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ART “4” “2”-DAY  11 November
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DEATHS: 1638 CORNELIS — 1563 SALVIATI — 1903 PRINSEP — 1911 ZIEM — 1976 CALDER — 1810 “ZOFFANY”
BIRTHS: 1868 VUILLARD — 1579 SNYDERS — 1911 MATTA — 1738 LE BARBIER — 1863 SIGNAC
^ Died on 11 November 1638: Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem, Dutch Mannerist painter and draftsman born in 1562.
— He came from a wealthy family. During the Spanish siege and occupation of Haarlem (1572–1577), his parents moved elsewhere, leaving their son and large house in the protection of the painter Pieter Pieterszoon [1541–1603], who became Cornelis’s teacher. In 1579 Cornelis went to France by sea, but the journey terminated at Rouen because of an outbreak of plague. He then became a student of Gillis Congnet in Antwerp, with whom he stayed for one year. In 1580–1581 he returned permanently to Haarlem, and in 1583 he received his first official commission from the city, a militia company portrait, The Banquet of the Haarlem Civic Guard. About 1584 he befriended Hendrick Goltzius and Karel van Mander, with whom he is said to have established a kind of academy, which became known as the Haarlem Academy. Cornelis later became city painter of Haarlem and received numerous commissions from the town corporation. He worked for the Commanders of the Order of Saint John and also for the Heilige Geesthuis. He married Maritgen Arentsdr Deyman [–1606], the daughter of a burgomaster, some time before 1603. In 1605 he inherited one third of his wealthy father-in-law’s estate. Cornelis also had one illegitimate daughter [1611–], who married Pieter Janszoon Bagijn, a silversmith, and whose son was the painter Cornelis Bega. From 1626 to 1629 Cornelis Corneliszoon was a member of the Catholic Guild of Saint Jacob. In 1630, along with several other artists, he drew up new regulations for the Guild of Saint Luke, which brought to an end its essentially medieval organization and conferred a higher status on art. The surviving inventory of his estate contains valuable information about his art collection. Iconographically, Cornelis van Haarlem—as he is usually known—had a wider range than his Haarlem colleagues. Besides conventional religious and mythological subjects, he produced a few portraits as well as kitchen scenes and still-lifes.
— Gerrit Pieterszoon was a student of Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem.
— LINKS
— Bathsheba at her bath (1594) [you can see why she wasn't named Showersheba]
— Massacre of the Innocents (1590) — The Fall of Man (1592)
— Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert (1590)
^ Born on 11 November 1868: Jean Édouard Vuillard, French Nabi and Post-Impressionist painter, draftsman, and printmaker, who died on 21 June 1940.
— He was brought up in Paris in modest circumstances, and his home life was closely involved with his mother’s and elder sister’s dressmaking work. He attended the Lycée Condorcet where his contemporaries included the musician Pierre Hermant and the writer Pierre Véber, as well as Maurice Denis. His closest friend (and future brother-in-law) was Ker-Xavier Roussel, and, on leaving school in 1885, Roussel encouraged Vuillard to join him at the studio of the painter Diogène Maillart [1840–1926], where they received the rudiments of artistic training. Vuillard began to frequent the Louvre and soon determined on an artistic career, breaking the family tradition of a career in the army.
— Vuillard's students included Lucia Dem Balacescu, Christian Bérard, Eugène Berman, Henri Catargi.
— LINKS
— Place Saint-Augustin (1913, 152x194cm; 796x972pix, 151kb — ZOOM to 1593x1944pix, 616kb) _ This painting is one of a pair of nearly identical compositions commissioned by the artist's friend Dr. Henri Vasquez, a cardiologist who lived near this city square.
— The Sunny Room (1920, 46x53cm; 872x1000pix, 125kb — ZOOM to 1745x2000pix, 681kb)
— La Pâtisserie (1899, 35x27cm; 1233x942pix, 131kb)
— Vase de Fleurs (1905, 32x24cm; 1250x903pix, 168kb)
— Interior with Mother and Child (1900, 43x35cm; 2/3 size)
— Chemin tournant à midi (1935, 37x29cm; 3/4 size)
— Une Galerie au Théâtre du Gymnase (1900, 25x20cm; full size)
— En chemin de fer (19x13cm; 3/4 size)
— Le jardin devant l'atelier (1901, 63x47cm; 5/12 size _ ZOOM to 5/6 size)
— The Reader (1896; 1000x914pix, 219kb)
— Le Déjeuner à Villeneuve-sur-Yonne (1902; 1000x838pix, 179kb) _ detail
— Madame Arthur Fontaine (1905) — La Flambée (1935 rough sketch, 31x25cm; 4/5 size)
^ Died on 11 November 1563: Francesco Rossi del Salviati “il Cecchino”, Italian Mannerist painter born in 1510.
— .For art lovers, to be alive in the age of Michelangelo and Raphael was no doubt bliss, but to be a young Italian artist, very near heaven. The problem for the coming generation of practitioners was where to go from there.
      For eager disciples of the titans the tendency was to follow the directions indicated by these High Renaissance masters through to their logical conclusions. This gave rise to that exaggeration and elongation of form, particularly of the nude, that boldness of color, and deliberate oddity and exoticism of composition that has come to be called, in the present century, Mannerism.
      The term Mannerism ultimately derives from “maniera,” as copiously and imprecisely used in a multitude of contexts by Giorgio Vasari in his epochal “The Lives of the Artists,” published in an enlarged edition, in which Salviati appears, in 1568. For Vasari the work of none of his contemporaries represented “la bella maniera” — everything that was accomplished, studied, graceful, stylish and beautiful in art according to the “mannerist” tastes of the times — better than that of his childhood and lifelong friend, Francesco Salviati.
      Vasari, in his account of Salviati, offers a warts-and-all portrait of his friend — an exceptionally obstreperous and quarrelsome character even by the elevated standards of bad behavior achieved by some other artists of that period - but champions him wholeheartedly as an artist. This was not enough to gain for Salviati the posthumous reputations secured by, for example, Pontormo, Rosso and Parmigianino.
      Drawing was not only the absolute bedrock of every endeavor in the Florentine artistic world into which Salviati was born in 1510, but had won the status of an art form in itself. Indeed, Vasari at one point declares a drawing of Salviati “the best and truly the rarest thing” he ever did. The show's 50 drawings from the Louvre, supplemented by others from far-flung collections, including 18 new attributions, confirm Salviati as a front-ranker in this medium.
      His portraits, too, reveal enormous skill, a perceptive eye and an arresting realism, blended with the arcane symbolic props beloved of his era.
      The artist's striking and distinctive works in other media — from designs for tapestries, metalwork and book illustrations — are also well represented, along with his religious, mythological and allegorical oils.
      Of Salviati's major frescoes, only those in the Audience Chamber of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence are generally easily accessible, a situation that has prevented Salviati from being as appreciated as he might be. Two Roman cycles — at Palazzo Farnese, now the French Embassy, and at Palazzo Sacchetti on Via Giulia — mark the acme of that adventurous composition, elegance combined with vigor, and “most capricious and ingenious invention,” which Vasari so praised in his sometimes rival and friend.
      The daring conception and teeming complexity of these frescoes, with their brilliant trompe l'oeil architecture, wonderful color, and series of elaborately framed scenes, amid riots of figures, vegetation and exuberant decoration, create an impression of simultaneous, multiscreen action, impossible to take in at a single glance. Palazzo Farnese, Palazzo Sacchetti, and the three other Roman interiors with Salviati frescoes can be visited on various days of the week for the duration of the Rome exhibition by pre-booking in the entry hall of the Villa Medici show.
      Disillusioned by his fellow countrymen's failure more fully to appreciate his genius, Salviati early in 1556 took up an invitation to go to France. But the artist could not thereby leave his excessively abrasive character behind him and the experience merely fueled his paranoia. Francesco was never much liked in France, because he had a nature completely opposed to that of the men of that country; because there, just as happy and jovial men, who live free and easy lives and adore parties and banquets, are loved and cherished, so equally those who are by nature melancholy, abstemious, sickly, and morose, are, I do not say shunned, but less well liked and treated.
      Salviati died a broken man in Rome in 1563, a grievous and damaging loss to the art of painting, lamented by a small group of friends who, despite every-thing, never ceased to admire him and seemed genuinely fond of him.
      In the end Salviati failed to scale those pinnacles which his abundant talents and dedication to his calling otherwise so well equipped him to conquer, above all perhaps because in an age where patronage meant everything he managed to alienate even his most long-suffering customers. And yet, as this important exhibition highlights, Salviati still left much for us to savor and enjoy.
— LINKS
— Bathsheba Goes to King David (1554) _ Salviati (Francesco de' Rossi), together with Bronzino and Vasari, belonged to the second generation of Mannerist painters in Florence. He was in the Sarto workshop about 1529 and later Vasari and he were together in Rome where the influence of Raphael and of sophisticated Raphael followers affected him deeply. He also gathered ideas from his travels through north Italy, in Mantua, Venice and probably Parma. His frescoes in the Palazzo Sacchetti in Rome are among his most Mannerist works.
— Charity (1557, 156x122cm)
^ Born on 11 November 1579: Frans Snyders (Snyers, Sneis), Flemish painter who died on 19 August 1657.
— Antwerp-born Baroque artist who was the most noted 17th-century painter of hunting scenes and animals in combat.
Frans Snyders' parents kept an inn well-known for good food, which many artists frequented. In about 1592-1593, Snyders studied art under Pieter Brueghel the Younger, and later under Hendrik van Balen. He joined the Lukas Guild in 1602 and studied in Italy in 1602-1609. In 1611 he married Margaretha de Vos, the sister of the Flemish painters Cornelis and Paul de Vos.
      Snyders originally devoted himself to painting flowers, fruit, and still-life subjects, later turning to his lively depictions of animals. The compositions of these scenes of hunting and animals fighting are rich and varied. His drawing is accurate and vigorous, and his touch bold and thoroughly expressive of the different textures of furs and skins. Rubens frequently employed him to paint animals, fruit, flowers, and still-life objects in his own pictures.
      Apart from his domestic scenes, which showed the Mannerist influence, Snyders created two new categories of painting: the hunting still life, such as Wild Boar Hunt (1649), and the "larder" picture, such as Still Life with a Swan (1613-1620), Flowers, Fruits and Vegetables. He excelled as a painter of still life, transformed it into a lively scene, and also produced minutely observed, dramatic hunting scenes.
      Snyders was appointed principal painter to the archduke Albert, governor of the Low Countries, for whom he executed some of his finest works. One of these, a "Stag Hunt," was presented to Philip III of Spain, who commissioned the artist to paint several subjects of the chase.
— LINKS
— The Monkey and the Gander (1613) — Still Life with Cats and Monkeys (1635, 75x108cm)
— Market Scene on a Quay (1635, 202x344cm) _ At 344 cm in width, Snyders' still life cannot fail to impress, as it must have when he became the first to paint market scenes on such a scale. Snyders' native Antwerp was then the leading commercial and artistic center of Flanders. This type of subject had been initiated by Pieter Aertsen in the same city during the previous century with such paintings as the Butcher's Stall. Snyders, as the foremost Flemish still life artist of his time, specialized in market scenes and compositions that included game animals. He, in fact, contracted with Rubens and others to execute still life elements for some of their commissions. Snyders was so successful that he employed assistants to paint portions of his compositions. The quality of fur and feathers in this work indicates that the master himself painted the deer, cat, swan, partridges, and curlew. Snyders observed his game birds with such remarkable specificity that each species can be identified. This luxurious display of the abundance of Antwerp's commercial port probably carries propagandistic overtones relating to the Spanish administration of Flanders or to the prosperity brought by the peace that followed recent war. Such produce as the artichokes and melon were relatively rare in Flanders and demonstrated the wealth of the city.
— Cook with Food (1630, 88x120cm) _ The painting shows a cook preparing a meal and is set in a basement room. The woman is grinding spices with a pestle and mortar - there is a rolled-up bag full of cloves on the table in front of her — to improve the flavor of the vegetables (artichokes, asparagus and red turnips) and the different roasts. The artist's macabre sense of humor prompted him to depict the rabbit (on the left), both paws stretched out and flexed, as if with rigor mortis. Desserts have been placed on the shelf at the back, including a pie, lemons (one of them halved), a china bowl with strawberries and a bulging greenish jug which matches the two glasses with knob handles, hardly noticeable against the dark background.
— The Fruit Basket (153x214cm) _ The genre of the still-life composed of things to eat was created at the end of the 16th century by the Antwerp painter Pieter Aertsen. Frans Snyders gave it a decorative amplitude that belongs to the Baroque spirit.
— Fish Shop (210x340cm) _ The "Fish Shop" was originally painted for Bishop Antonio Triest to decorate the main dining room of his Bruges palace. The large canvas was later acquired by Catherine II in 1772. The canvas spectacularly displays the abundant gifts from the sea.
— Fruit and Vegetable Stall (201x333cm) _ detail _ Occasionally it is hard to distinguish market scenes from the genre of early kitchen scenes which also tended to display still-life features. Similar to the market stall, they often show tables and sideboards with clusters of baskets and bowls full of fruit and vegetables. Many kitchen scenes are only distinguishable from market scenes by the setting. While the former have their location in a dark basement room, the latter often appear to be situated alongside the wall of a house, with a view of an open square or a street to the side.
— Still-life with a Basket of Fruit (99x156cm) _ Snyders's usually large canvases and panels are characterized by an abundance of birds, game, fruit, fish, meat and vegetables in a lively arrangement. The exact representation of the texture of feathers, fur and skin, as well as the luminous, powerful coloring in his later works are outstanding.
— Still-life (1614, 156x218cm) _ Just as a circle of specialists for individual genres gathered in Amsterdam around Rembrandt, the same was true in Antwerp around Rubens. Snyders frequently collaborated with him on arrangements of objects and staffage. On the other hand, Snyders also adopted Rubens' new Baroque principles into his own specialized area of still life. The result was a number of new pictorial types in this field.
      He initially drew upon the great kitchen interiors and pantry paintings of the Flemish Mannerists such as Aertsen or Beuckelaer. However, whereas these artists created "epic" arrangements of enormous breadth, Snyders sought to produce more dynamic still-lifes. He created the hunting still-life which not only features game, but also includes certain elements of the hunt itself, and in which each animal, dead or alive, still has its own tale to tell. In his portrayal of animals, he was peerless in his time. Whereas Dutch still-life presented coded "truths" and warned of the transience of earthly life, Snyders staged a theatrical drama portraying the riches of the world. Snyders' pantry scenes, a variation on the hunting still-life, are equally dynamic.
— Vegetable Still-Life (1600, 144x157cm) _ This still-life from the collection of Margrave Hermann von Baden-Baden, which has - probably correctly - been ascribed to Frans Snyders, may have belonged to Rubens at one time. It is one of the few examples of early 17th-century Flemish paintings which do not show market or kitchen scenes but the agricultural sphere of the production itself. However, it is worth noting that the farmer's labor, as a source of the new wealth, has been completely delegated to the background (small section in the top right corner).
^ Died on 11 November 1904: Valentine Cameron Prinsep, British Pre-Raphaelite painter born on 14 February 1838 (1836?).
— Born in Calcutta, the son of an English colonial civil servant who was able to afford a house in Holland Park, one of the most fashionable areas of London, and to send his son to Haileybury, Valentine Prinsep was also fortunate to have as his teacher, George Frederick Watts (1817-1904), a historical and portrait painter, now regarded as one of the foremost of the Victorian artists. Watts, who seems to have been a permanent guest in the Prinseps' home — a meeting place for all the major artists, poets, and writers of the day — eventually suggested that Valentine should go to Paris to complete his art education under Gleyre, who was considered by English students to be the best art teacher in France.
      Prinsep returned to England and exhibited a hundred pictures at the Royal Academy from 1862 and 1904. A versatile artist and a very wealthy one after his marriage to the well-connected Florence Leyland, he painted historical subjects and portraits. He also tried to paint classical and biblical subjects, but the results were dull and no match for the more inspired flights of imagination to be seen in the works of the more famous trio of classical painters, Alma-Tadema, Leighton and Poynter. In 1876 Prinsep was commissioned by the Indian government to paint the durbar that was held to proclaim Queen Victoria the Empress of India. The result was a gigantic canvas, At the Golden Gate.
— He was the son of Sir Henry Thoby Prinsep [1793-1878], a wealthy merchant with the East India Company by 1827 and then acting secretary to the Government Territorial Department in India, and Sara Monckton Pattle Prinsep. The family returned to London in 1843. Val was encouraged to become a painter by George Frederick Watts (his mother’s house guest from 1850 to 1875) and began his training from Watts in 1856. In 1857 he worked with members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle on the Oxford Union murals, painting Sir Pelleas Leaving the Lady Ettarde. Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones were predominant influences on the Pre-Raphaelite style of his early works, such as The Honey Queen (1859). Prinsep toured Italy with Burne-Jones in 1859, studied at Charles Gleyre’s atelier in Paris from 1859 to 1860 and was in Rome from 1860 to 1861. George Du Maurier, a fellow student under Gleyre, introduced him to the St John’s Wood Clique, of which he became an honorary member. His mature style was influenced by Frederick Leighton, for instance in At the Golden Gate (1882) and Ayesha (1887), and by John Everett Millais in such works as Cinderella (1899) and Goose Girl (1900). Both artists were close personal friends. Prinsep’s late style was also influenced by the Venetian subjects of Luke Fildes and Henry Woods [1846–1921]. In 1876 he was commissioned to paint The Imperial Durbar to commemorate Queen Victoria becoming Empress of India. He became Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy in 1900. He married Florence Leyland, the daughter of F. R. Leyland, and in 1864 commissioned a house from Philip Webb at 14 Holland Park Road, Kensington. The house was completed in 1866 in a red-brick, parsonage style typical of Webb, with Queen Anne Revival details. It was among the first of several grand houses commissioned by artists in that area, designed both to accommodate studio space and to display the artists’ social status. Although Prinsep’s work lacked originality, his personal charm, wealth and social standing gave him an important place in the Victorian art world.
— Photo of Prinsep
— LINKS
— La Révolution (1896 Diploma Work, 160x110cm)
— Home From Gleaning (122x161cm) — Il Barbagianni (78x54cm)
— The Queen was in the Parlour, eating Bread and Honey (1860, 60x33cm; 370x700pix)
— At the Golden Gate (1882, 137x96cm; 471x700pix)
— Cinderella (1899; 516x700pix) — Ayesha (1887, 90x70cm; 512x393pix, 20kb)
^ Born on 11 November 1911:
Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren, Chilean Surrealist painter, active mostly in France, who died on 23 November 2002.
— Matta pintó cuadros de inspiración surrealista y metafísica que ilustran un mundo onírico de la civilización tecnológica moderna. Se formó como arquitecto en Santiago de Chile y con Le Corbusier en París entre 1934 y 1935, donde se hizo amigo del pintor Marcel Duchamp. Al estallar la II Guerra Mundial se trasladó a Estados Unidos. De 1939 a 1948 Matta vivió en Nueva York, donde conoció a André Breton, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy y André Masson. Matta ha ejercido una influencia decisiva en la obra de Arshile Gorky y en la creación del expresionismo abstracto. Sus obras están pobladas de extraños autómatas híbridos y de criaturas a modo de insectos, como en Eros precipitado (1944). Otras obras significativas son La tierra es un hombre (1941), La cuestión Djamila (1962) y Sobre el estado de la unión (1965).
— LINKS
— I Want to See It To Believe It (1947, color lithograph 41x33cm)
— Untitled Illustration of a Poem by Alain Bosquet [Centaur teaching the mathematical theory of basketball?](etching and color aquatint)
— The Mooner [I'm pretty sure that it has nothing to do with what you're thinking, or anything else, for that matter](1959 color etching 37x48cm)
— Composition (lithograph 30x50cm) — The Bachelors Twenty Years After (1943)
— A Grave Situation [An emaciated alien is keeping invisible walls from closing in on him and crushing him?](1946)
— To Give Painless Light (1955)
^ Died on 11 November 1911: Félix~François~Georges~Philibert Ziem, (or Siem), French painter, specialized in Veniscapes, born on 26 (21?) February 1821.
— He studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Dijon until he was expelled in 1838 for unruly behavior. In 1839 he left for Marseille, where he was Clerk of Works on the construction of the Marseille canal. In November 1839 he was noticed by Ferdinand Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, who accepted two watercolors that Ziem presented to him and commissioned a further six. This first success decided Ziem’s vocation, and he started a drawing class that was attended by Louis Auguste Laurent Aiguier [1819–1865] and Adolphe Monticelli. During this period he also encountered the Provençal artists Émile Loubon [1809–1863], Prosper Grésy [1804–1874] and Gustave Ricard.
— Drawing portrait of Ziem
— LINKS
— Venise (54x81cm; 288kb)
— Grand Canal, Venise (55x88cm) — Le coup de canon (69x112cm)
— On the banks of the Bosphorus (45x77cm) — On the Venetian Lagoon
— Gloire de Venise (55x77cm) — Campement (84x115cm)
— Constantinople (56x81cm) — Constantinople au Soleil Couchant (69x112cm)
— Le Pont de bois à Venise — (43x63cm) — Scène Venétienne (69x95cm)
— Un Port Oriental (23x28cm) — Venise, Le Grand Canal (68x107cm)
^ Born on 11 November 1738: Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier, French Neoclassical painter, illustrator, and writer, who died on 07 May 1826 (1828?).
— He began his studies in Rouen and, at 17, won first prize for drawing at the city’s Académie. Shortly afterwards he travelled to Paris, entering the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture as a student of Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre. In 1767–1768 he was in Rome, a fact confirmed by a number of dated and inscribed drawings and paintings, including the pen, ink and wash drawing Landscape Inspired by the Gardens of the Villa d’Este at Tivoli. He was in Switzerland in 1776, where he spent several years drawing illustrations for Beát Zurlauben’s Tableau de la Suisse ou voyage pittoresque fait dans les treize cantons du Corps Helvétique (1780–1786). In 1780, having returned to France, he was approved (agréé) by the Académie Royale and received (reçu) in 1785 with Jupiter Asleep on Mount Ida. Thereafter he regularly exhibited moralistic pictures at the Salon until 1814, including the Canadians at the Tomb of their Child and Jeanne Hachette at the Siege of Beauvais (destroyed in 1940) in 1781, Aristoumenos and the Spartan Girls in 1787 and pictures of Saint Louis and Saint Denis in 1812, both of which indicate his interest in depicting religious themes and incidents from earlier French history.
— LINKS
— Une Spartiate Donnant un Bouclier à son Fils (1805, 45x54cm) _ Like other artists of his time, Jean-Jacques François Le Barbier rejected the lighthearted grace of the Rococo in favor of the straightforward severity of Neoclassicism. His subjects, often vignettes from Greek and Roman mythology and history, served as illustrations for the newfound morality and patriotism of the French during and after the Revolution. In this work, the characters enact a Spartan woman’s traditional farewell to a departing warrior, "Return with your shield or on it." All elements of the painting reinforce its message: the babies playing with the warrior’s lance allude to Spartan military training, which began in infancy. The simplicity of the stone-walled interior underscores the austerity of Spartan existence, while the dog is both a symbol of fidelity and a reference to the famed dogs of Sparta.
— Courage des Femmes de Sparte se Défendant contre les Messéniens (1787, 318x324cm)
— Étude de femme en fureur (1781, 40x32cm)
— Henry IV et Sully à Fontainebleau (1783, 327x240). Tapestry cartoon (B&W image) commissioned by Louis XVI for the Gobelins factory for the Story of Henry IV series. Exhibited at the 1783 Salon. The subject is familiar after the piece depicting Henry IV's hunting party; the painter set the scene in the gallery at Fontainebleau, but the episode actually took place out-of-doors, along what was formerly known as the White Mulberry Walk. Sully himself related how, on entering the King's bedchamber, the sovereign said impatiently to Beringhem: “The weather isn't good; I don't want to go riding, take off my boots.” He then went down to the Queen's Garden, followed the path to the kennels, summoned Sully, who had taken his leave of him, and said, “Come here, haven't you anything to say to me?” He then took me by the hand, said Sully, and leading me down the Mulberry Walk, he had two Swiss guards who did not understand French put at the entrance... I wanted to embrace his knees, but he would not let me, so that any courtier who may have seen this posture from afar would not think I had made such a gesture to obtain forgiveness for a real crime... At the end of this scene, the King took back the papers that had led to this discussion.”
^ Died on 11 November 1976: Alexander “Sandy” Calder, US kinetic artist, painter, sculptor, and printmaker, in love with the color red, born on 22 July 1898. He was the son of Alexander Stirling Calder and grandson of Alexander Milne Calder who were both sculptors.
— Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born into a family of renowned artists who encouraged him to create from a very young age. As a boy, he had his own workshop where he made toys for himself and his sister. He received a degree in mechanical engineering in 1919 but soon after decided to pursue a career as an artist. Calder attended classes at the Art Students League in New York from 1923 to 1926, supporting himself by working as an illustrator.
      In 1926 Calder arrived in Paris where he developed his Cirque Calder, a work of performance art employing small-scale circus figures he sculpted from wire, wood, cloth, and other materials. Through these elaborate performances, Calder met members of the Parisian avant-garde. At the same time, Calder sculpted three- dimensional figurative works using continuous lengths of wire, which critics described as drawings in space. He explored ways to sculpt volume without mass and to captured the essence of his subject through an economy of line and articulated movement. Calder's wire works then became increasingly gestural, implying motion. By the end of 1930, this direction yielded his first purely abstract sculptures.
      After translating drawing into three dimensions, Calder envisioned putting paintings into motion. He developed constructions of abstract shapes that can shift and change the composition as the elements respond to air currents. These sculptures of wire and sheet metal (or other materials) are called "mobiles." A mobile laid flat exists only as a skeleton, a reminder of its possibilities, but when suspended it seems to come alive.
      Calder also developed "stabiles," static sculptures that suggest volume in multiple flat planes, as well as standing mobiles, in which a mobile is balanced on top of a stabile. Calder furthered his work by developing a monumental scale. His later objects were huge sculptures of arching lines and graceful abstract shapes that now inhabit public plazas worldwide.
      Calder was an artist of great originality who defined volume without mass and incorporated movement and time in art. His inventions redefined certain basic principles of sculpture and have established him as the most innovative sculptor of the twentieth century.
— Although Calder has no desire to imitate anything—his one aim is to create chords and cadences of unknown movements—his mobiles are at once lyrical inventions, technical, almost mathematical combinations and the perceptible symbol of Nature: great elusive Nature, squandering pollen and abruptly causing a thousand butterflies to take wing.
      In a time of constant artistic upheaval, Alexander Calder's aesthetic revolution concerned itself with a somewhat taboo topic in the art world— fun. His prolific and passionate output brought with it a humor and sense of play unlike any before. From a wire animal the size of a match box to a fountain filled with mercury to a seventy foot representation of a man in metal, Calder ignored the formal structures of art and in so doing redefined what art could be.
      Born in in Philadelphia, Calder came from a family of artists. Both his father and grandfather were well-known sculptors, and his mother was a painter. Throughout his young life, Calder was more interested in mechanics and engineering than art. After graduating high school he attended the Stevens Institute of Technology, receiving his degree in 1919. Within a short while, however, his creative energies turned toward art and he enrolled in the Art Student's League in New York. Working as a freelance illustrator, Calder began to paint and sculpt. Soon after his first one man show in New York, Calder left for Paris.
      It was then that he began work on one of his most famous projects, the Calder Circus. [video: series of tiny stills not worth the download time, in my opinion] The Circus was a miniature reproduction of an actual circus. Made from wire, cork, wood, cloth and other easily found materials, the "Circus" was a working display that Calder would show regularly. A mix between a diorama, a child's toy, and a fair game, Calder's "Circus" found many eager fans among the avant-garde. One of the methods used to create the "Circus" was the bending of wire to form realistic figures. Drawn to the ease and simplicity of it, Calder began to make wire portraits. A combination of a line drawing and of sculpture, these instant portraits represented a new possibility in three dimensional art.
      By the early 1930s Calder had brought his "Circus" to the United States and back, and was living in Paris off the proceeds of his regular performances. While regularly fixing and adding to the "Circus", Calder began to show and work on wire and wood sculpture as well as painting. It was around this time that he became interested in the work of the Surrealist painter Joan Miró and the modernist painter Piet Mondrian. Both men had gone beyond abstraction and were making paintings of colors and shapes with no direct reference to the outside world. Enthusiastic about this embrace of form and color, Calder began to make moving sculptures in a similar vane.
      Beginning with painted aluminum and wire, Calder created motored objects that could move to create different visual effects. In a short while, however, he realized that the mechanized movement didn't have the fluidity or the surprise he wanted in his work. He decided to let them hang and have the wind or a slight touch begin their movement. When the experimental French artist Marcel Duchamp saw them, he named them "mobiles" (a pun on the French for "to move" and "motive"). These new sculptures, arranged by the chance operations of the wind, went against everything that sculpture had been. They were not monumental, nor were they sober. They were simply about form and color and the joy in creating both. So, in his early thirties Alexander Calder had not only found a project he would continue for the rest of his life, he had created a unique form of art, the mobile.
      In 1933, Calder and his wife, Louisa James, moved to Roxbury, Connecticut, where they would spend the rest of their lives. Working on hundreds of small mobiles, Calder became interested in making large, more substantial works as well. Using similar colorful abstract forms, he made giant metal structures whose shapes and colors stood out bravely in both rural and urban settings. Known as "stabiles," these works often had a similar whimsical quality to the smaller kinetic pieces. By the time of his first major show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943, Calder's quiet revolution was known internationally. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s he was commissioned to create site specific "stabiles" and had major retrospectives in a number of cities including Amsterdam, Berne, and Rio de Janiero.
      By 1970, Calder had reached the height of his fame. He had worked regularly creating thousands upon thousands of objects—everything from jewelry to children's toys to major monuments for the Lincoln Center in New York and UNESCO in Paris. That same year his gifts were honored again with a comprehensive show at the Guggenheim Museum and a smaller one at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1976, Alexander Calder died. Throughout his life, his commitment to creating work free from the pretensions of the art world and accessible to all, never stopped him from making exquisitely beautiful and important sculpture. In a century that saw the forms of art and literature reinvented regularly, Alexander Calder stands out as one of the great pioneers of his time.
— Homage to Calder (1972, book cover with photo, 32x25cm)
— LINKS
— Lollipops (1976, 69x93cm) — Papillon (1975, color lithograph 65x98cm)
— Flying Colors (1976, color lithograph 62x88cm)
— (family portrait?) untitled plate at p. 29 in the book Homage to Calder (1972, 32x25cm)
— Composition, p. 61, from the book Prints (1964)
— Black Sun (1953, 74x108cm; 348x512pix, 26kb)
— Sculpture photos on front and back covers of book Alexander Calder 1898-1976
— Sculpture photo on front cover of book Calder in Connecticut
^ Born on 11 November 1863: Paul Signac, Parisian pointilliste painter, printmaker, etcher, lithographer, who died on 15 August 1935.
— One of the principal neoimpressionist painters, Signac worked with Georges Seurat in creating pointillism (or divisionism). Signac published From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism (1899), explaining their theories. Signac's prosperous shopkeeping family gave him financial independence. Unlike Seurat, he had virtually no formal training; he taught himself to paint by studying the works of Claude Monet and others. After he and Seurat met in 1884, they developed their technique of painting with dots of color, which led to the name pointillism [because they spoke French, a good thing too, because in English it might have been called “dotage”]. As Signac explained, they used the pure impressionist palette but applied it in dots that were to be blended by the viewer's eye. What Signac called "muddy mixtures" were to be banished from painting and replaced by luminous, intense colors. Many of Signac's works are landscapes, inspired by the bright sunlight of southern France. He also painted some figure compositions. The neoimpressionists influenced the next generation; Signac inspired Henri Matisse in particular. As president of the annual Salon des Indépendants (1908-1934), Signac encouraged younger artists by exhibiting the controversial works of the Fauves and the Cubists.
— LINKS
— Blessing of the Tuna Fleet at Groix (1923, 72x90cm; 873x1200pix, 231kb — ZOOM to 1558x2000pix, 671kb)
— Neige, Boulevard de Clichy, Paris (1886, 48x65cm; 826x1200pix, 167kb — ZOOM to 1377x2000pix, 442kb)
— Sailboats in the Bay (38x55cm; half-size _ ZOOM to full size)
— Fishing Boats in La Rochelle (1921 rough study, 27x40cm; 1349x2000pix; 2083kb)
— Au Bord de la Rivière (rough study, 28x39cm; 1443x2000pix; 1595kb)
— Le Soir (La Jetée de Flessingue) (1898 lithograph, 20x26cm; full size)
— Nude figure standing (lithograph 20x11cm; full size)
— Le vieux port #7 (1897 etching, 15x24cm; 5/8 size)
— Application du Cercle chromatique (1888 color lithograph, 16x18cm; 4/3 sizeo)
— Le dimanche parisien (1887 lithograph, 17x12cm; 2/3 size)
— Ë Flessingue (1896 color lithograph, 24x40cm; 3/4 size)
— The Dining Room (1887) — The Dining Room
— M. Félix Fénéon (1890) — Women at the Well (1892) — Red Buoy (1895)
— The Large Pine, Saint-Tropez (1892, 19x27cm) — Port Saint-Tropez (1899)
^ Died on 11 November 1810: Johannes Josephus Zauffaly “Zoffany”, German Neoclassical painter, active in England where he dies, also in Italy and in India, born on 13 March 1733.
— Zoffany (originally Zauffely) made his reputation in England with paintings depicting episodes from contemporary theater and with portraits and conversation pieces (i.e., paintings of groups of people in their customary surroundings). After studying in Germany and Italy, Zoffany went to England about 1758. Following the lead of William Hogarth [10 Nov 1697 – 26 Oct 1764], he painted scenes from London's theatrical productions. Notable in this genre are his paintings of the famed actor David Garrick in his many West End successes - e.g., The Farmer's Return (1762). His portraits were popular with George III, who became his patron and for whom he produced Queen Charlotte with Her Sons, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York. In 1772 Zoffany went to Italy with the king's financial help and stayed during a seven years. There he painted The Tribuna of the Uffizi (1778) for the royal family. This celebrated work shows a group of connoisseurs admiring paintings and sculptures in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. He worked as a portraitist in India from 1783 to 1789, and when he returned to England he painted such notable portraits as Charles Towneley Among His Marbles (1790). Zoffany was a founder-member of the Royal Academy (1768). He possessed brilliant technical skills and introduced greater liveliness and personal anecdote into English conversation pieces.
— Born Johannes Josephus Zauffaly, he was the son of Anton Franz Zauffaly [1699–1771], Court Cabinetmaker and Architect in Regensburg to Alexander Ferdinand, Prince of Thurn and Taxis {NOT the prince of U-turns and taxis, nor the Prince of Taxes nor the Prince of Texas}. Johann Joseph Zauffaly at various times called himself Johan Joseph, John, Zoffany, Zauphaly, Zoffani. After an apprenticeship in Regensburg under the painter and engraver Martin Speer [1702–1765], a student of Francesco Solimena, Zoffany left in 1750 for Rome, where he studied under the portrait painter Agostino Masucci and came into contact with Anton Raphael Mengs. By 1757 and after a second trip to Rome, Zoffany was commissioned by Clemens August, Prince-Archbishop and Elector of Trier, to produce frescoes and paintings for his new palace at Trier and the palace of Ehrenbreitstein at Koblenz. All Zoffany’s early work at Ehrenbreitstein and Trier has been destroyed, but it may have been in the German Rococo manner of Cosmas Damian Asam and Johann Baptist Zimmermann. A number of small easel paintings, such as Venus Bringing Arms to Aeneas (1759), survive to show his typical choice of portentous themes tempered by Rococo technique and pretty, pale colors. However, two large mythological works painted the following year, Venus Marina and Venus and Adonis, are impressive indications of Zoffany’s ability at this early stage in his career. Although the compositions are not particularly successful, they are enterprising reinterpretations of popular themes. The earthy realism of some of the figures and the relatively dark tonality clearly indicate that Zoffany was capable of developing his hitherto decorative style of painting.
     In 1783, Zoffany fell out of favor with the British royal family when he painted a picture of the Queen (when prior to her marriage, she was known as the Princess of Mecklenburg) in close proximity with one of her reputed lovers. This disfavor at the royal court caused his rich patrons to forsake him and Zoffany decided to leave for India, where he was told that the Indian rajas and nawabs would pay lavishly for oil paintings of their families, such paintings being rare in India. William Hodges R.A. who had been to India earlier told him of lakhs {1 lakh = 100'000, hence “lakhs” also means any great number} of rupees awaiting an artist in oil paintings in the East. In India, Zoffany made a fortune at the courts of Indian rulers. He arrived Calcutta via Madras in 1783. His name appears in a 1787 Calcutta almanac of the year under the heading "Artist and portrait painter". He is reputed to have been the greatest European artist in India in those days.
     In 1784, he reached the Durbar of Oudh at Warren Hastings' insistence. Zoffany excelled in the art of character portrayal even when his subject was not one individual but a group. He also drew a number of landscapes, during his journey from Calcutta to Oudh. To his credit is the composition of The Last Supper that he did for Saint John's Church in Calcutta (the oldest Protestant church in India; its foundation was laid on Easter Monday, 01 April 1678, and it was completed in 1680). Zoffany also did paintings commemorating the victory of the British over Tipu Sultan.
     In Calcutta, Zoffany made a painting of The Last Supper and donated it to the Church of Saint James when it was consecrated in 1787. When the painting was hung over the high altar, the Calcutta society was shocked for Zoffany, like other artists before him, had painted the faces of Jesus, Saint John and other apostles in the likeness of local notables. The original for Jesus was a Greek philanthropist named Portenio. The police magistrate W.C. Blaquire, served as a model for Saint John. Judas Iscariot was recognized by some as a Calcutta auctioneer by the name of Tulloch, while others saw in him James Paul, the English Resident at the Royal Court of Oudh. Strangely enough, just like the traitor Judas, James Paul committed suicide a few years later. The other apostles resembled various other prominet members of Calcutta high society.
— The students of Zoffany included William Beechey, Maria Cosway, Henry Walton.
^
— LINKS
— Prince Ernest Gottlob Albert of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1772, 126x100cm; 1050x832pix, 87kb) _ Zoffany was born near Frankfurt-am-Main and in 1760 travelled to England, where he won success as a painter of conversation pieces and theatrical scenes. He was extensively patronised by George III and Queen Charlotte, although he had no official connection with the court. Zoffany was nominated personally by George III in 1769 for membership of the newly founded Royal Academy, where he exhibited between 1770 and 1800. The artist was absent from England for two long periods: firstly in Italy from 1772 to 1778 and secondly in India from 1783 to 1789. Some of Zoffany's most captivating work was done for the Royal Family, for example, Queen Charlotte and her Two Eldest Sons of 1771. Like the conversation pieces, many of the single portraits are imbued with a surprising degree of informality implied more by the pose than the finish, which is always meticulous. Both qualities are apparent in the portrait of Prince Ernest Gottlob Albert of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, where the sitter leans nonchalantly against a chair and looks away from the viewer. The figure is sharply lit from the right, but set against a dark background. The coiffure, the facial features and the uniform are all carefully and precisely modelled, but in such a way that the technical skill heightens the effect of the characterisation. Prince Ernest of Mecklenburg-Strelitz [1742-1814] was the youngest brother of Queen Charlotte. He is depicted in Hanoverian military uniform, wearing the ribbon and star of the Polish Order of the White Eagle. He was a keen soldier and in 1788 George III appointed him General of Infantry in the British Army. The portrait was probably painted for Queen Charlotte in the spring of 1772 as the sitter had returned to Hanover by May.
— Charles Towneley in his Sculpture Gallery (1782, 127x102cm, 1072x865pix, 169kb) _ Antiquity was the great theme in British painting in the last decades of the 18th century. Its influence can be traced in two areas particularly - in literature, which often comes close to the macabre, and in the excavations of antique sites, which were followed with intense interest at the time. The excavation sites attracted the British travelers on the Grand Tour, and soon a fever for collecting developed that dominated elegant taste throughout Europe. Charles Towneley [1737-1805] was the most famous of the many English collectors. Zoffany portrayed him in his library with an imaginary assembly of the entire collection in the one room. He is shown with three friends: Charles Greville, a politician, Thomas Astle, conservator of the British Museum, and Pierre d'Hancarville, French antiquarian. The owner of the house and his counterpart, d'Hancarville, who is wearing a Rococo costume, are seated in Baroque armchairs, but the rest of the interior decoration is in the new style. This is determined by the collection itself, which was later donated to the British Museum.

— The Tribuna of the Uffizi (1778, 124x155cm; 850x1050pix, 199kb) _ detail (1150x893pix, 195kb) _ The painting has become one of the most celebrated images of eighteenth-century taste. Zoffany shows a group of connoisseurs and members of the nobility admiring works of art in the Tribuna, the principal room of the Uffizi in Florence, which was the most famous gallery in the world during the eighteenth century. The Tribuna had been built by Francesco de' Medici from 1585to 1589 to a design by Bernardo Buontalenti as a showcase for the most precious items in the Medici collection. Although Zoffany has depicted the architectural features of the Tribuna with a fair degree of accuracy, he has rearranged the works of art and in some cases altered their scale. In fact, he has also incorporated a number of paintings from that part of the Medici collection housed in the Palazzo Pitti, as well as including several additional pieces of sculpture. The painter thus successfully gives the gallery a more crowded and undoubtedly richer appearance than it had during the eighteenth century, and by this means has facilitated his rendering of the complicated sightlines of the room and the perspectival inlaid marble decoration of the floor. The setting is therefore somewhat idealized, but it remains a perfectly accurate representation of the significance of the Tribuna for eighteenth-century connoisseurship, with its emphasis on the antique, the High Renaissance, the Bolognese school and Rubens.
      Zoffany painted the picture in Florence expressly for Queen Charlotte, beginning in 1772. Much of the composition was completed the following year, but the artist continued working on it intermittently until late in 1777, making changes some of which are now only visible by X-ray. Notable among these changes is the inclusion of a self portrait on the left of the composition, where the artist has shown himself peering round the unframed canvas of The Virgin and Child by Raphael. For this purpose, it is almost as if the painter has abandoned his easel, partly visible in the lower right corner of the picture, and walked across or around the back of the room to partake in the discussion.
      The figures in the picture, all of whom are identifiable, fall into three groups: those on the left between the sculptures of Cupid and Psyche and Satyr with the Cymbals; those in the foreground, right of center, gathered around the Venus d'Urbino by Titian; and those on the right around the Venus de' Medici. These portraits were meticulously painted by Zoffany and won widespread admiration, although apparently not from George III and Queen Charlotte, who claimed that such recognizable figures were inappropriate to the scene. In essence, however, Zoffany has amalgamated the traditional subject of a gallery view, much exploited by Flemish painters in the seventeenth century, with the conversation piece evolved by British painters during the eighteenth century, although recently other more cryptic levels of meaning have been sought in the picture.
      Royal patronage enabled the artist to have the Venus d'Urbino by Titian taken down from the wall for copying after the Grand Duke of Tuscany (Ferdinando I) had specifically decreed that the picture had been copied too much and should not be moved again for such a purpose. Correspondingly, there are one or two references in the picture to the Royal Collection: The Virgin and Child by Raphael, held by the artist, was a work that was offered to George III by Earl Cowper (this is the Niccolini-Cowper Madonna) and The Samian Sibyl by Guercino, seen at the lower edge of the composition, is a pendant to The Libyan Sibyl by the same artist bought by George III in the 1760s. The Tribuna of the Uffizi is a technical tour de force. The attention to detail and texture involves not just the portraits, but also the copies after the works of art nearly all of which are identifiable. Controlled brushwork and careful application are the hallmarks of Zoffany's style, and they are seen at their best in this famous picture without any of the loss of verve that such a long and elaborate undertaking might have forced upon the artist.
     The detail shows the figures on the left between the sculptures of Cupid and Psyche, and Satyr with the Cymbals. At the left of Raphael's Niccolini-Cowper Madonna they are (from left to right):
1. George 3rd Earl Cowper [1738-1789], Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. A distinguished collector and lover of Florence.
2. Sir John Dick [1720-1804], Baronet of Braid. British consul at Leghorn, 1754-1776. He is wearing his badge as a Baronet of Nova Scotia and the ribbon and star of the Russian Order of Saint Anne of Schleswig-Holstein.
3. Other Windsor, 6th Earl of Plymouth [1751-1799]. He was in Florence in January, February, and June 1772.
4. Johann Zoffany.
At the right of Raphael's Madonna:
5. Mr. Stevenson, companion to Lord Lewisham on his travels.
6. George Legge, Lord Lewisham, later 3rd Earl of Dartmouth (1755-1810). He embarked on a tour of the Continent with Mr. Stevenson in July 1775. They were in Florence on 02 December 1777.
      The paintings on the wall (left to right) are:
Raphael Madonna della Sedia (1518)
Correggio The Virgin adoring the Child (1522, 81x77cm; 731x600pix, 47kb)
Sustermans Galileo Galilei
Raphael Madonna del Cardellino (1507)

— The Dutton Family (1765, 125kb)
— The Minuet (Family Scene) (489x620pix; 99kb)
^
Died on a 11 November:

1911 Félix-François-Georges-Philibert Ziem

1873 Henry Perle “Smuggler” Parker, British artist born in 1795.

1856 John Middleton, Norwich English painter and etcher born on 09 Jan 1827 (or in 1828?). His father, John Middleton [–1848], was a painter and decorator and his mother, Ann [–1830], was an amateur flower painter. Middleton’s artistic development had reached full maturity when he was 20 years old. On a sketching tour to Kent in 1847 he produced watercolors which, in their free use of wash, show a marked improvement on his work of the previous year. His teacher Henry Bright accompanied him on this trip. Their watercolors were remarkably similar at this time, and it is evident that Middleton’s rapid development influenced the work of his own teacher.

1772 Jan Morits Quinckhardt, Dutch painter and dealer born on 28 January 1688. — [He painted quick and hard?] — He was the son of Julius Quinkhard, a local portrait painter in Cleves, then part of Germany. He studied with his father for six years before moving to Amsterdam in 1710. There he continued his studies, working successively with Arnold Boonen, Christoffel Lubiniecki and Nicolaas Verkolje [11 Apr 1673 – 21 Jan 1746]. In 1723 Quinkhard became a citizen of Amsterdam and remained there until his death. Among Quinkhard's students were Jurriaan Andriessen, Jan de Beyer [1705-1768], Willem Bartel van der Kooi, Tibout Regters.

^ 1761 Jan Ten Compe (or Kompe), Amsterdam painter, draftsman, and dealer, born on 14 February 1713. In 1736 he became a citizen of Amsterdam, where he spent most of his life, apart from 1740 to 1755, when he lived mostly in The Hague. He was a student of the decorative wallpaper and landscape painter Dirk Dalens III [1688–1753]. Ten Compe produced mostly views of country houses and townscapes, including Haarlem, The Hague, Amsterdam, Oudekerk aan de Amstel, Delft, Leiden, Rotterdam, Utrecht and Kleef. One of the best topographical artists of his generation, he worked in a detailed, controlled and elegant manner, influenced by such 17th-century townscape painters as Jan van der Heyden and the Berckheyde brothers, several of whose paintings he copied. Like the Berckheydes, he painted mostly topographically accurate views, as in The Amsterdam Stadhuis with the Nieuwe Kerk (1744), with its impressive town hall building dominating the scene. For some of the views, preparatory drawings survive, some of which had watercolor washes added by Jacobus Buijs [1724–1801]. Ten Compe’s drawings were engraved by Pierre Charles Nicolas Dufour [1725–1818] and Robert Muijs [1742–1825]. Ten Compe worked for the collectors Frans van de Velde, Gerrit Braamcamp and Jan van Rijneveld. His works were very popular, one painting sometimes fetching as much as 2000 florins. He had one student, Gerrit Toorenburgh [1732–1785], who himself became a town- and landscape painter.

1681 (burial) Jacob Marell (or Marrel, Marzell, Morsel, Moral, Morrel, Murel, Marellus), German painter, active also in the northern Netherlands, born in 1614. He was the grandson of a French goldsmith, Claude Marrel, who had settled in Frankfurt am Main in the 16th century, and the only notable pupil of the Frankfurt still-life artist Georg Flegel. Jakob’s earliest known paintings date from 1634. One is from Utrecht, where Marell stayed until 1651, not only painting but also dealing in art and flower-bulbs. In 1651 he settled permanently in Frankfurt, where he married the widow of Matthäus Merian I and continued dealing in art. In 1661 his Artliches und Kunstreiches Reissbuchlein für die ankommende Jugend zu lehren Insonderheit für Mahler, Goldschmied und Bithauern was published. Remaining in contact with the Netherlands, he returned to Utrecht occasionally from 1664. — Maria Sibylla Merian was a student of Marell


Born on a 11 November:

^1888 Johannes Itten, Swiss Expressionist painter, lithographer, textile designer, teacher, writer, and theorist, who died on 25 March 1967. He was trained first as a primary school teacher in Berne (1904–1906), where he became familiar with progressive educational and psychoanalytical ideas. He was, however, interested in art and music, and in 1909 he decided to become a painter. He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva but was so disappointed that he returned to teacher training in Berne. He read widely and developed an interest in religion and mystic philosophy. After qualifying he returned to Geneva and greatly enjoyed the course on the geometric elements of art run by the Swiss painter Eugène Gilliard [1861–1921]. After traveling in Europe, in 1913 Itten went to Stuttgart to study at the academy of Adolf Hölzel, a pioneer of abstraction who was also convinced of the importance of automatism in art. Greatly impressed, Itten absorbed his teaching on color and contrast and his analyses of Old Masters paintings. Encouraged by Hölzel, he made abstract collages incorporating torn paper and cloth. — The students of Itten included Mordecai Ardon, Richard Oelze, Hellmut Stauch, Gunta Stölzl, Heinz Trökes. — Gruss und Heil den Herzen Love (33x25cm) — Architectural Study (30x24cm)

1884 Josef Mangold, German artist who died in 1942.

^ 1837 Arthur Grottger, Polish draftsman and painter who died on 13 December 1867. He received his first drawing-lessons from his father Jan Józef Grottger (1799–1853), a talented amateur artist. From 1848 or 1850 he studied drawing and painting under Jan Kanty Maszkowski [1794–1865] and Juliusz Kossak in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine). Grottger's watercolor The Entry of Francis Joseph into Lwów (1851), brought him an imperial scholarship in 1852, enabling him to continue his studies in the Kraków School of Fine Arts, under Wladyslaw Luszczkiewicz [1828–1900] and Wojciech Kornel Stattler [1800–1875]. During this period he met the Bavarian magnate Aleksander Pappenheim, who purchased his painting The Recovery of the Tatars’ Booty (1854) and remained his patron and benefactor until 1863. Early in his career Grottger painted numerous battle-scenes, in oil and watercolor, whose landscape sections are frequently inept, but whose horses, riders, and fighting cavalry are depicted with great vitality and sense of movement. In 1854 he went to Vienna, where he studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste from 1855 to 1859 under Karl von Blaas, Carl Wurzinger [1817–1883] and Peter Geiger [1805–1880]. He lived in Vienna until 1865, working as an illustrator for various periodicals including Mussestunden, Illustrierte Zeitung and, from 1862, Postep, whose editor he became in 1863. About 300 drawings are attributed to Grottger, and together these constitute a cohesive political, social, literary and satirical commentary on contemporary and historical events. In Vienna Grottger continued to produce watercolors but he also painted numerous oils, including a number of historical compositions (e.g. Sigismund II Augustus and Barbara Radziwillówna, two versions: 1859 and 1860), works on themes from the January Uprising of 1863 (In the Saski Gardens, 1863), some portraits (Gräfin Thun with Roses, 1860), and a number of self-portraits. In several series of deeply patriotic drawings Grottger depicted events preceding the January Uprising (e.g. Warsaw I, 1861; and Warsaw II, 1863). A further series, Lithuania (1864–1866), was devoted to the Lithuanian peasant–partisan movement, while War (1867) was a protest against the mutual destruction of nations. These series were popularized through albums published by the Viennese firm of F. Bodny. In 1865 Grottger returned to Poland, visiting Kraków and Lwów, but in 1866 he left for good. He went to Paris, and then, seriously ill, to the South of France, where he died. He painted his last Self-portrait (1867) shortly before his death.

1832 Philippe Jolyet, French artist who died in 1908.

^ 1787 Jan Christiaan Schotel, Dordrecht Dutch painter and draftsman who died on 21 December 1838. — {As a schoolboy, what was the favorite activity of Schotel? “Show-and-tell”?} — Originally a yarn manufacturer, from 1805 he received lessons in drawing and painting from Adriaan Meulemans [1763–1835] and Martinus Schouman [1770–1848] in Dordrecht. His first paintings were done in collaboration with Schouman (Bombarding of Dordrecht by the French on 24 November 1813, 1815). His early work, for example the highly detailed drawing of The Battle of Kijkduin in 1673, shows great admiration for Ludolf Backhuysen and Willem van de Velde II. In 1822 he showed himself to be an accomplished and independent painter with The Wreck of the ‘Delphine’, in which the emphasis is no longer on the ships but on the stormy sea and massive clouds. By this time, Schotel was the most important Dutch painter of sea and river views; he generally set his scenes in the Netherlands, although a few deal with impressions from his trips to France in 1827–1828 and 1837. His palette became warmer and richer under the influence of his French contacts, a development that some Dutch critics regarded as improper; he also won a prize at the 1827 Paris Salon with Gaff-rigged Ship Sailing before the Wind in Tempestuous Weather. As is often the case with Schotel’s works, an excellent preparatory study has been preserved. In this and other drawings he shows a surprisingly free and confident style. From about 1830 he produced many paintings for foreign collectors, including splendid works such as Ships before the Coast (1830), and a large number of smaller pictures such as Stormy Sea at Katwijk (1837). He was the father and teacher of painter and lithographer Petrus Johannes Schotel [19 Aug 1808 – 23 Jul 1865] who, like him, specialized in sea and river views.
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