ART “4”
“2”-DAY 10 February
v.9.a0 |
| BIRTH:
1795 SCHEFFER |
| ^
Died on 10 February 1772: Louis Tocqué
(or Toucquet), French portrait painter and engraver born on 19 November
1696. — He was the student and son-in-law of Jean-Marc Nattier [17 Mar 1685 – 07 Nov 1766] (who was good at painting pretty women, while Tocqué was happier with plain ones). He admired Rigaud and Largillièrre and adapted their styles, and Nattier's, to the requirements of his own time. He worked in Paris except for a stay in Saint-Petersburg and Copenhagen (1756-1759) and a second trip to Copenhagen in 1769. — He studied briefly under the history painter Nicolas Bertin but was more influenced by the portrait painter Jean-Marc Nattier, whose studio he entered about 1718, and whose daughter he married in 1747. In Nattier’s studio he made copies of portraits by van Dyck, Nicolas de Largillièrre, and Hyacinthe Rigaud [1659-1743] (e.g. a copy of Rigaud’s portrait of Cardinal de Fleury). He may have participated in Pierre Crozat’s project, begun in 1721, to publish engravings of pictures in the collection of the Regent, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, making drawings alongside Nattier and Watteau, and he may also have made engravings after the paintings by Charles Le Brun in the Grande Galerie at Versailles under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Massé (about 1724). — Jean Valade was a student of Tocqué. — LINKS — Marie Leczinska, Queen of France (1740, 277x191cm; 1070x782pix, 133kb) — A Man — Ekaterina Golovkina — Empress Elizabeth Petrovna — Louis, Grand Dauphin of France — Mademoiselle de Coislin |
| ^
Died on 10 (09?) February 1667: Juan
Bautista Martínez del Mazo, Spanish painter born in 1612. — Del Mazo was a student of Diego Velázquez, married his daughter Francisca Velázquez on 21 August 1633. Velázquez, who then held the position, arranged for Philip IV to appoint Mazo as Ujier de Cámara in 1634, and Mazo and his bride lived in the same house as Velázquez, and Mazo succeeded him as court painter in 1661. Among Mazo's very few signed works is a portrait of Queen Mariana (1666), and many of the works now attributed to him were formerly thought to be of Velázquez, whose mature style del Mazo imitated with great skill. — LINKS — The Artist's Family (1660, 148x174cm) — The Hunting Party at Aranjuez (1635, 187x249cm; _ ZOOM to 1501x2024pix, 358kb) — View of the City of Zaragoza _ View of Zaragoza (1647, 181x331cm) — Infante Don Baltasar Carlos (1635, 144x109cm; _ ZOOM to 2071x1576pix, 304kb) _ Mazo, one of the true followers of Velázquez, is credited with a number of works formerly attributed to his master (and his father-in-law). Baltasar Carlos [17 Oct 1629 – 09 Oct 1646] was the son of King Philip IV [l [08 Apr 1605 – 17 Sep 1665]. The influence of Velázquez [bap. 06 Jun 1599 – 06 Aug 1660] (who made several portraits of Baltasar Carlos) is very strong both in the composition and in the landscape background. It is assumed that this is a variant of a lost Velázquez portrait. Some scholars attribute this painting to Alonso Cano [1601-1667]. — Queen Mariana of Spain in Mourning (1666, 197x146cm) _ The painting follows the style of Velázquez in its handling, though lacking his supreme skill as a painter of convincing interiors. The room in the background represents the Pieza Ochavada in the Royal Palace in Madrid, before the destruction of the building by fire in 1734. The boy king Charles II [06 Nov 1661 – 01 Nov 1700] is shown there with a group of attendants and a toy coach. He became king at the death of his father, Philip IV, for whom his mother, Mariana of Austria [23 Dec 1634 – 1696], is in mourning. —(060209) |
| ^
Born on 10 February 1795: Ary
Scheffer, Dutch French Academic
painter, sculptor, and lithographer, who died on 15 June 1858. — He received his earliest training in the studio of his parents, German Johann-Bernhard Scheffer [1764–1809] and Dutch Cornelia Scheffer [1769–1839], who were both artists, as was his brother Henri Scheffer [1798–1862]. He then attended the Amsterdam Teeken-Academie (1806–1809). At the first Exhibition of Living Masters in Amsterdam in 1808 he showed Hannibal Swearing to Avenge the Death of his Brother Hasdrubal, a predominantly monochrome and loosely done painting, which reveals his familiarity with the Dutch pictorial tradition. After his father's death the family moved to Paris in 1809, where he was trained in 1810 by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon and at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1811 by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. Scheffer exhibited at the Salon from 1812. His early work was Neoclassical in style (e.g. Hannibal Swearing to Avenge his Son's Death, 1810) but by 1814 he had introduced color and drama into his work (e.g. Orpheus and Eurydice , 1814). He was highly popular in Paris during the 1830s for his sentimental merging of a highly finished technique and Romantic subject-matter. He worked in a range of genres from portraiture to exotic and literary themes (e.g. Leonora, 1828). He was a supporter of Greek independence, an enthusiast for English and German literature and a friend of Gautier, and therefore could be seen as representing the acceptable face of Romanticism. — Scheffer's students included Thomas Armstrong, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, Gustave Colin, Louis-Joseph-Auguste Coutan, Louis-Joseph Gallait, Charles Landelle, Claudius-Marcel Popelin, Charles Verlat, and ... {take a deep breath} ... Marie-Christine-Caroline-Adélaïde-Françoise-Léopoldine de Bourbon princesse d'Orléans et duchesse de Württemberg. — LINKS — Self-portrait –- Saint Augustin et sa Mère Sainte Monique (1855, 145x110cm; 512x617pix, 20kb _ .ZOOM 1 to 1024x1234pix, 69kb _ .ZOOM 2 to 2048x2469pix, 385kb) — La Mort de Géricault (1824, 36x46cm; 840x1034pix, 138kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1728pix, 721kb, and admire the network of aging cracks in the paint) _ The death of Géricault [26 Sep 1791 – 26 Jan 1824] at the age of thirty-three came about as a result of an infection following a riding accident, but the circumstances were never satisfactorily explained, and Géricault was thought to have neglected various ailments from which he was already suffering, and even to have attempted suicide. He had struggled to win artistic recognition, and there seemed a tragic inevitability about his end. It was fitting that the Salon of 1824 - often called the 'Romantic' Salon for including so many icons of the movement - should also have contained the moving memorial to Géricault painted by Ary Scheffer. Mourned by his friends, the painter lies on his deathbed in his small room in the rue des Martyrs, his favorite sketches and pictures on the wall above - indeed a martyr to art. — The Ghosts of Paolo and Francesca Appear to Dante and Virgil (1835, 167x234cm; 814x1208pix, 98kb) _ The painting illustrates a famous episode from the fifth canto of Dante's Inferno, in which Dante and Virgil see Paolo and Francesca condemned to the darkness of Hell with the souls of the lustful. This is the prime version of a composition Scheffer repeated several times (the first in 1822) and it has a frame which he specially devised to suit the subject. — almost identical The Ghosts of Paolo and Francesca Appear to Dante and Virgil (1855, 171x239cm; 770x1141pix, 96kb) — Sérénade sur la Terrasse du Château d'Arenenburg (600x833pix _ ZOOM not recommended to cracked and very blurry 1400x1943pix, 547kb) — Margaret at the Fountain (1852) — The Souliot Women (1827, 248x354cm) {en français ce n'est PAS Les femmes du soûlaud} — Faust and Marguerite in the Garden (1846, 218x135cm) — Francesca da Rimini (1835) — Mme. Frederick Kent (1847, 119x74cm) — Macbeth et les Sorcières (65x81cm) |
| ^
>Died on 10 February 1765: Jean-Baptiste-Henri
Deshays (or Deshayes) de Colleville “le Romain”,
French painter, specialized in historical
painting, born on 26 May 1729. — He was first trained by his father, Jean-Dominique Deshays[1700–], an obscure painter in Rouen. After a brief period at Jean-Baptiste Descamps’s École Gratuite de Dessin, he entered the studio in Paris of Hyacinthe Collin de Vermont in 1740. There he acquired the foundations of the mastery of drawing for which he later became celebrated. In late 1749 he moved to the studio of Jean Restout II, who was, like Collin de Vermont, a student of Jean Jouvenet, and whose work continued the grand tradition of French history painting. It was from Restout that Deshays learnt the importance of dramatic composition and strong coloring in large religious paintings. While he was in Restout’s studio, Deshays entered the Prix de Rome competition, winning second prize in 1750 with Laban Giving his Daughter in Marriage to Jacob, and the first prize in 1751 with Job on the Dung-hill. Before going to Rome, Deshays spent the obligatory three years at the Ecole des Elèves Protégés; from its director Carle Vanloo he learnt a more fashionable facility and tempered the severity inherited from Jouvenet with a more appealing manner. During this period he undertook a number of commissions for religious paintings, including two vast canvases, a Visitation and an Annunciation, for the monastery of the Visitation at Rouen. He completed his artistic education with four years at the Académie de France in Rome under its director, Charles-Joseph Natoire. During this time he made a great many copies of works by Raphael and the Bolognese masters Domenichino, Guercino, and the Carracci. — Deshays enjoyed a brief, but brilliant, career; he was extolled by Diderot as "the first painter of the nation" (Salon of 1761). Born in Colleville, near Rouen, he spent his formative years in Normandy. He studied first under his father, a minor painter, subsequently receiving instruction in drawing from Collin de Vermont, religious painting from Jean Restout, and the rococo style from François Boucher. He won the Prix de Rome in 1751 but spent the next three years in the studio of Carle Vanloo before taking up residence at the French Academy in Rome, then under the direction of Charles Natoire. Deshays returned to Paris in 1758, married the elder daughter of Boucher, and was made a full member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1759. The artist exhibited at only four official Salons, all to extraordinary acclaim. Deshays's rich imagination and powers of expression were inspired by the great history painters of the seventeenth century, Eustache Le Sueur, Charles Le Brun, Rubens, and the Carracci (Agostino [1557-1602], Annibale[1560-1609], Lodovico [1555-1619]) . The majority of his oeuvre is made up of religious and mythological compositions, conceived in the grand French decorative tradition. — The students of Deshays included Jacques Gamelin, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, François-Guillaume Ménageot. — LINKS –- The Abduction of Helen (1761, 54x87cm; 756x1250pix, 102kb _ .ZOOM to 1513x2500pix, 822kb) — Saint Andrew Refusing to Worship Idols. (1759, 445x215cm) _ The subject is drawn from Jacques de Voragine's Golden Legend. It shows the martyrdom of Saint Andrew, when he is about to be nailed to the cross and is asked to worship idols. The painting was intended for the Church of Rouen whose patron saint is this holy apostle. According to Jacques de Voragine (De Sancto Andrea Apostolo), the proconsul of Achaea Aegeus (whose wife Saint Andrew had converted and baptized) told Saint Andrew, who was trying to convert him too: "Tu es Andreas, qui superstitiosam praedicas sectam, quam Romani principes nuper exterminare iusserunt." And after having him imprisoned, at last et ad sacrificia idolorum iterum invitare coepit dicens: "Nisi mihi obtemperaveris, in ipsam, quam laudasti, crucem faciam te suspendi." —(070209) |
| ^
Died on 10 February 1861: Francis
Danby, English painter of Irish birth (16 November 1793),
specialized in landscapes. — Danby was born in Ireland but worked in Bristol for the first part of his career, where his landscapes and scenes of rustic life made him the best known member of the Bristol School. In 1824 he moved to London where he concentrated on painting large-scale Biblical subjects and fantasy landscapes rivalling those of John Martin. After his wife left him in 1829 he moved to Switzerland and Paris. He returned to London in 1838 but his paintings became increasingly unfashionable. — Danby was a landowner’s son and studied art at the Dublin Society. In 1813 he visited London, then worked in Bristol, initially on repetitious watercolors of local scenes: for example View of Hotwells, the Avon Gorge (1818). In about 1819 he entered the cultivated circle of George Cumberland [1754-1849] and the Rev. John Eagles [1783-1855]. Danby’s discovery of the ‘poetry of nature’ in local scenery and insignificant incident was influenced by the theories of Eagles, published as The Sketcher (1856), and, less directly, by those of William Wordsworth, who had been associated with Bristol earlier in the century. Danby’s distinctive work began with the small panel paintings he produced for his Bristol audience. Boy Sailing a Little Boat (1822.) recalls the rustic scenes of William Collins and the Bristol artist Edward Villiers Rippingille, but Danby emphasized the effect of sun and shade rather than sentiment Danby became the best-known member of the Bristol school of painters but preferred to exhibit more ambitious paintings in London. The Upas, or Poison-tree in the Island of Java attracted considerable attention when first shown at the British Institution in 1820, by its large scale (168x229cm) and sublime motif: a despairing adventurer coming upon the remains of his predecessors in the moonlit poisoned valley. It has deteriorated badly, like many of his works. Disappointed Love (1821) was his first Royal Academy exhibit. It differs from his Bristol works in its narrative content and in the pathetic fallacy by which the oppressive trees and wilting weeds echo the girl’s despair. When Danby moved to London in 1824 he abandoned naturalistic landscape and contemporary genre subjects to concentrate on painting poetical landscapes in the manner of Claude Lorrain and J. M. W. Turner’s Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps (1812), and also large biblical scenes to rival John Martin. Danby’s relationship with Martin was ambiguous, but undoubtedly competitive. Danby was elected ARA following the exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1825 of the Delivery of Israel out of Egypt (Exodus. xiv) (1825). His poetic treatment of landscape seems to have inspired Martin’s Deluge, which was shown the following year at the British Institution. Danby himself was already contemplating painting a Deluge and his An Attempt to Illustrate the Opening of the Sixth Seal in turn owed much to Martin’s conception of the Sublime. Danby quarreled with the Royal Academy in 1829, when not elected RA (Constable won by one vote). At the same time his marriage had collapsed, and he had taken a mistress; his wife left London with the Bristol artist, Paul Falconer Poole, whom she subsequently married. The ensuing scandal forced Danby to move abruptly to Paris in 1830. Between 1831 and 1836 he worked in Geneva, producing chiefly watercolors and topographical paintings. He then lived in Paris, copying Old Master paintings. He returned to London late in 1838 where Deluge (1840.) reestablished his reputation when exhibited privately in Piccadilly, London, in May 1840. A huge rock rises in the midst of the flood, swarming with figures who struggle to gain the highest point. Their diminution implies immensity. The color is appropriately, but uncharacteristically, somber. Despite its success, it was his last work of this type. Danby continued to paint poetic fantasy landscapes throughout the 1840s and 1850s (e.g. Enchanted Castle - Sunset, 1841), although they became increasingly unfashionable. He also produced landscapes and marine paintings, which derive in color and conception, although not in execution, from those of Turner. These found admirers, although they were too rich in color and imprecise in detail for wide popularity. Evening Gun (1848, destroyed, but replica exists), showing naval vessels in harbor, was well received at the Royal Academy in 1848 and the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1855. Danby moved to Exmouth, Devon, in 1847 where he built boats and painted. He was embittered by a life of nearly constant debt and by his failure to gain academic honors. He died a few days after Poole was elected RA. Two of his sons, James Francis Danby [1816-1875] and Thomas Danby [1817-1886], became painters. — LINKS — The Deluge (1840, 284x452cm) _ This painting depicts the story of the Flood as told in the book of Genesis (6:12 - 8:22). It shows the terrible punishment brought down by a wrathful God upon sinful mankind. In this huge, bleak painting Danby shows the weather at its most overwhelming and destructive, God’s flooding of the world described in the Bible (Genesis 7). Helpless naked figures, including a lion {a naked lion, how tragic!}, cling or are caught in the branches of a fallen tree and clamber to the rock’s summit as the waters rise. Black cataracts of water continue to fall as the red sun slips below the horizon. But there is some hope, in the distance bathed in moonlight, is Noah’s Ark, and on the right in a curious episode a glowing angel grieves over a dead mother and her presumably innocent child. — The Deluge (1840, 71x110cm) _ smaller version. — The Shipwreck (The Wreck of the Hope) (1859, 77x107cm) _ As so often in paintings by Danby and his contemporary and rival John Martin, humanity appears insignificant and helpless in the face of nature’s power. A wrecked ship lurches to one side, about to be swamped by the stormy seas or dashed upon the rocks. Most of it is already submerged and time is running out for the remaining survivors. One of the lifeboats is upturned in the water, some figures cling to wreckage on the left, while the rest wait desperately in line for the sole escape route to the rocks on the right. — Sunset at Sea, after a Storm (1824, 90x143cm) _ This astonishingly dramatic sky shows the clouds of a violent storm dispersing in the red glow of a setting sun. But however beautiful the effect of limpid blue seen through brilliant orange, this sky carries a threat. Just visible in the left foreground is a raft to which cling the few feeble survivors of a shipwreck. They have survived the storm but now night is falling. The drama of the picture made it a hit when it was exhibited at the 1824 Royal Academy exhibition. It made Danby’s name and was bought by the artist Sir Thomas Lawrence. — Children by a Brook (1822, 35x46cm) _ This is one of several small poetic landscapes with figures that Danby painted during his early years in Bristol. The scene is probably imaginary but inspired by the landscape of the Frome valley at Stapleton. Such works were painted for local collectors, unlike the more spectacular pictures Danby sent up for exhibition in London, where he moved in 1824. — Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream (20x28cm). |
| ^
Died on 10 February 2005: Fritz Scholder,
US expressionist painter and sculptor born on 06 October 1937, dies of complications
of diabetes. His "Indian" series of paintings in the 1960's and
70's reimagined the depiction of Amerindians. Although best known for his
paintings, Scholder produced work in a variety of media - lithographs, photographs,
sculpture and books. — Born in Breckinridge, Minnesota, Fritz William Scholder was the fifth Fritz in a family of primarily German ancestry. He was one-quarter Amerindian (one of his grandmothers was from the Luiseño tribe in California). He grew up in Wahpeton ND and in Pierre SD. As a child he collected stamps and coins and was fascinated by foreign cultures, especially ancient Egypt. In 1957, he studied at Sacramento City College under Wayne Thiebaud, who arranged for his first one-man show. Scholder received a B.A. from Sacramento State College in 1960 and an M.F.A. from the University of Arizona in 1964. Soon after, Lloyd Kiva New, the arts director at the newly established Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe NM invited Scholder to join the faculty. In 1967, while teaching painting at the institute, he began his "Indian" series. His innovative approach, based on research and observation, was a radical departure from traditional, sentimental renderings of mythic Amerindians. He said that he was the first artist to paint an Amerindian wrapped in a US flag, an image that still resonates: Indian No.4 (848x745pix, 124kb). It is based on 19th-century prison photographs of Amerindians dressed in surplus flags in lieu of their confiscated tribal regalia. Scholder recognized that it was time for a painter of Amerindians to develop a new way of painting them, which he expressed as “Real, not Red.” Beginning in 1972, Scholder's world revolved around his adobe-walled compound in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he lived and produced series noteworthy both for their subjects and for their titles, including "Mystery Woman," "Monster Love," "Martyr" and "Shaman." His favorite subject was women, and he approached this and other subjects, including mortality and isolation, with renderings of single and paired figures as well as skulls and skeletons. Scholder traveled to Egypt, Transylvania and other exotic locales, accumulating artifacts and occult objects that have figured prominently as props in his work. His house included a skull room and he surrounded himself with taxidermic creatures, including a 3.3-meter African lion and a buffalo. In 2001, the Institute of American Indian Arts dedicated a museum gallery in Scholder's honor.In 2001 Scholder, said he was a "natural optimist, which might be surprising, because I like the dark side of things." He regularly fashioned self-portraits in different guises, including a buffalo and a sphinx. His last, rendered in 2003, shows him seated with an oxygen tube in his nose as a pool of blood accumulates on the floor alongside a book and a photograph. In the foreground, an Egyptian cat gazes up at him. Much of Scholder's art exudes an air of mystery. His paintings, which celebrate paint with drips, smears, energetic brushwork and vivid underpainting, have been described as symbolist or colorist. Abstract Expressionists like de Kooning and Franz Kline informed his style, and the influence of Francis Bacon, Richard Diebenkorn, Goya, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch and Cy Twombly is also evident. — 2001 photo of Scholder (600x426pix, 17kb) — Scholder talking to students (Nov 2000 photo; 1200x1600pix, 355kb) — LINKS — Carnival E (1386x1039pix, 324kb) _ detail (543x727pix, 139kb) — The Odyssey #2 (1976 color lithograph, 76x56cm; 1330x960pix, 246kb) _ detail (532x596pix, 125kb) — Bicentennial Indian (474x640pix, 25kb) — Indian with Rays (600x447pix, 59kb) — Indian with Tomahawk (1970; 405x400pix, 38kb) — Half Breed (1974; 530x400pix, 33kb) — Indian with Blue Window (1978, 76x57cm; 480x358pix, 18kb) — Crow Indian (lithograph, 29x18cm) — Indian in a Spotlight (1972 lithograph, 44x57cm) — Indian Target (lithograph, 53x63cm) — Screaming Artist (lithograph, 76x57cm) — Squatting Woman (lithograph, 31x18cm) — Tired Indian (lithograph, 21x18cm) — Woman in Orange Chair (lithograph, 51x77cm) — The End of the Trail (1970; 389x300pix, 27kb) — Strawberry Fields II (293x300pix, 23kb) — Sholder's web site www.scholder.com — A Lust for Life illustrated article |
| ^
Buried on 10 February 1660: Judith Leyster,
Dutch Baroque painter, baptized as an infant on 28 July 1609, who married
Jan
Miense Molenaer [1610 – 15 Sep 1668] in 1636. — She painted genre scenes, portraits and still-lifes, and she may also have made small etchings; no drawings by her are known. She specialized in small intimate genre scenes, usually with women seated by candlelight, and single half-length figures set against a neutral background. She was influenced by both the Utrecht Caravaggisti and Frans Hals, under whom both she and Molenaer studied. — Judith Leyster was born in Haarlem. Her father started in the textile trade but later became a brewer with his own brewery. Judith Leyster was probably taught by Frans de Grebber and apparently went on to work in Frans Hals' studio. Leyster's paintings reveal the influence of the latter, already a famous artist, and of his younger brother, Dirck Hals, as well as of the painter she was to marry in 1636, Jan Miense Molenaer. Like Dirck Hals, Leyster generally painted genre pieces depicting merry, music-making groups, although usually these companies were small. — Leyster was extremely successful in her day as a portrait and genre specialist. Little is known about her early training but she was mentioned in about about Haarlem as being a local artist. In her early twenties she became the only female member of the Haarlem painters' guild and soon had students of her own. Even though her work is closely identified with that of Hals, their relationship remains unclear. What is known is that she successfully sued Hals for a breach of ethics after he took on one of her students. Judith Leyster is one of the very few women to have been accepted as a member of the Haarlem Guild of Painters. Although a contemporary historian described her as a leading light in art (punning on her name Leyster, which means "lodestar") she remained unknown for a long time and her works were either believed lost, or were attributed to Frans Hals. She probably worked in his studio around 1630 and was also a friend of his family, for one year later she became godmother to Hals' daughter Maria. Like Hals at the same time, the young Leyster adopted the style of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, with their strong chiaroscuro modelling in the manner of Caravaggio. From the mid-1620, she concentrated more on vividly illuminated genre scenes, generally featuring half figures of merry musicians, gamblers and whores, strongly influenced by the painting of Terbrugghen and Honthorst. While the Utrecht school of painters still rounded the surfaces of their objects smoothly between light and shade, Hals and his school adopted a broad, vibrant and independent brushstroke. Leyster's work can be distinguished from that of Hals through her generally more discordant handling of color, her sketchier treatment of hands, the wryly distorted smiles of her figures and her altogether flightier brushwork. — LINKS — Self-Portrait (1635, 72x651007x887pix, 136kb) — The Serenade (1629) — Carousing Couple (1630, 68x54cm, 970x767pix, 130kb) — A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel (59x49cm; 793x637pix, 40kb). |
|
|
site safe for children 