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ART “4” “2”-DAY  30 MAY
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DEATHS: 1770 BOUCHER — 1640 RUBENS — 1888 BUVELOT
BIRTHS: 1623 VAILLANT — 1879 BELL — 1930 GENOVÉS
^ Born on 30 May 1623: Wallerant Vaillant, in Lille, Flemish artist who died in Amsterdam on 02 September 1677.
— He was the son of a merchant who established himself in Amsterdam about 1642. Vaillant was apprenticed to Jan Erasmus Quellinus in Antwerp, and in 1647 he was registered as a member of the Guild of Saint Luke in Middelburg. In 1649 he was in Amsterdam, where he painted the portrait of Jan Six. Vaillant lived in Paris between 1659 and 1665 before returning to Amsterdam, where he remained for the rest of his life, although he was also registered in Middelburg. Vaillant first learnt the technique of mezzotint-engraving during a visit to Frankfurt am Main in 1658. There he met Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who was then experimenting with mezzotint. As the first professional mezzotint-engraver, Vaillant achieved remarkable results and had a great following: his more than 200 prints were copied until well into the 18th century. He took his designs from his own paintings (e.g. the portrait of Jan Six) but also from Italian Renaissance artists and the work of contemporaries. Of the last group the wash drawings of Jan de Bisschop were particularly suitable for translation into mezzotint because of their tonal character.
— LINKS
— Self~portrait (23x18cm) — a different Self~portrait (or portrait of the artist's brother Andv. Vaillant) (mezzotint, 26x19cm)
— Portrait of a Boy with a Falcon (76x64cm) _ Until recently this picture was attributed to Aelbert Cuyp who, like his father Jacob Gerritsz., painted portraits comparable to this one in composition, and in motifs such as a falcon or other attributes suggestive of hunting pursued as a fashionable sport. However, the style of execution is characteristic of Vaillant. Today his paintings are often confused with works by Bartholomeus van der Helst and other contemporaries.
— Boy Seated in a Studio, a Plaster Cast of the Christ Child after Michelangelo in Front of Him (27x21cm)
^ Died on 30 May 1770: François Boucher, French Rococo painter, engraver, and designer, born on 29 September 1703.
— Boucher best embodies the frivolity and elegant superficiality of French court life at the middle of the 18th century. He was for a short time a pupil of François Lemoyne and in his early years was closely connected with Watteau, many of whose pictures he engraved. In 1727-1731 he was in Italy, and on his return was soon busy as a versatile fashionable artist. His career was hugely successful and he received many honors, becoming Director of the Gobelins factory in 1755 and Director of the Academy and King's Painter in 1765. He was also the favorite artist of Louis XV's most famous mistress, Mme de Pompadour, to whom he gave lessons and whose portrait he painted several times. Boucher mastered every branch of decorative and illustrative painting, from colossal schemes of decoration for the royal châteaux of Versailles, Fontainebleau, Marly, and Bellevue, to designs for fans and slippers. In his typical paintings he turned the traditional mythological themes into wittily indecorous scènes galantes, and he painted female flesh with a delightfully healthy sensuality, notably in the celebrated Reclining Girl (1751), which probably represents Louis XV's mistress Louisa O'Murphy. Towards the end of his career, as French taste changed in the direction of Neoclassicism, Boucher was attacked, notably by Diderot, for his stereotyped coloring and artificiality; he relied on his own repertory of motifs instead of painting from the life and objected to nature on the grounds that it was 'too green and badly lit'. Certainly his work often shows the effects of superficiality and overproduction, but at its best it has irresistible charm and great brilliance of execution. qualities he passed on to his most important student, Fragonard. Boucher's students also included François-Hubert Drouais, Hubert-François Gravelot, Jean-Baptiste Marie Huet, Jacques Charlier, Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, Gabriel Jacques de Saint-Aubin.
— Boucher was noted for his pastoral and mythological scenes. His work embodies the frivolity and sensuousness of the rococo style. Boucher, the son of a designer of lace, was born in Paris. He studied with the painter François Le Moyne but was most influenced by the delicate style of his contemporary Antoine Watteau. In 1723 Boucher won the Prix de Rome; he studied in Rome from 1727 to 1731. After his return to France, he created hundreds of paintings, decorative boudoir panels, tapestry designs, theater designs, and book illustrations. He became a faculty member of the Royal Academy in 1734. He designed for the Beauvais tapestry works and in 1755 became director of the Gobelins tapestries. In 1765 he was made first painter to the king, director of the Royal Academy, and designer for the Royal Porcelain Works. His success was encouraged by his patron, Marquise de Pompadour, mistress to Louis XV. He painted her portrait several times. Boucher's delicate, lighthearted depictions of classical divinities and well-dressed French shepherdesses delighted the public, who considered him the most fashionable painter of his day. Examples of his work are the paintings Triumph of Venus (1740), Nude Lying on a Sofa (1752) and the tapestry series Loves of the Gods (1744). Boucher's sentimental, facile style was too widely imitated and fell out of favor during the rise of neoclassicism. He died in Paris.
— François Boucher is the quintessential artist of the rococo, a style characterized by elegance, artifice, wit, and imagination. Parisian by birth, Boucher was the son of a painter. He entered the studio of François Le Moyne about 1720, where he learned the new style, and made drawings for the engraver Jean-François Cars. By exhibiting at the Exposition de la Jeunesse, he met the connoisseur Jean de Jullienne, who invited him to make engravings after many of Watteau's drawings. Although Boucher won the Prix de Rome in 1723, it was not until 1727 that he went to Italy to study at his own expense. There he was influenced in particular by the Venetians Veronese and Tiepolo, and Roman painting. He went back to Paris in 1731, became a member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1734, and, upon the death of Carle Vanloo, was named both director of the academy and First Painter to the King in 1765. His most steadfast and influential patron was the marquise de Pompadour, mistress to Louis XV, but he was inundated with commissions throughout his official career. The range of his oeuvre includes not only paintings but decorations, tapestries, stage designs, porcelains, fans, and drawings, all executed with sure draftsmanship, inexhaustible inventiveness, and a rich palette of pastel colors. Boucher continued his amazing productivity until his death, in spite of the public's changing taste, the sharp criticism of Diderot, and his own failing eyesight.
— LINKS
— Virgin and Child (1767, 43x35cm)
— Pensent-ils au Raisin? (1749, 76x90cm)
— Companions of Diana (1745, oval 117x92cm) — Bacchantes (1745, 117x97cm) — Virgin and Child (1768, oval 43x35cm) — Music (92x122cm) — Vertumnus and Pomona (1757, 314x184cm) — Christ and John the Baptist as Children (1758) — Un Polisson (25x20cm)
^ Born on 30 (13?) May 1879: Vanessa Bell, English painter who died on 07 April 1961, wife of art critic Clive Bell, sister of the writer Virginia Woolf. Vanessa Bell was a member of the Bloomsbury group of artists and thinkers, which also included Duncan Grant and Dora Carrington.
— Daughter of the eminent literary critic Sir Leslie Stephen and his wife Julia Duckworth, Vanessa inherited a High Victorian attitude to art against which she was to react. She trained as a painter under Arthur Cope [1857–1940], then at the Royal Academy Schools, where one of her tutors was John Singer Sargent. Family circumstances restricted the work of her early years, and not until 1906 did she begin to assert herself as an artist, forming the Friday Club in an attempt to create an atmosphere in London more conducive to painting. Her Iceland Poppies (1908), exhibited at the New English Art Club in the summer of 1909, was praised by Sickert and marks her artistic maturity. Its quiet, restrained naturalism was, however, to be exploded a year later by her experience of Post-Impressionism.
— Daughter of the eminent literary critic Sir Leslie Stephen and his wife Julia Duckworth, Vanessa Bell inherited a High Victorian attitude to art against which she was to react. She trained as a painter under Arthur Cope [1857–1940], then at the Royal Academy Schools, where one of her tutors was John Singer Sargent [1856-1925]. Family circumstances restricted the work of her early years, and not until 1906 did she begin to assert herself as an artist, forming the Friday Club in an attempt to create an atmosphere in London more conducive to painting. Her Iceland Poppies (1908), exhibited at the New English Art Club in the summer of 1909, was praised by Sickert and marks her artistic maturity. Its quiet, restrained naturalism was, however, to be exploded a year later by her experience of Post-Impressionism.
     Before this she and her sister, later famous as the writer Virginia Woolf [25 Jan 1882 – 28 Mar 1941], had with their brother Thoby's Cambridge friends formed the circle known as Bloomsbury. Vanessa had also married Clive Bell, by whom she had two sons, Julian and Quentin. The entry of Roger Fry into Bloomsbury in 1910 radically altered Vanessa Bell's life and art. Her painting, boldly simplified, was now shorn of all detail and intrusive sentiment. Her willingness to experiment placed her in the forefront of the avant-garde, and she was one of the first in England to essay a non-representational style. She was closely involved in the early stages of the Omega Workshops and retained a lifelong interest in decorative schemes, bringing pattern and color into everyday domestic surroundings.
     Like other artists of her generation she reverted to a more naturalistic style after World War I. She had by then begun her close association with Duncan Grant, by whom she had a daughter, Angelica, in 1918. With him she divided her time between a London studio, the Sussex farmhouse Charleston, and a small farm building called La Bergère outside Cassis. During this interwar period her art, in both style and subject-matter, is very similar to that of Duncan Grant. Both exhibited regularly with the London Group and the London Artists' Association. They also gave their support to the short-lived Euston Road School and together collaborated on many decorative schemes, including work for HMS Queen Mary.
     The tenor of Vanessa Bell's art was altered by the tragic loss of her son Julian in the Spanish Civil War. Soon after this she made Charleston her permanent home, and her more restricted lifestyle is made evident in her paintings, particularly in her choice of subject-matter. Over the years Charleston had gradually filled with paintings and decorations, on the doors, walls, overmantels and furniture. It is frequently the subject of her work and helped deepen her liking for traditional still-lifes, garden scenes and domestic subjects. Her brushwork grew tighter and less flamboyant, the touches of color became smaller and more richly orchestrated. Her art never lacks integrity and offers a sense of private contemplation and delight. Though she received less recognition in her lifetime than Duncan Grant, her work steadily gained in critical acclaim. Her decorative work at its best is outstanding in its unforced simplicity. This is seen especially in her book-jacket designs for the Hogarth Press, which helped establish its distinctive house-style.
^
— LINKS
— View of the Pond at Charleston (1919; 101kb)
— Frederick and Jessie Etchells Painting (1912, 51x53cm) _ In the summer of 1912 Vanessa Bell was living in Asheham House near Lewes in Sussex. Several artists came to stay, including briefly Frederick Etchells and his sister Jessie. Bell's painting of them demonstrates the friendship of all three in working together, so making a common cause in artistic innovation. This painting was never exhibited by the artist, but it is finished, and is a study chiefly in colour and design. Paintings by all these artists were included in the 'Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition' in October 1912, arranged by their friends.
— Studland Beach (1912, 76x102cm) _ This is one of a group of Vanessa Bell's paintings of 1911-1912 indebted to Matisse in design and conception, but always with a rich coloring of her own. In these experimental paintings there is often a curious contrast between advanced style and domestic subject. Studland Beach began as a sketch of her family on holiday at this beach near Bournemouth. This sketch was enlarged and simplified, omitting all detail and isolating the figures. The faces are hidden, and the mother is separated from the other people. Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell worked closely at this time and the back of this canvas has an unfinished painting of male nudes by Grant.
— Still Life on Corner of a Mantelpiece (1914, 56x46cm) _ This is the same mantelpiece as in The Mantelpiece (1914, oil and collage of paper 46x39cm) by Duncan Grant [1885-1978]. They were undoubtedly painted at the same time, as was often the case with these two artists. Whereas Grant was apparently standing, Bell seems to have painted her version sitting down. The mantelpiece was in Vanessa Bell's house at 46 Gordon Square, and the objects on it include an Omega Workshops painted box and paper flowers. Grant also painted Omega Flowers on the Mantelpiece, 46 Gordon Square (1912).
— Abstract Painting (1914, 44x39cm) _ About 1914 Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant made a small number of purely abstract pictures, as did Roger Fry. This coincided with Clive Bell's assertion that 'Significant Form' as opposed to meaningful content was the key ingredient in art. Abstract painting was little seen in Britain at this time, and would have been popularly viewed as an extreme manifestation of the avant-garde. Significantly, work of this type marked only a brief phase in Bell's career and this picture was never exhibited, although she continued to make decorative designs. Her portrait of Mrs St John Hutchinson, of the same time, includes an abstract background.
— Helen Dudley (1915, 72x61cm) _ Helen Dudley was the daughter of a prominent Chicago gynaecologist. In 1914 she had a brief affair with the English philosopher, Bertrand Russell, who she met at Harvard, Massachusetts. Bell painted this portrait at Roger Fry’s home ‘Durbins’, outside Guildford, before Helen Dudley’s friendship with Russell had ended. At this time Bell was making decorative art, including mosaics and pottery, for Fry’s Omega Workshops. The strong colours and elementary forms in this portrait recall her decorative drawing technique and the influence of the Post-Impressionist artists.
— Mrs St John Hutchinson (1915, 74x58cm) _ Vanessa Bell was one of the leading members of the Bloomsbury Group, a set of critics, writers and painters who sought to force British culture to come to terms with modernism. Her sitter for this portrait was the short story writer Mary Hutchinson, who was the mistress of Bell’s husband Clive, a fact of which she was aware. It is painted in the dazzling colours of Matisse and the French ‘fauve’ painters, and its abstract background elements put it at the cutting edge of the early British avant-garde.
— The Tub (1917, 180x166cm) _ In October 1916 Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and the writer David Garnett moved into Charleston Farmhouse, a country house on the South Downs in Sussex. They were all members of the circle of artists, writers and thinkers known as the Bloomsbury Group. This unusually large canvas was intended for the garden room of the new house. It was never installed, and the artist kept it folded up. It was only rediscovered with the new enthusiasm for Bloomsbury in the 1970s. A bath tub like this was used at Charleston in 1916 because the plumbing was rudimentary.
— Chrysanthemums (1920, 61x46cm) _ Bell often painted flowerpieces and frequently used flowers in her interior decorative work. Stylized flowers are a dominant theme in the dust jacket designs that Bell produced for books written by her sister, Virginia Woolf. Rejecting the brighter colours she had employed before the war, Bell's flowerpieces and still lifes of the 1920s-30s were painted with rich but somber color harmonies. The vase of flowers here is placed on a mirror, an unusual device which concentrates the viewer's attention. This work was presented to the Tate by the Contemporary Art Society in 1924 and was the first work by Bell to enter the collections.
— Interior with a Table (1921, 54x64cm) _ Bloomsbury painters such as Vanessa Bell had been interested in French Post-impressionist painting since before the First World War. However, during the inter-war years, many more artists were attracted to foreign sources of renewal in their art, particularly the Mediterranean. In 1916 Bell and Duncan Grant had established their home in rural Sussex, but they continued to seek inspiration in the South of France. This picture was painted at La Maison Blanche, a villa situated just outside Saint-Tropez with views over the bay. They rented the villa from Bell's friend Rose Vildrac between October 1921 and February 1922. Their close friend Roger Fry was also living and working nearby.
click for self-portrait ^ Died on 30 May 1640: Pieter Pauwel Rubens, Flemish Baroque era painter born on 28 June 1577. His studio assistants included Jan Fyt, and his students included Anthony Van Dyck, Lambert Jacobsz, Cornelis de Vos, and Simon de Vos.
[click for 1639 self-portrait >]
  — By completing the fusion of the realistic tradition of Flemish painting with the imaginative freedom and classical themes of Italian Renaissance painting, he fundamentally revitalized and redirected northern European painting. Masterpieces include portraits and landscapes, although he is perhaps best known for his religious and mythological compositions.
—     Born in Siegen, Nassau, Westphalia, Rubens was the greatest exponent of Baroque painting's dynamism, vitality, and sensuous exuberance. Though his masterpieces include portraits and landscapes, Rubens is perhaps best known for his religious and mythological compositions. As the impresario of vast decorative programs, he presided over the most famous painter's studio in Europe. His powers of invention were matched by extraordinary energy and versatility.
            Peter Paul Rubens was born into the family of a Calvinist who had to live in exile from Antwerp. On his father's death, Ruben’s mother returned to Antwerp in 1587, where he was brought up and educated in the Catholic faith. At the age of fourteen (1591) he entered the household of a Flemish princess as a page, and began to study painting first under Tobias Verhaecht [1561-1631], then under Adam van Noort, and then under Otho Venius. In 1598, he was accepted as master in the Lukas Guild, though continued to work in Venius’s  workshop until 1600.  Most of Rubens' youthful works have disappeared or remain unidentified. The Portrait of a Young Man (1597; 728x523pix, 43kb) is his earliest dated work.
            In May 1600, Rubens went to Italy. In Venice he was introduced to Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga and accepted his offer to join his court in Mantua. Gonzaga had Rubens make copies of Renaissance paintings, mainly portraits of court beauties. Rubens accompanied the duke on his travels to Florence and Rome. In Florence, in October 1600, Rubens attended the marriage-by-proxy of Gonzaga's sister-in-law Marie de Médicis to King Henry IV of France, a scene he was to re-create a quarter-century later for the queen.
      In August 1601 Rubens arrived in Rome. His first major Roman commission was for three large paintings (1601–1602) for the crypt chapel of St. Helena in the Basilica of Santa Croce.
      In 1603, the duke of Mantua sent him on his first diplomatic assignment to Spain to present a shipment of paintings to King Philip III. For Philip's prime minister, the duke of Lerma, Rubens painted his first major equestrian portrait (1603).
      Toward the end of 1605 Rubens made his second trip to Rome. In 1606 he received his crowning commission in Rome: the painting over the high altar of the Chiesa Nuova, whose precious icon Rubens enshrined in an apotheosis borne aloft by a host of putti.
      While in Italy, Rubens studied and copied Titian, Tintoretto, and Raphael, he also admired the works of his contemporaries, including Caravaggio and Carracci. The copies Rubens made of Renaissance paintings offer a rich survey of the achievements of 16th-century Italian art. During his Italian period he also produced some of his finest portraits at various princely Italian courts: The Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Lerma (1603), Portrait of Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria (1606).
     In October 1608 Rubens returned to Antwerp. He was commissioned to paint for the Antwerp Town Hall an Adoration by the Magi (1609). In October 1609 Rubens married the 19-year-old Isabella Brant, and he painted his Double Portrait in a Honeysuckle Bower (1610; 1400x1072pix, 106kb).
            In 1609, Rubens was appointed court painter to the Regent Albert and Isabella. He married Isabella Brant. In 1610, he built himself a large house and studio. During his Antwerp period, until 1622, he received a flood of commissions from the church, state and nobility. The Gobelin factory produced tapestries after his sketches, and engravers used his paintings, distributing the ‘Rubens style’ all over Europe. Among his best works are The Elevation of the Cross (the triptych). (1611), The Descent from the Cross (the triptych). (1614; 1228x1468pix, 122kb), The Union of Earth and Water (1618), Castor and Pollux Abduct the Daughters of Leukyppos (1618), The Battle of the Amazons (1620), Perseus and Andromeda (1621).
            His largest commission was in 1621 for a series of 21 paintings for Marie de’Medici, the Queen Dowager of France, widow of Henry IV. The paintings, describing Marie's life, were for her palace in Paris. It was not an easy work. The queen was far from being a beauty, her life was not full of interesting events, besides she was of bad temper: she had constantly quarreled with her deceased husband, Henry IV, wasted enormous sums of money, and bothered her son, Louis XIII, with constant advice so that at last he ordered her out of Paris. Rubens’s diplomatic skills were much at hand in fulfilling the order. He successfully managed it within three years to the great satisfaction of the customer.
            Between 1623 and 1631, Rubens traveled frequently on diplomatic missions, visiting London and Madrid, where he received peerages from both Charles I of England and Philip IV of Spain. Isabella Brant died in 1626; in 1630 Rubens married the 16-year-old Helene Fourment, who sat for many portraits and other works: Bathsheba at the Fountain (1635), The Fur Cloak (Helene Fourment) (1639), The Three Graces. (1638), Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment, and Their Son Peter Paul. (1639). After the death of Archduchess Isabella he gradually withdrew from the court and bought castle Steen near Mecheln. His last big commission was the decoration of the Spanish King’s hunting lodge, Torre de la Parada near Madrid, which he designed but was no longer able to carry out himself. Rubens died on 30 May 1640.
            Rubens is often called Prince of Baroque painters. In his style he successfully united  the features of Northern and Flemish art with those of Italy. His influence on the painters of his century was enormous, as it was on sculpture and architecture. He was a versatile genius and rivaled in inventive power the great minds of the Italian Renaissance. He was a humanist and classical archaeologist, a sumptuous designer of religious, historical and allegorical canvases and a supreme master in ‘pure’ landscape. Rubens was endlessly active. There are thousands of works by his hand, scattered through collections and museums across the world. The paintings amount to more than three thousand. He also gave the world the great number of pupils, the celebrated artists van Dyck, Jordaens, Snyders and Cornelis de Vos are among them.
— LINKS
— Render to Cesar the Tribute (1612, 144x190cm; 964x1260pix, 178kb — zoom to 1928x2520pix, 675kb) _ detail 1: Head of Christ (and that of an old man) (1152x1152pix, 80kb) _ detail 2: 4 Faces at left (1872x1872pix, 273kb) _ detail 3: 2 Faces in center (1008x1296pix, 78kb)
— Cimon and Pero (1630) — Entombment (1615) — Sara Breyll, wife of Rogier Clarisse (1611, 118x92cm) — Rogier Clarisse (1611, 118x91cm) — Mars and Rhea Silvia (1620, 463x645cm) _ detail — The Death of Seneca (1615, 182x121cm) — Portrait of Gaspard Schoppins (1605, 116x88cm) — The Emperor Charles V (1603, 75x55cm; 3110x2190pix, 2784kb) — Leda and the Swan (1600, 64x80cm; 1857x2265pix, 1322kb) — Crocodile and Hippopotamus Hunt (1616)
— The Adoration by the Magi (1624, 447x231cm)(447x336?) _ detail _ Rubens' close involvement with the resurgence of Catholicism and the struggle for power led to the production a numerous large altarpieces. His stirring baroque ideas come to the fore in The Lance (1619-20), with its emotionally charged, highly plastic figures, and The Adoration of the Magi (1624). This masterpiece is particularly impressive because of its animated, asymmetrical composition, its marvelously gradated coloring, the spontaneity of execution and, above all, the expressiveness of the depicted figures.
— The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek (1625)
— The Landing of Marie de' Médici at Marseilles (1625, 394x295cm)
— Massacre of the Innocents (1621, 199x302cm)
— The Deposition (1602) _ Rubens painted his Deposition during his first stay in Rome. Rubens provides us with an extraordinary interpretation of the theme of the incarnation of the divine and human nature of Christ, suspended between death and potential future life. All the shades of the spectrum of light are apparent in the flesh tones, with an opalescence that develops that mother of pearl quality first introduced by Federico Barrocci. The impact made on Rubens by Roman statuary can be seen in the antique altar with sacrifice scenes, but above all in the strong sculptural high relief of the figures. The dense chromatic texture of the composition owes much Titian's later works, while the airy vibrato and gentle rhythms echo Correggio's achievements. The light unexpectedly bursting through the dark area of the painting provides evidence that Rubens competed in an original way with the chiaroscuro experiments of his contemporary Caravaggio.
— Virgin and Child (1604) looking upon the donors, Antoine Goubau and his wife, Anne Anthoni.
— Boy with Bird (1616, 49x40cm) _ A child of about two is shown playing with a captive bird. On the original panel, which was smaller, only the child's head was visible. Rubens made use of this study for an angel in the Madonna with a Floral Wreath in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Later the artist enlargened the picture on the left side, adding the hands with the bird. Although formerly taken to be a girl, the child portrayed is in all probability Rubens' first son Albert, who was born in 1614. The motif of the child playing with a bird goes back to antiquity. It also crops up frequently in Christian art. The bird symbolizes the soul or life, which passes all too quickly. In many pictures of the Virgin and Child, Jesus is portrayed holding a bird in his hand as an allusion to his death and resurrection. Whether Rubens had a similar allegory in mind when he introduced the bird into his child-portrait, or whether some particular incident in his own life motivated him, is not known.
^ Born on 30 May 1930: Juan Genovés, Spanish painter. He trained at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in Valencia and became associated with avant-garde movements as a young man, joining the short-lived Grupo Parpalló (1956–1959), which sought to inject new energy into Valencian art, and the Grupo Hondo (1961–1964). Like other artists who reacted against Art informel, he reintroduced figurative images in his pictures, in his case either through the use of collage or by the incorporation of photographic or cinematic motifs (a method suggested by Pop art).
— Genovés es uno de los pintores más representativos de la "Crónica de la realidad española", aparecida en los años sesenta y promovida por el crítico de arte Vicente Aguilera Cerni. En primer lugar expresionista, la figuración de Genovés posee singularidad en el seno del Pop Art europeo. A las imágenes que toma prestadas de los medios, las trabaja para darles un sentido claramente crítico: sus personajes y muchedumbres, a veces presentados en secuencias narrativas, son anónimos y están animados de movimientos violentos que dramatizan el pánico y el dolor, al tiempo que permiten adivinar la violencia del poder y la alienación que de él resulta. Genovés no se conformó con sintetizar en sus cuadros el llamado "espacio del miedo", directamente relacionado con su país, sino que amplió su obra al campo de la gráfica dando testimonio a través de xilografías, serigrafías, grabados, etc., de la problemática universal del ser humano tanto en los tiempos de Franco como en la guerra de Vietnam o durante la Guerra del Golfo. En plena transición democrática de España pintó El abrazo (1976), que impreso luego como cartel terminó convirtiéndose en el motivo central de la amnistía del pueblo español. Sin embargo, la obra de Genovés no es panfletaria. El propio artista expresó al respecto: "Si yo hubiera sido un pintor realmente político, habría hecho panfletos". En las pinturas y dibujos recientes (Secuencias 1993-1998), las diminutas figuras humanas de Genovés, distribuidas en las pinturas texturadas y en los dibujos sobre papel, aparecen sumidas en el desamparo y en la soledad.

— Señales Internacionales (1970, 768x1024pix, 96kb) — Ida y Vuelta (1970, 634x1024pix, 45kb) — Desconcierto (56x76cm; 421x623pix, 148kb) — El Monumento (1985,56x76cm; 369x633pix, 117kb) — Sistema de Vigilancia — Sin título (1996, 46x62cm)
— Cuatro fases en torno a una prohibición (1966, 130x125cm) _ In this painting, the human figures are seen from afar, fleeing in terror. The figures are demonstrators, running away from the Franquista police. The formal organization of the work, including the serial-like quality and sequencing of the scene, confers a cinematic feel to the work. This is reinforced by the section depicting a small portion of the crowd, revealing demonstrators who have fallen.
^ Died on 30 May 1888: Abram Louis Buvelot, Swiss Australian painter, lithographer, and photographer, active in Brazil and Australia, born on 03 March 1814.
— Louis Buvelot arrived in Australia in 1865 at the height of the Melbourne boom. Since 1850, when the Separation Bill was passed and Victoria was governed independently from the colony of New South Wales, there had been measurable progress. The population had increased in Victoria from 80'000 to 600'000 and revenue from £750'000 to £3'000'000. In 1851, 24'000 hectares had been cultivated and by 1864 this had increased to 200'000 hectares. Five hundred kilometers of railway linked Victoria. 1200 churches had been built from an original 39. The discovery of gold in Victoria added further to an era of prosperity and economic expansion.
     By the time Buvelot arrived in Melbourne at the age of fifty-one he was already an experienced and mature artist. He had trained as an artist in Switzerland and for a short time in Paris. Buvelot was not only a versatile painter but also a practised lithographer and photographer. During the 1870s his reputation as an artist rose and his vision of the landscape inspired the young artists Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin, who considered him the 'father of Australian landscape painting'.
     Buvelot's attitude to landscape painting in some part was influenced by the art of his fellow-countryman Barthélémy Menn. Menn had lived in Paris and had been aquainted with and influenced by the French Barbizon artists Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau [1812-1867], and Charles Daubigny. It is possible that Buvelot also had some first-hand knowledge of a landscape by Rousseau shown in Lausanne in 1855. The Barbizon artists and Menn painted naturalistic landscapes of familiar countryside as opposed to the previous romantic views of nature.
     Buvelot's landscape paintings were a result of sketching trips undertaken in and around Melbourne, although he occasionally traveled further afield, and was commissioned to do a few homestead paintings in the Western District of Victoria. On his trips, he made pencil, watercolor, or oil sketches, from which he executed more elaborate charcoal drawings, watercolor and oil paintings in his Melbourne studio. His painting style was considered broad and even unfinished when his paintings were first shown in Melbourne.
     Buvelot's paysages intimes were an appropriate expression of the colonists' growing acceptance of their environment as no longer alien and antagonistic but their proper home, familiarly Australian rather than discomfortingly non-European. Buvelot's Australian landscape painting acted as a catalyst in reconciling Victoria's settlers to their environment.
— LINKS
— The Pool (1878, 18x25cm) — At Lilydale (1870, 76x102cm)
— Man with horse and cart (1872, 28x45cm)
— Summer afternoon, Templestowe (77x119cm) _ Summer afternoon 1866 was made after a study and completed in the studio. A glance at the preliminary sketch (38x54cm) reveals that Summer afternoon 1866 is not topographical and Buvelot took liberties as an interpreter. Unlike photography, for the painter nature is converted according to the laws of art. Actual visual experience has been modified. This depicts a rural scene on the outskirts of Melbourne. The low viewpoint makes us part of the scene as we look along the dusty road to the oncoming sheep. The horizon line is also low, and contributes to the openness of the countryside. The landscape is dotted with human activity, from the drover with his two sheep-dogs to the various people in conversation. The houses already appear to be old, and add to the feeling that the countryside is well settled, familiar and commonplace. This is not the setting for heroic deeds by pioneers, but rather the every-day routine activities by local farmers. The tall, centrally-located gum-tree, with barren branches exposed, establishes the scene as Australian. As the sun sets, the light glows rather than shines on the brown rough vegetation, although a few patches of green grass defy the sullen heat. The whole atmosphere is heavy with the lingering heat, but the long weary afternoon is drawing to a close and the build up of clouds suggests that some relief is in sight. — Compare this Paysage by Théodore Rousseau.
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Died on a 30 May:

1911 Arturo Faldi, Italian artist born on 27 July 1856.

1855 Johann Baptist Pflug von Biberach, German artist born on 13 February 1785.

1835 Adrian Meulemans, Dutch artist born on 24 August 1766.

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Born on a 30 May:

1930 Robert Ryman, US painter and printmaker, who adds almost no value to a blank canvas or paper. After studying at the Tennessee Polytechnical Institute, Cookeville, between 1948 and 1949, and at the George Peabody College for Teachers between 1949 and 1950, he settled in New York in 1950 and made his first monochrome abstract paintings in about 1955. He was at that time very isolated in his approach, for although he had reacted against the domination of Abstract Expressionism, he had no intention of reintroducing realism or of depicting objects. It was not until the late 1960s that he began to exhibit regularly; for example, his work was included in the important exhibition ‘Systemic Painting’ at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1966. His work is often associated with Conceptual art, but although organized into non-representational systems, it is fundamentally a quest for pictorial expression.
— Robert Ryman was born in Nashville. In 1948, he enrolled at Tennessee Polytechnic Institute but transferred the next year to George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, where he studied music. In 1950, Ryman enlisted in the United States army reserve corps and was assigned to an army reserve band during the Korean War. In 1952, he moved to New York and studied with jazz pianist Lenny Tristano. Taking on odd jobs to support himself, Ryman took a position as a guard at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in June 1953. During that year, the artist made his first paintings.
     In 1955, Ryman began what he considers his earliest professional work, a largely monochrome painting titled Orange Painting. His work was first exhibited in a staff show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1958, and later that year he was included in a group show at the Brata Gallery, New York. In the late 1950s, Ryman became friends with artists Dan Flavin and Michael Venezia, both of whom were also working at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1961, the artist married the art historian Lucy Lippard; this marriage ended in divorce. He later married Merrill Wagner. In 1961, he also began to paint on a full-time basis. During the early 1960s, Ryman spent a great deal of time with other artists whose studios were on the Bowery, including Tom Doyle, Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, and Sylvia and Robert Mangold. At this time, Ryman began making his first paintings on metal (vinyl polymer on aluminum), a support he would use many times again. In 1966, Ryman’s work was included in Systemic Painting at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, along with 28 other artists, including Ellsworth Kelly, Jackson Pollock, and Frank Stella. The artist’s first solo exhibition took place at the Paul Bianchini Gallery, New York, in 1967. Two years later, Ryman was included in When Attitudes Become Form, a seminal exhibition of works by Minimalist and Conceptual artists organized by the Kunsthalle Bern. Throughout his career, Ryman has isolated the most basic components of painting and experimented with their variations. — LINKS
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1887 Alexander Archipenko, Ukrainian Cubist sculptor and painter who originated a new style in which the representation of the human figure was subordinated to the formal composition of voids and solids. He died on 25 February 1964. He began studying painting and sculpture at the School of Art in Kiev in 1902 but was forced to leave in 1905 after criticizing the academicism of his instructors. In 1906 he went to Moscow, where, according to the artist, he participated in some group exhibitions. In 1908 he established himself in Paris, where he rejected the most favoured contemporary sculptural styles, including the work of Rodin. After only two weeks of formal instruction at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts he left to teach himself sculpture by direct study of examples in the Musée du Louvre. By 1910 Archipenko was exhibiting with the Cubists at the Salon des Indépendants, and his work was shown at the Salon d’Automne from 1911 to 1913.
— Archipenko was born in Kiev. In 1902, he entered the Kiev Art School, where he studied painting and sculpture until 1905. During this time, he was impressed by the Byzantine icons, frescoes, and mosaics of Kiev. After a sojourn in Moscow, Archipenko moved to Paris in 1908. He attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts for a brief period and then continued to study independently at the Musée du Louvre, where he was drawn to Egyptian, Assyrian, archaic Greek, and early Gothic sculpture. In 1910, he began exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendants, Paris, and the following year showed for the first time at the Salon d’Automne.
     In 1912, Archipenko was given his first solo show in Germany at the Museum Folkwang Hagen. That same year, in Paris, he opened the first of his many art schools, joined the Section d’Or group, which included Georges Braque, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, and Pablo Picasso, among others, and produced his first painted reliefs, the Sculpto-Peintures. In 1913, Archipenko exhibited at the Armory Show in New York and made his first prints, which were reproduced in the Italian Futurist publication Lacerba in 1914. He participated in the Salon des Indépendants in 1914 and the Venice Biennale in 1920. During the war years, the artist resided in Cimiez, a suburb of Nice. From 1919 to 1921, he traveled to Geneva, Zurich, Paris, London, Brussels, Athens, and other European cities to exhibit his work. Archipenko’s first solo show in the United States was held at the Société Anonyme, New York, in 1921.
     In 1923, he moved from Berlin to the United States, where over the years he opened art schools in New York City; Woodstock, New York; Los Angeles; and Chicago. In 1924, Archipenko invented his first kinetic work, Archipentura. For the next 30 years, he taught throughout the United States at art schools and universities, including the short-lived New Bauhaus. He became a United States citizen in 1928. Most of Archipenko’s work in German museums was confiscated by the Nazis in their purge of “degenerate art.” In 1947, he produced the first of his sculptures that are illuminated from within. — Author of Archipenko: Fifty Creative Years 1908–1958 (1960). — Archipenko's students included Franciska Clausen, Béni Ferenczy, Paul Outerbridge, Tony Smith. — LINKS

1848 Rudolf Ribalz, Austrian artist who died on 12 November 1904. — [That's Ribalz, NOT Ribald!]

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