ART 4
2-DAY 19 April |
^ Born
on 19 April (March?) 1869: Józef Mehoffer,
Polish painter, printmaker, and decorative artist, who died on 08 July 1946.
[It would have been of no use for him to try to join the Teamsters, because when they asked his name, they would have understood him to say Me, Hoffa. and they would have dismissed him as an imposta.] Megoffer was a student of Matejko in 1887 at the Cracow Fine Arts Academy; in 1890 he attended the Vienna Fine Arts, and in 1891-1896 attended the Academy Colarossi and the Paris Beaux-Arts. Wyspiaski, who studied with him, influenced him in his decorative work. Mehoffer illustrated magazines such as Zycie and Chimera and won a reputation as a designer of stained-glass. The great work of his life was the preparation of the cartoons for the stained-glass windows of the Cathedral of St Nicolas in Fribourg, Switzerland. — From 1887 he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków under Wladyslaw Luszczkiewicz [1828–1900] and Jan Matejko [24 Jun 1838 – 01 Nov 1893]. In 1889 Mehoffer and Stanislaw Wyspianski, as the two most talented students of the School, were engaged to assist Matejko in his decorative wall paintings for the Gothic Church of St Mary in Kraków. This work aroused Mehoffer’s interest in both fresco and stained glass. In 1889–1890 he studied at the Kunstakademie, Vienna, and in 1891 he travelled through Salzburg, Innsbruck and Basle (where the work of Arnold Böcklin caught his imagination), eventually going to Paris. There he studied at the Académie Colarossi, at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs and, from 1892, in the atelier of Léon Bonnat at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts. During his stay in Paris (1891–1896) he devoted much time to studying works by the Old Masters in the Louvre; he also studied architecture, making a tour of medieval cathedrals in France in 1893. He took an interest in current history painting and exhibitions of contemporary art, especially the paintings of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Mehoffer’s early works, such as Maternity (1894), Objects on a Mantelpiece (1895; both Poznan, N. Mus.) and Dance Naïve (1898), inspired by a theme from Paul Verlaine’s poem Les Ingénues, reveal the extent to which he had absorbed the characteristics of the Nabi artists, to whom he was drawn for their tendencies towards decorative synthesis, refined stylization and tasteful tonality. Mehoffer employed an expressionistic variant of Symbolism to create an atmosphere suggestive of unease and impending disaster, as in the painting The Ravine (La Gorge de Reusse, 1897; Poznan, N. Mus.), as well as in the several versions from this period of The Muse. LINKS The Strange Garden (1903) _ In the midst of a dream garden where a toddler is taking his first steps watched fondly by his mother, the artist had introduced a giant Gallé-like dragonfly a dramatic touch which serves to underscore the painting's message that happiness and indeed life itself are precarious things. — the Artist's Wife (1904) — Europa Jubilans (1905) — May Sun (1911) — History of the Holy Cross (stained glass window, 1924) |
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Born on 19 April 1849: Eva
Gonzalès, Mme Henri Guérard, French Impressionist
painter who died on 05 May 1883. — Her first introduction to art was through her parents. Her father, Emmanuel Gonzalès (of Spanish origin but naturalized French), was a well-known writer; her mother, a Belgian, was an accomplished musician. The family salon was a meeting place for critics and writers including Théodore de Banville and Philippe Jourde, the director of the newspaper Siècle. At 16 she had art lessons with the society portraitist Charles Chaplin [1825-1891], who ran a studio for women. Gonzalès rented a studio in the Rue Bréda and under Chaplin’s guidance made figure compositions and landscapes, exhibiting at the Salon of 1870 as his student. Eva Gonzalès was born in Paris into the family of the writer Emmanuel Gonzalez. In 1865, she began her professional training and took lessons in drawing. In 1869, she met Édouard Manet [23 Jan 1832 – 30 Apr 1883] and became his student and model. She exhibited for the first time at the Salon in 1870. Thereafter she submitted work every year to the Salon. Until 1872, she was strongly influenced by Manet but later developed her own, more personal style. Her watercolors with their bright colors and soft forms achieved great success. During the Franco-Prussian War she stayed in Dieppe. In 1879, she married a brother of the graphic artist Henri Guérard. She died during childbirth, five days after Manet. LINKS — Afternoon Tea (On the Terrace) (1875) — Le Petit Lever (1876) — Jeanne Gonzales (1/4 from back) — Woman in White (1879) — Indolence (1872) — La Toilette — Secretly (1878) _ Reading a book instead of practicing the piano. — Roses in a Glass (1882) — White Shoes (1880) Enfant de troupe (1870) Une Loge au Théâtre des Italiens (1874) Morning Awakening (1876) La Modiste (1877) |
Died on 19 April 2000: Michael, 27, lowland gorilla who knew about 500 gestures in American Sign Language, at the Gorilla Foundation's preserve 40 km south of San Francisco. Michael was a talented and prolific painter and a lover of classical music. |