ART 4
2-DAY 26 March |
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Born on 26 March 1864: Alexei
Georgevich Jawlensky (or Yawlensky), Russian German Expressionist
painter and printmaker, active in Germany, who died on 15 March 1941. — He was born in Torzhok, but, when he was ten, his family moved to Moscow. Following family tradition, he was originally educated for a military career, attending cadet school, and, later, the Alexander Military School in Moscow. However, while still a cadet, he became interested in painting. At the age of 16, he visited the Moscow World Exposition, which had a profound influence on him. He subsequently spent all of his leisure time at the Tret’yakov State Gallery, Moscow. In 1884 he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Samogita Infantry–Grenadier’s Regiment, based in Moscow. In 1889 he transferred to a regiment in Saint-Petersburg, and later enrolled in the Academy of Art (1889–1896), where he was a student of Il’ya Repin. Indeed his works of this period reflected some of the conventions of Realism (e.g. W. W. Mathé Working, 1892). Seeking to escape the limitations on expression exhorted by the Russian art establishment, in 1896 Jawlensky and his colleagues Igor Grabar, Dmitry Kardovsky, and Marianne Werefkin moved to Munich to study with Anton Azbe. Here he made the acquaintance of another expatriate Russian artist, Vasily Kandinsky. In Munich Jawlensky began his lasting experimentation in the combination of color, line, and form to express his innermost self (e.g. Hyacinth, 1902). LINKS Spanish Woman (1913) Meditation (The Prayer) (1922) Love (1925) |
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Born on 25 March 1692: Jean
Restout II, French Neo-classical
painter, specialized in historical
subjects, who died on 01 January 1768. — — Jean Restout II received his early artistic training from his father, Jean Restout I, and from his mother, Marie Catherine Jouvenet Restout. By 1707 he was in Paris as the student of his famous uncle and godfather, Jean Jouvenet [1644 – 05 Apr 1717], the leading religious painter there. In 1717 Jean Restout painted Vénus demandant à Vulcain des armes pour Énée. Ce tableau lui mérita d'être agréé de l'Académie le 29 May 1717. On y voit l'influence de Jouvenet: même caractère de dessin, mêmes formes larges de drapées, même principe de disposer ses groupes, mêmes entente de la perspective et de toute la magie du clair-obscur. He followed with Vénus montrant ses armes à Enée. He was received (reçu) by the Académie on 28 June 1720, the year in which he married Marie-Anne Hallé [1704–], a daughter of the painter Claude-Guy Hallé. Unlike most history painters of his time, Restout did not travel to Italy to study. He had a solid training with Jouvenet, and perhaps also with Nicolas de Largillièrre, and, once established in the 1720s, he had a studio of assistants and students. He occasionally attended the drawing school of the Académie, where from 1730 he was professor of drawing, in which capacity he wrote his Essai sur les principes de la peinture. Jean Restout II painted many religious and mythological pictures, and worked for a time for Frederick the Great. His works, chiefly altar-pieces, ceilings and designs for Gobelin tapestries, were engraved by Cochin, Drevet and others. Jean Restout II had an impressively active and successful career. He specialized in serious historical subjects, especially sombre and large-scale religious scenes, which seem out of place in a period renowned for its rather more amorous Rococo art and fêtes galantes, although they demonstrate the continuity of the tradition of monumental figure painting throughout the 18th century. LINKS La Pentecôte (1732, 465x778cm) — Ananie imposant les mains à Saint Paul (1719, 99x80cm) THE FAMILY — Jean Restout II is the most famous of a family of painters from Caen, of which the first was Marguérin Restout, active in the early 17th century. Marguérin’s son Marc-Antoine Restout [1616–1684] was a student of Noël Jouvenet and a friend of Nicolas Poussin, with whom he apparently visited Rome in 1642. He established a reputation in both Rome and the northern Netherlands, as well as in his native Caen. Several of Marc-Antoine's ten children became artists: Jacques Restout [?1653–before 1702], a student of Poussin's nephew Pierre Le Tellier [1614-1680], became a painter, etcher, writer, and abbot of the Premonstratensian abbey of Moncel, near Vitry.; Eustache Restout [1655–1743], prior of the Premonstratensian abbey of Mondaye, trained under Jean Jouvenet and made some fine decorative ceiling paintings as well as being active as an architect and sculptor.; Jean Restout I [1663–1702] married Jouvenet’s sister Marie-Madeleine-Catherine Jouvenet [1655–1698], herself a painter, and acquired a reputation for history painting. They were the parents of Jean Restout II, whose son, Jean-Bernard Restout [22 Feb 1732 – 18 Jul 1797], is the second most renowned painter in the family, best known for his portraits; and whose daughter (painter Anne-Catherine Restout?) married Noël Hallé [1711 – 1781]. Pierre Restout [1666–] was also a painter and monk. Charles Restout [1668–] was a Benedictine monk at Saint-Denis, who painted church ceilings and altarpieces. Thomas Restout [1671–1754] visited Rome and the Netherlands to study his art before establishing himself as a portrait painter. |