| ART “4”
“2”-DAY 02 January
v.7.00 |
| DEATH:
1952 VALTAT |
| ^
Died on 02 January 1952: Louis Valtat,
French Fauvist
painter, printmaker, and stage designer, born on 08 August 1869. — He spent much of his youth in Versailles, moving in 1887 to Paris, where he studied under Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux-Arts and under Jules Dupré at the Académie Julian. There he met Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Albert André. With a keen interest in both artistic precedents and contemporary trends, he absorbed in the mid-1890s the chief tenets of Impressionism, van Gogh’s work and Pointillism before slowly developing his own style. In 1895 he collaborated with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and André on the set of Aurélien-François Lugné-Poë’s play Chariot de terre cuite, performed at the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, Paris. Under Toulouse-Lautrec’s influence, his own works darkened both in color and sentiment, for example Chez Maxim’s (1895), in which he depicted two gaunt, severe-looking women seated in a murky café. By 1896 he painted contemporary French life with an overall sunnier, more optimistic air, as in Water Carriers at Arcachon (1897), in which he referred to van Gogh, also looking to Fauvism for his use of bold colors. — Valtat was born in Dieppe. In 1880 his parents moved to Versailles, where the boy attended classical studies before being admitted in 1887 to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He also enrolled at the Académie Julian and met Bonnard and Albert André. From 1893 he exhibited regularly in the Salon des Indépendants. Already in 1895 he painted in Arcachon a series of studies which were exhibited the following year in the Indépendants, and were noticed by Thadée Natanson. Valtat already showed a taste for color and a forceful style which would link him ten years later to the Fauves. But he followed an independent career, never really joining any of the various avant-garde groups he had contacts with: the neo-Impressionists, the Nabis, the Fauves and the Cubists. In 1898, Valtat spent some time in the Côte d’Azur, in Agay, a village on the Esterel hills, where he painted a series of studies which were exhibited the following year in the Galerie Durand-Ruel. He was seduced by the region, and got a house, “Roucas Rou”, built in Anthéor, not far from Agay, where he would spend every winter until 1914. He regularly visited Signac, who had settled in Saint-Tropez, and Renoir, who lived in Cagnes-sur-Mer. From 1900 to 1912, Valtat had a contract with the dealer Ambroise Vollard, which enabled him to travel to Italy in 1902 and to Algeria the following year. In 1905 he took part in the Salon d’Automne, where he exhibited six paintings, including a sea view which, when published in L’Illustration, associated him with the Fauvists. In 1914 he gave up the Midi, and settled in a new studio in Paris. He spent the summer mainly in Normandy and in the Île-de-France, where, in 1924, he bought a house in Choisel. There, he painted many landscapes and family scenes. In 1948, Valtat lost his sight as a result of a glaucoma. He died in Paris. — LINKS — Autoportrait au chien (1902, 73x60cm; 798x656pix, 60kb). –- Femme dans un fauteuil (1903, 71x94cm; 773x1000pix, 69kb) — Violet Rocks (Sea Tide) (1900; 575x715pix, 203kb) — Jeunes Femmes dans le Jardin (1898) — Antheor Bay (1907) — Sunlight under the Trees (1909) — Le jardin du Petit Trianon à Versailles, avec patineurs (1900, 81x100cm; 381x470pix, 99kb) _ 4 détails : 1. mur du jardin, 2: oies et canards, 3: patineurs, 4: peupliers _ The snow-covered park is seen from a point just left of the small bridge leading to the Temple of Love, on the side of the Saint Antoine alley. Valtat, having lived in Versailles since 1880, was familiar with the park. In 1868, Renoir had painted Skating in the Bois de Boulogne (), with a similar composition in its broad lines. Valtat may have seen Renoir’s work at Ambroise Vollard’s, their common dealer, or he may have only seen a photo, as at the time Vollard was gathering the necessary documents to draw up an annotated catalogue of Renoir’s works. But this painting shows Valtat’s originality and sense of humor. In the foreground, the geese and ducks are reduced to schematic outlines, almost caricatures. The birds are aligned like the audience of a show, and seem to be the main subject of the composition. In the background are the small, dark, sketchy silhouettes of the skaters on a patch of ice. The perspective makes them tiny compared with the geese. The marked, elaborate and varied touch, with some unexpected brightly colored spots, reveals the artist’s pre-Fauvism. The composition consists of two main areas with contrasting colors: in the foreground, cold colors; in the background, warm colors. The snow, with the whites touched up in blue, grey, and pink, makes this work comparable to the snowy landscapes of Monet. The water is slate blue, the poplars are like flames with reddish hues, under a snowy sky, gray and heavy, where there is a mix of pinks, mauves, lilac, blues, grays, whites, and even some touches of red. The shadows, the simplificity of the composition and of the perspective, contribute to the modernity of this landscape, representative of Valtat’s work at the turn of the century. —(060601) |
Died on a 02 January:
^
2004 Burgess Collins “Jess”,
US artist born on 06 August 1923. His first career was as a chemist in nuclear
weapons and energy research and development, while he painted during his free
time. But his doubts about the direction of science led him to change fields.
In 1949 he enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco,
where his teachers included Clyfford Still, Hassel Smith, Elmer Bischoff, and
David Park. He broke from his family and dropped his last name, calling himself
just Jess. In 1951 Jess met the poet Robert Duncan [07
Jan 1919 – 03 Feb 1988], who became his domestic partner until Duncan's
death. Beginning in the early 50's, Jess began producing collages, or, as he
preferred to call them, paste-ups, which incorporated fragments of magazine
photographs, old engravings and illustrations and jigsaw puzzle parts, somewhat
like the collages of Max Ernst and Joseph Cornell but were much larger in scale
and complexity. In some cases they measured 2 meters in height and width and
teemed with images. One of Jess's best-known series of collages, made in the
50's, in which he scrambled words and images of Dick Tracy comic strips, associated
him in the minds of many with Pop Art, a movement that was remote from his Symbolist
and Surrealist tendencies which kept him working outside mainstream styles like
Abstract Expressionism in the 1950's and Pop Art in the 60's. Jess's paintings
took several directions. He made atmospheric, painterly abstractions and narrative
pictures that have symbolically allusive qualities like his collages, but are
less bewilderingly detailed. From 1959 to 1971 he worked on the series Translations,
cartoonlike pictures made in extremely thick, puttylike paint, and copied from
miscellaneous images, such as photographs from science books, children's book
illustrations, a snapshot of the artist as a small child, a picture of the Beatles
from a fan magazine. Another series, called Salvages, consisted of
paintings found in thrift stores or old canvases by Jess himself, to which he
added new layers of imagery. — The work of “Jess” stands apart
from any particular movement in modern and contemporary art, though affinities
with Surrealism, Action Painting, Pop Art, and California Funk are sometimes
evident in his work. Jess is best known for his paintings and collages that
he calls "paste-ups." These combine fragments from magazine illustrations, engravings,
comic strips and sometimes jigsaw puzzles.
— Will
Wonders Never Cease: Translation No. 21 (1969, 53x71cm)
— A Western
Prospect Of Egg And Dart (1988, 143x203cm)
— Goddess... because
II (1956; frame included 480x592pix, 90kb) _ This is a group of six “paste-ups”
within a frame customized by the artist. Using the collage technique to reconfigure
pictures of lawnmowers, castles, animals, and other incongruous elements, Jess
has transformed images of stiffly-posed, genteel women from magazine ads into
domestic goddesses inhabiting strange and marvelous tableaux. Jess’s simple
manipulation of existing material reveals the artist’s ability to stimulate
our power to transform our experience of everyday reality.
^
1962 Kurt Seligmann, commits suicide, Swiss
US painter, printmaker, sculptor, stage designer, and writer, born on 20 July
(02 Jun?) 1900. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva (1920)
and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence (1927). From this training he
drew upon two dominant influences, combining a predilection for the illusionistic
deep space and the clear vibrant color of the Italian tradition with the fantastic
narratives explored by earlier Swiss artists such as Johann Heinrich Füssli
[07 Feb 1741 – 16 Apr 1825],
Ferdinand Hodler [14 Mar 1853 – 20 May 1918], Urs Graf and Niklaus Manuel
Deutsch. — Robert
Motherwell [24 Jan 1915 – 17 Jul
1991] was a student of Seligmann. — LINKS
— Acteon
(etching; 640x476pix, 80kb) —(070101)
^
1926 Harry Humphrey Moore, US orientalist painter
born on 02 July 1844. He was a deaf mute and a family friend of Thomas Eakins.
Eakins and Moore studied together in Gérôme's atelier and visited
Spain in 1869. It was probably the influence of Gérôme and the
more Moorish elements in Spain which gave Moore his the inspiration for Orientalist
subject matter. Moore stayed several years in Spain. In 1872, he married and
moved to Morocco and also went to Japan, having been encouraged by the artist
Robert Blum.
— Glimpse
into the Yoshiwara aka Pleasure Quarters (1887, 62x91cm; 495x719pix,
70kb _
ZOOM to 975b1420pix, 138kb)
— Oriental
Man Sharpening his Sword (1875, 140x102cm; 550x394pix, 69kb) —(060101)
^
1901 George Smith, British painter born on 18 April
1829. — Not to be confused with George
Smith [1714 – 07 Sep 1776] nor with George Smith [1870-1934].
–- The
Lacemakers (900x763pix, 61kb _
.ZOOM to 1575x1335pix, 118kb) you get a choice of 10 backgrounds. _ There
is only one lacemaker; her young daughter is just watching. On the wall behind
them there is a painting of a cat looking into a goldfish bowl.
–- A
Lady (900x682pix, 40kb)
–- The
Nibble (892x1155pix, 89kb)
–- Passing
the Time (892x698pix, 67kb)
— The
Recruiting Sergeant (71x95cm; 737x1000pix, 125kb)) —(070101)
^
1868 John Doyle “H.B.”, Irish English painter and printmaker
born in Dublin in April 1797. Dispossessed of his family estate, he left Ireland
for London in 1821. He studied under the Italian landscape painter Gaspar Gabrielli
(fl 1803–1833) at the Royal Dublin Society’s schools and under the miniature
painter John Comerford [1770–1832]. He then spent nearly a decade experimenting
with portraiture, first in oils and then in lithographs. The ease and economy
of the latter, a relatively new medium, loosened Doyle’s line, and from 1829
to 1851 he produced a series of 917 prints satirizing the public face of English
politics. For these prints he adopted the cipher ‘H. B.’ (from two ‘J. D.’s,
one on top of the other). From the Catholic Relief Bill until the Ecclesiastical
Title Act, H. B.’s prints caused London ‘to smile in a quiet, gentlemanlike
kind of way’ (according to William Makepeace Thackeray) at faintly animalized
depictions of Arthur, Duke of Wellington, Prime Ministers Disraeli, Palmerston
and Melbourne, and the ubiquitous John Bull (or, as H. B. had it, ‘The man wot
is easily led by the nose’). — John Doyle was the father of Richard
Doyle [Sep 1824 – 10 Dec 1883], Henry Edward Doyle “Hen”
[1827 – 17 Feb 1892], and Charles
Altamont Doyle [25 Mar 1832 – 10 Oct 1893], father of Arthur Conan
Doyle [22 May 1859 – 07 Jul 1930], author of the Sherlock Holmes novels.
— A
pitiful-looking group (1841 drawing; 533x506pix, 50kb) _ This refers to
Daniel O'Connell [1775-1847], who was an Irish MP and leader of the Catholic
Emancipation movement. He became also the first Catholic Lord Mayor of Dublin
in 1841. In the 1841 general election he was unseated as MP for Dublin, and
his allies tried to get up a subscription which would allow him to regain his
seat. The beggar is O' Connell. The dog, which holds in its mouth the begging
plate, is radical MP Joseph Hume [1777-1855], a Scottish MP who also campaigned
for Catholic emancipation. It is not clear who is represented by the big human-headed
owl perched on the beggar's hand organ.
1845 Antoinette-Cécile-Hortense Handebourt-Lescot,
Parisian painter born Lescot (main
coverage) on 14 December 1784. —(060101)
Born on a 02 January:
^
1938 Robert Smithson, US “environmental
artist” who died on 20 July 1973. He was born in Passaic, New Jersey.
While still in high school in Clifton, New Jersey, he attended classes in New
York at the Art Students League and the Brooklyn Museum School. He served in
the United States Army Reserves in 1956–57, after which he moved to New
York. In the late 1950s, he was painting, drawing, and making collages. Smithson's
first solo show was held at Artists Gallery in New York in 1959.
Smithson married artist Nancy Holt in 1963. Taking
up sculpture in 1964, he produced Minimalist and geometric works. Visits to
quarries, industrial sites, and abandoned wastelands in New Jersey and neighboring
states began to impact his art in 1966. The places he explored soon expanded
to include the US West and Southwest, deserts in particular. Among those accompanying
him on various trips were Holt, Carl
Andre, Michael Heizer, Donald
Judd, Robert
Morris, and Claes
Oldenburg. Smithson worked on his Photo-Markers and Sites/Nonsites
in the mid- to late 1960s. The Photo-Markers explored human intervention
into the natural landscape. He photographed sites, enlarged the images, and
placed these enlargements into the physical landscapes they depicted before
rephotographing these (now photo-bedecked) landscapes. The Sites/Nonsites
series comprised sculptures incorporating elements—such as dirt, sand,
and rocks-gathered from distant venues and transported to the gallery space.
Unlike the Photo-Markers, the Sites/Nonsites altered the landscape
itself by the removal of materials. Smithson's subsequent earthworks would use
similar practices on a massive scale, the artist literally reshaping the land.
Smithson wrote many theoretical essays and variations
on the travelogue genre. One such illustrated piece, “A Tour of the Monuments
of Passaic, New Jersey,” published in a 1967 issue of Artforum, was a
tongue-in-cheek guide to such highlights as a sandbox and industrial piping.
In 1968, photographer Bernd Becher accompanied Smithson through West Germany's
industrial Ruhr Valley. The next year, Smithson traveled with Holt and his dealer
Virginia Dwan to Mexico, a trip that spawned the Yucatan Mirror Displacements
(1969), the photographic essay “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan” (1969),
and the related Hotel Palenque (1972). In addition, Smithson visited
Stonehenge and other prehistoric sites of England and Wales in 1969. Meanwhile,
his proposed large-scale project for an island in British Columbia was terminated
as a result of environmental concerns.
Smithson's best-known work, Spiral
Jetty, was created in 1970 in the violet-red water off the northern
shore of Utah's Great Salt Lake. This gigantic spiral of some 6650 tons of earth
would at times be entirely underwater in subsequent years. After a great deal
of hunting, Smithson purchased a Maine island and a site in Utah for future
projects. In 1971, he completed Broken Circle / Spiral Hill
at a quarry near Emmen, the Netherlands. Interested in “reclaiming” US land
for large-scale art, Smithson presented more than fifty proposals to various
strip-mining companies, but was stymied in these efforts. On 20 July 1973, Smithson
was aboard a small airplane to document the site for a new work called Amarillo
Ramp. The plane crashed, killing Smithson, the photographer, and the pilot.
Holt and others completed Amarillo Ramp the next month. Before his death,
Smithson was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship.
His art was included in several group exhibitions that defined 1960s art, among
them Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum in New York (1966), Minimal
Art at the Haags Gemeentemuseum (1968), Earth Works at Dwan Gallery
in New York (1968), and Earth Art at the Andrew Dickson White Museum
of Cornell University in Ithaca (1969) — LINKS
— (060601)
^
1933 On Kawara, Japanese so-called “conceptual”
artist, greatly prized by greater fools. After graduating from Kariya High School
in 1951, he moved to Tokyo, exhibiting at the Yomiuri Independent Exhibitions.
His sensibility for a cold materialism became apparent in his series of drawings
Bathroom, of dismembered grotesque nude bodies (1953-1984). Kawara
went to Mexico in 1959 and traveled through Europe. He settled in New York in
1965. His ridiculous series of Date Paintings (from 1965), made in
various cities on his travels, juxtapose a detail from a local newspaper with
a simple record of the date in typographical letters and numbers on monochrome
canvases using acrylic. The meaningless paintings’ alleged principal meaning
is that the artist and viewer share the numbers that signified a date they both
had lived. In the series of telegrams in the 1970s, which sent the message ‘I
am still alive’ to his friends, he used the verification of his own existence
as a statement in a medium whose abstraction, regardless of the artist’s hand,
paradoxically gave his work a tense reality. His other “work” in
book form, One Million Years (Past, 1971; and Future,
1980), consists of one million years typewritten year by year. Such fraudulent
non-works claiming to explore concepts of time and space led Kawara to be foisted
on greater fools as a leading conceptual artist.— LINKS
— MAY 21,1985
the title is .the
picture (21 May 1985, 66x91cm; 657x900pix, 27kb), worth from £200'000
to £300'000 according to the evaluation by Sotheby's prior to its 21 June
2006 auction in London. _ The pseudonymous Ohno Arawak has a created a picture
in the same style, but somewhat more colorful:
_ 02 JANUARY
1933 (2006; screen filling, 1kb) but he has also scrambled, distorted,
and variously colored the ten characters MAY21,1985 into a real maximalist work
of art:
_ MAY192185WMVAY11985,MAY211985V5K,89112YAM
aka May Yam (2006; screen filling, 292kb _ ZOOM
to 1864x2636pix, 2386kb).
— JULY 8,1981
again the title is .the
picture (08 Jul 1981, 49x61cm; 682x900pix, 29kb), but worth only half as
much as the preceding one according to the evaluation for the same auction by
Sotheby's which apparently calculates that greater fools can be persuaded to
pay about £30 to £50 per square centimeter for this kind of non-art,
but are indifferent as to whether the flat background is dark gray or dark blue.
_
_ Click
here for a much better picture of July 08, 1981 (284kb) _ Arawak's corresponding
picture is in bright patriotic colors:
_ 04 JULY 1766
(2006; screen filling, 1kb)
— FEB.27,1987
again the title is .the
picture (27 Feb 1987, 133x194cm; 252x373pix, 12kb) you get a choice of 8
backgrounds, much more interesting than Kawara's “picture”, of which
you can crop off the excess gray. _ The greater fool who bought the original
paid only $159'750 / 25'920 = $6.16 per square centimeter at a Sotheby's
auction, but that was on 16 May 2001 and in New York. _ Arawak's corresponding
picture features a rainbow of colors
_ 27 FEBRUARY 1930
(2006; screen filling, 1kb)
_ The pseudonymous Off Kapeacea has realized a much
greater and magnificent transformation of Kawara's non-art, the interrelated
maximalist
_ Art
Beauty Color Design aka Alessandro Botticelli Can Dream (2006;
1024x1448pix, 662kb),
_
Beauty Art Design Color aka Bad Critics (2006; 1024x1448pix, 662kb),
_
Color Design Art Beauty aka Could Degas Achieve Better? (2006;
1024x1448pix, 662kb), and
_
Design Color Beauty Art aka De Chirico Bested Absolutely (2006;
1024x1448pix, 662kb).
— NOV.30,1985
again the title is .the
picture (30 Nov 1985, 46x61cm; 434x574pix, 14kb). The greater fool who bought
it paid £176'000 / 2806 = £62.72 per square centimeter
at the Sotheby's 22 June 2005 auction in London. _
_ Click
here for a much better picture of November 30, 1985. _ Arawak's corresponding
minimalist (emphasis on “list”) picture comprises much more interesting
dates, all of which are links to painters:
_ 30 NOVEMBER 1543,
1599, 1636, 1642, 1647, 1710, 1736, 1765, 1812, 1813, 1820, 1825, 1836, 1846,
1872, 1904, 1953 (2006; screen filling, 3kb). In this case, Arawak's maximalist
pictures have gone way beyond any constraint of remnants of the typographical
characters:
_ Thirty
No-Win Bears; Nineteen Ate Five aka 903309 (2006; screen filling,
292kb _ ZOOM
to 1864x2636pix, 2386kb) and
_ No
Wine, Thirsty Nine Teens Hate Five aka 309903 (2006; screen
filling, 292kb _ ZOOM
to 1864x2636pix, 2386kb).
— DEC.12,1979
— DEC.17,1979
— DEC.18,1979
— 16
NOV.2000 (25x34cm; 376x500pix, 61kb) — (070101)
1821 Adolphe Alexandre Dillens, Belgian painter who died (main
coverage) on 01 January 1877. —(060101)
^
>1795 Hendrik Bakhuyzen (or Backhuyzen) van de Sande,
Dutch artist who died on 12 December 1860.
–- Mountainous
Landscape (699x955pix, 97kb) yellowed by age.
–- Cows
in a Landscape (924x1080pix, 126kb) slightly yellowed and badly crackled.
–- Sorting
the Catch on Scheviningen Beach (1029x1224pix, 148kb) monochrome light brown.
–- Winter
Landscape with People by a Boat on a Frozen Waterway (56x79cm; 708x1020pix,
66kb) _ Hendrikus van de Sande Bakhuyzen, born in The Hague on 2 January 1794,
is best known for his arcadian summer landscapes with cattle. These pictures,
which glorify the beauty of the Dutch landscape, show clear influences of seventeenth
century Dutch landscapists, thereby taking pride in our national tradition.
Van de Sande Bakhuyzen's talent was recognised at an early stage. Already in
1810, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam acquired his Gelders Landschap. In 1821 and
1822 his work was rewarded with medals of honour at exhibitions in Brussels
and Antwerp. Although van de Sande Bakhuyzen specialised almost exclusively
in summer landscapes, occasionally he also painted some very fine winter landscapes.
The present lot, painted in close cooperation with Andreas Schelfhout, is actually
a good example of this. Schelfhout was one of the most applauded painters of
winter landscapes and a friend of Van de Sande Bakhuyzen. It is therefore not
surprising that the two joined forces. Schelfhout's contribution was essential,
a contemporary writing in 1841: 'Only when Schelfhout portrays the winter cloaked
in white, with a colourful array of skaters, do we see something attractive
in the scene. His is a true depiction of our winter delight'. How both artists
divided the work is difficult to determine. As assumed in the book pu-blished
recently on the Van de Sande Bakhuyzen-family, Schelfhout probably painted the
left part of the picture with the skaters on the ice, while Van de Sande Bakhuyzen
must be held responsible for the right part with the landscape, the houses and
the trees. This is supported by the fact that Schelfhout signed left and van
de Sande Bakhuyzen right. The close cooperation of the two artists-friends resulted
in a classical Dutch winter landscape with many figures on the ice, seen under
a beautifully rendered, cloudy sky.—(070101)
^
1783 Christoffer
Wilhelm Eckersberg, Danish neoclassical
painter and teacher who died of cholera on 22 July 1853. Born in Blåkrog near
Åbenrå, he moved to Copenhagen in 1803 and was accepted at the Royal Danish
Academy of Fine Arts. In 1809, Eckersberg was awarded the Academy Gold Medal.
He subsequently went on his first study trip in 1810. He went to Paris, where
he spent a year as the apprentice of Jacques-Louis David [1748-1825]. In 1813
he went to Rome, where he studied the buildings of Antiquity. He returned to
Denmark in 1816 and made a number of major historical works for the royal family
and portraits for the Copenhagen bourgeoisie. He was appointed professor at
the Academy in 1818 and published two books on the theory of perspective, one
in 1833 and one in 1841. From 1827 to 1829, Eckersberg headed the Academy. He
never became wealthy, leaving him dependent on income from various assignments,
including somewhat menial ones. — He has been called ‘the father of Danish
painting’ because of the influence he exerted on Danish painters in the second
quarter of the 19th century. With Christen Købke he was the leading painter
of the Danish ‘Golden Age’ (1800–1850). He is best known for his landscapes,
portraits, and marine paintings, though he also painted some religious themes
and subjects from Danish history in Christiansborg Palace. — Eckersberg's
students included Wilhelm Ferdinand Bendz, Dankvart Christian Magnus Dreyer,
Lorenz Frølich, Heinrich Louis Theodor Gurlitt, Louis Hansen, Carl Christian
Constantin Hansen, Christen Schjellerup Købke, Carl Frederik Emanuel Larsen,
Wilhelm Nicolai Marstrand, Daniel Herman Anton Melbye, Jørgen Roed, Martinus
Christian Wedelstoft Rørbye, Adolph Tidemand, Johan Frederik Nicolai Vermehren.
— LINKS
— Selvportræt
(1813, 36x33cm; 312x250pix, 19kb)
— Sailing
Ships (1825, 39x54cm)
— En
dansk yacht passerer Stevns (1845, 48x45cm)
— Marine
Scene with Two Russian Ships Setting Sail (1827, 30x57cm; 336x640pix, 39kb)
_ In his diary for 22 July 1827, Eckersberg recorded that he and a student sailed
down the Danish coast, making sketches of the Russian ship of the line and frigate
represented here. The intensity of the artist's vision is apparent in the way
the afternoon light is caught in the sails, in the attention to details of rigging,
and in the description of fast-moving clouds and the transparency of the waves.
— View
of the Forum in Rome (1814; 32x41cm; 400x521pix, 42kb) _ This is one of
the most famous views in Rome, looking along the Forum towards the Palazzo dei
Senatorio on the Capitol. The three surviving columns of the Temple of Castor
and Pollux frame the composition on the left; in the middle distance are the
remains of the Temples of Saturn and Vespasian. In 1814 the Forum was still
used as a field for grazing cattle and many prominent monuments (such as the
Arch of Septimius Severus on the right) had yet to be fully excavated. A detailed
drawing by Eckersberg dated 08 June 1814 corresponds to the view in this painting.
–- Regnbue
Over Havet (14x21cm; 479x724pix, 25kb)
–- Udsigt
fra Wilbers Plads. et Skib Som Lodser og Tørrer Sejl (1832, 22x32cm;
765x1124pix, 60kb) _ Eckersberg began to focus on marine painting after 1821,
continuing to explore the genre during the 1830s and 1840s. Ships and modern-day
sea-faring became a constant source of fascination, yet despite their contemporary
subject matter, his marine paintings are among the finest expressions of the
lessons in neoclassicism he had learnt during his formative years in Paris and
Rome. In this view of Copenhagen harbour, the clarity of detail echoes the importance
his teacher, Jacques-Louis David, attached to the study of nature; the calm
Danish sea and sky and the delicate control of light hark back to the arcadian
landscapes of Claude Lorrain whom Eckersberg admired, while the observation
of the ship, its rigging, and the mastery of perspective and architectural structure
derive from Eckersberg's Roman architectural views.
–- Adskillige
kobmandsskibe som krydser med alle sejl, fortil en dansk orlogsbrig (1827,
58x88cm; 525x795pix, 38kb) _ This Merchant Ships Crossing in Full Sail
is arguably Eckersberg's finest achievement as a marine painter. With its large
animated scene, it pre-dates by a year his famous Asow, A Russian Ship of
the Line, together with a Frigate, riding at Anchor at Elsinore.
The present work is a brilliant juxtaposition of modern subject
matter with the neoclassical compositional principles Eckersberg had learned
in Paris and Rome. The fresh and vibrant atmosphere of the high seas may seem
a world removed from the work of Jacques-Louis David, under whom Eckersberg
studied for a year. Yet underlying the contemporary nautical subject the tenets
of a classical training are respected to the last. The clarity of detail mirrors
the importance David attached to the direct study of nature; the mastery of
receding perspective points to the spatial arrangement of a Claude Lorrain (whose
work Eckersberg had admired in Paris); while the observation of the ships reflects
his own Roman architectural views. Thus Eckersberg reinvents classical traditions
to capture the modern world.
Eckersberg was fascinated by the open sea and
the vistas it offered him. After painting the present work, he crossed the North
Sea twice - in 1833 and 1839 - specifically to observe the weather. He executed
sketches noting, like J.C. Dahl and Constable, the exact time and meteorological
conditions, as well as making complex perspectival calculations. This precision
was echoed in his deep interest in science. He attended the lectures of the
physicist H. C. Orsted, and had several marine engineer friends, whose drawings
he borrowed to study nautical details for use in his seascapes.
Meteorology was a particular interest, and a
science much in vogue at the time. Clouds play a central role in Merchant
Ships Crossing, and in Eckersberg's other marine paintings. The work is
as much a cloudscape as it is a seascape, its three-dimensional cumulus cloud
formations with their shadowed bases forming an integral part of the composition.
Not only do these add to the sense of receding perspective towards the horizon,
but they are subjects in their own right, painstakingly observed to the last
detail. Eckersberg's interest may have been prompted by his friendship with
the Norwegian Dahl, as well as by the various scientific publications on cloud
formation appearing at the time. He also kept a special weather diary, recording
the meteorological conditions twice a day until his death.
Eckersberg focused on marine painting in earnest
after 1821, continuing to explore the genre during the 1830s and 1840s. The
breezy freshness and vibrancy of his seascapes are in marked contrast to his
early academic history paintings and portraits painted during his Paris years
(1810-1813). It was not until he moved to Rome in 1813 that he discovered plein
air painting, and it was here that landscapes and architectural views came to
the forefront of his work. The development of Eckersberg's oeuvre, culminating
in marine paintings such as this, exemplifies the unique approach to painting
of Denmark's Golden Age.
–- Bertha
Henriette Frederikke von Løvenskiold [1814-1875] (1824, 55x44cm;
892x700pix, 33kb) _ Bertha, perhaps about 10 years old in 1824, was the daughter
of Sophie Hedvig Løvenskjold, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie Sophie Friederike.
In 1836 Bertha married Count Zytphen-Adeler of Adelsborg. In 1817 Eckersberg
painted a double portrait of Bertha and her mother. The present work, with its
neoclassical overtones, shows the influence of Ingres, whose work Eckersberg
had admired in Paris, and, closer to home, of the portraitist Jens Juel, whose
daughter Julie he married in 1817. —(070101)
Happened on a 02 January:
1912 The parents of Renato Guttuso, who was born on 26 December
1911 in Bagheria, Italy, register his birth in Palermo, because they were ostracized
in Bagheria, their home town, due to their liberal ideas. Usually, 02 January
1912 is incorrectly given as Renato Guttuso's birth date. He died (full
coverage) on 18 January 1987. —(080101)
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