ART “4”
“2”-DAY 11 May
v.5.40 |
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Born on 11 May 1815: Richard
Ansdell, British painter who died on 20 April 1885. — He was the son of an artisan and in 1835 entered the Liverpool Academy Schools, where he later became president (1845–6). One of his earliest and largest dated works is the Waterloo Coursing Meeting. This canvas demonstrates his considerable skill as a portrait painter and creates a detailed record of a major sporting event of the period which was attended by many members of the local aristocracy, some of whom, notably the 3rd Earl of Sefton, were his patrons. It was engraved and published in 1843, and other works were similarly popularized. Shooting Party in the Highlands (1840; Liverpool, Walker A.G.) was the first of 149 works exhibited at the Royal Academy. It shows huntsmen with their horses and dogs resting after a good day’s sport, a theme that Ansdell often depicted. He also portrayed other rural scenes such as gamekeepers or shepherds with domestic and wild animals, often in historical settings. All are painted with precision and sensitivity and without sentimentality. Although based in London from 1847 until 1884, Ansdell owned houses in Lancashire and Scotland and found inspiration in northern landscape. He travelled to Spain with the painter John Phillip in 1856 and alone in 1857 and produced several works of Spanish inspiration, for example Feeding Goats in the Alhambra (Preston, Harris Mus. & A.G.). He also collaborated with William Powell Frith and Thomas Creswick in rural genre scenes. Ansdell was commercially successful and was elected ARA in 1861 and RA in 1870. His animal subjects often rival those of Landseer, both in execution and composition, and place him in the forefront of Victorian sporting art. The contents of Ansdell’s studio were sold at Christie’s, London, 19 March 1886. — LINKS — The Blacksmith's Shop (1858, 103x140cm; 727x1000pix, 179kb) — A Ewe with Lambs and a Heron Beside a Loch (1867, 82x112cm) {“Ewe with Lambs” NOT “You with Lambs”} — The Lucky Dogs (1881, 118x161cm) — Good Friends (91x71cm) — Lost In The Storm (82x130cm) — The Goatherds, Gibraltar - Looking Across The Strait Into Africa (121x189cm) — The Gamekeeper (32x24cm) — A Ploughing Match (78x135cm) — Dog with Wild Duck (36x46cm) — The Deer Hunt (176x375pix, 32kb) _ The painting shows a man taking a drink next to the carcass of a deer lying across the back of a grazind horse, with a tricolored collie on the right and two deer hounds on the left; in the distance another man is bringing a horse similarly loaded with a dead deer. |
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Died on 11 May 1866: Franz
Xaver Petter, Viennese painter specialized in Still
Life, born on 22 October 1791. — The tradition of painting detailed, carefully observed arrangements of flowers began in seventeenth century Holland, but remained popular and continues to be practiced in our own time. The still life is an ideal subject matter for the artist to display both his or her talent in describing different textures, as well as an individual sense of order and harmony. In nineteenth century Vienna, the still life was a standard subject at the Academy of Arts and was a favored subject with the Imperial Court, which collected examples by the Dutch masters and by local Viennese painters. Among these artists, Franz Petter distinguished himself as a disciplined and sensitive creator of still life subjects. Petter painted large opulent still lifes for Viennese homes which provided him with a regular income; but it was his small-scale studies of flowers and fruit that established his lasting reputation for their meticulous craftsmanship, compositional clarity, and sense of simplicity and intimacy. — Der berühmte Künstler wurde an der Wiener Akademie unter Johann Baptist Drechsler und Sebastian Wegmayr ausgebildet und avancierte zu einem der angesehensten Blumenmaler der Biedermeier-Zeit. Bereits 1814 wurde er Korrektor an der akademischen Blumenzeichenschule, 1832 Professor und 1835 Akademischer Rat und Direktor an der Manufaktur-Zeichenschule der Wiener Akademie. Seine lebendigen und in prachtvollen Farben ausgeführten Blumenstücke fanden große Wertschätzung in Hof-, Adels- und (gehobenen) Bürgerkreisen und befinden sich heute in wichtigen Museen und in Privatsammlungen. — Portrait of Petter (1847 lithograph; 384x257pix, 25kb) by T. Petter. — An Arrangement of Flowers with a Bird's Nest — An Arrangement of Flowers with Fruit — Großes, dekoratives Blumenstilleben mit sitzendem Affen (1835, 79x63cm; 500x396pix, 74kb) — Großes Blumenstück (1841, 110x86cm; 450x350pix, 59kb) _ In seinen großen Blumenstilleben – wie in nebenstehendem Meisterwerk – setzt Petter die von den Niederländern des 17. Jahrhunderts beeinflußte Blumenmalerei Drechslers fort: auf einer Marmorplatte steht ein barockes Prunkgefäß, das als Vase für das meisterhaft arrangierte Bouquet fungiert. Wie ein dicht gesetztes Puzzle türmen sich die plastisch und in sämtlichen leuchtenden Farben der Palette gemalten Blüten von Rosen, Rhododendren, Orchideen, Tulpen, Mohn oder Pfingstrosen übereinander; der Fuß der Vase ist flankiert von frischen und prallen Früchten. Die eindrucksvoll vermittelte „barocke“ Lebensfreude und Naturfrische sowie die botanisch und malerisch perfekt wiedergegebenen Blumen machen das Gemälde zu einem imposanten Hauptwerk des Künstlers. |
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Born on 11 May 1824:
Jean-Léon Gérôme, French painter and sculptor,
specialized in Orientalism,
who died on 10 January 1904. — Gérôme’s father, a goldsmith from Vésoul, discouraged his son from studying to become a painter but agreed, reluctantly, to allow him a trial period in the studio of Paul Delaroche in Paris. Gérôme proved his worth, remaining with Delaroche from 1840 to 1843. When Delaroche closed the studio in 1843, Gérôme followed his master to Italy. Pompeii meant more to him than Florence or the Vatican, but the world of nature, which he studied constantly in Italy, meant more to him than all three. An attack of fever brought him back to Paris in 1844. He then studied, briefly, under Charles Gleyre, who had taken over the students of Delaroche. Gérôme attended the École des Beaux-Arts and entered the Prix de Rome competition as a way of going back to Italy. In 1846 he failed to qualify for the final stage because of his inadequate ability in figure drawing. To improve his chances in the following year’s competition, he painted an academic exercise of two large figures, a nude youth, crouching in the pose of Chaudet’s marble Eros (1817), and a lightly draped young girl whose graceful mannerism recalls the work of Gérôme’s colleagues from the studio of Delaroche. Gérôme added two fighting cocks (he was very fond of animals) and a blue landscape reminiscent of the Bay of Naples. Delaroche encouraged Gérôme to send The Cockfight (1846) to the Salon of 1847, where it was discovered by the critic Théophile Thoré (but too late to buy it) and made famous by Théophile Gautier. The picture pleased because it dealt with a theme from Classical antiquity in a manner that owed nothing to the unfashionable mannerisms of David’s pupils. Moreover, it placed Gérôme at the head of the Néo-Grec movement, which consisted largely of fellow students of Gleyre, such as Henri-Pierre Picou [1824–1895] and Jean-Louis Hamon. — Born in Vésoul, died in Paris. Gérôme was born in the département of Haute-Saône, the son of a prosperous silversmith. Afler attending local schools, he moved to Paris in 1839 to enter the studio of Paul Delaroche. Following a year in Rome with Delaroche he studied in 1845 under Charles Gleyre [02 May 1806 – 05 May 1874], whose neoclassical manner he adopted for the treatment of scenes from ancient life. His Cock Fight won a third-class medal at the Salon of 1847 and considerable critical and public attention, including praise from Théophile Gautier. In 1854 he made the first of many trips to the Near East, and soon his treatments of oriental subjects vied in number with his classical scenes. He was appointed a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1863, and elected a member of the Institute of France in 1865. From this influential position as famous teacher and leading proponent of classical artistic values, Gerôme was a powerful opponent of impressionism and the avant-garde. In 1878 he exhibited his first monumental sculpture. He remained active as a painter, sculptor, and teacher until his death — He was a student of Paul Delaroche and inherited his highly finished academic style. His best-known works are his oriental scenes, the fruit of several visits to Egypt. They won Gérôme great popularity and he had considerable influence as an upholder of academic tradition and enemy of progressive trends in art. — Gérôme was a student of Paul Delaroche. He inherited his highly finished academic style almost directly from Delaroche. His best-known works are his oriental scenes, the fruit of several visits to Egypt. They won Gérôme great popularity and he had considerable influence as an upholder of academic tradition and enemy of progressive trends in art; he opposed, for example, the acceptance by the state of the Caillebotte bequest of Impressionist pictures. Gérôme was a proponent of the orientalist movement and a "lion" in the international artistic circles. His first work, The Cockfight, shown in the Show of 1847, illustrated his concern for authentic detail which he obtained by frequent voyages to Egypt and Constantinople. His marriage with the daughter of legendary collector and art broker Adolphe Goupil facilitated the sales of his works. Goupil worked with the collectors of contemporary academic artists and ensured great fame to Gérôme. Gérôme was a Professor in the Art Schools starting around 1864, although he saw his popularity declining toward the end of his life, partly because of his opposition to the Impressionist painters. — Gérôme went to Paris in 1841 and worked under Paul Delaroche, whom he accompanied to Italy (1844 - 1845). On his return he exhibited The Cock-fight, which gained him a third-class medal in the Salon of 1847. The Virgin with Christ and St John and Anacreon, Bacchus and Cupid took a second-class medal in 1848. He exhibited Bacchus and Love, Drunk, a Greek Interior and Souvenir d'Italie, in 1851; Paestum (1852); and An Idyll (1853). In 1854 Gérôme made a journey to Turkey and the shores of the Danube, and in 1857 visited Egypt. To the exhibition of 1855 he contributed a Pifferaro, a Shepherd, A Russian Concert and a large historical canvas, The Age of Augustus and the Birth of Christ. The last was somewhat confused in effect, but in recognition of its consummate ability the State purchased it. Gérôme's reputation was greatly enhanced at the Salon of 1857 by a collection of works of a more popular kind: the Duel: after a Masquerade, Egyptian Recruits crossing the Desert, Memnon and Sesostris and Camels Watering, the drawing of which was criticized by Edmond About. In Caesar (1859) Gérôme tried to return to a severer class of work, but the picture failed to interest the public. Phryne before the Areopagus, Le Roi Candaule and Socrates finding Alcibiades in the House of Aspasia (1861) gave rise to some scandal by reason of the subjects selected by the painter, and brought down on him the bitter attacks of Paul de Saint-Victor and Maxjme Ducamp. At the same Salon he exhibited the Egyptian chopping Straw, and Rembrandt biting an Etching, two very minutely finished works. Gérôme's best paintings are of Eastern subjects; among these may be named the Turkish Prisoner and Turkish Butcher (1863); Prayer (1865); The Slave Market (1867); and The Harem out Driving (1869). He often illustrated history, as in Louis XIV and Moliere (1863); The Reception of the Siamese Ambassadors at Fontainebleau (1865); and the Death of Marshal Ney (1868). Gérôme was also successful as a sculptor; he executed, among other works; Omphale (1887). His Bellona (1892), in ivory, metal, and precious stones, which was also exhibited in the Royal Academy of London, attracted great attention. The artist then began an interesting series of Conquerors, wrought in gold, silver and gems - Bonaparte entering Cairo (1897); Tamerlane (1898); and Frederick the Great (1899). Gérôme was elected member of the Institut in 1865. — Gérôme's students included Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret, Jules Jean Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ, Thomas Cowperthwaite Eakins, Frank Boggs, Frederick Bridgman, Kenyon Cox, Julian Alden Weir, Dennis Miller Bunker, William DeLeftwich Dodge, Alexander Harrison, Robert Lee MacCameron, Siddons Mowbray, Harper Pennington, William Picknell, Julius Stewart, Abbott Handerson Thayer, Douglas Volk, Wyatt Eaton, Lawton Parker, Ali Ahmet, Harriet Backer, Léon Bakst, Gunnar Fredrik Berndtson, George de Forest Brush, Dennis Miller Bunker, Eugène Burnand, Mary Stevenson Cassatt, Albert Gustaf Aristides Edelfelt, Emanuel Phillips Fox, Antonio de la Gandara [16 Dec 1862 – 30 Jun 1917], Pierre-Paul-Léon Glaize [1842-1932], Auguste-Barthélémy Glaize [15 Dec 1807 – 08 Aug 1893], Lucien Felix Henry, Vojtech Hynais, Ernst Josephson, Konstanty Laszczka, Henry Herbert La Thangue, Fernand Léger, Hamdi Osman, Paul Peel, Jean-François Raffaëlli, Anthon Gerhard Alexander van Rappard, Odilon Bertrand-Jean Redon, Theodore Robinson, Alfred-Philippe Roll, Helene Sofia Schjerfbeck, Édouard Vuillard, Émile-Charles Wauters. |
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LINKS — Self Portrait (1886, 41x31cm) — Le Marché aux Tapis (1887, 84x65cm; 1135x880pix _ ZOOM to 2270x1761pix; 3105kb) _ This painting shows the Court of the Rug Market in Cairo, which Gérôme had visited in 1885. — Le Bain (1885, 74x60cm); 3/8 size _ ZOOM to 3/4 size) — La Prière au Caire aka La Prière sur les Toits au Caire (1865, 50x81cm; 900x1269pix) — Un Muezzin Appelant du Haut du Minaret les Fidèles à la Prière (1879, 91x66cm) — Interior of a Mosque (1870, 57x89cm) — A Café in Cairo (1883) — Almehs playing Chess in a Café (1870, 66x55cm) — The Serpent Charmer (1880, 84x122cm) — Pelt Merchant of Cairo (1869, 61x50cm) — A Street Scene in Cairo (1871, 59x93cm) — Cairene Horse Dealer aka The Horse Market (1867, 57x46cm) — The Arab and his Steed aka In the Desert (1872, 60x99cm) — Arabs Crossing the Desert (1870, 41x56cm) — Egyptian Recruits Crossing the Desert (1857, 62x106cm) — Camels at the Trough (1857, 74x119cm) — Harem Pool (725x609pix, 125kb) — Ultime Prière des Martyrs Chrétiens (1883, 88x150cm) — King Candaules (1859, 67x99cm) _ Candaules was a king of the ancient Kingdom of Lydia from 735 BC to 718 BC. One version of how he was succeeded by Gyges, who reigned until 680 BC (when he was killed in a battle), is told here: There was a certain king of Sardis, Candaules by name, whom the Greeks called Myrsilus. He was a descendant of Alcaeus, son of Hercules. The first king of this dynasty was Agron, son of Ninus, grandson of Belus, and great-grandson of Alcaeus; Candaules, son of Myrsus, was the last. The kings who reigned before Agron sprang from Lydus, son of Atys, from whom the people of the land, called previously Meonians, received the name of Lydians. The Heraclides, descended from Hercules and the slave-girl of Jardanus, having been entrusted by these princes with the management of affairs, obtained the kingdom by an oracle. Their rule endured for two and twenty generations of men, a space of five hundred and five years; during the whole of which period, from Agron to Candaules, the crown descended in the direct line from father to son. Now it happened that this Candaules was in love with his own wife; and not only so, but thought her the fairest woman in the whole world. This fancy had strange consequences. There was in his bodyguard a man whom he specially favored, Gyges, the son of Dascylus. All affairs of greatest moment were entrusted by Candaules to this person, and to him he was wont to extol the surpassing beauty of his wife. So matters went on for a while. At length, one day, Candaules, who was fated to end ill, thus addressed his follower: "I see thou dost not credit what I tell thee of my lady's loveliness; but come now, since men's ears are less credulous than their eyes, contrive some means whereby thou mayst behold her naked." At this the other loudly exclaimed, saying, "What most unwise speech is this, master, which thou hast uttered? Wouldst thou have me behold my mistress when she is naked? Bethink thee that a woman, with her clothes, puts off her bashfulness. Our fathers, in time past, distinguished right and wrong plainly enough, and it is our wisdom to submit to be taught by them. There is an old saying, 'Let each look on his own.' I hold thy wife for the fairest of all womankind. Only, I beseech thee, ask me not to do wickedly." Gyges thus endeavored to decline the king's proposal, trembling lest some dreadful evil should befall him through it. But the king replied to him, "Courage, friend; suspect me not of the design to prove thee by this discourse; nor dread thy mistress, lest mischief be thee at her hands. Be sure I will so manage that she shall not even know that thou hast looked upon her. I will place thee behind the open door of the chamber in which we sleep. When I enter to go to rest she will follow me. There stands a chair close to the entrance, on which she will lay her clothes one by one as she takes them off. Thou wilt be able thus at thy leisure to peruse her person. Then, when she is moving from the chair toward the bed, and her back is turned on thee, be it thy care that she see thee not as thou passest through the doorway." Gyges, unable to escape, could but declare his readiness. Then Candaules, when bedtime came, led Gyges into his sleeping-chamber, and a moment after the queen followed. She entered, and laid her garments on the chair, and Gyges gazed on her. After a while she moved toward the bed, and her back being then turned, he glided stealthily from the apartment. As he was passing out, however, she saw him, and instantly divining what had happened, she neither screamed as her shame impelled her, nor even appeared to have noticed aught, purposing to take vengeance upon the husband who had so affronted her. For among the Lydians, and indeed among the barbarians generally, it is reckoned a deep disgrace, even to a man, to be seen naked. No sound or sign of intelligence escaped her at the time. But in the morning, as soon as day broke, she hastened to choose from among her retinue such as she knew to be most faithful to her, and preparing them for what was to ensue, summoned Gyges into her presence. Now it had often happened before that the queen had desired to confer with him, and he was accustomed to come to her at her call. He therefore obeyed the summons, not suspecting that she knew aught of what had occurred. Then she addressed these words to him: "Take thy choice, Gyges, of two courses which are open to thee. Slay Candaules, and thereby become my lord, and obtain the Lydian throne, or die this moment in his room. So wilt thou not again, obeying all behests of thy master, behold what is not lawful for thee. It must needs be that either he perish by whose counsel this thing was done, or thou, who sawest me naked, and so didst break our usages." At these words Gyges stood awhile in mute astonishment; recovering after a time, he earnestly besought the queen that she would not compel him to so hard a choice. But finding he implored in vain, and that necessity was indeed laid on him to kill or to be killed, he made choice of life for himself, and replied by this inquiry: "If it must be so, and thou compellest me against my will to put my lord to death, come, let me hear how thou wilt have me set on him." "Let him be attacked," she answered, "on the spot where I was by him shown naked to you, and let the assault be made when he is asleep." All was then prepared for the attack, and when night fell, Gyges, seeing that he had no retreat or escape, but must absolutely either slay Candaules, or himself be slain, followed his mistress into the sleeping-room. She placed a dagger in his hand and hid him carefully behind the self-same door. Then Gyges, when the king was fallen asleep, entered privily into the chamber and struck him dead. Thus did the wife and kingdom of Candaules pass into the possession of Gyges, of whom Archilochus the Parian, who lived about the same time, made mention in a poem written in iambic trimeter verse. Gyges was afterwards confirmed in the possession of the throne by an answer of the Delphic oracle. Enraged at the murder of their king, the people flew to arms, but after a while the partisans of Gyges came to terms with them, and it was agreed that if the Delphic oracle declared him king of the Lydians, he should reign; if otherwise, he should yield the throne to the Heraclides. As the oracle was given in his favor he became king. The Pythoness, however, added that, in the fifth generation from Gyges, vengeance should come for the Heraclides; a prophecy of which neither the Lydians nor their princes took any account till it was fulfilled. Such was the way in which the Mermnadae deposed the Heraclides, and themselves obtained the sovereignty. (Herodotus, Histories book 1.7-13) _ see also the painting Candaules, King of Lydia, Shows his Wife by Stealth to Gyges (417x512pix, 28kb) by William Etty. — Phryné before the Areopagus (80x128cm) — The Slave Market (1880; 600x508pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1185pix) — Slave Market in Rome (1884; 600x508pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1185pix) — Slave Auction (750x594pix, 104kb) — Pho Xai fils d'ambassadeur Siamois (1861, 28x22cm) — Markos Botsaris (1874, 70x54cm) _ Markos Botsaris [1788 – 21 Aug 1823] was a Greek patriot exiled from his native Epirus in 1803, who became a hero of the Greek War of Independence, the successful insurgency waged by the Greeks between 1821 and 1827 to win independence from the Ottoman Empire. Botsaris was prominent notably in the defense of Mesolongion (1822–1823) and at Karpenision, where with a handful of men he defeated the Turks but died in battle. — Madame de la Pagerie (77x63cm; quarter-size _ ZOOM to half-size _ ZOOM++ not recommended to fuzzy full size) — Mlle Durand aka Madame Duvergier (1853, 127x87cm) — Duel Après un Bal Masqué _ détail (1857) — L'Éminence Grise (1874, 65x98cm) — Unfolding the Holy Flag (The Standard Bearer) — Louis XIV and Molière (42x75cm; 583x995pix, 207kb) — The Grief of the Pasha — The Virgin, the Infant Jesus, and Saint John — The Reception of the Siamese Ambassadors at Fontainebleau (1864, 128x260cm) — The Pyrrhic Dance (63x89cm) — The Dance of the Almeh — Socrates Seeking Alcibiades in the House of Aspasia (ZOOM to 1400x2222pix; 1378kb) _ The dog, Argos, belongs to Alcibiades. — Petit Garçon — Pollice Verso (1872, 96x149cm) _ no cops! it means “thumb down” in Latin. — Napoléon et son État-Major en Égypte (1867; 513x775pix) — 162 images at the Athenaeum — 167 images at ARC (including some photos of sculptures). |
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Died on 11 May 1664:
Salomon de Bray (or Braij), Dutch painter born in 1597. — Salomon de Bray was the son of Simon de Bray, who moved to Holland from Aelst in the Catholic southern Netherlands. Salomon was a man of versatile talents, with interests ranging from painting to poetry and urban planning. He married in 1625 and three of his sons became artists: Jan de Bray [1627-1697], Dirck de Bray, an engraver and painter, and Joseph de Bray, a painter of still-lifes. Jan de Bray's Banquet of Anthony and Cleopatra (1669) is generally thought to depict his parents as Anthony and Cleopatra and himself and his siblings as their attendants. Salomon was a painter of biblical and allegorical scenes, who settled in Haarlem about 1625. He was the pupil of Goltzius, whose manner he occasionally imitated, but his portraits, like those by his son and student Jan, are often close to Hals. He wrote a book, Architecture Moderna (1631), describing the buildings of Hendrick de Keyser. He was a member of the civic guard company of Saint-Adriaen in Haarlem, where he remained until his death. He was a sensitive and intelligent man who played an important role in various cultural projects and institutions in the city. In 1627 he was paid for sketches of the Zeylpoort in Haarlem; he co-founded the Haarlem Guild of Saint Hubert; in 1631 he helped reform the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke, serving on its executive committee from 1633 to 1640; in 1634 he supervised the repairs to an organ in a Haarlem church; and he took an interest in many architectural projects for the city, contributing, among other things, a plan for the enlargement of the city and models and drawings for the Nieuwe Kerk. In 1644-1645 he was summoned to Nijmegen as a consultant architect to supervise the alterations to an orphanage and an old people's home, and in 1649-1650 he contributed large decorated fields to the painted decoration of the Oranjezaal at the Huis ten Bosch outside the Hague. Salomon de Bray, his wife, two of their sons, and two daughters died during the 1663-1664 plague epidemic in Haarlem. — Architect and painter Salomon de Bray spent nearly his whole life in Haarlem, where Mannerist artists Cornelis van Haarlem and Hendrick Goltzius were probably his first teachers. He painted mostly religious and mythological scenes, along with portraits, landscapes, and genre pictures. An active and accomplished draftsman, De Bray made architectural drawings and highly finished preliminary studies for paintings. De Bray's artistic development is not well documented. In 1635 he seemed to favor half-length figures, which at that time had become rather old-fashioned. By about 1640, his work showed the influence of Rembrandt van Rijn's chiaroscuro. In the following decade, De Bray began incorporating classical compositions into his work, a style introduced two decades earlier by fellow townsman Pieter de Grebber. De Bray played an important role in Haarlem's cultural projects and institutions. Unfortunately, many of his architectural designs were never carried out. He helped reorganize the Guild of Saint Luke in 1631, along with Pieter Molijn. Sensitive and intelligent, De Bray published a collection of love poems and a book on contemporary architecture. In 1663 - 1664, the plague struck the De Bray family, killing both parents and four of their ten children. The surviving sons Jan, Dirck, and Joseph became painters. — LINKS — The Twins Clara and Aelbert de Bray (1646, 780x1001pix, 104kb) _ Salomon de Bray is usually remembered for his classical compositions. Yet his double portrait of his nephew's twins puts him squarely in the tradition of Dutch naturalistic portraiture. The chiaroscuro effect and the color scheme of the painting are reminiscent of works by Rembrandt in the 1640s, but stylistic slots are the last thing to come to mind when confronted by this touching image of two peaceful tiny babies wearing what are presumably their baptismal lockets lying in a richly carved gilded Baroque shell-like cradle. — Adoration by the Magi (round; 686x686pix, 208kb _ ZOOM to 1030x1029, 75kb) — David with His Sword (1636, 62x51cm) _ In the classic biblical story of faith, daring, and skill overcoming brute strength and superior odds (1 Samuel), the shepherd boy David slew the armored Philistine giant Goliath with just a stave, a slingshot, and a pouch containing a few pebbles from a local brook. After stunning Goliath with a stone from his slingshot, David quickly took up the giant's sword and severed his head. Assured that his audience knew the story, Salomon de Bray could evoke a meaningful narrative by depicting only a boy with an oversize sword. De Bray's David embodies youth and naiveté; he is an ordinary, rather blank-faced, Dutch youth, not an idealized heroic type. David with His Sword and Samson with the Jawbone share the same size, medium, and composition; they were probably paired as pendants or as part of a series of Old Testament heroes. — Samson with the Jawbone (1636, 62x51cm) _ Holding his attribute the jawbone, Samson looks upward, perhaps to God. The great strongman slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass (Judges 15:19). Overcome by thirst, he then drank from the rock at Lechi, a name that also means "jawbone" in Hebrew. A mistaken translation in the Dutch Bible led some artists, like de Bray, to depict Samson with a jawbone issuing water, rather than the spring's rocky source. In this half-length composition, Salomon de Bray used a clear light and plain background, showing his awareness of the artistic conventions of the Utrecht Caravaggisti. — Landscape with a couple of sleeping shepherds (1633; 600x848pix) — Young Nun (1622; 600x496pix) |
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Born on 11 May 1889:
Paul Nash, English Surrealist
painter who died on 11 July 1946. — Brother of John Northcote Nash
[11 Apr 1893 – 23 Sep 1977]. — Nash, the son of a successful lawyer, was born London. Nash was educated at St. Paul's School and the Slade School of Art, where he met Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, William Roberts and C. R. W. Nevinson. Influenced by the work of William Blake, Nash had one-man shows in 1912 and 1913. On the outbreak Nash enlisted in the Artists' Rifles and was sent to the Western Front. Nash, who took part in the offensive at Ypres, had reached the rank of lieutenant in the Hampshire Regiment by 1916. Whenever possible, Nash made sketches of life in the trenches. In May, 1917 he was invalided home after a non-military accident. While recuperating in London, Nash worked from his sketches to produce a series of war paintings. This work was well-received when exhibited later that year. As a result of this exhibition, Charles Masterman, head of the government's War Propaganda Bureau (WPB) recruited Nash as a war artist. In November 1917 he returned to the Western Front where he painted several more pictures. Nash's work during the war included The Menin Road, The Ypres Salient at Night, The Mule Track (1918), A Howitzer Firing, Ruined Country and Spring in the Trenches. Nash was unhappy with his work as a member of War Propaganda Bureau. He wrote at the time: "I am no longer an artist. I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on for ever. Feeble, inarticulate will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth and may it burn their lousy souls." After the war Nash experimented with surrealism and abstract art. Nash also taught at the Royal College of Art and worked as a designer and book illustrator. During the Second World War Nash was employed by the Ministry of Information and the Air Ministry and paintings produced by him during this period include The Battle of Britain and Totes Meer. — LINKS — Wood on the Downs (1929) _ Nash helped organise and exhibited in the first surrealist exhibition of 1936. He is ranked as one of the greatest lyric artists of the English School - alongside Turner and Blake. It has been said of him that he was: Essentially a landscape painter, no artist has interpreted the beauty and rhythm of the English countryside as perfectly as he. Wood on the Downs is an articulate and monumental treatment of a vivid but unsensational subject. It is described in English Art & Modernism as a painting that summarises the first three decades of twentieth century British painting. There is an emphasis on a substantial paint surface, a feature of the best work of the Camden Town Group and a clear formal structure testifies to a continued recognition of the importance of Cezanne. The continental influences of Surrealism and Cubism were being gradually adopted into a context that became entirely appropriate to English painting. — Northern Adventure (1929) _ This is the second version of a view from the window of Nash's flat in London which overlooked St. Pancras Station, across a vacant lot, containing an advertising hoarding. The work demonstrates Nash's increasing interest in architectural landscapes and in Surrealism. In the first version, oval windows line the station building. In Northern Adventure these have been removed, substituted for an outsized window which floats in space at an angle. This strange displacement of the window calls to mind the work of the Surrealists. It was a device used by the Italian artist, Giorgio De Chirico and its inclusion in Nash's work provides a reflection of the sky which is otherwise cut from the composition. In Nash's autobiography, 'Outline', his notes under the chapter titled 'Searching' read; "A new vision and a new style. The change begins. Northern Adventure and other adventures." — Winter Sea (71x97cm) _ Muted shades of green and white are combined with black to create an impression of the sea at night. As well as suggesting moonlight, the palette of steely colors conveys a sense of somberness and cold. Concentrating on color and form, Nash represented nature as a pattern that verges on the abstract. The sharp, angular shapes of the waves evoke the forbidding nature of the winter sea. — A Howitzer Firing (71x91cm) _ Along with Nevinson and Wyndham Lewis, Nash (1889-1946) was one of the major British war painters who, like them, had been influenced by Cubism and Futurism prior to 1914. He signed up in 1914, was made a lieutenant in 1916, and fought near Ypres. An accident led to his repatriation in May 1917. He then set down to work from memory and from his sketches. Nash's paintings rely on detailed observation, from which he extracts the substance of his pictorial, lyrical and tragic effects. This is the case with this picture, where Nash is not content merely with a representation of the gun under camouflage nets. The initial flash of light and the reddening of the sky in contrast with the shadow of the foreground heighten the picture's expressiveness. — Night Bombardment (1919, 183x214cm) _ Produced for the Canadian War Memorial, this painting is reminiscent of the work of Vallotton, in spite of the difference in the two painters' ages, training and experience of the war. In this commemorative picture, Nash combines figurative elements - mainly tree trunks, barbed wire and the dark entrance to a dugout - with geometrical elements - now curved, like craters and smoke etc., now angular, like the explosion, parapets and wooden frames. It reminds one of early Nevinson, which relies on the same pictorial system. However, faced with a monumental format, Nash introduces a further element, with the brutality of his earthy colors, the muddy grey-browns, the red of the barbed wire and the whitish lights, forming sharp contrasts against the backdrop of an opaque sky. — The Ypres Salient at Night (1918, 71x91cm) — Void (1918, 72x92cm) — The Menin Road (1919, 183x317cm) _ The battle around Ypres lasted as long as the war itself. This appalling blood-bath was for the Commonwealth troops like Verdun for the French: an endless carnage in a marshy landscape where the wounded were swallowed up in the mud. These three paintings by Paul Nash, while showing how he moved from Cubo-Futurism towards descriptive naturalism, bear witness to the extreme violence of the destruction, in the wetlands, in the mutilated woodlands and around the town, itself destroyed. Void can be seen as the archetype of the Great War landscapes: not a soldier to be seen, abandoned lorries and guns, flooded trenches, a limp corpse among the shells and rifles, smoke and, in the distance a plane, either dropping bombs or falling to the ground, we cannot tell. On top of everything, it rains continually. There can be no more hope of coming back alive from such a place which no longer has a name, which has become a field of death. — Behind the Inn (1922, 63x76cm) |
| ^ Died
on 11 May 1927: “Juan Gris”, Spanish
Cubist
painter and sculptor born José Victoriano Carmelo Carlos González
Pérez on 23 March 1887. — Juan Gris was the Third Musketeer of Cubism, and actually pushed Cubism further to its logical conclusion until his ultimely death at the age of 39. With Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, he was one of the first and greatest exponents of the cubist idiom in painting. He adopted the pseudonym by which he is known after moving (1906) to Paris, where he lived as Picasso's friend and neighbor. Between 1907 and 1912 he watched closely the development of the cubist style and in 1912 exhibited his Homage to Picasso, which established his reputation as a painter of the first rank. He worked closely with Picasso and Braque until the outbreak of World War I, adapting what had been their intuitively generated innovations to his own methodical temperament. In the 1920s, Gris designed costumes and scenery for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. He also completed some of the boldest and most mature statements of his cubist style, with landscape-still lifes that compress interiors and exteriors into synthetic cubist compositions, such as Le Canigou (1921), and figure paintings, especially the fine series of clowns that includes Two Pierrots — Gris was born in Madrid. He studied mechanical drawing at the Escuela de Artes y Manufacturas in Madrid from 1902 to 1904, during which time he contributed drawings to local periodicals. From 1904 to 1905 he studied painting with the academic artist José Maria Carbonero. In 1906 he moved to Paris, where he lived for most of the remainder of his life. His friends in Paris included Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, and Pablo Picasso and the writers Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and Maurice Raynal. Although he continued to submit humorous illustrations to journals such as L’Assiette au beurre, Le Charivari, and Le Cri de Paris, Gris began to paint seriously in 1910. By 1912 he had developed a personal Cubist style. He exhibited for the first time in 1912: at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, Der Sturm gallery in Berlin, the Salon de la Société Normande de Peinture Moderne in Rouen, and the Salon de la Section d’Or in Paris. That same year D.-H. Kahnweiler signed Gris to a contract that gave Kahnweiler exclusive rights to the artist’s work. Gris became a good friend of Henri Matisse in 1914 and over the next several years formed close relationships with Jacques Lipchitz and Jean Metzinger. After Kahnweiler fled Paris at the outbreak of World War I, Gris signed a contract with Léonce Rosenberg in 1916. His first major solo show was held at Rosenberg’s Galerie l’Effort Moderne in Paris in 1919. The following year Kahnweiler returned and once again became Gris’s dealer. In 1922 the painter first designed ballet sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev. Gris articulated most of his aesthetic theories during 1924 and 1925. He delivered his definitive lecture, “Des possibilités de la peinture,” at the Sorbonne in 1924. Major Gris exhibitions took place at the Galerie Simon in Paris and the Galerie Flechtheim in Berlin in 1923 and at the Galerie Flechtheim in Düsseldorf in 1925. As his health declined, Gris made frequent visits to the south of France. He died in Boulogne-sur-Seine. — LINKS — Still Life with Book (1925 _ ZOOM not necessary) — Still Life (1917, 73x92cm; 958x1206pix, 847kb _ ZOOM not necessary to 1781x2299pix) _ without any recognizable book (unusual for the artist) or any other clearly recognizable object except a crooked table with on it probably a bottle, and possibly a small scale model of a toilet commode, and what might be a wide transparent ruler. — Still Life (1925; 600x739pix, 103kb _ ZOOM not recommended to blurry 1400x1724pix, 225kb) with defecating (?) violin. — Seated Harlequin (91x74cm; 1200x940pix, 774kb _ ZOOM not necessary to 2286x1791pix, 2416kb) — Picasso (1912, 93x74cm; 1107x912pix, 265kb) — Maurice Raynal (1912, 55x46cm; 1234x1016pix) _ Raynal [1884–1954] was an art critic. — Landscape with Houses in Céret (1913, 100x65cm; 1247x789pix, 230kb) — The Mountain “Le Canigou” (1921, 65x100cm; 738x1129pix, 122kb) _ Gris continued to elaborate the theme of the open window in 1921, concluding with this picture painted at Céret in December. In it he returned to the juxtaposition of interior and exterior as seperate and distinct. Whereas a sail became a triangle in The View Across The Bay, the mountain now assumes that form, much as it had for Kandinsky and Klee starting about 1910. Although there is no reason to beleive that Gris knew of the works and writings from Munich, it is a remarkable coincidence to find him manipulating his favorite form of the Blaue Reiter artists in a similar manner. Perhaps Cézanne lies at the heart of those usages. At any rate, by making the mountain triangular and regularizing the form of the guitar, he was rendering the poetic juxtaposition in terms of object-emblems. Diagrammatic, too, is nature, as a blue triangle containg the triangular mountain and the white swatch of cloud. Opposed are the curved lines of the guitar. It and an open book epitomixe art. As usual, the door is present both as a barrier and a means of entry. — Guitar and Fruit Dish (1918; 60x73cm) — Guitar and Fruit Dish (1919; 92x72cm) — Guitar and Fruit Dish (1921; 61x95cm) — 163 images at the Athenaeum |
| ^
Born on 11 May 1904: Salvador
Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domenech, Catalan Surrealist
painter and printmaker who died on 23 January 1989. — Spanish painter, writer, and member of the surrealist movement. He was born in Figueras, Catalonia, and educated at the School of Fine Arts, Madrid. After 1929 he espoused surrealism, although the leaders of the movement later denounced Dalí as overly commercial. Dalí's paintings from this period depict dream imagery and everyday objects in unexpected forms, such as the famous limp watches in The Persistence of Memory. Dalí moved to the United States in 1940, where he remained until 1948. His later paintings, often on religious themes, are more classical in style. They include Crucifixion and The Sacrament of the Last Supper. Dalí's paintings are characterized by meticulous draftsmanship and realistic detail, with brilliant colors heightened by transparent glazes. Dalí designed and produced surrealist films, illustrated books, handcrafted jewelry, and created theatrical sets and costumes. Among his writings are ballet scenarios and several books, including The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942) and Diary of a Genius (1965). — Dali was born in the small agricultural town of Figueres, Catalonia, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, 25 km from the French border, the son of a prosperous notary. He spent his childhood in Figueres and at the family's summer home in the coastal fishing village of Cadaques. His first studio was built for him by his parents and was situated in Cadaques. For most of his adult life he lived in a fantastic villa in nearby Port Lligat. As a young man, Dali attended the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. His first one-man show was held in Barcelona in 1925. He got international fame when three of his paintings were shown in the third annual Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928. Dali went to Paris the following year, again holding a one-man show, and joined the Paris Surrealist Group. It was in this same year that Dali met Gala Eluard when she visited him in Cadaques with her husband, the French poet Paul Eluard. She became Dali's lover, muse, business manager, and the source of inspiration for many of Dali's greatest works. They were married in 1934 at a civil ceremony and made their first trip to America. Dali emerged as a leader of the Surrealist movement and his painting, Persistence of Memory (1931) is still one of the best known surrealist works. But, as war approached, the apolitical Dali clashed with the Surrealists and he was expelled during a trial conducted by the group in 1934. Although he did exhibit works in international surrealist exhibitions throughout the decade, asserting: “le Surréalisme c'est moi”, by 1940 he was ready to move into a new era, one that he termed “classic.” During World War II Dali and his wife, Gala, took refuge in the United States, returning after the war's end to Spain. His international reputation continued to grow, based as much on his flamboyance and flair for publicity as on his prodigious output of paintings, graphic works, and book illustrations; and designs for jewellrey, textiles, clothing, costumes, shop interiors, and stage sets. His writings include poetry, fiction, and a controversial autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. |
| Dali
returned to the Catholic faith of his youth and he and Gala were married
in a second ceremony in 1958, this time in a chapel near Girona, Spain. Dali produced two films - An Andalusian Dog (1928) and The Golden Age (1930) — in collaboration with Buñuel. Considered surrealist classics, they are filled with grotesque images. In 1974 Dali opened the Teatro Museo Dali in Figueres. This was followed by retrospectives in Paris and London at the end of the decade. After Gala's death in 1982, Dali's health began to fail. It deteriorated further after he was severely burned in a fire in Gala's castle in Pubol, Spain, in 1984. Two years later, a pacemaker was implanted. Much of the years 1980-89 were spent in almost total seclusion, first in Pubol and later in his private room in the Torre Galatea, adjacent to the Teatro Museo Dali. Dali died in a hospital in Figueres from heart failure and respiratory complications. — Salvador Dalì was born in the Catalan town of Figueras, near Barcelona. He was given the same name of his brother, who died at the age of 21 months from a case of meningitis, possibly brought on by his father’s blows to the infant’s head. The second Salvador Dalì became a world-renowned Surrealist painter and avatar of the bizarre, with a combination of technical accomplishment, haunting imagery, and thirst for publicity that made him one of the most recognized artists of the 20th century. Dalì was the son of a rich, atheistic notary and a devoutly Catholic, adoring mother. The artist forged a very close relationship to his younger sister, Ana Maria, who remained his only model until 1929 (rumors exist that the relationship crossed the line into incest). Bored in school, Dalì was expelled at the age of fifteen. This expulsion, though, afforded Dalì more time for private art lessons and for mastering the finer points of classical technique that would become crucial to his "lucid dream" style. In 1921, Dalì won acceptance to the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. There he became the youngest member of an avant-garde circle of students that included the surrealist filmmaker, Luis Buñuel, and the poet, Federico Garcia Lorca. Dalì later collaborated with Buñuel on two notorious Surrealist films, Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or. Garcia Lorca soon became a very close friend of Dalì’s (and according to some, possibly Dalì’s lover), spending many holidays at Dalì’s family house in the Spanish beach town of Cadaques. In 1930, however, Lorca and Dalì quarreled violently, and the two reconciled only a year before Lorca’s death in 1936 as a dissident in the Spanish Civil War. During his years at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Dalì spent his mornings painting and drawing. Afternoons were spent dressed as a dandy, drinking in cafés and discussing current avant-garde movements like Dadaism, Futurism, and the newly forming Surrealism. Eventually, Dalì’s eccentricities and political beliefs became too much for the Madrid academy. In 1923, he was expelled from school and even jailed for a month for disturbance of the peace and political agitation. He subsequently returned home to work on his paintings in Figueres and at the family beach house in Cadaques. During these student years, Dalì discovered what would become one of the most important influences on his painting style, Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. Dalì’s personal take on Freud’s theory of the subconscious became the basis of his so-called "paranoiac-critical method" of painting, by which Dalì discovered or hallucinated images of his own subconscious desires and libidinal urges and painted the results. Dalì called the paintings of this period "hand-painted dream photographs." As a result of his "paranoiac critical-method, " Dalì achieved his first significant recognition as an artist and soon became identified with the Surrealist movement. In 1925, Dalì had his first one-man show in Barcelona. In 1928, three of his paintings, including Basket of Bread, were shown in Pittsburgh. 1928 also marked his first trip to Paris, where Spanish painter Joan Miró introduced Dalì to the Surrealists, an artistic movement led by the poet André Breton and dedicated, in Breton’s words, to "reuniting the realms of conscious and unconscious experience". Dalì soon became the best-known member of the group, though other members, including Breton, resented the newcomer’s flair for publicity and ultimately tried to expel the Figueras native. |
| The
end of the 1920s marked a crucial point in Dalì’s life. In 1929, he met
Gala (née Helena Deluvina Diakinoff), a Russian immigrant eleven years older
who was then married to the Surrealist poet Paul Eluard. During a summer
visit to Cadaques, Gala began a relationship with Dalì that would last over
fifty years. The two married in 1934, and Gala became Dalì’s only model
and managed all of the artist’s financial affairs, earning herself a reputation
as a harpy. At least initially, Gala deserved credit for maintaining order
in Dalì’s personal life so that he could concentrate on his art. In 1931,
Dalì painted his most famous painting, The Persistence of Memory, with its
melting clocks becoming a Surrealist icon. Throughout the 1930s, Dalì’s
paintings were including in Surrealist group shows in the U.S. and Europe.
These paintings featured wild juxtapositions of animals, objects and biomorphic
shapes, usually placed in the harshly lit landscapes of his native Catalan.
One buyer astutely commented that Dalì’s titles, like The Lugubrious Game
(1929) or Atmospheric Skull Sodomising a Grand Piano (1934), were worth
as much as the paintings. During World War II, Dalì and Gala took refuge in the U.S., returning to Spain only in 1955. As Dalì’s international fame continued to grow, the artist thirstily sought publicity, stating "My motto has always been, ‘Let them speak of Dalì, even if they speak well of him.’" Unfortunately, Gala’s constant demands for money caused Dalì to take on too many commissions, triggering deterioration in the quality and creativity of his work. During his return to Catholicism during the fifties and sixties, Dalì produced a series of large, classically influenced, religious and historical canvases. While these pieces sold well, art critics received the works less enthusiastically than Dalì’s surrealist works. In addition to painting, Dalì also began his kaleidoscopic output of drawings, poetry, a novel (Hidden Faces), an invention-filled autobiography (The Secret Life of Savador Dalì), book illustrations, and designs for jewelry, textiles, clothing, costumes, shop windows, and stage sets. Beyond artistic endeavors, Dalì and his wife captured the public imagination through their increasingly decadent (and well-publicized) social life in New York, Paris, and several Spanish cities. They hosted surrealist balls that resembled performance art happenings, with food served in shoes, live animals as decorations, and bartenders with ties made of hair. Surrounded by a collection of hippies and freaks called the "Court of Miracles," Dalì and Gala also hosted "sexual cabarets" in European castles, populated by transvestites, young girls, and dwarfs. Gala, pushing seventy, topped off this excess by having an extended affair with a man who played Jesus Christ Superstar off-Broadway. Ultimately, Dalì and Gala’s need for more and more money to support their outrageous lifestyle led to "The Dalì Scandal" of the 70s. During these years, Dalì signed several contracts for the reproduction of paintings created many years prior. In addition, he put his name on many other articles besides paintings and prints, the most extreme example being a set of Tarot cards for which he signed over 17'500 copies. These actions ultimately prompted a revaluation during the 1980s of the many Dalì prints on the market. In 1974, Dalì opened the Teatro Museo Dalì in Figueres. Retrospectives in Paris and London followed at the end of the seventies, paying tribute to Dalì’s life accomplishments as a painter. After Gala's death from heart failure in 1982, Dalì's slipped in and out of sanity and almost completely stopped eating. During the last years of his life, the artist lived in seclusion, receiving almost no visitors (exceptions were the King and Queen of Spain) and receiving medical help from private nurses. Salvador Dalì died in a hospital in Figueres from heart failure and respiratory complications. — LINKS — Autoportrait_au_Cou_de_Raphael — Autoportrait_Cubiste — Enid Haldorn (ZOOM) — Dorothy Spreckels Munn (ZOOM) — The Madonna of Port Lligat I (1949, 49x38cm; 840x640pix, 79kb) — The Madonna of Port Lligat II (1950, 368x246cm; 881x640pix, 143kb) _ detail, the Child, 1413x1107pix, 241kb) _ This immense canvas, one of Dali’s most famous, marks the beginning of a new period in his work. At the same time, i is his first picture this large, it is the first of his religious paintings, and it heralds his corpuscular epoch. The whole composition is arranged around the eucharistic bread visible thought a hole in the center of Jesus’ body, the point of intersection of the diagonal lines indicating the middle of the painting. Gala is depicted as the Virgin and also as the cuttlefish-angels on the right side of canvas. A little boy of Cadaqués called Juan Figueras was used as the model for the infant Jesus. "Gala Madonna embodies all the geological virtues of Port Lligat," the painter wrote in 1956; "for example, the nurse, from whose back the night stand was taken, has this time been sublimated into the tabernacle of living flesh through which the celestial sky may be seen, and in turn another tabernacle cut from the chest of the infant Jesus, containing eucharistic bread in suspension." There are two oils of the same subject; this is the second one. The first, which is smaller in size, was submitted by Dali to Pope Pius XII for approval and is now at Marquette University. About the larger canvas, Dali has commented: "This picture because of its size was destined to know many mishaps. In the midst of an awful storm we had to have a contractor come to Port Lligat to enlarge the window in the room. Then Gala had to hire a truck, because it was to big for the train , to ship first to Paris and then to Le Havre, in order to ship it by boat to America. In New York, it was too big for any elevator; they had to hoist it up with a rope to the windows of the floor on which the Carstairs Gallery was located and where it was to be shown. The dealer, George Keller, himself said at the time, ‘ This painting is magnificent, but I will never be able to sell it, because there is no house big enough for it, and it costs to much to ship it around.’ It is, however, the one which opened the doors to the sale of all my large pictures." Today The Madonna of Port Lligat is in the collection of Lady Beaverbrook in Canada. It is never shown in retrospective exhibitions because, in order to get it out, it would be necessary to knock down the door or take out one of the windows in the library where it hangs. (There is also a Madonna of Port Lligat II in Tokyo, apparently identical to this one, except that it is 144x96cm. It is not clear which of these two is shown in the reproductions.) — Juan de Pareja, the Assistant to Velázquez (1960, 74x88cm; 975x1158pix _ ZOOM to 1857x2205pix) _ Unlike many of his fellow Surrealists who rejected the influence of the past, Dali maintained a deep admiration for the art of the Old Masters. This work was conceived by Dali as an homage to Diego Velázquez [bap. 05 Jun 1599 – 06 Aug 1660], and it loosely quotes several elements from two of the great master's most famous works, Las Meninas (1657, 318x276cm; 1336x1136pix, 104kb — ZOOM to 2405x2045pix, 295kb) and the portrait of Juan de Pareja (1650, 81x70cm). Those elements most easily discerned are: the palace official from Las Meninas who stands in the doorway at left; and, Juan de Pareja's hand with extended thumb at bottom center. More elusive to the viewer, however, is the profile of Juan de Pareja, the outline of which is defined by a figural grouping from the Las Meninas . Velázquez's easel defines the bridge of Pareja's nose, while the Spanish princess and her attendants form his mustache and beard. — The Dream of Christopher Columbus aka The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1959; 1171x841pix, 292kb) _ Three major influences (other than Gala, who was ALWAYS Dali's chief muse) inspired Dali to create this Masterwork, which is more than 4 meters tall. The first of these was the appraching 300th anniversary of the death of Velázquez, who was very important to Dali. The second was that there was considerable academic debate at the time regarding the true nationality of Columbus. Some were asserting that Columbus had been Catalonian rather than Italian, and Dali seized upon this opportunity to further glorify his homeland. Finally, the gallery which commissioned Dali to paint this work, the Huntington Hartford Gallery, was situated on Columbus Circle in New York City. The appointment of Columbus to explore the New World by King Ferdinand, and Queen Isabella of Spain is depicted in the upper center of the painting. Just to the right of that, the flying crosses, and the lances, standards and polearms held aloft by the figures below are direct references to the Velázquez painting The Surrender at Breda (or The Lances). In this way, Dali is paying his direct respects to the 17th Century Spanish Master who has so influenced him. The center of the painting is dominated by a young Columbus who is leading one of his ships onto the shoreline of the New World. He holds in his right hand, a standard on which the visage of Gala is depicted in the pose of St. Helena, the mother of Constantine. Contantine was the founder of Constantinople and the Byzantium Empire, which so heavily influenced the development of Western Civilization. To the right of Columbus, is a kneeling figure of a monk, who is actually Dali, and in the lower right hand corner, the figure whose head is totally covered by the cloak is representative of the introspective and private side of his wife Gala. |
| In
the lower left hand corner, a transluscent bishop holds his staff aloft
amongst a series of crosses and other objects. This is Saint Narcisso, the
Bishop of Gerona, who had been murdered in his own abbey. There was a Spanish
legend that said whenever any foreign invaders would advance into the area
of St. Narcisso's tomb, that huge clouds of gadflies would pour forth in
order to drive the foreign invaders away. Behind the lances on the right there is a faint image resembling Dali's Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951; 1178x656pix, 121kb) This painting, above all, is a tribute to Dali's Spanish Catholic heritage. The pose of Gala on the banner held by Columbus symbolizes the way in which Gala helped Dali to discover America. She was very much responsible for many of the antics for which he became famous. _ The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1958-1959) This work exemplifies Dalì’s "classic" period, when he created large, epic canvases depicting religious or historical themes. These paintings sold very well to private collectors and exhibited a full development of technique, as Dalì created them over a much longer period of time than his earlier works. In abandoning his earlier system of symbols for universal and classic themes, however, Dalì was derided by critics. The major inspirations for this painting were the 300th anniversary of the death of Velasquez (a Spanish painter Dalì considered an important influence), historical rumors that Columbus was Catalonian rather than Italian, and the commissioning gallery’s address on Columbus Circle. The most Dalìesque features of the painting are the surprising, dynamic perspective and the dreamlike quality sparked by the lack of distinction between sea and sky. This work also reveals Dalì’s favorite habit of depicting his wife, Gala, as a religious figure. Here, he paints Gala as St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, founder of the Byzantium Empire. Dalì himself also appears in the painting, as a black-hooded monk kneeling next to the ship. The forest of crosses, lances, standards and pole arms serves as a direct reference to Velasquez’s painting The Surrender at Breda (or The Lances), and a transparent Christ on the cross is visible among these symbols. ^ — The Vision of Hell (1962) _ This is a highly sophisticated painting that juxtaposes Salvador Dali's earlier style, Surrealism, (for which he was most famous) with a more classical style of religious mysticism which he developed later in life. Most critics believe that Dali's greatest works were those done during his Surrealistic period, (before the 1940's). It was then that Dali, greatly influenced by The Interpretation of Dreams of Sigmund Freud, tried to enter the subconscious world while he was painting, in order to fathom subconscious imagery. To this end he tried various methods. For example, he attempted to simulate insanity while painting, and he tried setting up his canvas at the base of his bed to paint before sleeping and upon rising. During this period of his life certain images repeated themselves in his art: eyes, hands, noses, bones, crutches, clouds, mountains, blood, soft bodies and/or objects. In Vision of Hell we find all of these symbols, called cliches by some critics, but, here they seem to be much more than a trite convention. They are an expression of Dali himself. Too Dali uses the techniques of double images, hidden appearances, counter appearances. It is important to note that although in the early 1960's (the time when Vision of Hell was painted) Dali's art was pejoratively classified as "academic", "religious," and "mystic," and despite the fact that he was, at the time, often excluded from the company if Surrealists, Dali deliberately chose the lapse into his previous surrealist style to accomplish these portrayal of hell. Note, his old style, surrealism,dominates these portrayal of hell (the left side of the painting), while his newer style of "Religious Mysticism" is used on the right side of the painting in the portrayal of Our Lady of Fatima. A close look at Our Lady of Fatima shows that an experimental technique was used around her upper body. The paint has texture. It is interesting to note that Dali does not use his wife Gala as the subject for his portrayal of Mary, as he had in previous ones (The Madonna of Port Lligat (1950)); however, in Vision of Hell, Our Lady of Fatima does hold her hands open in a similar way as the Madonna of Port Lligat. The central image in the painting is that of eight carving forks, that, in the form of a circle are piercing a body that, typical of Dali's earlier period, is soft. The parts most visible in this human form are the left chest, the left arm and the head. Note, too, the blood. Vision of Hell is Dali's portrayal of death. Whenever an artist seriously approaches the subject of death, we can expect profundity. When this part of the painting is placed side by side with Dali's famous birth painting, Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943; 402x480pix, 79kb) the comparison is startling. Both bodies are curved in a type of fetal position; there are large drops of blood; the arm, the navel and the breast are the central focus of attention. Vision of Hell would be well shown beside ...Birth of a New Man. One painting shows life, the other death. Not to be dismissed is the elongated eye of the pierced victim. Eyes have always been a symbol for Dali, particularly in his own polymorphic self-portraits. His paintings The First Days of Spring, Illuminated Pleasure, The Enigma of Desire and The Persistence of Memory all show a head, a face and a prominent eye. Those eyes, however, are all closed. The long extended eye in Vision of Hell is open, as if to say, the victim's eyes have been opened at death. This eye is a double image, typical of Dali. From one side it seems to be a human eye, bent out of shape, from the other it is the eye of a strange creature (Bosch like) with its mouth wide open ready to take a bite. Hieronymus Bosch Influenced Dali's Vision of Hell Dali, as well as other surrealist painters, were greatly influenced by the Dutch painter, Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516). Vision of Hell actually copies a part of Hieronymus Bosch's Hell, portrayed in the right hand panel of the Garden of Earthly Delights (triptych). The burning buildings shown in the top left if Dali's painting closely resemble Bosch's burning building in hell, and, interestingly, Dali also picks up from Bosch's inferno the image of the tattered flag, as well as a rectangular structure from which emanate four rays of light. |
| Crutches In his earlier, much more famous works, Dali frequently employed crutches in his paintings. He, himself, says he finds the crutch to be "the significance of life and death...a support for inadequacy." It is well known that Dali, for a long time, had a fetish about crutches, which stemmed from his youthful desire to place a crutch under the breast of a woman whom he saw working in the fields. The orange/red spirit, shown escaping from the pierced body in Vision of Hell, has two crutches, one under or on each breast. They seem claw-like, clutching. These crutches are more easily seen when the painting is lighted by high intensity artificial light. (Recall that Dali sometimes painted with artificial light and a jewelers eye piece.) Hidden Self Portrait Salvador Dali often hides images and faces within his paintings, and many of his works are self-portraits. There are three places in this painting where it seems Dali is portraying himself. First, in the polymorphic body. Second, in a whimsical face which appears in a puff of smoke in the lower left center part of the painting. However, there is another face, hidden face, composed of an eye and a nose, that dominates the painting. Before studying this last hidden face in Vision of Hell, remember that eyes and noses are among the dominant symbols in Dali's art. (Refer to The Enigma of Desire, Illuminated Pleasures and The Persistence of Memory). One might do well to look at a photographic portrait of Dali which was done in 1955. In it Dali holds a magnifying glass over his eye and nose. The dominant face in Vision of Hell can be found by focusing on the black drops that appear in the middle left side of the painting. These black drops (which echo the red drops on the lighter side) if seen as tears falling from a closed eye, anchor us into position to see a bushy black eyebrow above the crying eye, the inside edge of which is being pierced by two carving forks. If one perceives the eye, then the large white nose, which too is being pierced by carving forks, appears. the hidden face is composed of an eye crying black tears, a bushy eyebrow and a large nose, all of which closely resemble Dali's own features. When viewed in this way, the hell of Hieronymus Bosch appears to be flushing from the mind, (to the left of the eye). This dominant and tormented face, floating in the air, recalls the lines which Dali used to inspire the painting, “plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form...raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves...” (from St. Lucia's Description of hell). The "flames that issued from within" could well be the Hieronymus Bosch flames that are issuing from the mind of this tormented face. Why did Dali choose to sign his name so prominently in the middle of the painting? Could it be that Vision of Hell is not only a portrayal of the vision of hell seen by the three shepherd children of Fatima (which he was commissioned for $15'000 to portray here) but also a portrayal of Dali himself, tormented and crying. Is a serious portrayal of death, such as this, a minor work? The Lower Half of the Painting The lower half of the painting has yet to be explored. But, one must note that a solitary female figure who stand on the cracked earth is holding a cross in her right hand, just as St. John of the Cross held a cross in Dali's painting The Temptation of St. Anthony (1946). She also had another form in her left hand which may be a shepherd staff. The painting must be examined with a magnifying glass in order to determine this. If it is a shepherd's crook, this figure could very well represent Lucia, the sole survivor and one of the three shepherd children who saw Our Lady of Fatima. and hell. It was Lucia's account of the vision of hell that Salvador Dali studied before he painted Vision of Hell. The White Circle The white circle on Our Lady's stomach could very well symbolize Jesus. An extremely thick glob of paint, this circle seems to be molded, like clay, into a shape that still needs to be explored with a magnifying glass. It does recall, in corporal placement, the square tabernacle forms found in Dali's representation of the Madonna of Port Lligat (1949, 632x496pix, 59kb)." — La Naissance des désirs liquides (1932, 96x112cm) _ By the time Salvador Dalí joined the Surrealist group in 1929, he had formulated his “paranoid-critical” approach to art, which consisted in conveying his deepest psychological conflicts to the viewer in the hopes of eliciting an empathetic response. He embodied this theoretical approach in a fastidiously detailed painting style. One of his hallucinatory obsessions was the legend of William Tell, which represented for him the archetypal theme of paternal assault. The subject occurs frequently in his paintings from 1929, when he entered into a liaison with Gala Eluard, his future wife, against his father’s wishes. Dalí felt an acute sense of rejection during the early 1930s because of his father’s attitude toward him. Here father, son, and perhaps mother seem to be fused in the grotesque dream-image of the hermaphroditic creature at center. William Tell’s apple is replaced by a loaf of bread, with attendant castration Symbolism [more]. (Elsewhere Dalí uses a lamb chop to suggest his father’s cannibalistic impulses.) Out of the bread arises a lugubrious cloud vision inspired by the imagery of Arnold Böcklin. In one of the recesses of this cloud is an enigmatic inscription in French: “Consigne: gâcher l’ardoise totale?” Reference to the remote past seems to be made in the two forlorn figures shown in the distant left background, which may convey Dalí’s memory of the fond communion of father and child. The infinite expanse of landscape recalls Yves Tanguy’s work of the 1920s. The biomorphic structure dominating the composition suggests at once a violin, the weathered rock formations of Port Lligat on the eastern coast of Spain, the architecture of the Catalan visionary Antoni Gaudí, the sculpture of Jean Arp, a prehistoric monster, and an artist’s palette. The form has an antecedent in Dalí’s own work in the gigantic vision of his mother in The Enigma of Desire of 1929 (Collection Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich). The repressed, guilty desire of the central figure is indicated by its attitude of both protestation and arousal toward the forbidden flower-headed woman (presumably Gala). The shadow darkening the scene is cast by an object outside the picture and may represent the father’s threatening presence, or a more general prescience of doom, the advance of age, or the extinction of life. — The Persistence of Memory, painted during the period when Dalì produced some of his best-known pieces, is not only the artist’s most famous work but also the world’s most famous Surrealist painting. Like his other Surrealist paintings, this work shows ordinary objects (most notably, watches) and multiple images altered in a startling way against the stark landscape of Cadaques and rendered with the eerie clarity of a dream. While several theories exist regarding the symbolic importance of this work’s "melting watches," Dalì attempted to offer insight into their meaning by stating: "You may be quite sure that the famous soft watches are nothing less than the tender, extravagant, solitary camembert of time and space." With a pronounced interested in scientific breakthroughs (he once dedicated a huge canvas to Watson and Crick), Dalì may have drawn his conception of time and space as soft cheese from Einstein’s theory of relativity. However, a naughtier, more Freudian interpretation also has been advanced. Many objects in Dalì’s canvases are soft when they should be hard, suggesting impotence. In the work, a Freudian might link the soft watch (in French, "les montres molles") to the idea of a sick child showing his soft tongue (in French, "montre sa langue"), and the tongue in turn to a soft penis. The inclusion of swarming ants in this work gives some credence to such an interpretation, as the ants — a favorite Dalì animal motif — are said to represent overwhelming sexual desire as well as death and decay. Whatever the ultimate significance of the melting watches, this painting still maintains a freshness and iconic power seventy years after its completion. — Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937-1938) This painting shows the full development of Dalì’s surrealist style, with rich color, detail, classical references, and a strong use of repeated images. The profusion of detail, from the dog in the corner to the naked dancers in the background, has invited comparisons to Hieronymous Bosch, a nothern European painter from the late Middle Ages. Like The Persistence of Memory, this work also includes references to death and decay, from the emaciated dog chewing on blood to the ants crawling over the petrified hand. — Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages) (1940) Here, Dalí used double images to create the allegorical faces of Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy. Glimpses of Port Lligat are seen through the apertures where illusions of faces also appear. These openings were suggested to Dalí by the worn arches of the ruins of Ampurias. On the left, the bowed head of the woman from Millet's Angelus makes up the eye of Old Age; the hole in the brick wall forms her head's outline, and the rest of the figure forms the nose and mouth. The nose and mouth of Adolescence, the figure in the center, is created from the head and scarf of Dalí's nurse sitting on the ground with her back to us. The eyes emerge from the isolated houses seen in the hills across the Bay of Cadaques. On the right, a fisherwoman repairing a net composes the barely-formed face of Infancy. — Endless Enigma — Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of a New Man (1943) — Dali at Age Six, When He Thought He Was a Girl, Lifting the Skin of the Water to See the Dog Sleeping in the Shade of the Sea — Dali from the Back Painting Gala from the Back Eternalized by Six Virtual Corneas Provisionally Reflected by Six Real Mirrors — Gala and the Angelus of Millet Preceding the Imminent Arrival of Conical Anamorphoses — Galacidalacidesoxiribunucleicacid {sic} (Homage to Crick and Watson) — L'Enfant Malade — The Enigma of Hitler — Partial Hallucination. Six Apparitions of Lenin on a Piano — Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire — Millet's Architectural Angelus — Portrait of Gala or Gala's Angelus — 1029 images at karelia.ru (slow loading if you are not in Russia, but worth it) — Prints La Divina Commedia _ 34 Inferno images _ 33 Purgatorio images _ 33 Paraiso images _ the 25x35cm colored wood engravings (shown about 310x220 pixels, i.e. 8x5.7cm on my screen) illustrations which Dali made for Dante's poem in three parts, each of 33 cantos, in which Dante imagines himself guided by Virgil through the nine circles of Inferno, then up the mountain of Purgatory, at the top of which he meets Beatrice who takes him to Paradise. — Biblia Sacra: page 1 (21 images) _ page 2 (21 images) _ page 3 (19 images) _ page 4 (19 images) _ page 5 (25 images) — Decameron (10 images... what did you expect? After all, it's not called Hectomeron) — Tristan and Iseult (22 images) — 14 Lithographs numbered plates measuring 21.25" x 30" Edition: Art Graphic International - Paris L'ART D'AIMER D'OVIDE (330X226 pixels) (Ars amatoria) : by Ovid (43 BC-17 AD). Written 2000 years ago, the Art of Love consists of three songs dedicated to seduction and intrigue, then to masculine conquest and finally to female seduction. This manual of the art of being attractive is also a picture of the morals of Roman times and a precious study of characters. 299x208 pixels 6.5x4.4cm — 20 prints at FAMSF |
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Born on 11 May 1823:
Alfred-Émile-Léopold Stevens,
Belgian painter who died on 24 August 1906. — Not to be confused with
English artist Alfred
George Stevens [31 Dec 1817 – 01 May 1875] — Alfred Stevens was one of the hundreds of traditional artists cast into shadow by the blinding light of the sunrise of Impressionism. In 1900, Stevens was accorded the unprecedented honor of a one man retrospective at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, during his lifetime. Within fifty years, the mention of his name in England simply led to confusion with his namesake and near contemporary, Alfred George Stevens, a sculptor from Dorset! The market, of course, follows in step. At an auction in 1902, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Numbering at Bethlehem sold for 9200 francs whereas Tous les Bonheurs by Alfred Stevens brought 25'000 francs. Up until 1967, no painting by Stevens had brought more than £4000 since the Second World War and most examples sold for a few hundred pounds, if that. Stevens, born at Brussels, underwent a traditional artist’s training in the late 1830’s and 1840’s. His close friend, Florent Willems, went to Paris and before long (1844) Stevens followed. He was not a prodigy and his early efforts are unrecognizable to us as the work of the artist who was to paint Tous les Bonheurs in 1861. By that date, Stevens, nearing forty, had found his niche as the painter of the contemporary Parisienne. The jury of the 1861 Salon where Tous les Bonheurs was exhibited told Stevens that whereas they admired his skills no medal could be awarded unless he changed his subject matter (genre) to something more conventional. His much quoted reply was ‘keep your medal and I’ll keep my genre.' Unlike some artists who feel the need to ‘evolve’, Stevens had the good sense to play to his strengths, perfect his speciality, be content with his role and his happy domestic and social life. He was not averse to the money that he started to make either. The Second Empire, under Napoleon III, was a time of dynamism and prosperity. The young Empress raised the profile of women, set fashions, and entertained Stevens to a ball at the Tuileries in 1867. Among his fellow guests was Bismarck, destined to return to Paris in a different guise three years later! 1867 saw Stevens triumph at the Paris Exposition Universelle with eighteen paintings on display and promotion in the Légion d’Honneur. The pattern was set for the successful career of Alfred Stevens. Together with Whistler, Stevens responded early on to the Japanese craze which opened new possibilities to an artist finely tuned to the subtleties of every fabric and the nuances of every color. The paravent japonais was successfully added to the studio props. Another seated model, Victorine Meurent, became Le sphinx parisien (42x32cm) painted during the siege of Paris in November, 1870, a tour de force display of the artist’s sureness of touch and unfailing eye for color. Although it is the large scale canvases that have caught the public’s attention by selling at auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent times, (none more eye catching than the famous Vanderbilt painting sold for $1.6 million in 1998), Stevens was equally at home on a small panel only 22 cm high. In 1880, Stevens's doctor advised him to get some sea air into his lungs, congested by long, turpentine-fumed hours in the studio. He went to the Channel coast and thus started a long romance with sea and shore. In winter, he went to the Riviera and painted surprisingly modern views of the Mediterranean as in the Cap Martin of 1894. Sometimes, he combined his two subjects in compositions like the Evening Rendez-vous Europeans tend to be unaware of the popularity of Alfred Stevens in the United States and how far back that goes. Several of the major examples today in museums in Baltimore, Boston and Philadelphia, entered the collections of their American future donors during the artist’s lifetime. Stevens enjoyed the friendship of Whistler and Sargent and influenced the Boston School, notably Paxton, Tarbell, De Camp and Philip Hale. The latter was the author of the first account of Stevens in English, published in 1910. However, there is no doubt that the keenest US fan of Stevens was William Merrit Chase. He met the artist on his visit to Paris in 1881 and eventually came to own a dozen of his paintings. Chase lent a number of his Stevens’ to the exhibition in New York in 1911 at the Berlin Photographic Company Galleries. Prints after the work of Stevens circulated in the United States and the list of museum acquisitions continued to grow. Today he is represented in over twenty public collections, including a magnificent recent acquisition by Dallas. In 1886, Stevens wrote a little book about painting called Impressions sur la peinture. It was so good that separate English and US editions followed, the latter in 1891. Stevens’ remarks are full of common sense and unpretentious insights into painting. He writes of his pleasure in the act of painting itself, the wielding of the brush and stresses the vital importance of technical mastery – not a popular theme today! ‘One cannot be a good painter without being a good craftsman’ were his words. — LINKS — Le Bain (1867) — Femme à la poupée japonaise (1894, 81x65cm _ ZOOM by clicking on “VIEW high-resolution image in browser) — La Fillette au Canard (1893, 100x75cm _ ZOOM as above) — A Woman Seated in Oriental Dress (35x26cm _ ZOOM as above) — La Femme à la Harpe (60x45cm _ ZOOM as above) — Idylle (1875; 600x927pix, 221kb _ ZOOM not recommended to blurry and patterned 1400x2163pix, 508kb) — The Desperate Woman — La Tricoteuse (52x40cm) — A Woman — A Woman in White (82x60cm) — A Woman in Blue (33x24cm) — The Farewell Note — La Douloureuse Certitude (80x60cm) — What is Called Vagrancy — La Tricoteuse (52x40cm) — Quai Aux Fleurs (61x50cm) — Afternoon in the Park (1885; 1128x780pix, 233kb) |
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