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ART “4” “2”-DAY  20 December
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BIRTH: 1858 TOOROP
^ Born on 20 December 1858: Jan Theodoor Toorop, Dutch Symbolist painter who died on 03 March 1928. — [Vous ne trouvez pas qu'il y a des O de Trop dans son nom?]
— Born in Java, he studied art in Delft and Amsterdam. A grant allowed him to study in Brussels, where he came into contact with the XX group, and became a member in 1885. He befriended Khnopff, Ensor and de Groux. In 1886, he met Whistler in London. He discovered the Pre-Raphaelites and William Morris' views on art and socialism. In 1890 he developed his own version of Symbolism using elements of a Javanese aesthetic. Met Péladan in 1892. In 1905 converted to Catholicism. His themes thereafter became religious and even mystic. His style simplified and he adopted a technique close to Pointillisme, which he put at the service of a fragmentation of the surface of the painting at poles from the measured unity to which Seurat aspired. These fragmentary surfaces relate Toorop to Expressionism.
— Born in Indonesia, Toorop studied in Amsterdam at the Rijksakademie and also at the Brussels Academy, where he joined Les Vingt when Ensor and Khnopff were members. He lived for a time in England before returning to Holland. He organized the first Dutch show of van Gogh in 1892. He continued through Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, and even made some works that recall van Gogh's Potato Eaters style; many of his later paintings were commissions from the Catholic Church. He was a major figure in Dutch art, and reproductions of his works hung in middle-class homes. Toorop's works now look to have been a succession of extremes. Perhaps the most charming to present tastes are his Neo-Impressionist dune-and-sea studies; only grasses and gulls anchor the soft-color dots of paint to a landscape reality. But more breathtaking, for some, are the highly decorative Symbolist works such as Song of Good Tidings (1893), a scene of mythological figures in a stylized landscape in which the linear effects of hair and clouds continue onto the broad, flat surfaces of the frames.
— He moved to the Netherlands in 1872 and took a course in drawing at the Polytechnische School in Delft (1876–1879). He also studied at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (1880–1882) and at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Brussels (1882–1885). In Amsterdam he joined the St. Lukas Society, and in Belgium he was, in 1884, a founder-member of Les XX, whose purpose was to bypass the jury system of the official Brussels Salon and organize their own exhibitions. Local critics nicknamed these neoimpressionists “Les Bubonnistes,” decrying what they saw as a plague descending on traditional art. But the avant-garde in France coveted invitations to exhibit at their annual shows. Van Gogh expressed surprise when asked to join them in 1890: “I should like to exhibit with them very much, though I'm conscious of my inferiority by the side of so many tremendously talented Belgians.”
      Although Toorop had met Jozef Israëls in 1880 and respected the style of the Hague school, he was more attracted by what he saw in Brussels, particularly work by French artists. His portraits of 1884 are painted in an Impressionist style. With other members of Les XX he trained himself in plein-air; he learnt from James Ensor how to apply colors with a palette knife and how to use white with the same intensity as other colors. His style, however, remained austere and his scenes of workmen show a sensitive realism reminiscent of Gustave Courbet’s work, for example Respect for the Dead (1884).
     “Charley” Annie Caroline Pontifex Toorop Fernhout [24 March 1891 – 06 Nov 1955] was the daughter of Jan Toorop.
— William Degouve de Nuncques and Jacoba van Heemskerck van Beest were students of Toorop.

LINKS
Self-Portrait in the Studio (1883, 50x36cm; 724x510pix, 83kb) _ Toorop gazes mistrustfully from beneath his wide-brimmed hat. His eyes are obscured by the shadow of the brim, which makes him seem even more reserved. He is seated at a table in his studio, working on a watercolor. A broken plate serves as a palette. In portraying himself in this fashion, dressed ‘artistically’ and seated in the untidy studio, Toorop emphasizes his role as a non-conformist bohemian artist.
O grave, where is thy Victory (1892, 62x76cm) _ Dreamlike drawing in which two angels are removing thorns from a corpse coveted by the forces of Evil, on the right. Toorop's characteristic flowing curved lines express good, the broken lines evil.
Poster for Delftsche Slaolie (1894) _ Toorop became especially known for his posters, like this one.
The Sea (1887)
A New Generation (1892; 160kb)
Le Passeur d'eau (1895) _ A book illustration for the poem of Émile Verhaeren [21 May 1855 – 27 Nov 1916].

Le passeur d'eau






Le passeur d'eau, les mains aux rames,
A contre flot, depuis longtemps,
Luttait, un roseau vert entre les dents.

Mais celle hélas! Qui le hélait
Au delà des vagues, là-bas,
Toujours plus loin, par au delà des vagues,
Parmi les brumes reculait.

Les fenêtres, avec leurs yeux,
Et le cadran des tours, sur le rivage
Le regardaient peiner et s'acharner
De tout son corps ployé en deux
Sur les vagues sauvages.

Une rame soudain cassa
Que le courant chassa,
A flots rapides, vers la mer.
Celle là-bas qui le hélait
Dans les brumes et dans le vent, semblait
Tordre plus follement les bras,
Vers celui qui n'approchait pas.

Le passeur d'eau, avec la rame survivante,
Se prit à travailler si fort
Que tout son corps craqua d'efforts
Et que son coeur trembla de fièvre et d'épouvante.

D'un coup brusque, le gouvernail cassa
Et le courant chassa
Ce haillon morne, vers la mer.

Les fenêtres, sur le rivage,
Comme des yeux grands et fiévreux
Et les cadrans des tours, ces veuves
Droites, de mille en mille, au bord des fleuves,
Suivaient, obstinément,
Cet homme fou, en son entêtement
A prolonger son fol voyage.

Celle là-bas qui le hélait,
Dans les brumes, hurlait, hurlait,
La tête effrayamment tendue
Vers l'inconnu de l'étendue.
Le passeur d'eau, comme quelqu'un d'airain,
Planté dans la tempête blême
Avec l'unique rame, entre ses mains,
Battait les flots, mordait les flots quand même.
Ses vieux regards d'illuminé
Fouillaient l'espace halluciné
D'où lui venait toujours la voix
Lamentable, sous les cieux froids.

La rame dernière cassa,
Que le courant chassa
Comme une paille, vers la mer.

Le passeur d'eau, les bras tombants,
S'affaissa morne sur son banc,
Les reins rompus de vains efforts,
Un choc heurta sa barque à la dérive,
Il regarda, derrière lui, la rive :
Il n'avait pas quitté le bord.

Les fenêtres et les cadrans,
Avec des yeux fixes et grands
Constatèrent la fin de son ardeur ;
Mais le tenace et vieux passeur
Garda quand même encore, pour Dieu sait quand,
Le roseau vert entre ses dents.

Died on a 20 December:


1929 Paolo Sala, Italian artist born on 14 January 1859. — Not a relative of English journalist and illustrator George Augustus Henry Sala [24 Nov 1828 – 09 Dec 1896] whose real name was Henry Fairfield.

1900 Carl Ludwig Friedrich Becker, German artist born on 18 December 1820.

^ 1900 Frederick Richard Pickersgill, British painter born on 25 September 1820. — LINKSThe Bribe (1857, 75x56cm) Diploma Work — The Contest of Beauty for the Girdle of Florimel Britomartis Unveiling Amoret (1848, 106x152cm) “At last the most redoubted Britonesse, Her louely Amoret did open shew, Whose face, discouered plainly, did expresse heauenly pourtraict of bright angels hew.” – Edmund Spenser (Faerie Queene, book iv., canto 5) — Amoret, Aemylia and Prince Arthur, in the Cottage of Sclaunder (1845, 59x89cm)

1817 Lié-Louis Périn-Salbreux, French artist born on 12 October 1753.

^ 1751 Pierre-Nicolas Huilliot, French artist born in 1674 in a renowned painters' family. He entered the Academy in 1721. He made numerous paintings for the royal family. — LINKSStill Life of Musical Instruments (52x88cm; 680x1206pix, 111kb)


Born on a 20 December:


^ 1914 Robert Colquhoun, Scottish painter and printmaker, born in Kilmarnock, who died in London on 20 September 1962.. He is associated with Robert MacBryde, with whom he worked and whom he met at the Glasgow School of Art in 1932. After a traveling scholarship to France and Italy (1937–1939), he and MacBryde were introduced by Peter Watson to the Neo-Romantic circle in London. During World War II Colquhoun joined the Civil Defence Corps but continued to paint. After his early works, for example Tomato Plants (1942), he concentrated on the theme of the isolated figure, for example Woman with Leaping Cat (1946). These existential images were favorably received and compared with those of contemporaries such as Francis Bacon. Colquhoun’s influences included Pablo Picasso, Jankel Adler and Percy Wyndham Lewis, although his art and lifestyle can be understood best in the context of Scottish nationalism. Always in debt, he had his decline delayed briefly by a retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1958. — Woman in Green (1950, 101x51cm)

1854 Charles Wilda, Austrian artist who died on 11 June 1907. — {Was the artwork of Wilda wilder than the wildest of Wildens [1585 – 16 Oct 1653]?}

^ 1744 (15 Dec?) Jean-François-Pierre Peyron, French painter and draftsman who died on 20 January 1814. — [Ceux qui voudront un Peyron paierons] — He was the son of a provincial administrator and at the wish of his family studied law until the death of his father in 1765, when as a protégé of Michel-François Dandré-Bardon he enrolled in the Ecole de Dessin at Aix-en-Provence. In 1767 he moved to Paris as a student of Louis Lagrenée and also enrolled in the school of the Académie Royale de Peinture. He was also a student of Joseph-Marie Vien. In 1773 he won the Prix de Rome in competition with Jacques-Louis David. Peyron’s version of the prize subject, The Death of Seneca, is known through an engraving by the artist. In 1774, working to designs by Charles-Louis Clérisseau, he decorated the salon of the Hôtel Grimod de la Reynière, Paris, with the first examples of Neo-classical grotesque decoration in 18th-century France. — Nicolas-André Monsiau was a student of Peyron. — LINKSLa Mort d'Alceste ou l'héroïsme conjugal (1785, 327x325cm; 755x750pix, 43kb) _ Malheureusement pour Peyron, le Salon de 1785, où il exposa ce tableau commandé par Louis XVI, fut celui du triomphe de David avec son Serment des Horaces (1784, 330x425cm; 648x833pix, 77kb). La concurrence entre les deux artistes fut permanente et fatale à Pierre Peyron, peintre capital pourtant, et l'une des plus grandes figures du premier néoclassicisme. Le tableau, conservé au Louvre, emprunte à Euripide un de ces exempla virtutis chers à l'esthétique classique : pour avoir négligé de sacrifier à Diane le soir de sa nuit de noces, Admète, roi de Thessalie, doit mourir. Il obtient d'Apollon la possibilité de se faire remplacer aux enfers. Hélas, seule sa femme sera volontaire ! L'ambitieuse composition a été préparée par ce dessin (1784, 36x50cm; 300x418pix, 31kb) et de nombreux autres. — a different version of The Death of Alcestis (1794, 97x97cm; 500x491pix, 98kb) _ The prestigious Grand Prix award enabled Peyron to spend seven years studying in Rome, where he profited from the examples of Italian artists and of his French predecessor Poussin. Peyron returned to enjoy patronage that included a commission for King Louis XVI for the subject of Alcestis' death. The original version was exhibited at the Salon of 1785. Dated 1794, this smaller version reveals some compositional changes. The figures are arranged in studied poses meant to convey the timeless value of the scene. The servant in the center has been repositioned and redrawn to present a profile suggested by antique sculpture. Details of ancient furniture are simplified, and more emphasis is placed on the classical folds of the drapery. The subject is the conjugal virtue of Euripides' tragic heroine Alcestis, who when her husband angered the gods, volunteered to give her life so that he might be spared. The grieving husband and especially the child heighten the sadness of the death scene. The morality of Peyron's subject, popularized in France a few years earlier by Gluck's opera, reflects official rejection of the frivolous rococo period and its obsession with games of love.

^ 1532 Orazio Samachini (or Sammacchini, Sammachini, Somacchini), Italian painter who died on 12 June 1577. Although a student of Pellegrino Tibaldi, his early work mainly reflects the classicism of Raphael as interpreted by Bagnacavallo and the Mannerism of Innocenzo da Imola and Prospero Fontana (i). Simplicity of form, limpid colors and purity of line characterize such early works as The Marriage of the Virgin (1560). Also datable to this early period is The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, which unites the style and typological elements of Fontana with a highly refined use of color reminiscent of early 16th-century south Netherlandish painting. In 1563 Samacchini participated in the decoration of the Belvedere and the Sala Regia in the Vatican. This Roman experience resulted in works characterized by complicated compositional solutions and spaces teeming with lively, clearly articulated figures. The influence of Michelangelo can be seen in The Crucifixion (1568) and in frescoes depicting The Brazen Serpent and Moses Striking the Rock (1577) in Parma Cathedral. The influence of Federico Zuccaro appears in the fresco of Paolo Vitelli Driving the Venetian Army from the Casentino (1574) in the Palazzo Vitelli a Sant’Egidio, Città di Castello, while The Presentation in the Temple (1575) reflects the late work of Vasari. Certain features of the school of Parma, however, can be traced as early as 1569, for example in The Transfiguration, which shows the influence of Parmigianino, and in the later frescoes of Virtues, Prophets and Angels in S. Abbondio, Cremona, which include suggestions of Correggio. A more discreet Mannerism characterizes his last altarpiece, which depicts The Virgin and Child with Saints (1577).

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