ART “4”
“2”-DAY 01 April |
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Died on 01 April 1802: Joseph-Siffrède
Duplessis, French artist born on 22 September 1725. — Duplessis, as a southerner from Carpentras, near Avignon, was trained quite differently from contemporaneous court painters. Asa result, recognition of his talent by Parisian society was slow to materialize. At the age of twenty he went to Rome and entered the studio of Pierre Subleyras, where he rapidly developed his artistic abilities. In 1752 he was in Paris, but it was not until 1764 that he had his first success at the Academy of Saint Luke. He achieved fame with ten works exhibited at the Salon of 1769 and was elected to membership as a portraitist by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1774. When he was named official court painter to Louis XVI, the aristocracy and most of the famous people of the time clamored to sit for him. The Revolution deprived him of patrons, and he retired to Carpentras during the Reign of Terror. Back in Paris in 1796, he was appointed curator of the collections at Versailles. Recognized as the finest realistic portraitist of his generation, rivaled only by Alexandre Roslin, Duplessis records facial expression with a searching and sensitive brush, interprets the moods and feelings of his sitters, and always presents clear evidence of their social position. — LINKS — Portrait of a Gentleman (Jean-Baptiste-François Dupré?) (1781, 147x114cm; 1/8 size, 52kb _ ZOOM to 1/4 size, 172 kb _ ZOOM++ to 1/2 size, 643 kb _ HUMONGAZOOM to full life size, 3100kb) — Portrait of a Woman (1785, 61x50cm; 3/8 size, 73kb _ ZOOM to 3/4 size, 325kb) — Benjamin Franklin (1778, oval 72x58cm; framed 886x600pix, 53kb) — Madame Lenoir, Mother of Alexandre Lenoir, the founder of the Museum of French Monuments — the Sculptor Christophe Gabriel Allegrain (1774, 130x97cm; 1080x829, 109kb) _ Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain [08 Oct 1710 – 17 Apr 1795] was a French sculptor who was much influenced by his more illustrious brother-in-law Jean-Baptiste Pigalle [26 Jan 1714 – 21 Aug 1785]. — Madame Frèret-Déricour (1769) — Cristoph Willibald von Gluck at the Spinet (1775; 81x100cm; 900x723pix, 105kb) _ The most popular of the portraits by Duplessis is this one of the composer Gluck [02 Jul 1714 – 15 Nov 1787]. It was begun during the Gluck's stay in Paris on the occasion of the first performance there of his opera Iphigénie en Aulide. — La Révolution Française Arrivée sous le Règne de Louis XVI les 14 Juillet 1789 et 10 Aoust 1792 Inventé, Dessiné, et Gravé par Duplessis — Dédiée aux Amis de la Liberté et de l'Egalité (1792 engraving; 600x725pix, 257kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1691pix, 1062kb _ ZOOM++ to 2219x2681pix; 4786kb) _ La légende: Du haut du Ciel, on voit l'Auguste Vérité resplandissante qui vient eclairer l'Univers, la Nation, et l'Assemblée nationale. La Liberté française sous la figure d'une femme ailée, prête a descendre en Terre, a, d'un seul mouvement fait tomber la Couronne, et brisé le Sceptre defer de l'affreux Despotisme retiré dans la Bastille; a côté est un Aigle coeffé de la Couronne Impériale symbole de l'injuste guerre que l'on fait a la France. Derriere sont differens Monstres sous la figure de Harpies, qui caractérisent les Prêtres réfractaires souflans le poison du Fanatisme, les Courtisans exhalans seur soufle péstiferé, les mauvais Ministres & De l'autre côté est un Génie bienfaisant qui grave sur une Colonne de bronze le petit nombre de Députés Patriotes de l'Assemblée constituante, dont la Mémoire chérie sera en vénération dans tous les siècles a venir. L'Arc-en-ciel annonce la Paix universelle chez toutes les Nations de la Terre, apres une aussi étonnante révolution, c'est le Prologue des Evenemens arrivés en France. La Cérémonie commence par les principales victimes qui ont étées frappées par le Poignard du Despotisme, et assassinées avec le Glaive de la Justice, suivi du Cercueil contenant le Corps immense des Abus, sur lequel on remarque la Thiarre, la Pourpre, l'Encensoir désignant les abus du Clergé, l'Epée liée a une Bourse et une Massue brisée sur des Armoiries déchirées ceux de la cy devant Noblesse; un Mortier, un bonnet carré et les Procédures horribles de ceux des Parlemens duRoy, aussi ceux de la Chicane. Le Sceptre et la Couronne defer a côté du Fléau, et le Livre rouge l'Empire Tyranique des abus. Les coins du Poële sount tenus par l'Envie, l'Avarice, l'Orgueil, et la Folie; le tout porté par les différente classes du cy devant Tiers Etat. Suit aprês le Président de l'Assemblée Nationale, qui après avoir approfondi les Abus les conduit au Tombeau. Vient ensuitte la Justice accompagnée delaForce et de l'Egalité. Mr. Bailly Grand Maitre des Cérémonies précede leLivre delaLoi porté en Vénération par d'honorables Membres. Derrière est la Chicanne un baillon ala bouche accompagnée par desProcureurs en pleureuses et en longs manteaux de deuil. Grand desespoir desPrinces, Ducs etPairs, et de teus ceux qui peuvent regretter las Abus, et l'enterrement duLivre rouge la pature desFainéans. Le Clergé lesPrésidens a mortier, les cinq grossesFermes se soutenans et consolans mutuellement, sont suivis par une foule dePrêtresses deVénus dansla désolation. La marche est fermée par leBedeau des Aristocrates. Sur le coin droit du tableau, on voit le Temps, quihonteux d'avoir silonstems epargné les restes duRègne féodal en détruit l'edifice, les Armoiries et touttes ces Distinctions puériles, tant recherchées par les Sots et les Intrigans. Acôté est un Chêne dont l'énorme entaille annonce la chutte prochaine, et tant désirée. Sur le devant une foule d'Aristocrates conspirateurs qui ne pouvant plus faire aucun mal sont obligés de s'expatrier et aller devorer leur rage et leur argent chez l'étranger; on les regrette d'autant moins, quils ne peuvent jamais mourir horizontallement enFrance Acôté sont les differens Ècrivains desRévolutions qui ont instruit le Peuple sur ses droits et ont vengé la Révolution des attentats de ces Juges sacriléges, dont les Procédures iniques et horribles, les ont si justement fait anéantir; ce sont eux quiles ont attachés auCaveau delaPresse pour les flétrir etles diffamer a jamais jusques dans laPostérité la plus reculée. Vient aprés la Société des Amis delaConstitution, tant de laFrance que del'étranger, qui se sont fédérés ici universellement et ont envoyé leurs Députés, a la tête desquels est Mylord StonhopePrésident de celle d'Angleterre, avec celui duClub des Jacobins de Paris.Danslefond estlaBastille, dont on voit sortir lePeuple vainqueur et oú a passé tout le Cortège, avec une foule de monde etVoitures quil'ont suivi.A côté, sont les débris desa démolition, oú on a élevé un Autel a laLiberté sur lequelles plus zélés Patriotes apportent leurs Offrandes, etDonsPatriotiques; A leur tête,on voit les femmes des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs Graveurs, Orphevres etc. qui ont etées les premieres a executter le projet dont Mme Moille épouse du Sculpteur duRoi est Auteur, elle apporte laCassette comme dépositaire.Dans lefond la brave et intrépideGarde Nationale commandée par Mr. LaFayette ,est souslesArmes,au devant d'une Superbe Colonnade en Amphitéatre d'Ordre Ionique, oú le Peuple est placé commodément pour voir passer le Cortège.Dans l'enfoncement une foule immense deCommis, Gapians, Gabelous,et autres Vampires de Finances, que l'on fait partir pour les Landes de Bordeaux et de Bretagne, cultiver les Terres qui ont besoin de bras. Il était temps de balayer touttes ces immondices Fiscales, et Aristocratiques. Courage Honorable sDéputés,et vousBrave s Parisiens,voila votre Ouvrage Jouisse z de la Gloire d'une aussi belle Révolution. |
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Born on 01 April 1831: Samuel Albert (or
Albrecht) Anker, Swiss painter and illustrator,
specialized in Children,
who died on 16 July 1910. — {About that painter Albert Anker: / When
his wife showed him a tanker at anchor; / He could see no reason to thank
her, / And he said: “That subject doesn't suit Anker.”} — Anker's early interest in art was kindled by visiting the exhibitions of the Société des Amis des Arts in Neuchâtel in 1842, and he took private drawing lessons from Louis Wallinger [1819–1886] between 1845 and 1848. However he began studying theology in Berne in 1851, continuing these studies at the university in Halle. During his stay in Germany he became acquainted with major German collections, notably the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, which impressed him deeply. His father reluctantly consented to an artistic career, and in 1854 Anker moved to Paris, where he joined the studio of Charles Gleyre. He studied at the École Impériale des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1855 until 1860, meanwhile selling portraits. In 1861 he traveled in northern Italy, copying Old Masters such as Titian and Correggio. — Auguste Bachelin was a student of Anker. — Photo of Anker — LINKS — Little Girl Soothing Crying Baby — Die Tochter Marie — The Artist's Daughter Louise (1874; 750x575pix; 93kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1073pix) — Krankes Mädchen mit Puppen spielend (1878; 600x920pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2147pix) — Der Neugeborene (600x920pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2147pix) being introduced by mom to brother and sisters. — Der Großvater (1893; 600x912pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2128pix) with young grandson reading to him. — Die Dorfschule (600x1048pix _ ZOOM not recommended to blurry 1400x2445pix, 527kb) — Dora Luthy and turtle (1900, 55x47cm) — Mutter und Kind (65x46cm) — The Crèche (1890) — The Little Knitters (1892) |
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Died on 01 (02?) April 1896: Theodore
Robinson, US Impressionist
painter born on 03 June 1852. He studied under Claude
Monet. — {OK, he was from the US. But did he have a Swiss family?} — Brought up in Evansville Wisconsin, Robinson studied art briefly in Chicago at the end of the 1860s, and in New York at the National Academy of Design (1874–1876). His early work, for example Haying (1882), was in the US genre tradition of Winslow Homer. From 1876 to 1878 Robinson studied in Paris under Carolus-Duran, alongside John Singer Sargent, and under Jean-Léon Gerôme. In 1879 Robinson returned to the USA and lived mainly in New York and Boston; he made a living by teaching and by assisting John La Farge and Prentice Treadwell with mosaic and stained-glass decorations for the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. In 1881 Robinson was elected to the Society of American Artists, a group in revolt against the conservatism of the National Academy. Returning to France in 1884, Robinson worked in Paris and Barbizon and was strongly influenced for a time by the Barbizon School. A crucial event was his meeting with Monet at Giverny, near Rouen, in 1887. By 1888 they were close friends and Robinson began to develop his own Impressionist style, which was never as extreme in its use of broken color as that of Monet. His aim, as he wrote in his journal, was to combine Impressionism’s ‘brilliancy and light of real outdoors’ with ‘the austerity, the sobriety, that has always characterized good painting’. Cézanne seems to have influenced the strong compositional structure of his paintings, and his best work was done mostly in France during the next four years. He also painted in Italy for several months in 1890 and 1891. His favorite subjects were landscapes and intimate vignettes of farm and village life, such as The Watering Pots (1890), In The Grove (1888) and Wedding March (1892). Since models were expensive and Robinson was poor, he often took photographs as studies for his figure compositions. — LINKS — Woman in a White Cap (1884) — House in Virginia (1893, 46x56cm) — In the Orchard (1895, 46x56cm) — Girl Sewing (1891, 46x55cm) — Country Road (35x25cm) |
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Born on 01 April 1856: Charles
Maurin, French painter and printmaker who died on 22 July
1914 (1913?). — In 1875 he won the Prix Crozatier, which enabled him to study in Paris, at the École des Beaux-Arts under Jules Lefebvre in 1876–1879 and also at the Académie Julian, where he later taught. He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français, becoming a member in 1883. Among his paintings are the Prelude to Lohengrin and Maternity. Inspired by the work of Japanese artists and the growing popularity of the 18th-century print, he was one of a small group of artists who experimented with color plates and in 1891 he patented a new technique of color printing. His best works are his lightly washed grey and pink etchings of nudes, such as After the Bath, The Model and Child with a Pink Ribbon, which show a high standard of drawing and modelling. He also produced wood-engravings, for instance Head of a Young Girl in a Landscape (1890), and others set in low-life cafés and music-halls. — Portrait of the Artist (1899, 23x14cm; full size) frontispiece in the book Histoires naturelles by Jules Renard [22 Feb 1864 – 22 May 1910]. — Maternity (1893; 647x800pix, 152kb) — Bain de la Fillette (etching 25x19cm; 2/3 size) — Niccolò Paganini (1838; 800x541pix, 278kb) lithograph by Albert Newsam after a painting by Maurin. |
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on 01 April 1976: Max Ernst, German French
Surrealist
painter and sculptor born on 02 April 1891. — Ernst lived in Paris, New York 1940-1948, became a French citizen in 1958. He was a leading advocate for irrationality in art, and an originator of the Automatism movement of Surrealism. As a youth his interests were psychiatry and philosophy, however he abandoned his studies at the University of Bonn for painting. Ernst served in the German army during World War I. Converted to Dadaism, the nihilistic art movement, he formed a group of Dadaist artists in Cologne. With artist-poet Jean Arp [16 Sep 1887 – 07 Jun 1966], Ernst edited journals and created a scandal by staging a Dada exhibit in a public restroom. More important, however, were his Dada collages and photomontages — startlingly illogical compositions which suggest multiple identities for the things depicted. Ernst moved to Paris in 1922 and two years later became a founding member of the Surrealists. To facilitate the flow of imagery from the unconscious mind, Ernst began to use "frottage" (pencil rubbings of such things as wood grain, fabric, or leaves) and "decalcomania" (the transferring of paint from one surface to another by pressing them together). By contemplating the accidental patterns and textures resulting from these techniques, he allowed free association to suggest images he then used in a series of drawings (Histoire naturelle, 1926) and in many paintings such as The Forest (1928) and The Temptation of St. Anthony (1945). These vast landscapes stem from the tradition of the German Romantics. After 1934 Ernst's activities centered more and more on sculpture, using improvised techniques. At the onset of World War II, Ernst moved to the US, where he joined his third wife, the collector and gallery owner Peggy Guggenheim [26 Aug 1898 – 23 Dec 1979], and his son, the US painter Jimmy Ernst [1920-1984]. After 1946 he moved to Sedona, Arizona, with his 4th wife, US painter Dorothea Tanning. After Ernst returned to France in 1949, his work became less and less experimental: he spent much of his time perfecting his modeling technique in traditional sculptural materials. — Ernst was born in Bruhl, Germany. He enrolled in the University at Bonn in 1909 to study philosophy, but soon abandoned this pursuit to concentrate on art. At this time he was interested in psychology and the art of the mentally ill. In 1911 Ernst became a friend of August Macke and joined the Rheinische Expressionisten group in Bonn. Ernst showed for the first time in 1912 at the Galerie Feldman in Cologne. At the Sonderbund exhibition of that year in Cologne he saw the work of Paul Cézanne [19 Jan 1839 – 22 Oct 1906], Edvard Munch [12 Dec 1863 – 23 Jan 1944], Pablo Picasso [25 Oct 1881 – 08 Apr 1973], and Vincent van Gogh [30 Mar 1853 – 29 Jul 1890]. In 1913 he met Guillaume Apollinaire [1880-1918] and Robert Delaunay [12 Apr 1885 – 25 Oct 1941] and traveled to Paris. Ernst participated that same year in the Erste deutsche Herbstsalon. In 1914 he met Jean Arp, who was to become a lifelong friend. Despite military service throughout World War I, Ernst was able to continue painting and to exhibit in Berlin at Der Sturm in 1916. He returned to Cologne in 1918. The next year he produced his first collages and founded the short-lived Cologne Dada movement with Johannes Theodor Baargeld [09 Oct 1892 – 18 Aug 1927]; they were joined by Arp and others. In 1921 Ernst exhibited for the first time in Paris, at the Galerie au Sans Pareil. He was involved in Surrealist activities in the early 1920s with Paul Eluard [1895-1952] and André Breton [1896-1966]. In 1925 Ernst executed his first frottages; a series of frottages was published in his book Histoire naturelle in 1926. He collaborated with Joan Miró [20 Apr 1893 – 25 Dec 1983] on designs for Sergei Diaghilev that same year. The first of his collage-novels, La Femme 100 têtes, was published in 1929. The following year the artist collaborated with Salvador Dalí [11 May 1904 – 23 Jan 1989] and Luis Buñuel on the film L’Age d’or. Ernst's first show in the US was held at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York, in 1932. In 1936 Ernst was represented in Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1939 he was interned in France as an enemy alien. Two years later Ernst fled to the United States with Peggy Guggenheim, whom he married early in 1942. After their divorce he married Dorothea Tanning [1910~] and in 1953 resettled in France. Ernst received the Grand Prize for painting at the Venice Biennale in 1954, and in 1975 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum gave him a major retrospective, which traveled in modified form to the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in 1975. He died in Paris. — LINKS — Rhythmic Composition (24x19cm) — Paysage Arizona (1960) — Les Correspondances Dangereuses (1947) — Étoile de Mer (1950, 43x27cm) — The Clothing of the Bride (1940) — Elephant of Celebes (1921) — Histoire Naturelle (1923, 232x356cm) — Ecole d'Oiseaux (1947 etching) — Von Minimax Dadamax selbst konstruiertes Maschinchen (1920, 49x31cm) _ This was made in Cologne the year Dada was established there. It belongs to a series of about fifty works dating from 1919–1920, based on diagrams of scientific instruments, in which Max Ernst used printer’s plates to reproduce preexisting images. The impressions, once altered by traditional coloristic and modeling effects, occupy a position between found object and artistic product, like his collages. In both subject and style the series can be compared with Francis Picabia’s mechanomorphic drawings and paintings. Ernst shared with Picabia [22 Jan 1879 – 30 Nov 1953] an interest in typography, printed images, and language; many of the forms in the present work can be read as letters. They function as well to describe a mechanical structure that can be seen as a symbol of sexual activity, like Picabia’s Très rare tableau sur la terre (1915, 126x98cm) and his L'Enfant Carburateur (1919), or The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1923) of Marcel Duchamp [28 Jul 1887 – 02 Oct 1968]. Ernst’s machine is a fantasized solution to the psychological pressures of sexual Performance, as announced in the humorously heroic inscription at the bottom of the sheet: “Little machine constructed by minimax dadamax in person for fearless pollination of female suckers at the beginning of the change of life and for other such fearless functions”. The right side of the machine seems to comprise a miniature laboratory for the production of semen, which is indicated as a red drop that courses through passageways to the left side of the apparatus. The drop finally issues from the yellow faucet, accompanied by a whimsically self-assured and cheerful “Bonjour.” Alternatively, the machine can be seen as a combination of male and female halves. The female (at the right) is dowdy and angular; the more brilliantly colored male (at the left) “fearlessly” points away from her. — Le Baiser (1927, 129x161cm) _ From humorously clinical depictions of erotic events in the Dada period, such as Little Machine Constructed by Minimax Dadamax in Person, Max Ernst moved on to celebrations of uninhibited sexuality in his Surrealist works. His liaison and marriage with the young Marie-Berthe Aurenche in 1927 may have inspired the erotic subject matter of this painting and others of this year. The major compositional lines of this work may have been determined by the configurations of string that Ernst dropped on a preparatory surface, a procedure according with Surrealist notions of the importance of chance effects. However, Ernst used a coordinate grid system to transfer his string configurations to canvas, thus subjecting these chance effects to conscious manipulation. Visually, the technique produces undulating calligraphic rhythms, like those traced here against the glowing earth and sky colors. The centralized, pyramidal grouping and the embracing gesture of the upper figure in The Kiss have lent themselves to comparison with Renaissance compositions, specifically the The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne by Leonardo da Vinci [15 Apr 1452 – 02 May 1519]. The Leonardo work was the subject of a psychosexual interpretation by Sigmund Freud, whose writings were important to Ernst and other Surrealists. The adaptation of a religious subject would add an edge of blasphemy to the exuberant lasciviousness of Ernst’s picture. — La Forêt (1928, 96x130cm) _ André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto of 1924 proclaimed “pure psychic automatism” as an artistic ideal, emphasizing inspiration derived from the chance juxtaposition of forms and the haphazard use of materials. Max Ernst came under the influence of Breton’s ideas in 1924, and soon thereafter developed his frottage or rubbing technique.1 In making his first frottages, he dropped pieces of paper at random on floor boards and rubbed them with pencil or chalk, thus transferring the design of the wood grain to the paper. He next adapted this technique to oil painting, scraping paint from prepared canvases laid over materials such as wire mesh, chair caning, leaves, buttons, or twine. His repertory of objects closely parallels that used by Man Ray [27 Aug 1890 – 18 Nov 1976] in his experiments with Rayograms during the same period. Using his grattage (scraping) technique, Ernst covered his canvases completely with pattern and then interpreted the images that emerged, thus allowing texture to suggest composition in a spontaneous fashion. In The Forest the artist probably placed the canvas over a rough surface (perhaps wood), scraped oil paint over the canvas, and then rubbed, scraped, and overpainted the area of the trees. The subject of a dense forest appears often in Ernst’s work of the late twenties and early thirties. These canvases, of which The Quiet Forest (1927), is another example, generally contain a wall of trees, a solar disk, and an apparition of a bird hovering amid the foliage. Ernst’s attitude toward the forest as the sublime embodiment of both enchantment and terror can be traced to his experiences in the German forest as a child. His essay “Les Mystères de la forêt,” published in Minotaure in 1934, vividly conveys his fascination with the various kinds of forests. The Peggy Guggenheim canvas resonates with those qualities he identified with the forests of Oceania: “They are, it seems, savage and impenetrable, black and russet, extravagant, secular, swarming, diametrical, negligent, ferocious, fervent, and likeable, without yesterday or tomorrow. . . . Naked, they dress only in their majesty and their mystery” — Couple zoomorphe (1933, 92x73cm) _ By 1925 Ernst had developed his frottage technique, which he associated with a childhood memory of accidental forms materializing within the grooves of wooden floorboards. He also acknowledged the influence of his later discovery of Leonardo da Vinci’s Treatise on Painting, in which artists are advised to gaze at the stains on walls until figures and scenes emerge. In the Hordes series of 1926–32 Ernst placed twine beneath his canvases and then rubbed pigment over their surfaces. The meanderings of the twine were thus revealed; these chance configurations were then manipulated to elicit imagery. In Zoomorphic Couple, the appearance of light, sinuous channels through dark painted areas produces a relieflike effect suggestive of frottage. However, the artist created the effect here by putting paint-laden string or rope on top of the canvas and spraying over it. The image of the bird, which recurs frequently in Ernst’s work from 1925, had become an almost obsessive preoccupation by 1930. In the present painting one can discern a vaguely birdlike form and a caressing humanoid arising from the primordial material that gives them their substance. It has been suggested that the atavistic imagery in Ernst’s work of this period alludes to the failure of European civilization in the face of the rising National Socialist threat in Germany. (Ernst was blacklisted by the party in 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor of the Third Reich.) Though a sensitivity to the current political climate may be inferred, it is not confirmed by anecdotal detail. The forms have the effect of dream or poetic apparition. The sense of genesis and evolutionary stirrings in Zoomorphic Couple is complemented by the creative inventiveness of the artist, who combines layers of pastel color under spattered, blown, and dripped paint. — La Toilette de la mariée (1940, 130x96cm) _ This is an example of Max Ernst’s veristic or illusionistic Surrealism, in which a traditional technique is applied to an incongruous or unsettling subject. The theatrical, evocative scene has roots in late nineteenth-century Symbolist painting, especially that of Gustave Moreau [06 Apr 1826 – 18 Apr 1898]. It also echoes the settings and motifs of sixteenth-century German art. The willowy, swollen-bellied figure types recall those of Lucas Cranach the Elder [1472 – 16 Oct 1553] in particular. The architectural backdrop with its strong contrast of light and shadow and its inconsistent perspective shows the additional influence of Giorgio de Chirico [10 Jul 1888 – 19 Nov 1978], whose work had overwhelmed Ernst when he first saw it in 1919. The pageantry and elegance of the image are contrasted with its primitivizing aspects—the garish colors, the animal and monster forms—and the blunt phallic Symbolism of the poised spearhead. The central scene is contrasted as well with its counterpart in the picture-within-a-picture at the upper left. In this detail the bride appears in the same pose, striding through a landscape of overgrown classical ruins. Here Ernst has used the technique of decalcomania invented in 1935 by Oscar Domínguez [07 Jan 1906 – 01 Jan 1958], in which diluted paint is pressed onto a surface with an object that distributes it unevenly, such as a pane of glass. A suggestive textured pattern results. The title of this work had occurred to Ernst at least as early as 1936, when he italicized it in a text in his book Beyond Painting. Ernst had long identified himself with the bird, and had invented an alter ego, Loplop, Superior of the Birds, in 1929. Thus one may perhaps interpret the bird-man at the left as a depiction of the artist; the bride may in some sense represent the young English Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington. — The Antipope (March 1942, 161x127cm) _ Max Ernst settled in New York in 1941 after escaping from Europe with the help of Peggy Guggenheim. The same year he painted a small oil on cardboard that became the basis for the large-scale The Antipope. When Guggenheim saw the small version, she interpreted a dainty horse-human figure on the right as Ernst, who was being fondled by a woman she identified as herself. She wrote that Ernst conceded that a third figure, depicted in a three-quarter rear view, was her daughter Pegeen; she did not attempt to identify another horse-headed female to the left.1 When Ernst undertook the large version from December to March he changed the body of the “Peggy” figure into a greenish column and transferred her amorous gesture to a new character, who wears a pink tunic and is depicted in a relatively naturalistic way. The “Pegeen” figure in the center appears to have two faces, one of a flayed horse that looks at the horse-woman at the left. The other, with only its cheek and jaw visible, gazes in the opposite direction, out over the grim lagoon, like a pensive subject conceived by Caspar David Friedrich [05 Sep 1774 – 07 May 1840]. The great upheavals in Ernst’s personal life during this period encourage such a biographical interpretation. Despite his marriage to Guggenheim, he was deeply involved with Leonora Carrington [1917~] at this time, and spent hours riding horses with her. As birds were an obsession for Ernst, so horses were for Carrington. Her identification with them is suggested throughout her collection of stories La Dame ovale, published in 1939 with seven illustrations by Ernst, two of which include metamorphosed horse creatures. It seems plausible that the alienated horse-woman of The Antipope, who twists furtively to watch the other horse-figure, represents a vision of Guggenheim. Like the triumphal bride in Attirement of the Bride, she wears an owl headgear. Her irreconcilable separation from her companion is expressed graphically by the device of the diagonally positioned spear that bisects the canvas. The features of the green totemic figure resemble those of Carrington, whose relationship with Ernst was to end soon after the painting was completed, when she moved to Mexico with her husband. |
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Born on 01 April 1852: Edwin
Austin Abbey, US English Golden
Age muralist and illustrator who died on 01 August 1911. — Abbey was born in Philadelphia, where he attended evening classes at the Academy while working as an apprentice draughtsman for a local publisher. In 1870 he began a long association with the New York publishers, Harper's, who sent him to England in 1878 to research an illustrated edition of Herrick's poems. After two years in Europe he returned briefly to America, then finally settled in England, marrying in 1890. Having made his name with his illustrations and watercolors, he began to paint seriously in oils in 1889 and soon conquered the RA with such dramatic historical and literary works as Richard, Duke of York, and the Lady Anne, the 'picture of the year' of 1896, and the magnificent Crusaders Sighting Jerusalem of 1891. Meanwhile in 1890, together with his friend John Sargent and Puvis de Chavannes, he was commissioned to paint murals in the new Public Library at Boston, exhibiting them in London in 1895 and 1901 to great acclaim. Other projects of this period were the designs for Irving's (abandoned) production of Richard II (1898), a mural of the Coronation of Edward VII (both completed 1904). The murals in the East Corridor of the Palace of Westminster were painted under his supervision 1908-10. His last years were devoted to a massive scheme of decoration for the state capitol at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (commissioned 1902). He suffered a physical breakdown in 1906 and was still only fifty-nine when he died. — LINKS — The Play Scene in "Hamlet" _ The Play Scene in "Hamlet" (1897) — Fair Is My Love (1900) — A Lute Player (1899, Diploma Work, 77x51cm) — Castle of Maidens — Fiammetta's Song — King Lear — Mistress Mine where are you roaming? — The Penance of Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester _ detail (1900, 125x216cm) _ The subject of this large narrative painting comes from Shakespeare's Henry VI: Part II, act 2, scene 4. Eleanor, having vainly urged her husband, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the Lord Protector, to usurp the throne of England, has committed the treasonable offense of consulting sorcerers about the length of the king's life. She has been sentenced to three days' public penance walking barefoot through the streets of London. Eleanor, clad in a white sheet, turns her head to her husband, who stands beside members of his entourage dressed in mourning cloaks, and says to him: Come you, my lord, to see my open shame? Now thou dost penance too. Look how they gaze! See how the giddy multitude do point, And nod their heads, and throw their eyes on thee! Ah, Gloucester, hide thee from their hateful looks, And, in thy closet pent up, rue my shame, And ban thine enemies, both mine and thine! Abbey's interpretation of the Shakespearean environment is tense and hallucinatory. The painting's shallow, crowded frieze of monumental figures is typical of the artist's work of the late 1890s and reflects both medieval and English Pre-Raphaelite prototypes. |
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Died on 01 April 1649: fray Juan
Bautista Maino (or Mayno), Spanish Baroque
painter born in 1569, 1578, or 1581, who studied under Caravaggio
and El
Greco. — He was born at the small court of the Prince of Eboli, Don Ruy Gómez de Silva. His father was Milanese and his mother of Portuguese origin. There is a tradition that Maino was a student of El Greco in Toledo, but there is no suggestion of this in Maino's clear and firm style, which was formed in Italy about 1595-1605. In Rome he was in contact with Annibale Carracci and Guido Reni and became familiar with the work of Caravaggio, which influenced him deeply. Given his father’s Milanese origin, he probably also had contact with artists in Brescia, Cremona, and Milan. In about 1620 Maino moved from Toledo to Madrid, where he worked for Philip III and Philip IV (whose drawing master he had been) and was a friend of Velázquez. Maino was a Dominican priest as well as an artist, but although he painted religious works, he is most highly regarded for his portraits, outstanding among which is the formidably characterized Dominican Monk (1635). — Fray Juan Rizi was a student of Maino. — LINKS — Adoration by the Shepherds = Adoration of by Shepherds (1612, 315x174cm; 1000x547pix, 122kb) — Adoration by the Magi = Adoration by the Kings (1612, 315x174cm; 1000x535pix, 121kb) _ These two pictures were painted as altarpieces for the Convent of St Peter Martyr in Toledo. Maino comes close to what we now term 'superrealism' in some sections of the pictures. He achieved this effect by careful control of the texture, shape and volume of the objects together with a very cold but bright lighting, which reveals the influence of Orazio Gentileschi and the Italian Baroque. Many aspects of the compositions derive instead from El Greco, whose works were so numerous in Toledo. The artist was trained in the studios of Toledo, and he became the drawing master of Philip IV. He stands apart from his colleagues in resisting the general predilection for dark settings with the light coming from a single or one principal source. The transparency of his colors and the brightness of his tones are combined with a very individual sense of space in which something of the late sixteenth century goes hand in hand with a love of realistic detail typical of the new age. Three of Maino's works that claim attention are the Adoration of the Shepherds and its companion-piece, the Adoration of the Kings (in the Prado) as well as the Pentecost in the Toledo Museum. — The Recovery of Bahia in 1625 = The Recovery of Bahia in 1625 (1635; 667x850pix, 138kb) — The Virgin Appears to a Dominican Monk in Seriano |
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Died on 01 April 1621: Cristofano
Allori, Florentine painter, born on 17 Oct 1577. — Breaking with the Mannerist traditions kept alive by his father Alessandro Allori [03 May 1535 – 22 Sep 1607], Cristofano became one of the foremost Florentine artists of the early Baroque period, also winning renown as a courtier, poet, musician and lover. He had a complex character, ardent, devoutly religious and obsessively perfectionist. — Cristofano Allori was one of the leading Florentine painters of his period, working in a style that was more naturalistic and Baroque than that of his father. He is remembered primarily for one work, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (in several versions), in which his femme fatale mistress is portrayed as Judith and he has depicted his own features in Holofernes' severed head. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was one of the most famous paintings in Italy. Cristofano Allori's students included Cesare Dandini [1595-1658]. — Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1613, 139x116cm) _ Allori trained in the school of his father and his grandfather, the leading Florentine Mannerist Agnolo Allori, known as Bronzino. Even if Cristofano may be regarded as an artist who broke with late Mannerist tendencies and went on to become an express proponent of early Baroque reform ideas, he nevertheless continues to borrow certain traits of "Mannerist physiognomy" in order to heighten the effect of a picture. In his most famous painting, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, the extreme contrast between the dark and bearded head of Holofernes and the angelic face of his murderess owes much to the Mannerist school in which he was trained. Allori is said to have created a portrait of his mistress Mazzafirra in the figure of Judith and her mother in the figure of the elderly servant woman. The head of Holofernes may be a self portrait. If this is true, the picture would certainly be a classic example of the so-called "portrait historié" in which real figures are presented as figures from history. Whether or not this is true, the significance of this painting lies predominantly in the enormous erotic tension that emanates not only from the faces of Judith and Holofernes, but also from the sensuality with which the Old Testament heroine is portrayed. This major theme of triumph over tyranny had never before been presented from this point of view. — The Hospitality of Saint Julian (259x201cm) — Portrait of a Man |
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