| ART “4”
“2”-DAY 26
October |
| DEATH:
1764 HOGARTH |
BIRTH:
1645 DE GELDER |
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Born on 26 October 1645: Aart (Aert,
Arent) de Gelder, Dutch painter who died
on 28 August 1727 — Aert de Gelder was first trained by Samuel van Hoogstraten, and then by Rembrandt himself. Gelder was the last and most devoted student of Rembrandt. He studied in his studio in 1661-67. The style of Rembrandt’s late works profoundly influenced him. Gelder worked mostly with the subjects from Old Testament, the favorite subjects of his master and friend. He liked, just as Rembrandt did, rich accessories, and his studio remind of the old curiosity shop: it was full of old weapons, antiques, bright fabrics. He used dummies in his work and dressed them up and designed the scene as the subject demanded. He painted with broad brushes, to put paint on canvas he used a brush handle and a palette-knife, to smooth the paint on canvas he used his fingers and scratched it with the brush handle. Born in Dordrecht, he spent all his life there. Being a wealthy man, Gelder never sold his pictures, and during his life-time was not known outside his town. Looking at Gelder’s canvases, one can easily recognize Rembrandt’s influence, as well as appreciate Gelder’s individual response to the subject. — Dutch painter, active mainly in his native Dordrecht. After studying there with Hoogstraten, he became one of Rembrandt's last students in Amsterdam. He was not only one of the most talented of Rembrandt's students, but also one of his most devoted followers, for he was the only Dutch artist to continue working in his style into the 18th century. His religious paintings, in particular, with their imaginative boldness and preference for oriental types, are very much in the master's spirit, although de Gelder often used colors - such as lilac and lemon yellow - that were untypical of Rembrandt, and his palette was in general lighter. One of his best-known works, Jacob's Dream, was long attributed to Rembrandt. — LINKS — Self-Portrait at an Easel Painting an Old Woman _ same Self-Portrait at... (1685) _ In this unusual self-portrait the artist portrays himself laughing as he sits at his easel painting a portrait of an unlovely old lady. Why is he laughing? Albert Blankert persuasively argued that he has depicted himself as the ancient Greek painter Zeuxis who laughed so hard while painting the portrait of a funny old crone that he choked and died. The tale of Zeuxis's demise is found in a Roman source dated about 200 AD and was repeated by both van Mander (1604) and Hoogstraten (1678). De Gelder's Frankfurt painting was conceivably done in emulation of Rembrandt's Self-Portrait at Cologne which shows the old master laughing. X-rays and technical investigation reveal that Rembrandt may also have portrayed himself as Zeuxis laughing as he painted a portrait of an ugly old woman. — Self-portrait (?) (79x64cm) _ The artist, a student of Rembrandt, is holding in his hands Rembrandt's etching, The 100 Guilder Print. It is generally accepted as his self-portrait and as his homage to his teacher, but even if we ignore the fact that this portrait does not show a cross-eyed man — we are told that de Gelder bore his affliction with good humor — the evidence for this identification is flimsy. — Ernestus van Beveren, Lord of West-Ijsselmonde and the Lindt (1685) — Hermannus Boerhaave with his wife (1724) — Portrait of a Boy (1700, 57x47cm) — Christ on the Mount of Olives — The Jewish Bride (Esther Bedecked) (1684) — Simeon's Song of Praise (1700) — Ecce Homo (1671) — Abraham and Angels — Esther and Mordochai (1685, 93x148cm) _ This painting depicts the scene of the Biblical story when Mordochai, foster-father of Esther presuades the Queen to induce her husband to save the Jewish people. The artist painted several pictures of the different scenes of Esther's story. |
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Died on 26 October 1764: William
Hogarth, British painter and etcher born on 10 November
1697. — He played a crucial part in establishing an English school of painting, both through the quality of his painting and through campaigns to improve the status of the artist in England. He also demonstrated that artists could become independent of wealthy patrons by publishing engravings after their own paintings. He is best remembered for the satirical engravings that gave the name ‘Hogarthian’ to low-life scenes of the period. — William Hogarth is unquestionably one of the greatest English artists and a man of remarkably individual character and thought. He is the great innovator in English art. On one hand, he was the first to paint themes from Shakespeare, Milton and the theater, and the founder of a wholly original genre of moral history, which was long known as Hogarthian. On the other, he investigated the aesthetic principles of his art, which resulted in his book “The Analysis of Beauty”(1753). William Hogarth was the 5th child of Richard Hogarth, a schoolmaster and classical scholar from the north of England who had come to London in the mid-1680s. His father’s premature death in 1718 affected Hogarth’s early life, his training and forced him to earn money. In February 1714, Hogarth began his apprenticeship to a plate engraver, Ellis Gamble, who was a distant relation. By April 1720, he set up an independent business as an engraver. His first works included a number of commissions for small etched cards and bookplates, and in 1721 he produced two inventive engraved allegories. With these topical prints The South Sea Scheme and The Lottery, which aroused considerable attention, he started his black-and-white satires which made him so widely known in Britain and abroad. His first success as a painter was in the ‘conversational pieces’, in which figure informal groups of family and friends surrounded by customary things from their everyday life. He was not the inventor of the genre, and had many contemporary rivals, but his pictures are marked with his own individuality: The Fishing Party (1730), The Wedding of Stephen Bechingham and Mary Cox (1730). In 1729, he married a daughter of his painting teacher Sir James Thornhill. The scene from The Beggar’s Opera, the picture of an actual stage, brought him great success, and at about about 1730, he was commissioned for several versions. The result of this accomplishment was the idea of his own ‘theater’: the creation of ‘pictorial dramas’ and reaching wider public through the means of engraving. The first successful series The Harlot’s Progress, of which only the engravings now exist (the originals were burnt in 1755), was immediately followed by the tremendous verve of The Rake’s Progress; the masterpiece of the story series The Marriage a la Mode followed, after an interval of twelve years. Hogarth’ satires were serious moral and social satires, besides being good paintings. In 1935, he opened his own academy in St. Martyn's Lane. In portraiture, Hogarth displays a great variety and originality: George Arnold (1740), Mary Edwards (1742), Bishop Benjamin Hoadly (1743). The charm of childhood, the ability to compose a vivid group, a delightful delicacy of color appear in The Graham Children (1742). The portrait heads of his servants are penetrating studies of character: Hogarth's Servants. (c.1750). The painting of Captain Thomas Coram (1740), the philanthropic sea captain who took a leading part in the foundation of the Foundling Hospital, adapts the formality of the ceremonial portrait to a democratic level. The painter’s character is reflected faithfully in his forthright Self-Portrait with Pug-Dog (1745). The quality of Hogarth as an artist is seen to advantage in his sketches and one sketch in particular, the famous The Shrimp Girl (1742) quickly executed with a limited range of color, stands alone in his work, taking its place among the masterpieces of the world in its harmony of form and content, its freshness and vitality. Hogarth died in 1764 in London and is buried in Chiswick cemetery. — Hogarth satirized the follies of his age. He was born in London. On finishing his apprenticeship to a silversmith in 1718, he turned to engraving and first became known in 1726 for his illustrations for the novel Hudibras (1726), by Samuel Butler. Hogarth began painting about 1728, producing small group scenes such as A Musical Party (1730). By 1735 he had established a reputation as a painter of English manners and customs by two series of paintings, A Harlot's Progress (1732, destroyed by fire in 1755) and A Rake's Progress (1735). Through the sets of engravings he made from these paintings, Hogarth gained renown as a brilliant satirist of moral follies. Plagued by the artistic piracy to which his popular engravings were subject, he secured the passage of a copyright act, often called Hogarth's Act, in 1735. Two of Hogarth's most ambitious, although least characteristic, works are the murals The Good Samaritan and The Pool of Bethesda painted on the staircase of Saint Bartholomew's Hospital, London, from 1735 to 1736. These murals were executed in the so-called grand manner, a highly ornamental, baroque style depicting mythological subjects; it was popular in the French and Italian art of the period. In 1743 Hogarth completed the six paintings entitled Marriage à la Mode; in 1745 the engravings based on these paintings were published. Hogarth's remarkably exuberant satire of marriage for money, his pungent details of upper-class life, and his mastery of complex scenes find perhaps their highest expression in this series, generally considered his finest work. To this period also belong many of Hogarth's portraits. Among his exceptional portraits are the famous Garrick as Richard III (1745) and The Shrimp Girl (1759). In 1753 Hogarth wrote The Analysis of Beauty, a statement of his aesthetic principles. Four years later he was appointed sergeant painter to George II. During the last five years of his life, Hogarth was engaged in political feuds with the controversial British political reformer John Wilkes, whom he had satirized in an engraving. Wilkes retaliated with an attack on Hogarth's painting Sigismunda (1759). Hogarth's last engraving, The Bathos, intended as a farewell work, was published in 1764. He died in Chiswick. On his monument is an epitaph written by his friend, the actor David Garrick. — LINKS — Hogarth Painting the Comic Muse (1764 print, 37x34cm; 3/5 size; ZOOM to 6/5 size) — An Election Entertainment (1754, 100x127cm) _ The painting belongs to the series entitled An Election. — Soliciting Votes (1754, 102x127cm) _ This is the second of a series of four paintings executed by Hogarth on the moral of elections between 1753 and 1758. — An Election: 3. The Polling (1758 print 44x56cm; half-size; ZOOM to full size) — Marriage à la Mode 1: The Marriage Settlement (1743, 70x91cm) _ This is Scene 1 of the series of six . Controversial and quarrelsome, Hogarth is one of the most attractive and innovative British artists. Born in London, he trained as an engraver, later studying painting at a private academy, but was frustrated in his ambition to become an English 'history painter'. He blamed this on the vogue for Old Masters and competition from Continental contemporaries. His vociferous patriotism, however, cannot disguise his own indebtedness to French art; nor did he hesitate to advertise his use of 'the best Masters in Paris' to engrave the series Marriage à la Mode, of which this picture is the first. Since he could not earn a living as a portraitist or monumental painter, Hogarth conceived the notion of 'modern moral subjects' to be sold as engravings on subscription, as well as in their original painted state. In the spirit of the 'comic epics' of Henry Fielding, whom influenced and was later to influence him, these 'comic history paintings' are the works by which we best remember the artist and which most clearly express his own moral certitudes. They are related to sixteenth-century broadsheets, and to the 'conversation pieces' theatrical subjects which Hogarth himself helped to popularize. Marriage à la Mode, 'representing a Variety of Modern Occurrences in High-Life', was advertised for subscription in April 1743. The theme, an unhappy marriage between the daughter of a rich, miserly alderman merchant and the son of an impoverished earl, was suggested by current events but also indebted to Dryden's comedy of the same name, and by a recent play of Garricks. As the pictures were designed to be engraved — each print a mirror image of the composition incised on a copper plate — the sequence of events in every painting is reversed. The series thus begins with the proud Earl pointing to his family tree rooted in William the Conqueror; he rests his gouty foot — a sign of degeneracy — on a footstool decorated with his coronet. Behind him is a lavish building in the new classical style, unfinished for lack of money; a creditor is thrusting bills at him. But on the table in front of him is a pile of gold — the bride's dowry just handed him by the bespectacled alderman, who holds the marriage contract. Silvertongue, an ingratiating lawyer, whispers in the ear of the alderman's daughter listlessly twirling her wedding ring on a handkerchief. Turning away from her to take snuff and admire himself in the glass — and, in the engraving, to lead our eye into the next tableau — is the foppish bridegroom. At his feet, symbolic of the couple's plight, are a dog and a bitch chained to each other. From the walls horrid Italian Old Master martyrdoms presage tragedy, and a Gorgon's head screams from an oval frame above the pair. The rest of the series follows the pathetic adventures of the ill-assorted pair: he frequents a child prostitute and contracts venereal disease; she incurs debts in fashionable pursuits and takes Silvertongue as her lover. Discovered in a house of assignation, the lawyer kills the husband, is arrested and executed. The Countess, back in the alderman' mean house (where the 'low-life' paintings on the walls are Dutch, and the dog is starving) swallows poison; her father strips her wedding ring from her hand and a servant takes her weeping child, whose crippled leg in a brace recalls his tainted inheritance. — Marriage à la Mode 2: The Tête à Tête (1743, 70x91cm) _ aka Shortly after the Marriage. — The Orgy (1735, 62x75cm) _ This is scene III from the series of eight entitled A Rake's Progress. It represents a night at the Rose Tavern, Covent Garden, where an orgy is in preparation under the direction of Leathercoat, standing in the doorway. Tom Rakewell, incapably drunk, is robbed by the women of the establishment. — A Scene from the Beggar's Opera (1729) _ The Scene from the Beggar's Opera was among the first of Hogarth's topical pictures in a career that had begun with portraits and conversation pieces. Later he moved from the contemporary theatrical life to complete series of pictures of his own devising in subject: The Rake's Progress and Marriage à la Mode. — The Shrimp Girl (1740, 63x52cm) _ This spontaneous and fresh study recalls the style of Frans Hals and it can be considered a precursor of Impressionism. — The Strode Family (1738, 87x92cm) _ This is a fine example of the conversation pieces which Hogarth executed at the beginning of his career. — Gin Lane (1751, etching and line engraving, 36x34cm) _ Among the strong didactic pieces by Hogarth is Gin Lane, his graphic lecture on the evils of drinking gin. "Idleness, poverty, misery and distress, which drives even to madness and death" - this is the price one pays for indulgence in this poison. The companion print, Beer Street, encourages the use of this beverage, for, as Hogarth said, it is an "invigorating liquor" and on this street "all is joyous and thriving. Industry and jollity go hand in hand." No modern copywriter could produce a more persuasive argument. In most of Hogarth's plates one does not look for expert handling, for he used his craft to tell a story rather than to demonstrate a technical skill — which he did not, in fact, possess. We "read" his pictures. We must examine every section of the plate, as we would read every page of a book to know everything that happens. In the lower left-hand corner is the notorious gin cellar. Over the entrance is an inscription: Drunk for a Penny / Dead Drunk for Two Pence / Clean Straw for Nothing. On the lower right is a cadaverous itinerant ballad seller who also retails gin and obviously has imbibed more than he has sold. In the background, the buildings are empty or toppling — the area is rapidly becoming a slum. In one exposed room a man has hanged himself. In the right middle section there is some gaiety, some fighting, and much drinking. In front of a pawnshop on the other side of the square, a carpenter is trying to pledge his tools, a housewife her pots. Their receipts will, of course, go for gin. The most horrible scene is in the foreground, where a woman, breasts exposed and a drunken grin on her face, reaches for a pinch of snuff. She has lost her grip on her child, who falls over the railing to the pavement below. Hogarth's point is well made. — Moses Brought Before Pharaoh's Daughter (1746) — The Rake's Progress — The Pool of Bethesda (1736; 675x1000pix, 103kb) — The Orgy (1735, 62x75cm) — The Fountaine Family (1730) — The Beggar's Opera 5 (1729) — The Wedding of Stephen Beckingham and Mary Cox (1730) — Scholars at a Lecture (1737 print, 22x18cm; full size) — Tailpiece, or The Bathos (1764 engraving, 32x34cm; 3/5 size; ZOOM to 6/5 size) ... or Manner of Sinking, in Sublime Paintings, inscribed to the Dealers in Dark Pictures. _ Rarely an artist's goodbye to the world has been that moving. Intended by the artist quite literally as a "tailpiece" to a bound collection of his printed works, this was also the last print he made. This conclusion to Hogarth's art includes a just-broken tobacco pipe and a cloud of smoke labelled "FINIS" within a gallery of other objects, all identifying death, destruction, the end, including his last will and testament naming Chaos as his executor, a broken column, one of his own prints going up in the flames of a candle, Phaeton's chariot descending from the sky, etc., etc. It is Hogarth' last graphic work, seven months before his death. Artistically a recourse to Salvator Rosa the title is based on Pope's poetical counterpart Peri Bathous or the Art of Sinking in Poetry (1727) as itself a parody of Longinus' Peri Hypsous. The final message ridicules the so-called academic school of painters, known to be pleased with allegories and compositions mixing up mythology of the ancient ages and newer conditions. The scenery itself is of an unheard of radicalism. Those attributes signaling the ending of the times are especially affected by the ruin: Scythe and hourglass are broken here as are crown, pipe, palette, bottle, bell, the sign of the pub "The Worlds End" with the burning globe as its insignia, the church, and several other symbols of Vanitas. The clock lost its hands, the trees are as dead as the hanged man – and Phoebus in the burning sky waggon together with his horses tumbling down to the bottomless abyss. Finally Saturn himself as god of time – the winged death – as of the wealth founded by agriculture breathes his last "Finis" while his last will – witnessed by the three Fates Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos – slips from his hand: All and every Atom there of to Chaos. Shortly "H. Nature Bankrupt". With the exception of the man in the thin crescent of the decreasing moon who still seems to be alive a bit. As also the gallows are standing fast. To increase the bathos a few puns have been mixed in the whole mess: a cobler's end and last resp., a rope's end, and the candle's end. — 75 prints at Fine Arts Museums of SF |
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