| ART “4”
“2”-DAY 11
October |
| DEATH:
1893 BROWN |
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Born on 11 October 1803: Barend Cornelis Koekkoek
[pronounced "quack, quack"?], Dutch painter who died on 05 April
1862. — He received his first lessons from his father, Johannes Hermanus Koekkoek (1778–1851), and also studied at the Tekenacademie in Middelburg. Subsequently he became a student at the Amsterdam Rijksakademie under Jean Augustin Daiwaille [1786–1850]. He first participated in an exhibition in 1820. Between 1826 and 1834 he travelled constantly, visiting the Harz Mountains, the Rhine and the Ruhr. His first great success came in 1829 when he won the gold medal of the Amsterdam society Felix Meritis with Landscape with a Rainstorm Threatening. The painting is notable for its accurate and sober study of nature; it marked Koekkoek’s commitment to a style of landscape divorced both from the predominantly topographical approach of the 18th century and from the flat and decorative manner of contemporary mural painting. In 1834 he moved permanently to Cleve in Germany, where he developed into one of the most important landscape painters of his generation and achieved international fame. — Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriël and Johannes Tavenraat were students of Koekkoek. — LINKS — Winter Landscape (1838) — Heuvellandschap met rustend boerenvolk onder een eik paneel (38x52cm) — View of a Park (1835) |
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Born on 11 October 1629: Vincent Laurenszoon
van der Vinne, Haarlem Flemish Mennonite painter and draftsman,
best known for his travel diaries and sketches, who died on 26 July 1702.
He had three artist sons: Jan Vincentszoon van der Vinne [03 Feb 1663 –
01 Mar 1721], Izaak Vincentszoon van der Vinne [1665–1740], and Laurens
Vincentszoon van der Vinne [1658–1729] who may be the author of some of
the drawings attributed to his father. Three of Laurens’s children worked
as painters and engravers: Vincent Laurenszoon van der Vinne (1686–1742),
Jacob Laurenszoon van der Vinne (1688–1737) and Jan Laurenszoon van der
Vinne (1699–1753). In the next generation Jacob’s son Laurens Jacobszoon
van der Vinne (1712–42) became a flower painter, and two of Jan’s children,
Jan Janszoon van der Vinne (1734–1805) and Vincent Janszoon van der Vinne
(1736–1811), seem to have been the last artists active in the family. — Vincent Laurenszoon van der Vinne was trained at a weaving mill. Then, when he was 18, he spent nine months as the student of Frans Hals (who later painted his portrait in 1660), and in 1649 he joined the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke. From 1652 to 1655 van der Vinne traveled through Germany, Switzerland, and France, accompanied some of the time by Guillam Dubois [1610–1680], Dirck Helmbreker, and Cornelis Bega. During the trip van der Vinne kept an illustrated diary and on his return worked this up in a second volume, copying his drawings and adding topographical prints by Matthäus Merian the elder and Jean Boisseau. He also filled a sketchbook with Rhineland landscapes. The year after he returned from this trip he married Anneke Jansdr de Gaver [–1668], and six months after her death he married Catalijntje Boekaert. Besides the drawings from his 1652–1655 travels, he produced a number of townscapes in pen and ink with gray wash, some on a journey through the Netherlands in 1680. He also made drawings in black and red chalk depicting the city gates of Haarlem and ruins found in the surrounding countryside. He received commissions for ceiling paintings, signboards, landscapes, portraits and other works, but his known painted work is confined to a few vanitas still-lifes, such as Vanitas Still-life with a Royal Cromn and a Print of Charles I of England, beheaded in 1649 (>1649, 95x69cm), leçon de vanité, allusive aux fragiles occupations humaines (du berger au savant, du roi au musicien, etc...). On lit en haut «Denckt op t'ent» (pense à la fin) et, en bas, sous le portrait du roi: «t'kan verkeren» (cela peut changer). Contre-note optimiste, l'espérance signifiée par la gourde du pèlerin, lequel chemine vers Dieu. — Memento Mori (1656; 450x423pix, 36kb) _ Exquisite vanitas still lifes like this were widely popular in seventeenth-century Europe. They were meant to exhort the viewer to prepare for death. Vanitas still lifes are based on a biblical passage from Ecclesiastes, "Vanity of vanities, ... all is vanity," that urges the reader to remember that saving one's soul is more important than wordly gains. All objects in this painting have symbolic meaning intended to remind the viewer that wealth, power and knowledge acquired in this world are unimportant in the face of inevitable death. The watch and hourglass give notice of the passage of time. The plumed helmet, sword and gun refer to soldierly activities; the globe, maps and the money bags to worldly knowledge and material possessions. Books indicate scholarly pursuits, but warn as well against conceited pride that comes with learning. The overturned goblet cautions against overindulgence, but also symbolizes the Sense of Taste. The musical instruments refer to the Sense of Hearing, to Music — one of the Seven Liberal Arts — and, in case of the lute and flute, to carnal love. Since they wither and die, the cut flowers in a vase allude to the transience of life, as does the skull, a particularly stark reminder of death. But the ivy crowning the skull offers hope because it is a symbol for immortality. Apart from its allegorical meaning, the painting is a pleasure for the eye in its masterful representation of different materials, its color, and the organization of these diverse elements. — Vanitas with a Royal Crown and the portrait of Charles I King of England Decapitated in 1649 (95x69cm; 797x573pix, 54kb) _ Vincent van de Vinne is best known for his still-lifes. Beside Pieter van Roestraten, a genre and still-life painter (and the son-in-law of Frans Hals) Vinne is the only documented student of Hals, though not a trace of their contact with him is evident in their works. Leçon de vanité, allusive aux fragiles occupations humaines (du berger au savant, du roi au musicien, etc...). On lit en haut «Denckt op t'ent» (pense à la fin) et, en bas, sous le portrait du roi : «t'kan verkeren» (cela peut changer). Contre-note optimiste, l'espérance signifiée par la gourde du pèlerin, lequel chemine vers Dieu. |
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Died on 11 October 1893: Ford Madox Brown,
English Pre-Raphaelite
painter born on 16 April 1821. He was the father of Lucy Madox Brown. His students included Marie Spartali Stillman. — Born in Calais, Ford Madox Brown revealed a precocious talent for art at an early age. From 1836 to 1846 he studied drawing in Europe, first in Bruges with a student of David, later in Antwerp with Baron Wappers. He travelled to Paris and Rome, where he befriended Cornelius and Overbeck, survivors of the German Romantic Nazarene movement. In 1841 he produced his first important oil painting, taking the execution of Mary Queen of Scots as his subject. Back in England, he met Rossetti and became associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, although he never joined it. From 1850 on, however, his works, mainly on historical and religious themes, closely adhered to the Pre-Raphaelite precepts. He executed an important series of frescoes in the Manchester Town Hall (1880-1893), illustrating episodes in the history of the city, and numerous stained-glass designs. His life was a continual succession of adversities and delusions; neglected by both the critics and the public, he never knew real success. He died in London. — He was born at Calais and trained at Antwerp (under Wappers), in Paris, and at Rome, where he came into contact with the Nazarenes. Settling in England in 1846, he became a friend of the Pre-Raphaelites and--with his taste for literary subjects and meticulous handling--an influence on their work, though he was never a member of the Brotherhood. Rossetti studied briefly with him in 1848 and Brown's Chaucer at the Court of Edward III (1851) contains portraits of several of the Brotherhood. In 1861 Brown was a founder member of William Morris's company, for which he designed stained glass and furniture. The major work of the later part of his career is a cycle of paintings (1878-93) in Manchester Town Hall on the history of the city. Brown was an individualist and a man of prickly temperament; he opposed the Royal Academy and was a pioneer of the one-man show. BR> — Always an outsider to the art establishment who viewed him as suspiciously foreign because of his birth outside Britain, although to British parents, Ford Madox Brown studied art in the great schools of Antwerp and Paris and brought their influence to bear in his paintings. His pictures are now much in demand, but his contemporaries largely ignored his work and he never made much money out of painting. After visiting Rome in 1845 he became very influenced by the Nazarene School of painting, as invented and practiced by the German painters Johann Overbeck (1789-1869) and Peter von Cornelius (1783-1875). Madox Brown's work was highly original at a time when British art was mundane and predictable; his subjects were to do with English literature and language but produced in a dark, highly mannered, and dramatic style synthesized from his early European training and his tours of Italy and Switzerland. His work bore the brunt of his two great weaknesses — finishing and retouching. Even more so than Rossetti, he was almost incapable of finishing his paintings, this meant that he was never able to leave a work alone, even when it was ostensibly finished, he would continually retouch it, even though sometimes the painting was already sold. Ford Madox Brown first met Dante Gabriel Rossetti in March 1848 and for a short time gave him academic painting lessons. This rather fell on deaf ears and Rossetti moved on, but in time they resumed their friendship. Ford Madox Brown became closely involved with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood through his friendship with Rossetti, but never a member because he was regarded with xenophobic suspicion by Hunt and Millais. Ironically it is Ford Madox Brown who in years to come became regarded as the ultimate Pre-Raphaelite because he painted many of their characteristic paintings. One such, the very first shown in the 1852 summer exhibition — The Pretty Baa-Lambs is a very Pre-Raphaelite-looking picture with its brilliant color (painted on a white ground), naturalistic detail and contemporary subject matter. He had often painted out of doors before but this was the first time he had painted in natural light and it showed to anyone who looked properly. Unfortunately few did, the painting was hung in a poor position and went largely unnoticed. The same year he enjoyed perhaps his best period and produced three of his finest paintings, all of them Pre-Raphaelite in everything except name: The Last of England, An English Autumn and Work. The latter, landmark, painting took him 13 years to finish. It is a modern allegory of society and a literal rendition of Heath Street, Hampstead. In it he shows ordinary people as heroes, but without a shade of sentimentality: at the center are common navvies digging. They are surrounded by a thronging crowd of contemporary people: ragged working class children and beggars alongside street traders and smart upper class ladies. The muscle workers are the navvies and itinerant farm workers, while the brain workers are two of Brown's heroes - the Reverend F.D. Maurice, a pioneer of working class education and Christian socialist, and Thomas Carlyle, the author of Past and Present. "Ford Madox Brown eventually made enough money from his paintings to buy a house in Fitzroy Square which became a lively center for artists and writers to gather together and swap ideas and gossip. |
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receiving little notice for his work Brown gave up exhibiting at the R.A.
after 1853; and by 1856 he had lost his belief in the Pre-Raphaelite ethos
of painting modern morality works, instead he started collaborating with
Morris and Co., working on designs for art glass and illustrations. He was
commissioned to paint 12 large murals inside Manchester Town Hall showing
the glorious history of Manchester, and he spent a great deal of time on
the project, after which he played no significant part in artistic development. Browns later career is peripheral to the Pre Raphaelite story although he lived until 1983. He taught at the Working Men's College and he was involved with design work for Morris and Company. In time, Brown achieved a level of financial security and his house in Fitroy Square became a noted rendezvous for artists and writers subsequently recalled by his grandson and biographer Ford Madox Ford. The later part of his career is taken up with work on his twelve murals in the Manchester Town Hall which illustrate the history of the city. The combination of a heroic style and local history proved not to be a success and the work is not among his best. However, Madox Brown retains his place as a seminal figure in the Pre Raphaelite movement and an artist of great power and originality. — Dates on Ford Madox Brown's paintings are odd because he never felt finished with a painting. He would keep making changes years later, even after a picture had been sold. So often a definitive date is just impossible to establish. — LINKS — Let The Little Children Come To Me — Jesus washing Peter's feet at the Last Supper (1865) _ Brown's first religious painting in the Pre Raphaelite style. Here we can also see the other side of the Pre Raphaelite style and its effect on Brown in that in the same way as Millias details in 'The Carpenter's Shop' Brown shows Christ and his disciples as ordinary people. Christ is deliberately betrayed in a humble, unflattering way and his treatment of the figures is bold and realistic. Brown continued to paint religious and historical pictures of this style, blending Pre Raphaelite realism with his own highly academic mannerism. — Oure Ladye of Good Children (1861) — The First Translation of the Bible into English: Wycliffe Reading His Translation of the Bible to John of Gaunt Date (1848) — William Tell's Son — The English Boy _ Note the similarity and subtle differences between these two portraits. — Manfred on the Jungfrau (1861) _ Inspired by Byron's Manfred. — Byron's Dream — The Finding of Don Juan by Haidee (1878) _ The subject of this painting is taken from Byron's Don Juan, Canto II, verses 110-112. — Lear and Cordelia (1854) — Romeo and Juliet (1870) — William Shakespeare — The Seeds and Fruits of English Poetry (1853) _ This painting shows Chaucer reading at the court of Edward III with his patron, the Black Prince, on his left. In the wings appear the 'fruits' of English poetry: Milton, Spenser and Shakespeare on the left; Byron, Pope and Burns on the right; Goldsmith and Thomson in the roundels; and the names of Campbell, Moore, Shelley, Keats, Chatterton, Kirke White, Coleridge and Wordsworth are written on the cartouches held by the standing children in the base. — The Last of England (1855) _ This is his best-known picture. It was inspired by the departure of Woolner, the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor, for Australia, and deals with the great emigration movement which attained its peak in 1865. Social realism is one more area of the Pre Raphaelite movement where Brown made an important contribution. It is also prominent in the picture Work. — Stages of Cruelty (1890) _ The title refers to William Hogarth's engravings on the theme of cruelty of animals leading to cruelty to humans. — The Pretty Baa-Lambs (1859) _ detail _ One of his first Pre Raphaelite paintings was 'The Pretty Baa-Lambs' first exhibited in 1852 which he painted outdoors in full sunlight. It is an uncompromisingly truthful picture and shows how determined Brown must have turned to the Pre Raphaelite style. Browns first important landscape in the Pre Raphaelite style. It was painted at Stockwell, in South London where the artist had been living and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1852. Brown wrote in his diary that the picture 'was painted almost entirely in sunlight which twice gave me fever while painting ... The lambs and sheep used to be bought every morning from Clapham Common in a truck; one of them ate all the flowers one morning in the garden, and they used to behave very ill.' His wife and daughter modeled for the figures. — The Hayfield (1856) — Work (1863, 137x197cm) _ detail _ Ford Madox Brown had the idea for Work after seeing a group of navvies laying water pipes in Heath Street, Hampstead, London. Much of the painting was done on the spot in the open air. The famous anthology piece Work shows Brown's dedicated craftsmanship and brilliant coloring, but is somewhat swamped by its social idealism. Brown describes how the picture was painted 'To insure that peculiar look of light all round which objects have on a dull day at sea, it was painted for the most part in the open air on dull days, and, when the flesh was being painted, on cold days. Absolutely without regard to art of any period or country, I have tried to render this scene as it would appear.' This comment reflects the fearless honest search for reality which was also typical of Holman Hunt. |
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Born on 11 October 1450: Bartolomeo Cincani
“Montagna”, Italian
painter and draftsman who died on 11 October 1523. — Bartolomeo Cincani, who used the pseudonym Montagna, was from the Brescia region. His initial training was presumably under Domenico Morone in Verona. He was subject to a distinctly Venetian influence, probably in the studio of Giovanni Bellini. He may also have adopted the Mantegnesque severity. His occasional obsession with detail is reminiscent of Carpaccio. Montagna was active in Venice (Scuola di San Marco) and in Verona, mainly however in Vicenza. Powerful use of color (zinc plating), symmetrical picture composition, and marked light-dark contrasts are his distinguishing characteristics. The Friulian School (Pellegrino and Pordenone) is indebted to him — He was the leading painter in Vicenza during the last quarter of the 15th century and the first quarter of the 16th. His son Benedetto Montagna [1480-1557], who continued his father’s style of painting, is more significant for his engravings. Bartolomeo Montagna is first documented in 1459 in Vicenza, near which he was born, as a minor and, still a minor, in 1467. In 1469 he is recorded as a resident of Venice. In 1474 he was living in Vicenza where, in 1476 and 1478, he was commissioned to paint altarpieces (now lost). He has variously been thought to have been a student of Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Antonello da Messina, Alvise Vivarini, Domenico Morone, and Vittore Carpaccio. While none of these artists, except Carpaccio, was irrelevant to Montagna’s stylistic formation, Giovanni Bellini was the primary influence on his art. Montagna may have worked in Bellini’s shop around 1470. Several of Montagna’s paintings of the Virgin and Child in which the influence of Antonello da Messina is especially marked are likely to be close in date to Antonello’s sojourn in Venice (1475–1476); they are therefore best considered Montagna’s earliest extant works rather than as an unexplained parenthesis about 1485 between two Bellinesque phases. These early paintings appear to be followed by others in which the geometrically rounded forms derived from Antonello become more slender and sharper-edged. Their figures are imbued with a deeply felt, individual humanity, sometimes austere and minatory, sometimes tender. Among them are some larger-scale works, for example the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Nicholas and Lucy and a Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Ansanus, Anthony Abbot, Francis, and Jerome (often but wrongly attributed to Carpaccio). This group also includes a fresco fragment depicting the Virgin and Child, the modern frame of which is inscribed, ‘Painted 1481 in the choir of the church of Magrè near Schio-Vicenza’. The date seems plausible on stylistic grounds, and the work thus provides a chronological point of reference for the rest of the group. In 1482, again in Venice, Montagna undertook to paint canvases of The Flood and the Creation for the Scuola di San Marco; the former was completed in 1485–1486 by Benedetto Diana, and both were subsequently destroyed by fire. — The students of Montagna included Francesco Bassano, Giovanni Buonconsiglio, Cima da Conegliano, Marcello Fogolino. — LINKS — Saint Bernardino and a Holy Bishop (1492, 64x69cm; 3/4 size; or see it 3/8 size) — Saint Jerome (1500, 51x58cm; 851x950pix, 150kb) _ The most striking aspect of this picture is the fabulous landscape on the right, which seems to be only partially invented. The Veronese provenance of the work suggests the interesting theory that it was painted for the convent of Saint Jerome at the Roman theater. The topographical features of Verona recur here, though in altered form: the river, the ruins, the double staircase cut into the tufa, the church and the convent. Bartolomeo's main inspiration seems to have stemmed from a reality that he returned to a state of nature, converting the townscape he knew into a rustic landscape. — Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Andrew, Monica, Ursula, Sigismund, and angel musicians (1498, 410x260cm; 1068x670pix, 144kb) _ detail: the angel musicians (770x1116pix, 159kb) _ Signed and dated on the step: "OPVS/BARTHOLOMEI/MONTA/GNA MCCCCLX- XXXVIIII." The large capitals in the background frieze are the initials of the Latin phrase meaning: "Implore God's grace for us." The medallion on the left portrays Matteo de' Pasti's profile plaque of Christ. Another Latin inscription on the step records a 1715 restoration, which does not seem to have much altered the painting. Preliminary drawings for this work have survived. Trained in Venice, Bartolomeo interpreted the great Venetian models in an archaizing vein, as did all the contemporary artists of the mainland. His prodigiously skillful draftsmanship defined lapidary forms that may be splintered or flaked but are always pure and as resonant as crystal. His strict sense of order is open, however, to an aristocratic feeling for nature, which is shown in pungently descriptive passages. In this altarpiece, the noble figures are displayed within a purely Lombard architectural setting. The composition is also architectonic, and its precedents go back through Antonello da Messina to Piero della Francesca, whose device of a pendant ostrich egg has been adopted here. The brown and silvery harmonies of the Lombard palette add a note of elegant austerity. — Ecce Homo (80kb) |
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