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ART “4” “2”-DAY 12 March

DEATHS: 1681 VAN MIERIS — 1749 LISSANDRINO

BIRTH: 1831 LEADER

^ Died on 12 March 1681: Frans van Mieris the Elder, Dutch painter born on 16 April 1635.
— Father of Jan van Mieris and Willem van Mieris. Studied under Gerrit Dou.
— Dutch painter, the most distinguished member of a family of artists who worked in Leiden. He was one of the best students of Gerrit Dou and followed his master in choice of subjects (mainly domestic genre scenes) and in his highly polished technique. The tradition was continued by his sons Jan and Willem, and by Willem's son Frans II.
— Frans van Mieris the Elder was after Dou the principal representative of the Leiden school of 'fijnschilders'. Apparently by the time he was born his parents stopped keeping track of the number of children they produced; he is vaguely mentioned as one of the last of twenty-three. Mieris studied with Dou, and the latter acknowledged him as the 'crown prince of his students'. The characterization is still valid. Mieris fell heir to Dou's technique and compositions.
Like his teacher, he was extremely popular with the wealthy collectors of his time. He received important commissions from Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici and Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. The latter invited him to work at his court in Vienna. He turned down the offer and, as far as we know, spent his life in his native town. A review of his oeuvre brings to mind the work of many of his contemporaries, although he always manages to keep his own personality, particularly his impeccable, highly polished finish which had a lasting effect on later painters with a passion for 'fine painting'.
— Gerrit Dou called Frans van Mieris 'the Prince of my students'. Van Mieris was the son of a Leiden goldsmith and, like Dou himself, had been trained in the studio of a glass-painter before entering that of a painter. Van Mieris mastered Dou's highly finished technique and after his master's death was the leading exponent of the fijnschilder (fine painter) style. He spent his entire working life in Leiden, although (once again like Dou) he enjoyed a considerable international reputation: he received commissions from, among others, Duke Cosimo III de'Medici and Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, who unsuccessfully offered van Mieris the position of court painter in Vienna. This painting shows the traditional subject of a woman admiring herself in a mirror: in the work of Hieronymous Bosch, for example, it was a symbol of the sin of superbia (pride) but by the time it was painted by Gerard ter Borch and van Mieris it simply provided an opportunity for the painter to display his skill in rendering reflections and rich materials. Van Mieris highlights the shimmering satin dress and brightly colored feather within the dark interior, encouraging the viewer to admire his craftsmanship and virtuosity.
Despite his success van Mieris was constantly in debt and contemporary documents appear to support the accounts of an early biographer, Arnold Houbraken, who described him as a habitual drunkard. He was, however, well respected in Leiden and established a dynasty of painters: his sons, Willem and Jan, and his grandson, Frans van Mieris the Younger, imitated his meticulous style and continued to work in his manner until the 1760s.

— LINKS
— Brothel Scene (1658, 43x33cm) _ Unlike a history painting, a genre picture does not generally refer to a written text. Its relation is to the popular, often crude and simplistic, metaphorical interpretation of the world. Genre picture, therefore, have a different structure from history painting, and that structure is one of their major characteristics. A history painting usually illustrates the decisive moment of the historical narrative to which it refers. For a genre painting, however, there never could be such a crucial moment: there was no story. A genre painting always presents a situation, which, through the introduction of key symbols, is reversed into a moral example. This is examplified by the Brothel Scene, which shows an interior with a rather coy lady pouring a smartly dressed young man a glass of wine. An elegant scene — until one perceives, farther back in the room, two dogs copulating. This crude and explicit detail associates the picture with a popular expression of Italian origin: “As is the lady, so is her dog.” And another proverb, saying that beautiful woman and sweet wine are full of dangers, may also apply here. So what at first seems a harmless, attractive scene, is suddenly reversed when the viewer encounters an explicit symbol, often hidden in the background.
— Duet (1658, 32x25cm) _ The curtain drawn aside lets the viewer spy on the elegant, mildly titillating musical partnership.
— The Lacemaker (1680, 78v42cm) _ Frans van Mieris the Elder painted allegories, biblical, historical, literary subjects, and portraits. His principal contribution, however, is found in his genres scenes.
— Duet (1658, 32x25cm) — Carousing Couple — Interior with figures playing Tric Trac (1680, 78x42cm)
— A meal of Oysters (1661, 27x20cm) _ Oysters in the late 17th-century Dutch paintings were generally interpreted as erotic - vaginal - symbols. Here, however, they still had the religious symbolism of shell, with the meaning that had been given to it in a 3rd-century Christian book on animals called 'Physiologus.' Describing the behaviour of animals in 55 chapters, it then relates them to Christian doctrine. The shell is symbolically likened to Mary who gave birth to the 'pearl of great price,' Jesus.
— Young woman in the morning (52x40cm) _ The same woman appears in the Brothel Scene
— Pictura (an allegory of painting) (1661) _ This is a good exemple of the refined technique of van Mieris. Done on copper, the tiny picture follows more or less the formula Cesare Ripa gives in his Iconologia for representing the art of painting: 'A beautiful woman ... with a golden chain around her neck, on which hangs a face mask ... [with] brushes in one hand, and in the other a palette, dressed in a lustrous garment ...' Among the attributes Ripa prescribes for the allegorical representation of Pictura that Mieris thankfully omits are the inscription 'Imitatio' written on the woman's forehead and a bound cloth over her mouth. We have seen that a few years later Vermeer also turned to Ripa's Iconologia for his Art of Painting and Allegory of Faith and that he did not follow the iconographer's instructions to the letter either.
— Woman before the mirror (1670, 43x32cm) _ detail _ This painting shows the traditional subject of a woman admiring herself in a mirror: in the work of Hieronymous Bosch, for example, it was a symbol of the sin of superbia (pride) but by the time it was painted by Gerard ter Borch and van Mieris it simply provided an opportunity for the painter to display his skill in rendering reflections and rich materials. Van Mieris highlights the shimmering satin dress and brightly colored feather within the dark interior, encouraging the viewer to admire his craftsmanship and virtuosity.
— The Doctors' visit (1667, 44x31cm) — The Death of Lucretia (1679, 38x17cm)

^ Born on 12 Mar 1831: Benjamin “Williams Leader”, English painter who died on 22 March 1923. — {Was there any Follower?}
— His father Edward Leader Williams was a civil engineer who knew and admired John Constable. Leader’s early artistic training was as a draftsman at the Government Schools of Design in Worcester. In 1854 he entered the Royal Academy Schools, London, and subsequently took up a career as a landscape painter. His early landscapes show the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Leader began to exhibit work at the Royal Academy in 1857, whereupon he transposed his names in order to distinguish himself from the Williams family of painters who also exhibited there. He continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy until 1922 and also at the British Institution and the Birmingham Society of Artists.

— LINKS
— Low Tide on the South Coast (1911, 76x122cm)
— The Sandpit, Burrow's Cross (1898, 61x102cm)
— A Woodland Pool (1915, 61x91cm) — The Incoming Tide, Porth Newquay (1912, 46x76cm)
— Morning on the Sussex Coast (1911, 61x93cm; 660x1000pix, 198kb)
— Across The Heath (1909, 123x184cm)
— Where Peaceful Waters Glide (1898, 112x183cm) — Returning Home (1897, 53x81cm)
— Sunshine After Rain (1882, 82x123cm) — On The Llugwy, North Wales (1879, 41x61cm)
— The Last Gleam, Wargrave on Thames (1879, 61x91cm)
— A Welsh Sheep Farm (1878, 41x 61cm) — The Wengen Alps, Morning In Switzerland (61x91cm)
— The Valley of the Lleder, North Wales (1871, 41x61cm)
— Derwentwater (1868, 67x105cm) — On the Thames (41x61cm)
— Tintern Abbey (523x780pix, 104kb) _ This abbey, in Monmouthshire, England, was founded in 1131 by Walter de Clare for Cistercian monks, who came from the Abbey of Aumone, in the Diocese of Chartres, itself founded only ten years before. Walter's son Gilbert, first earl of Pembroke, and probably also his grandson Richard Strongbow, conqueror of Ireland under Henry II, were buried at Tintern, the magnificent church of which dates from the end of the thirteenth century. The abbey received rich benefactions not only from the family of its founder but from other noble houses. The accounts submitted by the last abbot, Richard Wych, in 1535, place the net income at under 200 pounds a year; and the abbey, containing at that time thirteen monks, was suppressed under the Act of 1536 which dissolved the smaller monasteries. The ruins of Tintern, which stands on the right bank of the river Wye, backed by a semicircle of wooded hills, ranks with Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire as the most beautiful in England. The church, measuring 245 feet in length, with transepts of 110 feet, is almost perfect, though roofless, the architecture being of the transitional style from Early English to Decorated. The window-tracery is especially fine. Hardly anything remains of the domestic buildings of the abbey, the stone having been used for cottages and farm buildings in the neighborhood.
_ in Leader's painting, Tintern Abbey is a relatively minor part of a landscape of the Wye valley. In contrast, the ruins are the whole subject of Tintern Abbey (1794; 683x517pix, 93kb), watercolor by Joseph Mallord William Turner [23 Apr 1775 – 19 Dec 1851].
_ another Tintern Abbey picture (636x874pix, 204kb) color lithograph in P.I. De Loutherbourg, The Romantic and Picturesque Scenery of England and Wales (London: T. Bensley, 1805)
_ a poem by Wordsworth: LINES composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour. July 13, 1798 . He wrote: “No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days, with my Sister. Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol. It was published almost immediately after in the little volume of which so much has been said in these Notes.” --(The Lyrical Ballads, as first published at Bristol by Cottle.)
_ a sonnet Written in Tintern Abbey by Gardner
_ Tintern Abbey today, history, description, and 10 photos.

^ Died on 12 March 1749: Alessandro Magnasco “Lissandrino”, Genovese Rococo painter and draftsman, active mostly in Milan, born on 04 February 1667.
— Il Lissandrino was born and died in Genoa, but spent most of his working life in Milan. At the beginning of his career he was a portraitist, but virtually nothing is known of this aspect of his career. Later he turned to the type of work for which he is now known - highly individual melodramatic scenes set in storm-tossed landscapes, ruins, convents, and gloomy monasteries, peopled with small elongated figures of monks, nuns, gypsies, mercenaries, witches, beggars, and inquisitors. His brushwork is nervous and flickering and his lighting effects macabre. He was very prolific and his work is rarely dated or datable. Marco Ricci and Francesco Guardi were among the artists influenced by him.
— Lissandrino was not taught by his father the painter Stefano Magnasco [1635-1672], who died when he was a young child. He went to Milan, probably between 1681 and 1682, and entered the workshop of Filippo Abbiati [1640–1715]. His Christ Carrying the Cross faithfully repeats the subject and composition of Abbiati’s painting of the same subject. Alessandro Magnasco’s early works were influenced by the harsh and dramatic art of 17th-century Lombardy, with dramatic contrasts of light and dark and livid, earthy tones, far removed from the bright, glowing colors of contemporary Genoese painting. The depiction of extreme emotion in the St Francis in Ecstasy was inspired by Francesco Cairo’s Dream of Elijah. However, Magnasco was already expressing himself in a very personal manner, with forms fragmented by swift brushstrokes and darting flashes of light. The Quaker Meeting (1695) is one of his first genre scenes. In this early period he specialized as a figurista, creating small human figures to be inserted in the landscapes and architectural settings of other painters. He also began collaborating with the landscape painter Antonio Francesco Peruzzini, with a specialist in perspective effects, Clemente Spera, and other specialist painters; it was not until between 1720 and 1725 that Magnasco himself began to create the landscapes and architectural ruins that provide the setting for his figures.

— LINKS
— Monks Praying in a Grotto (97x70cm; 935x695pix, 475kb _ ZOOM to 2347x1745pix, 2905kb).
— Soldiers Feasting (1725, 59x45cm; 1/3 size, 59kb _ ZOOM to 2/3 size, 203kb) — Bacchanalian Scene (1717, 110x167cm; 640x1008pix, 186kb) _ These paintings belongs to a series of four, two of which representing bacchanalian scens, the other two brigands. The painting was done in collaboration with Clemente Spera who painted the architectural background.
— Halt of the Brigands (1718, 112x162cm; 640x999pix, 172kb) _ The painting belongs to a series of four, two of which representing bacchanalian scenes, the other two brigands. The painting was executed in collaboration with Clemente Spera who painted the architectural background.
— Christ Adored by Two Nuns (1715, 58x43cm; 820x662pix, 123kb) _ Alessandro Magnasco's first training was in the artistic circles of late seventeenth century Genoa where the styles most favorably regarded were those of Rubens and the painters of Lombardy with their considerable use of chiaroscuro (Morazzone in particular). These influences led Magnasco towards a visionary, fantastic language characterized by stylistic modes of an expressionistic rapidity of execution and a tormented luministic violence. The pictoricism of Magnasco, of which Christ Adored by Two Nuns is a significant example, worked on the imagination of many Venetian painters, and of Sebastiano Ricci, Marco Ricci, and Francesco Guardi in particular.
— Praying Monks (54x44cm; 1053x820pix, 159kb) _ This is a good example,of the brilliant sketching technique of Magnasco, who was a transitional figure between the Baroque and Rococo. The impassioned figures are rendered against a dark and threatening background with rapid, irregular brushstrokes. Isolated and ecstatic monks and hermits often feature in the macabre scenes through which Magnasco conveyed his fantastic and critical vision of humanity. The emotional turbulence of his work was not unique in the Italian Baroque and Rococo, but it was certainly something of an extreme example.
— The Seashore (1700, 158x211cm; 700x927pix, 171kb) _ The painting is one of the romantic landscapes of Magnasco. It was made in collaboration with Antonio Francesco Peruzzi landscape painter.
— Interrogations in Jail (1710, 670x1300pix, 176kb _ ZOOM not recommended to fuzzy 1400x2559pix, 343kb) _ Magnasco painted scenes in which he showed up the anxieties of his age, as for instance in this picture, which depicts a torture-chamber of the Inquisition. He borrowed some of his motifs from Callot's etchings, but the expressive arrangement and flowing rhythm of the groups are a reflection of his own highly individual and original style. This is one of a group of three paintings inspired by the disasters of war. Looting, the wounded, and torture are all depicted in a lucid, almost documentary style, which could almost be regarded as a form of protest, uncommon though that was at the time.
— Wedding Procession (1740; 700x926pix, 108kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1852pix, 392kb)

Died on a 12 March:

2001 Josep Martinell, pintor y biógrafo español.

^ 1966 Victor Brauner, Moldavian painter, sculptor, and draftsman, active in France, born on 15 June 1903. — {Compared with the paintings of other artists, were those by Brauner browner?}— As a child, he shared his father’s passionate interest in spiritualism, heralding a lasting preoccupation with the occult. In 1912 he accompanied his family to Vienna, and from 1916 to 1918 attended the evangelical school at Braila, near Galati, studying zoology with great enthusiasm; he also started to paint. In 1921 he spent a brief period at the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest, where his first exhibition was held in 1924 at the Galerie Mozart. The same year, Brauner and the poet Ilarie Voronca founded the review 75HP, in which he published his manifesto of ‘Pictopoésie’ and an article on ‘Le Surrationalisme’.
From 1928 until 1931 he worked with the Dada and Surrealist review UNU, which reproduced his drawings and paintings. Settling in Paris in 1930, he met Constantin Brancusi, who introduced him to photography, and Yves Tanguy, through whom he met the major Surrealists. He lived in the same building as Tanguy and Alberto Giacometti. His premonitory Self-portrait with Enucleated Eye (1931) became a cause célèbre for the Surrealists, whom he joined officially in 1932. André Breton wrote the introduction for his first one-man show at the Galerie Pierre in 1934, the year of Monsieur K’s Power of Concentration and The Strange Case of Monsieur K, departures from Brauner’s earlier work and reminiscent of Alfred Jarry’s Père Ubu. Returning to Bucharest briefly in 1935, he joined the clandestine Romanian Communist Party but left in 1936 at the beginning of the Soviet show trials.

^ 1905 Rudolf von Alt, Viennese painter, draftsman, and printmaker born on 28 August 1812. He was perhaps the most productive and accomplished watercolor painter in German-speaking Europe in the 19th century. On his frequent travels he produced local views, landscapes and interiors, often commissioned by aristocratic patrons. He was taught by his father, Jakob Alt [1789–1872], a landscape and watercolor painter and one of the first to use the new technique of lithography. From the age of six Rudolf accompanied him on study trips, and, together with Alt’s other children, he colored his father’s drawings. During his student days at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna (1825–1932), Rudolf joined his father on further journeys and collaborated in his studio. In 1832 he won a prize, which simultaneously freed him from military service and marked the beginning of his independent artistic activity. In the same year he produced his first oil painting, after his own watercolor, of The Stephansdom, Vienna, a subject that he treated on many occasions until 1898. In 1833 he and his father visited northern Italy; Venice, in particular, made a lasting impression on him. Two years later he went to Rome and Naples. In the brilliant southern light Alt adopted a far wider range for his radiant and transparent color. Many of his views of Italy, and also those of locations throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were intended for use in a peep-show, commissioned by the Austrian Archduke (later Emperor) Ferdinand. Alt continued to receive such official commissions until 1848.

1904 James Fairman, US artist born on 1826. [Now, wouldn't a fair man expect to see a Fairman or two on the internet?]

1722 Christian Beretsz, German artist born in 1658 [Did he start the custom for artists of wearing berets?].

1653 (buried) Gillis Peeters I, Flemish artist born on 12 January 1612 and baptized on 23 January 1612. He was the brother of Bonaventura Peeters I [bap. 23 Jul 1614 – 25 Jul 1652], Catharina Peeters [16 Aug 1615 – >1676], and Jan Peeters I [bap. 24 Apr 1624 – 1679] — Relative? of Clara Peeters [1594-1657+]?

Born on a 12 March:

1920 Elaine Marie Catherine (Fried) de Kooning, US Abstract Expressionist painter, teacher and art critic who died on 01 February 1989. — She married painter Willem de Kooning [24 Apr 1904 – 19 Mar 1997] in 1943. She is best known for her portraits, including two of US President John F. Kennedy. — LINKS — President John F. Kennedy (1963, 295x150cm; 480x222pix, 44kb) standing.

^ 1915 Alberto Burri, Italian Abstract Expressionist painter and sculptor who died in 1995. Trained as a physician, he began painting during his internment as a prisoner of war in Hereford TX. He abandoned medicine and settled in Rome upon repatriation in 1946. Burri’s first solo exhibition in 1947 at La Margherita in Rome featured expressionistic landscapes (e.g. 1947) and still-lifes. In his earliest abstractions (1948–1949) the inspiration of Joan Miró, Paul Klee, Hans Arp, and Enrico Prampolini is discernible, although the addition of tar, pumice, sand, enamel ,and collage elements to the oil in such works as Composition (1948) was more significant. A protagonist of Art informel, Burri’s career evolved through series that overlapped chronologically, in which he used unorthodox materials and processes. In this he was a precursor of Arte Povera. In 1950 he produced his first Sacks, paintings that displayed broad expanses of worn and stained sacking. Color was restricted to red and black, which enhanced the effect of desolation. Burri’s use of ‘poor’ materials offered an alternative to the hermetic painted surfaces of the contemporary geometric ‘post-Cubist’ Concrete art movement. In contrast to idealist aesthetics of the Fascist era, Burri’s works signified a re-engagement with life without recourse to realism. Burri remained aloof from the contemporary debates in Italy about the political significance of abstract and realist art and refused to offer a metaphorical reading of his art. With Mario Ballocco [1913~], Ettore Colla, and Giuseppe Capogrossi he founded the Gruppo Origine in 1951, which declared a commitment to an anti-decorative and non-referential art of pure abstract fundamentals.— LINKS

1889 Carlo Socrate, Italian artist who died in 1967. [Je ne trouve rien de lui dans l'internet. Peut-être aurait-il mieux fait d'être philosophe.]

^ 1888 Jean Dufy, French painter who died in May 1964. Jean Dufy was one of the eight siblings of Fauvist painter Raoul Dufy [03 Jun 1877 – 23 Mar 1953]. The Dufy family was very open to the arts, particularly to music. From the age of 14, Jean exhibited his artistic abilities which were encouraged by his brother Raoul, and Raoul’s friend A.E. Othon Friesz. Jean also painted theater sets. He enrolled in l’École des Beaux-Arts du Havre, where he was taught by Raoul and then by Friesz and Georges Braque. However, Jean quit these studies to rejoin his brother in Paris who remained his true master for the rest of his life. Jean had, at this period of his life, discovered much from travels to North Africa and other European cities. World War I, in which he was a horse-soldier, interrupted his activities for a while. In 1920, he exhibited his recent paintings, notably at the Salon d’Automne, of which he was a member. Along with Raoul, Jean was active in the decorative arts, especially in textiles and porcelains. Inevitably, Jean Dufy’s work continues to be compared to that of his brother. Jean painted frequently in watercolor and ink. Like his brother, his subjects are often Paris, other French cities, country scenes, circuses, horse races, stages and orchestras. He played the classical guitar and was an amateur of jazz, which may account for his paintings exhibiting a more fluid rhythm revealed in deep blues, animated reds and greens, and yellows that tend to accentuate light. Raoul Dufy often dissected each of the elements that he used in his compositions, often with humor or tenderness, if not with acuteness. Jean, on the other hand, was more sensitive to the entire panorama of the scene represented, i.e. the particularity, the individuality, the "hands on". Jean retired to his farm in the Loire River valley where he remained up until his death, continuing to paint the fresh, simple landscapes and subjects which were the love of his life. — Modèle dans l'atelier (340x274pix, 28kb) — Horses and Carriages in the Park (15 x 22, 401x600pix, 48kb) _ sold for $6900 at Shannon's in April 2002.

1867 Auguste Fred Pierre Sézille des Essarts, French artist.

1863 Carl Vilhelm Holsøe, Danish painter who died on 06 November 1935. He studied painting from 1882 to 1884 at the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi, Copenhagen, subsequently studying at the Kunstnernes Studieskole in Copenhagen under P. S. Krøyer. When in 1886 he made his début at the Charlottenborg December exhibition with an interior, the critic Karl Madsen stated that the painting ‘almost had the character of a manifesto’. He referred to the spatial treatment of the picture, in which the objects moved ‘like the fish in the sea’. Holsøe’s depiction of the refraction of light is precise, and his use of colors harmonious.

^ 1848 Karl Hagemeister, German painter who died on 06 August 1933. He studied from 1871 at the Kunstschule in Weimar under Friedrich Preller, who introduced him to the principles of classical landscape painting. In 1873 he began to develop a more modern approach when he met Carl Schuch at the Hintersee, near Berchtesgaden; he immediately became his pupil and later wrote Schuch’s biography. Schuch introduced Hagemeister to the Leibl circle. He visited the Netherlands and Belgium (1873–1874), Italy (1876), and France (1884–1885), often accompanying Schuch and, in the early journeys, Wilhelm Trübner. His approach to landscape changed from classical Naturalism to ‘pure painting’, a more formalist approach in which purely pictorial qualities were given priority over naturalistic representation, as in Lake Shore (1900). His brushwork became broader, his depiction of objects became increasingly summary, and his colours lighter and cooler. Absorbing the influence of Japanese art through the interpretations of the French Impressionists, and following trends in international Art Nouveau, Hagemeister developed an individual variant of Jugendstil. His pictures were composed in accordance with decorative rather than naturalistic principles and became primarily ornamental, as in White Poppy (1881).

1842 Francisco Domingo Marqués, Spanish painter who died in 1920 — Self-Portrait (1884) — Interior of Muñoz Degrain's Studio in Valencia (1867)

^ 1770 Karl August Senff, Estonian painter, engraver, and teacher, of German birth, who died on 02 January 1838. He studied in Leipzig and Dresden about 1795 under Anton Graff and Christian Leberecht Vogel. In Leipzig he learnt an austere approach to art that was mingled with Lutheranism. He rarely received commissions for portraits and turned to engraving as a more democratic art form, portraying, for example, Estonians in the service of the Russian government, such as Pyotr Wittgenstein (drypoint, 1815). At the center of Senff’s artistic universe, Germany, the medieval system of relations between man and the world gave way to Sturm und Drang at the turn of the 19th century, but on the fringes art was more conservative and made a smooth transition to the Biedermeier style, whereby portraits, landscapes and still-lifes were painted with equal scrupulousness. Senff’s landscapes are completely purged of feeling, and they focus on the accurate and precise representation of detail, mainly architectural, as in View of Tartu (1803). In its precision his work can be compared to that of Ivan Khrutsky in Vilnius. Senff’s greatest achievement was as a teacher: from 1803 until his death he taught at the school of drawing at the University of Tartu, where his students included August Clara [1790–1859] and August Schuch [1792–1850]. {It is not known whether he accepted students whose given name was neither Karl nor August}.

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