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ANY DAY ...IN ART ...IN HISTORY ||| HISTORY “4” FEB 10 ||| ALTERNATE SITES

ART “4” “2”-DAY 10 February

DEATHS: 1772 TOCQUÉ — 1667 MAZO — 1674 BRAMER — 1765 DESHAYS — 1861 DANBY — 1927 WENTZEL — BURIAL: 1660 LEYSTER

BIRTH: 1795 SCHEFFER

^ Died on 10 February 1772: Louis Tocqué (or Toucquet), French portrait painter and engraver born on 19 November 1696.
— He was the student and son-in-law of Jean-Marc Nattier [17 Mar 1685 – 07 Nov 1766] (who was good at painting pretty women, while Tocqué was happier with plain ones). He admired Rigaud and Largillièrre and adapted their styles, and Nattier's, to the requirements of his own time. He worked in Paris except for a stay in Saint-Petersburg and Copenhagen (1756-1759) and a second trip to Copenhagen in 1769.
— He studied briefly under the history painter Nicolas Bertin but was more influenced by the portrait painter Jean-Marc Nattier, whose studio he entered about 1718, and whose daughter he married in 1747. In Nattier’s studio he made copies of portraits by van Dyck, Nicolas de Largillièrre, and Hyacinthe Rigaud [1659-1743] (e.g. a copy of Rigaud’s portrait of Cardinal de Fleury). He may have participated in Pierre Crozat’s project, begun in 1721, to publish engravings of pictures in the collection of the Regent, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, making drawings alongside Nattier and Watteau, and he may also have made engravings after the paintings by Charles Le Brun in the Grande Galerie at Versailles under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Massé (about 1724).
— Jean Valade was a student of Tocqué.
— LINKS
— Marie Leczinska, Queen of France (1740, 277x191cm; 1070x782pix, 133kb)
— A Man — Ekaterina Golovkina — Empress Elizabeth Petrovna
— Louis, Grand Dauphin of France — Mademoiselle de Coislin

^ Died on 10 (09?) February 1667: Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo, Spanish painter born in 1612.
— Del Mazo was a student of Diego Velázquez, married his daughter Francisca Velázquez on 21 August 1633. Velázquez, who then held the position, arranged for Philip IV to appoint Mazo as Ujier de Cámara in 1634, and Mazo and his bride lived in the same house as Velázquez, and Mazo succeeded him as court painter in 1661. Among Mazo's very few signed works is a portrait of Queen Mariana (1666), and many of the works now attributed to him were formerly thought to be of Velázquez, whose mature style del Mazo imitated with great skill.

— LINKS
— The Artist's Family (1660, 148x174cm)
— The Hunting Party at Aranjuez
— View of the City of Zaragoza _ View of Zaragoza (1547, 181x331cm)
— Infante Don Baltazar Carlos (1635, 144x109cm) _ Mazo, one of the true followers of Velázquez, is credited with a number of works formerly attributed to his master (and his father-in-law). This portrait represent the son of King Philip IV. The influence of Velázquez is very strong both in the composition and in the landscape background. It is assumed that this is a variant of a lost Velázquez portrait. Some scholars attribute this painting to Alonso Cano.
— Queen Mariana of Spain in Mourning (1666, 197x146cm) _ The painting follows the style of Velázquez in its handling, though lacking his supreme skill as a painter of convincing interiors. The room in the background represents the Pieza Ochavada in the Royal Palace in Madrid, before the destruction of the building by fire in 1734. The boy king Charles II is shown there with a group of attendants and a toy coach.

^ Buried on 10 February 1674: Leonaert Bramer “Leonardo delle Notti”, Delft Dutch Baroque genre and history painter born on 24 December 1596.
— Bramer was active mainly in his native Delft. He traveled widely in Italy and France, 1614-1628, and drew on a variety of influences for his most characteristic paintings: small nocturnal scenes with vivid effects of light. Works such as the Scene of Sorcery have earned him the reputation an interesting independent who cannot easily be pigeonholed. Bramer was also one of the few Dutch artists to paint frescoes in Holland, but none of his work in the medium survived. He evidently knew well the greatest of his Delft contemporaries, Vermeer, for he came to the latter's defense when his future mother-in-law was trying to prevent him from marrying her daughter. In fact, it is likely that Bramer, rather than Carel Fabritius, was Vermeer's teacher.
— The first record of Bramer’s career concerns his journey through France and Italy, which he began in 1614. In France he visited Arras, Amiens, Paris, Aix-en-Provence and Marseille. While in Aix he contributed a drawing and a dedicatory poem dated 15 Feb 1616 to the Album Amicorum of his compatriot Wybrand de Geest. This drawing, his earliest known work, depicts three figures in a landscape and shows similarities with the work of Adriaen van de Venne.

— LINKS
— The Beheading of John the Baptist (1813; 600x488pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1139pix)
— The Finding of Pyramus and Thisbe (600x952pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2221pix)
— The Adoration by the Magi (1630) _ Bramer is best remembered today for his small nocturnal scenes illuminated by phosphorescent colors and streaks of light. His contemporaries considered him an outstanding wall painter and, he was one of the artists commissioned by Frederik Hendrik to help decorate his hunting lodge at Honselaarsdijk, and he also received several other important commissions. Bramer was one of the few seventeenth-century Dutch artists who painted frescoes in Holland; none have survived the Dutch climate. Bramer's name has been invoked in connection with Rembrandt's early phase. The question of whether Bramer's early night scenes influenced Rembrandt, or if Rembrandt inspired Bramer's late works, is best answered negatively. The resemblance between their works is superficial. It is safe to say both artists arrived at their results independently.

^ Born on 10 February 1795: Ary Scheffer, Dutch French Academic painter, sculptor, and lithographer, who died on 15 June 1858.
— He received his earliest training in the studio of his parents, German Johann-Bernhard Scheffer [1764–1809] and Dutch Cornelia Scheffer [1769–1839], who were both artists, as was his brother Henri Scheffer [1798–1862]. He then attended the Amsterdam Teeken-Academie (1806–1809). At the first Exhibition of Living Masters in Amsterdam in 1808 he showed Hannibal Swearing to Avenge the Death of his Brother Hasdrubal, a predominantly monochrome and loosely done painting, which reveals his familiarity with the Dutch pictorial tradition. After his father's death the family moved to Paris in 1809, where he was trained in 1810 by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon and at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1811 by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. Scheffer exhibited at the Salon from 1812. His early work was Neoclassical in style (e.g. Hannibal Swearing to Avenge his Son's Death, 1810) but by 1814 he had introduced color and drama into his work (e.g. Orpheus and Eurydice , 1814). He was highly popular in Paris during the 1830s for his sentimental merging of a highly finished technique and Romantic subject-matter. He worked in a range of genres from portraiture to exotic and literary themes (e.g. Leonora, 1828). He was a supporter of Greek independence, an enthusiast for English and German literature and a friend of Gautier, and therefore could be seen as representing the acceptable face of Romanticism.
— Scheffer's students included Thomas Armstrong, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, Gustave Colin, Louis-Joseph-Auguste Coutan, Louis-Joseph Gallait, Charles Landelle, Claudius-Marcel Popelin, Charles Verlat, and ... {take a deep breath} ... Marie-Christine-Caroline-Adélaïde-Françoise-Léopoldine de Bourbon princesse d'Orléans et duchesse de Württemberg.

— LINKS
— Self-portrait
— Margaret at the Fountain (1852)
— The Souliot Women (1827, 248x354cm) {en français ce n'est PAS Les femmes du soûlaud}
— Faust and Marguerite in the Garden (1846, 218x135cm)
— Saint Augustin et sa Mère Monique (1855, 145x110cm)
— Francesca da Rimini (1835) — Mme. Frederick Kent (1847, 119x74cm)
— The Death of Gaston Foix in the Battle of Ravenna on 11 April 1512 (1824; 575x695pix, 90kb)

^ Died on 10 February 1765: Jean-Baptiste-Henri Deshays (or Deshayes) de Colleville “le Romain”, French painter, specialized in historical painting, born on 26 May 1729.
— He was first trained by his father, Jean-Dominique Deshays[1700–], an obscure painter in Rouen. After a brief period at Jean-Baptiste Descamps’s École Gratuite de Dessin, he entered the studio in Paris of Hyacinthe Collin de Vermont in 1740. There he acquired the foundations of the mastery of drawing for which he later became celebrated. In late 1749 he moved to the studio of Jean Restout II, who was, like Collin de Vermont, a student of Jean Jouvenet, and whose work continued the grand tradition of French history painting. It was from Restout that Deshays learnt the importance of dramatic composition and strong coloring in large religious paintings. While he was in Restout’s studio, Deshays entered the Prix de Rome competition, winning second prize in 1750 with Laban Giving his Daughter in Marriage to Jacob, and the first prize in 1751 with Job on the Dung-hill. Before going to Rome, Deshays spent the obligatory three years at the Ecole des Elèves Protégés; from its director Carle Vanloo he learnt a more fashionable facility and tempered the severity inherited from Jouvenet with a more appealing manner. During this period he undertook a number of commissions for religious paintings, including two vast canvases, a Visitation and an Annunciation, for the monastery of the Visitation at Rouen. He completed his artistic education with four years at the Académie de France in Rome under its director, Charles-Joseph Natoire. During this time he made a great many copies of works by Raphael and the Bolognese masters Domenichino, Guercino, and the Carracci.
— Deshays enjoyed a brief, but brilliant, career; he was extolled by Diderot as "the first painter of the nation" (Salon of 1761). Born in Colleville, near Rouen, he spent his formative years in Normandy. He studied first under his father, a minor painter, subsequently receiving instruction in drawing from Collin de Vermont, religious painting from Jean Restout, and the rococo style from François Boucher. He won the Prix de Rome in 1751 but spent the next three years in the studio of Carle Vanloo before taking up residence at the French Academy in Rome, then under the direction of Charles Natoire. Deshays returned to Paris in 1758, married the elder daughter of Boucher, and was made a full member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1759. The artist exhibited at only four official Salons, all to extraordinary acclaim. Deshays's rich imagination and powers of expression were inspired by the great history painters of the seventeenth century, Eustache Le Sueur, Charles Le Brun, Rubens, and the Carracci (Agostino [1557-1602], Annibale[1560-1609], Lodovico [1555-1619]) . The majority of his oeuvre is made up of religious and mythological compositions, conceived in the grand French decorative tradition.
— The students of Deshays included Jacques Gamelin, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, François-Guillaume Ménageot.

— LINKS
— The Abduction of Helen (1761, 54x87cm; 3/8 size, 216kb _ ZOOM to 3/4 size, 824kb)
— Saint Andrew Refusing to Worship Idols. (1759, 445x215cm) _ The subject is drawn from Jacques de Voragine's Golden Legend. It shows the martyrdom of Saint Andrew, when he is about to be nailed to the cross and is asked to worship idols. The painting was intended for the Church of Rouen whose patron saint is this holy apostle. According to Jacques de Voragine (De Sancto Andrea Apostolo), the proconsul of Achaea Aegeus (whose wife Saint Andrew had converted and baptized) told Saint Andrew, who was trying to convert him too: "Tu es Andreas, qui superstitiosam praedicas sectam, quam Romani principes nuper exterminare iusserunt." And after having him imprisoned, at last et ad sacrificia idolorum iterum invitare coepit dicens: "Nisi mihi obtemperaveris, in ipsam, quam laudasti, crucem faciam te suspendi."

^ Died on 10 February 1861: Francis Danby, English painter of Irish birth (16 November 1793), specialized in landscapes.
— Danby was born in Ireland but worked in Bristol for the first part of his career, where his landscapes and scenes of rustic life made him the best known member of the Bristol School. In 1824 he moved to London where he concentrated on painting large-scale Biblical subjects and fantasy landscapes rivalling those of John Martin. After his wife left him in 1829 he moved to Switzerland and Paris. He returned to London in 1838 but his paintings became increasingly unfashionable.
— Danby was a landowner’s son and studied art at the Dublin Society. In 1813 he visited London, then worked in Bristol, initially on repetitious watercolors of local scenes: for example View of Hotwells, the Avon Gorge (1818). In about 1819 he entered the cultivated circle of George Cumberland [1754-1849] and the Rev. John Eagles [1783-1855]. Danby’s discovery of the ‘poetry of nature’ in local scenery and insignificant incident was influenced by the theories of Eagles, published as The Sketcher (1856), and, less directly, by those of William Wordsworth, who had been associated with Bristol earlier in the century. Danby’s distinctive work began with the small panel paintings he produced for his Bristol audience. Boy Sailing a Little Boat (1822.) recalls the rustic scenes of William Collins and the Bristol artist Edward Villiers Rippingille, but Danby emphasized the effect of sun and shade rather than sentiment
      Danby became the best-known member of the Bristol school of painters but preferred to exhibit more ambitious paintings in London. The Upas, or Poison-tree in the Island of Java attracted considerable attention when first shown at the British Institution in 1820, by its large scale (168x229cm) and sublime motif: a despairing adventurer coming upon the remains of his predecessors in the moonlit poisoned valley. It has deteriorated badly, like many of his works. Disappointed Love (1821) was his first Royal Academy exhibit. It differs from his Bristol works in its narrative content and in the pathetic fallacy by which the oppressive trees and wilting weeds echo the girl’s despair.
      When Danby moved to London in 1824 he abandoned naturalistic landscape and contemporary genre subjects to concentrate on painting poetical landscapes in the manner of Claude Lorrain and J. M. W. Turner’s Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps (1812), and also large biblical scenes to rival John Martin. Danby’s relationship with Martin was ambiguous, but undoubtedly competitive. Danby was elected ARA following the exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1825 of the Delivery of Israel out of Egypt (Exodus. xiv) (1825). His poetic treatment of landscape seems to have inspired Martin’s Deluge, which was shown the following year at the British Institution. Danby himself was already contemplating painting a Deluge and his An Attempt to Illustrate the Opening of the Sixth Seal in turn owed much to Martin’s conception of the Sublime.
      Danby quarreled with the Royal Academy in 1829, when not elected RA (Constable won by one vote). At the same time his marriage had collapsed, and he had taken a mistress; his wife left London with the Bristol artist, Paul Falconer Poole, whom she subsequently married. The ensuing scandal forced Danby to move abruptly to Paris in 1830. Between 1831 and 1836 he worked in Geneva, producing chiefly watercolors and topographical paintings. He then lived in Paris, copying Old Master paintings. He returned to London late in 1838 where Deluge (1840.) reestablished his reputation when exhibited privately in Piccadilly, London, in May 1840. A huge rock rises in the midst of the flood, swarming with figures who struggle to gain the highest point. Their diminution implies immensity. The color is appropriately, but uncharacteristically, somber. Despite its success, it was his last work of this type.
      Danby continued to paint poetic fantasy landscapes throughout the 1840s and 1850s (e.g. Enchanted Castle - Sunset, 1841), although they became increasingly unfashionable. He also produced landscapes and marine paintings, which derive in color and conception, although not in execution, from those of Turner. These found admirers, although they were too rich in color and imprecise in detail for wide popularity. Evening Gun (1848, destroyed, but replica exists), showing naval vessels in harbor, was well received at the Royal Academy in 1848 and the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1855. Danby moved to Exmouth, Devon, in 1847 where he built boats and painted. He was embittered by a life of nearly constant debt and by his failure to gain academic honors. He died a few days after Poole was elected RA. Two of his sons, James Francis Danby [1816-1875] and Thomas Danby [1817-1886], became painters.
— LINKS
— The Deluge (1840, 284x452cm) _ This painting depicts the story of the Flood as told in the book of Genesis (6:12 - 8:22). It shows the terrible punishment brought down by a wrathful God upon sinful mankind. In this huge, bleak painting Danby shows the weather at its most overwhelming and destructive, God’s flooding of the world described in the Bible (Genesis 7). Helpless naked figures, including a lion {a naked lion, how tragic!}, cling or are caught in the branches of a fallen tree and clamber to the rock’s summit as the waters rise. Black cataracts of water continue to fall as the red sun slips below the horizon. But there is some hope, in the distance bathed in moonlight, is Noah’s Ark, and on the right in a curious episode a glowing angel grieves over a dead mother and her presumably innocent child.
— The Deluge (1840, 71x110cm) _ smaller version.
— The Shipwreck (The Wreck of the Hope) (1859, 77x107cm) _ As so often in paintings by Danby and his contemporary and rival John Martin, humanity appears insignificant and helpless in the face of nature’s power. A wrecked ship lurches to one side, about to be swamped by the stormy seas or dashed upon the rocks. Most of it is already submerged and time is running out for the remaining survivors. One of the lifeboats is upturned in the water, some figures cling to wreckage on the left, while the rest wait desperately in line for the sole escape route to the rocks on the right.
— Sunset at Sea, after a Storm (1824, 90x143cm) _ This astonishingly dramatic sky shows the clouds of a violent storm dispersing in the red glow of a setting sun. But however beautiful the effect of limpid blue seen through brilliant orange, this sky carries a threat. Just visible in the left foreground is a raft to which cling the few feeble survivors of a shipwreck. They have survived the storm but now night is falling. The drama of the picture made it a hit when it was exhibited at the 1824 Royal Academy exhibition. It made Danby’s name and was bought by the artist Sir Thomas Lawrence.
— Children by a Brook (1822, 35x46cm) _ This is one of several small poetic landscapes with figures that Danby painted during his early years in Bristol. The scene is probably imaginary but inspired by the landscape of the Frome valley at Stapleton. Such works were painted for local collectors, unlike the more spectacular pictures Danby sent up for exhibition in London, where he moved in 1824.
— Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream (20x28cm).

^ Died on 10 February 1927: Nils Gustav Wentzel, Norwegian painter born on 07 October 1859.
Wentzel

— He was descended from a Bohemian family of glassmakers who settled in Norway about 1750. He studied at Knud Bergslien’s art school (1879–1881) and at the same time at the Royal School of Design in Christiania, and in 1883 he was a student of Frits Thaulow, who introduced him to plein-air painting. Wentzel paid a short visit to Paris that same year and stayed there again in 1884 as a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau at the Académie Julian. In 1888–1889 he studied with Alfred Roll and Léon Bonnat at the Académie Colarossi. During this period he painted mainly interiors with figures, the urban middle-class and artisans in their homes, and also artists’ studios. His earliest paintings, for example Breakfast I (1882), render detail with a meticulousness unsurpassed in Norwegian Naturalism. Wentzel’s work gradually adopted an influence from contemporary French painting, including a more subtle observation of the effects of light and atmosphere on local color, as in The Day After (1883) and Breakfast II (1885). Scenes from the Norwegian countryside became more frequent, such as Old Folks (1888). The Dance in Setesdal (1891) represents a more romantic note in his work, which predominated in the early 1890s. Later he preferred landscapes, especially snowscapes, rural scenes etc, as subjects, although he did not maintain the standard of his earlier work.

— Wentzel, maler, født i Oslo, død i Lom. Elev ved Statens håndverks- og kunstindustriskole, av Knud Bergslien 1879-81 og Fritz Thaulow i 1883. Studerte ved Academie Julian i Paris 1884 og hos Roll og Bonnat 1888-89. Motivene fant Wentzel i Setesdal, Valdres, Hardanger, Telemark, Hallingdal, Vågå, Asker og til slutt i Lom. Gift med Christiane Marie (Kitty) Bætzmann [1868-1961]. Separert i 1910, men mot slutten av livet bodde begge i Lia i Lom. To sønner, Bjørn og Jørgen, begge bosatt i Lom. Jørgen var bonde og maler, Bjørn ballettedanser. Flyttet til Ottadalen på grunn av økonomien. Kitty Wentzel har gitt sjarmerende skildringer av Gustav Wentzel og det spennende, men fattige kunstnerlivet i bøkene Gustav Wentzel (1956) og Fra mitt livs karusell (1960). Tildelt St. Olavs orden.

[< photo] [Sjølportrett (1925) >]
      Gustav Wentzel vart født i Oslo. Han var elev av Bergslien og Thaulow og studerte ei tid i Paris. I sine måleri var Wentzel oppteken av ljoset og fargane og kontrastane mellom ute og inneljos og mellom ljos og skugge. Han var og ein god folkelivsskildrar. I 1919 fløtte han til sin son i Furuheim i Lia, der han sette seg opp eit atelie. Haukdalen har fleire måleri og skisser å vise fram av Gustav Wentzel, mellom anna ei rekkje aktteikningar og eit flott bilete han har måla av sin kone, Kitty. Gustav Wentzel budde fast i Lom i åtte år frå 1919 til han døde i 1927. Han var ofte å sjå ute på ski om vinteren med staffeli på ryggen og fargane i lomma for at dei ikkje skulle fryse. Han fekk på desse turane festa på lerretet snøstormar i vinterlandskap, vintervegar i januarsol, tømmerkjørarar i vinterskogen. Fleire stod modellar for han i Liagrenda.
     Gustav Wentzel var mykje på reisefot den tida han budde i Asker og var fleire gonger på vitjing i Nord-Gudbrandsdalen. Tidleg på 1900-talet var han fleire turar til Vågå der han budde både på Sandbu, Kvarberg og Sve. Han hadde med seg familien på desse turane og han nytta ofte høvet til å måle. I 1915 gifta den eldste sonen Jørgen seg med Magnhild Prestjordet frå Skjåk. Dei fløtte til det vesle bruket Høgbrenna i Lia der dei budde i 4 år . Gustav var ofte på besøk og likte seg svært godt. I 1919 kjøpte han Furuheim saman med sonene, der dei bygde seg hus med atelier i andre etasje med utsikt mot Lomseggen. Dette var eit ynda motiv for Wentzel. Yngstesonen Bjørn med si tyskfødde kone Eva Kønig kjøpte da Høgbrenna etter broren og busette seg der i 1920. Bjørn reiste på den tida mykje rundt i Europa som scenekunstnar og var samtidig journalist for Aftenposten og dei budde fast i Høgbrenna fram til 1953 da dei fløtte saman med Kitty ned i Haukdalen.
      Kitty Wentzel var ein stor beundrer av Gustav Wentzel som medmenneske og kunstnar, og meinte at han vart uberettiga kritisert for sin kunst i dei seinare åra han levde. Ho skreiv m.a. i ei landsdekkande avis: "Må jeg be om plass for nedenstående i deres ærede blad. Ærbødigst. Herr Jeppe Nielsen. Helt siden De begynte Deres geschæft som kritiker, har De ved hver given anlening overøst Guetav Wentzel med ondsindede og sakløse --Jeg kalder det med vilje ikke kritikk. Nu er han død, men De gir ikke opp . Endog i graven forfølger de ham med Deres angrep på hans kunst. Forhåpentlig blir det siste gang De får anledning til å boltre Dem i skjellsord mot denne vår store kunstners livsverk. For de er en meget gammel mann Hr. Nielsen! Men ett kan De vere forvisset om. Trods Deres dom, vil Gustav Wentzels navn leve og lyse i Kunstens verden, meget, meget lenge, efter at glemselens slør har bret seg over Deres navn og virke. De har vert for liten, herr. Nielsen. Kitty Wentsel."

— Ung pike som spinner (807x644pix, 73kb)
— Spinnersken (492x734pix, 55kb)
— Vinterlandskap med gård (80x110cm; 572x788pix, 33kb)
— Winter picture from Vågå (1914, 79x98cm; 822x1024pix, 46kb)
— Interiør fra Paris (1884, 60x92cm; 676x1040pix, 67kb) _ Interiør fra Paris er malt under Nils Gustav Wentzels tredje opphold i Paris, som varte fra juletider 1883 til juni 1884. Bildet viser med høy sannsynlighet hans studievenn fra Bergsliens malerskole, Ragnvald Hjerlow, sittende i et hyggelig møblert værelse, hvor lyset kommer strømmende inn i rommet gjennom florlette gardiner. Antageligvis er det Wentzels værelse i pensjonatet i rue de Douais vi ser fremstilt. Her bodde han sammen med studiekameratene Sverre Ihle og Nils Schjelbred. Noen måneder av oppholdet var han elev av den veletablerte salongrealisten Adolphe William Bouguereau ved det store private Académie Julian. Produksjonen under tiden i Paris ser imidlertid ikke ut til å ha vært stor, og den begrenser seg sansynligvis bare til Nasjonalgalleriets nyervervede bilde. På tross av hjemlengsel fantes det lyspunkter i tilværelsen: "Jeg har dog havt det ganske herligt en gang imellem den sidste tid. Her en kveld til eksempel havde jeg meget gemytlig hos frøknene Kielland og Backer, der var kun inviteret nogle faa, Jonas Lie med frue, maleren Skredsvig, Eilif Peterssen, Werenskiold og en tre-fire norske damer der var sang, musik og interessante samtaler om politik, kunst o.s.v.
      Andreas Aubert omtalte Wentzels Paris-interiør, som ble vist på Høstutstillingen i 1884, på følgende måte: "Malemaaden i dette er væsentlig forskjellig fra alt, hvad vi har seet af ham. Det eiendommelige ved hans Begavelse har fra første Stund været et borende Blik, der har vært istand til at gjennemtrænge Detaljen lige til dens inderste Eiendommelighed." Videre skrev han at Wentzel her rettet øyet mot: "Helhedens Lysvirkning.... Lyset er blevet kridtet, Skyggerne sorte; for mange vil Billedet - i Lighet med andre der er malet paa samme Maade - føles som dækked af klar Mældug.
      Wentzel hadde det meste av sin utdannelse fra Kristiania. Men i likhet med de andre kunstnerne av mellomgenerasjonen, hadde han mottatt impulser om hva som skjedde ute i Europa - og da særlig i Paris - hjemme i Kristiania gjennom de norske pariserfarernes utstilte bilder. På tross av sin lyse og lette maleriske gjennomføring, viser bildet at han bygget på senrealismens strengt registrerende fremstillingsform.
      Ingebjørg Ydstie forbinder Wentzels bilde med Harriet Backers berømte Blått interiør, som han hadde sett på Høstutstillingen i 1883, like før han dro til Paris. På tross av enkelte ulikheter mener hun at dersom man sammenligner de to bildene: "blir det klart at Wentzels intensjon likefullt er nært beslektet med malerinnens; å skildre lyset gjennom fargen". I Wentzels komposisjon finner man igjen mange av de elementer man har møtt i hans tidligere arbeider; interiøret, lyset som strømmer inn gjennom vinduet, fondveggen som plasseres parallelt med billedplanet, samt de stillebensaktige komposisjonene både på peishyllen og bordet. Wentzel gjorde som Harriet Backer sa om sitt eget maleri - han bragte friluftsmaleriet innendørs - "Plein-Airen i Interiøret", men uten å oppgi sin forkjærlighet for nøyaktig gjengitte gjenstander.

^ Buried on 10 February 1660: Judith Leyster, Dutch Baroque painter, baptized as an infant on 28 July 1609, who married Jan Miense Molenaer [1610 – 15 Sep 1668] in 1636.
— She painted genre scenes, portraits and still-lifes, and she may also have made small etchings; no drawings by her are known. She specialized in small intimate genre scenes, usually with women seated by candlelight, and single half-length figures set against a neutral background. She was influenced by both the Utrecht Caravaggisti and Frans Hals, under whom both she and Molenaer studied.
— Judith Leyster was born in Haarlem. Her father started in the textile trade but later became a brewer with his own brewery. Judith Leyster was probably taught by Frans de Grebber and apparently went on to work in Frans Hals' studio. Leyster's paintings reveal the influence of the latter, already a famous artist, and of his younger brother, Dirck Hals, as well as of the painter she was to marry in 1636, Jan Miense Molenaer. Like Dirck Hals, Leyster generally painted genre pieces depicting merry, music-making groups, although usually these companies were small.
— Leyster was extremely successful in her day as a portrait and genre specialist. Little is known about her early training but she was mentioned in about about Haarlem as being a local artist. In her early twenties she became the only female member of the Haarlem painters' guild and soon had students of her own. Even though her work is closely identified with that of Hals, their relationship remains unclear. What is known is that she successfully sued Hals for a breach of ethics after he took on one of her students. Judith Leyster is one of the very few women to have been accepted as a member of the Haarlem Guild of Painters.
Although a contemporary historian described her as a leading light in art (punning on her name Leyster, which means "lodestar") she remained unknown for a long time and her works were either believed lost, or were attributed to Frans Hals. She probably worked in his studio around 1630 and was also a friend of his family, for one year later she became godmother to Hals' daughter Maria. Like Hals at the same time, the young Leyster adopted the style of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, with their strong chiaroscuro modelling in the manner of Caravaggio. From the mid-1620, she concentrated more on vividly illuminated genre scenes, generally featuring half figures of merry musicians, gamblers and whores, strongly influenced by the painting of Terbrugghen and Honthorst. While the Utrecht school of painters still rounded the surfaces of their objects smoothly between light and shade, Hals and his school adopted a broad, vibrant and independent brushstroke. Leyster's work can be distinguished from that of Hals through her generally more discordant handling of color, her sketchier treatment of hands, the wryly distorted smiles of her figures and her altogether flightier brushwork.

— LINKS
— Self-Portrait (1635, 72x651007x887pix, 136kb)
— The Serenade (1629) — Carousing Couple (1630, 68x54cm, 970x767pix, 130kb)
— A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel (59x49cm; 793x637pix, 40kb).

Died on a 10 February:

1901 (11 Feb?) Telemaco Signorini, Florentine painter, writer, critic, illustrator, etcher, and teacher, born on 18 August 1835. He was a major figure of the Macchiaioli group, painting primarily landscapes, seascapes and street scenes in towns and villages in Tuscany and Liguria. As with many of the Macchiaioli, he did not always date his paintings, and their chronology must be deduced from exhibition catalogues and other contemporary sources. As a writer and critic he was the most ardent spokesman for, and promoter of the Macchiaioli and wrote with insight and cutting wit about the art world of the second half of the 19th century. — Giovanni Boldini was a student of Signorini.

1837 (29 January Julian) Alexandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, Russian poet, novelist, dramatist, short-story writer, not a painter, but a painted, for example by Kiprensky — by Tropinin — by Serov — by Bruni. Pushkin was born on 06 June (26 May Julian) 1799.

1720 Hendrik Govaerts (or Goovaerts), Flemish artist born on 21 July 1669.

1685 David Teniers III, Flemish painter born on 10 July 1638, son of David Teniers the Younger [15 Dec 1610 – 25 Apr 1690] and grandson of David Teniers I [1582 – 29 Jul 1649]

1657 Sebastian Stoskopff, Alsatian painter baptized as an infant on 31 July 1597. He was born and brought up in the independent Protestant republic of Strasbourg. In 1615, after serving his apprenticeship in the studio of the miniaturist and engraver Friedrich I Brentel, he became the student of the painter and architect Daniel Soreau [–1619] in Hanau, near Frankfurt am Main; after Soreau’s death he had to finish his master’s paintings. He remained in Hanau until 1621 and there came across examples from Flanders and the Netherlands of still-life painting, the genre to which he was to devote himself. In 1621 he went to Paris, remaining there until 1640 apart from a trip in 1629 to Venice, where he met his future biographer, the historian Joachim von Sandrart. Like other Protestant painters he frequented the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district of Paris and came into contact with the still-life painters Lubin Baugin and Jacques Linard. In 1641 he settled in Strasbourg, where he was accepted (reçu) as a master.

^ 1526 Bernardo Zenale, Italian painter and architect born in 1463. In 1481 Zenale was already a qualified master and a member of the Scuola di San Luca, the painters’ guild, in Milan. In 1485 he and Bernardino Butinone were hired by Simone da San Pellegrino and other officials of San Martino, Treviglio, to paint a large altarpiece for the high altar; the carving of the frame was sub-contracted to Ambrogio and Giovanni Pietro Donati. By January 1491 the altarpiece had been installed, and Zenale and Butinone made a final payment to the Donati brothers. The two-tiered polyptych, in an elaborate pedimented frame, shows the Virgin and Child, Saint Martin and the beggar, and other saints. The architectural setting for each group, shown in steep perspective, is festooned with swags and encrusted with decorative patterning. — Bambaia was a student of Zenale. — LINKS — The Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple (600x927pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2162pix, 472kb)

Born on a 10 February:

1888 Wilhelm Thöny, Austrian painter and printmaker who died on 01 May 1949. After receiving training as a pianist and singer he studied painting at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Munich. He was involved in the foundation of the Neue Sezession in Munich in 1913 and in 1923 he returned to Graz to found the Secession there. He moved to Paris in 1931 and emigrated to New York in 1938. His early figure paintings, such as The Bridge (1925), reveal a somber melancholy that is reminiscent in its expressiveness of Munch; the individualized portrait does not stand out, but rather man is shown as the prisoner of an oppressive and speechless dream world. The best known of Thöny’s subjects are the cityscapes of Paris and New York, as in Paris, Ile de la Cité (1935) and New York at Night (1936). The combination of a fluffy mass of color and a nervous line creates a shimmering, pulsating effect. A metallic hard grey-blue base dominates the use of color, sometimes in combination with coloristic effects and sometimes with a great deal of black. The reality of what is perceived mingles with irrational elements and the skyline of Manhattan in particular is transported into the realms of the mysterious and visionary. Many of Thöny’s works were destroyed in 1948 by a fire in a New York warehouse.

1878 Otto Eduard Pippel, German artist who died in 1960.

1824 (17 Jan 1817?) Eugenio Lucas Velázquez, Madrid Spanish painter who died on 11 September 1870, admiror and imitator of Goya. — Father of Eugenio Lucas Villaamil [1858-1918] — He was long known as Eugenio Lucas y Padilla, but his real surname was Lucas Velázquez. He came late to painting, in 1844 still stating his profession as that of cabinetmaker. It is possible that he studied at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid, but he may have been largely self-taught. His early work included portraits (e.g. Jenaro Peréz Villaamil, 1849), scenes of the Spanish Inquisition and subjects from contemporary life (e.g. Scene with Bandits, 1855). By the mid-1850s he was well established: in 1853 he was appointed Pintor de Cámara Honorario to Queen Isabella II, and he was made a Knight of the Order of Carlos III as a reward for his idealized portrait of Pedro de Valdivia, which the Spanish government gave as a present to the cathedral of Santiago de Chile. Lucas Velázquez showed his work successfully at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1855, and in the same year he was one of three connoisseurs asked to value Francisco de Goya’s Pinturas Negras (1820–1823), then still in the Quinta del Sordo, Goya’s country house near Madrid.

^ 1793 Léon-Matthieu Cochereau, French artist who died on 10 August 1817. — Interior of the Studio of David

^ 1755 (11 Feb?) Nicolas-Antoine Taunay (or Tonnay), French painter who died on 20 March 1830. He was the son of Pierre-Henri Taunay [1728–1781], a painter–enameller at the Sèvres factory, and entered the studio of Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié at the age of 13. Later he worked in the studios of Nicolas-Guy Brenet and Francesco Casanova. With a group of friends that included Jean-Louis Demarne, Lazare Bruandet, and Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld, he made trips to the forests of Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau, and Compiègne to learn to draw directly from nature. He visited the Dauphiné and Switzerland in 1776 with Demarne. That same year he made vignette illustrations for an erotic book, Journée de l’amour by Charles-Simon Favart [1710–1792] and others. Taunay exhibited landscape paintings at the Salon de la Jeunesse in 1777 and 1779 and at the Salon de la Correspondance in 1782. — LINKS

1670 Norbert “Cefalus” van Bloemen (or Blommen), Flemish artist who died in 1746; brother and student of Pieter van Bloemen [bap. 17 Jan 1657 – <06 Mar 1720], and brother of Jan Frans van Bloemen “Orizzonte” [bap. 12 May 1662 – 13 Jun 1749]. Norbert joined his brothers in Rome, where they had been since 1686. Like them he was a member of the Schildersbent (which gave him the nickname Cephalus). After failing to succeed as an artist in Italy, however, Norbert returned to Antwerp. His fortunes were no better there, and he set off again, eventually settling in Amsterdam, where he painted history subjects, interior genre scenes, and portraits, for instance that of the art dealer and collector Jan Pietersz. Zoomer

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