ART “4”
“2”-DAY 15 April v.7.30 |
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Born on 15 April 1889: Thomas
Hart Benton, US Regionalist
painter, illustrator, and lithographer, who died on 19 January 1975. — He was the son of a congressman and first studied art in Washington DC, where he saw the murals in the capital’s public buildings. In 1907 he enrolled for a year at the Art Institute School in Chicago, visiting Paris the following summer. He studied until early 1909 at the Académie Julian and thereafter independently. Benton rejected academic methods and was exposed to both the Louvre and modernist styles; his interests seem to have focused on Impressionism and Pointillism. In Paris he met Diego Rivera and a number of fellow US artists, such as John Marin and Stanton Macdonald-Wright, who had a lasting influence on him. He also read and admired Hippolyte-Adolphe Taine, whose thought countered modernist ‘art for art’s sake’ attitudes with a sense of the artist’s responsibility to the social milieu. — Benton worked as a cartoonist for The American (a Missouri newspaper) in 1906. Later he studied at the Chicago Art Institute and then in Paris at the Académie Julian during a three-year visit. When he returned to the United States, he and his friends favored avant-garde art, but he abandoned a modern idiom in his own art about 1920. In 1924, he traveled through the rural US South and Midwest, sketching the scenes and people he encountered. Benton's images of people and landscapes are done in an original style marked by brilliant color with undulating forms displaying stylized, cartoon like figures. Like his fellow Regionalists, he was annoyed by the domination of French art in US culture. He was convinced that the culture and images from the South and Midwest should be the source of US art. Benton emerged as the defacto head of the US Regionalist painters at about the beginning of the depression. During the depression Benton painted a number of notable murals. Among them are several City Scenes (1930-1931) for the New School for Social Research in New York City. He frequently transposed biblical and classical stories to rural US settings, as in Susanna and the Elders (1938) and Persephone (1939); both shown below. For many years Benton taught at the Art Students League in New York City. Jackson Pollock [28 Jan 1912 – 11 Aug 1956] was one of his students. Later Benton taught at the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design, Kansas City, Missouri. Fairfield Porter was another of his students. — LINKS — 24 Dec 1934 Time cover with Self~Portrait (527x400pix cover, 280x230pix portrait, 42 kb) — People of Chilmark (Figure Composition) (1920; 600x710pix, 100kb _ ZOOM to 1014x1200pix, 122kb) — Threshing Wheat (1939; 575x946pix, 54kb) — Study for Threshing (496x653pix, 378kb) — (A Cottage Near the Sea) (374x481pix, 60kb) — Trail Riders (1965, 143x188cm; 390x514pix, 79kb) _ detail 1: the peak (390x520pix, 80kb) _ detail 2: the lake (390x520pix, 92kb) _ detail 3: trees _ detail 4: the stream — Boy on a Mule (1943; 399x531pix, 43kb) _ This painting has the kind of intimacy and quiet about it of many of Benton's paintings of rural life in Missouri. The slightly bowed young man is framed by the angular country shed to his right. The colors are subdued and natural; the paint has been applied with a light touch, leaving the image luminous and uncomplicated, but full of emotion. |
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Died on 15 April 1622: Leandro
Bassano da Ponte, Venetian Mannerist
painter born on 10 June 1557, on of the four sons of Jacopo
Bassano [1510 – 13 Feb 1592], brother of Francesco
Bassano II [07 Jan 1549 – 03 Jul 1592], Gerolamo
Bassano [03 Jun 1566 – 08 Nov 1621], and Giambattista Bassano.
Leandro Bassano's students included Tiberio
Tinelli [1586-1638]. — Leandro worked in the Venetian studio of the Bassano family under Francesco Bassano II, his elder brother who ran the Venetian branch of the workshop. Francesco committed suicide a few months after his father's death, then Leandro took over the workshop. He was the chief portrait painter of the family, and his portraits are closely allied to those of Tintoretto [1519 – 31 May 1594]. Leandro both acquired some distinction and popularity working in Venice, he was knighted by the Doge in 1595 or 1596 (thereafter he sometimes added 'Eques' to his signature). — Leandro entered the workshop of his father, Jacopo Bassano, when very young and soon developed a style of painting strongly based on drawing. Leandro used fine brushwork, with cool, light colors, smoothly applied in well-defined areas, unlike his father, who painted with dense and robust brushstrokes. From 1575 Leandro’s participation in the workshop increased, and he became his father’s principal assistant after Francesco Bassano il giovane moved to Venice in 1578. Jacopo’s will indicated that Leandro should take over the running of the shop, for Francesco was infirm after his suicide attempt, Giambattista was mediocre and incompetent, and Gerolamo was combining the painter’s trade with medical studies at the Univeristy of Padua. — LINKS — A Young Man (600x544pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1269pix) — Moses Striking the Rock (102x12cm) — An Old Man (116x96cm) _ Formerly attributed to Tintoretto. — Pénélope défaisant son ouvrage (1575, 92x85cm) _ Leandro n'est considéré le plus souvent que comme l'élève le plus original de son père, Jacopo Bassano. S'il travaille dans la même veine, en poursuivant notamment les recherches luministes auxquelles Jacopo s'est consacré dans sa dernière période, la personnalité propre de Leandro est pourtant bien cernée aujourd'hui. La composition étrangement moderne a soulevé des questions sur l'intégrité de l'oeuvre qui, selon certains, pourrait n'être qu'un fragment et représenter une femme au travail parmi d'autres. A la fin du XIXe siècle, le tableau a même perdu quelque temps son titre, Pénélope devenant une "ouvrière en guipure devant son métier". Ce petit flottement montre bien l'originalité déroutante du sujet. Malgré la célébrité du récit homérique, son iconographie est assez rare et imprécise. Les détails anecdotiques sont d'ailleurs limités ici au strict minimum, à savoir le métier et surtout la lampe, prétexte à un exercice technique saisissant sur le jeu de la lumière. La pénombre envahissante ne sert qu'à intensifier la couleur, posée en empâtements généreux dans la grande tradition familiale. Bien loin des effets de bougie des peintres caravagesques, c'est une dimension poétique et onirique que créent les contrastes inédits de Leandro Bassano. |
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Born on 15 April 1682: Jan
van Huysum, Dutch painter who died on 07 February 1749. — Van Huysum was, with Rachel Ruysch [1664 – 12 Aug 1750], the most distinguished flower painter of his day. He had a European reputation and was much imitated. The light colors he used, the even lighter backgrounds, and the openness of his intricate compositions became distinguishing features of 18th century Dutch flower painting. He occasionally painted subjects other than flowers, including a self-portrait. His father, Justus the Elder [08 Jun 1659 – Apr 1716], was a flower and landscape painter and he had three painter brothers: Justus the Younger [1684-1707]: Michiel [–1759]; and Jacob [1687-1740], who worked in England and imitated Jan's style. — LINKS — Still Life with Flowers (1723) — Bouquet of Flowers in an Urn (1724) _ The main line of eighteenth-century Dutch still-life painting is represented by the Amsterdamers Rachel Ruysch and Jan van Huysum, who both specialized in elaborate flower and fruit pictures. They were the most popular still-life painters of the period; their works commanded high prices and were found in famous collections throughout Europe, and their colorful paintings still have wide appeal. The status they were accorded in their time indicates there were powerful patrons and collectors who took exception to the teachings of academic theorists who minimized the significance of still-lifes by placing them. [Do not confuse Amsterdamers with “hamster damners”, even if a few, a very few, might be both] — Hollyhocks and Other Flowers in a Vase (1710, 62x52cm) _ Dutch painters described the visible world with remarkable precision and one of the forms this description took was the still life. In the earliest years of the seventieth century still-lifes often had a vanitas element. Among the apparently random accumulation of objects were clocks, snuffed-out candles, faded flowers and skulls, reminders of the passage of time and the inevitability of death and decay. As the century progressed these elements dropped away and still-lifes became simply displays of the rare, exotic, expensive and beautiful. Jan van Huysum, whose career spanned the first half of the eighteenth century, was the heir to this great tradition of still-life painting and, as far as floral still-lifes are concerned, its greatest exponent. This painting is undated but must belong to the first half of his career before about 1720, when he began to paint more elaborate and artificial flower pieces, which are light in tone on light backgrounds, in an almost pastel palette. It probably dates from about 1710. Jan van Huysum lived and worked in Amsterdam. He was one of a dynasty of painters, having been trained by his father Justus van Huysum, also a still-life painter, and was later imitated by his younger brother, Jacob. — Vase of Flowers (63x50cm) _ Son of Justus, a decorator of apartments and gardens, Jan van Huysum was one of the most famous Dutch painters of floral still-lifes, establishing himself in a pictorial genre that was already popular and widespread, and taking it to a perfection and virtuosity which was at times even mechanical. However, whereas in French artists, whom the painter was inspired by, ability and technical complexity were also reflected in the sometimes excessive elaboration of the portrayal, van Huysum stayed within the sober Quattrocento Flemish-Dutch tradition, even though he used motifs characteristic of the seventeenth century (the dark background and the presence of rare species of flowers). |
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Died on 15 April 1912: Francis Davis Millet,
US painter mostly of genre scenes, decorative artist, and writer, born on
03 November 1846, drowns as
the Titanic sinks, after he helped women and children into
the too few lifeboats and gave his life jacket to another passenger. He
boarded the Titanic as a 1st Class passenger at Cherbourg on Wednesday 10
April 1912, with ticket No. 13509, for which he paid £26 11s and got
cabin No. E38. His floating body would be recovered on 25 April by the ship
Mackay-Bennet. — Not to be confused with the better known
Jean-François
Millet [04 Oct 1814 – 20 Jan 1875], nor with “Francisque”
Millet [bap. 27 Apr 1642 – 03
Jun 1679 bur.]. — He served as a drummer boy and later as a surgical assistant with the Union forces during the US Civil War. He graduated from Harvard with a degree in literature in 1869. He worked as a newspaper editor before enrolling in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at Antwerp, Belgium, in 1871. He returned to the US in 1875 to become a correspondent for the Advertiser at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. In 1876, he painted murals at Trinity Church with John LaFarge. During the Russian Turkish War of 1877-1878, he became a war correspondent for several US and British newspapers; and he was decorated by Russia and by Romania for bravery under fire and services to the wounded. Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Mark Twain (whom Millet would paint) were the witnesses at his 1879 marriage to Elizabeth Merrill, sister of a Harvard friend. In 1887 Millet translated into English Sebastopol by Tolstoy. Millet was director of the decorations at the 1893 Columbia exposition in Chicago. In 1898 he became a war correspondent again, this time in the Philippines. Author of The Dnnude (1891), Capillary Crime and Other Stories (1892), Expedition to the Philippines (1899). — LINKS — Wandering Thoughts (800x606pix, 167kb) — The Expansionist aka The Well-Traveled Man (125kb) — Old Harmonies (60kb) — Reading the Story of Oenone (1883, 103kb) — A Difficult Duet (1886, 106kb) — Flemish Kitchen (169kb) — Between Two Fires (1892, 74x91cm) — Playing with Baby (1890) — The Artist's Bedroom in Antwerp (1873, 43x36cm; 547x450pix, 52kb) — The Artist's Kitchen in Antwerp (1873, 19 1/8 X 16 3/8 inches; 430x340pix, 39kb) — A Cosey Corner (1884, 92x62cm; 456x300pix, 39kb) — Turkish Water Seller (1874) — Bachi-Bazouk: épisode de la guerre en Turquie (1878, 127x72cm; 852x450pix, 70kb) — Mr. Sargent at work on Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885 drawing) _ about Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose by Sargent [12 Jan 1856 – 15 Apr 1925] |
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Born on 15 April 1741: Charles
Willson Peale, US painter, naturalist and museum visionary,
who died on 22 February 1827. — {Do you think that the appeal
of a Peale is only skin deep in the eye of the beholder?} — Charles Willson Peale married Rachel Brewer [14 May 1744 – 12 Apr 1790] on 12 Jan 1762; and Elizabeth De Peyster [10 Jul 1765 – 19 Feb 1804] on 30 May 1791; and he had a third wife, who also died before him. Thrice widowed, he fathered 17 children, 11 of whom lived to adulthood, and named sons after famous painters and succeeded in having them become competent painters in the cases of the still-life artist Raphaelle Peale [17 Feb 1774 – 25 Mar 1825], the portraitist Rembrandt Peale [22 Feb 1778 – 03 Oct 1860], and Titian Ramsay Peale [17 Nov 1799 – 1881; or 10 Oct 1800 – 1885], but no so much with Rubens Peale [04 May 1784 – 17 Jul 1865] who had poor eyesight and was taught to paint by his own daughter the painter Mary Jane Patterson Peale [16 Feb 1827 – 1902]. Charles Willson Peale may also have influenced his brother James Peale [1749 – 24 May 1831] and his nephew Charles Peale Polk [1767-1822] to become painters. In addition to members of his family, Charles Willson Peale had among his students Jeremiah Paul [–13 Jul 1820]. — With his surviving sons and daughters, among them Raphaelle, Angelica Kauffman, Rembrandt, Titian Ramsay, Rubens (father of Mary Jane Peale), Sophonisba Angusciola, Charles Linnaeus [20 Mar 1794 – <1836], Benjamin Franklin [15 Oct 1795 – 05 May 1870], Sybilla Miriam (Mrs. Andrew Summers) [27 Oct 1797–] ; Charles Willson Peale reflected and promoted a contemporary outlook which emphasized the importance of educating citizens and exploring the topography of the new nation. — Charles Willson Peale was the most prominent portraitist of the Federal period. He studied in London under the US-born historical painter Benjamin West [10 Oct 1738 – 11 Mar 1820] in 1767 and settled permanently in Philadelphia in 1776. Peale painted notable portraits of many military leaders, including 14 of George Washington. He was also an enthusiastic naturalist and established (1786) a museum of specimens in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. In 1805 he helped found Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. One of Peale's best-known works is his life-size trompe l'oeil portrait of two of his sons, The Staircase Group (1795) an affectionate work showing them mounting a spiral staircase. — The son of English embezzler Charles Peale [22 Dec 1709 – Nov 1750] exiled to the American colonies, Charles Willson Peale was a saddler’s apprentice in Annapolis MD from 1754 to 1761. After that he worked at various trades, including painting signs and portraits. In 1766 some prominent Marylanders underwrote his studies in London under Benjamin West, from whom he absorbed the fundamentals of the British portrait tradition. Peale probably attended the informal life classes offered at Saint-Martin’s Lane Academy, precursor to the Royal Academy Schools, and drew from casts in the Duke of Richmond’s collection in Whitehall. He visited the studios of such important British portrait painters as Joshua Reynolds [16 Jul 1723 – 23 Feb 1792], Francis Cotes [1726 – 20 Jul 1770], and Allan Ramsay [1713 – 10 Aug 1784], and studied the techniques of miniature painting, sculpture and engraving. He also studied under John Heselius. In London he painted his first major commission, a full-length allegorical portrait of William Pitt, Lord Chatham (1768) from which he engraved a mezzotint. — Born in Chester, Maryland, Charles Willson Peale became one of the major figures in US art and in other areas such as military figure, naturalist, curator, and inventor. He developed an art and natural history museum that became world famous, especially for the gallery of artwork that had his more than 250 portraits of distinguished Americans. In his home, Peale charged admission to persons to see his depictions of US heroes. By 1788, he opened a natural history museum in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and eventually accumulated over 100'000 items that included paintings, fossils, minerals, stuffed animals, and skeletons. In 1795, he opened his own art academy, which was not a success, and in 1805, he became one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Academy. His father was a schoolmaster who died prematurely, and Charles grew up as the eldest son in Annapolis, Maryland and helped support his widowed mother. He apprenticed in saddle making, silver smithing, sign painting and portraiture, and had several lessons with painter John Hesselius to whom he gave a saddle in exchange for instruction. He also studied in Boston with portraitist and silversmith John Singleton Copley and with painter John Smibert. When he returned to Maryland from his Boston training, his talent was recognized by men who were planters and they raised subscription money for him to study with expatriate history and portrait painter, Benjamin West, in London. He also studied the Italian masters in Italy. In 1769 he returned to Annapolis and there became an established portraitist in the neo-classical style learned from Benjamin West. For additional commissions, he traveled to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Williamsburg, Virginia and to Mount Vernon, home of George and Martha Washington. In 1775, he moved to Philadelphia where he hoped to find more portrait subjects. Shortly after, he joined the militia and fought with Washington at the battles of Princeton and Trenton, and during this period created miniatures of army personnel. In 1778, he settled in Philadelphia but continued to visit Baltimore and the eastern shore of Maryland. From 1810 to 1821, he lived as a gentleman farmer near Philadelphia but returned to the city in 1822 to take over the management of the Peale Museum. His fourteen portraits of George Washington include the first authentic likeness of him and include seven portraits painted from life. At Valley Forge where he was painting General Washington, Peale also painted portraits of many other colonial leaders including the Marquis de Lafayette. An outspoken anti-royalist, Peale served in the Revolutionary War and alienated many of his wealthy patrons with their British loyalties. From three marriages, he had three children, many whom became artists. Charles Peale died at age 86, the result of catching a cold while crossing a body of water to court a woman. — LINKS — The Peale Family (1809) — Raphaelle Peale (1822) — The Staircase Group (Raphaelle Peale and Titian Ramsey Peale) (1795) cm) — Elie Williams (1789, 92x69cm) — Thomas Willing (1782, 128x101cm) — Samuel Mifflin (1780, 126x101cm) — Margaret Strachan (Mrs. Thomas Harwood) (1771, 79x62cm) — Rachel Brewer Peale (1769, oval 5.7x4.6cm) — Disinterment of the Mastodon (1808) — George Washington at Princeton US Senate version (1779, 233x148cm; 973x610pix, 730kb) _ GW at P another version (1779, 236x148cm) –- George Washington at Trenton the version with sword (1780; 626x400pix, 25kb _ .ZOOM to 939x600pix, 38kb _ .ZOOM+ to 1170xpix, 131kb _ .ZOOM++ to 3758x2400pix, 608kb) _ Charles Willson Peale painted George Washington more times from life than any other artist. In 1772 Peale visited Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, to portray the hero as a colonel of the Virginia regiment, the only pre-Revolutionary likeness of him. In 1795 Peale and other members of his family painted the president for the last time during his second term. All told, Peale had seven opportunities to paint the great man at different times in his career, and he replicated many of the paintings. None was as popular as the enduring image of Washington after the Battle of Princeton, which was commissioned on 18 January 1779 by the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania for its council chamber in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. In preparation, Peale visited the Princeton and Trenton battlefields in February of 1779 to make sketches for the background. The original (no link to it here) was completed in early 1779, when Washington sat for Peale in Philadelphia. An immediate success, it precipitated a great demand for replicas. Of the estimated 18 replicas, the superlative Senate picture is the earliest recorded one that Peale made, although there was a contemporary published notice that five replicas had been ordered as early as February 1779. The portrait, with its specific reference to a battle, was a complicated undertaking. Of course, Peale invented the composition. Washington, wearing a blue and buff uniform with the blue sash of the commander-in-chief, leans lightly on the barrel of a captured cannon. Two Hessian flags captured at Trenton are beside him and at his feet. A British ensign lies on the ground to the left. Behind him, an officer holds his commander’s horse, while above them flies the blue battle flag with a circle of 13 stars. A second horse is glimpsed at the right. On a shadowed rise in the left middle distance, beside a barren, wintry tree, are two mounted soldiers with rifles. One of them gestures toward a procession of 16 red-coated prisoners under guard farther back. Beyond is a group of six or seven buildings, including Nassau Hall, the principal building of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). The hall was included for its significance in the battle–-the engagement actually ended within its walls. It was a landscape Peale knew well. The artist had served in the Continental army for three years, commanding a company of Philadelphia militia. He saw action at the Battles of Trenton, Princeton, and Germantown. At Princeton, he found himself in the front line at the battle’s climax, with Washington in command. It is rare, indeed, for a painter of military history to have participated in the engagement being depicted. Peale wrote in his diary that they “stood the Fire without regarding [the] Balls which whistled their thousand different notes around our heads, and what is very astonishing did little or no harm.” Peale visited both Trenton and Princeton to observe and sketch the landscape in preparation for the painting, and he obviously had vivid memories of the Battle at Princeton. Washington’s cross-legged pose may seem awkward. It is a complex play of angles and curves around the central vertical axis of the upper left leg, torso, and head. The curves of the coat’s edges, sash, and left arm are played against the abrupt angles of Washington’s right elbow, his left knee, and his heels. Peale effectively repeats the shapes of the elbow and the brim of the hat, held inverted in Washington’s right hand. Asymmetries animate the portrait: Washington leans slightly, which pulls his head just to the right of center, with the angle balanced by the inward angle of the battle flag. This pose, similar to that of ancient Roman sculptures, was quite prevalent in English portraiture of the period. Peale seems to have imitated the portrait of naval captain Augustus Hervey, 3rd Earl of Bristol by Thomas Gainsborough, including a captured battle flag at the feet. With two years of study and practice in London (1767-1769) behind him, Peale had a solid knowledge of contemporary English portraiture. In the 1768 Society of Artists Exhibition in London, in which Peale himself exhibited, he had seen the Gainsborough painting. The most significant difference between the two subjects arises from Peale’s literal directness: Where Gainsborough’s Hervey is positioned on a diagonal within the picture space and looks away from the viewer, Peale’s Washington is nearly frontal and looks directly at the viewer with a candid, affable expression. This is, in fact, a defining characteristic of Peale’s portraiture. Avoiding any classical symbolism (he had earlier pictured William Pitt in a Roman toga), Peale produced a realistic, accurate portrait of the general. 188-cm-tall, Washington stood a full head above the average soldier in his army. He had narrow shoulders, wide hips, long arms and legs, and very large hands and feet. His head was small in relation to the length of his body. Although Peale’s likeness of Washington did not match the ideal canon of proportions espoused by the art academies, it was nonetheless accurate. Peale knew the general better than any other artist did, and his artistic abilities are not in doubt. In addition, the full-length painting George Washington before the Battle of Trenton (1783, 62x45cm) by John Trumbull and statue George Washington by Jean-Antoine Houdon second the evidence of Peale’s likeness. Only the several full-length portraits by Gilbert Stuart seem closer to ideal proportions, and their greater public fame has given them an authority they do not deserve. Stuart idealized his sitters more than Peale did, and when he was painting the general’s body, he used a visitor to his studio as a surrogate model. Apart from the face, Stuart’s Washington fails as an accurate record of the hero’s physical appearance. See Stuart's George Washington (1796; 800x514pix, 82kb), George Washington (The Lansdowne Portrait) (1796, 244x152cm; 800x503pix, 145kb), and Washington at Dorchester Heights (1806; 800x514pix, 75kb) In Peale’s painting, Washington is strongly silhouetted against a pinkish-blue sky, with the horizon line at the mid-level of the canvas. It is dawn, the hour when the battle commenced. It might, at the same time, be the symbolic dawn of eventual success in the War for Independence. Optimism is embodied in the general’s glowing face: Confident and self-possessed, this is the definitive image of George Washington at the apogee of his vigorous manhood and military career. The popular success of George Washington at Princeton led to orders for as many replicas as Peale could produce. In August 1779 the artist wrote: “I have on hand a number of portraits of Gen. Washington. One the ambassador had for the Court of France, another is done for the Spanish Court, one other has been sent to the island of Cuba, and sundry others, which I have on hand are for private gentlemen.” Versions vary in size and composition–-with the background and the treatment of the figure of Washington altered by Peale. Changes included replacing the soldiers and horses with a bleak winter landscape, updating the general’s insignia according to the most recently issued orders, and giving greater prominence to the colonial flag. Other full-length versions by Charles Willson Peale are found at Princeton University in New Jersey, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Colonial Williamsburg, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The one version with sword was probably painted between June and August of 1780. In every other version, Washington is shown after the Battle of Princeton, but this one depicts him after the Battle of Trenton, the turning point of the war. It has been suggested that this version was commissioned upon the order of Mrs. Washington, because it is the only portrait in which Washington wears his state sword (the handle near his left hand, and most of the scabbard unseen behing his legs) and because the painting descended in the Washington family. —(070414) |
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Died on 15 April 1808: Hubert
Robert, French landscape painter born on 22 May 1733. — Robert was sometimes called "Robert des Ruines" because of his many romantic representations of Roman ruins set in idealized surroundings. Robert went to Rome (1754), was elected to the French Academy there, and became a friend and associate of the renowned etcher of architectural subjects Giambattista Piranesi. In 1759 he joined Abbé de Sainte-Non and the French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard in travels through southern Italy and Sicily. Each man influenced the other's style but not the other's choice of subjects. At the Villa d'Este, Tivoli, Robert produced a quantity of red chalk drawings of ancient buildings in ruined parks, animated with small figures. Returning to Paris (1765), Robert became a member of the French Royal Academy in 1766. A gifted decorative artist, he based his paintings on his Italian drawings, and his popularity was enhanced by exhibitions at the Salons from 1767 on. In addition to Italian landscapes, he painted scenes of Ermenonville, Marly-le-Roi, and Versailles, near Paris, and of the south of France, with its ruined Roman monuments. He also directed the design of the English garden at Versailles. Under Louis XVI he became Keeper of the King's Pictures and one of the first curators of the Louvre. Although imprisoned during the French Revolution, he continued to work. (He owed his life to an accident whereby another person with the same name was guillotined in his stead.) He collaborated with Fragonard on a commission for the Musée Français in the Louvre during the 1790s, but at the time of his death he was forgotten. — LINKS — Avenue in a Park (1799, 59x39cm) _ This small, finely executed painting is a good example of Hubert Robert's refined art. Robert, a French painter of the second half of the 18th century, is known mainly for his landscapes decorated with imaginary architecture and little figures, in which happiness, reality and fiction, archaeological taste and sense of decoration are all mingled. Avenue in a Park is a late work in the painter's career, testifying to the permanence of his style and to his taste for a nature that has been disciplined and made decorative by man. The subject matter still reflects the "douceur de vivre" so dear to the 18th century. An avenue lined with trees with their tops intertwined leads the spectator towards the bottom of the garden. In the center, a young girl is playing on a swing, activated by two companions. A group of people to the right are looking on. The whole painting bathes in a soft harmony of browns, greys and greens against a bluish sky background. The red coat of the man leaning against the pedestal catches the viewer's eye. The antique statues — reposing satyr and faun playing a flute — flanking the tree-lined opening in the foreground had been earlier captured by Robert in a red chalk drawing of various Graeco-Roman sculptures conserved in the Capitol. The artist has repeated them here the other way round. The young musician in turn had appeared in several of Robert's paintings. Arriving in Rome in 1754, Robert stayed there for over 10 years. It is there that he met the Abbé de Saint-Non, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and in particular Gian Paolo Panini, who was to have a lasting influence on him. He also became friends with Fragonard. The little painting in Brussels confirms the close links between the art of "Robert of the Ruins" and Fragonard's poetic universe. The avenue of trees also refers to the many parks and gardens in Italy and the Ile-de-France which were to nourish his imagination throughout his long and successful career. Robert exhibited at every salon from 1767 to 1798, becoming "designer of the King's gardens" in 1777 and much later, after the revolutionary tumult, producing plans for converting the Grande Galerie of the Louvre into a museum. — Le Pont du Gard (1787, 242x242cm) _ Hubert Robert, who learned his trade during a long journey through Italy, was a very producti8ve artist. He took over from Pannini the theme of ruins, but in his hands it became less dry and more picturesque. — Washerwomen below a Bridge - (24x33cm) _ Hubert Robert in his large-scale decorative works was often conventional, but in his works on a small-scale he was a very fine painter, with a sensitive and spontaneous technique. — Imaginary View of the Grande Galerie in the Louvre in Ruins (1796, 114x146cm) _ French painting in the second half of the 18th century displays the overlapping or intermingling of pre-Romantic and Neoclassical pictorial ideas, and nowhere is this clearer than in the work of the 'painter of ruins', Hubert Robert. He obtained his ideas from Italy, where he admired the paintings of ruins by Giovanni Paolo Pannini, and witnessed the first excavations in Pompeii. Praised by Diderot, he was immediately consulted when antique pieces were to be placed in the park of Versailles. But his great work was the realization of the Louvre Museum. A comparison of two of his paintings, the first showing a ruined barrel-vault hall, and the second the Grande Galerie in the Louvre, immediately reveals the source of the idea for the top lighting and the "antique effect" that the newly designed gallery is open to the sky. The sublimity of antique ruins was to be transferred to the real building, and this in turn was to be a treasure chest of art and a worthy successor to its antique models. — Design for the Grande Galerie in the Louvre (1796, 112x143cm) _ Hubert Robert's great work was the realization of the Louvre Museum. A comparison of two of his paintings, the first showing a ruined barrel-vault hall, and the second the Grande Galerie in the Louvre, immediately reveals the source of the idea for the top lighting and the "antique effect" that the newly designed gallery is open to the sky. The sublimity of antique ruins was to be transferred to the real building, and this in turn was to be a treasure chest of art and a worthy successor to its antique models. — The Draughtsman of the Borghese Vase (1775, 36x29cm) _ Rome's ancient ruins was a source of inspiration in the late 18th century, as this drawing shows. Distorting the proportions of the scene like Piranesi, Robert composed an architectural "capriccio" from a number of set pieces that were freely designed and rendered in the manner of veduta. The artist of the title is seen sketching the gigantic Borghese Vase on a square above the Forum, which had a view to the Coliseum - a building whose vertical dimensions Robert extended by adding an additional series of arcades. The Borghese Vase was actually never exhibited close to the Coliseum, but was situated in the Borghese gardens. The inscription illuminates an idealized relationship to Antiquity: Rome's former glory is still revealed in its ruins. With the brownish red-chalk crayon typical of the late 18th century, Robert achieved subtly drawn as well as painterly effects. The fragile, delicate contours and the schematic manner in which the foliage of trees is depicted recall the Rococo. |
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Born on 15 April 1859: Abbott Fuller Graves,
US Impressionist
painter who died in 1936. — {My guess is that, during the Black Plague,
they ran out of cemetery space in the monastery, so the abbot decided to
bury two deceased monks in each grave. These became known as the “abbot's
fuller graves”.} — Graves divided his studies between Boston and Paris. He studied practical design at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a teenager, followed by numerous trips to France where he studied with individual painters. In 1890 he started a teaching position at the Cowles School of Art in Boston. During this time he traveled often to Kennebunkport, Maine where he owned a house. Graves is best known for his paintings of gardens and doorways. His works, mostly in oil, depict New England, Paris, Holland, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. He was a social and well-loved man who was greatly influenced by extensive world travel and both classical and impressionist painters. — Graves was a renowned specialist in decorative open air garden paintings and floral still lifes. His use of thick, impasto brushstrokes, bright colors and natural light, most evident in his later garden paintings, shows the influence of European impressionism. Born in Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1859, Graves studied both in New England and abroad. He attended, but did not graduate from, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Although already considered one of the best flower painters in Boston, Graves went to Paris and Italy in 1884 to continue his studies. In Europe, he roomed with Edmund C. Tarbell [1862-1938] and studied still life painting. After returning to Boston in 1885, Graves became an instructor at the Cowles Art School. Also teaching there was his close friend and colleague, Childe Hassam [1859-1935]. The two painters undoubtedly influenced one another. In 1887, Graves returned to Paris to study figure painting at the Académie Julien. There he studied under Fernand Cormon [1845-1924], Laurens [1838-1921], and Gervais until 1891. After 1891, the majority of Graves's works depict gardens and floral landscapes. Often these oils, pastels and watercolors include female figures. Some portray exotic gardens of Spain and South America. The bright sunlight and bold use of color and paint, as well as the subject matter of the garden paintings, reflect the influence of European impressionism on Graves's work. Throughout his career, Graves continued his travels between New England and Paris. In 1891, he opened his own art school in Boston. The school moved to Kennebunk, Maine and closed in 1902. From 1902 to 1905, Graves was employed as a commercial illustrator for magazines in Paris. When Graves died in 1936, he had achieved wide acclaim as a specialist in garden painting, both in New England and Paris. — Abbott Fuller Graves was born in the working-class town of Weymouth, Massachusetts. From a young age, he displayed the singular ambition to be the US’s foremost flower painter and arranged the circumstances of his life in order to realize that goal. When he was forced to leave school at the age of sixteen to help support his family’s meager income, he chose to work in a greenhouse tending to flowers. It was there that Graves developed an intricate knowledge of many varieties of flora and fauna. One year later, he traveled to Boston to take classes in fine art. He studied design and drawing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he met life-long friend and fellow Boston Impressionist Childe Hassam. At nineteen, his first painting was accepted to the Boston Art Club’s Annual Exhibition. In 1884, he traveled to Paris for the first time with his fiancée Montie Aldrich and her family. He rented a room on the Avenue de Victor Hugo, in the same building as another Boston artist Edmund C. Tarbell. Tarbell studied at the traditional Académie Julian, while Graves petitioned the premier European flower painter Georges Jeannin for lessons. Graves also trained at the Académie Julian during a later trip to France. He stayed for two years and also traveled to Venice. Upon his return to Boston, he married Montie (with both Hassam and Tarbell serving as attendants) and began teaching at the Cowles Art School with Dennis Miller Bunker. The following spring, Graves and his wife returned to Paris for an extended stay in order to exhibit his works in more prominent venues. Two of his florals were included in the Exposition Universelle de 1889 and several works were accepted by the Paris Salon of the same year. His success may be attributed to the contemporary appeal of his painterly style and refined sense of color, admired by French Academic painters. US critics praised the artist as the only US flower painter whose works were accepted by the Exposition jury to represent US arts in this specialty. Designed by Boyceau in the seventeenth century, the Luxembourg Gardens provided ample subject matter for US artists studying in Paris but was especially inspirational for Abbott Fuller Graves, More detailed than a traditional pochade, Graves added his own refined painterly style to this popular practice of sketching with immediacy on small wood panels. Having spent several extended periods in Paris, Graves came under the influence of Impressionism and began painting en plein air. Luxembourg Gardens depicts the winding paths and abundant sculptures of the English style gardens bathed in sunlight. Once back in the US, Graves’ career paralleled a renaissance of gardening and horticulture in the late 19th century US. Gardens symbolized prosperity and the particular tastes of the burgeoning leisure class, and their popularity provided the artist with regular commissions and a prosperous career. He became best known for his views of New England Colonial doorways and gardens, as well as scenes depicting flower markets and expostions in the Boston area. Graves traveled regularly throughout Western and Northern Europe, as well as South America and the Caribbean and kept studios in both New York and Boston. While he exhibited extensively at the National Academy of Design and several prominent galleries in New York (including the MacBeth Gallery and Babcock Galleries), and he enjoyed participating in professional organizations including the Salmagundi Club, the Boston Art Club, the Paint and Clay Club and the Copley Society, he was happiest away from frenzied urban lifestyle. The Graves family established a permanent residence in the rural fishing village of Kennebunkport, Maine, in a home he designed based on the prairie architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. — Near Kennebunkport (1900) — Grandmother's Doorway (1900) — Summer Garden — My Two Friends (61x51cm; 480x390pix) _ a woman who is peeling vegetables looks at two rabbits who are sitting next to her. — Luxembourg Gardens (1885, 24x16cm; 480x318pix) _ The painting depicts the winding paths and abundant sculptures of the English style gardens bathed in the Paris sunlight. — Peonies (52x76cm; 449x640pix) — Roses (51x41cm, 480x368pix) |
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Died on 15 April 1757: Rosalba
Carriera, Venetian pastelist and painter born on 07 October
1675. Along with her long-time friend, Antoine Watteau, whom she portrayed
in pastels, she was considered one of the leading portrait artists of the
Rococo era. — She was a daughter of Andrea Carriera, who worked in the mainland podesteria of the Republic of Venice, and of Alba Foresti, an embroiderer. She had two sisters: Angela, who married the painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, and Giovanna, who, like Rosalba herself, never married. She originally painted snuff-boxes and later became a student of Giuseppe Diamantini and/or Federico Bencovich. There are more precise records of her life and of some of her works from 1700 onwards, when she started keeping the letters she received and rough copies of those she sent. — Rosalba Carriera had a great vogue in Venice, chiefly among British tourists, in Paris (1720-1721), and Vienna (1730). She painted snuff boxes for the tourist trade with miniatures on ivory, a technique she seems to have pioneered as against the earlier use of card as a ground. She was painting miniatures by 1700, and her earliest pastels are of 1703. In 1705 she was made an 'accademico di merito' by the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, a title reserved for non-Roman artists. She achieved immense popularity, and made pastel portraits of notabilities from all over Europe, She also had great success with her near-pornographic demi-vierges, much earlier examples of the genre than those by Greuze. She went blind at the end of her life, which provoked a mental collapse. A sister-in-law of Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, Rosalba Carriera achieves the same airy lightness of touch as her relative in her portraits. These were done in pastel and in them she explored the finest shadings of her subjects' characters, the most fleeting of their moods. Thus, without falling either into the dangers of the encomiastic portrait or of the documentary, Rosalba matches the immediacy of pastel technique to the freshness of her psychological and social penetration of her subjects, offering an unrivalled picture of the society of her time. In the Elderly Lady the mature beauty of the noblewoman and her serene good-natured existence are conveyed with incomparable skill. Typical of her work is the portrait of Cardinal Melchior de Polignac with its superb rendering of the physical features of the subject, catching immediately the wilful character of the prelate. Trained as a miniaturist, Rosalba Carriera became very famous and sought-after throughout Europe, and especially in Paris where she was highly esteemed by Watteau for her portraits in pastels. This technique, which she used exclusively, was particularly suitable for the haziness and lightness of her pictures and also for her mawkish obligingness towards her sitters. Her portraits are a typical example of what Diderot called "flatterie", that is, they tend towards over-embellishment and idealization. — Rosalba was born in Venice, Italy in 1675. Little is known of her early life nor how she came to pick up her amazing talent with pastels, not to mention oils; which she handled with similar ease in the demanding art of miniature portrait painting. Pastels were brand new at the time, probably a French invention, and inasmuch as Venice was a trade port, it's not surprising they turned up there first in Italy. They've always been considered something of a women's art medium, at least until Degas embraced them in the late 1800s. Men did their painting in oil. At first, pastels were reserved for the quick, color sketches for which they were designed. But gradually, because of the speed with which they could be used, they became popular with those lacking the time and patience to sit for an oil portrait. And, being done on paper, not to mention mostly by women, they were no doubt cheaper than oils. But Carriera not only proved the equal to any male portrait painter in Venice, but also proved pastels the equal of oils in their richness, color, and handling. She was accepted as one of the few female members of the Guild of St. Luke (doctors and artists) and later, the French Academy. One of her best works, Self-portrait with a Portrait of her Sister, done in 1709 after she took up residence in Paris, was something of an advertisement. She worked with her sister, whom she herself had taught to paint, in managing quite a busy portrait workshop. The pastel painting (I still have trouble with that concept) depicts the rather plain face of the artist, no doubt made up to look her best, attired in satin and lace, blending tool in hand, showing off the portrait of her slightly more attractive sister. Most of her other female portraits are a good deal more glamorous, even erotic, with deeply plunging décolletage and even the occasional bare breast. Her Young Lady with a Parrot is more typical. Rosalba Carriera is credited with having greatly popularised the medium of pastels in France during the early 1700s; and with introducing, perhaps even instructing, the renowned French pastel artist, Maurice Quentin de la Tour, to the use of pastels as a portrait medium. Tragically, perhaps as a result of years spent straining to paint miniature portraits, her eyesight failed her the last ten years of her life. — Gustaf Lundberg was a student of Carriera. — LINKS — Self-Portrait as Winter (1731) — Felicità Sartori (1735) — Cardinal Melchior de Polignac (1732, 57x46cm) — Elderly Lady (1740, 50x40cm) — Flora (1735, 47x33cm) — Young Cavalier (1730, 55x42cm) — America (1730) — Bambina Leblond con Ciambella (1730, 34x27cm) _ Il ritratto di una ragazzina della famiglia Le Blond appare nella vaporosa leggerezza dei toni del colore usati dall'artista. Ella infatti era abilissima nell'uso dei pastelli , tanto da ottenere le più delicate sfumature e le più fresche trasparenze, negli incarnati del volto. Ne è un esempio questo ritratto di giovinetta dalle guance rosee, la bocca minuscola e arrossata, gli occhi grandi e spalancati. Il viso dolce è incorniciato dai capelli biondi che ricadono a boccoli sulle spalle. L'abilità tecnica, raggiunta dall'artista, le permette di descrivere minutamente anche l'abbigliamento. La ragazzina porta una sciarpetta di pizzo annodata al collo e indossa un bellissimo vestito bianco, decorato con fiori azzurri e rosa, e trattenuto nella scollatura da un nastro. Particolare curioso è indubbiamente la dolce ciambella che trattiene in mano. —(060401) |
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