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DEATHS: 1876 DIAZ — 1976 “MAN RAY” — BURIAL: 1630 VAN DE VELDE
BIRTHS:  1736 GRAFF — 1785 WILKIE — 1584 CRAYER — 1573 BOSSCHAERT — 1882 LEWIS — 1907 BRAYER — 1904 LEMIEUX
^ Born on 18 November 1736: Anton Graff “van Dyck of Germany”, Swiss German painter specialized in portraits who died on 22 June 1813.
— Graff, born in Switzerland, was the leading German portrait painter of the 18th century. He was a younger contemporary of Reynolds, with whom he is often compared but Graff really belongs to a later generation, since most of his portraits lack the trappings of the Grand Style, and he worked almost into the Biedermeier period.
      He was in Augsburg by 1756 and removed to Dresden in 1766 to teach at the newly founded Academy. He recorded himself as having painted some 1240 portraits in his long career and his sitters included many of the most famous of his contemporaries — Lessing, Herder, Schiller (whom he records as having fidgeted the whole time). He also made some 322 portrait drawings in silver point, a very rare technique in the 18th century. Some fragments of an autobiography were posthumously published in 1815.
— Graff was a student of Johann Ulrich Schellenburg [1709–1795] in Winterthur and continued his training with Johann Jakob Haid in Augsburg between 1756 and 1765. He worked for the court painter Leonhard Schneider [1716–1762] in Ansbach from 1757 to 1759, producing large numbers of copies of a portrait of Frederick the Great (probably by Antoine Pesne). This was an important step in furthering his career, as were the months he spent in Regensburg (1764–1765) painting miniatures of clerics and town councilors. He was court painter to the Elector Frederick-Christian of Saxe-Weimar in Dresden from 1766 and taught at the Hochschule der Bildende Künste there. In 1771 he went to Berlin, where he painted portraits of Jakob Mendelssohn, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and J. G. Sulzer. Sulzer introduced him at court, which resulted in many commissions. He was invited several times to teach at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, but he remained in Dresden. He often went to Leipzig, and in summer he frequently went to Teplitz (now Teplice, Czech Republic) and Karlsbad (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic); he also worked in Berlin on several occasions and returned to Switzerland for visits.
— Graff's students included Heinrich Freudweiler, Johann Konrad Gessner [02 Oct 1764 – 08 May 1826], Karl August Senff, Henriette-Felicité Tassaert.
— LINKS
— Self-Portrait at the Age of 58 (1794, 168x105cm; 1150x709pix, 112kb) _ The artist abandoned the idealized portraiture of the Rococo period and specialized in half-length portraits with naturalistic poses and subdued tones.
— The Artist's Family before the Portrait of Johann Georg Sulzer (1785; 800x597pix, 93kb)
— Le Comte Christophe Urbanowski (1791, 113x92cm; 512x410pix, 34kb)
— George Leopold de Gogul (1796; 575x419pix, 67kb)
^ Died on 18 November 1876: Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña, French Barbizon School painter specialized in landscapes, born on 20 August 1807.
— Born of Spanish parents, in 1825 he became a decorator of porcelain at Arsène Gillet's factory where he met Jules Dupré, Gillet's nephew. In the late 1820s he began painting his first oils, perhaps receiving lessons from François Souchon [1787-1857]. He also copied and was much influenced by the paintings of Correggio (1494-1534) and Prud'hon. His small-scale richly colored landscapes, mythological scenes and scènes de fantaisie were popular with collectors. One of the leading figures of the Barbizon school of landscape painters, his later career was much influenced by his friend Théodore Rousseau, with whom he often painted in the forest of Fontainebleau.
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— Autumn, Forest Interior (36x46cm; 908x1200pix, 179kb _ ZOOM to 1453x1920pix, 484kb)
— Seraglio (1875, 67x84cm; 821x1186pix, 161kb _ ZOOM to 1369x1978pix, 535kb)
— Forêt de Fontainebleau (1867; 83x112cm; quarter-size _ ZOOM to half-size _ ZOOM++ to full size)
— Three Gypsies in a Clearing (120x95cm; quarter-size _ ZOOM to half-size _ ZOOM++ to fuzzy full size)
— Gypsies in a Forest (1851, 50x34cm; 2/3 size)
— In the Forest (1852, 51x62cm; half-size _ ZOOM to full size)
— Jour de Soleil dans un Bosquet
— Fleurs (37x21cm; full size)
— Les Maléfices de la beauté (lithograph, 20x16cm)
— Les Folles Amoureuses (lithograph 20x16cm) — Les Fous Amoureux (lithograph)
— Mother and Child (56x36cm) — The Old Windmill near Barbizon (100x78cm)
— Gypsy Mother and Child (1866, 44x32cm)
— Women of the Seraglio (1860, 43x63cm; 665x1000pix, 168kb) — Baigneuse (1851, 34x25cm)
— Common with Stormy Sunset (1850, 37x54cm; 420x585pix, 39kb) _ Artists of the Barbizon School often used small wood panels like this one when they wanted to work out of doors directly in front of their chosen motif. Easily portable and more sturdy than canvas or paper, the panels allowed the painter to move quickly from one study to another as he recorded changing atmospheric and light conditions. This picture was known in the 19th century as The Sunset. Often, such oil studies were completed back in the studio where, as here, the artist turned the sketch into a small-scale finished composition.
^ Born on 18 November 1785: Sir David Wilkie, Scottish painter and etcher who died on 01 June 1841.
— Wilkie was born in Cults manse in Fife in 1785. In 1799, he was sent to study at the Trustees’ Academy in Edinburgh and on his return home in 1804, painted his Pitlessie Fair. The Village Politicians (1806) was of great success which made him settle in London. In 1817, he visited Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, and painted his family group.
      His fame mainly rests on his genre pictures in the Dutch style, such as the Distraining for Rent (1815), The Penny Wedding (1818), The Letter of Introduction (1818) and others. Later he changed his style, tried to imitate the depth and richness of coloring of the old masters and chose more elevated historical subjects, like The Preaching of John Knox before the Lords of Congregation, 10 June 1559. He also painted portraits William Chalmers-Bethune, his wife Isabella Morison and their Daughter Isabella (1804), and was successful as an etcher.
      In 1823, he was appointed King’s limner in Scotland, and in 1830 painter-in-ordinary to King William IV. In 1840, for his health, he visited Syria, Palestine and Egypt, but died on his voyage home.
— Born in Cults, Fifeshire, he first studied in Edinburgh before coming to London in 1805. His earlier work was much in the manner of Teniers (and was mocked as the 'Pauper Style'). He exhibited at the Royal Academy, London 1806-1825 and 1829-1841, being elected Associate Royal Academician, London 1809 and Royal Academician 1811. He visited France in 1814 and 1821, and in 1825-1828 he made a convalescent tour on the Continent which included a period in Madrid. Thereafter he adapted a looser, more dramatic style, influenced by Rembrandt and seventeenth-century Spanish painting. In 1830 he was appointed Principal Painter to the King, and he was knighted in 1836. In 1840 he visited the Holy Land, but died at sea on his return voyage, an event memorably described by Turner in his Peace: Burial at Sea (1842, 87x86cm)
— LINKS
— The Blind Tenant (69x88cm) _ detail 1 _ detail 2 _
— The Blind Fiddler (1806, 58x79cm)
— The Artist's Family before the Portrait of Johann Georg Sulzer (1785)
— The Village Holiday (1811, 94x128cm) _ In the early nineteenth century, Wilkie became the great celebrity of the art world with pictures like this, showing moralising scenes from rural life in a minutely naturalistic style. Their entertaining subject-matter and apparently straightforward ‘realism’ secured him tremendous popular interest when these pictures were shown in public. This picture was exhibited in a one-man show the artist organised in 1812. Writing of it in the catalogue Wilkie explained that ‘in the principal group... a man is represented hesitating whether to go home with his wife, or remain with his companions at the public house.

^ Died on 18 November 1976: Emmanuel Rudnitsky “Man Ray”, US Dadaist and Surrealist photographer, painter, and filmmaker, born on 27 August 1890.
— He was was born in Philadelphia, and moved to New York with his family seven years later. In New York he frequented Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery “291” in 1911 and attended classes at the Ferrer Center in 1912. In 1915 his first solo show was held at the Daniel Gallery, New York. About this time he took up photography, the medium for which he was to become best known. He entered into a lifelong friendship with Marcel Duchamp, with whom he and Walter Arensberg founded the Society of Independent Artists in 1916. With Duchamp, Katherine Dreier, Henry Hudson, and Andrew McLaren, Man Ray established the Société Anonyme, which he named, in 1920.
      Man Ray moved from New York to Paris in 1921. In Paris Man Ray was given a solo exhibition at the Librairie Six in 1921. His first Rayographs (photographic images produced without a camera) were published in Les Champs délicieux, rayographies in 1922, the year in which Man Ray participated in the Salon Dada at the Galerie Montaigne in Paris. With Jean Arp, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso, he was represented in the first Surrealist exhibition at the Galerie Pierre in Paris in 1925.
      From 1923 to 1929 he made the films Le Retour à la raison, Emak Bakia, L’Étoile de mer, and Les Mystères du château de dé. In 1932 Man Ray’s work was included in Dada, 1916–1932 at the Galerie de l’Institut in Paris and in a Surrealist show at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. He collaborated with Paul Eluard on the books Facile in 1935 and Les Mains libres in 1937. In 1936 he went to New York on the occasion of the Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, in which his work appeared.
      Man Ray left France in 1940, shortly before the German occupation, making his way to Hollywood and then to New York. In 1951 he returned to Paris, where he was given a solo show at the Galerie Berggruen. In 1959 a solo exhibition of Man Ray’s work was held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. His autobiography Self Portrait was published in 1963. Ten years later the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presented 125 of his photographic works. Man Ray died in Paris.
— LINKS
— Return to Reason (1921, 37x25cm; 986x684pix, 89kb) _ Man Ray worked in several media exploring the concept of the "found object" - treating discarded materials as valued artifacts. Many of these objects recur over many years in a range of the artist's work. The motif of the unwinding swath of paper first appeared in Man Ray's controversial Dada sculpture of 1919, Lampshade, in which an unrolled paper lampshade curled around a metal shaft. He returned to the motif in four subsequent works, three of which are titled Return to Reason. This painting is the earliest. A three minute film followed in 1923, and a he made a larger version of this painting in 1939.
— ...istan/islam (1924 “Rayograph” 30x24cm)
— Peggy Guggenheim (B&W photo, 1600x1023pix, 123kb)
— Dance in the Subway (1948, 45x61cm)
— Imaginary Portrait of the Marquis de Sade (732x570pix, 43kb)
— Pisces aka La Femme et son Poisson (1938, 60x73cm) _ This was based on a suite of drawings that Man Ray published, with poems by Paul Eluard, as Free Hands in 1937. ‘In these drawings my hands are dreaming’, he later remarked. The woman lies alongside a fish to create what the artist described as ‘a contrasting of similar and different forms at the same time’. Man Ray strengthened the identification of woman and fish by choosing Pisces as the English title, the zodiac sign of paired fishes.
— Silhouette (1916, 52x64cm; 451x573pix, 137kb) _ In 1915 Man Ray abandoned what he called his “Romantic-Expressionist-Cubist” style and adopted a mechanistic, graphic, flattened idiom like that developed by Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp during the same period. This drawing is preparatory to his most successful painting in this style, The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows (1916), the subject of which was inspired by a vaudeville dancer whose movement he wished to suggest in a series of varying poses.1 Man Ray’s interest in frozen sequential movement may derive from the experiments in photography he initiated about this time. The particularized features of the figures in this drawing are eliminated to produce two-dimensional patterned forms that are silhouetted against black oval shadows. The dancer is accompanied not only by her shadow but also by music, concisely indicated by the voluted head of an instrument at the lower right of the support, the strings across the bottom, and the music stand at left. The position of her feet on the strings, which may double as a stave, may be meant to convey a specific sequence of notes, as if the dancer were indeed accompanying herself musically. It seems likely that this drawing represents the first stage in the conception of the painting. In the canvas the three positions of the dancer are superimposed and appear at the top of the composition, with the greater part of the field occupied by her distorted, enlarged, and vividly colored cutout shadows.

^ Born on 18 November 1584: Gaspar de Crayer, Flemish painter and draftsman who died on 27 January 1669. — {Do NOT pronounce his name “Gaspar the Cryer”}
— He was active in the southern Netherlands at the time when demand was high for decorative schemes embodying the tenets of the Counter-Reformation: altarpieces and other religious paintings form the largest part of his considerable oeuvre. To a significant extent he owes his reputation to the fact that he was one of the earliest and most consistent followers of Rubens, whose formal idiom he disseminated beyond Antwerp’s artistic circles.
— Gerard Seghers was a student of de Crayer.
— LINKS
— Altar
— Alexander and Diogenes (196x278cm) _ The meeting between the classical ruler Alexander the Great and the philosopher Diogenes had been illustrated in the 15th and 16th centuries but was also a popular subject in Italian and Netherlands Baroque painting. Diogenes replied to Alexander, the conqueror of the world, when he asked him if he wanted anything: "Stand a little less between me and the sun." The contrast between the youthful and beautiful hero and the beggarly old man whose life exemplified asceticism is exploited in the composition and use of colors. The message of the painting is the meaninglessness of earthly power when confronted with ethical principles. The Antwerp artist de Crayer later became court painter to the archduke in Brussels. This work, reflecting his dealing with forms and themes in the work of Rubens, is one of his best.
— The Cardinal Infante (1639, 219x125cm) _ Crayer was a student and continuator of Rubens, also influenced by Van Dyck. He was the accredited painter for the churches of Brabant and Ghent.
— Head Study of a Young Moor (40x33cm) _ Rubens' style was imitated by many 17th-century artists, who devoted themselves to large-scale ecclesiastical commissions. Gaspar de Crayer, a Brussels master who settled in Ghent in 1664, was one of the most talented members of this group. A series of his paintings can be seen in local churches. De Crayer's best work is marked by the grandeur of its composition. Although he lacked Rubens' drive, he made up for it somewhat with his refined modeling and soft palette, and never descended into the tedium of most Rubens imitators
^ Born on 18 November 1573: Ambrosius Bosschaert I, Flemish Baroque flower and still-life painter, active mainly in the Netherlands, who died in 1621.
— Ambrosius Bosschaert I is recorded in Middelburg from 1593 to 1613 and later in the Utrecht Guild in 1616. Although he spent the major part of his life in the Netherlands, Bosschaert's style was basically Flemish - similar to that of Jan Brueghel, with whom he ranks in quality and as one of the pioneers of flower painting as an independent genre. His bouquets have a rich variety of flowers from different seasons arranged in a formal way. The degree of finish and exactitude, and the subtlety of the color, are exceptional. His Vase of Flowers (1620) is one of the most reproduced of all flower pieces. Bosschaert may fairly be said to have initiated the Dutch tradition of flower painting and his style was continued by his three sons, Ambrosius Bosschaert the Younger [1609-1645], Abraham Bosschaert [1613-1643], and Johannes Bosschaert [1610-1650], and also by his brother-in-law, Balthasar van der Ast.
— Ambrosius Bosschaert I is a representative of 17th century Dutch still life, he was one of the first painters who concentrated entirely on still lifes with bouquets of flowers and fruit. Bosschaert was born in Antwerp in 1573, but had to flee to Holland because of his religious beliefs before reaching the age of twenty. He settled in Middelburg, the capital of the Dutch province of Zeeland, where he became famous for his radially composed still lifes of flowers. Later he also worked in Utrecht and Breda. The most famous of his works is no doubt his Bouquet of Flowers, placed in front of a round, arched window. It has been observed that Bosschaert’s still lifes, combine flowers that blossom at different times, so that this is an idealized flower still life, a painted botanical encyclopedia to a contemporary viewer, at the same time his floral paintings have a symbolic meaning, which is true for all early masters of the still lifes, even though the symbols are often hidden from contemporary eyes. As a floral still life painter Bosschaert started a whole ‘dynasty’ that specialized in the subject, and the tradition he had started was continued by his three sons, two brothers-in-law and a son in law. He also worked as an art dealer. Bosschaert died in The Hague. He had a great deal of influence on Dutch still-life painting.
— LINKS
— Still Life with Flowers in a Wan-Li vase (1619)
— Bouquet of Flowers (1620, 23x17cm) _ Analysis of the flower pieces made by Bosschaert and other flower painters of his time reveals that their bouquets were seldom painted from life. They were assembled from a number of independent studies which serve as patterns. The pictures frequently show blossoms which bloom at different seasons of the year, and it is not unusual to find the same flower, shell, or insect in more than one picture. This manner of composing flower pieces was continued by later artists.
— Bouquet in an Arched Window (1620) _ One of the oldest types of still-life is the flower piece. It seems that flower painting was established as an independent category in the Netherlands during the third quarter of the sixteenth century, with the rise of a widespread interest in gardening and the cultivation of exotic flowers. The principal member of the group of flower painters during the first decades of the seventeenth century was Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, the founder of a dynasty of flower and fruit painters.
      His prime work is the brilliantly colored Bouquet in an Arched Window. Jacob de Gheyn II and Roelandt Savery painted similar multicolored bouquets in niches, but only Bosschaert showed flowers against an open vista. The painting's exquisite attention to detail recalls works by miniaturists. Of Baroque chiaroscuro there is not a trace. Each bloom in his typically axial symmetrical arrangement is given equal attention and is minutely analyzed in an even light.
      Analysis of the flower pieces made by Bosschaert and other flower painters of his time reveals that their bouquets were seldom painted from life. They were assembled from a number of independent studies which serve as patterns. The pictures frequently show blossoms which bloom at different seasons of the year, and it is not unusual to find the same flower, shell, or insect in more than one picture. This manner of composing flower pieces was continued by later artists. Moreover, the huge bouquets are usually far too large for the roemers or vases that hold them. If set up in the studio they would surely topple over.
— Flowers in a Glass Vase (1619; 110kb) — Still Life of Flowers (131kb)
— Flower Vase in a Window Niche (1620; 134kb) — Bouquet of Flowers in an Arch (1620; 87kb)
^ Buried on 18 November 1630: Esaias van de Velde, Dutch painter, draftsman, and etcher, specialized in landscapes, baptized as an infant on 17 May 1587.
— He was the second son of Cathalyne van Schorle and the painter and art dealer Hans van den Velde [1552–1609], a Protestant who fled religious persecution in Antwerp and settled in Amsterdam in 1585. Esaias van de Velde probably received his earliest training from his father. It is also possible that he studied under the Antwerp painter Gillis van Coninxloo, who moved to Amsterdam in 1595 (ten years after Esaias’s father). He may also have been trained by David Vinckboons, whose work shows similarities with that of Esaias.
     On his father’s death, Esaias moved to Haarlem with his mother, and the same year he married Katelyna Maertens, with whom he had four children: Jan [1614–], Esaias the younger [1615–], Anthonie the younger [1617–1672] and a daughter, Jacquemijntgen [1621–]. Both Esaias the younger and Anthonie the younger became artists, the latter a still-life painter named after his uncle, the Antwerp painter Anthonie van den Velde the elder [1557–]. Esaias’s older brother, Jan van de Velde I [1568–1623], was a famous calligrapher, who moved from Antwerp to Rotterdam after his marriage in 1592. His eldest son, Jan van de Velde II [1593 – Nov 1641], was a painter, draftsman and printmaker, like his uncle. He had a son, Jan van de Velde III [1620–1662], who became a still-life painter. Both Esaias I and Jan II played an important role in the development of naturalistic Dutch landscapes in the 17th century.
      Esaias I became a member of the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke in 1612, the same year as Willem Buytewech and the landscape painter Hercules Segers. During this Haarlem period Esaias had two students, Jan van Goyen and Pieter de Neijn [1597–1639], but by 1618 he had moved with his family to The Hague, where he joined the Guild of Saint Luke in October of that year.
— Van de Velde painted genre and battle pictures, but is best known for his realistic landscapes, by which he helped establish the Dutch school of realistic landscape painting. His use of composition and color in works such as Dune Landscape (1629) were especially influential. He worked in Haarlem from 1610 to 1618 and then in The Hague where he was Court Painter to the Prince Maurits and Frederick Hendrick, until his death. Jan van Goyen was his student. There were other artists in his family, but he was not related to the family of Willem van de Velde, who were marine painters and landscapists including Willem van de Velde the Elder [1611 – Dec 1693], his son Willem van de Velde the Younger [1633 – 06 Apr 1707], Adriaen van de Velde [1636-1672] brother of Willem the Younger.
— LINKS
— Landscape with Gallows, near Haarlem (1616) — Landscape with Trees (1619)
— Spaarnwoude (1615) — The Cattle Ferry (1622)
— Ferry Boat (1622, 76x113cm) _ Between 1607 and 1640, entrepreneurs and engineers drained vast lakes in the province of Holland, thus creating acres of new arable land. New villages sprung up in these low-lying "polders," protected only by dikes and pumps, driven by the readily available wind power of the flat countryside. At the same time, entrepreneurs created an efficient system of transportation along rivers and canals, as this painting of Esaias van de Velde attests.
— Winter Landscape (1623, 26x30cm) _ In 1612 two landscape artists, Hercules Seghers and Esaias van de Velde joined the painters' guild in Haarlem, and it is from that year that the origins of realistic landscape painting in the north Netherlands can be dated. Esaias was born in Amsterdam in about 1590 and probably trained in the studio of Gillis van Coninxloo, an Antwerp landscape painter and follower of Pieter Bruegel the Elder; who had fled to the north as a Protestant refugee from the war in Flanders. Esaias van de Velde developed Coninxloo's style in the direction of greater realism.
      As can be seen in this small panel of 1623, his mature style is characterized by a striking naturalism created by free brushwork and a deliberately restricted palette. The mannerisms of Flemish landscape have disappeared to leave an image which conveys all the crispness of an icy winter day in Holland. The figures are sketched in sure, quick strokes, the landscape evoked in pigments thinly scraped across the still-visible gesso ground. Van de Velde also studied the work of Adam Elsheimer, the German painter who moved to Rome in the first decade of the seventeenth century. Esaias would have known Elsheimer's paintings in the form of prints and it is from them that he derives his low viewpoint and the triangular composition.
      At the same time as the powerful and naturalistic landscapes of Seghers and Esaias van de Velde were being created in Haarlem, Esaias's cousin, Jan van de Velde, was at work in the town engraving his delicate landscapes, and Cornelis Vroom was creating his understated but remarkably innovative paintings and prints based on the countryside around the town. Among Esaias's students was Jan van Goyen who was further to develop and refine his master's style.
— View of Zierikzee (1618, 27x40cm) _ In this landscape a great natural effect is achieved by the artist. There is the outline of the town, occupying almost all the horizon, in a not too distant view, and painted almost exclusively in dark tones of brown, as one might see the silhouette of a town in the failing light of dusk, with only a few patches of very dark green in the river bank. The sky is a liquid blue, with stray clouds which by their diagonal sweep define and emphasize the sky's width. The sky and the town are reflected in the calm water. In the foreground is the near bank with fishermen. Their silhouettes, and the strong red color worn by the middle one, are points against which the vast space beyond may be measured.
      The surprise of this brilliant painting lies in Esaias's total matter-of-factness. All chances to embellish the picture, to make it more attractive to contemporary Late Mannerist taste, have been passed by. The painting is deliberately dry, almost to the point of fanaticism, and that is why it contains, already at this early date, the complete program of realist landscape: the low viewpoint, the wide space, the horizon, the sky, the little figures as spatial points of reference.
^ Born on 18 November 1882: Percy Wyndham Lewis, Canadian British writer and painter, born on a yatch near Amherst, Nova Scotia. He died on 07 March 1957 in London.
—     Lewis founded the abstract Vorticist movement, which, in painting and literature before WW I, sought to relate art to the industrial process. (Tarr, Apes of God). Lewis went to England and was educated at Rugby School and the Slade School of Art (1898-1901). After leaving art college Lewis spent the next seven years in Europe. When he returned to England in 1909 he began publishing stories, essays, novels and plays. In 1912 Lewis became the founder of Vorticism, a literary and artistic movement. Members of the group included Charles Nevinson, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, William Roberts and Alvin Langdon Coburn. In his journal, Blast (1914-15), Lewis attacked the sentimentality of 19th century art and emphasized the value of violence, energy and the machine. In the visual arts Vorticism was expressed in abstract compositions of bold lines, sharp angles and planes. From 1916 to 1918 Lewis served on the Western Front as a battery officer. He was also commissioned by Lord Beaverbrook and the Canadian War Memorials Fund to paint A Canadian Gun Pit. However, his most famous war painting is A Battery Shelled. Lewis later wrote an account of his experiences in the war entitled, Blasting and Bombardiering (1937).
      After the First World War Lewis developed right-wing views and was sympathetic to the political changes taking place in Germany and Italy. On the outbreak of the Second World War returned to Canada. In 1951 Lewis went blind and was forced to give up painting. In his later years he concentrated on writing, this included the autobiographical Self-Condemned (1954) and The Human Age (1955). Percy Wyndham Lewis died in 1957.
— ART LINKS
— A Canadian Gun-Pit (1918, 305x362cm) _ A Battery Shelled (1918, 183x318cm) — Despite the difference in format and the - less obvious - difference in style, these two works may be considered as being two moments from the same story. Through his training, Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) belonged to the Vorticists, the London branch of the Cubo-Futurists. Along with the poet Ezra Pound, he edited the magazine Blast and stood out as a leader of that movement, if only because of his provocative stances and his taste for controversy. In March 1916, he signed up in the artillery. In May 1917, he met Orpen and, paradoxically modeling his style on this painter whose art he considered outmoded, he in turn became "official army painter" with the Canadian and later British troops. This took him to the Vimy sector, before he transcribed his observations onto monumental formats. A Canadian Gun-Pit and A Battery shelled are examples of this original enterprise - at the risk of disconcerting, Lewis combined the geometrical stylization of Vorticism and more immediately figurative elements, close to the portrait for instance. The former offers a wealth of detail, with the sheet metal of the dugouts, the mechanisms of the gun, the uniforms and camouflage nets. The latter is more elliptical; a group on the left observes impassively the devastation caused by the bombing as a dead gunner is buried by his comrades. More deliberately modernist in tone, it is based on a plastic language of angles, lines, changes of scale and schematization of silhouettes. These paintings are thus the product of one of the rare attempts at inventing a modern style of war painting._ Wyndham Lewis endeavors to show the war in terms of energy - Battery Shelled - in which the symbolism dominates, in which men lose their human form in action; chimneys wave and bend, and the very shells zigzag in lumps and masses across the sky.
^ Born on 18 November 1907: Yves Brayer, French painter who died in 1990.
— Son oeuvre s'avère très diverse, car outre ses paysages, il a peint de grandes toiles de compositions, des figures, des natures mortes et il s'est intéressé à toutes les techniques mises à la disposition d'un artiste fertile. Amateur de paysages méditerranéens, il séjourna au Maroc, en Espagne et en Italie, puis se fixa en Camargue et en Provence. Attiré par les paysages méditerranéens, Yves Brayer est séduit par les paysages de la Provence. Ses premières toiles provençales datent de 1945, lors d'un séjour à Saint Rémy de Provence. Il peint les Alpilles et ses oliviers. Circulant à bicyclette, moyen propice à la flânerie, il arrive par hasard au site des Baux de Provence qu'il avait visité en1917 lorqu'il était enfant accompagné de sa mère. Depuis, les escapades en Provence se multiplient. Ses courts séjours l'amènent en Camargue aussi. Il fait construire des cabanes gardianes près des Saintes Maries de la Mer. Le cheval devient un personnage clé de ses peintures et de sa vie. Enfin, la tauromachie qu'il découvre dans sa jeunesse est présente dans son oeuvre. Selon son désir, il est enterré aux Baux de Provence, où un musée lui est entièrement consacré.
— Yves Brayer fit partie des peintres qui, entre les deux guerres mondiales, éprouvèrent la nécessité de s'attacher à la réalité qui les entourait. Ceux-ci rejetant, sans pour autant les ignorer, les mouvements picturaux de la fin du 19ème et du début du 20ème siècles, se voulaient davantage les disciples de Vuillard et de Bonnard, tel le groupe de la Réalité Poétique, ou admirateurs de Courbet, tel le mouvement Forces Nouvelles. Si Brayer resta toujours indépendant, il comptait parmi ses amis Francis Gruber qui fut à l'origine du Nouveau Réalisme français des années 1950, et dont Bernard Buffet allait être le brillant exemple.
      Yves Brayer est né à Versailles, mais la plus grande partie de son enfance se déroule à Bourges. A son arrivée à Paris en 1924, il prend le chemin des académies de Montparnasse, puis celui de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Très jeune, il témoigne de sa personnalité et, des aînés comme Jean-Louis Forain, l'encouragent. Encore étudiant, il expose au Salon d'Automne et au Salon des Indépendants. En 1927 une bourse de voyage de l'Etat lui permet de partir en Espagne où la rencontre avec les maîtres du musée du Prado aura une influence décisive sur son œuvre future. Après un séjour au Maroc grâce à un prix créé par le Maréchal Lyautey, il décroche le Grand Prix de Rome en 1930. Tout d'abord il regrette l'Espagne, puis il se laisse emporter par la richesse de la vie italienne des années trente.
      A son retour à Paris en 1934, il réunit sa moisson en une grande exposition à la Galerie Charpentier, faubourg Saint-Honoré, où le public découvre l'authenticité de ce peintre de vingt-sept ans au tempérament puissant et original.
      Paris demeure son port d'attache, et, après avoir vécu dans le quartier du Panthéon, il s'installe, dès 1935, rue Monsieur le Prince, dans le sixième arrondissement. A diverses périodes, il peint dans Paris, alors même qu'il est étudiant, dans les années 1926 à 1929. Démobilisé à Montauban, il s'installe à Cordes sur Ciel dans le Tarn en 1940. Un musée lui sera consacré dans la plus belle salle de la mairie dès 1960. En 1942, il regagne la capitale où Jacques Rouché le charge d'imaginer ses premières maquettes de décors et costumes pour un ballet à l'Opéra de Paris. Il y demeure durant l'occupation et peint la ville enneigée, puis la ville libérée.
      L'année 1945 marque une nouvelle étape dans son œuvre. En Provence, il réalise qu'il existe d'autres harmonies que celles des architectures créées par l'homme, celles de la nature pure et sauvage et il est bientôt fasciné par la diversité des Alpilles et leurs plissements calcaires, puis par les étendues de la Camargue peuplées de chevaux blancs et de taureaux noirs. Il se fixe bientôt en Provence plusieurs mois chaque année.
      Après sa période noire espagnole, puis ocre et rouge italienne, il diversifie sa palette en introduisant des verts, des jaunes pâles et quelques bleus. Fortement attiré par les paysages méditerranéens, il retourne travailler en Espagne et en Italie, mais la Provence et la Camargue resteront ses lieux de prédilection jusqu'à la fin de sa vie.
      Il entreprend divers voyages au Mexique, en Egypte, en Iran, en Grèce, en Russie, aux Etats-Unis et au Japon. S'emparant vite de la lumière et des rythmes de ces pays, il en rapporte de nombreux dessins et aquarelles.
      Son goût pour le graphisme l'entraîne tout naturellement à pratiquer la technique de la gravure sur cuivre et de la lithographie; ainsi il réalise de nombreuses estampes et illustre des livres à tirage limité avec des textes de Blaise Cendrars, Henry de Montherlant, Baudelaire, Paul Claudel, Jean Giono, Frédéric Mistral, etc...
      Yves Brayer est aussi l'auteur de décorations murales, de cartons de tapisseries, de maquettes de décors et de costumes pour le Théatre-Français, et les Opéras de Paris, Amsterdam, Nice, Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux ou Avignon.
      Ses expositions particulières ont rendu ses œuvres familières dans de nombreux pays : à Paris tout d'abord, puis en France, en Europe et aux Etats-Unis. La bibliothèque Nationale présente en 1977 "Yves Brayer, Graveur" pour son soixante-dixième anniversaire, et le Musée Postal lui consacre une exposition de ses œuvres lors de la parution du timbre qui lui est demandé en 1978. Enfin le Musée Yves Brayer est inauguré en Septembre 1991 aux Baux de Provence.
      Il est présent dans divers musées et dans de nombreuses collections tant en France qu'à l'étranger. Il fut professeur à l'académie de la Grande Chaumière pendant cinquante ans, Président du Salon d'Automne pendant cinq ans et, au titre de membre de l'Académie des Beaux-Arts, conservateur du Musée Marmottan à Paris pendant plus de onze ans.

— Les Rochers de Camaret (1929, 81x102cm; 400x500pix, 57kb) _ En 1929, Yves Brayer passe l'été à Camaret. Il est alors élève à l'école des Beaux-Arts de Paris, dans l'atelier de Lucien Simon et il vient rendre visite à son maître en Bretagne. Brayer campa quelque temps dans les rochers de la pointe de Pen-Hir qu'il représente sur ce tableau.
— Amandiers en fleurs en Provence (50x64cm; 480x618pix, 37kb)
— Amandiers en fleurs, oliviers et cyprès (51x66cm) — Le Chemin aux amoureux (1987, 66xw81cm)
— La Vandières à Ramatuelle (1972, 51x66cm) — Cirque (38x56cm; 487x502pix, 72kb)
— Le taureau renversant un picador (1927) — La Fantasia (1928)
— Les Séminaristes allemands (1932) — Le départ du Palio (1932)
— L'escalier du Capitole (1934) — La Nature Morte Espagnole (1939)
— L'allée des pins de Saint-Paul de-Mausole (1946) — Marbella (1955)
— Vue de Cordes (1956) — La nature morte au bucrane (1960 )
— Le Village des Baux (1963) — Arcades à Cholula, Mexique (1963)
— Le champ d'amandiers (1967) — La Place des Seigneurs à Vérone (1937)
— Manade de chevaux dans les marais, Camargue (1971) — Le Reflet (1973)
— Le chœur de la Chapelle des Pénitents (1974 )
— La basilique Saint-Basile à Moscou (1974) — L'Atelier des Baux au Paysage (1976)
— Chevaux de Cirque (1950 color lithograph, 27x41cm)
— Le Guitariste (1929, 100x81cm; 308x250pix, 10kb)
^ Born on 18 November 1904: Jean-Paul Lemieux, Québec Canadian painter who died on 07 December 1990.
— He lived as a child in Quebec but moved with his family to Montreal in 1917 after a year in California. From 1926 to 1929 he studied art in Montreal at the College Mont-Saint-Louis and the École des Beaux-Arts, after which he spent a year in Paris, where he met Clarence Gagnon, before returning to Montreal to complete his studies at the École des Beaux Arts from 1930 to 1934. He began teaching there in 1934 and from 1935 also at the École de Meuble in Montreal. He began around this time to paint landscapes such as Village (1934), followed soon after by dream-like figure scenes on symbolic and religious themes, such as Lazarus (1941). His early tendency to a geometric and decorative approach led him to an ever greater simplification that was especially noticeable in a mural of the mid-1950s, Medicine in Quebec City (300x550cm), in which a group of figures is displayed in a flattened manner against an architectural background.
— Lemieux naît à Québec, où il y passera la majeure partie de sa vie. Il étudie à l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Montréal où il obtient son diplôme en 1934. En 1937, Lemieux retourne à Québec et accepte un poste d'enseignant à l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Québec, qu'il occupera jusqu'en 1967. Les premières œuvres qu'il produit au cours des années trente et quarante s'apparentent à l'art naïf, où il y dépeint la réalité québécoise de l'époque. Bien qu'il délaissera éventuellement ce style, ces tableaux sont fort bien réussis et laissent miroiter un potentiel indéniable. Au cours des années cinquante, le style de Lemieux se raffine alors qu'il élimine le détail de ses compositions. Après un séjour en Europe et quelques expérimentations avec formes et couleurs, le tout débouche sur des œuvres où les personnages se retrouvent campés dans un espace pictural où le temps semble figé. Il y capture dès lors, temps et espace d'une façon étonnamment efficace. Son tableau Les Ursulines (1951, 61x76 cm; 228x286pix; 13kb) qui image bien ce virage artistique, remporte le Grand Prix de la Province de Québec en 1951. Au cours des années soixante, il réalise de pures splendeurs dans le genre, que l'on considère aujourd'hui comme des classiques de la peinture québécoise. Lemieux parvient comme nul autre, à isoler des scènes typiques de la vie quotidienne dans toute leur magnitude et leur simplicité. La solitude et la mélancolie de ses personnages ne font qu'accentuer l'humanisme profond de son œuvre. Ses œuvres bien que simples à première vue, sont pourtant empreintes d'une lourde complexité de par leur composition dénudée de toute superficialité. En 1984, Postes Canada immortalise son œuvre en émettant pas moins de 12 timbres à partir de ses tableaux. Il est reçu à l'Académie royale du Canada en 1951 et comme académicien en 1966. Plusieurs expositions lui seront consacrées au Québec et à l'étranger (Scandinavie, Russie). Jean Paul Lemieux, l'artiste sobre, l'homme discret et simple, meurt à Québec.
— Photo of Lemieux (640x412pix, 21kb)
— LINKS
— La Visite (1967, 170x107cm; 640x403pix, 36kb)
— L'Orpheline (1956, 61x46cm; 640x482pix, 48kb)
— La Ville Lointaine (1956, 49x110cm; 280x640cm, 26kb)
— Hommage à Nelligan (1971, 85x133cm; 336x538pix, 22kb)
— Notre-Dame protégeant Québec (1942, 64x49cm; 378x282pix, 26kb)

Died on a 18 November:

1689 Jacob van der Ulft, Dutch artist born on 21 December 1627.


Born on a 18 November:

^ 1879 Viggo Thorvald Edvard Weie, Danish painter who died on 09 April 1943. He was self-taught, except for a short period of study under Kristian Zahrtmann at the Kunstnernes Studieskoler, Copenhagen (1906–1907). On his first journey abroad to Italy in 1907 he was impressed by the Mediterranean light, which influenced his later desire to introduce lighter colors into his painting. His maturation as an artist, however, took place in Denmark. His first paintings were naturalistic, with a color scale close to grey. He described this early work as realistic–impressionistic, with a rhythmical weighing out of form and coloring, the chief emphasis being laid on the coloring, as in The Painter’s Mother (1908). In 1912 Weie visited Paris for the first time, and later in the same year he stayed on the island of Christiansø. Both of these experiences led to a new stage in his development. The color surface gained a broader and more Cubist character. He began a series of freely-imaginative figurative compositions, in which sea, rocks and figures were woven into a turbulent drama. Among these are different depictions of Poseidon, such as Poseidon Rushing over the Sea Surrounded by Nereids and Tritons (1917), in which the brushstrokes are violent and the color tones restrained. He continued to paint heroic compositions into the 1920s. At the same time he produced paintings lacking in spatial depth, in which the brushstrokes are scarcely evident. The pictures appear to be charged with mystic dreams and nervous impressions. The last 20 years of Weie’s life were characterized by a long series of compositions that show a more intense and free abstraction, together with a continuing experimentation with colours and a lighter and more obvious brush control. He became absorbed in the abstract qualities of colors that were rich and glowing, as in Interior with Figure (1923) and Dante and Virgil after Delacroix (1925). Weie expressed his views on art in his book Poesi og kultur.

1879 André Giroux, Parisian painter born on 30 April 1801, son of François-Simon-Alphonse Giroux [–01 May 1848], a student of Jacques-Louis David who became a picture restorer specialized in genre paintings of medieval ruins and troubadours.

1858 Luigi Pastega, Italian artist who died on 27 January 1927.

^ 1732 Pehr Hilleström, Swedish painter and tapestry-weaver who died on 13 August 1816. In 1743–4 he was apprenticed to the tapestry designer and decorative painter Johan Filip Korn (1728–96) in Stockholm and at the same time was a pupil at the Kungliga Akademi för de Fria Konsterna, where he took drawing lessons. In 1744 Christian Fehner, a German fan painter living in Sweden, took him as his apprentice. In 1747 Carl Hårleman apprenticed him to the French high-warp weaver Pierre-Louis Duru [–1753], and for the next ten years he served as Royal Weaver to the Swedish Court. His first large commission was the throne canopy (1746–1753) for the Audience Chamber in the Kungliga Slott in Stockholm. In 1757–8 he went to Paris to study weaving at the Savonnerie factory but instead he took classes in pastel and oil painting from Boucher and Chardin. After his return to Sweden he wove parade carpets and did tapestry portraits of Hårleman, and of Gustav III and his sister Princess Sofia Albertina after originals by Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and Lars Bolander (fl 1774–1795). After 1773 he became more interested in painting than in tapestry-weaving and he executed more than 1000 paintings between 1773 and 1810. He was appointed Painter to the Royal Court in 1776 and became a professor at the Akademi the following year. He was a pioneer in the depiction of Swedish folk life. Lovisa Ulrica, Queen of Sweden, commissioned him to paint Haymakers’ Feast at Svartsjö Slott (1782), while for Gustav III he executed a series of studies of farmers dressed in different regional costumes and gathered together for celebrations. He also portrayed court life at the royal palaces in Stockholm and Drottningholm (e.g. Conversation at Drottningholm, 1779) in a series of somewhat naive paintings and for Gustav III he painted 21 scenes based on operas and plays. Hilleström was Sweden’s first painter of historical subjects. He did a series of paintings based on the early legends of Ingjald Illråde. In addition, he depicted more recent Swedish history in such portraits as Gustav I (reg 1523–1560) and Adolf Frederick (reg 1751–1771). In his later years he was Principal of the Modellskola of the Akademi and was the Director of the Akademi from 1810 until his death. His son Carl Peter Hilleström [1760–1812] was a landscape painter. — Going Out Sledding (1820, 56x71cm; 381x525pix, 35kb)
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