search 8000 artists, their works, museums, movements, countries, time periods, media, specializations
<<< ART 15 Apr
ANY DAY ...IN ART ...IN HISTORY ||| HISTORY “4” APR 16 ||| ALTERNATE SITES
ART 17 Apr >>>
ART “4” “2”-DAY  16 April
SO
abspic
4~2day
DEATHS: 1825 FÜSSLI — 1978 LINDNER — 1828 GOYA — 1932 PALMER — 1817 DRÖLLING — 1941 BERNARD
BIRTHS: 1635 VAN MIERIS — 1755 VIGÉE~LEBRUN — 1821 BROWN
^ Died on 16 April 1825: Johann Heinrich Füssli “Henry Fuseli”, Swiss British Romantic painter, draftsman, and writer, active in England born on 06 February 1741. — His students included George Richmond.
— The Füssli were a Swiss family of artists and writers. Johann Caspar Füssli [1707-1782], descended from a long-established Zurich family of metalworkers, combined the practice of art with art-historical work in the mid-18th century, being followed in both by his eldest son, Johann Rudolf Füssli, who worked mainly in Austria and Hungary. Johann Caspar’s younger son Johann Heinrich Füssli left Zurich to travel in Germany, England and Italy, calling himself Henry Fuseli after he settled in London in 1779. There, through his strikingly original paintings and drawings and the influence of his teaching and writing, he remained a prominent figure in English art circles until his death in 1825. Johann Caspar’s other children, Hans Caspar Füssli [1743–1786], Elisabeth Füssli [1744–1780] and Anna Füssli [1749–1772], were botanical and entomological illustrators. A later Füssli of Zurich, Wilhelm Heinrich Füssli [1830–1916], also was a painter.
— Johann Heinrich Füssli spent most of his working life in England, where he established himself as the most original history painter and draughtsman of his generation. Renowned for his treatment of bizarre and psychologically penetrating subjects, he was also a prolific writer and, from 1779, Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy.
— Born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zurich, “Henry Fuseli” spent most of his life in England. He studied theology intending to become a priest, but the discovery of Italy, where he spent eight years absorbing the atmosphere of the recently uncovered ruins and the works of Michelangelo, drove him to paint themes which can be described as Romantic, centred around the imaginary, the Gothic and the horrible. He found in the works of Shakespeare, Milton and Wieland a dream-like universe which suited him. The cold, neo-classical purity to which he aspired does not mask the presence of the uneasy sexuality of the 1800s. He is most at home with the macabre, the realms of the unconscious and Romantic eccentricity, making him one of the great precursors of Symbolism and even of Surrealism.
— Johann Heinrich Füssli was born in Zürich; he moved to England in 1764 and later changed his name to Henry Fuseli. The London theater, and in particular the productions of Shakespeare, charged his imagination and over the years he painted, etched and drew numerous scenes from the plays. He contributed nine paintings in the 1780s to Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery (scenes from Hamlet, Henry IV, Henry V, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest and three scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream). He later painted five pictures for Woodmason's Irish Gallery (1793), an enterprise designed to emulate in Dublin the success of Boydell's exhibition in London. Fuseli turned often to Shakespeare for his inspiration; Füssli pittore di Shakespeare: Pittura e teatro 1775-1825, the catalogue of the 1997 exhibition of Fuseli's Shakespeare paintings in Parma, Italy, lists 85 paintings, drawings, sketches and engravings drawn from the plays. After a prolific and successful career as an artist in England, he died in 1825. Fuseli admired the Romantic poets, and many of his illustrations for Shakespeare and Milton -- as well as a number of other poets and writers -- reveal his love for the grotesque, the sublime, and the fantastic. He is best remembered for his influential painting The Nightmare and his fascination with the realm of the dream-world in his works.
— Füssli's works are among the most exotic, original, and sensual pieces of his time. Was raised in an intellectual and artistic environment and initially studied theology. Forced to leave Zürich due to political entanglements, he went first to Berlin, settling in London in 1764. Encouraged to become a painter by Joshua Reynolds, he left England in 1768 to study in Italy until 1778. In Rome he studied the works of Michelangelo and classical art, his major stylistic influences. Subject matter was mostly literary. Famous for his paintings and drawings of nude figures caught in strained and violent poses suggestive of intense emotion. Had a gift for inventing macabre fantasies, such as that in The Nightmare (1781, 127x102cm). Had a noticeable influence on the style of his younger contemporary, William Blake.

LINKS
Man Attacked by a Lyon (600x472pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1101pix)
Loneliness in Morning Twilight (600x636pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1484pix)
A Lawyer (600x464pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1083pix)
The Dressing Room (32x43cm) _ Fuseli made this portrait of himself as a sculpted faun when he was in Italy during the 1770s. By this time Fuseli already had a reputation for studied eccentricity. As a friend in Rome noted: He is everything in extremes – always an original; His look is lightning, his word a thunderstorm; his jest is death, his revenge, hell. He cannot draw a single mean breath. He never draws portraits, his features are all true, yet at the same time caricature...
Titania's Awakening (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act IV, scene i) (1789) _ Titania awakes and says, “My Oberon, what visions I have seen! / Methough I was enamored of an ass.” Oberon points to Bottom, sleeping beside her. Like its companion, Titania and Bottom, this painting is busy with detail and invites the viewer to interpret the various figures.
      Titania Awakening divides into two contrasting parts. On the right are Oberon and Titania, bathed in light; standing between them is a fairy with the herb, "love-in-idleness," that breaks the spell cast by Puck. Surrounding the two are a group of laughing and dancing fairies, accompanied by an elf playing the bagpipe.
      On the left, however, we find the shadowed figure of Bottom, with some kind of cloaked and hooded creature crawling from between his legs. The ass's head is held above him by a fairy, and just above his head in Queen Mab and her steed. The allusion is to Romeo and Juliet (I, iv) when Mercutio describes Queen Mab as "the fairies' midwife" who is drawn "Over men's noses as they lie asleep." She gallops by night "Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love." At Bottom's left arm, to complete the sinister aspects of this half of the painting, are a group of witches, one of them clutching to her breast a baby demon. Here Fuseli depicts, as he did in Titania and Bottom, the two aspects of life and love: one light and carefree, the other dark and erotic.
Titania and Bottom — Midsummer Night's Dream IV.1 (1789, 49x63cm; 3/5 size _ ZOOM to 6/5 size) _ Shakespeare's text _ Bottom now wears the ass's head, and Titania says to him: Come, sit thee down upon this flow'ry bed, / While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, / And stick musk-roses in they sleek smooth head, / And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.
      This is one of several illustrations by Fuseli on scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream, a natural source for an artist so often drawn to the subject of dreams and nightmares. The central figure Titania calls on her fairies to wait on the seated Bottom. In Bottom's hand stands Mustardseed, ready to help Peaseblossom, who scratches Bottom's right ear. Cobweb is at the left of the painting, spear poised to kill a bee and to bring the honey-bag to Bottom. At the right is a girl holding the bowl of "dried pease" Bottom has requested. The woman standing behind the girl, looking wantonly from the picture at the viewer, leads a dwarfish old man on a leash. She represents the triumph of youth over age, of the senses over reason--and, in terms of the imagery established by the play itself, the victory of night over day, the forest of Oberon over the court of Theseus, the world of love and dreams over the rational, workaday world of Athens. In this one allegorical image Fuseli captures the polarity of much of the imagery of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
      The two halves of the painting in fact contrast interestingly with one another. On Titania's right hand (our left side of the painting) is a well-lit scene with an attractive grouping of young women and a young girl in the lower-right hand corner. Contrasted to her is the waxen, gnomish little figure sitting in the lap of a hooded figure in the opposite corner. In opposition to the two figures smiling suggestively out at us on the right are the two women with hands outstretched on the left. Immediately to the left and behind Titania is another woman with arms folded, and she is duplicated on the right; the right-hand figure, however, is cast in shadows and her features are partially obscured. Is Fuseli suggesting to us something of the nature of the fairy world, with a lighter and untroubled scene on Titania's right hand and a darker, shadowy scene on her left hand, an iconographical presentation of the two sides of human nature? Again, this symbolic interpretation of the painting reflects some of the themes in Shakespeare's play.
— Fuseli was introduced to Shakespeare's plays during his student days in Zürich with the Swiss scholar Jacob Bodmer. A Midsummer Night's Dream held a special appeal for him, in that it explores the realms of the supernatural.
     In the picture Fuseli illustrates a moment from Act IV scene 1, in which Oberon, in order to punish her for her pride, casts a spell on Queen Titania, as a result of which she falls in love with Bottom, whose head has been transformed into that of an ass. In the play she murmurs lovingly to the object of her affections,
Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
And stick musk roses in thy sleek smooth head,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.

      Fuseli's imagination is given free reign in this fantastical scene. Titania calls on her fairies, who are wearing contemporary dress, to attend to Bottom: Pease-blossom scratches his ass's head; Mustard-seed perches on his hand in order to assist; and Cobweb kills a bee and brings him the honey-bag. A leering young woman offers him a basket of dried peas. The young woman leading a dwarf-like creature by a string symbolises the triumph of youth over old age, of the senses over the mind and of woman over man. The hooded old woman on the right is holding a changeling newly formed out of wax. Similarly, on the left of the picture, the group of children are artificial beings created by witches.
      The picture draws on several artistic sources. Fuseli has adapted Titania's seductive pose from Leonardo da Vinci's Leda (1506). The elves plunging into the calyx on the right are inspired by Botticelli's illustration of Canto XXX of Dante's Paradiso (1469). And the small girl with a butterfly head on the left derives from a type of child portrait developed by Reynolds, whereby the child's features closely resemble a cat, mouse or other small creature posed with her.
      Fuseli painted several other scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream, including Titania's Awakening (1790), where the Queen awakes and recounts her 'dream' to Oberon. He was also inspired by other Shakespearean texts and was particularly drawn to the supernatural and irrational elements in such plays as The Tempest, Hamlet and King Lear.

Titania, Bottom and the Fairies (1794) (67x53inches) aka Titania Awakes, Surrounded by Attendant Fairies, Clinging Rapturously to Bottom, Still Wearing the Ass's Head; probably erroneously. In the play when Titania awakes, both Oberon and Puck are present, and almost immediately Oberon commands Puck to remove the spell and the ass's head from Bottom. Although Puck appears in the upper right-hand corner, Oberon is absent and Bottom should still be sleeping. The painting is, therefore, probably another version of Titania and Bottom, executed a few years later than the original.
      In this later version the fairies wear contemporary dresses, and, besides Peaseblossom scratching Bottom's ears and Cobweb, in armor, killing the bee, we find various fairies making music, in accord with Titania's question in Act IV, scene i, "Wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?" This version is more sensuous than the earlier one, with a clearly enamoured, even "rapturous," Titania stroking an almost naked and decidedly virile lover. 
Titania and Oberon
Shakespeare - Second Part of Henry IV - Act II, Scene IV (56x41cm) _ Shakespeare's text
Thor in the Boat of Hymir (1790)
The Three Witches (1783, 65x92cm)
The Death of Cardinal Beaufort (Henry VI, Part II.3.iii) (1772)
Lady Constance, Arthur and Salisbury (1783)
The Three Witches (after 1783)
Lady Macbeth (1784)
Hamlet and the Ghost (1789)
Macbeth, Banquo and the Witches on the Heath (1794)
Ariel (1810)
Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard in Macbeth (1812, 102x127cm) _ aka Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers. The source is Act II, scene ii of Macbeth:
Lady Macbeth:
Go get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there: go carry them, and smear
The sleepy grooms with blood.

Macbeth: I'll go no more:
I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on't again I dare not.
Lady Macbeth: Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers.

      Fuseli saw the play on stage in 1760 with David Garrick playing Macbeth, and he made a watercolor of this scene; the production must have impressed him, for more than 50 years later he executed the painting. The two almost translucent figures vividly capture this particular moment of horror. Macbeth's hair stands on end and, with an expression of terror, he holds the daggers at arm's length as if attempting to distance himself from the assassination. The scene is set against a background of deep, regal purple, reminding us that this is no ordinary murder and that Macbeth has spilled the royal blood of a king:
Confusion now hath made his masterpiece:
Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
The Lord's anointed temple and stole thence
The life o' th' building!

      The source of lighting in this painting is difficult to determine, and Peter Tomory suggests that there may be an obscure force at work in the painting's starkly translucent figures: electricity. Artists and writers were drawn to the idea of electricity as soon as Joseph Priestley's The History of the Idea of Positive and Negative Electricity (1775) was published, and they soon began to experiment with his concepts in their works. The moment of terror, now becomes a violent electrical discharge, with its accompanying light and smell. This observation about artistic experiments with "electricity" and light helps explain the stark, glowing quality of the two figures, especially when the painting is compared with the earlier watercolor, which is much more conventional in the posing of the figures and the prosaic setting.
      In the first years when Shakespeare subjects began to be painted in some quantity (the 1780's), a distinction was made between paintings derived from the literary text and those that originated in the theatre. The former bore the more honored credentials. The distinction can be applied to Fuseli's works; the 1812 painting is so much more powerful and suggestive of the moment of horror than the earlier watercolor. Although they are superficially similar, the painting finally has much more to do with a particularly frightening moment in Macbeth that with either David Garrick or Mrs. Pritchard.

The Shepherd's Dream, from Paradise Lost (1793) _ Fuseli was introduced to the poetry of John Milton [1608-1674] during his student days in Zürich with the Swiss scholar Jacob Bodmer. Paradise Lost held a special appeal for him, and other Romantic artists, in that it explores the realms of the imagination, dreams and the supernatural.
      The picture illustrates a moment in Milton's poem where he compares the fallen angels in the Hall of Pandemonium in Hell to the fairies who bewitch a passing peasant with the sound of their music and dancing:
Fairy Elves,
Whose midnight revels by a forest side
Or fountain some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while over head the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course, they on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear;
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.

      Instead of depicting the fairies as they appear in traditional woodcuts, dancing in a magic circle on the ground, Fuseli shows them linking arms and swirling, as in a dream or vision, above the sleeping shepherd. Emerging from the darkness they form a vortex of light above his head, which one fairy touches with a dream-inducing wand. Fuseli draws on his imagination for the supernatural creatures that populate the picture. In the bottom left-hand corner a crouching witch has just pulled a flower-headed mandrake out of the ground. In the opposite corner, seated on large stone steps, is Queen Mabs, the bringer of nightmares. Attached to her by a chain is a monster child, the demonic incubus, who points at the sleeping man. Farther up the steps behind them, a naked fairy combing her hair derives from Shropshire folklore. According to legend, these naked creatures entice unsuspecting travellers, overpower them and steal all their clothes. The building on the right possibly represents the Temple of Diana, since according to Medieval folklore Diana was transformed into a demon and led an army of witches through the sky by night. Alternatively, Fuseli may have intended it to represent the ivory portal, described by Homer and Virgil, through which delusive dreams emerge. The picture is based on a more detailed drawing in pencil, red chalk and wash.
^ Born on 16 April 1635: Frans van Mieris the Elder, Baroque Dutch painter who died on 12 March 1681.
— Father of Jan van Mieris and Willem van Mieris. Studied under Gerrit Dou.
— Dutch painter, the most distinguished member of a family of artists who worked in Leiden. He was one of the best students of Gerrit Dou and followed his master in choice of subjects (mainly domestic genre scenes) and in his highly polished technique. The tradition was continued by his sons Jan and Willem, and by Willem's son Frans II.
— Frans van Mieris the Elder was after Dou the principal representative of the Leiden school of 'fijnschilders'. Apparently by the time he was born his parents stopped keeping track of the number of children they produced; he is vaguely mentioned as one of the last of twenty-three. Mieris studied with Dou, and the latter acknowledged him as the 'crown prince of his students'. The characterization is still valid. Mieris fell heir to Dou's technique and compositions.
      Like his teacher, he was extremely popular with the wealthy collectors of his time. He received important commissions from Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici and Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. The latter invited him to work at his court in Vienna. He turned down the offer and, as far as we know, spent his life in his native town. A review of his oeuvre brings to mind the work of many of his contemporaries, although he always manages to keep his own personality, particularly his impeccable, highly polished finish which had a lasting effect on later painters with a passion for 'fine painting'.
— Gerrit Dou called Frans van Mieris 'the Prince of my students'. Van Mieris was the son of a Leiden goldsmith and, like Dou himself, had been trained in the studio of a glass-painter before entering that of a painter. Van Mieris mastered Dou's highly finished technique and after his master's death was the leading exponent of the fijnschilder (fine painter) style. He spent his entire working life in Leiden, although (once again like Dou) he enjoyed a considerable international reputation: he received commissions from, among others, Duke Cosimo III de'Medici and Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, who unsuccessfully offered van Mieris the position of court painter in Vienna. This painting shows the traditional subject of a woman admiring herself in a mirror: in the work of Hieronymous Bosch, for example, it was a symbol of the sin of superbia (pride) but by the time it was painted by Gerard ter Borch and van Mieris it simply provided an opportunity for the painter to display his skill in rendering reflections and rich materials. Van Mieris highlights the shimmering satin dress and brightly colored feather within the dark interior, encouraging the viewer to admire his craftsmanship and virtuosity.
      Despite his success van Mieris was constantly in debt and contemporary documents appear to support the accounts of an early biographer, Arnold Houbraken, who described him as a habitual drunkard. He was, however, well respected in Leiden and established a dynasty of painters: his sons, Willem and Jan, and his grandson, Frans van Mieris the Younger, imitated his meticulous style and continued to work in his manner until the 1760s.

LINKS
The Love Declaration (600x672pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1101pix)
Young Lady Before a Mirror (600x460pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1073pix)
— different Woman before the mirror (1670, 43x32cm) _ detail _ This painting shows the traditional subject of a woman admiring herself in a mirror: in the work of Hieronymous Bosch, for example, it was a symbol of the sin of superbia (pride) but by the time it was painted by Gerard ter Borch and van Mieris it simply provided an opportunity for the painter to display his skill in rendering reflections and rich materials. Van Mieris highlights the shimmering satin dress and brightly colored feather within the dark interior, encouraging the viewer to admire his craftsmanship and virtuosity.
Brothel Scene (1658, 43x33cm) _ Unlike a history painting, a genre picture does not generally refer to a written text. Its relation is to the popular, often crude and simplistic, metaphorical interpretation of the world. Genre picture, therefore, have a different structure from history painting, and that structure is one of their major characteristics. A history painting usually illustrates the decisive moment of the historical narrative to which it refers. For a genre painting, however, there never could be such a crucial moment: there was no story. A genre painting always presents a situation, which, through the introduction of key symbols, is reversed into a moral example. This is examplified by the Brothel Scene, which shows an interior with a rather coy lady pouring a smartly dressed young man a glass of wine. An elegant scene — until one perceives, farther back in the room, two dogs copulating. This crude and explicit detail associates the picture with a popular expression of Italian origin: “As is the lady, so is her dog.” And another proverb, saying that beautiful woman and sweet wine are full of dangers, may also apply here. So what at first seems a harmless, attractive scene, is suddenly reversed when the viewer encounters an explicit symbol, often hidden in the background.
Duet (1658, 32x25cm) _ The curtain drawn aside lets the viewer spy on the elegant, mildly titillating musical partnership.
The Lacemaker (1680, 78v42cm) _ Frans van Mieris the Elder painted allegories, biblical, historical, literary subjects, and portraits. His principal contribution, however, is found in his genres scenes.
Duet (1658, 32x25cm) — Carousing CoupleInterior with figures playing Tric Trac (1680, 78x42cm)
A meal of Oysters (1661, 27x20cm) _ Oysters in the late 17th-century Dutch paintings were generally interpreted as erotic - vaginal - symbols. Here, however, they still had the religious symbolism of shell, with the meaning that had been given to it in a 3rd-century Christian book on animals called 'Physiologus.' Describing the behaviour of animals in 55 chapters, it then relates them to Christian doctrine. The shell is symbolically likened to Mary who gave birth to the 'pearl of great price,' Jesus.
Young woman in the morning (52x40cm) _ The same woman appears in the Brothel Scene
Pictura (an allegory of painting) (1661) _ This is a good exemple of the refined technique of van Mieris. Done on copper, the tiny picture follows more or less the formula Cesare Ripa gives in his Iconologia for representing the art of painting: 'A beautiful woman ... with a golden chain around her neck, on which hangs a face mask ... [with] brushes in one hand, and in the other a palette, dressed in a lustrous garment ...' Among the attributes Ripa prescribes for the allegorical representation of Pictura that Mieris thankfully omits are the inscription 'Imitatio' written on the woman's forehead and a bound cloth over her mouth. We have seen that a few years later Vermeer also turned to Ripa's Iconologia for his Art of Painting and Allegory of Faith and that he did not follow the iconographer's instructions to the letter either.
The Doctors' visit (1667, 44x31cm) — The Death of Lucretia (1679, 38x17cm)
^ Died on 16 April 1978: Richard Lindner, US Pop painter born on 11 November 1901.
— Lindner was born in Hamburg. His mother was from the US. He grew up in Nuremberg and studied there at the Kunstgewerbeschule. From 1924 to 1927 he lived in Munich and studied there from 1925 at the Kunstakademie. He moved to Berlin and stayed there until 1928 when he returned to Munich to become art director of a publishing firm. He remained there until 1933 when he was forced to flee to Paris, where he became politicaly engaged, sought contact with French artists and earned his living as a commercial artist. He was interned when the war broke out in 1939 and later served in the French army. In 1941 he went to the USA, worked in New York as an illustrator of books and magazines and made contact with New York artists and German emigrants. In 1948 he became a US citizen. From 1952 he taught at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, from 1967 at Yale University School of Art and Architecture, New Haven. In 1965 he became Guest Professor at the Akademie für Bildende Künste, Hamburg. His paintings at this time used the sexual symbolism of advertising and investigated definitions of gender roles in the media.
— A concert pianist from the age of eighteen to twenty-two, Lindner left Nazi Germany in 1933 for the Paris of Picasso and Gertrude Stein. In the 1941 he came to the United States, where he worked as a magazine illustrator; feeling that this hampered his painting, he abandoned illustration entirely in a few years for painting alone. Oxymorons describe his paintings-decadent vitality, icy voluptuousness, impersonal titillation, invulnerable victims. His technique is as impersonal as the modern world, yet "in a cool climate" he shows "the brilliant display of a heated imagination," in the words of Hilton Kramer.
— Lindner grew up in a bourgeois Jewish household in Nuremberg; the city’s fairy-tale appearance and atmosphere, its reputation as the toy capital of Europe and as the home of the Iron Maiden and its suffocating smugness were all later cited by him as influences on his work. Lindner’s early studies were in music and he seemed destined for a career as a concert pianist, but his growing interest in art led him to study at the Kunstakademie in Munich from 1925 to 1927. He lived in Berlin from 1927 to 1928 and returned to Munich in 1929 as art director at the large publishing house of Knorr & Hirth. Lindner’s politics were Social Democratic and on Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933 Lindner hurriedly left Germany just as he was about to be arrested by the Nazis. He went to Paris, where he continued to work in graphic design until 1939, when he was interned as an alien; shortly thereafter he joined the French army. In March 1941 he arrived in New York, where he quickly became a highly successful illustrator for such magazines as Fortune, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue.
— Painter Richard Lindner's highly idiosyncratic work incorporates elements of his personal history, as well as literary associations. The element of introspection separates his work from pop art. He was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1901 to an American mother and a German father. After a brief career as a concert pianist, in 1925 Lindner entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Eventually, he became an art director for Knorr & Hirth, a publisher closely associated with the Nazis. There, Lindner met high-ranking Nazis, including Hitler.
      The day after the Nazis came to power in 1933, he fled to Paris, where he was interned as an enemy alien when WW II started in 1939. To prove his loyalty, he served in the French and British armies. Finally, in 1941, he arrived in New York City. Lindner worked as an illustrator for Vogue, Fortune and Harper's Bazaar. He began painting seriously in 1952, holding his first one-man exhibit in 1954.
      His style blends a mechanistic cubism with personal images and haunting symbolism. He used flat areas of rich, sometimes garish, colors separated by hard edges, to present ambiguous perspective. He modeled clothing, faces and body parts. His favorite subject was bizarre women. Corsets and straps emphasize their sexual qualities. Lindner professed no hatred of women; instead, he said, "I feel sorry for women. When I dress women in these corsets and contraptions in my painting, it's kind of the way I see them wrapping themselves up." His Ice (1966) established a connection between the metaphysical tradition and pop art. The painting shows harsh, flat geometric shapes framing an erotic but mechanical robot-woman. Lindner's characters-the women, precocious children and men who could be strangers or voyeurs--often are posed in slice-of-life scenes. But these scenes are obsessive, rather than normal visions. Though he became a United States citizen in 1948, Lindner considered himself a New Yorker, but not a true American. However, over the course of time, his continental circus women became New York City streetwalkers. New York police uniforms replaced European military uniforms as symbols of authority. Lindner taught at the Pratt Institute from 1952 to 1965.

Homage to a Cat (1952, 92x60cm) — Stranger No. 2 (1958, 152x101cm)
Man & Tiger Woman (41x48cm) — Watching (76x56cm) — Woman & Bird (24x31cm)
Der Rosenkavalier (1975, 91x61cm) — Untitled (Sketch No. 15) (1959, 12x9cm)
^ Born on 16 April 1755: Marie-Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, French Neoclassical painter specialized in portraits, who died on 30 March 1842. Starting in 1835, she wrote Souvenirs, her autobiography [English translation]
— Her students included Marie-Guillemine Benoist [1768-1826]
— She was one of the most successful of all women artists, particularly noted for her portraits of women. Her father was Louis Vigée, a pastel portraitist and her first teacher. She studied later with a number of well-known painters, among them Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Joseph Vernet. In 1776 she married a picture dealer, J.-B.-P. Lebrun. Her great opportunity came in 1779 when she was summoned to Versailles to paint a portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette. The two women became friends, and in subsequent years Vigée-Lebrun painted at least 25 portraits of Marie-Antoinette in a great variety of poses and costumes; a number of these may be seen in the museum at Versailles. Vigée-Lebrun became a member of the Royal Academy in 1783. On the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, she left France and for 12 years traveled abroad, to Rome, Naples, Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Moscow, painting portraits and playing a leading role in society. In 1801 she returned to Paris but, disliking Parisian social life under Napoleon, soon left for London, where she painted portraits of the court and of Lord Byron. Later she went to Switzerland (and painted a portrait of Mme de Staël) and then again (1810) to Paris, where she ceased painting. Vigée-Lebrun was a woman of much wit and charm, and her memoirs, Souvenirs de ma vie (1837), provide a lively account of her times as well as of her own work. She was one of the most technically fluent portraitists of her era, and her pictures are notable for the freshness, charm, and sensitivity of their presentation. During her career, according to her own account, she painted 877 pictures, including 622 portraits and about 200 landscapes.

LINKS
Self-Portrait (1781, 64x53cm; 600x500pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1167pix) wearing a black hat.
Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat (after 1782, 98x70cm) _ The daughter and student of a minor Parisian painter, Louis Vigée, Madame Vigée-Lebrun was an attractive and charming woman, who specialised in the attractive and charming portrayal of women and children while remaining a competent portraitist of men. Eighteenth-century notions of graceful spontaneity may strike twentieth-century viewers as arch or sentimental; nevertheless, she pioneered a new style. Her fashionable portraits in the simplified dress called à la grecque dispense with Baroque props of columns or curtains to demonstrate 'natural' manners and feelings, anticipating the Neo-classical portraits of David.
      Madame Vigée-Lebrun fled the French Revolution in 1789, avoiding the fate of her most illustrious patron, Queen Marie-Antoinette, to become an international success in the capitals of Europe. She returned to her native city after the Restoration in 1814 and gave an account of her early life and later tribulations and triumphs in the highly readable, if unreliable, Memoirs published in 1835.
      The painter Claude Joseph Vernet, she recalls, advised her to study the Italian and Flemish masters but above all to follow nature. This picture is an autograph replica of a self portrait painted in Brussels in 1782 which wittily records her admiration of a famous Flemish masterpiece, Rubens's Portrait of Susanna Lunden, known as the 'Chapeau de Paille'. '[Its] great effect', she wrote, 'resides in the two different kinds of illumination which simple daylight and the light of the sun create...This painting...has inspired me to the point that I made my own portrait...in search of the same effect.'
      The bright gleam and the general radiance of direct and reflected outdoor light as represented in Rubens's picture are indeed carefully noted, but Madame Vigée-Lebrun takes care also to record her debt to nature. She shows herself in the open against a cloud-flecked sky, and - not surprisingly since she is both sitter and painter - as almost a personification of the art of painting. For this fictitious excursion into the fields, but also to demonstrate her powers of observation, she wears a genuine chapeau de paille, unlike Rubens's sitter whose hat is actually made of beaver felt. To the dashing ostrich feather she has added a wreath of freshly picked rustic flowers. Her hair is her own, not a wig, and is left unpowdered. Where Susanna Lunden modestly crosses her arms above her waist and peers out from below her hat, Madame Vigée-Lebrun extends her unaffected friendship to the viewer. Most natural of all, however, is her charming bosom. For unlike Rubens's beauty, whose breasts are moulded by her tight corset, Madame Vigée-Lebrun lets it plainly be seen in her low décolletage that she has no need of such artifice. — another Self-Portrait (1800)
Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland, later Marchioness Wellesley (1791, 99x75cm; 1/3 size _ ZOOM to 2/3 size)
Bacchante (1785, 112x85cm; 1/6 size _ ZOOM to 1/3 size _ ZOOM++ to 2/3 size)
Flora or Hebe (600x484pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1129pix)
Étienne Vigée the artist's brother (1773; 600x440pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1027pix)
Charles-Alexandre de Calonne (1784; 600x528pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1232pix)
Bacchante (1785; oval 600x460pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1073pix)
Marie-Antoinette et ses Enfants (1787; 600x448pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1045pix)
La Marquise de Pezay et la Marquise de Rougé avec ses Fils (1787; 600x748pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1745pix)
Hubert Robert (1788; 600x448pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1045pix)
La Duchesse d'Orléans (1789; 600x444pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1036pix)
La Comtesse Bucquoi (1793; 600x428pix _ ZOOM to 1400x999pix)
Stanislas Auguste II, roi de Pologne (1797; oval 600x464pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1083pix)
La Comtesse Galovine (1798; 600x456pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1064pix)
Louise, reine de Prusse (1801; 600x448pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1045pix)
Giuseppina Grassini dans le rôle de Zaïre (1804; 600x432pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1008pix)
Mme de Staël en Corinne (1808; 600x524pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1223pix)
Prince Henry Lubomirski, amour de la gloire (1789, 105x83cm _ ZOOM to 1400x1083pix) [as “Genius of Fame”: a long-haired boy, with wings, down on one knee, holding a crown of laurel] _ Henry Lubomirski [1777-1850]
Prince Henry Lubomirski, Allegory of the Genius of Alexander I (1814, 110x85cm) [same winged long-haired boy, facing the other way, holding a shield]
Prince Henry Lubomirski as Amphion playing the Lyre, admired by three Naiads (Mlles Guichet, Polignac, and Julie Le Brun) (1795) _ The sitter is Heinrich Fürst Lubomirski [15 Sep 1777 – 20 Oct 1850]. Julie Le Brun [1780 – 1819], daughter of the artist, was the subject of 13 of her portraits, from Self portrait with daughter Julie (1786, 105x84cm) to Julie LeBrun as Flora (1799, the goddess of flowers, beloved of Zephyrus, the wind) and Sainte Geneviève (1821, Julie at age 12); one of the best being Julie Lebrun (1791).
La Reine Marie-Antoinette
Madame Perregaux (1789, 100x79cm) _ Madame Perregaux was the wife of a Parisian banker whose clients included the artist. Vigée-Lebrun, ravished by the charm of her own appearance, and hardly able to paint a male sitter, continued the 18th century's cult of women. In Vigée-Lebrun we have the last view of eighteen-century woman - who had begun as a goddess, became a courtesan, and now ended all heart - before Napoleon and War banished her from the centre of events.
Woman's Head (1780, 48x41cm) _ This picture, showing the head of an attractive woman, recalls the Rococo. In pastel - a popular medium in the 18th century - the artist modeled the laurel-wreath head of an allegorical figure of peace over a preparatory drawing in black chalk. The work was intended as a study for a painting (La paix ramenant l'Abondance). While the theme and technique are conventional, the flattened composition and the idealized beauty of the head with its cool lustrous and porcelain-like skin tones correspond to Classicist ideas.
The Vigée-Lebrun supersite.
^ Died on 16 April 1828: Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Spanish painter born on 30 March 1746.
BIOGRAFÍA EN CASTELLANO (distinta de las que se dan aquí en Inglés)
— Francisco de Goya is one of the great Spanish masters, known for such works as Nude Maja, Clothed Maja and Third of May, 1808. The student, and later brother-in-law, of Francisco Bayeu, Goya was initially trained in the then-current Rococo style. He gradually developed his own distinctive style of painting, showing the influence of Velázquez and Rembrandt. Goya's late works became quite dark in mood, from his satirical caricatures to the so-called Black Paintings such as Saturn Devouring One of his Sons.
— Goya was a consummately Spanish artist whose multifarious paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters. The series of etchings Los desastres de la guerra (1810-1814) records the horrors of the Napoleonic invasion. His masterpieces in painting include The Naked Maja and The Clothed Maja (1805). [They never say what is a “maja”. It means a “provocative young woman” or a “belle of the lower classes”.]
      For the bold technique of his paintings, the haunting satire of his etchings, and his belief that the artist's vision is more important than tradition, Goya is often called "the first of the moderns." His uncompromising portrayal of his times marks the beginning of 19th-century realism.
      Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was born in Fuendetodos, a village in northern Spain. The family later moved to Saragossa, where Goya's father worked as a gilder. At about 14 young Goya was apprenticed to José Luzán, a local painter. Later he went to Italy to continue his study of art. On returning to Saragossa in 1771, he painted frescoes for the local cathedral. These works, done in the decorative rococo tradition, established Goya's artistic reputation. In 1773 he married Josefa Bayeu, sister of Saragossa artist Francisco Bayeu. The couple had many children, but only one--a son, Xavier--survived to adulthood.
      From 1775 to 1792 Goya painted cartoons (designs) for the royal tapestry factory in Madrid. This was the most important period in his artistic development. As a tapestry designer, Goya did his first genre paintings, or scenes from everyday life.
      The experience helped him become a keen observer of human behavior. He was also influenced by neoclassicism, which was gaining favor over the rococo style. Finally, his study of the works of Velázquez in the royal collection resulted in a looser, more spontaneous painting technique.
      At the same time, Goya achieved his first popular success. He became established as a portrait painter to the Spanish aristocracy. He was elected to the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1780, named painter to the king in 1786, and made a court painter in 1789.
      A serious illness in 1792 left Goya permanently deaf. Isolated from others by his deafness, he became increasingly occupied with the fantasies and inventions of his imagination and with critical and satirical observations of mankind. He evolved a bold, free new style close to caricature. In 1799 he published the Caprichos, a series of etchings satirizing human folly and weakness. His portraits became penetrating characterizations, revealing their subjects as Goya saw them. In his religious frescoes he employed a broad, free style and an earthy realism unprecedented in religious art.
      Goya served as director of painting at the Royal Academy from 1795 to 1797 and was appointed first Spanish court painter in 1799. During the Napoleonic invasion and the Spanish war of independence from 1808 to 1814, Goya served as court painter to the French. He expressed his horror of armed conflict in The Disasters of War, a series of starkly realistic etchings on the atrocities of war. They were not published until 1863, long after Goya's death.
      Upon the restoration of the Spanish monarchy, Goya was pardoned for serving the French, but his work was not favored by the new king. He was called before the Inquisition to explain his earlier portrait of The Naked Maja, one of the few nudes in Spanish art at that time.
      In 1816 he published his etchings on bullfighting, called the Tauromaquia. From 1819 to 1824 Goya lived in seclusion in a house outside Madrid. Free from court restrictions, he adopted an increasingly personal style. In the Black Paintings, executed on the walls of his house, Goya gave expression to his darkest visions. A similar nightmarish quality haunts the satirical Disparates, a series of etchings also called Proverbios.
      In 1824, after the failure of an attempt to restore liberal government, Goya went into voluntary exile in France. He settled in Bordeaux, continuing to work until his death there.
—       Goya was an innovative Spanish painter and etcher; one of the triumvirate—including El Greco and Diego Velázquez—of great Spanish masters. Much in the art of Goya is derived from that of Velázquez, just as much in the art of the 19th-century French master Edouard Manet and the 20th-century genius Pablo Picasso is taken from Goya. Trained in a mediocre rococo artistic milieu, Goya transformed this often frivolous style and created works, such as the famous Third of May, 1808 (1814), that have as great an impact today as when they were created.
      Early Training and First Projects
      Goya was born in the small Aragonese town of Fuendetodos (near Saragossa). His father was a painter and a gilder of altarpieces, and his mother was descended from a family of minor Aragonese nobility. Facts of Goya's childhood are scarce. He attended school in Saragossa at the Escuelas Pias. Goya's formal artistic education commenced when, at the age of 14, he was apprenticed to a local master, José Luzan, a competent although little-known painter in whose studio Goya spent four years. In 1763 the young artist went to Madrid, where he hoped to win a prize at the Academy of San Fernando (founded 1752). Although he did not win the desired award, he did make the acquaintance of Francisco Bayeu, an artist also from Aragón, who was working at the court in the academic manner imported to Spain by the German painter Anton Raphael Mengs. Bayeu (the brother of Goya's wife) was influential in forming Goya's early style and was responsible for his participation in an important commission, the fresco decoration (1771, 1780-1782) of the Church of the Virgin in El Pilar in Saragossa.
      In 1771 Goya went to Italy for approximately one year. His activity there is relatively obscure; he spent some months in Rome and also entered a composition at the Parma Academy competition, in which he was successful. Returning to Spain about 1773, Goya participated in several other fresco projects, including that for the Charterhouse of Aula Dei, near Saragossa, in 1774, where his paintings prefigure those of his greatest fresco project, executed in the Church of San Antonio de la Florida, Madrid, in 1798. It was at this time that Goya began to do prints after paintings by Velázquez, who would remain, along with Rembrandt, his greatest source of inspiration.
      Years as Court Painter
      By 1786 Goya was working in an official capacity for King Charles III, the most enlightened Spanish monarch of the 18th century. Goya was appointed first court painter in 1799. His tapestry cartoons executed in the late 1780s and early 1790s were highly praised for their candid views of everyday Spanish life. With these cartoons Goya revolutionized the tapestry industry, which, until that time, had slavishly reproduced the Flemish genre scenes of the 17th-century painter David Teniers. Some of Goya's most beautiful portraits of his friends, members of the court, and the nobility date from the 1780s. Works such as Marquesa de Pontejos (1786) show that Goya was then painting in an elegant manner somewhat reminiscent of the style of his English contemporary Thomas Gainsborough.
      Etchings and Later Paintings
      In the winter of 1792, while on a visit to southern Spain, Goya contracted a serious disease that left him totally deaf and marked a turning point in his career. A mood of pessimism entered Goya's work. Between 1797 and 1799 he drew and etched the first of his great print series Los caprichos, which, in their satirical humor, mock the social mores and superstitions of the time. Later series, such as Desastres de la guerra (1810) and Disparates (1820-1823), present more caustic commentaries on the ills and follies of humanity. The horrors of warfare were of great concern to Goya, who observed firsthand the battles between French soldiers and Spanish citizens during the bloody years of the Napoleonic occupation of Spain. In 1814 he completed Second of May, 1808 and Third of May, 1808. These paintings depict horrifying and dramatically brutal massacres of groups of unarmed Spanish street fighters by French soldiers. Both are painted, like so many later pictures by Goya, in thick, bold strokes of dark color punctuated by brilliant yellow and red highlights.
      Straightforward candor and honesty are also present in Goya's later portraits, such as Family of Charles IV (1800), in which the royal family is shown in a completely unidealized fashion, verging on caricature, as a group of strikingly homely individuals.
      Final Works
      The Black Paintings, scenes of witchcraft and other bizarre activities, are among the most outstanding works of the artist's late years (about 1820). Originally painted in fresco on the walls of Goya's country house and now transferred to canvas, they attest to his progressively darkening mood, possibly aggravated by an oppressive political situation in Spain that forced him to leave for France in 1824. In Bordeaux he took up the then new art of lithography, producing a series of bullfight scenes, considered among the finest lithographs ever made. Although he returned to Madrid for a brief visit in 1826, he died in self-imposed exile in Bordeaux two years later. Goya left no immediate followers of consequence, but his influence was strongly felt in mid-19th-century painting and printmaking and in 20th-century art.
—       Goya was born in a very poor village called Fuendetodos, near Saragossa, in Aragon, on 30 March 1746. Goya’s father was a gilder in Saragossa and it was there that Goya spent his childhood and adolescence.
      He began his artistic studies at the age of 13 with a local artist, José Lusán, who had trained in Naples and who taught Goya to draw, to copy engravings and to paint in oils. In 1763 and 1766, he competed unsuccessfully for a scholarship of the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, probably working in the studio of the Court Painter Francisco Bayeu, who was also from Saragossa. To continue his studies he went to Rome at his own expense. In April of 1771 he participated in a competition held by the Academy of Parma introducing himself as a student of Francisco Bayeu. By the end of 1771, Goya was back in Saragossa, where he received his first official commission, the frescoes in the Cathedral of El Pilar.
      In 1773 Goya married Josefa Bayeu, sister of Francisco Bayeu. In 1774, the German artist Anton Raphael Mengs summoned Goya to Madrid to paint cartoons for tapestries for the Royal Factory of Santa Barbara. It is possible that Goya first met Mengs in Rome, since many years later he wrote that it was Mengs who made him return to Spain. In any event, it was Mengs who started him on his career at court. Under the direction first of Mengs, and later of Francisco Bayeu and Mariano Maella, Goya executed over 60 tapestry cartoons between 1775 and 1792, see e.g. Fight at the Cock Inn, The Parasol, La Cometa.
      In 1780, Goya was elected a member of the Royal Academy of San Fernando. In 1780-1781, he worked on the frescoes of El Pilar in Saragossa. On his return to Madrid he received the royal invitation to paint one of seven large altarpieces for the newly built church of San Francisco el Grande. The King’s opinion of his work must have been favorable, because in 1785, a year after the paintings were first shown to the public, Goya was appointed Deputy Director of Painting in the Academy. In 1786, he became a court painter.
      Among Goya’s early admirers and most important patrons during a period of 20 years were the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, who commissioned not only portraits of themselves and a family group but also a number of paintings to decorate their country residence near Madrid, the Alameda Palace, known as El Capricho. Among other paintings for the Duke of Osuna are two altarpieces, commissioned in 1788 for the chapel of his ancestors, St. Francis Borgia, in Valencia Cathedral.
      In 1783-1785, Goya painted a number of portraits of the influential persons of his time: the portrait of the Chief Minister of State, the Count of Floridablanca, in which Goya himself appears; the family portrait of the Infante Don Luis, the King’s brother, with himself again in the picture; the court architect, Ventura Rodriguez. In 1785, he was commissioned for a series of portraits of offices of the Banco Nacional de San Carlos. In these early official portraits, Goya adopted conventional XVIII century poses. His portrait of Charles III in Hunting Costume is based directly on Velásquez’s paintings of royal huntsmen.
      The death of Charles III in 1788, and the outbreak of the French Revolution, brought to an end the period of comparative prosperity and enlightenment in Spain during which Goya had reached maturity. Under the rule of the weak Charles IV and his unscrupulous Queen, María Luisa, Spain fell into political and social corruption, which ended with the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. Under the new regime Goya reached the height of his career as the most fashionable and successful artist in Spain. The new King raised him to the rank of Court Painter in 1789.
      During a visit to Andalusia towards the end of 1792, Goya was struck down by a long and serious illness of which the effect, as he wrote even a year later, made him, ‘At times rage with so ill a humor that he could not tolerate himself’. The nature of the illness is not known for certain but it caused temporary paralysis and partial blindness and left him permanently deaf, so that henceforth he could only communicate by writing and sign language. He returned to Madrid in the summer of 1793.
      After the death of Francisco Bayeu in 1795, Goya succeeded his former teacher as Director of Painting in the Academy (but resigned for reasons of health two years later), and in 1799 was appointed First Court Painter. In 1799, Goya published the series of 80 etchings called Los Caprichos, bitter caricatures of life. Despite the veiled language of Los Caprichos they were withdrawn from sale after a few days.
      From the time of their ascension until 1800, Charles IV and María Luisa sat for him on many occasions, and many replicas were made of his portraits of them. He painted them in various costumes and poses, ranging from the early decorative portraits in full regalia in the tradition of Mengs to the simpler and more natural compositions in the manner of Velázquez.
Goya was 62 years old when the Napoleonic invasion of Spain started in 1808, and Spain was subjected to six years of war and revolution. Goya was in Madrid during the tragic events of 02 and 03 May 1808 when the population rose against the French and the uprising was savagely repressed. In 1814 he recorded the events in two of the most famous of his paintings The Second of May, 1808: The Charge of Mamelukes. and The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid. Meanwhile, with thousands of other heads of families, Goya swore allegiance to the French King, Joseph Bonaparte. During the war he was occupied with portraits of family groups and private citizens. At the time he made his personal record of the war in expressive and fearful drawings Desastres de la Guerra, which were later used for a series of 82 etchings, which were published only in 1863.
      In August 1812, when the British entered Madrid, Goya accepted a commission for an equestrian portrait of the Duke of Wellington and, soon afterwards, painted one other portrait of his only recorded English sitter. On the restoration of Ferdinand VII in 1814, Goya resumed his office as First Court Painter. The portraits of Ferdinand were Goya’s last royal portraits, he went out of favor and fashion. From now on Goya was chiefly occupied with paintings for private patrons, for friends and for himself. He continued to record his observations and ideas in drawings. During this period Goya received two important ecclesiastical commissions for St. Justa and St. Rufina, painted in 1817 for the Seville Cathedral, and for The Last Communion of St. Joseph of Calasanz, painted in 1819 for the church of the Escuelas Pías de San Antón in Madrid.
      As a result of the revolution of 1820 Ferdinand VII was forced to recognize a constitution, but already in 1823 the French army restored the Spanish king to absolute power, and the persecution of the liberals was renewed with greater violence than ever before. Goya, who had made his last appearance at the Academy on 04 April 1820 to swear allegiance to the Constitution, went into hiding early in 1824. After the declaration of amnesty Goya left Spain. Except for two short visits to Madrid in 1826 and 1827, the painter remained in France, mainly in Bordeaux, for the rest of his life. He died in Bordeaux.

LINKS
Self-Portrait (1795 drawing) — Self-Portrait (1815)
— Paintings: Self-Portrait With DoctorAutoretrato
3 de Mayo de 1808Maja With Masked Men
Inquisition — Carlos III
Familia de Carlos IV
(280x336cm)_ La Familia de Carlos IV supone la culminación de todos los retratos pintados por Goya en esta época. Gracias a las cartas de la reina María Luisa de Parma a Godoy conocemos paso a paso la concepción del cuadro. La obra fue realizada en Aranjuez desde abril de 1800 y durante ese verano. En ella aparecen retratados, de izquierda a derecha, los siguientes personajes: Carlos María Isidro, hijo de Carlos IV y María Luisa de Parma; el futuro Fernando VII, hijo primogénito de la real pareja; Goya pintando, como había hecho Velázquez en Las Meninas; Doña María Josefa, hermana de Carlos IV; un personaje desconocido que podría ser destinado a colocar el rostro de la futura esposa de Fernando cuando éste contrajera matrimonio, por lo que aparece con la cabeza vuelta; María Isabel, hija menor de los reyes; la reina María Luisa de Parma en el centro de la escena, como señal de poder ya que era ella la que llevaba las riendas del Estado a través de Godoy; Francisco de Paula de la mano de su madre, de él se decía que tenía un indecente parecido con Godoy; el rey Carlos IV, en posición avanzada respecto al grupo; tras el monarca vemos a su hermano, Don Antonio Pascual; Carlota Joaquina, la hija mayor de los reyes, sólo muestra la cabeza; cierra el grupo D. Luis de Parma; su esposa, María Luisa Josefina, hija también de Carlos IV; y el hijito de ambos, Carlos Luis, en brazos de su madre. Todos los hombres retratados portan la Orden de Carlos III y algunos también el Toisón de Oro, mientras que las damas visten a la moda Imperio y ostentan la banda de la Orden de María Luisa. Carlos IV también luce la insignia de las Ordenes Militares y de la Orden de Cristo de Portugal. Alrededor de esta obra existe mucha literatura ya que siempre se considera que Goya ha ridiculizado a los personajes regios. Resulta extraño pensar que nuestro pintor tuviera intención de poner en ridículo a la familia del monarca; incluso existen documentos en los que la reina comenta que están quedando todos muy propios y que ella estaba muy satisfecha. Más lógico resulta pensar que la familia real era así porque, de lo contrario, el cuadro hubiese sido destruido y Goya hubiese caído en desgracia, lo que no ocurrió. El artista recoge a los personajes como si de un friso se tratara, en tres grupos para dar mayor movimiento a la obra; así, en el centro se sitúan los monarcas con sus dos hijos menores; en la derecha, el grupo presidido por el príncipe heredero realizado en una gama fría, mientras que en la izquierda los Príncipes de Parma, en una gama caliente. Todas las figuras están envueltas en una especie de niebla dorada que pone en relación la obra con Las Meninas. Lo que más interesa al pintor es captar la personalidad de los retratados, fundamentalmente de la reina, verdadera protagonista de la composición, y la del rey, con su carácter abúlico y ausente. La obra es un documento humano sin parangón. Estilísticamente destaca la pincelada tan suelta empleada por Goya; desde una distancia prudencial parece que ha detallado todas y cada una de las condecoraciones, pero al acercarse se aprecian claramente las manchas. Goya, a diferencia de Velázquez en Las Meninas, ha renunciado a los juegos de perspectiva pero gracias a la luz y al color consigue dar variedad a los volúmenes y ayuda a diferenciar los distintos planos en profundidad. Fue la primera obra de Goya que entró en el Museo del Prado, siendo valorada en 1834 en 80'000 reales.
Holy NameQueen of MartyrsHoly Family
— The Great He~Goat or Witches SabbathMarquesa de Pontejos

Don Ramón Satué, Alcade de Corte (1823) — Fight at the Cock Inn
The ParasolLa CometaCharles III in Hunting Costume
The Second of May, 1808: The Charge of Mamelukes.
— an equestrian portrait of the Duke of WellingtonThe Last Communion of St. Joseph of Calasanz
103 images at Webshots
— Etchings: Que Se Rompe la CuerdaEs PeorDesgracia
Contra el Bien GeneralAccuse the Time (1812) — El Sueno de la razon produce monstruos (1799)
252 prints at FAMSF
 
^ Saturn Devouring One of his Sons (1823, 146x83cm) _ detail _
      The image seems to have arisen in a nightmare: the cannibal god on bended knees, engulfed in darkness; the mad haunted eyes and black-blooded mouth; the rending fingers, threaded with blood, and the ravaged figure in their grasp — like a huge, mad Richard Nixon or Dubya Bush, devouring the young men of the US through their insane wars: a cannibal father, jealous of our freedoms, determined to destroy us, our ideals, our hopes. Critics have called this Saturn a symbol of evil, a Satan, a monster. The painting evokes in the viewer an interior terror, a sense of isolation, loneliness, grief — this god on his knees, tearing apart his own child, enshrouded in a blackness that is like a psychic tar, in a drama of primal murderousness.
      This story of fathers and sons is one of the foundation tales of Western tradition: Abraham binding his son Isaac for sacrifice on Mount Moriah; God offering the sacrifice of His son Jesus on the cross. The earliest version of the Kronos myth — Saturn is the later Roman name — was written down by Hesiod in his Theogony, about the eighth century BC.
      First comes Chaos; then Earth/Gaia; Tartarus in the bowels of Earth; and finally Eros. Earth gives birth to Heaven, also known as Ouranos, and then bears twelve of his children, the last, "most terrible of sons / The crooked-scheming Kronos."* Earth and Ouranos have three more sons, so fearsome and mighty that Ouranos forces them back inside their mother, burying them alive. She forms a sickle, and asks her other sons to use it against their father, “For it was he / Who first began devising shameful acts.” All are afraid, except Kronos. She gives him the sickle, hides him in her, and he castrates his father, preventing him from having more children, then assumes power among the Titans. But fear lives in his heart; a usurper himself, he learns that one of his own children will usurp him, and he devours them at birth: “As each child issued from the holy womb / And lay upon its mother's knees, each one / Was seized by mighty Kronos, and gulped down.” Through a ruse by his mother, the last born, Zeus, survives, leads a war against Kronos, and casts him down to Tartarus. Even gods cannot overcome Fate.
      Goya produced a chalk drawing, Saturn Devouring His Sons, in 1797, most likely influenced by a Rubens painting of the same subject. Both works are illustrative of a literary theme, passionless, even morbidly comic. Rubens's Saturn is out on a stroll, his foot resting momentarily on a stone, one hand holding his staff, the other grasping his meal — his infant son — biting into the boy's chest like a sturdy Flemish burgher stooping to a roast goose. Goya's Titan is cunning-eyed; his mouth, clamped upon his son's leg to the thigh, is turned upwards in a leering grin; the legs of a second son he holds almost daintily, his pinky slightly raised. Neither work is likely to evoke more than a passing grimace from a viewer.
      All of this changes with the Saturn of 1824, one of the series known as the Black Paintings. What returned Goya to this subject? What did he recognize in himself that charged the work with such raw, wounding power?
      Goya and his wife, Josefa, had between five and twenty children: the exact number is unknown. Only one boy, Javier, survived beyond childhood. Did the early deaths of his other children, reflected upon in the solitude of the Quinta del Sordo — the house he moved into in 1819, seven years after Josefa died — inspire Goya's vision of the cannibal god? Was he portraying his sense of potential cut off, of lives interrupted before they can begin?
      This interpretation is inconsistent with the fact that the figure gripped in the giant's hands is no child, but a full grown adult, which leads to another, allied interpretation: Saturn / Kronos as the ancient deity Time, implacable devourer of all humankind.
      Shortly before he began the Black Paintings, Goya survived a near fatal illness, documented in his Self-portrait with Dr. Arrieta, where the pained and weary artist, surrounded by dark, phantasmal faces, is ministered to by the doctor. Did Goya, sick, deaf, in his seventies, paint his lonely terror of his own mortality through his Saturn?
      But if the giant represents Time, why is he painted on bended knees, with spindly misshapen legs that seem unable to bear the weight of his enormous torso? Is this Goya's sardonic commentary on Spain's recent war with France — presenting a crippled Time, forced to overfeed on the numberless dead? On the dead of all wars? Did the early nineteenth century supply Saturn / Kronos with such quantities of corpses, that Time himself is brought to his knees, his wild eyes bulging, as if he were unable to stomach another bite? Or is the figure a symbol of war itself, the culminating portrait of the horrors he chronicled in his series of etchings, The Disasters of War, in 1810-1820?
      Every interpretation of a painting rooted so complexly in the mind of Goya leads, as with dreams, to new interpretations.
      In the universe before the coming of Christ, Saturn, frenziedly eating his own child-god, might be seen as engaged in an act of perverse communion. The Christian God sacrificed his son that all humankind might live; the Titan acts out of fear and jealousy, and the body of his child reveals not the mystery of resurrection, but the dark and violent mysteries of the psyche, a Tartarus of blood and madness, where all instincts and emotions merge, and consequence is forgotten. A realm of unconsciousness. Of mutilation and murder.
      From this perspective, Saturn might be Goya's warning to humankind, whose wars and wanton cruelties, devotion to superstition and false gods will lead it to dissolution, to the Nada scrawled by the corpse as its last message in the etching, "Nothing. We shall see." (The Disasters of War #69)
      And yet, for all the mythological, political, social, historical, and religious meanings we attach to the painting, there is something we still turn away from, the most basic theme — a man destroying his own son. Think of Javier, Goya's only child to survive to adulthood. From the beginning, Goya loved him, pampered him, fretted over him.
      Fathers and sons enjoy, or are condemned to, the play of uniquely powerful forces of love and pride, disappointment and dominance, the scales forever unbalanced, sometimes seeming to shift in a single moment, then swaying back. Communications, in the best of circumstances, are infinitely complicated and the effects of Goya's deafness should not be underestimated. It developed in 1793, when Javier was nine, and the use of sign language must have impeded dialogue. What remained unsaid between them? We subtly shade our speech through inflection, expecting understanding. Did Javier feel Goya's eyes always on him — as father, as deaf man, as artist — studying his face for clues to his thoughts?
      Goya had hopes that Javier would follow in his footsteps and devote himself to art. In 1803, he presented the plates and the remaining sets of his Caprichos to Charles IV, from whom he obtained a pension of twelve thousand reales for Francisco Javier.
      In 1805, Javier married the daughter of a respected, wealthy family from Saragossa. Goya undertook, in the marriage contract, to be financially responsible for the couple, their servants, any children they might have. In his later years, it was said that he had spent most of his wealth on his only child and his daughter-in-law, leaving little for himself. Soon after the marriage, Goya painted a portrait of the twenty-one-year-old Javier. Despite his love and pride, he is an artist, and cannot help but render what he sees: a handsome, foppish, self-regarding young man with a somewhat weak chin, seeming to lacking the depth of character necessary to create great art. At what age did Javier realize that he would never fulfill his father's ambitions for him?
      Seven years later, as the war against Napoleon's armies was ending, Josefa died. Javier claimed his mother's inheritance, and when the property was divided, Goya gave to his son the house, library, and, curiously, nearly all his own art work in a collection of seventy-eight paintings and prints, like a man making restitution for genius denied in the blood. He kept for himself only two portraits: the bullfighter Romero, and the Duchess of Alba, the celebrated beauty he had followed to Andalusia in 1795, after she was widowed, and had lived with for almost a year, while Josefa and the twelve-year-old Javier remained in Madrid. In her will, signed during Goya's stay, the Duchess bequeathed a lifetime annuity for Javier.
      In 1819, Goya retreated across the Manzanares River on the outskirts of Madrid to his villa, known coincidentally as the Quinta del Sordo. He had already achieved the pre-eminent position of First Painter of the Royal Bedchamber, and was the most famous artist in Spain; survived war, pestilence, famine, a near-fatal illness; endured the deaths of so many loved ones. Surely he had earned, at seventy-three, an existence free of turmoil in the peace of the Quinta, if he so wished. Quickly, he filled the walls with vivid landscapes in lush greens and sky blues; mountains, rivers, donkeys, small figures; even a man dancing with castanets — all revealed in recent years through radiography and stratigraphy.
      Then, something happens. Goya suddenly unleashes his art, covering over the colorful landscapes, refusing himself the bland pleasures of the merely picturesque, recognizing in every surface a new opportunity, until the Quinta mirrors his internal world, the meanings personal, all sense of decoration dismissed. Only truth remains. On the dining room wall, two-and-a half feet by four-and-a-half feet, a thick-shouldered, murderous colossus begins to take shape. If he once exposed his son's nature in a portrait, he now strips himself bare with his Saturn.
     
One more time, we look at the painting. Cover the right side of the face, and we see a Titan caught in the act, defying anyone to stop him, the bulging left eye staring wildly at some unseen witness to his savagery, his piratical coarseness heightened by the sharp vertical lines of the eyebrow, crossed like the stitches of a scar. Cover his left eye, and we are confronted by a being in pain, the dark student gazing down in horror at his own uncontrolled murderousness, the eyebrow curved upwards like an inverted question mark, as if he were asking, "Why am I compelled to do this?"
      In this painting one may see, with revulsion, only the image of a gruesome giant, father as devourer. But it may be that a hidden knowledge evoked in Goya his terrible compassion for the cannibal god. The primal battle between fathers and sons is inescapable, the roots of such terrifying instincts too deep to be thoroughly excised. As fathers, we fear not only that we might destroy our sons — through anger, jealousy, fear; through our sometimes desperate love; through a thousand seemingly small sins — but that we secretly intend to destroy them. We want to protect them from the monsters that inhabit their nightmares, only to discover among the faces of those monsters our own.
      If human beings are made free only by their admission of their darkest fears and impulses, this admission, unalterably expressed, may have granted Goya a sense of well-being, as did the entire series of Black Paintings. Javier, writing after his father's death, referred to the pleasure Goya had experienced in viewing daily in his house those pictures he had painted for himself with freedom and in accordance with his own genius.
      The ancient myth that once provided him with the subject for an unmemorable drawing, becomes, in this late period of his life, the inspiration for uttering the unutterable. It is ironic that the very painting the world sees and shudders at — the image it considers one of the most horrifying in all Western art — may have given its creator peace.
^ Born on 16 April 1821: Ford Madox Brown, English Pre-Raphaelite painter who died on 11 October 1893.
     He was the father of Lucy Madox Brown. His students included Marie Spartali Stillman.
— Born in Calais, Ford Madox Brown revealed a precocious talent for art at an early age. From 1836 to 1846 he studied drawing in Europe, first in Bruges with a student of David, later in Antwerp with Baron Wappers. He travelled to Paris and Rome, where he befriended Cornelius and Overbeck, survivors of the German Romantic Nazarene movement. In 1841 he produced his first important oil painting, taking the execution of Mary Queen of Scots as his subject. Back in England, he met Rossetti and became associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, although he never joined it. From 1850 on, however, his works, mainly on historical and religious themes, closely adhered to the Pre-Raphaelite precepts. He executed an important series of frescoes in the Manchester Town Hall (1880-1893), illustrating episodes in the history of the city, and numerous stained-glass designs. His life was a continual succession of adversities and delusions; neglected by both the critics and the public, he never knew real success. He died in London.
— He was born at Calais and trained at Antwerp (under Wappers), in Paris, and at Rome, where he came into contact with the Nazarenes. Settling in England in 1846, he became a friend of the Pre-Raphaelites and--with his taste for literary subjects and meticulous handling--an influence on their work, though he was never a member of the Brotherhood. Rossetti studied briefly with him in 1848 and Brown's Chaucer at the Court of Edward III (1851) contains portraits of several of the Brotherhood.
      In 1861 Brown was a founder member of William Morris's company, for which he designed stained glass and furniture. The major work of the later part of his career is a cycle of paintings (1878-93) in Manchester Town Hall on the history of the city. Brown was an individualist and a man of prickly temperament; he opposed the Royal Academy and was a pioneer of the one-man show.
— Always an outsider to the art establishment who viewed him as suspiciously foreign because of his birth outside Britain, although to British parents, Ford Madox Brown studied art in the great schools of Antwerp and Paris and brought their influence to bear in his paintings. His pictures are now much in demand, but his contemporaries largely ignored his work and he never made much money out of painting. After visiting Rome in 1845 he became very influenced by the Nazarene School of painting, as invented and practiced by the German painters Johann Overbeck [1789-1869] and Peter von Cornelius [1783-1875].
      Madox Brown's work was highly original at a time when British art was mundane and predictable; his subjects were to do with English literature and language but produced in a dark, highly mannered, and dramatic style synthesized from his early European training and his tours of Italy and Switzerland. His work bore the brunt of his two great weaknesses — finishing and retouching. Even more so than Rossetti, he was almost incapable of finishing his paintings, this meant that he was never able to leave a work alone, even when it was ostensibly finished, he would continually retouch it, even though sometimes the painting was already sold.
      Ford Madox Brown first met Dante Gabriel Rossetti [09 Apr 1882 – 12 May 1828] in March 1848 and for a short time gave him academic painting lessons. This rather fell on deaf ears and Rossetti moved on, but in time they resumed their friendship. Ford Madox Brown became closely involved with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood through his friendship with Rossetti, but never a member because he was regarded with xenophobic suspicion by William Holman Hunt [02 Apr 1827 – 07 Sep 1910] and John Millais [08 Jun 1829 – 13 Aug 1896].
      Ironically it is Ford Madox Brown who in years to come became regarded as the ultimate Pre-Raphaelite because he painted many of their characteristic paintings. One such, the very first shown in the 1852 summer exhibition, The Pretty Baa-Lambs, is a very Pre-Raphaelite-looking picture with its brilliant color (painted on a white ground), naturalistic detail and contemporary subject matter. He had often painted out of doors before but this was the first time he had painted in natural light and it showed to anyone who looked properly. Unfortunately few did, the painting was hung in a poor position and went largely unnoticed.
      The same year he enjoyed perhaps his best period and produced three of his finest paintings, all of them Pre-Raphaelite in everything except name: The Last of England, An English Autumn and Work. The latter, landmark, painting took him 13 years to finish. It is a modern allegory of society and a literal rendition of Heath Street, Hampstead. In it he shows ordinary people as heroes, but without a shade of sentimentality: at the center are common navvies digging. They are surrounded by a thronging crowd of contemporary people: ragged working class children and beggars alongside street traders and smart upper class ladies. The muscle workers are the navvies and itinerant farm workers, while the brain workers are two of Brown's heroes - the Reverend F.D. Maurice, a pioneer of working class education and Christian socialist, and Thomas Carlyle, the author of Past and Present. Ford Madox Brown eventually made enough money from his paintings to buy a house in Fitzroy Square which became a lively center for artists and writers to gather together and swap ideas and gossip.
      After receiving little notice for his work Brown gave up exhibiting at the R.A. after 1853; and by 1856 he had lost his belief in the Pre-Raphaelite ethos of painting modern morality works, instead he started collaborating with Morris and Co., working on designs for art glass and illustrations. He was commissioned to paint 12 large murals inside Manchester Town Hall showing the glorious history of Manchester, and he spent a great deal of time on the project, after which he played no significant part in artistic development.
      Browns later career is peripheral to the Pre Raphaelite story although he lived until 1983. He taught at the Working Men's College and he was involved with design work for Morris and Company. In time, Brown achieved a level of financial security and his house in Fitroy Square became a noted rendezvous for artists and writers subsequently recalled by his grandson and biographer Ford Madox Ford. The later part of his career is taken up with work on his twelve murals in the Manchester Town Hall which illustrate the history of the city. The combination of a heroic style and local history proved not to be a success and the work is not among his best. However, Madox Brown retains his place as a seminal figure in the Pre Raphaelite movement and an artist of great power and originality.
— Dates on Ford Madox Brown's paintings are odd because he never felt finished with a painting. He would keep making changes years later, even after a picture had been sold. So often a definitive date is just impossible to establish.

LINKS
Let The Little Children Come To Me
Jesus washing Peter's feet at the Last Supper (1865) _ Brown's first religious painting in the Pre Raphaelite style. Here we can also see the other side of the Pre Raphaelite style and its effect on Brown in that in the same way as Millias details in 'The Carpenter's Shop' Brown shows Christ and his disciples as ordinary people. Christ is deliberately betrayed in a humble, unflattering way and his treatment of the figures is bold and realistic. Brown continued to paint religious and historical pictures of this style, blending Pre Raphaelite realism with his own highly academic mannerism.
Oure Ladye of Good Children (1861)
The First Translation of the Bible into English: Wycliffe Reading His Translation of the Bible to John of Gaunt Date (1848)
William Tell's SonThe English Boy _ Note the similarity and subtle differences between these two portraits.
Manfred on the Jungfrau (1861) _ Inspired by Byron's Manfred.
Byron's Dream
The Finding of Don Juan by Haidee (1878) _ The subject of this painting is taken from Byron's Don Juan, Canto II, verses 110-112.
Lear and Cordelia (1854) _ text of Shakespeare's King Lear Act I Scene 1
Romeo and Juliet (1870) _ text of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare
The Seeds and Fruits of English Poetry (1853) _ This painting shows Chaucer reading at the court of Edward III with his patron, the Black Prince, on his left. In the wings appear the 'fruits' of English poetry: Milton, Spenser and Shakespeare on the left; Byron, Pope and Burns on the right; Goldsmith [10 Nov 1730 – 04 Apr 1774] and Thomson [11 Sep 1700 – 27 Aug 1748] in the roundels; and the names of Campbell, Moore, Shelley, Keats, Chatterton, Kirke White, Coleridge, and Wordsworth are written on the cartouches held by the standing children in the base.
The Last of England (1855) _ This is his best-known picture. It was inspired by the departure of Woolner, the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor, for Australia, and deals with the great emigration movement which attained its peak in 1865. Social realism is one more area of the Pre Raphaelite movement where Brown made an important contribution. It is also prominent in the picture Work.
Stages of Cruelty (1890) _ The title refers to William Hogarth's engravings on the theme of cruelty of animals leading to cruelty to humans.
The Pretty Baa-Lambs (1859) _ detail _ One of his first Pre Raphaelite paintings was 'The Pretty Baa-Lambs' first exhibited in 1852 which he painted outdoors in full sunlight. It is an uncompromisingly truthful picture and shows how determined Brown must have turned to the Pre Raphaelite style. Browns first important landscape in the Pre Raphaelite style. It was painted at Stockwell, in South London where the artist had been living and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1852. Brown wrote in his diary that the picture 'was painted almost entirely in sunlight which twice gave me fever while painting ... The lambs and sheep used to be bought every morning from Clapham Common in a truck; one of them ate all the flowers one morning in the garden, and they used to behave very ill.' His wife and daughter modeled for the figures.
— Work (1863, 137x197cm _ ZOOM) _ detail (ZOOM) _ Ford Madox Brown had the idea for Work after seeing a group of navvies laying water pipes in Heath Street, Hampstead, London. Much of the painting was done on the spot in the open air. The famous anthology piece Work shows Brown's dedicated craftsmanship and brilliant coloring, but is somewhat swamped by its social idealism. Brown describes how the picture was painted 'To insure that peculiar look of light all round which objects have on a dull day at sea, it was painted for the most part in the open air on dull days, and, when the flesh was being painted, on cold days. Absolutely without regard to art of any period or country, I have tried to render this scene as it would appear.' This comment reflects the fearless honest search for reality which was also typical of Holman Hunt.
^ Died on 16 April 1932: Walter Launt Palmer, US painter born on 01 August 1854.
— Palmer was born in Albany NY, son of the sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer. In his youth he was acquainted with the leading artists of the day such as Frederick E. Church, John Kensett, and John McEntee, all of whom frequented the Palmer home. At age 24, he began his formal study of art with Frederick E. Church, the great Hudson Valley painter. In the early and mid-1870's Palmer traveled and studied extensively in Italy and France. He studied with Carolus-Duran in Paris. He studied the work of the Impressionists as well as that of the expatriate US artists in Europe. He was a friend of John Singer Sargent, with whom he went on at least one sketching trip. He also spent time with John Henry Twatchman, William Merrit Chase, Frank Druveneck, and Robert Blum.
      Upon Palmer's return to the US in the late 1870's, he and Church rented a studio in New York City. They keep it from 1878 until 1881. Palmer first received major attention for his winter scenes in 1887 when he received the Second Halgarten Prize of the National Academy for his painting January. This award is for outstanding young (under 35) artists with potential. The artist's use of blue shadow in the snow is considered one of the first uses of this technique. He also received the gold medal from the Philadelphia Art club in 1894 and another gold medal from the Boston Art Club in 1895. More awards came from more prestigious Art Associations and his reputation continued to grow. His winter scenes became very popular but his scenes of Venice and interiors were also beautiful and desirable.
     At the turn of the century Palmer was being compared to Claude Monet and John Henry Twatchman. In 1915, Palmer, now 61 years old, spent the summer in Gloucester Massachusetts, as he would do again in many later summers. His studio was rather quaint and situated on Rocky Neck in Gloucester Harbor. It was described by the Boston Globe in 1923 as one "which hangs down over the rocks and boasts an array of sky blue shutters .. in this studio by the sea." He actually found the summer studio a boost to his art sales as many visitors who came to see, actually bought. He complained that visitors interrupted him but it was good for business. Prices at that time were about $200 each without frames for good sized pictures. One person bought three for a reduced price of $500. He kept meticulous records of all his paintings and sales. He became active in the local art colony and the local art associations, basking in his celebrity status.
     People would remark that it was strange to see him sitting on his Gloucester Bay dock in the summertime while painting a snow scene. All the while the picturesque harbor's beauty was right in front of him. But he responded that he felt that it was no more inconsistent than many of his fellow artists painting summer scenes in the dead of winter. Walter L. Palmer died in his hometown Albany NY.
     After his death his work fell out of favor and many museums deaccessioned his paintings in the years following W.W.II. Indeed, by the early 1960's, representational art was out and often the frames were worth more than the paintings. People liked clean walls with no paintings -- a sort of a delayed reaction to the covered wall style of the Victorian period. In the last 20 years the trend has again reversed and the works of US Impressionist and realistic artists of the early 20th century have been rediscovered. Walter Launt Palmer is now recognized as an excellent artist.
LINKS
Normansvale (56x76cm) — Sunshine After Snowstorm (81x62cm)
The sole survivor (paged 646 and 647 from Harper's Weekly, 05 Aug 1876, wood engraving 29x51cm)
Fleeing from persecution (pages 614 and 615, from Harper's Weekly, 04 Aug 1877, wood engraving, 27x50cm)
Library at Arbor Hill (Olcott Interior) (1878) _ Palmer painted this interior of the home today known as the Ten Broeck Mansion. Seated within is the house's owner, Thomas Worth Olcott [1795-1880], a prominent Albany banker. The furnishings are an eclectic mix of personal possessions, oriental rugs, a Shaker chair, a Japanese screen and a marble bust of Mary Olcott sculpted by Erastus Dow Palmer. Inclusion of the elderly Mr. Olcott reading a morning newspaper gives an idea of his social and economic status; he had both the means to pursue and acquire his possessions and the leisure time to enjoy them.
^ Died on 16 April 1817: Martin Drölling, French academic painter baptized as an infant on 19 September 1752.
— Both Martin Drölling and his son Michel-Martin Drolling [07 Mar 1786 – 09 Jan 1851] were portrait painters; whereas the father expanded his range by concentrating on bourgeois domestic interiors, the son produced a number of history paintings on mythological and religious subjects. Another of Martin Drölling’s three children by his second wife, Louise-Elisabeth (née Belot), was Louise-Adéone Drolling [29 May 1797 – <1831), otherwise known as Mme Joubert; she also practised as a painter. — After receiving initial training from an unknown painter in Sélestat, Drölling moved to Paris, where he attended courses at the Académie Royale. He supplemented his education there by studying Flemish and Dutch Old Masters in the collection at the Luxembourg Palace. From the Flemish school he derived his own rich impasto, while the Dutch was to influence him in his meticulous, supremely descriptive and unsentimental style of painting as well as his choice of subject-matter: unfussy bourgeois interiors and frank portraits. Drölling first exhibited at the Salon de la Correspondance in 1781 and again in 1782 and 1789. After the French Revolution he was able to participate in the Salon at the Louvre, despite the fact that he had never become a member of the Académie Royale. He exhibited from 1793 to 1817, although the majority of his works extant today were shown after 1800. From 1802 to 1813 he was employed by the Sèvres porcelain manufactory, and many of his designs were engraved.

LINKS
Interieur d'une Cuisine avec une Femme et deux Enfants (1815, 65x81cm; 596x750pix, 138kb; _ ZOOM not recommended to somewhat blurry 1400x1812pix, 371kb) _ a brighter copy (600x735pix, 160kb _ ZOOM not recommended to blurry 1400x1716pix, 368kb)
Sappho et Phaon Chantant leurs Amours dans une Grotte (51x 61cm)
Joseph Merceron, avocat au Parlement de Paris (1791, 210x144cm; 600x410pix, 54kb)
La Femme et la Souris (1798; 25x35cm; 416x581cm, 115kb gif) et le bébé, et le chat, et le baquet à lessive, et la nature morte... (la souris est dans une trappe que la femme montre au chat).
Les petits soldats (24x32cm; 448x593pix, 88kb)
^ Died on 16 April 1941: Émile Bernard, French painter and writer born on 28 April 1868 — He was the son of a cloth merchant. Relations with his parents were never harmonious, and in 1884, against his father’s wishes, he enrolled as a student at the Atelier Cormon in Paris. There he became a close friend of Louis Anquetin and Toulouse-Lautrec. In suburban views of Asnières, where his parents lived, Bernard experimented with Impressionist and then Pointillist color theory, in direct opposition to his master’s academic teaching; an argument with Fernand Cormon led to his expulsion from the studio in 1886. He made a walking tour of Normandy and Brittany that year, drawn to Gothic architecture and the simplicity of the carved Breton calvaries. In Concarneau he struck up a friendship with Claude-Emile Schuffenecker and met Gauguin briefly in Pont-Aven. During the winter Bernard met van Gogh and frequented the shop of the color merchant Julien-François Tanguy, where he gained access to the little-known work of Cézanne.
Portrait of Bernard

LINKS
Self-Portrait with Portrait of Gauguin (1888, 46x55cm; 427x510cm, 49kb) _ In 1888 Bernard worked with Paul Gauguin in Pont-Aven, in Brittany. There he produced this self-portrait, which he inscribed with the text “à mon copaing Vincent” and sent to his friend Vincent in Arles. Van Gogh had actually requested a portrait of Gauguin, but Bernard replied that he did not feel confident enough to paint his older, better-known colleague. By way of a compromise he painted this self-portrait in blue and green tints, including Gauguin’s head on the wall in the background as a stylized drawing. Van Gogh was enthusiastic about the gift – “a couple of simple tones, a couple of dark lines, but it is as elegant as a real, genuine Manet”. Gauguin also sent Van Gogh a self-portrait, Les Misérables (1888), which included a portrait of Bernard in the background.
Jeune Fille sur la Colline (1904, 64x77cm; 2/5 size, 186kb _ ZOOM to 4/5 size, 714kb) _ This is strictly a landscape with a village The young lady occupies barely 1/200 of the picture area. This image is mirror-reversed, unless the artist signed his painting in reversed handwriting (inspired by Leonardo da Vinci?).
Arcadia (58x36cm; 1000x619pix, kb) — Madeleine au Bois d'Amour (1888)
Moissoneurs de Sarrasin à Pont-Aven (1888; 562x700pix, 129kb)
Moisson au bord de la mer (1891, 70x92cm; 532x700pix, 246kb)
Musiciens Espagnols (1897)
Les Bretonnes aux ombrelles (1892, 81x105cm; 579x700pix, 286kb)
La Vierge aux Saintes, published by L'Ymagier in 1895 (hand-colored lithograph, 61x41cm; 759x503pix, 146kb)

Died on a 16 April:


1965 Floris Jespers, Belgian artist born in 1889. — Brother? of sculptor Oscar Jespers [22 May 1887 – 01 Dec 1970]?

1879 Jacob Jan van der Maaten, Dutch artist born in 1820.

1812 Martin von Molitor, Austrian artist born on 20 February 1759.

^ 1782 Giuseppe Vasi, Italian engraver and painter born in Corleone, Sicily (future birthplace of “the Godfather” character in the movie), on 28 August 1710. After completing a classical education, he got trained as a printmaker in Palermo, possibly at the Collegio Carolino, which was founded by the Jesuit Order in 1728 and at which the etcher Francesco Ciché ( fl before 1707; d Palermo, 1742) was a teacher. Vasi was already an accomplished engraver when, in 1736, he contributed to the illustration of La reggia in trionfo by Pietro La Placa, which described the festivities held in Palermo to mark the coronation of Charles VII of Naples (the future Charles III of Spain). That same year Vasi moved to Rome, where, as a Neapolitan subject, he was immediately afforded the protection of the ambassador, Cardinal Troiano Aquaviva d’Aragona [1694–1747]. In Rome he met other artists who worked for the same patron: Sebastiano Conca, Luigi Vanvitelli and Ferdinando Fuga. It is against this background that Vasi’s work in Rome, when he was in residence at the Palazzo Farnese, should be considered: his monopoly as the engraver of the Roman records of the monarch, the plates for the festivals of the ‘Chinea’ and the triumphal arches erected in front of the Palatine gardens on the occasion of temporal sovereignty over Rome. — Porta Latina (engraving; 918x1300pix, 240kb) _ Via Latina, che sotto Monte Casino si unisce con la Via Appia. Fù in essa Via la Villa di Filide nutrice di Domiziano. — Chiesa di S. Eustachio (engraving; 872x1300pix, 501kb) _ Palazzo Cenci, architettura di Giulio Romano, & Collegio della Sapienza, & Cupola di S. Luca architettura del Borromini, 4 Piazza di S. Eustachio. — 128 prints at www2.siba.fi/~kkoskim/rooma/ kuvat

1687 Gaspar Peeter Verbruggen (or Verbrugghen), Flemish artist born on 08 September 1635. — Relative? of sculptor Peeter Verbruggen I [05 Jun 1615 bapt. – 31 Oct 1686], and of his sons sculptor/etcher Peeter Verbrugghen II [17 Aug 1648 bapt. – 09 Oct 1691] and sculptor/architect/illustrator Hendrik Frans Verbruggen [30 Apr 1655 bapt. – 06 Mar 1724 bur.]?


Born on a 16 April:


1647 (infant baptism) Matthijs Naiveu (or Neveu), Dutch painter who died on 04 June 1726. He was the son of a wine merchant from Rotterdam and began his training with Abraham Toorenvliet [1620–1692], a glass painter and drawing master in Leiden. From 1667 to 1669 Naiveu was apprenticed to the Leiden ‘Fine’ painter Gerrit Dou [07 Apr 1613 – 09 Feb 1675], who received 100 guilders a year (an exceptionally high sum) for instructing Naiveu. In 1671 Naiveu entered the Leiden Guild of St Luke, of which he became the head in 1677 and again in 1678, the year in which he moved to Amsterdam, where he was later appointed hop inspector. This job did not prevent him producing a considerable number of paintings; the earliest known work by Naiveu is dated 1668, the latest 1721. There are dated paintings for almost every year in between; his most productive periods were 1675–1679 and 1705–1712. — {Was Naiveu naive?}

TO THE TOP
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO WRITE TO ART “4” “2”DAY
http://www.safran-arts.com/42day/art/art4apr/art0416.html
http://h42day.0catch.com/art/art4apr/art0416.html
http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/all42day/art/art4apr/art0416.html
http://www.ifrance.com/7aujourdhui/art/art4apr/art0416.html
updated Friday 16-Apr-2004 3:14 UT
safe site
site safe for children safe site