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ART “4” “2”-DAY  15 MAY
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DEATH: 1935 MALEVICH — 1734 RICCI — 1782 WILSON — 1789 PIERRE — 1859 TURPIN
BIRTH: 1625 MARATTI — 1864 HAMMERSHØI
^ Died on 15 May 1935: Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, Ukrainian Cubist painter born on 26 February 1878, persecuted by the Soviet authorities. His artwork was collected by Nikolai Khardzhiev, and was plundered by crooks when Khardzhiev left the Soviet Union in 1993. A Malevich exhibition was held at the Guggenheim in New York starting on 13 May 2003.
— Malevich was born near Kiev. He studied at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1903. During the early years of his career, he experimented with various Modernist styles and participated in avant-garde exhibitions, such as those of the Moscow Artists’ Association, which included Vasily Kandinsky [04 Dec 1866 – 13 Dec 1944] and Mikhail Larionov, and the Jack of Diamonds exhibition of 1910 in Moscow. Malevich showed his Primitivist paintings of peasants at the exhibition Donkey’s Tail in 1912. After this exhibition, he broke with Larionov’s group.
      In 1913, with composer Mikhail Matiushin and writer Alexei Kruchenykh, Malevich drafted a manifesto for the First Futurist Congress. That same year, he designed the sets and costumes for the opera Victory over the Sun by Matiushin and Kruchenykh. Malevich showed at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1914. At The Last Futurist Exhibition in Petrograd in 1915, Malevich introduced his non-objective, geometric Suprematist paintings. In 1919, he began to explore the three-dimensional applications of Suprematism in architectural models.
     About 1914, after two years of painting in a Cubo-Futurist style, Malevich began to work in an abstract style, which he called Suprematism. For Malevich, the guiding principle of Suprematism was “the supremacy of pure sensation in creative art,” best represented by the square, which he considered the most elementary, basic, and thus supreme formal element; but he increasingly combined the square with the circle, other geometric shapes, and even curved lines. He began by limiting himself in his Suprematist paintings to black, white, gray, and red, but he expanded his palette as his compositions became more complex.
      Malevich, like other artists of his time, believed that the external world could no longer serve as the basis for art, which had, instead, to explore pure non-objective abstraction in the search for visual analogues to experience, both conscious and unconscious. As he wrote in 1915, “Nothing is real except sensation . . . the sensation of non-objectivity.” He first showed his Suprematist works at The Last Futurist Exhibition in St. Petersburg in December 1915. The exhibition, which included a broad sampling of then-current tendencies in Russian avant-garde painting, has become famous for inaugurating the two directions that would largely govern artistic production in Russia (including architecture, graphic design, theater, and the decorative arts) for the next seven years: Suprematism, and the closely related (although more socially oriented) movement Constructivism [more]. Other artists affiliated with Suprematism include Ilya Chashnik, Ivan Kliun, El Lissitzky [23 Nov 1890 – 30 Dec 1941], Liubov Popova, Ivan Puni, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, Nikolai Suetin, and Nadezhda Udaltsova.
      Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Malevich and other advanced artists were encouraged by the Soviet government and attained prominent administrative and teaching positions.
      Malevich began teaching at the Vitebsk Popular Art School in 1919; he soon became its director. In 1919–20, he was given a solo show at the Sixteenth State Exhibition in Moscow, which focused on Suprematism and other non-objective styles. Malevich and his students at Vitebsk formed the Suprematist group Unovis. From 1922 to 1927, he taught at the Institute of Artistic Culture in Petrograd, and between 1924 and 1926 he worked primarily on architectural models with his students.
      In 1927, Malevich traveled with an exhibition of his paintings to Warsaw and also went to Berlin, where his work was shown at the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung. In Germany, he met Jean Arp [16 Sep 1886 – 07 Jun 1966], Naum Gabo, Le Corbusier, and Kurt Schwitters [20 Jun 1887 – 08 January 1948] and visited the Bauhaus, where he met Walter Gropius. The Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow gave Malevich a solo exhibition in 1929.
Malevich, left, with Khardzhiev      Using the pretext of Malevich's connections with German artists, Soviet authorities, who repressed any non-realist art, arrested him in 1930 and destroyed many of his manuscripts. In Malevich's final period, he was forced to paint in a representational style. Malevich died Leningrad.
     This artwork had been among the Russian avant-garde artwork and writings collected by Nikolai Khardzhiev [1903-1996], which, when he left the Soviet Union in 1993, was plundered by corrupt officials, confidence men, and crooked art dealers. Malevich died in poverty in Amsterdam, where the Stedelijk Museum has the best collection of his work, acquired, as by other museums and collectors, under questionable circumstances.
[1933 photo: Malevich, left, with Khardzhiev, in Moscow >]
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— Self Portrait (1933, 73x66cm) — An Englishman in Moscow (1914, 88x57cm) — The Aviator (1914, 125x65cm) — Complex Presentiment: Half-Figure in a Yellow Shirt (1932, 99x79cm).
— Morning in the Village after Snowstorm (1912, 81x81cm) _ The paintings of the Russian avant-garde have, in general, elicited two types of interpretation: one focuses on issues of technique and style; the other concentrates on social and political issues. The former method is usually applied to Kazimir Malevich’s early paintings, grounded as they are in the forms of Cubism, Futurism, and other contemporaneous art movements; the latter largely avoids Malevich in favor of more politically engaged artists such as El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and Vladimir Tatlin.
      From the formalist’s standpoint, Morning in the Village after Snowstorm is, in its mastery of complex colors and shapes, a perfect example of the newly created Russian style, Cubo-Futurism. The figures have been called a continuation of the genre types Malevich portrayed in his Neo-primitive paintings, their depiction seemingly reliant on Fernand Léger’s work, which Malevich could have known from an exhibition in Moscow in February 1912 or through reproductions. This phase in Malevich’s career has been seen as his formidable stopover on his journey toward abstraction and the development of Suprematism.
      But to ignore the political and social dimensions of Malevich’s art would be a disservice. Malevich came from humble circumstances and it is clear in autobiographical accounts that vivid memories of his country childhood compensated for his lack of a formal art education. Morning in the Village after Snowstorm demonstrates that his hard-won skills as a sophisticated painter were rooted in an unmistakably Russian experience. If art can be said to augur the future, then Malevich’s repeated decision—on the brink of the October Revolution—to depict peasants cannot have been merely coincidental.
— Untitled [RFD mailbox?] (1916, 53x53cm) _ Kazimir Malevich proposed the reductive, abstract style of Suprematism as an alternative to earlier art forms, which he considered inappropriate to his own time. He observed that the proportions of forms in art of the past corresponded with those of objects in nature, which are determined by their function. In opposition to this he proposed a self-referential art in which proportion, scale, color, and disposition obey intrinsic, nonutilitarian laws. Malevich considered his non-objective forms to be reproductions of purely affective sensations that bore no relation to external phenomena. He rejected conventions of gravity, clear orientation, horizon line, and perspective systems.
      Malevich’s units are developed from the straight line and its two-dimensional extension, the plane, and are constituted of contrasting areas of unmodeled color, distinguished by various textural effects. The diagonal orientation of geometric forms creates rhythms on the surface of the canvas. The overlapping of elements and their varying scale relationships within a white ground provide a sense of indefinitely extensive space. Though the organization of the pictorial forms does not correspond with that of traditional subjects, there are various internal regulatory principles. In the present work a magnetic attraction and repulsion seem to dictate the slow rotational movement of parts.
^ Born on 15 May 1625: cavaliere Carlo Maratti (or Maratta), Italian painter who died on 15 December 1713.
— Carlo Maratti (Maratta) was the leading painter in Rome in the latter part of the 17th century. As the pupil of Andrea Sacchi he continued the tradition of the classical Grand Manner, based on Raphael, and he gained an international reputation particularly for his paintings of the Madonna and Child, which are reworkings of types established during the High Renaissance. The rhetorical splendor of his work is thoroughly in the Baroque idiom, however, and the numerous altarpieces he painted for Roman churches (many still in situ) give wholehearted expression to the dogmas of the Counterreformation. Maratta was also an accomplished fresco painter, and the finest portraitist of the day in Rome. He had a large studio and his posthumous reputation suffered when the inferior works of his many students and imitators were confused with his own paintings. Maratta's students included Sir Godfrey Kneller, Francesco Trevisani, Antonio Balestra, Giacinto Calandrucci and Giuseppe Passeri.
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— Self-portrait (1684, chalk, 37x27cm)
— Adoration of the Magi (in Garland) (75x61cm) _ The flower garland was executed by Mario Nuzzi, nicknamed Mario dei Fiori (1603-1673). He painted the flowers on several other paintings by Maratti, too.
— Adoration of the Shepherds (1696, 95x98cm) _ The painting is a variant of the fresco executed for the gallery of the Palazzo Quirinale in 1657, revised in 1696. Another variant is in the Louvre, Paris.
— Assumption and the Doctors of the Church (1689) _ The tranquil calm of this scene was derived from cleverly following Raphael's model. It sums up the way that Maratti managed serenely to dominate the image he painted. Pietro da Cortona's exuberance had by now subsided. From this we can deduce that Roman art was losing its impetus after the death of Bernini (1680) and was about to enter a phase of soporific academicism.
— Madonna and Child Enthroned with Angels and Saints (1690) _ This altarpiece possesses a richness of color that is unusual for Maratti. He was, in fact, influenced by looking at Venetian painting, which can also be seen from the way the composition is laid out as well as the expressions and gestures of the characters. Maratti had an eclectic ability to quote from others but always toned it down in a sober and controlled fashion. Indeed, this might be seen as his main claim to fame. Otherwise he was an isolated figure trying to handle the difficult passage between one style and another, between one generation and the next.
— Pope Clement IX (1669, 158x118cm) _ Apart from demonstrating the favours granted by important Roman patrons, Maratti's portraits are also perhaps the most lively and penetrating part of his work. He took pains to capture the exact physiognomy of his sitters in whom he sometimes seemed to uncover an incurable feeling of melancholy hiding just below the surface. Here his admiration for Raphael's portraits is evident, but he has added a more stylish air to suit the tastes of the high Baroque The painting was executed shortly before the death of the Pope who was on the throne from 1667 to 1669. It is signed on the paper sheet on the table.
— Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well (1657, 47x62cm) _ A leading figure in Rome's cultural world in the second half of the seventeenth century, Carlo Maratti is a good example of both the strengths and weaknesses of the Baroque. His technical ability was unsurpassed as was his knowledge of formal models. At the same time he seemed to struggle to be creative in a truly innovative fashion. He grew up in the classically-inspired atmosphere of Nicolas Poussin's circle and had close contacts with Bellori, a man of letters. Maratti studied sixteenth-century painting admiringly (especially Raphael and Correggio) and joined the group of Emilian artists who had succeeded the Carracci. Most of his career was spent in Rome where he painted numerous large altarpieces, excellent portraits and fresco cycles, such as the one in Villa Falconieri at Frascati. He was praised as "Raphael reincarnate" and became leader of the Roman school after the deaths of Pietro da Cortona and Bernini. His painting was typically polished and flawlessly stylish. He attracted imitators and admirers all over Italy.
— Apollo Chasing Daphne (1681, 221x224cm) _ The story is taken from the Metamorphoses of the Roman poet Ovid. After Apollo had offended Cupid in his capacity as an archer, the god of love shot two separate arrows out of spite. One of these struck Apollo himself, who became inflamed with love for Daphne, the daughter of the river god Peneus. With the other, with opposing effect, he hit Daphne, who as a result fled Apollo's advances. Maratti depicts the point at which Apollo almost catches up Daphne and she is rescued by changing into an olive tree. In the foreground lies Peneus, recognisable as river god by his crock of flowing water.
      Carlo Maratti, a native of the Marches and a pupil of Andrea Sacchi, was one of the leading painters of the Rome of his day. The prestigious commission for this painting came from Louis XIV of France. In it the king consciously followed the image of the Sun King by selecting a theme with the sun god Apollo in the main role. The moment in the story chosen here is very traditional and well-loved in the pictorial arts. A famous and virtuoso model is Bernini's group in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. Even so, Maratti's work was rejected by the French court when his work arrived in 1681. The Académie that the king had founded, with its ideals of unity of place, time and action, reproached Maratti for depicting the river god Apianus in the background, although Ovid mentions only later in the story that this god lamented Daphne's lot together with Peneus.
      In accordance with the art theory of the time, which encouraged rivalry between artists, many French artists attempted to improve Maratti's composition by observing the academic rules in their own works with the same theme. In this way Maratti's painting became not only one of the first, but, ironically enough, also one of the most influential manifestations of classicism at the French court. Maratti's figures also contain various borrowings from classical antiquity and Renaissance models. His Apollo follows the Apollo Belvedere in the Vatican. The nymph to Apianus' right strongly resembles a print by Marcantonio Raimondi based on Raphael. Later Ingres and Manet sought inspiration from similar sources for their Odalisque and Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe respectively.
^ Died on 15 May 1734: Sebastiano Ricci (or Rizzi), Italian Rococo era painter, born in 1659, uncle of Marco Ricci (1676 – 21 Jan 1729) Sebastiano Ricci's students included Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini and Francesco Fontebasso.
— Italian decorative painter. He was born in Belluno and is considered a member of the Venetian school, but before he settled in Venice in 1717 he led a peripatetic life, working in numerous Italian cities (Bologna, Rome, Modena, Florence, and Parma) before going to Vienna where he worked in the Schönbrunn Palace. In 1712 he went to England with his nephew, Marco Ricci. They left in 1716, after Sebastiano failed to get the commissions to decorate the dome of St Paul's and Hampton Court Palace. He returned to Venice, and on the way home he stopped in Paris and visited Watteau, some of whose drawings he copied. His unsettled existence is a reflection not only of the demand for his talents but also of his penchant for illicit love affairs, which often led to his having to move in haste, and once almost resulted in his execution. In view of this it is not surprising that his work is uneven and sometimes shows signs of carelessness, but he had a gift for vivid, fresh coloring, and his itinerant career was important in spreading knowledge of Italian decorative painting. Little of the decorative work he did in England survives except the Resurrection in the apse of the Chelsea Hospital Chapel and some large but damaged canvases on the staircase at Burlington House (now the Royal Academy).
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— Prayer in the Garden (1730, 95x76cm) _ In this elegant, late work of Sebastiano Ricci there are reminiscences of Paolo Veronese, especially in the garment of the angel.
— Madonna and Child with Saints (1708, 406x208cm) _ This has to be one of the most cheerful altarpieces of the whole eighteenth century. It was directly inspired by Veronese's Sacra Conversazione but the subject is reinvented with a freshness and exquisite coloration that are spectacularly effective. It was commissioned for a side altar in the church designed by Palladio. It is carefully composed using rising diagonal lines that shift the viewer's attention toward the left of the picture, that is to say toward the Madonna and Child. This geometrical rigor (which is disguised by the apparent immediacy of an action-packed scene) also helps to overcome the tricky problem of having so many figures packed into a fairly small space.
— The Liberation of Saint Peter (1722) _ This sweeping, dynamic composition was part of the most important cycle of canvases commissioned in Venice in the first part of the eighteenth century. The cycle consisted of twelve pictures destined for the presbytery of the church of S. Stae (its full name is Sant'Eustachio and it overlooks the first section of the Grand Canal). Each picture was commissioned from a different artist, thus bringing them together at the same time as provoking comparisons between their various styles. Apart from Ricci, the group comprised among other major geniuses of Venetian painting in the eighteenth century, Piazzetta, Pittoni, and Giambattista Tiepolo. Thanks to these commissions S. Stae became the most important experimental setting for Venetian art in the early part of the century.
— Altar of Saint Gregory the Great _ Ricci was an exuberant personality, internationally renowned and an archetypal "traveling" painter. After training in the Veneto, Ricci spent some time in Emilia (Bologna, Parma and Piacenza). This proved crucial to his development as his style was influenced by the local classicism, deepened when Ricci made a trip to Rome, where Annibale Carraci's frescos in Palazzo Farnese deeply moved him. After a brief trip to Vienna, Ricci went back to Venice in 1708, where his art changed. His Altarpiece of St Gregory the Great was a deliberate homage to Paolo Veronese and inaugurated a totally new era in eighteenth-century Venetian painting, trying to revive the glories of its Renaissance. Compared to his earlier works, his art was now remarkably free in composition and brushwork. This new style of painting was an immediate success. By 1711 Sebastiano had joined his nephew Marco Ricci in London where he remained for five years, working for many great noblemen.
— Susanna and the Elders (1713, 83x102cm) _ The artist made this painting during his stay in England in 1713.
— Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro (1725, 114x178cm) and Bathsheba at the Bath (1725, 118x199cm) _ Two companion-pieces
— a different Bathsheba in her Bath (1725, 112x144cm) _ Attended by four maids and on the far right, a boy with a mirror, Uriah's beautiful wife, Bathsheba, devotes herself to her elaborate toilette in an enclosed garden. The sight of Bathsheba inflamed King David's desire, and he is usually depicted in a palace-window in the background. Here, however, a maid approaches on the far left with a letter from the king. The painting dates from about 1725 and thus belongs to the artist's late period: its refinement of form and color is reminiscent of the golden age of Venetian painting in the 16th century, in particular of Veronese. One of the most influential painters of his time, Ricci was well on the road to international success by the turn of the 17th century. His career took him to Parma, Bologna, Rome, Milan, Florence, Venice and London. His style bridges the impetuous baroque paintings of Luca Giordano and the Rococo-like, Venetian elegance of Tiepolo.
— Dream of Aesculapius (1710, 62x101cm) _ After a long period of study of the greatest figures of late seventeenth century Italian painting, from Pietro da Cortona [01 Nov 1596 – 16 May 1669] and Baciccio in Rome to the Carracci in Bologna, Luca Giordano in Florence and Magnasco in Milan, Sebastiano Ricci achieved a voice of his own characterized by a sparklingly fluent Rococo brilliance which was to gain the artist acceptance in London (1712-1716), and Paris (1716). Especially in paintings of small dimensions Sebastiano Ricci freed himself from all trace of his complex artistic training. Thus in the Dream of Aesculapius every detail of the bed chamber is rendered in the dancing rhythm of his line and the free and easy pictorial style. In the subdued glow of the setting, the scene seems like an animated ballet, fixed for ever in the wonder of bright, spirited color.
— Fall of Phaeton (1704) _ Undoubtedly Sebastiano Ricci's dashing virtuoso technique had its roots in the Baroque. In his hands, however, it was translated into an explosive, light-hearted energy.
— The Punishment of Cupid (1707) _ This is a splendid example of the work Ricci produced during his Florentine period. It incorporated references to Luca Giordano but brought to them a completely new richness and innovation.
— Venus and Adonis (1706), 70x40cm) _ The story of Venus and Adonis, which has attracted not only artists but poets, including Shakespeare, tells that Adonis was the offspring of the incestuous union of King Cinyras of Paphos, in Cyprus, with his daughter Myrrha. His beauty was a byword. Venus conceived a helpless passion for him as a result of a chance graze she received from Cupid's arrow (Met. 10:524-559). One day while out hunting Adonis was slain by a wild boar, an accident Venus had always dreaded (Met. 10:708-739). Hearing his dying groans as she flew overhead in her chariot, she came down to aid him but was too late. In the place where the earth was stained with Adonis' blood, anemones sprouted. Artists usually depict two scenes, the depart and the death of Adonis. This painting represents the first scene. Adonis, spear in hand and with hunting dogs straining at the leash, is impatient to be off, while Venus imploringly tries to hold him back. But she pleads in vain.
— The Meeting of Bacchus and Ariadne (1713, 76x63cm) — Bacchus and Ariadne (1713, 189x104cm) _ It was Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos of Crete, who helped Theseus, whom she loved, to escape from the labyrinth with the aid of a ball of string, but all she had in return was to be abandoned by him on the island of Naxos. Here Bacchus came to her rescue. Classical representations show Ariadne asleep when Bacchus arrives, as described by Philostratus. But according to Ovid she was at that moment lamenting her fate, and Renaissance and later artists generally depict her awake. Bacchus took her jeweled crown and flung it into the heavens where it became a constellation. Ariadne was readily consoled by him and they were married shortly afterwards.
— Sacrifice to Silenus (1723, 56x73cm) _ In Greek mythology Silenus was a rural god, one of the retinue of Bacchus, a gay, fat old drunkard who was yet wise and had the gift of prophecy. On Ricci's picture the priest, touching the bust of Silenus, is blessing the kneeling people around him.
^ Born on 15 May 1864: Wilhelm Hammershøi, Copenhagen painter who died on 13 February 1916. — [was he hammer shy ever since being hit on the head with one?]
— Hammershøi attended the Kongelige Akademi for de Skønne Kunster, Copenhagen, under Frederik Vermehren, between 1879 and 1884. He also studied under Frederik Rohde [1816–1886], Vilhelm Kyhn and Peder Severin Krøyer. Hammershøi's style matured early in his life and did not change much during the 30 years of his career.
     Hammershøi’s first work to be exhibited officially was Portrait of a Young Woman: The Artist’s Sister Anna Hammershøi (1885). In this picture the main characteristics of his distinctive manner of painting portraits and interiors are already evident. He concentrated on the sitter’s expression and stance and omitted anything not essential. The black gown makes a fine point of departure for the blank face, which contrasts with the expressive, fidgety hands, showing the artist’s sympathetic insight into the dreamy world of his younger sister. The simple backdrop — a brownish wall and a white door — emphasizes the image of an isolated figure in an empty room. — Brother and teacher of Svend Hammershøi [10 Aug 1873 — 27 Feb 1948].
— Pintor impresionista y naturalista, uno de los más importantes de Dinamarca. Sus raices se pueden encontrar en la Era Dorada de la tradición de la primera mitad del siglo XIX, aunque permanece profundamente original. Solo maneja un número límitado de géneros bien definidos: interiores - casi siempre de su propia casa - sin ninguna presencia humana, excepto a veces por un caracter femenino, generalmente visto desde atrás, vistas arquitectónicas, paisajes y unos pocos retratos. Hombre secreto y solitario, tuvo pocos amigos. Diaghilev y Rainer Maria Rilke eran sus admiradores. Su obra muestra un parecido extraordinario con algunas tendencias figurativas contemporáneas. Su técnica suave, cautivan la atención de quien lo ve por su enigmática y secreta cualidad y el uso de un limitado rango de colores.
— Vilhelm Hammeshøi durante toda su vida se circunscribió a unos cuantos motivos pictóricos: retratos de familiares y amigos cercanos, pinturas de interior de su hogar, edificios monumentales de Copenhague y Londres, y paisajes de Selandia. Los mismos motivos reaparecen una y otra vez. No hay acción en sus cuadros; a éstos los impregna una actitud fundamental y determinada: tras la calma extrema y la inmovilidad, se percibe el acecho de un elemento indefinible y amenazador. Su escala de colores es muy limitada y la domina una variación de tonos grises. Hammershøi fue alumno en la Academia de Arte en Copenhague de 1879 a 1884 y, en 1883, fue además alumno de Krøyer en la Escuela Libre de Estudios para Artistas. A su debut en Charlottenborg en Copenhague, en 1885, había ya encontrado su forma de expresión. Su arte despertó gran admiración, pero también indignación en los círculos más conservadores de la vida artística, siendo rechazados sus trabajos en 1888 y en 1890 por el comité de censura de las exposiciones de la Academia. Ese rechazo fue uno de los motivos por los que, en 1891, y a iniciativa de Johan Rohde, se organizara la Exposición Libre. No fue sino hasta después de 1900 que recibió un reconocimiento oficial. Hammershøi iba frecuentemente de viaje, especialmente a Paris, Londres, Holanda e Italia. No obstante, y a pesar de que se podía identificar rasgos familiares en la pintura internacional de la época entre diferentes artistas, especialmente J.M. Whistler, no es posible encontrar prototipos propiamente dichos para el arte de Hammershøi.
— “Hammershøi is not one of those one need talk about in a rush. His work is long and slow and at whatever moment one turns to it, it will always offer ample reason to talk about the most crucial and fundamental things in art.” (Rainer Maria Rilke, 1905) In his own lifetime he was one of the most celebrated artists in Europe. Thereafter his work descended almost fully into oblivion outside his home country, Denmark.Many of Hammershøi’s paintings are interior views of his own apartment in Copenhagen. Resembling a non-stop inner monologue he portrays in a few muted tones and with decisive geometrical stringency his sparsely-furnished apartment. His doors spit insults, the floorboards remain silent. It’s almost as if painting had departed, leaving the world behind it as an interior.
     Hammershøi’s paintings also include deserted city views and landscapes, as well as enigmatic nudes and portrait paintings. While Hammershøi’s oeuvre speaks entirely for itself, it nonetheless contains visible references to turn-of-the-century Symbolist art movements that reach far beyond Scandinavia. Accordingly Hammershøi can best be appreciated in the context of contemporaries such as Ferdinand Hodler, Fernand Khnopff, Edgar Degas, Emil Nolde, and Félix Valotton. Among them Hammershøi is a major protagonist of the Symbolist movement. Only in the last few years has Vilhelm Hammershøi’s fascinating oeuvre regained international attention.
— Warning: all the following links are to images that are small; and some of them are of inferior quality.
— Self Portrait — The painter and his wife (1898) — The painter's sister (1885)
— InWeiße Türen/Offene Türen (1904) — Interieur 1904 (part of a dining room) — Gentofter See (1903) — Fredriksborg Castle (1894) Interior (1906?? =1899 !) — The British Museum (1905) — Specks of Dust in the Sun's Rays (1900) — Ida Isted (1890)
— Amalienborg Square (1896) — The Music Room (1907) — Nude (1909) — The four rooms (1914)
— Interior (1899, 64x58cm) _ As in this case, the interiors by the Danish artist Hammershøi are usually of his own house in Copenhagen. Several others also include a figure seen from behind, but many are of the empty rooms. He travelled and exhibited in Europe, and was well known in London early in this century. He had lived here in 1896-1897, partly in the hope of meeting Whistler, whom he admired. — In December 1898 Hammershøi moved into the old merchant house at Strandgade 30, Copenhagen, built in 1636. This painting portrays one of its rooms, and the model is his wife Ida, whom he married in 1891. The table was originally larger and filled most of the foreground, and the figure was added at the end. Pencil underdrawing is visible through the paint layer. The artist painted the interior of this house more than sixty times, sometimes portraying empty rooms, sometimes including the figure of his wife in a long black dress. She is either viewed in profile or from the back, often reading a letter or a book. In all the interiors a sense of stillness prevails, and they show the influence of 17th-century Dutch painting, particularly that of Jan Vermeer.
— Interiør, Strandgarde 30, med ung kvinde set fra ryggen (1904) _ The symbolism from about 1900 can be seen in works of L.A.Ring, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Ejnar Nielsen and J.F. Willumsen etc. An example is this Hammerhøi picture of a woman standing with her back turned at the observer. The secrecy of the figure, the big empty wall spaces , the asceticism of the architectonic style and the colors gives the picture an evocative character that suggest a number of symbolical meanings surpassing the mere perception of the painting.
— Study (Baker shop) (1888, 113x91cm) _ This is Hammershøi's first study in full size. It is characterized by a strict, horizontal composition. In the foreground is the shop counter, in the background the shelves. The room is dark, with a soft light coming in from the left. Behind the counter, separated from the spectator, is a young girl with her back turned. The bread and cakes in the shop are hardly visible, and it is obvious that the composition, not the situation, was what interested Hammershøi. He doesn't paint a girl working, but a soft shape contrasting with the straight lines of the rest of the room. The beauty of the lines and shapes is the real theme of the image.
^ Died on 15 (11?) May 1782: Richard Wilson, Welsh Romantic painter, active in Italy and England, specialized in Landscapes, born on 01 August 1714.
— He began his career as a portraitist who also painted landscapes but committed himself to the latter genre in the early 1750s while in Italy. He painted and drew Italian scenery and idealized classical landscapes not only in Italy but after his return to England, only later developing this manner to include British scenery too. He was also influenced by Dutch landscape painting, particularly the work of Aelbert Cuyp. Wilson was a founder-member of the Royal Academy and enjoyed considerable success until the early 1770s, but his last years were penurious and his reputation in decline. Through William Hodges, a former pupil who published a short essay on Richard Wilson in 1790, and through other ex-pupils (notably Joseph Farington and Thomas Jones), the status of Wilson’s work improved; gradually it began to influence the artists of J. M. W. Turner’s generation. — His students included Joseph Farington, Robert Pollard, William Hodges, Thomas Jones, Jacob More, Francis Wheatley.
— LINKS
— Lake Albano and Castel Gandolfo (1754) — The Mawddach Valley and Cader Idris (1774, 102x107cm) — Solitude — Francesco Zuccarelli
^ Died on 15 May 1789: Jean~Baptiste~Marie Pierre, French painter, printmaker, draughtsman and administrator, born on 06 March 1714.
— Although he painted a number of rustic genre scenes and was an occasional designer of vases and picture frames, he was principally active as a painter of large-scale history and religious works. In this aspect of his output he forms a link in the 18th-century tradition of French history painting that runs from Jean Jouvenet to the Neo-classicism of Jacques-Louis David.
— Among his students he had Jean-Jacques Bachelier, Etienne-Louis Boullée, Louis(-Jean)-Jacques Durameau, Nicolas-René Jollain, Etienne de Lavallée-Poussin, Jean-Jacques-François Lebarbier, Lorens Pasch [1733-1805], (Jean-)Hugues Taraval, Jean-Baptiste Tierce, Antoine Vestier.
— LINKS
— The Rape of Europa (1759, 51x69cm) — Winner of the Rome Prize, academician, Academy director, First Painter to the Duke of Orléans, then to the King, he attempted to impose the supremacy of history painting. — A Hero Welcomed into Olympus, aka The Invocation (1765, 72x62cm oval). _ Study for an unexecuted (?) ceiling, probably intended for the Orléans family. The hero is welcomed by Juno, Jupiter, Minerva, Diana and Neptune. — Junon Demandant à Vénus sa Ceinture (1748, 145x200cm) — Junon Trompant Jupiter avec la Ceinture de Vénus (1748, 145x200cm) commandé par Louis XV pour l'appartement du Dauphin— Un Pont (1749, 59x73cm)
^ Died on 15 May 1859: Lancelot~Théodore Turpin comte de Crissé, Paris painter, lithographer, and collector, born on 06 (09?) July 1782.
— Born into a distinguished military family, he inherited from his father a talent for painting, which was encouraged by the Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, who sent him to Switzerland (1802–1803) and then to Italy (1807–1808). Turpin de Crissé exhibited for the first time at the Salon of 1806, showing René’s Farewell (sold London, Sotheby’s, 25 Nov 1981), a romantic subject taken from Chateaubriand’s René, and a View of the Temple of Minerva at Athens, which had probably been commissioned by Choiseul-Gouffier. He was welcomed into Napoléon’s court as the protégé of Queen Hortense and later of the Empress Joséphine, to whom he became chamberlain in 1809. He accompanied her to Switzerland and Savoy in 1810, returning with an album of 33 sepia drawings that express a delightful ‘troubadour’ feeling for nature.
— Turpin de Crissé came from an aristocratic family, but his father, a talented amateur artist, lost his life and the family fortune in the French Revolution. During the Directory he was supported by the comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, enabling him to study landscape painting and make a trip to Switzerland in 1803. At the Salon of 1806 he exhibited a painting, René's Farewell to His Sister, based on a literary subject from Châteaubriand, the French writer and statesman. During the Empire, Turpin de Crissé attended the court of Josephine as one of her chamberlains, but returned to his artistic career after her death and the fall of Napoléon in 1814. By this time an inheritance had made him financially secure. A frequent exhibitor at the Paris Salon until 1835, he traveled to Italy in search of landscape motifs in 1818, 1824, and 1830. Trusted by the Bourbons after the restoration of the monarchy, he held a number of official posts concerned with the administration of the arts and museums, and was elected to the Legion of Honor in 1825. After the Revolution of 1830, he retired to his native town of Angers, and devoted himself to building a collection of antiquities and works of art, which he bequeathed to the local museum that still bears his name.
— LINKS
— Craggy Landscrape With Bacchanal (1836, 129x76cm) — Piazzetta et Palais Ducal à Venise (1829, 75x100cm)
— Etude de hêtres aux derniers jours d'Automne (1830) — Au premier plan deux hêtres au feuillage jaune. A gauche, dans une clairière, un jeune garçon conduit un troupeau de vaches. Ciel bleu.
— Etude de hêtres au printemps (1831, 60x38cm) _ Un groupe de hêtres en arrière-plan domine un ravin fermé par un talus à droite et par un tunnel au fond d'où sort une charrette chargée de bois et traînée par deux chevaux. Elle est accompagnée d'un homme, tandis qu'une silhouette féminine apparaît près d'un hêtre, au-dessus du tunnel.
— View of a Villa, Pizzofalcone, Naples (1819, 41x54cm) _ detail 1 _ detail 2 _ detail 3 _ detail 4 _ detail 5 _ detail 6 _ detail 7 _ detail 8 (a horse-cart heads towards the tunnel) _ This was probably painted in 1819, just after Turpin de Crissé's first visit to Italy. In 1826 he published a suite of thirty-nine lithographed views in and around Naples, Souvenirs du golfe de Naples, although the subject of our painting does not appear there. View of a Villa, Pizzofalcone, Naples shows a modest neoclassical villa, perched atop an overgrown, rocky cliff and grotto, with animals and passersby heading for the ancient tunnel to the right. The same site was depicted in the 1770s by the British painter Thomas Jones; the little villa, however, was constructed later, at some point between then and 1819. Turpin de Crissé's painting contrasts the crisply whitewashed villa with the undeveloped terrain below. The site in the Pizzofalcone neighborhood of Naples is much altered today, with a garage and parking lot, but the house above, although modified, can still be identified as the Palazzo Villino Wenner. Turpin de Crissé's painting is remarkable for the artist's choice of an unusual and certainly unconventional site, in a city otherwise full of famous views and historic monuments. The finesse of his technique and the precision of his observation, combined with the surprising viewpoint, convey a vivid sense of place. Although this is a finished studio painting, it was very likely closely studied on the spot: the clear, bright light of the southern Mediterranean gives it an immediacy and a feeling of the outdoors.
^
Died on a 15 May:

1908 Charles Frederic Ulrich, German artist born on 18 October 1858.

1904 Mosè di Giosuè Bianchi, Italian painter and etcher born on 13 October 1840, son of Giosuè Bianchi [1806–1875], a painter of portraits and religious subjects in the academic style.
     Mosè enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan, in 1856. In 1859 he temporarily abandoned his studies to fight in the second Italian War of Independence, returning to Milan to study under Giuseppe Bertini. Among his fellow pupils was Tranquillo Cremona, whose involvement with the Scapigliati later had an impact on Bianchi’s work.
     In 1862 Bianchi exhibited his first large-scale independently painting, The Priest Stefano Guandeca Accusing the Archbishop of Milan, Anselmo Pusterla, of Sacrilegious Betrayal (1862). He continued to exhibit regularly and in 1866 he was awarded the Pensionato Oggioni for his Conversion of Saint Paul (1866), which enabled him to visit Venice, Paris and Rome.
     During this period Bianchi met the artists Mariano Fortuny y Marsal and Ernest Meissonier, and the dealer Goupil, who inspired him to produce a series of 18th-century genre scenes such as Leaving for the Duel (1866). Eighteenth-century influences, especially the work of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, were also important for his many fresco cycles, starting with those in the Villa Giovanelli in Lonigo in the Veneto (1870). Bianchi continued to attract attention with his views of Chioggia and Milan, these frequently providing the background for genre scenes (e.g. Porto di San Felice at Chioggia, 1885).
     He also made etchings, largely on urban genre subjects. In 1890 Bianchi extended his interest to rural scenes, following Eugenio Gignous and visiting Gignese on Lake Maggiore, where he painted works of great charm such as Goats at Gignese (1895). Notwithstanding his intense activity and continued public success (he was awarded the Premio Principe Umberto in 1874, 1894 and 1900), Bianchi spent his final years in poverty, assisted by his nephew, the painter Pompeo Mariani [1857–1927].

1891 Edwin Long (or Longsden), English painter born on 12 July 1829. He was taught by John ‘Spanish’ Phillip and began his career painting portraits and Spanish subjects, such as Dialogus diversus (1873). However, he became successful and rich with very large historical and biblical subjects such as the Babylonian Marriage Market (1875), which changed hands in his lifetime for immense sums. His choice of subject-matter was indebted to the example of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, while his style closely resembles that of Edward Armitage. His success enabled him to commission two houses (1878 and 1887), both in Hampstead, from Richard Norman Shaw. He was elected ARA in 1876 and RA in 1881.

1854 Hendrik Reekers, Dutch artist born on 21 September 1815.

1793 Peter Adolphe Hall, Swedish artist born on 23 February 1739.

1665 Claes Wou, Dutch artist [of Chinese origin?] born in 1592.

^
Born on a 15 May:

1842 Gustav Karoly Igler, Hungarian artist who died in 1938.

1628 conte Carlo Cignani, Italian painter and draftsman who died on 06 September1719. He was the leading master in Bologna during the later decades of the 17th century, commanding a position of authority comparable to that of Carlo Maratti in Rome. He bore the title of Conte, and his biographer Giovan Pietro Zanotti wrote that he ‘always worked for glory, not for need’. Zanotti’s emphasis on Cignani’s ‘new manner’ refers to the reflective, intimate mood of his art, presaged in the later pictures of Guido Reni and Guercino, and in those of Simone Cantarini. This gentle manner, which prevailed in the second half of the 17th century, marks a break with the more energetic style of earlier Bolognese classicism.
— Among Cignani's assistants were Federico Bencovich, Marcantonio Franceschini (from 1665 to 1680), Alessandro Marchesini, Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani.
— Among Cignari's students were Giacomo Antonio Boni, Francesco Caccianiga, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Marcantonio Franceschini, Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena Galli-Bibiena, Maria Oriana Galli-Bibiena, Bonaventura Lamberti, Marco Benefial, Francesco Mancini, Giuseppe Mazza, Antoine Rivalz, Ignaz Stern, Emilio Taruffi.

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