ART “4”
“2”-DAY 02 March
v.10.20 |
| DEATHS:
1751 SMIBERT —
1895 Mme. MANET |
| ^
Died on 02 (24?) March 1751: John
Smibert (or Smybert), Scottish and Colonial Baroque
painter specialized in Portraits,
born on 02 April 1688. — {Did people think that his first name was
Bert because his mom would proudly say of his paintings: “It's Smybert”?} — From 1702 to 1709 he was apprenticed to a house painter and plasterer in Edinburgh. He set out for London at the end of his apprenticeship, about which time he began recording in a Notebook the events of his life and in succeeding years the details of his travels and records of his painting activities. The appearance of a professionally trained British painter in the American colonies in 1729 marks a crucial point in the history of US art. Smibert not only imported the skills necessary to convey the impression of substantial, rounded forms in a picture, but his commercial success also inspired others to contemplate careers as painters. Born in Edinburgh and schooled in London and Italy, Smibert attracted numerous clients upon his arrival in Boston. — John Smibert divided his early career between Edinburgh, his birthplace, and London, where he variously studied art, worked as a plasterer, painted houses and coaches, and eventually set up as a portrait painter and copyist. He arrived in Italy in 1717, copied master paintings in Florence and Rome for his patron Cosimo III de' Medici, and then returned to London. By 1722 he had a studio there and was considered a leading portraitist. Smibert arrived in the American colonies in 1728, attracted by climate, opportunity, and the promise of employment in a visionary utopian colony to be established in the Bermudas. It failed to materialize, but he remained, the first fully trained artist in the colonies. He established a highly successful portrait practice in Boston. — A native of Edinburgh, Scotland, Smibert received his professional training in London at Sir Godfrey Kneller's Great Queen Street Academy. In 1716, after three years at the academy, he painted in Scotland, Italy, and London, and achieved a reputation as a painter of some note. He arrived in Boston in 1728 as part of the venture of Dean George Berkeley [12 Mar 1685 – 14 Jan 1753] to establish an academy in Bermuda, where Smibert was to be the professor of painting. The venture was commemorated with his influential group portrait The Bermuda Group (1728); the academy, however, never materialized, as Berkeley did not receive the £20'000 grant he expected from the British Parliament, and returned to England in October 1731. Smibert stayed in Boston, making his living as the portraitist of Boston's leading citizens and as the owner of a shop that sold prints and artists' supplies. He is noted as the first academically trained painter to carve out a career as a portraitist in the British colonies in America. — LINKS — The Bermuda Group (Dean Berkeley and his Entourage) (1729; 594x800pix, 94kb) _ George Berkeley was an Anglo-Irish Anglican clergyman, philosopher, and scientist, best known for his Empiricist philosophy (A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge), which holds that everything except the spiritual exists only insofar as it is perceived by the senses. He became bishop of Cloyne in 1734. He is shown in Newport, Rhode Island, with his wife holding their young son, and others who accompanied him on his unsuccessful American venture. The frenzied speculation that preceded the September 1720 bursting of the South Sea Bubble had shaken Berkeley's faith in the Old World, and he looked in hope to the New. His Essay Towards preventing the Ruin of Great-Britain (1721) was succeeded by his prophetic verses “Westward the course of empire takes its way; The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day: Time’s noblest offspring is the last.” in On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America (1726). By 1722 he had resolved to build a college in Bermuda for the education of young Amerindians, publishing the plan in A Proposal For the better Supplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations and Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity by a College to be Erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda. (1724). While Berkeley touted slavery as the best way to Christianize Blacks, he proposed a different way for Amerindians. He thought the best people to convert Amerindians to Christianity would be the Amerindians themselves. He recommended recruiting potential missionaries "by peaceable methods" if possible, but by "taking captive the children of our enemies" if necessary. For the success of his school, he suggested enrolling “only such savages as are under 10 years of age, before evil habits have taken a deep root” . Bermuda was the perfect setting for his social experiment. “Young Americans, educated in an island at some distance from their own country, will more easily be kept under discipline till they have attained a complete education." While on the continent, they (unlike Blacks) “might find opportunities of running away to their countrymen,” while, captive on the island, they would be prevented them from “returning to their brutal customs, before they were thoroughly imbued with good principles and habits.” The scheme caught the public imagination; the King granted a charter; the Archbishop of Canterbury acted as trustee; subscriptions poured in; and Parliament passed a contingent grant of £20,000. But there was opposition; an alternative charity for Georgia was mooted; and Sir Robert Walpole [26 Aug 1676 – 18 Mar 1745], the Prime Minister (from 1721 to 1742), hesitated. In 1728 Berkeley married Anne, daughter of Chief Justice Forster, a talented and well-educated woman, who defended her husband's philosophy after his death. Soon after the wedding, they sailed for America, settling at Newport, R.I., where Berkeley bought land and slaves for his Whitehall plantation, where he built a house, and waited. Berkeley preached often in Newport and its neighborhood, and a philosophical study group met at Whitehall. Eventually, word came that the grant would not be paid, and Berkeley returned to London in October 1731. Several American universities benefited by Berkeley's visit, Yale in particular, to which he donated his Whitehall plantation and its slaves upon his departure. Yale's first scholarship was funded for up to 50 years with money earned from slave labor. Berkeley's correspondence with Samuel Johnson, later president of King's College (now Columbia University), is of philosophical importance. Berkeley's Alciphron; or, The Minute Philosopher (1732) was written at Newport, and the setting of the dialogues reflects local scenes and scenery. It is a massive defense of theism and Christianity with attacks on deists and freethinkers and discussions of visual language and analogical knowledge and of the functions of words in religious argument. While at his Whitehall plantation in Newport, on 04 October 1730, Berkeley purchased "a Negro man named Philip aged Fourteen years or thereabout." A few days later he purchased "a negro man named Edward aged twenty years or thereabouts." On 11 June 11 1731, “Dean Berkeley baptized three of his negroes, 'Philip, Anthony, and Agnes Berkeley' ” . Berkeley's sermons explained to the colonists why Christianity supported slavery, and hence slaves should become baptized Christians. He said that it would be of advantage to their slave masters' affairs to have slaves who should “obey in all things their masters according to the flesh, not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, as fearing God;” and that gospel liberty is consistent with temporal servitude; and that their slaves would only become better slaves by being Christian. — Benjamin Colman (1740; 350x279pix, 19kb) _ A member of Boston's colonial elite, Benjamin Colman [1710-1765] was the nephew of Reverend Dr. Benjamin Colman, one of the most distinguished citizens of Boston, a founder of the Church in Brattle Square, and a voluminous writer on colonial economics. As did most young Boston men of his social station, Colman attended Harvard College. He graduated in 1727, despite being fined for "being once at a Tavern unseasonably & drinking strong drink & with Companions of ill fame as also for being with More when he cut Mr Gookins's sadle & killed his Peahen as also for Lying at first to conceal these crimes." A merchant like his father, Colman formed a partnership with Nathaniel Sparhawk of Kittery. Both were related to Lieutenant General Sir William Pepperill, a commander in the British army, through whose influence they obtained a government contract to outfit Massachusetts troops and to supply construction materials and workers for the garrison at Louisbourg, Nova Scotia. They also sold legal advice in business matters and collected debts for London merchants. The firm, however, declared bankruptcy in 1758, and in 1765 Colman was identified by his obituary in The Boston Gazette as "formerly a noted Merchant in this Town." Smibert's portrayal of Colman records both his high social status and his occupation as a merchant. Dressed in a frock coat and matching waistcoat of a rich burgundy color, Colman stands beside a table and proffers a letter. Based on portraits of British nobility, the pose indicates Colman's status as a gentleman. The letter was also a well-established convention, both for indicating the sitter's trade and for recording his identity. Colman's letter is inscribed "To Mr. Benjn Colman Mercht Boston." Painted near the end of Smibert's career, the portrait of Benjamin Colman is similar to Smibert's other merchant portraits, including Peter Fanueil (1740) and Richard Bill (1733). This repetition of pose and costume was an accepted convention in colonial society, for as citizens of the British crown, the colonists above all aspired to imitate the customs of the British aristocracy and the tastes of London's fashionable society. — Judge Samuel Sewall (1729, 76x63cm; 457x379pix, 44kb) _ A judge at the 1692 Salem witch trials that convicted and executed nineteen people, Samuel Sewall [1625–1730] later publicly confessed his error. He was an eminent citizen of colonial Boston: a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, manager of Boston’s only licensed printing press, and chief justice of the Superior Court. His diaries provide a lively record of the social, political, and religious life of his time. This was among the first of almost 250 portraits that Smibert made in Boston during his seventeen-year residence. His ability to capture character as well as appearance and his deft modeling of three-dimensional form caused a sensation in Boston, and his studio in Scollay Square became a mecca for aspiring artists. —(060313) |
| ^Died
on 02 March 1895: Berthe Marie-Pauline Morisot,
Mme. Eugène Manet, French Impressionist
painter born on 14 January 1841. — Berthe Morisot was a French impressionist painter. Influenced by the artists Camille Corot [16 Jul 1796 – 22 Feb 1875] and Édouard Manet [23 Jan 1832 – 30 Apr 1883], she gave up her early classical training to pursue an individualistic impressionistic style that became distinctive for its delicacy and subtlety. Her technique, based on large touches of paint applied freely in every direction, give her works a transparent, iridescent quality. She worked both in oil and in watercolor, producing mainly landscapes and scenes of women and children, as in Madame Pontillon Seated on the Grass (1873). — Born into a family of wealth and culture, Morisot received the conventional lessons in drawing and painting. She went firmly against convention, however, in choosing to take these pursuits seriously and make them her life's work. Having studied for a time under Camille Corot, she later began her long friendship with Édouard Manet, who became her brother-in-law in 1874 and was the most important single influence on the development of her style. Unlike most of the other impressionists, who were then intensely engaged in optical experiments with color, Morisot and Manet agreed on a more conservative approach, confining their use of color to a naturalistic framework. Morisot, however, did encourage Manet to adopt the impressionists' high-keyed palette and to abandon the use of black. Her own carefully composed, brightly hued canvases are often studies of women, either out-of-doors or in domestic settings. Morisot and US artist Mary Cassatt are generally considered the most important women painters of the later 19th century. — Berthe Morisot's mother arranged drawing lessons for her three daughters with no other intention than cultivating a polite pastime. That Berthe emerged with professional aspirations must have caused some consternation in their upper-middle-class Parisian household, since it might have compromised her future responsibilities as a wife and mother. Between 1864 and 1868 Morisot exhibited at the Paris Salon. Her early contact with the plein air Barbizon painter Camille Corot and her meeting Édouard Manet, whose work was reviled by both critics and Salon officials, encouraged her to repudiate the Salon system. As a result, she began to follow a more independent path and to exhibit her work with the Impressionists. She married Eugène Manet, Édouard's younger brother in 1874, the year the Impressionists held their first controversial exhibition — her portrait by brother-in-law Manet. — LINKS — Self-Portrait (1885) — Julie, la Fille de l'Artiste, avec sa Gouvernante (1884, 58x71cm; 820x976pix, 676kb _ ZOOM to 1825x2208pix, 3167kb) — Jour d'été (1879, 46x75cm; 600x964pix, _ ZOOM to 1400x2249pix, 985kb _ ZOOM+ to 2010x3290pix, 3971kb and admire the texture of the canvas showing through the paint) _ A river with two women in the foreground. — Fillette Devant une Cage (1879 600x489pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1141pix, 465kb) — Paris vu du Trocadéro (1872) — Cache-cache (1873, 45x55cm) — Nice Little Girl (Nice: the city) — La lecture (1888) _ This is at once a genre scene and a portrait of Jeanne Bonnet. It conveys Morisot's ability to integrate her art and family life by painting canvases of domestic scenes. Although out-of-doors, the space of Reading is shallow, compressed by a balcony railing and foliage. Morisot employed many compositional devices to enclose the figure: the bird cage, the railing and chair, the wall casement, and the palm frond that arches over the sitter's head. These forms, associated with the nineteenth-century feminine ideal, also picture a woman's space as a closed world turned in on itself. — 20 images at wikimedia — 240 images at the Athenaeum —(100301) |
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