search 7500+ artists, their works, museums, movements, countries, time periods, media, specializations
<<< ART 07 Dec
ANY DAY ...IN ART ...IN HISTORY ||| HISTORY “4” DEC 08 ||| ALTERNATE SITES
ART 09 Dec >>>
ART “4” “2”-DAY  08 December
RITHM
HIT
abspic
4~2day
DEATHS: 1919 WEIR — 1824 GIRODET — 1818 FÜGER — 1681 TER BORCH
BIRTHS:  1826 LEGA — 1922 FREUD — 1886 RIVERA — BAPTISM: 1614 COQUES

^ Died on 08 December 1919: Julian Alden Weir, US painter, etcher, lithographer, and teacher, born on 30 August 1852. — [Was Weir weird?]
— Born in West Point NY, he died in New York City. He was one of the earliest US Impressionists. He was the son of Robert Walter Weir [18 Jun 1803 – 01 May 1889], professor of drawing at West Point, 1834-1876; and half-brother of the Director of the School of Fine Arts at Yale University, John Ferguson Weir [28 Aug 1841 – 08 Apr 1926]; and a founder of the Society of American Artists (1877).
     His art education began in the studio of his father. There he and John Ferguson Weir acquired an appreciation for the Old Masters, particularly of the Italian Renaissance and of the 17th-century Dutch schools. While Weir pursued in his art a course very different from that of his father and half-brother, his personality as well as his artistic attitudes were shaped by them. In the winters of 1870–1871 and 1871–1872, he continued his studies at the National Academy of Design in New York, where his instructor was Lemuel Wilmarth [1835–1918].
He also studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme.
Weir's students included Philip Leslie Hale.
Photo of Weir
LINKS
Noonday Rest in New England (1897, 100x127cm) — Ideal Head (43x35cm)
Alex Webb Weir (1877, 36x31cm; full size, 168kb)
The Muse of Music (1883, 112x88cm; 3/10 size, 209kb _ ZOOM to 3/5 size, 881kb)
Landscape (1899, 28x45cm; half size, 72kb _ ZOOM to full size, 308kb)
Lady with a Mandolin51 prints at FAMSF
The Oldest Inhabitant (1876, 166x81cm) _ J. Alden Weir is best remembered as a leading US Impressionist, but he did not always embrace this progressive style. "They do not observe drawing nor form but give you an impression of what they call nature," he wrote to his parents after viewing the French Impressionist exhibition in Paris. "It was worse than the Chamber of Horrors." Weir's reaction is a reflection of his training from 1873 to 1877 at the École des Beaux-Arts under Jean-Léon Gérôme, who emphasized the careful observation of detail, precise drawing, and high finish that was challenged by the Impressionists.
      The Oldest Inhabitant typifies the oeuvre of Weir's student years and reveals his involvement with the European artists working in France. Weir had spent the summer of 1874 in Brittany, where he met Robert Wylie, a painter of peasant life, whose dark, rich palette and love of local French costumes and customs is reflected in The Oldest Inhabitant. During 1874, Weir became friendly with students of Jules Bastien-Lepage, whose scenes of French peasant life are rendered with exacting detail. That summer, Weir decided to paint in Cernay-la-Ville, a village southwest of Paris, where he knew his companions would be French painters, stating, "I know I will learn more and be more serious if I remain with the Frenchmen."
      The Oldest Inhabitant
, the largest painting of his student years, resulted from this summer's work, although it took him another year to complete it. Weir began the painting by 10 September 1875, but was still working on it the following 05 July, when he wrote home from Cernay-la-Ville: "Yesterday was the glorious 'Fourth.' I celebrated in a quiet way by leaving Paris on the 8 A.M. train.... I have brought my large canvas with me, which I expect to finish for the ex [hibition] of the end of the year ... the old peasant is in good health ... I lost little time and all goes well . . . . "
      Weir's sojourn at Cernay-la-Ville ended dramatically when he was unexpectedly summoned back to Paris to take an examination at the Ecole. Riding the stage coach to the train station, he remembered he had left The Oldest Inhabitant behind. "I got out to run back, being assured that I would never catch the train ... [but] everything counted on my canvas." When he reached the hotel he ordered the best horse in town and galloped off, canvas in hand. He rode on to the next stage stop, where it was market day, and, "the most dangerous part ... my horse balked at something, and walked all through the butter and egg pots. The peasants were bawling at me at the top of their lungs.” There Weir was able to join his fellow travelers, who applauded his great effort.
      In The Oldest Inhabitant the importance of the model's advanced age is underscored by the inscription Weir painted as though carved into the wood of the cabinet: "July 4th 1876 / La plus Vielle de Cernay / née le 4 Juin / 1794." The date, 04 July 1876, cannot refer simply to the painting's completion or of the model's death because she continued to pose for him. This eighty-two -year- old woman's life had spanned a tumultuous period of her nation's history, reaching back to the French Revolutionary War. Weir may have also been marking the passage of time in the US . Independence Day was a special holiday for the painter, who was raised at West Point, and who, a year earlier, had written warmly of the festivities that marked the holiday there. Of course, Weir's elderly subject, with a wrinkled visage reflecting character and implying wisdom, also draws on a strong artistic tradition that stretches back to seventeenth-century paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn, whom Weir greatly admired.
      Though Weir wished to remain in France, in the spring of 1877 he submitted The Oldest Inhabitant for exhibition at the National Academy of Design in anticipation of his return home that October. The work received favorable placement and was hailed by one critic as an "admirable performance, coming near truly great." Peasant subjects continued to appear in Weir's work, largely because of his frequent foreign travel, but in the late 1880s, he turned decisively to painting scenes of contemporary US life in a style that increasingly found its inspiration in Impressionism.

^ Born on 08 Dec 1826: Silvestro Lega, Italian painter who died on 21 September (21 November?) 1895.
— From 1843 to 1847 he attended the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence, studying drawing under Benedetto Servolini [1805–1879] and Tommaso Gazzarini [1790–1853], then, briefly, painting under Giuseppe Bezzuoli. About 1847 he entered Luigi Mussini’s school , where the teaching emphasized the 15th-century Florentine “Purismo” principles of drawing and orderly construction. Then and for some years afterwards he continued to attend the Scuola del Nudo of the Accademia. Antonio Ciseri was one of his teachers. After fighting in the military campaigns for Italian independence (1848–1849) Lega resumed his training, this time under Antonio Ciseri, making his first large-scale painting, Doubting Thomas (1850). In 1852 he won the Concorso Trienniale dell’Accademia with David Placating Saul (1852), a subject taken from the play Saul (1782) of Vittorio Alfieri [16 Jan 1749 – 08 Oct 1803].
— Silvestro Lega, romagnolo di nascita, svolse la sua formazione giovanile presso l’Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze dove fu allievo di Giuseppe Bezzuoli. Dopo un esordio dai tratti fondamentalmente accademici, si accostň alla tecnica a macchia degli artisti che si riunivano al Caffč Michelangelo, compiendo una evoluzione in senso realista ma con caratteristiche personali. Pittore molto dotato tecnicamente, realizzň le sue opere migliori tra il 1867 e il 1868, quali Il canto dello stornello, Il pergolato, La visita, che rimangono tra le opere piů alte dell’Ottocento italiano. Il contenuto dei suoi quadri tende ad esaltare la semplicitŕ delicata e gli affetti puri che caratterizzano la piccola borghesia italiana di quegli anni. Nei suoi quadri vi č sempre un po’ di commozione nostalgica per questo piccolo mondo vissuto in piccoli centri urbani.
LINKS
— Il Pergolato (1868) _ Piccolo capolavoro di poesia intimistica, questo quadro, tra i piů famosi di Lega, sintetizza le diverse scelte stilistiche e poetiche dell’artista. Notiamo innanzitutto il soggetto: č una rappresentazione di un realismo quasi fotografico che coglie una realtŕ molto ordinaria e comune. Lo spazio prospettico presenta una metŕ piů profonda, quella a sinistra, in cui si colloca un pergolato che crea un angolo fresco ed accogliente, ed una metŕ meno profonda nella parte anteriore, ma che si apre in lontananza verso una ariosa campagna. Dalla metŕ di destra proviene una donna con un vassoio in mano su cui porta un bricco di caffč. Nell’altra metŕ sono collocate tre giovani donne sedute ed una bambina. Sono protette dal fresco del pergolato e stanno conversando in maniera tranquilla e rilassata. Tutta la scena č pervasa da una calma e da un silenzio evidenti.
      Il realismo di Lega č accentuato dalla sua virtuosistica capacitŕ di riuscire a rappresentare con una fedeltŕ immediata anche i particolari piů banali della scena. Ciň che perň dŕ una nota stilistica del tutto originale č la sua tavolozza molto chiara e brillante, utilizzata sempre con la tecnica della macchia. I colori hanno una luminositŕ che ben rappresentano il piacere piů evidente del momento rappresentato: il contrasto tra luce ed ombra. La luce č la vera protagonista, l’ombra del pergolato serve proprio ad enfatizzare la luce che circonda la scena. Questa luce cosě forte costringe il pittore a scegliere una tecnica che accentua ulteriormente il realismo e, insieme, la liricitŕ della scena: il controluce. Le figure, infatti, sono tutte viste nel loro lato in ombra. Questa tecnica, che rimanda inevitabilmente a Millet, serve qui ad enfatizzare il senso di piacere interiore che l’ombra crea nello spazio rappresentato.
      La rappresentazione di un momento di vita quotidiana semplice ed ordinaria serve a Lega per cogliere quell’attimo fuggente di piaceri semplici della vita piccolo borghese, vissuta in cittŕ, piccole o grandi, che conservano ancora un rapporto felice con lo spazio della campagna. L’Ottocento italiano č tutto in questo quadro: la sua vita, i suoi tempi, le sue sensazioni, la sua luce.
— Il canto dello stornello (1867) _ Il quadro č una delle tele piů belle realizzate in tutto l’Ottocento italiano. Prova di grande virtuosismo tecnico, la tela rappresenta con fotografica analiticitŕ un momento quotidiano di grande semplicitŕ. Le tre donne intente a cantare mentre una di loro suona il piano č un esempio dei piů classici di quel lirismo intimo comune a gran parte della produzione artistica italiana del secolo. Lega pone la scena in controluce di fronte ad una finestra aperta. Da quella finestra entra non solo luce ma anche il respiro profondo di un’atmosfera pulita che sa di campi coltivati e colline lontani, sensazione che mai prima un quadro aveva trasmesso con tanta intensitŕ.
Maternita' (88x52cm) — The Folk Song (1867) — The Betrothed (1869)
^ Died on 08 (09?) December 1824:
Anne-Louis Girodet
de Roussy~Trioson (or Roussy~Trioson), French painter born on 29 January 1767.
— Girodet was named ‘de Roussy’ after a forest near the family home, Château du Verger, Montargis. He took the name Trioson in 1806, when he was adopted by Dr. Benoît-François Trioson [–1815], his tutor and guardian and almost certainly his natural father. Girodet took lessons, in his native Montargis, from a local drawing-master in 1773, and by 1780 was studying architecture in Paris, where he became a student of the visionary Neo-classical architect Étienne-Louis Boullée. Boullée persuaded Girodet to study painting under Jacques-Louis David, and Girodet joined David’s atelier in late 1783 or early 1784. He belonged to the highly successful first generation of David’s school, which included Jean-Germain Drouais, François-Xavier Fabre, François Gérard, Antoine-Jean Gros, and Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Wicar. David’s pupils showed great stylistic uniformity, based on a close emulation of his elevated Neo-classicism, and Girodet’s early compositions are distinguishable from those of his contemporaries only by their slight quirkiness and excessive attention to detail.
— The students of Girodet included Hyacinthe Aubry-Lecomte, Édouard Bertin, Antoni Brodowski, Eugčne Devéria, Théodore Gudin, Mathieu Kessels, Charles Langlois, Antonin-Marie Moine, Henry Monnier, Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, Philippe Jacques Van Brée.
LINKS
Self-Portrait
Mort de Camille (1784; 2020x2599pix, 5365kb)
Hippocrate Refuse les Cadeaux d'Artaxerxès (1792; 1834x2485pix; 7786kb) _ This painting urges the rejection of tainted wealth. When the fame of Hippocrates [460–377BC] reached the Persians, who were suffering from a pestilential epidemic, their king, Artaxerxes II (reigned 404-359BC), begged him to come to him, making his request through Hystanes, Governor of the Hellespont, and offering great gifts. Hippocrates spurns the Persians' bribe of opulent treasures with which they entice him to heal their sick. This classical physician was much admired during the period of the new Republic for his civic virtue and his brave patriotism. The Encyclopedia of Diderot and d'Alembert praised him as a "bon patriote". Artists such as Girodet urged the people of France to accept their civic responsibility by offering them such inspiring images as Hippocrates' deep loyalty and allegiance to his people. The figures at the center of the drama gesture vigorously at each other. Their outstretched limbs form a frame around the controversial riches. Hippocrates' extended hand imparts his answer to the Persians' plea, as he will not deign even to look the strangers in the face.
La Révolte au Caire (1810; 1859x2790pix, 8112kb)
Ossian Accueille les Ombres des Héros Français dans son Palais Céleste (1802; 1585x1500pix; 3257kb)
Hortense de Beauharnais (1808) — La Femme au Turban
Endymion Endormi (1793; 588x800pix, 124kb — ZOOM to 1968x2677pix, 1550kb)
L'Enterrement d'Atala (1808; 588x750pix, 116kb — ZOOM to 1980x2536pix, 619kb)
La Nouvelle Danaë (1799; oval 2580x2099pix, 2156kb)
Chateaubriand (1810; 2568x2024pix; 762kb) — Le Baron Larrey (1810; 2443x2024pix; 743kb)
Le Citoyen Jean-Baptiste Belley, Ex-Représentant des Colonies— (1798; 797x547pix, 107kb — ZOOM to 2730x1920pix, 3596kb) _ Beginning in 1791, Haiti’s enslaved Africans joined the revolution and overthrew the colonial regime. As the revolution thought through the consequences of the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) and the abolition of the monarchy (1792), it became clear that slavery would have to go. On 03 February 1794, a group of Haitian delegates to the Convention successfully proposed the abolition of slavery. One of these men was Jean-Baptiste Belley, a former slave who had been born in West Africa. In his portrait, Girodet makes a remarkable evocation of the tensions of the period expressed through one person’s body. Belley stands against a tropical landscape, wearing the uniform of a Convention member. His face is rendered in the traditional three-quarter style used for nobles and monarchs. Belley rests on a bust of the Encyclopedist philosopher abbé Guillaume-Thomas Raynal [12 Apr 1713 – 06 Mar 1796] (portrait engraving), author-editor of the 6-volume L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (1770), who had called for the abolition of slavery. The marble whiteness of the bust and its classical straight forehead contrast with Belley’s dark skin and a prominently sloped forehead. In the period, this cranial angle, as it was called, was taken as a mark of low intelligence. How should this portrait be understood? The simple fact that an African was painted in the royal style by a European artist marks a remarkable shift, while the various markers placed on his body by the artist tried to assert a new form of superiority: that of race. — Belley fut le premier député noir d'une assemblée francaise. Né en Afrique, transporté ŕ 2 ans ŕ Saint-Domingue, plus tard affranchi, il a fait la guerre d'Indépendance des Etats-Unis. Il fut un des trois députés de la partie nord de Saint-Domingue élus en septembre 1793 — sur les indications de Sonthonax. Plus tard, il retourne a Saint-Domingue avec l'expédition Leclerc comme officier de gendarmerie, mais sera renvoyé et deporté à Belle-Isle, oů il meurt en 1805.
^ Born on 08 Dec 1922: Lucian Freud, Berlin-born Jewish British painter, son of architect Ernst Freud [1892–1970] and grandson of psychoanalysis' inventor Sigmund Freud [06 May 1856 – 23 Sep 1939].
— His family very wisely moved to England in 1932 (before Hitler became dictator, but not before he became a notorious agitator), and in 1939 he became a naturalized British subject and enrolled at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, Dedham, run by Cedric Morris. Apart from a year in Paris and Greece, Freud spent most of the rest of his career in Paddington, London, an inner-city area whose seediness is reflected in Freud’s often somber and moody interiors and cityscapes. In the 1940s he was principally interested in drawing, especially the face, as in Naval Gunner (1941), and occasionally using a distorted style reminiscent of George Grosz, as in Page from a Sketchbook (1941). He began to turn his attention to painting, however, and experimented with Surrealism, producing such images as The Painter’s Room (1943), which features an incongruous arrangement of objects, including a stuffed zebra’s head, a battered chaise longue and a house plant, all of which survived his Surrealist phase and appeared separately in later paintings. He was also loosely associated with Neo-Romanticism, and the intense, bulbous eyes that characterize his early portraits show affinities with the work of other artists associated with the movement, such as John Minton, whose portrait he painted in 1952. He established his own artistic identity, however, in meticulously executed realist works, imbued with a pervasive mood of alienation. He was described by Herbert Read as ‘the Ingres of existentialism’ because of such images as those of his first wife, Kitty (the daughter of Jacob Epstein), nervously clutching a rose in Girl with Roses (1948)
LINKS
Reflection (self portrait) (1985, 56x51cm; 982x885pix, 155kb)
Reflection with two children (self portrait) (1965, 91x91cm; 737x735pix, 82kb)
The painter's mother III (1972, 32x23cm; 874x628pix, 119kb)
Painter's Mother in Bed (1983 drawing, 24x33cm; full size)
Girl with a white dog (1952, 76x102cm; 792x1062pix, 142kb) _ It looks like she has just finished breastfeeding the dog and it gave the dog a belly ache. This is a less typical depiction of the nude, as the subject’s body is only partially revealed. The model is Kitty Epstein, Freud’s first wife and daughter of the sculptor Jacob Epstein. She is the subject of the intense observation that is characteristic of Freud’s paintings in the early 1950s. Details are described with a stark clarity. There is a strange visual rhyming between the lines on the bed and the fabric of the backdrop, the curled up dog and the folds of Kitty’s robe. The smooth, linear style has its roots in the French neoclassicist painter Ingres, while the particular psychological atmosphere led the critic Herbert Read to call Freud, ‘the Ingres of Existentialism’.
Girl with a kitten (1947, 40x30cm; 861x649pix, 121kb) _ It looks like she is absent-mindedly strangling the passive big-eyed kitten.
Interior in Paddington (1951, 152x114cm)
Large Interior W.11 (after Watteau) (1983, 186x198cm) _ Freud produced this, for him unusually large, painting using the daylight flooding in from the newly-installed skylight in his west London flat. Its composition derives from the painting Pierrot Content (35x31cm; 2/3 size, 502kb) by Jean-Antoine Watteau [10 Oct 1684 – 18 Jul 1721], showing a Pierrot flanked by two flirting couples. Freud's painting is focussed around Suzy Boyt's son Kai (in yellow) who takes the place of Pierrot. Around him are the women in Freud's life: his daughter Bella playing the mandolin, Kai's mother to the right, holding a fan, and the painter, Celia Paul, on the left. Freud wanted one of his grand-daughters to pose for the smaller figure in the foreground, though in the end he had to make do with a substitute. He described the finished result as 'A slight bit of role playing'.
Factory in North London (1972, 71x71cm)
Two Plants (1980, 150x120cm) _ In the mid-1960s Freud embarked on a series of paintings of botanical subjects, an interest that was anticipated in an earlier painting, Interior in Paddington (1951). Two Plants is rendered with meticulous precision and is perhaps Freud's most ambitious and most resolved expression of this theme. He began the painting in 1977 and it took three years to complete. Freud recalls that it provided a means of accustoming himself to the light of a new studio. He describes it as 'lots of little portraits of leaves', adding 'I wanted it to have a really biological feeling of things growing and fading and leaves coming up and others dying'.
^ Died on 08 December 1818: Friedrich-Heinrich Füger, Austrian painter born on 05 November 1751.
— Füger was a fahionable portraitist and respected master of his period. As director of the Academy in Vienna he guarded the rigid system of Classicism against the new tendencies. He was the master of several Hungarian painters and he worked in Hungary, too. He executed portraits for the Haller family and altarpieces for Pannonhalma.
— At the age of eight he was already painting miniature portraits. In 1764 he entered the Hohe Karlsschule in Stuttgart and received drawing lessons from Nicolas Guibal. Overawed by the great historical paintings in the ducal gallery, he lost heart and moved to Halle to study law; but in 1771 public demand for his miniatures encouraged him to return to painting, and in that year he moved to Leipzig, to the school of Adam Friedrich Oeser, where he became acquainted with Classical art. Returning from this two-year training, he was introduced to the works of the Italian Renaissance by Guibal. His fresh and natural miniature portraits on ivory remained in demand; portraits of his parents (1774) also date from these years. During a stay in Dresden, Füger met the British Ambassador, Sir Robert Murray Keith [1730–1795]. In 1774 he followed him to Vienna, where Keith organized numerous portrait commissions at the Austrian court.
— The students of Füger included Eustatie Altini, Moritz Michael Daffinger, Peter Krafft, Leopold Kuppelwieser, Johann Baptist Lampi, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Joseph Karl Stieler, Martin von Wagner.
LINKS
Selbstbildnis (print) — Selbstbildnis mit dem Bruder Gottlieb Christian aka Der Künstler und sein Bruder am Flügel (1768 print, oval)
János Batsányi (1808, 68x51cm) _ János Batsányi [09 May 1763 – 12 May 1845] was Hungary's leading political poet of the age of Hungarian Enlightenment during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, and he was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Science. His political poetry was anti-royalist and advocated revolution and radical social change. His most famous political poem is A franciaországi változánokra (“On the changes in France”). He was imprisoned in Hungary for a year and in 1796 moved to Vienna and later to Paris, where the Austrians seized him after the fall of Napoléon and interned him in Linz for the remaining 30 years of his life. Batsányi also wrote fine lyric poems.
_ Batsányi János a magyar felvi-lágosodás egyik legjelentosebb költoje. A jako-binus mozgalomban való részvétele miatt börtön-büntetést, majd Napoleonnak a magyarokhoz intézett kiáltványa fordításáért számuzetést szen-vedett. Mind a költo, mind felesége, a népszeru bécsi költono, Baumberg Gabriella, viszontag-ságos életük során mindig a legjobb osztrák muvészekre; bízták arcvonásaik megörökítését. Így képmásukat Friedrich Heinrich Füger mellett Vinzenz Georg Kininger és Johann Niedermann is megfestette. A Füger mellképen a költoi hivatásra utaló attribútumok, a háttérben elhelyezett köny-vek nem játszanak túlságosan nagy szerepet, hogy a jellemábrázolás legfontosabb tényezoje az arc minél teljesebben érvényesülhessen. Ezt emeli ki haj szürkéje, a nyakravaló fehérje és a sárgásbarna drapéria is. A balról beeso fény a plaszticitást fokozza. A bécsi klasszicizmus jeles mestere Batsányi képmásával az egyik legszebb magyar íróarcképet alkotta meg.
Apoll und die Musen (1780; 470x620pix, 203kb) — Sir Robert Keith (b&w photo of miniature)
^ Born on 08 December 1886: Diego María Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, Mexican Social Realist muralist who died on 25 November 1957. Rivera's third wife was the painter Frida Kahlo.
— Diego Rivera produced murals on social themes. He was born in Guanajuato and educated in Mexico City. He studied painting in Europe between 1907 and 1921. Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921 and became prominent in the country's revival of mural painting. Believing art should serve working people and be readily available to them, he concentrated on creating large frescoes portraying the history and social problems of Mexico. He painted them on the walls of public buildings, including the National Palace in Mexico City (1929) and the Palace of Cortes in Cuernavaca (1930). Greatly influenced by indigenous Mexican art, Rivera's murals are simple and bold and, as social comment, have aroused much controversy among political and religious groups in both the United States and Mexico.
— Diego Rivera was one of the greatest artists in the XXth century. Born in Guanajuato Mexico, in 1892 he moved to Mexico City with his family. He studied in the San Carlos Academy and in the carving workshop of artist José Guadalupe Posada, whose influence was decisive. Later in Paris, he received the influence of post-modernism and cubism, the mediums in which he expressed himself with ease. Diego Rivera with the use of classicist, simplified and colorful painting recovered the pre-columbian past catching the most significant moments in mexican history: the earth, the farmer, the laborer, the custumes and popular characters. Diego Rivera 's legacy to modern mexican art was decisive in murals and canvas; he was a revolutionary painter looking to take art to the big public, to streets and buildings, managing a precise, direct, and realist style, full of social content.
LINKS
Self-portrait (574x423pix, 77kb)
Self-portrait (1930 lithograph, 40x28cm; 2/3 size, 234kb)
Two Women and a Child (1926, 74x80cm; recommended 3/10 size_ ZOOM to 3/5 size) _ Only one hand and the hair of the baby is seen, as it is held by a woman seen from the back. Both women are sitting on the ground.
picture too ugly?Agrarian Leader Zapata (1932) _ The legend of the Mexican Revolution, Emiliano Zapata [1873-1919], was a theme of several representations by masterful Diego Rivera during his pictorial trajectory. The first time he painted Zapata, was on his cubist work Paisaje zapatista (1915), then he appears on the murals of the Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo (1926-1927); after that he is seen as the great revolutionary figure of Mexico on the murals he realized inside the Secretaría de Educación Pública in 1928. It can´t be forgotten the way in which the celebrated phrase "Tierra y libertad" was painted by the "sapo-rana" artist, as he called himself, on the murals of Palacio Nacional (1929, 1930 and 1935).
     In this image [>], we see a Zapata painted in 1930-1931, that guides his agrarian revolutionaries; this panel is part of the removable mural that Rivera made for his individual exhibit in the Modern Art Museum of New York. Zapata appears with his white vestment in front of his revolutionaries; at his feet lies a fallen enemy, that no doubt is a property-owner. Emiliano Zapata with his left hand dominates a steed, that reminds us much to the horses of the Renaissance artist Paolo Uccello [1397 – 10 Dec 1475]. We just need to remember that Riviera on his trip to Italy from 1920 to 1921, produced several sketches about the horses that are part of Uccello´s masterpiece The Battle of San Romano. By this work, Rivera also swears allegiance to the lands of South Mexico, that was the battlefield of the agrarian revolutionary, as he presents a splendid vegetation, a humid land and in the piece can be felt that freshness of the thickness when printing greenish tones of incomparable richness. Diego Rivera is one of the Mexican Art's pillars, without him, its history would have been different.
Zapata (1932 lithograph, 41x33cm; 3/5 size, 202kb) _ this is the black-and-white lithograph made after the painting shown above.
Sugar CaneFlower Carrier (1935) — Calla Lilies
Flower Vender (1949) — Seated Woman
La Casteñeda (1904) — Los Viejos (1912)
Sueño de una Tarde de Domingo en el Parque de la Alameda (1948; 478x1790pix, 116kb) _ detail in center (642x831pix, 159kb) _ detail on the right (519x460pix, 70kb)
Noche de los Ricos (1928; 1035x495pix, 140kb) _ the banner at the top read “todos los pesos duros”.
Open Air School (1932 lithograph; 786x1020pix, 245kb) _ The nine peasant students sitting on the ground around the teacher seem to range from about 8 to 90 years old. They are observed by a gun-toting guard mounted on a horse, while farm laborers with three teams of mules plough in the background.
Fruits of Labor (1932 lithograph; 1120x792pix, 271kb) _ A woman passes out an apple each to the six children surrounding her, while a man at her side hold a book open toward the viewer.
^ Died on 08 December 1681: Gerard Ter Borch II (or Terburg), Dutch painter born in 1617.
— Ter Borch, Gerard was a Dutch painter, born in Zwolle, the son of a painter. He went to England in 1635, to Italy in 1640, and in 1648 to Münster, Westphalia, where he painted his celebrated Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Münster (1648, National Gallery, London), marking the recognition of Dutch independence. Containing 60 likenesses, this work is a perfect specimen of miniature portrait painting and one of the most imposing historical works in Dutch art. From 1648 to 1651 Ter Borch was in Madrid. Despite his extensive foreign travels, he remained a painter of Dutch family life. He worked in the realistic tradition of Frans Hals, Jan Vermeer, and other Dutch painters, with careful attention to lighting and the rendering of fabric. He produced charmingly realistic portraits, such as Helena van der Schalke as a Child (1645), and small, intimate genre scenes, such as The Music Lesson (1672).
LINKS
Gallant Conversation (The Paternal Admonition) giant reproduction (1654) (small reproduction) Version 1.
Paternal Admonition (1655, 70x60cm) Version 2 _ This painting having the popular title of Parental Admonition (link above to another version) was the subject of a charming passage by Goethe. In his novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften (“Elective Affinities”) Goethe notes the delicacy of attitude of the figures. He remarks how the father quietly and moderately admonishes his daughter who is seen from behind. The woman in black, sipping from a glass, Goethe interprets as the young woman's mother, who lowers her eyes so as not to be too attentive to the 'father's admonition'. This moralizing title, however, is without foundation and not in accordance with Ter Borch's usual themes.
      The authoritative biographer of the artist interprets the picture in the opposite sense, as a brothel scene, assuming that the seated gentleman holds a coin in his right hand, offering it to the girl. In fact, the detail of the coin is not visible. (The coin is omitted in the engraving Goethe knew). In the Berlin version the passage is rubbed; a former owner may have had it painted over because she or he found it an embarrassing allusion. The Amsterdam version does not show the coin either, but its original paint surface is generally abraded; thus it is impossible to tell if it ever included the tell-tale coin.
      Ter Borch's psychology is so delicate that the common scenes he repeatedly painted are raised to the level of highly civilized life. That Goethe's interpretation was possible at all shows the refinement of Ter Borch's treatment. Even if he made a mistake, Goethe had the right feeling for the way Ter Borch treated his subjects. Psychologically and pictorially he retains a sensitive touch and delicacy. The young woman is seen from behind; thus her face is averted. The only flesh visible is her neck, which is modelled with tender, silvery grey shadows. We have, however, opportunity to admire the silver-grey satin and black velvet of her gown.
      Ter Borch's minuteness and nicety of handling concentrate largely on painting stuffs. Contrary to Vermeer's paintings, the dim light and the subdued chiaroscuro do not allow a forceful grasp of the whole field of vision. The light comes mostly from the front and stops at the glossy surfaces of the costumes and other textures.
Girl in Peasant Costume. Probably Gesina, the Painter's Half-Sister (1650)
Helena van der Schalcke (1648) giant reproduction _ (Small reproduction) _ In 1635-36 Ter Borch was in London where he acquired familiarity with the English court portraiture. During the 1640s he began to make extraordinary small and miniature portraits. One of the most touching is his tiny portrait of Helena van der Schalcke as a Child, which holds his own when hung next to the pictures Hals and Rembrandt made of children.
Memorial Portrait of Moses ter Borch (1669) — The Ratification of the Treaty of Münster (1648) — Woman at a Mirror (1650) —
Officer Writing a Letter (51x38cm) _ It is thought to be an early work of the artist.
The Glass of Lemonade (1659, 67x54cm) _ The young woman depicted in the painting is Gesina Ter Borch, the artist's sister, while the young man is his brother Moses. _ detail (artist's brother)
The Concert (1675) _ Ter Borch's fame rests mainly upon the genre pictures he made after the middle of the 17th century which help define the subjects and pictorial schemes used by many artists of his generation and those who worked later. What sets him apart is his mastery of subtle narration which can charge every episode with subdued tension.
      In contrast to Pieter de Hooch, Ter Borch maintains his fine taste and craftsmanship in his genre pieces until the very end. His contact with Vermeer in Delft in 1635 may have had an impact on the younger master. Then there conceivably was a shift; some of Ter Borch's late works seem to show a sign of Vermeer's influence. The fullness and clarity of the foreground figure playing the cello in the Concert at Berlin and the bright illumination of the room recall the Delft master; but it is also possible that the two artists arrived at similar solutions independently. In any event, the Ter Borch, the exquisite and minute treatment of materials, textures, and stuffs with the most intricate light accents is completely personal. The spatial relationships are not grasped with Vermeer's sureness, and the composition lacks the Delft painter's masterly consideration of the surface plane and the adjustment of the spatial accents to the overall design.
     It will be noted that the figure playing the harpsichord has no Ter Borch character. Originally this figure represented a man. Ter Borch subsequently transformed the man into a woman, and a whimsical restorer, who worked on the picture at the end of the 19th century because of its bad state of presentation, changed the woman's gown and gave the model his wife's features.
A Concert (1675, 58x47cm) _ Ter Borch's fame rests mainly upon the genre pictures he made after the middle of the 17th century which help define the subjects and pictorial schemes used by many artists of his generation and those who worked later. What sets him apart is his mastery of subtle narration which can charge every episode with subdued tension. Few genre painters ever revealed more delicately the character of three individuals and their relation to each other as they ostensibly go about their business of making music in a drawing-room.
The Lute Player (31x27cm) _ The painting is signed on the spine of the book on the table: Gt. Borg FCT.
Man Offering a Woman Coins (1663, 67x55cm) _ This painting is euphemistically known as The Gallant Officer. In this mercenary love scene a soldier offers pieces of money to a young lady who is charming in type and dress. Her reaction is not surprise. The stuff painting is particularly excellent, as is the rendering of the facial expressions and the fine draughtsmanship and subtle lighting of the hands; also the still-life on the table. The apparent casualness is the result of careful thought and execution. The appearance of the tip of the woman's shoe peeking out from under the edge of her satin dress at the tremendous toe of the soldier's wonderful hip boot is as calculated as the color harmony of opulent browns, reds, buff, white, and silver.
A Young Woman Playing a Theorbo to Two Men (1668, 68x58cm) _ Several versions are known of the aristocratic interior by the artist. Many artists have painted beautiful satins and silks , but no one has ever depicted satin more exquisitely than the much-travelled Dutchman Gerard ter Borch. First trained by his father Gerard ter Borch the Elder, who had lived in Italy in his youth, the precocious young painter worked in Amsterdam and Haarlem before venturing to Germany, Italy, England, France and Spain. In 1646 he went to Münster, where he witnessed the ratification of the treaty of 1648 signalling the triumphant end of the Dutch wars of independence from Spain. In 1654, he married and settled down, permanently, in Deventer.
      Whether miniature full-length portraits, or scenes of - supposedly - everyday life, ter Borch's pictures are distinguished by technical and psychological refinement. It seems curious, therefore, that he first specialised in guardroom subjects - although he brings even to the rowdy theme of garrisoned soldiers an element of stillness and reflection. His best-known paintings, however, represent elegant interiors with only a few figures, one of them usually a young woman in ravishing pale satin. Here, in an old-ivory bodice trimmed with fur and a white skirt setting off her fair hair, her shoe propped against a foot warmer, she plays the theorbo, an early form of lute, accompanying the man holding a song book. A man in a cloak looks on, and a spaniel seems to listen. Behind them is a curtained bed. Under the red Turkey carpet covering the table lies a single playing card, the ill-omened ace of spades.
      The woman and the singing man each appear in other paintings by the artist, as do the silver box and candlestick - this is 'selective' naturalism, a scene composed from the imagination with ingredients assembled from drawings and studio props. In Dutch paintings of this type music-making is usually suggestive of love, while playing cards may be emblems of improvidence, and dogs and footwarmers can signify base desires. Yet it would be foolhardy to read this subtle painting, with its subdued tonality, as a scene of the demi-monde. We can never know what the relationships of these three figures are, and their thoughts and feelings, so delicately implied, are infinitely ambiguous. That, surely, was the artist's intention: to evoke imperfectly understood events, tantalising in their suggestion of mutability and transience.
Boy Ridding his Dog of Fleas (1665, 34x27cm) _ With Pieter de Hooch and Johannes Vermeer, Gerard ter Borch is one of the most outstanding of Dutch genre painters. Their paintings are based on close observation of their contemporaries and their surroundings, and yet elements from everyday life are often combined to suggest a particular mood, create an intriguing situation or point a moral.
      Ter Borch, the son of a painter, was born in Zwolle and trained there in the studio of his father and also in the Haarlem workshop of the landscape painter Pieter Molijn. In his youth he travelled widely in Europe - to Germany, Italy, England, France and Spain. By 1654 he had settled in Deventer in his native province of Overijssel, where he achieved great professional success. He also became one of the town's regent class, serving as a councillor and painting a group portrait of his fellow regents.
      In the genre scenes of his early years ter Borch depicted the life of soldiers but after settling in Deventer his paintings often showed elegant interiors in which small groups of figures talk, drink and make music. In this painting ter Borch shows a humbler setting and a mundane subject and yet he treats with the same delicacy and refinement the depiction of the differing textures of fur, hair, wood and felt. As with the painting of The Lace-Maker by Netscher, the painting gives an almost monumental quality to an everyday situation.
The Dancing Couple (1660, 76x68cm) _ This is one of an outstanding group of interior scenes with figures painted by ter Borch in Deventer in the years around 1660. He paints young men and women in elegant rooms, talking, dancing, drinking, making music and flirting. In addition to his skill in setting the scene, ter Borch possesses a remarkable technical gift, especially in the description of texture. No Dutch artist rendered satin more effectively than ter Borch nor was able to differentiate better in the medium of oil paint between the textures of a leather jerkin, a gleaming breastplate, a table carpet, a wooden lute and a brass candelabra.
      In 1658 ter Borch was in Delft where he witnessed a document with the young Vermeer. This recently discovered evidence of a direct contact between the two artists confirms what has long been suggested: that the simplicity and restraint of ter Borch's style exercised an important influence on the Delft painter.
A Woman Spinning _ Ter Borch's fame rests mainly upon the genre pictures he made after the middle of the 17th century which help define the subjects and pictorial schemes used by many artists of his generation and those who worked later. What sets him apart is his mastery of subtle narration which can charge every episode with subdued tension. His rendering of simple themes, such as a woman spinning, shows the same knowledge of people as his more ambitious pieces.
Woman Playing the Lute (36x31cm) _ Formerly it was attributed to Gabriel Metsu. (1629 - 1667).
Woman Reading a Letter (1662, 79x68cm) _ Ter Borch frequently represented elegantly dressed men and women writing or reading letters, often, as here, in the company of servants, family members, or friends quietly awaiting the reader's reactions. Well-to-do burghers relished the aristocratic social ritual of the love letter.
Woman Washing Hands (1655, 53x43cm) _ At Deventer, Ter Borch developed an independent form of genre which in the meticulousness of its execution seems to be close to the Leiden variant. In connection with his remarkable talent for sensitive rendering of the texture of different fabrics, which in all of his mature paintings constitutes a major pictorial motive, Ter Borch showed a preference for subjects associated with Vanity or Luxury. This preference must have a partially aesthetic background, for these subjects allowed him to paint elegant interiors and richly dressed ladies, as in this picture.
The Family of the Stone Grinder (1655)
^ Baptized as an infant on 08 December 1614: Gonzales Coques (or Cockes, Cocx, Cox), Flemish painter specialized in portraits, who died on 18 April 1684. — [Ce n'est pas lui qui a inventé les œufs à la Coques?]
— The artist’s name is in a baptismal register for the year 1614; however, an inscription on an engraved self-portrait of 1649 gives 1618 as his year of birth, and in 1666 he himself claimed to be 48. His name is listed in the archives of Antwerp’s Guild of Saint Luke for 1627–1628, the year he became a student of Pieter Brueghel II. Later he studied under David Rijckaert II. Coques was admitted to the painters’ guild as an independent master only in 1640–1641, this long delay suggesting that he traveled. He may have gone to England, for he was later given the nickname ‘Little van Dyck’, referring to the perceived influence on his work of Anthony van Dyck, who was in England after 1632.
      In 1643 Coques married his teacher’s daughter Catharina Rijckaert [1610–1674], by whom he had two daughters. His second wife, whom he married in 1675, was Catharina Rysheuvels; they had no children. Coques was a respected member of the artistic community in Antwerp: he was twice deacon of the Guild of Saint Luke, was a member of two rhetoricians’ societies and in 1661 was praised by Cornelis de Bie, in whose book there is an engraved portrait of him. An accomplished portrait painter, he was greatly influenced by Rubens and van Dyck, although his figures were generally on a smaller scale, and he enjoyed the patronage of successive Governor Generals of the Netherlands. He died in Antwerp. Two of his students were Cornelis van den Bosch in 1643 and Lenaert Frans Verdussen in 1665–1666.
LINKS
Portrait of a Man (36x26cm) — Un Intérieur Hollandais (etching 36 x50cm)
Smell (Portrait of Lucas Fayd'herbe) (<1661) _ The sitter is Lucas Fayd'herbe [1617-1697], a noted sculptor and architect who was one of Rubens's last students. He worked principally in Malines, and is also depicted in Frachoijs Portrait of Lucas Fayd'herbe. Here he is shown smoking a pipe, as a representation of the sense of Smell. This picture is one of a series of the 'Five Senses'; the fifth, 'Taste', is probably a copy. The series was painted before 1661 when Sight was engraved. The costumes suggest a date of about 1655-1660.
Sight (Portrait of Robert van den Hoecke) (<1661) _ Robert van den Hoeke [1622-1668], was a painter and engraver who worked in Antwerp and in Brussels. He became 'Contrôleur des fortifications' in Flanders and the plan, baldric (belt hung over the shoulder) and sword presumably refer to this office. The identification of the sitter is dependent upon the inscription on an engraving of the portrait by Cauckercken, which appeared in a book published in 1661.

Died on a 08 December:

1910 Jean-Baptiste Robie, Belgian artist born on 21 November 1821.


Born on a 08 December:


1902 Wilfredo (or Wifredo) Lam, Cuban artist who died in 1982. — Born at Sagua la Grande of an Afro-Indian mother and a Chinese father; studied painting at the San Alejandro Academy in La Havana; studied in Madrid in 1923 at the San Fernando Academy; met Picasso in 1938, Breton in 1940 and joined the Surrealist association in 1940; after 1942 he returned to Cuba and increasingly came under the spell of African and Oceanic sculpture and translated these images into irrational, biomorphic configurations which fused human, animal, and vegetable elements in totemic compositions. Following a visit to Haiti in 1946 he also began incorporating images of Voodoo gods and rites in his work; in 1951 he returned to Paris and thereafter travelled back and forth to New York and Italy. — LINKSFlying Figures (1956) — Quetzal, from Brunidor I (1947) — Untitled (opposite p. 43 in the... (1947)

1881 Albert Gleizes, French painter, printmaker, and writer, who died on 24 (23?) June 1953. He grew up in Courbevoie, a western suburb of Paris, and as a student at the Collčge Chaptal became interested in theatre and painting. At 19, his father put him to work in the family interior design and fabric business, an experience that contributed to a lifelong respect for skilled workmanship. The first paintings he exhibited, at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1902, were Impressionist in character, but the work accepted within two years at the Salon d’Automne showed a shift to social themes, a tendency that accelerated until 1908. Compulsory military service from 1903 to 1905 thrust him into the company of working-class people, arousing a permanent sense of solidarity with their aspirations and needs. The results were immediately apparent in the Association Ernest Renan, which he helped to establish in 1905, a kind of popular university with secular and socialist aims. He was also one of the founders of a community of intellectuals based near Paris, the Abbaye de Créteil, which functioned from November 1906 to February 1908. He remained interested during these years in social art, but his paintings became flatter and more somber, more simplified, and with an increased emphasis on structure. Through the circle of poets associated with the Abbaye de Créteil, Gleizes met Henri Le Fauconnier, whose portrait of Pierre-Jean Jouve (1909) made a decisive impression on him, confirming his exploration of volume. His friends soon included Jean Metzinger and Robert Delaunay, with whom he exhibited alongside Le Fauconnier and Fernand Léger at the Salon d’Automne in 1910; the critic Louis Vauxcelles wrote disparagingly {and probably accurately} of their ‘pallid’ cubes. The five artists, plus Marie Laurencin, encouraged by Guillaume Apollinaire, Roger Allard, Alexandre Mercereau, and Jacques Nayral, determined to group themselves together at the Salon des Indépendants in 1911. Manipulating the rules and helping to elect Le Fauconnier chairman of the hanging committee, they showed together in a separate room, marking the emergence of Cubism. Gleizes’s portrait of Jacques Nayral (1911, 162x114cm), one of his first major Cubist works, dates from this period. — The students of Gleizes included Dorrit Black, Evie Hone, Mainie Jellett [1897-1944], Tarsila. — LINKS

1861 Aristide Joseph Bonaventure Maillol, French Art Nouveau / Nabi sculptor who died on 24 September 1944. — LINKS

1858 Vincenzo Migliaro, Italian painter who died on 16 March 1938. He studied under the sculptor Stanislao Lista [1824–1908] and then at the Istituto di Belle Arti in Naples under Federico Maldarelli [1826–1893], Raffaele Postiglione [1818–1897] and Domenico Morelli. In 1877 he won second prize in a national painting competition and in 1884 exhibited, to great acclaim, his view of a Neapolitan square, Piazza Francese, at the Esposizione Nazionale in Turin. He then spent some time in Paris and Venice. Work shown in Naples in 1886 and 1888 was noticed by Francesco Netti, who admired two opposing tendencies in Migliaro’s style: a spontaneous approach with strict regard for effects of light and atmosphere, and a roughness and imprecision resulting in distortion and a lack of realism.

1851 Claude-Emile Schuffenecker, French painter who died in August 1934. In 1871 he entered the stockbroking firm of Bertin, where he met Paul Gauguin who was also employed there. In his spare time he took drawing classes and studied under Paul Baudry and Carolus-Duran, making his début at the Salon in 1874. He also became acquainted with Armand Guillaumin and Camille Pissarro. Following the stock market crash of 1882, he, like Gauguin, was forced to leave Bertin’s and got a job teaching art at the Lycée Michelet in Vanves. In 1884 he was one of the co-founders of the Salon des Indépendants and took part in the 8th and last Impressionist Exhibition in 1886, the year in which he also met Émile Bernard in Concarneau and sent him on to see Gauguin, thus initiating their joint development of Cloisonnism. Though he mixed with the members of the Pont-Aven group his own artistic tastes were very different. While Gauguin and his disciples had little more than contempt for Neo-Impressionism, Schuffenecker was much interested in pointillist techniques.

1850 Luigi Nono, Italian artist who died on 17 October 1918. — [Was his personality affected because, as a child, he was always told by his mother: “Luigi, no no!” and whenever she saw one of his pictures, she would say: “That is a Nono!”?] [Is this also why I cannot find on the Internet any reproduction of his artwork?]

1815 Adolf Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel, German Realist painter, draftsman, illustrator, printmaker, and teacher, who died on 09 February 1905. He was the most important artist working in Berlin in the second half of the 19th century and in his later years was one of the most successful and respected artists in Germany. Living virtually all his life in Berlin, he executed numerous paintings and illustrations relating to events in Prussia’s recent history and was the foremost chronicler of the life of Frederick the Great (reg 1740–86). Through his portraits and industrial scenes and his more intimate studies of interiors and local religious events he became one of the greatest German proponents of Realism. — LINKSMeissonier's Studio, circa 1880 - 1889The Artist's Sister with a Candle (1847) — Portrait of a Man49 prints at FAMSF

1794 John Berney Crome, British artist who died on 15 September 1842. — son of “Old” John Crome [22 Dec 1768 – 22 Apr 1821] — Posthumous portrait of the artist's father (15x17cm) — 20 prints at FAMSF

1587 Martin Ryckaert (or Marten Rijckaert), Flemish artist who died on 11 October 1631. Uncle of David Ryckaert III [bapt. 02 Dec 1612 – 1661] — LINKS

<<< ART 07 Dec
ANY DAY ...IN ART ...IN HISTORY ||| HISTORY “4” DEC 08 ||| ALTERNATE SITES
ART 09 Dec >>>
TO THE TOP
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO WRITE TO ART “4” DEC
http://www.jcanu.hpg.ig.com.br/art/art4dec/art1208.html
http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/all42day/art/art4dec/art1208.html
http://www.safran-arts.com/42day/art/art4dec/art1208.html
http://www.ifrance.com/7aujourdhui/art/art4dec/art1208.html
updated Monday 08-Dec-2003 0:06 UT
safe site
site safe for children safe site