ART “4”
“2”-DAY 04 January
v.10.10 |
| BIRTH:
1896 MASSON
|
^
>Died on 04 January 2005:
Alton Stanley Tobey,
US muralist, portraitist, illustrator, historical artist, and teacher
of art, born on 05 November 1914. |
| ^
Died
on 04 January 1778:
Charles-Dominique-Joseph
Eisen, French painter, draftsman, and illustrator, born
on 17 August 1720, son of genre painter François
Eisen [1695-1778], and father of artists Christophe-Charles Eisen [1744–]
and Jacques-Philippe Eisen [1747–]. — Charles Eisen went to Paris about 1740 to work in the studio of the engraver Jacques-Philippe Lebas. Eisen himself engraved little, and probably produced the drawings from which Lebas or studio assistants would engrave. In 1745 Eisen was asked to illustrate a volume celebrating the betrothal of the Dauphin Louis to Maria Theresa of Spain. This was his first significant commission and was probably passed to him by Lebas. Two years later he established his reputation and independence by providing 43 drawings for an edition of the works of Nicolas Boileau. In 1748, however, the Académie de Saint Luc seized Eisen’s studio effects because he was refusing to pay the joining fee, arguing that, as an artist of exceptional talent, he should be admitted for a lesser amount. Two years later he sued successfully and was admitted without fee; his morceau de réception was a painting of Daedalus and Icarus — Charles Eisen is best known as an illustrator of vignettes, which are small, ornamental images with no defined borders that are most often used in books (also on snuff boxes). His charm and grace, as well as his sense of humor and wit, brought him to the attention of Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV. Through Madame de Pompadour's considerable influence with the King, Eisen became a court painter and also a professor at the Acadèmie de Saint-Luc. Perhaps most importantly, he gave private instruction in drawing to Madame Pompadour herself. Eisen's popularity at the court insured that he would enjoy patronage among the aristocracy. His sure sense of line and use of brilliant color, in combination with his sense of humor and understanding of extravagant courtly tastes, resulted in paintings such as Le chien dansant. — LINKS –- Le Chien Dansant (675x568pix, 28kb)_ A young boy and girl, both fashionably dressed and coiffed, play with a tiny pet that they have dressed up in doll clothes for their own amusement. Though this is clearly a delightful and playful picture, it is also possible that Eisen is secretly making light of the aristocratic tastes which supported him. _ Compare Children Teaching a Cat to Dance (1668) by Jan Steen [1626 – 03 Feb 1679] and Chien Dansant by François Boucher. –- Courting the Shepherdess (1760 hand colored engraving by René Gaillard, 51x41cm, 703x600pix, 50kb) –- Putti Playing With a Goat (72x100cm; 562x799pix, 45kb _ .ZOOM to 984x1398pix, 81kb) — Culs-de-lampe et figures d'après celles de Charles Eisen pour les Contes de La Fontaine [1621-1695]. —(070103) |
| ^
Died on 04 January 1927: Frederick Cayley Robinson,
British Neoclassical painter born on 18 August 1862. — Robinson was born in Middlesex and studied in London and Paris. A pioneer of twentieth century tempera painting, illustrator and theatre designer, he was elected to the NEAC in 1912 and appointed Professor of Figure Composition and Decoration at Glasgow University in 1914. Elected ARA 1921. From 1914 he lived in the block of studios at Lansdowne House, Holland Park, where Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon were also residents. — LINKS –- A Winter Evening (1899, 61x76cm; 796x1009pix, 57kb — .ZOOM to 1592x2017pix, 195kb) –- A winter's evening (1918, 99x77cm; 474x640pix, 47kb) — Pastoral (1924, 90x116cm) — Mother and Child - Threads of Life (1894, 61x76cm; 336x400pix, 20kb) _ A pensive woman sits at the left of the composition, facing right, with her right forearm resting on a dining table, in her hand she holds a needle and thread with which she has been embroidering a narrow hanging which lies flat on the table, steam rises from a blue and white bowl at the centre of the table. Behind her, against a lace-curtained window, sits a red-haired girl, facing right, eating from a white bowl which she holds in her right hand. At the back edge of the table wooden Noah's Ark figures stand in line. All is lit from above by a hanging oil lamp. An open triptych showing angels awaking a sleeping shepherd and the Virgin and Child hangs on the right wall. Presumably painted immediately after Robinson's return from Paris, where he had been studying at the Academy Julian since 1891. During his stay in France Robinson admired the work of Puvis de Chavannes and the Nabis and their influences may be seen in both the technique and obscure symbolism of this work. Enigmatic groupings of two or more female figures around a table in a lamp-lit room, frequently occur in his work. The Depth of Winter (1900, 90x116cm) is a related painting which also features an incomplete embroidery, as does A Souvenir of a Past Age (1894) |
| ^
Buried on 04 January 1607: Gillis
van Coninxloo (or Konimksloo) III, Flemish painter, draftsman,
and collector, born on 24 January 1544, son of Jan van Coninxloo II [1489->1552]
and brother-in-law of Pieter
Bruegel II. — Van Coninxloo was a landscape painter whose works show the transition from Mannerist to early Baroque landscape. Coninxloo studied under, among others, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, a painter of the Antwerp school of Mannerism. After a period of travel in France, he returned to Antwerp in 1570 and was made a member of the painters' guild. He left his home again in 1585 to escape religious persecution and stayed at Frankenthal in the Palatinate until 1595, when he settled in Amsterdam. The development of Coninxloo's style is often described in three periods that somewhat correspond with his residence in Antwerp (1570-1588), Frankenthal (1588-1595), and Amsterdam (1595-1606). His earlier works are deliberately composed landscape fantasies reflecting the influence of the Italianate Flemish landscapist Paul Bril. Coninxloo's later landscapes are more naturalistic and are characterized by their blending of color into a harmonious atmospheric tone. — Van Mander, a contemporary of Gillis van Coninxloo III, wrote in 1604: ‘He is, as far as I know, the best landscape painter of his time; his style is now frequently imitated in Holland.’ Van Mander, moreover, based all his guidelines for landscape painters in his didactic poem Grondt der edel vry schilderconst (‘Principles of the noble and free art of painting’) on Gillis van Coninxloo’s ideas, since Gillis’s contributions to the development of Dutch and Flemish landscape painting were of decisive importance. More than any other artist, he represented the heroic landscape, an interpretation of nature based on reality but with a tendency to idealize the scenery, thus making the whole sublime. While his predecessors painted vast panoramic landscapes, Gillis III rendered self-contained glimpses of nature and created a sense of unity between man and nature as well as between the landscape and the viewer. A similar notion was being developed simultaneously in Italy by such artists of Netherlandish origin as Lodewijk Toeput and Paolo Fiammingo. Van Coninxloo, who never visited Italy, probably came to know this new style through prints by Cornelis Cort after Girolamo Muziano, which were then circulating throughout the Netherlands. Other northern artists such as Jan Breughel the elder and Paul Bril achieved similar results at the same time or even before. Their contribution to the development of forest landscapes may therefore be considered to be at least as important as that of Gillis van Coninxloo, if not more so. — The students of Gillis van Coninxloo III included Hercules Seghers, Pieter Schoubroeck, Esaias van de Velde. — LINKS — Wooded River Landscape with Raven Bringing Food to Elijah (115x178cm; 539x800pix, 101kb _ ZOOM to 1380x2048pix, 283kb) — Forest Landscape (1598, 42x61cm; 419x620pix, 60kb _ ZOOM to 845x1250pix, 268kb _ ZOOM++ to 1690x1690pix, 754kb, with right third cropped off) _ Taking as his starting-point Jan Brueghel, who was the first artist to paint a forest landscape abound 1595 (Galleria Ambrosia, Milan), Gillis van Coninxloo created his Forest Landscape, one of the highlights of Flemish landscape painting. In it, the viewer has a close-up view of a dense forest. He appears to be standing at a bend in the stream flowing out of the impenetrable wood towards him. In the middle, the stream runs around an island on which a traveler is encamped. The banks of the stream lend a sense of depth as they wend their way into the background. This painting achieves great intensity and an increasingly atmospheric quality in its fine shades of brown and green. Breaking through the mighty treetops, the light is reflected in the water and, against a background of impenetrable darkness, transforms the island on which the traveler is lying into an agreeable place. Through its accentuated handling of light, the forest landscape becomes highly atmospheric and seems to be positively charged with emotion. — Landscape with Leto and Peasants of Lykia (144x 204cm) _ The main subject of the painting is the landscape. The scene in the foreground is only a decoration; it depicts a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses: the peasants are changed to frogs because they did not give water to Leto. The figures of the scene were painted by Hendrick de Clerck. — Mountain Landscape with River Valley and the Prophet Hosea (20x29cm) _ The subject of this landscape is a moralistic one with a reference to a passage from the Bible, more specifically the Old Testament book of Hosea. The drawing is believed to have been done in Frankenthal, a small town in the Pfalz mountains where an important artists' colony sprang up after the fall of Antwerp to the Spanish in 1585. Many of the artists who settled there were Flemings sympathetic to the Reformation, who had been forced into exile because of their Protestant faith. Some years later, a number of them, including Gillis van Coninxloo, moved to Amsterdam. Protestant artists worked in Frankenthal in a reformed environment, which was naturally reflected in the subjects they chose to paint. That is certainly the case with this drawing. The Prophet Hosea opposed what he saw as abuses in the field of worship, making him a symbolic precursor of early Protestant leaders. Gillis van Coninxloo is viewed as an innovator in Flemish landscape painting. Above all, he represents the transition from the Mannerist to the Baroque landscape. The watercolor of the prophet Hosea is still done entirely in his early Mannerist style. Van Coninxloo went on to master and develop a variety of styles in his life. His influence on his contemporaries was crucial, and was felt by both Flemish and Dutch painters. In many ways, he helped Northern Netherlandish art embark on its search for a new, distinct identity. — Landscape (24x19cm) —(060103) |
^
1901 (17 Jan?) Nikolaos Gyzis (or Nicholas; Gysis,
Gyzês), Greek painter and sculptor, active in Germany, born on 01 March
1842. He studied at the School of Arts in Athens (1853–1864) and at the Akademie
der Bildenden Künste in Munich (1865–1871), where he later became a professor
(1882). Despite his great love for Greece and his desire to return there, he lived
and worked in Munich, perhaps fearing that he might not find the same suitable
conditions in Greece as in the Bavarian capital. He attracted many of the young
Greek artists who went to study in Munich. Gysis worked on almost all types of
subjects, and many of his paintings were inspired by Greek life. His primary failing
was that he never really managed to free himself from the academicism of Munich,
despite the revolutionary changes then taking place in art. Typical examples of
this type of work are: The Secret School (1876), The Betrothal
(1877) and The Ex-voto (1886). Also of interest are his portraits, especially
The Artist’s Wife, The Artist’s Son and The Artist’s Daughter.
Influenced by the prevailing fin de siècle mood, for about the last 20 years of
his life Gysis turned to both mythological and religious allegorical subjects
with an intense mystical and Symbolist flavor. Representative works of this period
are: Art and its Geniuses (1876), Eros and Psyche, Spring Symphony
(1886) and ‘Behold the Bridegroom Cometh ...’ (1895) 
In
an article on Gyzis published in the early 1970s, art historian Yannis Papaïoannou
claimed that even though The Secret School is not among Gyzis's greatest
works, it transcends the boundaries of mere genre painting because its subject
deals with "psychological and spiritual heroism. Its historical weight causes
a sacred affection, because it brings to mind the harsh years of slavery, as well
as the indomitable strength of national consciousness." |
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