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ART “4” “2”-DAY  29 MAY
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DEATHS: 1895 RECCO — 1858 RUGENDAS — 1921 THAYER — 1784 BARRET
BIRTH: 1840 MAKART
^ Died on 29 May 1695: il cavaliere Giuseppe Recco, Neapolitan still-life painter born on 12 June 1634.
— He was the outstanding member of a family of artists. He specialized in pictures of fish, painted in an impressively grand style, but more austere than those of Ruoppolo, with whom he ranks as the most distinguished Italian still-life painter of his period. He may have visited Lombardy and may have been influenced by Baschenis, but his works are all in the Spanish realist tradition of the Bodegón painting — some have been attributed to Velázquez — which goes back to Caravaggio. He died in Spain. Three of the family members — Giacomo, Giovanni Battista and Giuseppe — used the monogram G R which causes problems of attribution. Giacomo Recco [1603- before 1653] was the eldest, and was the father of Giuseppe, the most famous of the family. Giovanni Battista Recco [1615-1660] may have been Giuseppe's brother but was more likely his uncle.
— Giuseppe Recco was the most celebrated Neapolitan still-life painter of his day. He began in the tradition of his father and (probable) uncle Giovanni Battista Recco, painting naturalistic arrangements of flowers, fish, game and kitchen scenes. There are many signed and dated works which chart the development of his style. The Bodegón with a Negro and Musical Instruments (1659), the Bodegón with Fish (1664) and the Kitchen Interior (1675) are close to the art of Giovanni Battista Recco. The fish and kitchen still-lifes are typically Neapolitan, yet Giuseppe’s art is distinguished by the intensity with which he observes light and surface texture and by the clarity of the composition, based on a careful balance of horizontals and verticals. He moved toward a more Baroque and decorative style, and the unfinished Still-life with Fruit, Flowers and Birds (1672) and the Still-life with Fruit and Flowers (1670) are mature, more theatrical works that suggest the influence of Abraham Breughel [1631–1680] and Giuseppe Battista Ruoppolo.
LINKS
Still-Life with Fruit and Flowers (1670, 255x301cm; 866x1030cm, 158kb) _ This monumental still-life, placed in a landscape with rich vegetation, is a late work of the artist.
Dead Game (984x820, 116kb) — Still-life with the Five Senses (1676, 770x1087pix, 111kb) — Flowers and Game (250x335cm) — Raie sur un chaudron et poissons dans un panier
^ Died on 29 May 1858: Johann Moritz Rugendas, German painter born on 29 March 1802, noted particularly for his drawings and paintings of Brazil and other Latin American countries. Son of engraver Johann Lorenz Rugendas II [1775–1826]. — [He never considered titling a painting Rug end as Jo-Anne more eats]
— He studied first with his father, the engraver Johann Lorenz Rugendas II, and in 1817 went on to further study under Lorenzo Quaglio at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. He travelled to Brazil in 1821 as draughtsman with the Russian diplomat Baron de Langsdorff’s scientific expedition. However, instead of remaining with the expedition for the whole trip, he preferred to discover on his own the different Brazilian provinces, recording types, costumes and landscapes in Romantic visions full of contrasts, action and exoticism. On his return to Europe in 1825 he brought with him an extraordinarily rich collection of drawings, some hundred of which were reproduced as lithographs and published in Paris by Godefroy Engelmann as Voyage pittoresque au Brésil (1827–1835) with a text by Colbery in French and German. Encouraged by the German scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, Rugendas left for Latin America again in 1831, living until 1845 in Mexico and Chile with shorter stays in Argentina, Peru, Bolivia and Uruguay. In each of these countries he made numerous paintings and drawings. He returned to Bavaria, where nearly 3000 drawings and paintings were acquired by the local government, but he then went back to live in Brazil between 1845 and 1846. He took part in exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro and painted the portrait of Peter II (1846) and other members of the Brazilian imperial family. The interest aroused by his work led to the re-use in 1830 of some of the plates from Voyage pittoresque au Brésil as a panorama sold commercially as wallpaper by the Zuber company of Rixheim in Alsace. Decoration inspired by his scenes of the Brazilian jungle was also used on several pieces of a porcelain dinner-service commissioned by Louis-Philippe, King of France, from the Sèvres factory.
LINKS
Volcán de Colima (1834, 48x67cm) _ The German man of science, Alexander von Humboldt organized a series of expeditions which took him to Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Cuba and Mexico between 1799 and 1804. He published his observations on these expeditions in some thirty volumes whose publication began during his last year of travel, continuing up to 1834, when the last volume went to press. Humboldt's work broke with the tradition of the illustrated books on the Americas published in previous centuries, since his illustrations were based on direct observation and scientific inquiry. Johann Moritz Rugendas was one of the illustrators of his work.
Llegada del Presidente Prieto a la Pampilla _ detail 1 _ detail 2 (cattle)
^ Born on 29 May 1840: Hans Makart, Austrian Academic painter who died on 03 October 1884. — [Did Makart make artwork work?]
— He studied (1860–1865) at the Akademie in Munich under the history painter Karl Theodor von Piloty whose influence is evident in Makart’s Death of Pappenheim (1861). Makart visited London and Paris in 1862 and Rome in 1863. The Papal Election (1865) reveals Makart’s skill in the bold use of color to convey drama as well as his virtuoso draftsmanship. Two decorative triptychs, Modern Cupids (1868), and The Plague in Florence (1868), brought Makart both fame and disapproval (mostly because they lacked a literary original) when exhibited in Munich in 1868. His plan for the second work shows a setting of somber magnificence. — Ottó Koroknyai ani Hanus Schwaiger were students of Makart.
— Born in the former residence of the prince-archbishops of Salzburg as the son of an attendant at the Mirabell Palace, Makart received his initial instruction in painting in 1850/51 from Johann Fischbach (1797- 1871). After studies under Karl Theodor von Piloty (1826- 1886) in Munich from 1861 to 1865, and time spent in England, France and Italy, he was called to Vienna in 1869, where a home and a studio were made available to him at government expense. There he shaped Viennese aestheticism like no artist before or after him. The "Makart style" determined the culture of an entire era. Makart attracted the public through the sensuous appeal of his large-scale, theatrical productions of historicising motifs painted in brilliant colours. He was deeply interested in the interaction of all the visual arts and thus in the implementation of the idea of the "total work of art'" which dominated discussions on the arts in the 19th century. This was the ideal which he realised in magnificent festivities which he organised and centered around himself. The culmination of these was the pageant of the City of Vienna organised to celebrate the silver wedding of the imperial couple in 1879. With his sketchy, fleeting mode of painting, Makart, whose artistic successor is said to be Gustav Klimt (1862- 1918), exerted a seminal influence on the development of painting after 1900.
— Son of a chamberlain at Mirabell castle. After a short study at the Academy in Vienna he was educated by Karl Theodor von Piloty in Munich (1860-1865) and travelled to London, Paris and Rome to study. He returned to Vienna after the prince Von Hohenlohe provided him with an old foundy at the Gusshausstrasse 25 to use as a studio. He gradually turned it into an impressive place full of sculptures, flowers, musical instruments, requisites and jewellery that he used to create classical settings for his portraits, mainly of women. Eventually his studio looked like a salon and became a social meeting point in Vienna. Cosima Wagner described it as a 'wonder of decoritive beauty, a sublime lumber-room'.
     Makart became famous for his richly colored history paintings and enjoyed his finest hour in 1879 with his painting of the procession in honour of the silver anniversary of the marriage of emperor Francis Joseph and his wife Elisabeth (better known as Sisi). In the same year he became a Professor at the Academy.
     Makart also designed furniture and interiors. In 1882 emperor Francis Joseph orderded to build the Villa Hermes at Lainz (near Vienna) for his empress and the bedroom decoration should be inspired on Shakespeare's Midsummernight's Dream. Makart designed a fascinating dreamworld that still exists at the Villa Hermes as a large painting (1882). Unfortunately his design was never executed after his early death in 1884. His collection of antics and art consisted of 1083 pieces and was put up for auction by art-dealer H.O. Miethke.
photo of Makart
LINKS
The Dream after the Ball (1887, 159x95cm) — Portrait of a Lady with Red Plumed Hat (1873, 151x100cm) — Abundantia: The Gifts of the Sea (1870; 105kb) — Abundantia: The Gifts of the Earth (1870; 105kb) — Portrait of a Lady (122kb) (without a red plume on her hat)
Bildnis seiner ersten Frau Amalie (1871, 76x58cm; 595x450cm, 56kb) _ The daughter of a Munich butcher, she had risen to the top echelons of society, and her challenging look as well as her posture signal self-confidence. This portrait of his first wife Amalie Roithmayr, which was painted in about 1871, two years before her death, belongs to a small group of paintings which the artist did not intend for public viewing. Its lively expressiveness evokes the admiration of the beholder. Its special appeal derives from the combination of two different styles of painting and from its "nonfinito" character, as well as from the abruptly changing pictorial effects. The flesh tints painted wet-into-wet contrast effectively with the sketchy impasto brushwork on the dress and collar, and the fleeting suggestion of the sitter's hands. This portrait remained in the artist's studio to his death. Amalie was frequently used as a model for Makart's formal paintings. In the monumental work Venice Pays Homage to Caterina Cornaro, which was formally presented at the opening of the Vienna World Exhibition on 01 May 1879, Caterina Cornaro bears the features of the artist's wife. A portrait dating from 1867 shows Amalie Makart at the piano.
Charlotte Wolter as Messalina (1875; 494x798yix, 75kb)._ Charlotte Wolter [01 Mar 1834 — 14 Jun 1897] was born in Cologne and started her acting career at Budapest in 1857. From 1859 to 1861 she worked for the Victoria Theatre in Berlin. In 1861 she left for the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg and in 1862 she was contracted by Heinrich Laube, director of the Burg Theatre in Vienna, where she was engaged until her death. She played well known parts like Lady MacBeth, but also starred in Grillparzer's plays, like "Hero", "Sappho" and "Medea". She also managed to turn Wilbrandt's "Arria und Messalina" into a succes thanks to her powerful portrayal of Messalina. Her outcry during dramatic moments became famous as the "Wolter-Schrei". In 1876 she married count Charles O'Sullivan de Grass [–1888].
^ Died on 29 May 1921: Abbott Henderson Thayer. US painter born on 12 August 1849.
     Abbott Handerson Thayer was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His study of natural history began early, before he was nine he had begun to paint animals, particularly birds. He painted dogs' and cats' portraits, cattle and landscape. Then Thayer's introduction to the traditions of the Italian Renaissance and its classical ideals began with academic training in Paris under Jean~Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux Arts with .
     Returning to New York in 1879, he established a successful career painting society portraits and beautiful women for which he is best known. His later portraits develop beyond likeness into the psychological examinations that would increasingly occupy him. The Sisters (1884), a double-portrait of Clara and Bessie Stillman, hints at a complex familial relationship in the unusually close placement of their bodies and their pensive expressions.
      The illness and death of Thayer's beloved wife, Kate Bloede, inspired a new direction in his art. In the late 1880s, as her tuberculosis and depression worsened, he began painting their three children in classically inspired compositions that depict them as embodiments of perfection.
      Thayer's idealism was influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson's transcendentalist writings and the concept of an ideal world existing beside the material world. Thayer painted the first of his winged protective figures in 1887, Angel, a luminous portrait of his eldest daughter Mary.
      In Virgin Enthroned, painted in 1891 after his wife's death, Thayer's daughter appears as a Madonna-like figure watching over her siblings.
      Thayer often created large-scale paintings that served symbolically as "guardian angels." His homage to the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, titled Stevenson Memorial (1903), features a pale brooding figure enveloped by darkness, seated on a rock marking Stevenson's grave.
      Angel of the Dawn (1919) celebrates the vitality of the New England coast, where Thayer helped establish a bird sanctuary; Monadnock Angel (1920-1921) commemorates his active role in Mount Monadnock's preservation as a state park.
      Thayer is a curious double-figure, a man of extremes and contradictions. He embodied elegance and rusticity, enthusiasm and depression. The Stevenson Memorial brings together much of his thinking about the polar extremes of darkness and light symbolizing the coexistence of madness and sanity and good and evil that were found in some of Stevenson's writings.
      In 1901, after relocating his family to an artists' colony in Dublin, N.H., Thayer cultivated a rough persona and became disdainful of social conventions. He and his family slept outdoors and kept wild animals as household pets. However, he remained connected to the world of art and ideas, maintaining a lively correspondence with contemporaries such as Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), patron Charles Lang Freer and President Theodore Roosevelt.
      While living in New Hampshire, Thayer's interest in the natural world expanded to include scientific observations of animal camouflage, or "protective coloration." Peacock in the Woods (1907) illustrates Thayer's ideas of nature as an artist using color and shadow to disguise animals in the environment.  In the early 1890s, Abbott Thayer, best known for his images of idealized winged women and, at the time, one of the finest figure painters in the US, began formulating a comprehensive theory of concealing coloration (how coloring helps animals hide from their predators and prey) and studying how it might be applied to military camouflage.
      Thayer's concept was based on his observations of the ways in which nature "obliterates" contrast. One is by blending: the colorations of animals, he said, mimic their environments. The second is by disruption: strong arbitrary patterns of color flatten contours and break up outlines, so creatures either disappear or look to be something other than what they are.
      Although many prominent zoologists were receptive to Thayer's ideas, numerous other scientists attacked him. They argued correctly that conspicuous coloring was also designed to warn off a predator or attract a prospective mate. They particularly resented Thayer’s insistence that his theory be accepted all or nothing.
      With his son, Gerald, Thayer published his theories in Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (1909), and he promoted the idea of camouflage for soldiers and ships in World War I.
      Ultimately Thayer’s law of obliterative countershading received official acceptance. During World War I, both the Allies and the Germans made use of his theories in their efforts to camouflage military personnel and matériel.
      In his mature work, Thayer began exploring less traditional methods, leaving areas of the canvas exposed. Increasingly, he created heavily brushed, almost abstract areas of paint, sometimes using a palette knife. He used unconventional means to manipulate paint including a common broom or applying it directly from the tube. He might work on a single canvas for years, adding paint and scraping it away until he achieved the essence of his subject.
      Thayer's deliberately unfinished canvases — such as Monadnock Angel — allow the viewer to experience the painting's creation. Thayer was working with the modern notion that the key to understanding his paintings is in the process of their creation, much like the Abstract Expressionist ideas in the 1950s.
— Thayer's students included Ben Foster.

LINKS
David (1895, 159x83cm)
Alma Wollerman (his future daughter-in-law Mrs. Gerald Thayer) (1903, 48x40cm)
Irish GirlAngel (1889; 1000x778pix, 172kb) — Roses (1890, 57x80cm) — Stevenson MemorialWinged Figure (1889, 131x96cm) — Caritas (1895) — Boy and Angel
A Virgin (1893) _ Many of Thayer's works celebrate beauty and purity. A Virgin, painted for his patron Charles Freer, sets the artist's children (Mary leading Gerald and Gladys), draped in classical robes, against winglike clouds.
^ Died on 29 May 1784: George Barret Sr., 1784 George Barret Sr., Irish English painter born in 1728 (or 1732), specialized in Landscapes.; presumably father of George Barret Jr. [1767-1842]
— Barret was one of the most successful landscape artists working in London in the 1760s and 1770s. His idealized views were made up of stock motifs such as cottages, watermills, peasants and cattle. They may seem artificial now, but in their time Barret’s landscapes were appreciated for their naturalness. According to contemporary art theory, painting should represent a higher form of reality, in which the ugliness and disorder apparent in the real world were suppressed in favour of aesthetic harmony. Following these dictates, artists such as Barret helped create an enduring fantasy of the rural scene.
— Barret Sr. was born in Dublin, the son of a tailor. He first trained as a staymaker but then found work coloring prints for Silcock, a publisher in Dublin. In 1747 he was awarded first prize at the Dublin Society’s School, where he studied under Robert West. Among Barret’s earliest works is a group of landscapes painted for Joseph Leeson, later 1st Earl of Miltown, in the 1740s and 1750s as architectural decorations for Russborough House, County Wicklow, built in 1742–1755 by Richard Castle. They are rather stiff Italianate views, with somewhat contrived compositions. In the 1750s, perhaps through the influence of Edmund Burke, Barret embarked on a series of topographical paintings of the Dargle Valley, Powerscourt, Castletown and other locations around Dublin. These works established his reputation, and he moved to London in 1763. The following year he won a 50-guinea premium for a painting exhibited at the Free Society of Artists, and he was soon taken up by English patrons. In 1765–1767 he made ten views of the park and house at Welbeck Abbey, Notts, for William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland. After becoming a founder-member of the Royal Academy in 1768 he carried out a similar commission for Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, recording the mountainous scenery of Dalkeith Park, Lothian, in such pictures as A Rocky River Scene, which were shown at the Royal Academy between 1769 and 1771. Engleheart was a student of Barret Sr.
— The son of a tailor, Barret first trained as a staymaker but then found work coloring prints for Silcock, a publisher in Dublin. In 1747 he was awarded first prize at the Dublin Society's School, where he studied under Robert West. Among Barret's earliest works is a group of landscapes painted for Joseph Leeson, later 1st Earl of Miltown, in the 1740s and 1750s as architectural decorations for Russborough House, Co. Wicklow, built in 1742–55 by Richard Castle. They are rather stiff Italianate views, with somewhat contrived compositions. In the 1750s, perhaps through the influence of Edmund Burke, Barret embarked on a series of topographical paintings of the Dargle Valley, Powerscourt, Castletown and other locations around Dublin. These works established his reputation, and he moved to London in 1763. The following year he won a 50-guinea premium for a painting exhibited at the Free Society of Artists, and he was soon taken up by English patrons. In 1765–1767 he made ten views of the park and house at Welbeck Abbey, Notts, for William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland. After becoming a founder-member of the Royal Academy in 1768 he carried out a similar commission for Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, recording the mountainous scenery of Dalkeith Park, Lothian, in such pictures as A Rocky River Scene, which were shown at the Royal Academy between 1769 and 1771.
      A representative example of Barret's landscape style during this period is the View of Powerscourt Waterfall (1764), which shows both his distinctly acidic palette of yellows and greens, and his romantic approach to topography. Much of his work at this time is a clear reflection of Burke's influential treatise, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757). In 1765 he visited North Wales, later travelling to Westmorland and Cumberland in the Lake District. He was one of the first artists to be inspired by the Sublime characteristics of the Lake District, and he received wide acclaim for so doing. A measure of his popularity can be gauged by his reputed income of £2000 per annum, although this high figure is partly explained by the numerous pot-boilers he produced during the 1770s.
      When compared with the Powerscourt Waterfall picture, A Storm: Llanberris Pool in the Mountains of Wales (1777) shows that Barret's interest in atmosphere had not diminished, although the later canvas lacks both depth and drama. He continued to paint topographical views such as the East Front of Burton Constable Hall (1777). However, both canvases of 1777 show that he had lost a good deal of the freshness of his earlier work: Barret was relying on compositional formulae he had absorbed through studying Richard Wilson's work but without understanding the subtleties of Wilson's style.
      This decline, together with Barret's quarrelsome nature, alienated patrons and c. 1780 he was declared bankrupt. He had, however, responded well to a commission from William Locke (whom he had known since at least 1772), which involved decorating a room at Locke's house, Norbury Park, Surrey. Barret, who collaborated on this project with Sawrey Gilpin, Giovanni Battista Cipriani and the architect-designer Benedetto Pastorini (d 1839), produced a panoramic view of the Lake District, a work that was hailed as his masterpiece.
      In 1782, through Burke's efforts, Barret was appointed Official Painter to the Chelsea Royal Hospital; by this time, however, he was in poor health and died before completing any work for that institution. Several of his children were active as painters: Mary Barret [–1836] specialized in miniatures; James Barret (fl 1785–1819) mainly worked as a topographical artist, as did George Barret jr [1767–1842], who in 1840 published The Theory and Practice of Water-colour Painting.
LINKS
Broodmares and Colts in a Landscape (1783, 63x75cm) — River Scene with Watermill, Figures and Cows (100x125cm)
Landscape (112x165cm) _ Il dipinto raffigura un angolo di bosco entro il quale si frangono i flutti di una piccola cascata. Sulla riva alcune figure si intrattengono con un pescatore. L'attribuzione a George Barret va pienamente confermata, cosi' come quella a Giovan Battista Cipriani per le figure. Il sostenuto classicismo di queste ultime trova infatti agevole confronto nelle opere licenziate in patria dal pittore fiorentino e nella Vergine in gloria e San Clemente papa conservata nel Santuario della Madonna a Bastiglia in provincia di Modena. Il dipinto e' altresi' caratteristico della formula paesaggistica adottata da Barret, in concorrenza con il piu' noto Richard Wilson e con una larga fascia della cultura inglese di fine '700 che si compiace di un descrittivismo di piacevole effetto decorativo, non senza indulgere a quel gusto per il “pittoresco” che, in quegli stessi anni, riportava in auge la pittura del napoletano Salvator Rosa, amatissimo per le sue valenze preromantiche.
^
Born on a 29 May:


1897 Edward Wolfe, British artist who died in 1981. — [Who's afraid of Edward Wolfe? or at least of showing some of his artwork on the Internet? The same people who are afraid of Virginia Woolf [25 Jan 1882 – 28 March 1941]? Or those afraid of the author of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Edward Albee [12 Mar 1928 –], albeit in a different way?]

1863 Marcelino Peña Muñoz, Spanish painter.

1845 Alberto Urdaneta Urdaneta, Colombian painter, engraver, and publicist.

1838 Gérard-Marie-François Girard-Firmin, French artist who died on 08 January 1921. — [It's Girard-Firmin, NOT Girard-Vermin.] [Was Girard-Firmin firm in his convictions?] [Est-il vrai que les amis de Girard-Firmin firent main basse sur ses oeuvres et que c'est pour cela qu'on ne les trouve pas dans l'internet?]

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