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ART “4”
“2”-DAY 12 December
v.4.62 |
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Born on 12 December 1856: Henry
Moret, French marine and landscape painter, who died on
05 May 1913. — Moret, although from Normandy, lived and worked practically his whole life in Brittany and is regarded as the most important impressionist interpreter of the Breton landscape. After completing his formal education at the Ecole National des Beaux-Arts under Jean-Paul Laurens and Jean-Léon Gérôme, Moret rejected his academic training in favor of the painting techniques of the Impressionists. In 1888, he moved to Pont-Aven where he worked alongside his friends, Paul Gauguin [1848-1903] and Emile Bernard [1868-1941], and was introduced to the tenets of symbolism. After Gauguin left Pont-Aven in 1891, however, Moret returned to his earlier Impressionist style. In 1896, he settled in the nearby fishing village of Doelen where his art, a combination of Impressionist handling of the paint and the subjective treatment of color, reached its maturity. — First, Moret worked in Paris with Jean Paul Laurens [1838-1921] and debuted at the Salon in 1880. Soon thereafter he liberated himself from the academic artistic principles with which he was nurtured during his training with Jean-Léon Gérôme [1824-1904]. Not long after, he participated in the group of young artists around Gauguin at Pont-Aven and developed a free approach regarding painting technique and practice, including painting in the open air. The following years Moret was to dedicate himself exclusively to the study of various types of landscapes resulting in an enormous production of studies and sketches. Finally he settled in Douelan, where he was completely absorbed by painting marines and seascapes. — Normand d'origine, Henry Moret devient Lorientais d'adoption. A partir du port de Lorient, il rayonne chaque année le long de la côte à Larmor, au Pouldu, à Doëlan, puis plus loin à Quimper, Douarnenez et la presqu'île de Crozon. Il s'attardent dans les îles : Groix, Belle-Ile, Houat, Ouessant. Au cours d'un séjour à Pont-Aven, en 1888, il fait la connaissance de Gauguin, Bernard, Chamaillard, Jourdan et Laval et s'intègre au petit groupe. Si au départ son art était tributaire de Corot, Courbet et de l'Ecole de Barbizon, à partir de sa rencontre avec Gauguin, Moret est influencé par le synthétisme. — LINKS — View of the Customs Cabin, Pourville (1901; 852x1064pix, 178kb) — Haymaking (1893) — Peasant and her Herd (1910) — A Farm near Pont Aven (1902; 925x1132pix, 355kb) — Groux (1891) — The Pen-Clun Valley, Clohars, Carnoet (1908) — Farm at Doelan — Le Village de Paulgoazec (1906) — Calm Sea at l'Ile de Groux (1896) — Vue de Port-Louis (1891) — 'Beg-er-Vran' - Finistère (1897) — The Coast of Moellan (1896) — Cliffs of Moellan, Finistère (1901) — The Breton Coast (1898) — Horse in a Meadow — Cliffs of Kerserol, Finistère (1909) — Porspoder, the Port, Finistère (1910) — Quimper, Lake Marie in the Snow (1909) — Seascape (1895) — Fishing Boats off the Coast (1902) — 98 images at the Athenaeum — 94 images at Webshots |
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Born on 12 December 1753: Sir
William Beechey, British artist who died on 28 January 1839.
— Born in Burford, Oxfordshire, Beechey was trained for the law, moving from his first employer in Gloucestershire in the late 1760s to London. After meeting some students at the Royal Academy, he entered that school in 1774, exhibiting there from 1776 to 1839, one of the longest careers in the history of the academy. After some instruction from Johann Zoffany, well known for his conversation pieces, Beechey moved to Norwich in 1782 and set up a successful practice with the financial assistance of his patron, Dr. Strachey, a clergyman. Here he began to paint life-size portraits. He returned to London in 1787, entering into a professional rivalry with John Hoppner and Sir Thomas Lawrence. In 1793 Beechey was named painter to Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, who became a personal friend of the Beechey family and acted as godmother to one of their children. The artist was elected a full member of the Royal Academy in 1798, the same year he was knighted. Beechey's ability to achieve a conscientious but aristocratic likeness, probing subtly into the characters of his sitters, made him a favorite portraitist in Georgian society. — LINKS — Master James Hatch as Marshall's Attendant at the Montern Eton (1796, 185x133cm) — Ichabod Wright (1810) — Harriet Maria Day — The Oddie Children (1789, 183x182cm _ This painting depicts Henry, Jane, Sara, and Catherine, the children of Henry Hoyle Oddie, a London lawyer who commissioned the portrait in 1789. At this time, Beechey was the foremost portraitist in Britain; four years later, he was appointed official painter to Queen Charlotte. Beautifully painted, The Oddie Children is also noteworthy for its composition. Beechey masterfully links the four children through their poses, yet accords each of them individual prominence by silhouetting the fair-haired children against dark backgrounds and the dark-haired daughter against the pale sky. Above all, one imagines that it was Beechey's ability to capture the innocence and charm of childhood that must have especially delighted his patron. — {What would you call a pimple one of these children might develop? Oddie zit?} |
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Born on 12 December 1863: Edvard
Munch, Norwegian
Symbolist and Expressionist
painter who died on 23 January 1944. — Artist Biography: Printer, etcher. painter and printmaker. Intense, evocative treatment of psychological and emotional subjects was a major influence on the development of German Expressionism during the early 20th century. His painting The Scream (1893) is regarded as an icon of existential anguish. — Munch was born in Loten, Norway. He grew up in Christiania (now Oslo) and studied art under Christian Krohg, a Norwegian naturalistic painter. Munch's parents, a brother, and a sister died while he was still young, which probably explains the bleakness and pessimism of much of his work. Paintings such as The Sick Child (1886), Vampire (1894), and Ashes (1894) show his preoccupation with the darker aspects of life. Munch traveled to Paris in 1885, and his work began to show the influence of French painters — first, the impressionists, and then the postimpressionists--as well as art nouveau design. Like many young artists Munch reacted against conventional behavior, and in 1892 he took part in a controversial exhibit in Berlin. His circle of friends included several writers, one of whom was the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Munch designed the sets for several of Ibsen's plays. Between 1892 and 1908, Munch spent much of his time in Paris and Berlin, where he became known for his prints — etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts. After 1910 Munch returned to Norway, where he lived and painted until his death. In his later paintings Munch showed more interest in nature, and his work became more colorful and less pessimistic. Munch died in Ekely, near Oslo. He left many of his works to the city of Oslo, which built a museum in his honor. — Edvard Munch was a Norwegian artist whose brooding and anguished paintings and graphic works, based on personal grief and obsessions, were instrumental in the development of expressionism. Born in Løten, Norway, Munch began painting at the age of 17 in Christiania (now Oslo). A state grant, awarded in 1885, enabled him to study briefly in Paris. For 20 years thereafter Munch worked chiefly in Paris and Berlin. At first influenced by impressionism and postimpressionism, he then turned to a highly personal style and content, increasingly concerned with images of illness and death. In 1892, in Berlin, an exhibition of his paintings so shocked the authorities that the show was closed. Undeterred, Munch and his sympathizers worked throughout the 1890s toward the development of German expressionist art. Perhaps the best known of all Munch's work is The Scream (1893; 750x569pix, 123kb). This, and the harrowing The Sick Child (1886), reflect Munch's childhood trauma, occasioned by the death of his mother and sister from tuberculosis. Melancholy suffuses paintings such as The Bridge -- in limp figures with featureless or hidden faces, over which loom the threatening shapes of heavy trees and brooding houses. Reflections of sexual anxieties are seen in his portrayals of women, alternately represented as frail, innocent sufferers or as lurid, life-devouring vampires. In 1908 Munch's anxiety became acute and he was hospitalized. He returned to Norway in 1909 and died in Oslo. The relative tranquillity of the rest of his life is reflected in his murals for the University of Oslo (1910-16), and in his vigorous, brightly colored landscapes. Although his later paintings are not as tortured as his earlier work, a return to introspection marks his late self-portraits, notably Between Clock and Bed (1940). Munch's considerable body of etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts is now considered a significant force in modern graphic art; the work is simple, direct, and vigorous in style, and powerful in subject matter. Few of Munch's paintings are found outside Norway. His own collection is housed in the Munch Museet. — Munch drew inspiration throughout his life from his tragic youth: he had grown up in a poor family, lost his mother and sister at a young age, suffered under his severely depressed father and endured poor health. Munch took lessons in sculpting and painting and settled in Oslo (then Kristiana) where he joined the artist and student group 'Kristiana Bohème'. From an originally Impressionistic style, he rapidly developed a more Expressionistic form. Along with his youthful experiences of sickness and death, sexuality was an important theme in his work. In the period 1889-1907 Munch worked extensively abroad: first in Paris, later in Berlin. In the 1890s he began making prints - dry-point, woodcuts and lithographs. His expressive woodcuts exercised an especially strong influence on young German artists in the beginning of the twentieth century. Once back in Norway, Munch established himself in a village on the coast. He remained active as a painter and engraver. Towards the end of his life, he led a secluded existence. In 1944 he succumbed to an illness. — “Art,” wrote Edvard Munch, “is the antithesis of nature.” Munch's most famous paintings reflect his interior conflicts in intensely subjective images that are often morbid and disturbing. He spent most of his twenties in Paris and Berlin. Paul Gauguin's work particularly influenced him, demonstrating the possibilities of distilling intense emotions into universal experiences through simplified, sinuous forms and evocative blocks of pure color. By validating the concept of painting one's emotional response to a subject, Munch pointed the way for the development of German Expressionist painting. His most ambitious work, The Frieze of Life, begun in 1888, was never completed. He hoped to create a room for this series of paintings to deal with “the modern life of the soul,” but he ended up selling works individually and then making new versions of them. By 1900 Munch had created his most important works. In 1908 he suffered a nervous breakdown, after which his paintings changed. Instead of the revelation of private despair, he looked into the world for more optimistic and universal symbols. Munch's prints, which often shared subject matter with his paintings, may have been his most influential creations. — LINKS — Self-Portrait in the Grip of the Flu (600x521pix, 120kb) — Two Women on the Beach (1898 color woodcut; 1441x1600pix, 566kb) _ A young woman stands on the beach looking out to sea. She wears a long, white dress. Next to her sits an old woman in black, her wrinkled face turned away from the water. The two figures are each other's opposite while, at the same time, they are fused to each other as a single form. The landscape seems to reflect the incongruity of the two figures. It is portrayed vaguely by a green and a blue surface which runs over into sky. Spaces in the green color of the beach are left open to indicate stones. A woodcut is based on the relief printing process, the design being carved on the wood block in relief, as on a stamp. The impression, or print, is also referred to as a woodcut. Tools required to make a woodcut include gouges (curved chisels) and woodcarving knives. Wherever white areas are required in the print, the artist cuts away the wood, leaving the lines and planes in the picture. The ink is applied with a dabber - a sturdy cushion - or a roller onto the block. The expressive wavy lines and the color panels holding little detail are characteristic of Munch's work. Munch used a single block of wood for this multicolored woodcut. He transferred a drawing to its surface and then sawed the block into separate shapes. He inked each piece, reassembled the pieces and then printed the puzzle in one go. The wood's grain can be seen clearly in a few places. Several different states of this print exist. Prints are generally produced in a series of states. The first impression of a print is known as the first state. If the illustration or text on the copperplate is changed the subsequent impression is referred to as the second state. Prints often exist in several different states. A print is a work of art in the form of an impression. A graphic artist transfers a design onto a support - a copperplate or a block of wood. The lines that make up the drawing are then colored with ink. The illustration is subsequently impressed onto paper in a press. The result is a print. This technique allows dozens, even hundreds of impressions of a single picture to be made. Various types of print exist. The principal varieties are engravings, etchings, lithographs, wood- or linocuts, dry-point prints and mezzotints. are known. Munch experimented with color and combinations of techniques. The print in this image is the 'standard' version, printed in green, blue, black and orange-red. Munch used green chalk to color the jutting piece of land where part of the wood block had broken off. Women play a central role in Munch's work. He was not interested in painting portraits. Rather, he represented 'Woman' in a variety of guises: as a young girl in a virginal white dress, as a lover or fatal seductress - often in fiery red - or as a frail widow dressed in black. The women in this print represent two stages - two extremes - in a woman's life. The girl is at the beginning of her life and looks out, full of anticipation, to the unknown - the future. The old woman has no more expectations; all that lies behind her. She is resigned to her old age. Munch made this print shortly after returning to Norway from a stay in Paris. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Paris was the centre of innovation in the arts. There Munch saw color lithographs by Toulouse Lautrec and woodcuts by Gauguin. These artists made use of large panels, expressive, wavy lines and bright colors. Japanese prints were a powerful source of inspiration for them. Munch's simple, plain woodcuts tied in well with the Parisian innovators. Like Gauguin, Munch represented the Symbolist movement. His work also had great influence on the development of early twentieth-century Expressionism. Lithography is a flat-surface or planographic printing technique based on the principle that oil and water are mutually repellant. First the artist draws a design with an oily material onto a limestone plate or lithograph stone (lithos is Greek for stone). The plate is then treated in a special way: the crayon or ink with which the drawing has been made is washed away leaving the design as a vaguely visible grease stain on the stone. This is then wetted. Where it is oily, the water is repelled, the parts which have not been drawn on are now wet. Using a roller, ink is then applied to the stone, allowing the oily ink to adhere to the oily drawing while the rest of the stone, being wet, repels the ink. A print can now be made in a litho-press. With a sheet of paper on top, the inked stone is passed under a horizontal scraper or bar. Under the pressure of the press, the ink is transferred from the stone to the paper. Prints made with this process are known as lithographs. A color lithograph involves different stones being used for each color, passed through the press with the same sheet of paper in succession. — The Kiss (1892, 73x92cm; 406x510pix) _ This was painted in Nice in 1892, and the subject continued to absorb Munch throughout the 1890s. This version, which is one of the earliest, is a more bashful scene than later ones. The young, embracing couple - the figure of Munch is easily recognizable - has moved away from the window. They hide from the outside world as they abandon themselves to their love. It is dark in the room; outside it is evening, with illuminated shop windows, and people strolling in the street. In later versions, Munch shows the couple naked in front of the window, demonstrating their right to free love, regardless of how society might judge them. In our picture, however, it happens in secret. The bluish coloring, thinly applied paint, and light yet visible strokes are characteristic of the pictures Munch painted during his stay in Nice. Already we see that he integrates the two figures into one large shape, dominated by the man's outline. He was to take this concept further in his famous woodcut, where he draws the couple as an unbroken contour, omitting all detail, and merges this line with the annual rings of the wood. Thus lovemaking becomes part of nature's eternal cycle. In this picture, Munch has developed an idea from an etching by Max Klinger entitled In the Park, one of the series A Love (1887). There too, the artist, easily recognizable, appears in the role of seducer. Munch admired Klinger's art, and had encountered his series of prints in the early 1880s. — The Kiss (1897, 99x80cm; 700x561pix) _ Munch painted a number of variations of the motif Kiss, placing the couple in various positions but always expressing the tension between life rushing past outside and the timeless, frozen moment inside. In this version Munch explores the effect of back lighting, which contributes to the abstract, surface-like nature of the couple whose bodies glide across each other into a single shape. — Kiss IV (1902 woodcut, 47x47cm; 400x404pix) _ In the woodcut as in the paintings, the kissing pair are clothed, unlike the etching (563x450pix, 44kb) with a corresponding motif. In this version, abstraction has been taken to its extreme, and the man and the woman stand up together as a dark silhouette against the background formed only by the pattern in the wood. — Puberty (1895, 152x110cm) _ A young girl sits naked on the edge of a bed, her thighs pressed together and her hands hiding her nakedness. She stares straight ahead but without meeting an onlooker's eyes. She has experienced something, and her state is tense as a result, a fact underlined by the dark shadow unfurling behind her. Was it her first erotic dream? Her first menses? We do not know, nor is that crucial. What Munch depicts in this painting is sexual awakening, an awareness of something new, something frightening yet alluring and inescapable. Not surprisingly, a picture of such a subject was considered offensive at the time. Even nowadays when the topic is not taboo, the picture can shock the viewer with its frank portrayal of an intimate situation experienced by all young girls. For this work, too, Munch's inspiration came from Max Klinger's series of etchings A Love, from the plate entitled Awaken. — Death in the Sick-Room (1893, 153x170cm) _ Munch's childhood memories of the death of his sister Sofie materialized into several well-known motifs. In this painting, the family has assembled at Sofie's deathbed. To facilitate her breathing, the patient is sitting in a high-backed chair, turned away from us. The artist wants to depict not the sick girl but the reaction of the other members of the family as they come face to face with death. There is no communication among the persons, each is locked in his own world. The father, who was a doctor, is shown full-face, his hands clasped in prayer. The aunt, Karen Bjølstad, is tending the sick girl. The group in the foreground includes Munch's two other sisters. Laura is sitting with her hands in her lap; Inger is standing, exactly as in the full-length portrait painted in 1892. Edvard is turned towards the dying girl, whereas the brother Peter Andreas is leaving the room by the door on the left. "I paint not what I see but what I saw", Munch said of his art. This is the picture of a memory, not a faithfully rendered interior, and so all unnecessary details are omitted. He and his sisters have grown to adulthood since the event took place, his father and brother are dead. The arrangement of figures becomes a symbol of numbing grief. Munch repeated the composition in several versions and in a number of lithographs. — Melancholy (Evening) (1896, woodcut in color, printed from two blocks, each cut into two sections, 38x46cm) _ Munch’s first attempts at printmaking, of which this is an example, were made in Paris, a center of experimentation in printmaking methods. At first working in color lithography (which required extensive collaboration with a professional printer), Munch soon turned to woodcut, a technique that enabled him to prepare the block himself up to the moment of printing. In his woodcuts, the artist innovatively included the grain of the wood into his designs. He also developed a unique jigsaw-puzzle technique of sawing the wooden blocks into pieces, inking them individually, then reassembling and printing them as a single block. Composed of simplified shapes and curving, expressive line, this image, derived from his Frieze of Life paintings, universalizes human experience while depicting a specific subject — a friend, infatuated with an older woman, who mourns alone on a beach while his lover and her husband embark on a boat trip on a midsummer night. — The Sick Child, (1886, 120x118cm). _ Edvard Munch derived the subject-matter for many of his works from events in his own life. Love and death are central themes. The Sick Child evokes memories of his sister Sofie, who died of tuberculosis when Edvard was fourteen. The girl in the picture is a hired model. Propped up by a pillow, she is sitting in a chair, a pale hand on the blanket over her lap. To the right we see the aunt, her head bowed in grief. All attention is focused on the head of the young girl, seen in profile against the pillow. She gazes across the room, perhaps into eternity. Depictions of the ill and dying were not unusual in the art of his day, but Munch adds a new dimension to a current theme. In order to give expression to atmosphere and space, he applies thick layers of paint, and scores the surface with his palette knife. Naturalist that he is, he wants to convey the impression of his own eyelashes as he squints towards his sitters. This is the first of five versions of this painting; the latest dates from 1925. Several prints, too, varying in technique and composition, treat the same subject. _ Compare the same subject by Metsu [Jan 1629 – 24 Oct 1667 bur.], Hooch, Francisco] — Spring (1889; 511x800pix) — The Dead Mother (1900, 100x90cm) — Despair — 9 prints at FAMSF |
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