| ART “4” “2”-DAY
24 February |
| DEATH:
1911 LEFEBVRE |
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Born on 24 February 1753: Henri-Pierre
Danloux, French artist who died on 03 January 1809. — Orphaned at an early age, Henri-Pierre Danloux was raised by his uncle, an architect. Around 1770 he studied under a genre painter and a history painter. He followed one of them to Rome in 1775 and then traveled throughout Italy. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Danloux preferred drawing the Roman countryside and portraits instead of ancient monuments. Settling in Lyon, France, in 1783, Danloux established himself as a portraitist in the relaxed, informal manner of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. After moving to Paris in 1785, Danloux's reputation grew as a portraitist to the aristocracy. Danloux paid great attention to rendering fabrics, embroidery, and accessories in both oils and chalk. After another sojourn in Rome, Danloux returned to Paris in 1789, where he was commissioned to make portraits of the royal family. Soon the French Revolution forced him to flee to London. Influenced by fashionable English portrait painters like George Romney, Danloux excelled in family groups and portraits of children, whom he captured in natural, spontaneous poses. He also began painting history subjects. He returned to Paris in 1801 and spent his remaining years frustrated by his failure to establish himself as a history painter. — LINKS — Mademoiselle Rosalie Duthé (1792) [Ne pas confondre “voir Duthé” et “boire du thé”, bien qu'on (bien con?) puisse deviner que ce que servait à boire au peintre la demoiselle Duthé était du thé.] |
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Born on 24 February 1788: Johan-Christian-Clausen
Dahl, Norwegian Romantic
painter and collector, active in Germany, who died on 14 October 1857. His
paintings, imbued with Romantic and patriotic sentiments, had a strong influence
on the landscape tradition both in Germany (especially Dresden) and in his
native Norway. — The son of a fisherman, Dahl initially was trained as an artisan painter in his home town of Bergen, Norway (at that time still a part of Denmark). At the Copenhagen Academy, where he studied from 1811 to 1817 under C.A. Lorenzen, he won minor and major silver medals and chose to become a landscape painter. He was enormously influenced by Dutch landscape paintings in Copenhagen collections, particularly by Ruisdael and Everdingen, and by Eckersberg's studies of nature. He exhibited intermittently at Charlottenborg from 1812 to 1855 and at the World Fair in Paris 1855. In 1818 Dahl traveled via Berlin to Dresden, where he met Caspar David Friedrich. He spent 1820 and 1821 in Italy, living near the Bay of Naples and then in Rome, where he made friends with Thorvaldsen. He eventually settled in Dresden, and was appointed professor at the city's Art Academy in 1824. However, his mission in life remained the depiction of the Norwegian landscape, then considered a sublime primordial wilderness. He therefore undertook five long study tours from to his homeland, in 1826, 1834, 1839, 1844 and 1850. J.C. Dahl's artistic expression had parallels in the fierce independence felt by Norwegians and, although most of his Norwegian paintings were done from memory, they never lost the spontaneity and intense feeling which tied him so strongly to his country. The fundamental romanticism and drama of Dahl's works was a decisive inspiration for the Danish nationalist romantic landscape painters of the 1830s and 1840s. — The students of Dahl included Thomas Fearnley, Christian Friedrich Gille, Albert Emil Kirchner. — LINKS — Frederiksborg Castle (1814; 600x908pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2119pix) — Landscape with Torrent (1819; 600x884pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2063pix) — View of Honefossen (1847; 600x788pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1841pix, 714kb) — Wooden Houses in Hjelle in Valdres (1850; 600x972pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2268pix) — Returning from Harvesting (1881, 84x145cm) — Sailing in a Fjord — An Alpine Landscape with a Shepherdess and Goats (86x147cm) — By the Fjord (49x67cm) — The Daughters Of Ran (92x144cm; 661x1000pix) _ In the ancient nordic mythology Atla, Eistla and Gjalp are ocean giantesses taking the shape of ocean waves, who simultaneously gave birth to the God Helmdel (or Heimdall), Guardian of the Bifrost, the rainbrow bridge between Asgaard (realm of the Aesir, the war gods) and Midgaard (realm of Humans). Atla, Eistla, and Gjalp are three of Ran and Ägir's nine daughters, of which the others are Angeya, Eyrgjafa, Greip, Iarnsaxe, Imd, and Ulfrun. Ran is an ocean giantess as well and mother of all ocean waves. She reigns the realm of those died by drowning. Her husband, Ägir (similar to Poseidon) is the giant of the calm seas, king of all ocean giants and a rich and usually kind god. — The Fjord (93x147cm) — A Cloud and Landscape Study by Moonlight (1822, 16x19cm; 4/5 size) — Evening Landscape with Shepherd (1822) — Bergfossen Near Tinn (1831, 55x72cm; 585x765pix, 86kb) — Forest Scene near Engelholm (1814, 77x89cm; 585x682pix, 89kb) — View of Fortundalen (1836, 199x265cm; 585x771pix, 71kb) — Hjelle in Valdres (1851, 93x135cm; 550x800pix, 87kb) — Waterfall at Tvinde near Voss (1830, 82x119cm; 555x800pix, 67kb) — Forest with a Waterfall (101x88cm; 892x762pix, 66kb) _ copy of a landscape by J. Ruisdael _ Ruisdael painted many waterfalls from the late 1650s onwards (example 1; 970x853pix, 131kb — example 2; 790x672pix, 125kb). In the past it had been assumed that he himself must have traveled to Northern Europe where he would have seen this type of landscape. However, no such trip has been recorded and, instead, his paintings were inspired by the Amsterdam landscape painter Allart van Everdingen, who had visited Scandinavia in 1644 and had made a number of drawings of rocky mountainous scenes with torrents and waterfalls. |
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Born on 24 February 1619: Charles
Le Brun, French painter, designer, decorator, and art theorist,
who died on 12 February 1690, the dominant artist of Louis XIV's reign.
He studied under Nicolas
Poussin and Simon
Vouet. Le Brun's students included Charles
de La Fosse. — After being trained by Vouet Le Brun went to Rome in 1642 and worked under Poussin, becoming a convert to the latter's theories of art. He returned to Paris in 1646. In 1662 he was raised to nobility and named 'Premier Peintre du roi', and in 1663 he was made director of the reorganized Gobelins factory. Also in 1663 he was made director of the reorganized Académie, which he turned into a channel for imposing a codified system of orthodoxy in matters of art. His lectures came to be accepted as providing the official standards of artistic correctness and, formulated on the basis of the classicism of Poussin, gave authority to the view that every aspect of artistic creation can be reduced to teachable rule and precept. In 1698 his small illustrated treatise Méthode pour apprendre à dessiner les passions was posthumously published; in this, again, following theories of Poussin, he purported to codify the visual expression of the emotions in painting. Despite the classicism of his theories, Le Brun's own talents lay rather in the direction of flamboyant and grandiose decorative effects. Among the most outstanding of his works for the king were the Galerie d'Apollon at the Louvre (1663), and the famous Galerie des Glaces (1679-84) and the Great Staircase (1671-78, destroyed in 1752) at Versailles. His importance in the history of French art is twofold: his contributions to the magnificence of the Grand Manner of Louis XIV and his influence in laying the basis of academicism. Many of the leading French artists of the next generation trained in his studio. Le Brun was a fine portraitist and an extremely prolific draftsman. — LINKS — Martyrdom of Saint John the Evangelist at Porta Latina (1642, 282x224cm) _ This is an early work of the artist showing a strong influence of Simon Vouet. It was executed for the church Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet in Paris where it can be seen since then. — The Triumph of Faith (1660) The decoration for the newly constructed château of Vaux-le-Vicomte was begun by Le Brun in 1658 and was probably completed by 1660. On the ceiling of the Hôtel Lambert in Paris, on that of the great room in this Château, and in that of the Galeries des Glaces at Versailles Charles Le Brun rivalled the Italian decorative artists. — Chancellor Séguier at the Entry of Louis XIV into Paris in 1660 (295x351cm) _ Le Brun must not be rejected as a mere decorator, even though so much of his other art is relatively inaccessible, deposited in provincial museums or surrounded in the Louvre by so much more exciting and exacting painting. There was no sense of his inferiority at the time - on the contrary, his art was highly esteemed by his contemporaries - and the ambivalent attitude towards him came about only in later centuries when the art of the period came to be assessed as history. Le Brun was in fact the most important painter in France in the second half of the century and portrait of Chancellor Séguier in the Louvre justifies a high estimation of his talent. The composition forms an enormous pyramid with the figure of Séguier at its apex. The scale is almost life-size, and the characterization of the sitters is worthy of Champaigne. Acknowledged as a masterpiece even though the name of Le Brun is forgotten, it is a unique record of an important official surrounded by his attendants. — Entry of Alexander into Babylon (1664, 450x707cm) _ Louis XIV was interested in the story of Alexander the Great because of his own special type of megalomania could see itself reflected in the Greek past. Le Brun accordingly executed the truly colossal series of four canvasses depicting episodes from the life of Alexander the Great. This series — executed between 1662 and 1668 — was considered by the artist himself to be his masterpiece. The four paintings of the series are the Passage of the Granicus, the Battle of Argela, the Entry of Alexander into Babylon and Alexander and Porus. Like so many Herculean undertakings, the paintings impressed everybody by their sheer size. Later history has not been kind to them, but even so, tremendous energy burst out of every corner of these pictures, some of which are more than twelve metres long. The source, without any doubts, is Rubens. This is not the exuberant Rubens of the Medici cycle, but the Rubens of the vast hunting scenes and tapestry cartoons. Le Brun had in effect changed sides, as he moved from modest echoes of Poussin to a full-blown eulogy of Rubens. — Apotheose of Louis XIV (1677, 109x78cm) _ In this allegoric painting Providence put the crown on the head of King riding a horse in Roman costume. Angels coming from the cloak of Providence fight the enemies of France, the lion (Netherlands) and the eagle (Germany). — The Resolution of Louis XIV to Make War on the Dutch Republic (1671, 72x98cm) _ At the end of the 1670s Le Brun began the most exacting of his tasks - the decoration of the ceiling of the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles. Many of the sketches for the main compositions survive, and allow an assessment, on a small scale, of his inventiveness, which is usually lost in the vastness of the decorated ensemble. A typical example is The Resolution of Louis XIV to Make War on the Dutch Republic, depicting an event which was to have enormous repercussions (Louis XIV was eventually defeated by the Dutch). The handling, rapid and sure, is taken almost completely from Rubens, and yet the composition is original and dramatic, and demonstrates that Le Brun conformed to the grand tradition of Rubens and Pietro da Cortona in Italy. His work at Versailles shows that he belongs among the great decorative painters on the grounds of his energy, originality and appropriateness of setting, but even in France his reputation is not as high as it should be. — Adoration by the Shepherds (1689, 151x213cm) _ This picture shows how clever Le Brun was at composition, at mingling the world beyond with earthly life and at controlling the fantastic effects of the light produced by a screened fire. |
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Died on 24 February 1911: Jules-Joseph
Lefebvre, French Academic
painter born on 14 March 1836. — Lefebvre studied under Leon Cogniet, and afterwards at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1861. His early works were based upon historical events. However, after the death of close family members in the mid 1860s he began to specialise in painting nudes, such as Chloe. Lefebvre became a professor of the Académie Julian in Paris in the 1870s. The Belgian Symbolist painter Fernand Khnopff numbered amongst his students. Lefebvre received many awards during his long life, including being made Commandeur of the Légion d'honneur in 1898. — LINKS — Flora — Girl with a Mandolin — Mary Magdalen in the Grotto — Ophelia — Truth — The Language of the Fan (1882) — Chloé (1875) _ This is perhaps the most famous, notorious, well loved, well hung and controversial painting in Australia. Chloé was exhibited to great popular acclaim winning gold medals in the Paris Salon in 1875, the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879 and the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880. She was purchased in 1882 by a surgeon, Thomas Fitzgerald (later Sir Thomas) and subsequently loaned to the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1883, after three weeks of exhibition, she fell victim to Victorian "wowserism" (puritanical fanaticism) when outraged citizens objected to seeing the naked female form displayed on the Sabbath. Upon the death of Sir Thomas in 1908, Chloé was purchased by Henry Figsby Young, an ex-digger turned hotel proprietor, for the very considerable sum of 800 pounds. One story relates that Henry took the painting back to his home above Young and Jackson's Hotel and hid it from his wife. While he was away and she was "spring cleaning", the irate wife discovered it and banished it to the public bar, which ironically turned it into a smash hit. It has remained there ever since, apart from touring Australia to raise funds for the Red Cross during World War I and being loaned as the centre-piece for the exhibition "Narratives, nudes and landscapes" at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1995. As for the model "Chloé", she had posed for the painting when she was 19, had subsequently fallen in love with Jules Lefebvre and when the artist married her sister, she was devastated. She boiled up phosphorous match-heads, drank the poisonous concoction and died tragically, at 21. Or so they say! |
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Born on 24 February
1836: Winslow Homer, US painter, specialized
mainly, but not exclusively, in maritime
scenes, who died on 29 September 1910. — Born in Boston, Homer became a painter whose works, particularly those on marine subjects, are among the most powerful and expressive of late 19th-century US art. His mastery of sketching and watercolor lends to his oil paintings the invigorating spontaneity of direct observation from nature . His subjects, often deceptively simple on the surface, dealt in their most serious moments with the theme of man's efforts to establish his humanness in the face of an indifferent universe. Homer died on 29 September 1910. — Born in Boston, Homer was apprenticed to a lithographer (1855-1857), then began his career as an illustrator for magazines such as 'Harper's Weekly' (1859-1867), and specialised in watercolors of outdoor life painted in a naturalistic style which, in their clear outline and firm structure, were opposed to contemporary French Impressionism. He spent two years (1881-1883) at Tynemouth, England, and on his return to the US continued to depict the sea at Protus Neck, an isolated fishing village on the eastern seaboard, where he spent the rest of his life. His work was highly original, and is often regarded as a reflection of the US pioneering spirit. — Homer's works are considered by some to be the most powerful and expressive of late 19th-century US art. He was a master of sketching and watercolor. His oil paintings are brought alive by the invigorating spontaneity of direct observation from nature. Homer's themes often include man's efforts to establish his humaness in the face of an indifferent universe. Born into an old New England family and enjoyed a happy country childhood. Mother was an amateur painter. At 19 he was apprenticed to the lithographic firm of John Bufford in Boston. Within a few years he was submitting his own drawings for publication in such periodicals as Ballou's Pictorial and Harper's Weekly. In 1859 he moved from Boston to New York City and began his career as a free-lance illustrator. The next year he exhibited his first paintings at the National Academy of Design. During the Civil War he made drawings at the front for Harper's. Unlike most artist-correspondents he dealt most often with views of everyday camp life. As the war continued, he concentrated more and more on his painting. In 1865 he was elected to the National Academy of Design. Although his studio was in New York City, the city was rarely figures in his work. During the warmer months he traveled to Pennsylvania, the Hudson River valley, and New England, to go camping, hunting, fishing, and sketching. In 1866 he went to France for about a year. In Europe he was influenced by French naturalism, Japanese prints, and contemporary fashion illustration, but his work upon his return to the US had not changed markedly. However, the pictures were generally somewhat brighter. In 1873 Homer began to work in watercolor, which allowed him to make quick, fresh observations of nature. He explored and resolved new artistic problems. From the late 1870s Homer devoted his summers exclusively to direct painting from nature in watercolor. Greater concern for atmospheric effects and reflected light added complexity. . — LINKS — Boys at Play (1870; 600x972pix, 135kb _ ZOOM not recommended to fuzzy 1400x2268pix, 292kb) — The Bright Side (1865, 32x43cm; 5/4 size; or see it 5/8 size) — Portrait of Albert Post (1864, 32x27cm; 3/4 size) — Cutting a Figure (04 Feb 1871 engraving, 30x47cm; or see it the recommended half size) — Sunrise, Fishing in the Adirondacks (1892, 34x52cm; 3/5 size) — The Nooning (1873 wood engraving, 23x35cm) — A "Norther", Key West (1886, 36x 52cm; full size; or see it the recommended half size) — A Swell of the Ocean (1883, 38x54cm; full size; or see it the recommended half size) — Burnt Mountain (1892, 35x51cm; full size; or see it the recommended half size) — Backgammon (1877, 45x56cm; full size; or see it the recommended half size) — The War for the Union 1862 – A Bayonet Charge (wood engraving, 34x52cm; recommended full size; or see it half size) — Prisoners From the Front — Dressing for the Carnival — Turtle Pound — On A Lee Shore — Mending the Nets — Watching the Tempest — The Lifeline — The Fox Hunt — Canoe in the Rapids — Hurricane Bahamas — High Cliff, Coast of Maine (1894) — Night — Sponge Fishing (1885) — Taking a Sunflower to Teacher — 421 images at Webshots — The Gulf Stream (1899) [below] stands at the apex of Homer's career. A Black man lies inert on the deck of a small sailboat. A hurricane has shredded the sails, snapped off the mast, and snatched away the rudder. Unlike the boys in Breezing Up or the fisherman in Fog Warning, this man is powerless to control his vessel. He is at the mercy of the elements. Sharks circle the boat, a waterspout hovers in the distance, and a boat on the distant horizon passes by unseeing and unseen. As in Stephen Crane's comparable short story, The Open Boat, nature is seen as not caring whether a man lives or dies. |
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| Died on a 24 February: 1920 Paul Albert Girard, French artist born on 13 December 1839. — Relative? of Marie-François-Firmin Girard [1838-1921]? 1910 Osman Edhem Pacha Zadeh Hamby-Bey, Turkish artist born in 1842. 1839 Caspar Johann Schneider, German artist born on 19 April 1753. ^ 1819 Jean François Sablet “le Romain”, Swiss painter born on 23 November 1745. He was the son of painter and picture dealer Jacob Sablet [1720–1798]. Both he and his brother Jacques-Henri Sablet [28 Jan 1749 – 22 Aug 1803] studied at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris as students of Joseph-Marie Vien, François in 1768–1773 and Jacques in 1772–1775. Although their careers did not follow a similar course, the attribution of their works has frequently been confused. Among Jean François Sablet's early portraits are those of Charles de Bourbon, Comte d’Artois, as Colonel General of the Swiss and Grison Guards (1774) and Charles-Henri, Comte d’Estaing (engraved by Charles-Etienne Gaucher). He also painted genre scenes, such as Childhood in the Country and Visit to the Wet-nurse (engraved by L. Perrot, fl 1786), and mythological scenes. In 1791 he left Paris for Rome to join his brother. While there he concentrated on landscapes, for example Gardens of the Villa Borghese and Landscape at Nemi (1793), also depicting people in local costume (e.g. Peasant Woman of Genzano). In February 1793 he was obliged to leave Rome with the rest of the French community and by October was in Paris as a member of the Revolutionary Commune des Arts. He produced a number of Revolutionary portraits, including Joseph-Agricol Viala, William Tell and Lycurgus (all engraved by Pierre-Michel Alix), but spent most of his time quietly in Normandy. In 1802 he worked in Paris for the printmakers Francesco Piranesi [1758–1810] and his brother Pietro Piranesi [1773–>1807). In 1805 he established himself in Nantes, producing small-scale portraits of the city’s notables (e.g. Nantes, Mus. Dobrée) with sometimes scathing sincerity. In 1812 he decorated the Bourse in Nantes with six large grisailles depicting the Visite de Napoléon à Nantes en 1808. Born on a 24 February: ^ 1885 Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (or Witkacy), Polish writer, art theorist, painter and photographer, who died on 17 September 1939. He was the son of the architect, painter and critic Stanislaw Witkiewicz [1851–1915], creator of the ‘Zakopane style’. He spent his childhood in Zakopane in the Tatra Mountains and was educated at his family home, a place frequented by artists and intellectuals, and also through his many travels to Eastern and Western Europe. From his wide acquaintance with contemporary art, he was particularly impressed by the paintings of Arnold Böcklin. Witkiewicz’s often interrupted studies (1904–1910) under Józef Mehoffer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków had less influence than his lessons in Zakopane and Brittany with Wladyslaw Slewinski, who introduced him to the principles of Gauguin’s Synthetism. Witkiewicz abandoned the naturalism of his first landscapes, executed under the influence of his father, rejected linear perspective and modeling and began to use flat, well-contoured forms and vivid colors, as in Self-portrait with Flowers and Fruit (1913). But his art escapes all classification, and any similarities to contemporary trends are only superficial. In the so-called ‘period of the monsters’ (1908–1914) he created Expressionist-like compositions with fantastic creatures and deformed, ugly human figures. He exploited the ‘perverse harmony’ of complementary colors and turbulent forms. — LINKS 1884 Josef Stoitzer, Austrian artist who died in 1951. 1844 Raffaelo Sorbi, Italian artist who died on 19 December 1931. 1684 Matthys Balen, Flemish artist who died on 07 January 1766. 1613 Mattia Pretti “il Calabrese”, Italian artist who died on 03 January 1699. — [Were Pretti paintings pretty paintings?] |
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