ART / 4 / 2DAY

search 8000 artists, their works, museums, movements, countries, time periods, media, specializations

<<< ART 04 Apr

ANY DAY ...IN ART ...IN HISTORY ||| HISTORY “4” APR 05 ||| ALTERNATE SITES

ART “4” “2”-DAY 05 April

DEATHS: 1717 JOUVENET — 1862 KOEKKOEK — 1906 JOHNSON

BAPTISM: 1626 KESSEL — BIRTHS: 1811 DUPRÉ — 1913 CLAVÉ — 1865 BEVAN — 1732 FRAGONARD

^ Baptized as an infant on 05 April 1626: Jan van Kessel II, Antwerp, Flanders, still-life and flower painter and draftsman specialized in Still Life who died on 18 October (17 April?) 1679, sometimes designated as Jan van Kessel I, because he was the first painter of that name. But the real Jan van Kessel I was his grandfather, a draper. The father of Jan van Kessel II was the painter Hieronymus (= Jeroom) van Kessel [06 Oct 1578 bapt. – 1636+]. David Teniers the Younger [15 Dec 1610 – 25 Apr 1690] was the uncle-in-law of Jan van Kessel II, having married in 1637 his mother's sister Anna Brueghel. The Dutch landscape artist Jan van Kessel [1641 – 24 Dec 1680] was apparently unrelated.
— Jan van Kessel II began his training as a painter in 1635 with Simon de Vos [28 Oct 1603 – 15 Oct 1676] and was also taught by his uncle Jan Breughel II [13 Sep 1601 – 01 Sep 1678]. In 1645 he was registered in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as a flower painter, but he also depicted, in both oil and watercolor, animals, birds, fish and insects, as well as a variety of still-life subjects. He continued the traditions of his maternal grandfather, Jan I “Velvet” Brueghel [1568 – 13 Jan 1625], and was also influenced by Daniel Seghers [05 Dec 1590 – 02 Nov 1661]. Van Kessel painted garlands and bouquets of flowers, but is best known for small, jewel-like pictures, often on copper, of insects or shells against a light background, executed with strong color and great exactitude.
Jan II taught two of his seven sons to paint, Ferdinand van Kessel [07 Apr 1648 – 1696], who painted in the style of his father, and Jan van Kessel III [1654-1708] (aka, erroneously, Jan van Kessel II)., who followed in the portrait tradition of his grandfather.

— LINKS
— Insects and Fruit
— The Animals (1660, 175x123cm) _ This triptychon contains 40 sections (17x23cm each). The animals are placed in a setting (Netherlandish, mountainous, exotic) corresponding to the species. (8 rows of 5 separate pictures each, tiny in the reproduction)
— The Mockery of the Owl (170x234cm) _ The fully-fledged animal painting emerged in the late 16th century with the rise of biological research and collections of rare creatures. Jan van Kessel in The Mockery of the Owl demonstrates a thorough knowledge of exotic animals. The artist uses a narrative subject as a vehicle for painting his animals.
— Still-Life (42x77cm) _ This Antwerp artist's teacher and uncle was Jan Brueghel the Younger, and therefore he was a direct descendant on his mother's side from Pieter the Elder [1525-1569] and Jan the Elder (“Velvet”). He painted chiefly still-lifes, frequently representing food laid out sumptuously on light-colored tables and depicted with the delicacy of a miniaturist, using lively colors of a predominately red tint laid on with the tip of the brush. The documentary, informative, educational, and communicative function of these richly laid tables, in which the individual objects are simply added on and depicted from a slightly raised viewpoint, is combined with the evident intention of demonstrating the affluence of the wealthy patrons of these works. It is also possible to discern allegorical intentions alluding to the five senses or the four elements, but while such an interpretation is quite plausible, the principal aim is a purely aesthetic one, offering this profusion of beautiful objects, rendered with exquisite skill, as a simple feast for the eyes. There is a companion piece to this painting, a variation on the same theme.
— Still Life with Fruit and Shellfish (1653) — Africa (central panel, detail) (1666)
— Europe (central panel, detail) (1666) — 6 prints at FAMSF

^ Died on 05 April 1717: Jean-Baptiste Jouvenet, French painter born in April 1644.
— Son and student of Laurent Jouvenet, uncle, godfather, and teacher of Jean Restout, Jean-Baptiste Jouvenet was the outstanding member of a family of artists from Rouen. He went to Paris in 1661 and joined the studio of Charles Le Brun [24 Feb 1619 – 12 Feb 1690]. His early works, including decorations for the Salon de Mars at Versailles, were closely imitative of the style of Le Brun and Eustache Le Sueur (Saint Bruno in Prayer). He was the most distinguished of the group of artists who collaborated with La Fosse in the decorations at Trianon and Les Invalides, but he is now best remembered as the leading French religious painter of his generation, carrying out numerous major commissions for churches in Paris and elsewhere His later work was marked both by Baroque emotionalism and by a realistic treatment of details foreign to the principles encouraged by the Academy. For example, before painting his Miraculous Draught of Fishes (1706), he studied fishing scenes on the spot at Dieppe.

— LINKS
— Self-Portrait (51x40cm copy; 975x760pix, 112kb)
— Descent from the Cross _ {same} (1697, 424x312cm) _ This bold and vigorous painting, with its magnificent harmony of warm colors, foreshadows the most beautiful of the nineteenth-century Romantic paintings.
— a different The Descent from the Cross
— The Education of the Virgin (1700)
— The Resurrection of Lazarus (1706)

^ Born on 05 April 1811: Jules Dupré, French Barbizon School painter who died on 06 October 1889, specialized in landscapes. — {Lui, au moins, il a fait honneur a son nom. Voyez ses tableaux du pré.}— Not to be confused with French Realist artist Julien Dupré [1851-1910]
— Dupré was a founder of modern French landscape painting. He was born in Nantes, the son of a porcelain manufacturer. Settling in Paris, he was influenced by 17th-century Dutch landscape paintings in the Louvre, by the early 19th-century English landscapist John Constable [1776-1837] and by the leading Barbizon landscapist Théodore Rousseau. (1812~1867). Dupré's work expresses the brooding, dramatic aspects of nature. In his later works, the vivid, sharply contrasting colors are applied in thick impasto.
— Dupré a laissé une œuvre variée, tant par les thèmes abordés que par le style qui n’a cessé d’évoluer au grés des influences subies (hollandaise, anglaise), et des émotions du peintre. Lié au groupe des artistes de Barbizon (Rousseau,Troyon, Daubigny), il s’en détache par une perception lyrique très personnelle de la nature qui doit en partie sa puissance évocatrice à Théodore Rousseau.
— He began his career in Creil, Ile de France, as a decorator of porcelain in the factory of his father, François Dupré [1781–], and later worked at the factory founded by his father in Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche, Limousin. It was in this region of central France that Dupré became enchanted by the beauty of nature. He went to Paris to study under the landscape painter Jean-Michel Diébolt [1779–], who had been a student of Jean-Louis Demarne. Dupré began to see nature with a new awareness of its moods, preferring to paint alone and en plein air. He was fascinated by bad weather, changes of light and sunsets. Many of his paintings depict quiet woodland glades, often with a pond or stream (e.g. Plateau of Bellecroix, 1830). In 1830–1831 he associated with other young landscape painters, including Louis Cabat, Constant Troyon, and Théodore Rousseau, and with them sought inspiration for his study of nature in the provinces, exhibiting the finished paintings at the annual Salons. In 1832 he visited the region of Berry with Cabat and Troyon, and in 1834 he was among the first French landscape painters to visit England. He spent time in London, Plymouth, and Southampton and painted several views of these cities (e.g. Environs of Southampton, 1835). While in England he met, and was influenced by, Constable, Turner, and Richard Parkes Bonington. He traveled to the Landes and the Pyrenees with Rousseau in 1844, and they also explored the forests of the Ile de France in search of motifs. Dupré also painted in Normandy, Picardy, and Sologne. Although he was a member of the Barbizon school, he did not visit the Forest of Fontainebleau as frequently as did others of the group, preferring instead to settle in 1849 in the village of L’Isle-Adam, north of Paris, where he remained for much of his life.
— The students of Jules Dupré included his brother Léon Victor Dupré [18 Jun 1816 – 1879], and Louis Valtat.

— LINKS
— Paysage au Temps des Foins) (66x105cm; 1/3 size, 102kb _ ZOOM to 2/3 size, 402kb)
— Paysage (43x59cm; 2/5 size, 72kb _ ZOOM to 4/5 size, 275kb) thatched houses by a canal or pond.
— La Grenouillère (24x35cm; half~size _ ZOOM to full size )
— Vaches en Paturage (1837; 600x824pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1923pix)
— Mer Agitée (1870; 600x772pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1801pix)
— Terrain Éboulé en Forêt de Compiègne (1876, 33x42cm; 600x755pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1761pix)
— Le Chemin Creux (1850, 101x81cm; 600x481pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1123pix)
— Chênes de Fontainebleau (1843, 81x99cm; 960x1170pix _ ZOOM to 1833x2234pix)
— Vue_du_Panthéon_et de_l'Église Saint-Étienne_du_Mont,_Paris.
— Les Berges d'une Rivière (1831, 30x54cm)
— Paysage avec Dame en Rouge (1830)

^ Born on 05 April 1913: Antoni Clavé, Catalan French painter, stage designer, lithographer, and occasional sculptor.
— Born in Barcelona, he worked as a house painter while taking evening classes in drawing at the Barcelona School of Art. Then he supported himself for several years by making drawings for children's comics and designing posters. He also began to experiment with paintings and collages. He fought in the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War and arrived in France as a refugee in 1939. He moved the same year to Paris, where he at first made his reputation as an illustrator; had his first Paris one-man exhibition at the bookshop Au Sans Pareil in 1940, but only began to paint seriously in 1941 under the influence of Vuillard and Bonnard. In 1944 he met Picasso and began making figure compositions of kings, harlequins, children, etc. and still lifes influenced by his recent work. He was active as a designer for the ballet and opera from 1946 to 1954, then he gave up this and book illustration to concentrate on painting. From 1956 he incorporated collage elements in many of his paintings, his work gradually becoming more and more abstract.

— LINKS
— Untitled (S-stencil?) (40x60cm; half~size, 245kb _ ZOOM to full size, 906kb)
— Artist at his Easel (49x64cm; half~size, 229kb _ ZOOM to full size, 851kb)
— Carmen, third of a portfolio of eight Metropolitan Opera Fine Arts Posters (91x61cm; 1/4 size, 85kb _ ZOOM to half~size, 281kb _ ZOOM++ not recommended to excessive full size, 1082kb)
— Enfant à la pastèque (1948, 55x46cm)

^ Died on 05 April 1862: Barend Cornelis Koekkoek {pronounced "quack, quack"?}, Dutch painter born on 11 October 1803.
— 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 traveled 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)

^ Born on 05 April (05 August?) 1865: Robert Polhill Bevan, English Camden Town Group painter and lithographer who died on 08 July 1925.
— Self-Portrait (1914, 46x26cm) >>>
— He studied at the Westminster School of Art and in Paris. In 1890–1891, having encountered Paul Sérusier at the Académie Julian in Paris, he made his first visit to Brittany, where he worked with the Pont-Aven group; he also developed an interest in lithography. After contact with Renoir, Bevan made a second visit to Brittany in 1893–1894, when he met and was influenced by Gauguin. From the early 1900s Bevan adopted a divisionist or pointillist style in paintings that often depicted London street scenes and horse trading, as in Horse Sale at the Barbican (1912), and landscapes painted on summer holidays in Devon and Cornwall, of which Green Devon (1919) is a striking example. In the last years of his life his style changed, the paint becoming thicker and more textural, with a new attention to the juxtaposition of masses. At times he approached a Cubist geometry of form, for example in rural scenes such as Hay Harvest (1916), while retaining the use of clear, pure color, and luminous colored shadows. His lithographs, which he made again from 1919, show a fluent and expressive line, with formal massing expressed through graduations of tints, as in London Church (1924), giving them a tonal delicacy equivalent to his oil paintings. Bevan was a founder-member of the Camden town group. Having contributed to the formation of the London Group he broke away in 1914 to form the Cumberland market group with Charles Ginner and Harold Gilman. Always keen to retain links with the French art scene, he and Ginner organized the exhibition Peintres Modernes Anglais at the Galerie Druet in Paris in 1921.
— Born at Hove in Sussex on 05 April 1865 Bevan was the fourth of six children. His father was a banker with a comfortable financial life style. First educated at Winchester and then by private tutors, his first teacher of drawing was Alfred Pearce who became one of the chief designers at ‘Doultons’. In 1888 Bevan went to the Westminster School of Art studying under Fred Brown before moving to Julian’s in Paris, a somewhat leisurely apprenticeship possible because of family backing.
Stanislawa

      At twenty-seven Bevan went to Tangiers and joined a group of artists. He had a great love of horses and for one season he was Master of the Tangier Hunt. Bevan moved on to Brittany for two years and then lived in a lonely farmhouse at Hawkridge on Exmoor for three years where he indulged in hunting, painting and print making (mostly of hunting subjects).
      In the summer of 1897 Bevan attended the wedding ,in Jersey, of his friend Eric Forbes Robertson who was marrying an art student from Poland. The bridesmaid was also a Polish art student, Stanislawa de Karlowska [<<< portrait by him, 1920, 46x38cm]. It was apparently love at first sight but because of language difficulties they had to communicate in French which was their only common language. Many were the letters Bevan wrote her and then he journeyed into the depths of Polish countryside to her father’s house. They were married in Warsaw on 09 December 1897.
      The Bevans set up home near Swiss Cottage in London but made regular visits between 1899 and 1904 to Poland where he painted landscapes and horses. An exhibition of his work in 1908 at the first Allied Artists’ Exhibition broke his isolation as an artist and he became part of the circle of the Fitzroy Street Group and an original member of the Camden Town Group, the London Group and the Cumberland Market Group.

— LINKS
— Horse Sale at the Barbican (1912, 79x122cm; 326x512pix, 32kb) _ Bevan was fond of riding and often painted horses, almost always in London. They were either cab horses or, as here, horses being sold in a market. The auctioneer is standing in the decorated box in the background. Bevan's attitude in choosing to paint London, where he lived, matched the urban realism of the Camden Town Group, implied in their name. This is one of his largest paintings, and was carefully designed in detail in a preparatory drawing. The flat and textured color that characterises this work first appears in Bevan's paintings at about this time. This picture was included in the Camden Town Group exhibition of 1912
     After training in London and Paris, Bevan worked in the early 1890s at Pont Aven in Brittany. There he met Gauguin. The influence of French Post-Impressionism, with its emphasis on the flat, patterned surface of the painting and its use of prominent outlines is very clear in Bevan's work. His paintings, however, tend to use more subdued colors, appropriate to his English urban subjects. After settling in London in 1910 he began to paint scenes of horse-drawn cabs and — as here — horse sales. In these works the nobility of the animal is contrasted with the drab but respectful character of the onlookers.
— Devonshire Valley (501x600pix, 46kb) _ Bevan’s first visit to Applehayes, with his wife, was in the summer of 1912. They returned in 1913 and 1915. Due to the war Squire Harrison found it impossible to continue offering hospitality to his artist friends. Bevan had taken a special liking to the Blackdown Hills and from 1916 to 1919 he rented a cottage called Lytchetts in the Bolham Water Valley, Clayhidon. He would stay there from early May to the middle of November for a long working holiday. His wife and children, Robert and his sister (later Mrs. Charles Baty), would visit him during the school holidays. At intervals, particularly during the winter months he would travel with his family to Poland to visit relatives. On one such trip whilst drawing at Opatow he was apprehended by Russian Police for alleged spying (the second time this happened was whilst drawing in Camden Town).
      Lytchetts was owned by the Chard family, who lived at Harts Farm. Anne Chard remembers Bevan from her childhood recalling he was of a shy retiring disposition and not easy to communicate with. However she, her brother and sisters frequently saw him. A solitary gentleman tramping miles across the Blackdowns carrying either a sketch book and pencils or paints and easel tucked under his arm. Anne could remember Bevan’s look of pleased amusement when turning suddenly from the easel he encountered a child gazing in wonder at the remarkable likeness on canvas of two dearly loved shire horses, Prince and Farmer. On another occasion the Chard children having been asked to collect Prince from the common decided to mount and play at hunting on the way home. Three young children hanging on for dear life trotting along a narrow lane where they met the tall familiar figure and gaily called out "Good afternoon, Mr. Bevan". The artist lifted his bowler hat in acknowledgement and stopped dead in his tracks gazing incredulously at the spectacle before him. He was dressed in a light grey check suit with a watch-chain across his waistcoat. A bow tie and spats added to the elegance of his appearance. One of his nicknames in London was "Prime Minister" because of his bearing and attire.
      In 1920 Bevan moved away from Clayhidon but remained close by at Goulds Farm, Luppitt. In 1922 he spent a few weeks in a farm house near his old friend Harrison and in 1923 Bevan bought Marlpits, in the middle of Luppitt Common. Whilst alone at Marlpits in 1925 cancer was diagnosed. He was taken to London by car but failed to recover from the serious operation involved and died in St. Thomas’s Hospital on 08 July 1925.
      As can be seen, of the three artists Bevan spent by far the most time in Clayhidon and naturally more of his works of the area have survived. However he was very critical and may have destroyed much work. Very little survives from his three years on Exmoor.
      During his first visit in 1912 Bevan painted Evening in the Culm Valley (private collection). During his next visit in 1913 he produced Haze Over The Valley and Devonshire Valley. From the third visit in 1915 he painted at least seven works including Dunn’s Cottage (City Art Gallery, Leeds). Leeds Art Gallery acquired this in 1983 and the assistant keeper Jonathan Benington wrote to the Clayhidon Local History Group requesting information about the building for an article he was writing. He had concluded by consulting a large Scale Ordnance Survey map that it must be Dunsgreen Farm. We were able to tell him of the correct location. The cottage was known as Shepherds Villa. It is now much altered but still standing at the bottom of Applehayes Lane. Frank Dunn was Squire Harrison’s groom and lived there. A sketch of the cottage is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The Little Oak Tree (King George VI Art Gallery, Port Elizabeth, South Africa) was first exhibited as The Back of Dunn’s Cottage. Brimley Hill and a crayon and watercolor Sunshine at Applehayes are others. Then follows a series painted in the Rosemary Lane area. Rosemary No.I and Rosemary No.II (private collections), Rosemary (Victoria and Albert Museum).
      From his days at Lytchetts we have The Chestnut Tree. This was painted at Harts Farm where the Chard family lived. — The Hay Harvest: Anne Chard remembered Bevan sketching this and identifies the central figure as her father. — The Long Barn: one of the two views painted by Bevan of barns at Harts Farm. Harts Farm and a lithograph Harts Farm. — Mare and Foal painted at Lytchetts. — Timber Hauling No.I again painted at Lytchetts and portrays working horses. A second larger version was painted in London during 1918. — Culme Bridge, Hemyock, the scene shows the bridge between Culmbridge House and Culmbridge Mill and looks directly to the building at the road junction in between. — Gore’s Applehayes.
      Other known paintings by Bevan of the area are Clayhidon Church — Caller at the Mill — Troakes Farm — Up Bolham Water — An Outhouse, Devon — Fields at Applehayes — Applehayes Across the Valley — Fields Farm and a lithograph Smithy Barn, Bolham.
      Finally two other paintings need to be mentioned. Firstly Self Portrait by Bevan, which was reported to be a good likeness and secondly a painting by his wife Stanislawa de Karlowska: At Church Staunton, Somerset.
— Ploughing in Brittany (1894, 25x35cm; 25x35cm, 22kb)
— The Polish Tavern (1903; 542x760pix, 86kb)

^ Died on 05 April 1906: Jonathan Eastman Johnson, US painter and printmaker born on 29 July 1824.
— Between 1840 and 1842 he was apprenticed to the Boston lithographer John H. Bufford [1810–1870]. Johnson's mastery of this medium is apparent in his few lithographs, of which the best known is Marguerite (1870). In 1845 he moved to Washington DC, where he drew portraits in chalk, crayon and charcoal of prominent US personalities, including Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams and Dolly Madison (all 1846). In 1846 he settled in Boston and brought his early portrait style to its fullest development.
His chiaroscuro charcoal drawings, of exceptional sensitivity, were remarkably sophisticated for an essentially self-trained artist. In 1848 he went to Europe to study painting at the Düsseldorf Akademie. During his two-year stay he was closely associated with Emanuel Leutze, and painted his first genre subjects, for example The Counterfeiters (1855). He then spent three years in The Hague, studying color, composition and naturalism in 17th-century Dutch painting. The influence of the Dutch masters on his portrait style was so great that he was called ‘the American Rembrandt’.
In 1855, after two months in Thomas Couture’s Paris studio, he returned to the US. He then turned his attention to US subject-matter. He made studies of Indians in Wisconsin, and painted portraits while in Washington (e.g. George Shedden Riggs, 1855) and Cincinnati. He finally settled in New York.

— LINKS
— General Henry Sewall (1844, 54x38cm) _ detail: head and shoulders
— The Eavesdropper (1865, 31x38cm; 864x1105pix) — The Brown Family (1869, 98x82cm)
— The Pension Claim Agent (1867, 64x95cm) — What the Shell Says (1875, 56x43cm)
— A Day Dream (1877, 61x31cm) — Woman in White Dress (1875, 57x36cm)
— Old Kate's Bridge, Ulster County (1872, 46x77cm) — A Different Sugaring Off (1865, 43x81cm) — The Mother (1870, 39x33cm) — The Old Stagecoach (1871)
— The Cranberry Harvest on the Island of Nantucket (1880)

^ Born on 22 August 1732: Jean-Honoré Fragonard, French painter specialized in Historical Subjects, who died on 22 August 1806. — Husband of Marie Anne Gérard Fragonard [1745-1823]. Brother-in-law of Marguerite Gérard [1761-1837].
— Fragonard was described by his early biographers as a man of many love affairs as well as many talents, whose conviviality was legend. In reality, there is little of Fragonard's personal life that we know with certainty; he left nothing in writing. In lieu of fact, his biography seems to have been derived from the images he created, those of erotic scenarios, frivolous fête gallantes, and imaginative allegory. Much like his teacher, Boucher, Fragonard's art evokes the courtly fantasies of the eighteenth century. Also like Boucher, Fragonard has been underestimated as a serious painter because of his fanciful subject matter. Yet, he studied closely the works of Italian and Dutch masters without falling into simple imitation. His themes, while never serious or profound, were done with a sensitivity to color and texture that describe a sincere love for the pleasures of the senses.
— Rococo painter Fragonard's works are characterized by a delicate hedonism. He was the son of a haberdasher's assistant. His family moved to Paris about 1738, and in 1747 he was apprenticed to a lawyer, who, noticed his talent for drawing and suggested that he study painting. François Boucher accepted him as a student in 1748, and in 1752, recommended that he compete for the Prix de Rome scholarship to study under the court painter to Louis XV, Carle Van Loo, in Paris. In 1756, Fragonard went off with other scholarship winners to the French Academy at Rome. At the academy he copied paintings by Roman Baroque artists, and made numerous sketches of the Roman countryside. His scholarship ended in 1759 but he was allowed to remain in residence for several months. In 1760 a wealthy patron took him on a prolonged tour of Italy, where he studied Italian paintings and antiquities and made hundreds of sketches of the local scenery.
      After returning to Paris, Fragonard exhibited some landscape paintings at the Salon, one of which was purchased for King Louis XV. Subsequently, he was commissioned to paint a companion piece, granted a studio in the Louvre Palace, and accepted as an Academician. However, after 1767 he ceased to exhibit at the salons, and concentrated on landscapes (often in the manner of 17th-century Dutch painter Jacob van Ruisdael [1628-1692]), portraits and decorative, semierotic outdoor party scenes in the style of Boucher. His admiration for Rembrandt [1606-1669], Peter Paul Rubens [28 Jun 1577 – 30 May 1640], Frans Hals [1582 – 01 Sep 1666], and a Venetian contemporary, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo [05 Mar 1696 – 27 Mar 1770], are evident in a large series of heads of old men, between 1760 and 1767, and a series of portraits (1765-1772) in a similar style in which the sitters' fantastic costumes were emphasized rather than their facial expressions. In 1769 he married Marie-Anne Gérard from Grasse. In the last years before the Revolution, Fragonard turned from Rococo to Neoclassical subject matter and developed a less fluent style of painting.
— Fragonard was a painter of the rococo age who became a favorite in the courts of Louis XV and Louis XVI for his delicately colored scenes of romance, often in garden settings. Fragonard was born in Grasse. He began to study painting at the age of 18 in Paris with Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, but he formed his style principally on the work of his next master, François Boucher.
      Fragonard won the Prix de Rome in 1752. After studying for three years with the French painter Carle Vanloo, he studied and painted for six years in Italy, where he was influenced by the paintings of the Venetian master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo [1696-1770].
      Fragonard first painted in a style suitable to his religious and historical subjects. After 1765, however, he worked in the rococo style then fashionable in France. These later paintings, the works for which he is best known, reflect the gaiety, frivolity, and voluptuousness of the period. They are characterized by fluid lines, frothy flowers amid loose foliage, and gracefully posed figures, usually of ladies and their lovers or peasant mothers with children.
      The French Revolution (1789-1799), which destroyed the nobility on which Fragonard depended for commissions, ruined him financially. Although befriended by Jacques Louis David [30 Aug 1748 – 29 Dec 1825], the leading painter of the new French classical school, Fragonard did not adjust to the new style and died poor in Paris.
      His chief work was decorative panels commissioned by Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis XV, for her chateau at Louveciennes. She rejected the panels as unsuitable. The series that he executed there, The Progress of Love, includes the paintings The Pursuit and The Lover Crowned (both 1773). Some other of Fragonard's works are The Bathers (1760) and The Study (1769), The Swing (1766) and The Love Letter (1770)
^
— Fragonard's scenes of frivolity and gallantry are among the most complete embodiments of the Rococo spirit. He was a student of Chardin for a short while and also of Boucher, before winning the Prix de Rome in 1752. From 1756 to 1761 he was in Italy, where he eschewed the work of the approved masters of the Renaissance, but formed a particular admiration for Tiepolo. He traveled and drew landscapes with Hubert Robert and responded with especial sensitivity to the gardens of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli, memories of which occur in paintings throughout his career.
      In 1765 he became a member of the Academy with his historical picture in the Grand Manner Coroesus Sacrificing himself to Save Callirhoe. He soon abandoned this style, however, for the erotic canvases by which he is chiefly known (The Swing, 1766). After his marriage in 1769 he also painted children and family scenes. He stopped exhibiting at the Salon in 1767 and almost all his work was done for private patrons. Among them was Mme du Barry, Louis XV's most beautiful mistress, for whom he painted the works that are often regarded as his masterpieces — the four canvases representing The Progress of Love. These, however, were returned by Mme du Barry and it seems that taste was already turning against Fragonard's lighthearted style. He tried unsuccessfully to adapt himself to the new Neoclassical vogue, but in spite of the admiration and support of David he was ruined by the Revolution and died in poverty. Fragonard was a prolific painter, but he rarely dated his works and it is not easy to chart his stylistic develop;ent. Alongside those of Boucher, his paintings seem to sum up an era. His delicate coloring, witty characterization, and spontaneous brushwork ensured that even his most erotic subjects are never vulgar, and his finest work has an irresistible verve and joyfulness.
—      Fragonard was born at Grasse in a merchant's family. When he was 6, his family moved to Paris. At the age of thirteen Fragonard was placed as a clerk with a notary. As he was obsessed with painting, though, his parents took him to see Boucher [29 Sep 1703 – 30 May 1770], a most fashionable painter. Lacking any training, Fragonard was not trained at first by Boucher, but was sent to Chardin [02 Nov 1699 – 06 Dec 1779]. Life as an apprentice was tedious, however, and Fragonard's lack of patience with copying eventually provoked Chardin's ire, and he was sent packing. Fragonard nailed his courage to the sticking place and approached Boucher again; this time with a number of sketches he had made based on pictures he had seen in Parisian churches.

      Impressed, Boucher finally accepted him as student (and eventually friend). He encouraged him to apply for the Grand Prix for painting, and his winning composition Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Idols earned him a permanent place at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Destined for Rome, Fragonard enrolled at the Ecole Royale des Elèves Protégés in 1753. Under the tutelage of Carl van Loo [15 Feb 1705 – 15 Jul 1765] he studied history, geography, mythology - enjoying it so much that when an opening was available in Rome, he petitioned the committee asking to stay until the end of term with van Loo.
      In 1756 Fragonard left for the French Academy in Rome. There he studied under Natoire. Although discouraged with the quality of Fragonard's work at first (and especially his lack of decisiveness) he was eventually won over. While in Rome, Fragonard became very close to Hugh Robert and Abbé de Saint-Non. The latter took him to Naples, Bologna and Venice where the young painter made a special study of Tiepolo. Returning to Paris, he created an uninspired and rote painting for the 1765 Salon entitled High Priest Coresus sacrificing himself for Callirrhoe, perfectly suited for the Salon, so that he won unanimous admission to the Academy. But the public was as unimpressed as Fragonard himself. He realized that he was not cut out for this kind of painting, turned his back on academic art, and began doing the discretely erotic pictures which soon brought him fame and success.
      Fragonard was probably the swiftest painter of all time. His success can be partly attributed to this dizzying velocity. Not constrained by his subjects, Fragonard captures the acceleration of time, the frivolity of the moment, the foibles and superficiality of his time. Never attempting to moralize or paint a distortion of reality, he does indeed paint a portrait of the 18th century. Peering closely, you can see it in every hurried daub and stroke - each abandoned in eagerness for the next. His paintings are so very like the society he painted, ever on the move for the next diversion, the next entertainment. Such a headlong rush into pleasure could only sustain itself for a short time.
      The end of the French monarchy brought the end of Fragonard's popularity, but did not dim his inimitable spirit. The revolution cut short his career and reduced him to poverty, but David (perhaps remembering Fragonard's influence) offered him a position on the Museum Commission. He no longer painted, but had a part in preserving the paintings of the past.
      Out of his element in a world changed out of recognition, Fragonard never lost the joy of the times that he lived through. He died in the summer of 1806 of a stroke while eating ice cream. Luxury made him, his joy in it and his skill at portraying it, and in the end, luxury killed him too.
      "He who has not lived before the Revolution does not know the sweetness of living." This remark by Talleyrand may serve to exculpate Fragonard's son - for the sin he committed when he burned a large collection of his father's prints saying, "I am offering a holocaust to good taste". Only those who lived it may truly comment on it, and Jean Honoré Fragonard remains the perfect spokesman for an age of momentary pleasures and quick delights, unthinking elegance and never-ending grace.
^
— LINKS
— La Résistance Inutile (1770)
— La Bonne Maman (1762)
— L'Éducation de la Vierge (1773)
— Le Verrou (1778, 73x93cm) _ It was sold in December 1999 at Christie's, for £5'281'500, world record auction price for any French Old Master: _ Le Verrou is one of the most passionate images of seduction produced in the 18th century. The man’s straining gesture to engage the door lock and prevent the woman from fleeing is the perfect analogy to his yearning sexual desire. The implied violence of the episode is somewhat undercut by the theatrical nature of the scene, exemplified in the balletic posture of the woman and the coyly placed apple on the bedstand, suggesting that temptation has been employed to reach this stage. The apple, with its connotation of original sin, is also significant in that this work was painted for the Marquis de Veri, supposedly as a pendant to another of his ten Fragonards, an Adoration by the Shepherds of exactly the same size. Both works date from 1778 and make use of a similar range of colors and a Rembrandtesque burst of light. In the case of Le Verrou, this dramatic chiaroscuro is particularly effective, leading the viewer’s eye along the diagonal from the intensely lit bolt down and across the woman’s body to her delicate foot hidden in the shadows but clearly pointed toward the large bed. From this we can conclude that her “fall” is inevitable. The possible juxtaposition of this most secular of subjects with the Adoration by the Shepherds suggests the contrast between sacred and profane love or sin and redemption.
— Fantastic Figure: Portrait of Abbé de Saint-Non
— Diderot
— L'Amant Couronné
— Le Guerrier
— Education is Everything
— The Stolen Kiss
— Le Rendez-Vous
— Petit Garçon à la Curiosité
— Jeune Fille à la Marmotte
— La Lectrice (1776, 82x65cm) _ Few artists can have enjoyed painting more than Fragonard. The way he applied his paint in broad sensuous strokes, which have a life of their own, communicates the artist's pleasure to the spectator. The plumped cushion, graceful fingers, curling bows, and the ruffle incised with the end of the brush, all reveal a masterly control of paint.
— Psyche showing her Sisters her Gifts from Cupid (1753, 168x192cm) _ A prize-winning student of François Boucher, Fragonard in this youthful picture, painted at the École des Élèves Protégés in Paris, seems a perfect exponent of the taste of Boucher's patrons King Louis XV and his mistress the Marquise de Pompadour. However, after an unsuccessful final bid for institutional recognition at the Paris Salon exhibition of 1767, Fragonard virtually disappeared from official artistic life under the monarchy, working almost entirely for private patrons, many of them his friends. He was thus able to give free rein to a more individualistic celebration of nature, instinct and impulse. Whether in oils, gouache, pastels, in engravings and etchings, or in his many drawings in chalk, pen or wash, he came to efface the distinctions between sketch and finished work, and even between the boundaries of the genres. We cannot always tell, for example, whether any one of his many pictures of single figures is a portrait in fancy dress, or imaginary.
      On his two visits to Italy, the first to the French Academy in Rome (1756-61), and the second over a decade later as the guest of a patron, Fragonard was drawn to the landscape and to contemporary and near-contemporary Italian artists, notably Tiepolo and Giordano. He was unmoved either by ancient ruins or by Renaissance art. With the collapse of the art market during the French Revolution he retired to his native Grasse in Southern France, but was drawn into politics by his son's teacher, the painter David. His late paintings show him trying to conform, not always successfully, to the Neo-classical austerity of David's 'republican' style.
      The subject here is drawn from the allegorical tale of Cupid and Psyche by the Latin poet Apuleius, probably in a French version by La Fontaine. Psyche is showing off her 'storehouses of treasure' to her sisters in the magical castle in which she has been installed by Cupid, god of love. The sisters 'conceived great envy' - personified here by the serpent-haired figure of Eris, goddess of discord, hovering above — and try to wreck her happiness by destroying her faith in her invisible lover. In its handling of paint, and in such details as the chubby flying babies — the putti of ancient art, who here represent the castle's invisible servants — the picture, painted when the artist was barely 21, betrays the influence of Rubens's works at the Luxembourg Palace and also of Watteau.
      The composition is derived from a tapestry design for the same subject by Boucher. But the colors, with harmonies of gold and orange beginning to replace Boucher's accords of rose and blue, are already recognisably Fragonard's own. They appear in their purest and most concentrated form in the flowers at the foot of Psyche's throne, the area of the painting most clearly 'in focus'. Definition diminishes towards the edges of the picture, as it might in a convex mirror, and with it the colors tend to lose their identity, to mix and mingle, framing the main figures in shades of grey or darkened tones, presaging the disasters to come.

— The Musical Contest (1754, 62x74cm) _ Additions made to this canvas, probably in the late 18th century, were turned over in 1987 to reveal this engaging composition by the young Fragonard working in Boucher's idiom.
— Le petit parc (1765, 37x45cm) Fragonard used light and atmosphere to absorb people and objects until one is left with an airy, empty but still vibrating, surface; it is as if a conjuring trick had been played over some painting by Boucher, from which so much 'reality' has been abstracted. For both Fragonard and the Guardi, this is an escape from the discipline represented by Boucher and Tiepolo, but it is given an additional twist by Fragonard's knowledge and admiration of Tiepolo - the wilder genius anyway, but one become wilder and more romantic in Fragonard's interpretations of his compositions. Just as Veronese had provided Tiepolo with material out of which to build his own fantasy, so Tiepolo stimulated Fragonard.
Fragonard is a romantic rococo painter, inspired more perhaps by the picturesque aspects of nature than by people, who are usually dwarfed into insignificance beside the foaming trees which shoot up like great jets in his landscapes. When this Francesco Guardi-like diminution does not take place, Fragonard seems to produce a version of Gian Antonio's style, in which figures become mere arabesques of paint, animated but often faceless, tight balls of energy that shoot about the canvas under the impulse of his brush. In both styles they remain the painter's puppets, and one is always conscious of manipulation. Although capable of doing so, he is really too eager to stop and record natural appearances, actual textures, or facial expressions. This charming parkscape is composed from drawings made in the gardens of the Villa d'Este in Tivoli in 1760.
— Coresus Sacrificing himselt to Save Callirhoe (1765, 309x400cm) _ This picture is a tapestry cartoon for the Gobelin factory. The tapestry was never made. It was thanks to this painting that Fragonard was accepted by the Académie as a 'history painter'. He was soon to abandon this type of subject-matter and devote himself to the pleasant, often frivolous paintings for which he is famous. When Fragonard tackled the history picture - a rare occasion - it, like his other paintings, was animated by love. The large Corésus sacrificing himself to save Callirhoé, shown at the Salon of 1765, is Fragonard's effort to combine his own tendencies with academic requirements. It is not surprising that he exhibited there only once afterwards; this sort of machine was replaced by brilliant, witty decorations, positive riots of cupids and bathers, kissing lips and torn clothes, which always express love in action. The Corésus is negative love, sublime self-sacrifice, and in effect useless passion. Fragonard docs his best to excite the composition, sending waves of smoky clouds and excited winged figures to fill the space between the two pillars not occupied by the strangely feminine priest and the swooning heroine - herself almost as if ravished by love. Perhaps hints from Boucher and Tiepolo worked on Fragonard to emulate the high style for which he was not suited. His genius lay in aiming lower, from an academic standpoint, in being more rational and natural - that is, by being more witty, mischievous, and relaxed.
But in 1765 this was not yet apparent, though perhaps suspected. The whole, high, rococo fabric was toppling. For a moment the painter of the Corésus seemed the man who might keep it still upright. The picture itself was thought by Diderot to have attracted attention less by its own merits than by the need in France to find a successor to the established Carle van Loo and the supposedly promising Deshays, both of whom died that year. Boucher's talent had patently declined. Great painters, Diderot wrote in the same context, 'sont aujourd'hui fort rares en Italie', and the only person he could think of comparing with Fragonard was Mengs. At Venice, Gian Antonio Guardi was dead; Tiepolo was self exiled in Spain; Pittoni, last of the generation of talented practitioners still in the city, was to die in 1768.
— The Swing (1767, 81x64cm) _ This painting was originally commissioned from a serious history painter by an unknown French nobleman (he was not the Baron de St Julien as has been assumed in the past): 'I desire', he said, 'that you should paint Madame (pointing to his mistress) on a swing which is being set in motion by a Bishop. You must place me where I can have a good view of the legs of this pretty little thing....'. The serious history painter could think of nothing else to say except to recommend Fragonard as a more suitable painter.
— Man Playing an Instrument (The Music) (1769, 80x65cm) _ The painting belongs to a series representing Music, Poetry, Song and Comedy.
— Young Woman Playing with a Dog (1772, 70x87cm)
— The Confession of Love (1771, 318x215cm) _ The painting belongs to a series of four entitled Progress of Love. The cycle, often regarded as the artist's masterpiece, was painted for Mme du Barry, Louis XV's most beautiful mistress. The paintings, however, were returned by Mme du Barry since that time the taste has been already turned against Fragonard's lighthearted style.
— The Bathers (1775, 64x80cm)
— Adoration by the Shepherds (1775, 73x93cm)
— A Young Scholar (1778, 45x38cm) _ One of several sentimental heads by Fragonard, comparable to some extent with those by Greuze, though more plausible and individual.
— The Souvenir (1778, 25x19cm) _ The girl carves in the tree the initials of her lover, whose letter lies on the ground.
— A Boy as Pierrot (1780, 60x50cm) _ The fanciful composition imitates several miniatures which have been attributed to Fragonard, whose wife exhibited a number of miniatures of children between 1779 and 1782.
— The Love Letter (1775, 83x67cm) _ This picture exemplifies Fragonard's feeling for color, his sensitive handling of effects of light, and his extraordinary technical facility. The elegant blue dress, lace cap, and coiffure of the woman seated at her writing table must have been the height of fashion at the time this painting was made. The inscription on the letter she holds has given rise to different interpretations. It may simply refer to her cavalier, but if it is read Cuvillere, then the sitter would be the daughter of François Boucher, Fragonard's teacher. Marie Émilie Boucher, born in 1740, was widowed in 1769 and married, in 1773, her father's friend, the architect Charles Étienne Gabriel Cuvillier.
— The Fountain of Love (1785, 64x51cm) _ The melting chiaroscuro and classical figures contrast with Fragonard's earlier cheerful informality and anticipate the classicism which came to dominate French painting in the 1790s.
— Artist in the Studio (1774, red chalk 38x49cm) — Condorcet Se Donnant La Mort — Park Scene (black chalk, brown ink wash, 15x20cm) — Woman with a Parrot (1780, 41x29cm) — Au génie de Franklin (50x32cm) — L'Armoire (1778, 36x48cm) — Saint Jérôme (etching 16x11cm)

^
Died on a 05 April:

1932 Maria Guttierrez-Cueto y Blanchard, Spanish artist born in 1881.

1894 Johann-Heinrich-Carl Koopman, German artist born on 15 March 1797.

^ 1747 (03 Apr?) “l'abbate Ciccio” Francesco Solimena, Italian artist born on 04 October 1657. Son of Angelo Solimena [17 Nov 1629 – 1716], Francesco was a prolific artist, who created many frescoes, altarpieces, mythological paintings and portraits, he dominated Neapolitan painting in the first half of the 18th century and won admiration for his art throughout Europe. In his early years, influenced above all by Luca Giordano and Mattia Preti, he developed a highly personal and dramatic handling of light and shade, yet his later art reveals a tendency towards a more restrained classicism. In his Self-portrait (1730), Solimena emphasized his dignity and fame as a painter whose works were prized by the most distinguished princely patrons. — Nicola Maria Rossi was an assistant of Solimena. — The students of Solimena included Bartolomeo Altomonte, Giuseppe Bonito, Lorenzo de Caro, Sebastiano Conca, Mario Gaetano Gioffredo, Daniel Gran, Francesco de Mura, Francesco Narice, Allan Ramsay [1713-1784], Pietro Antonio Rotari, Ferdinando Sanfelice, Gaspare Traversi, Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, Johann Jakob Zeiller, Johan Joseph Zoffany.

Born on a 05 April:

1898 Geer van Velde, Dutch painter, active in France, who died on 05 March 1978; brother of Bram van Velde [19 Oct 1895 – 28 Dec 1981]. Geer van Velde was self-taught as a painter. From 1904 until 1924 he lived in The Hague, where he was apprenticed to the decorating firm of Kramer. In his spare time he painted subjects from nature. In 1925 he followed his brother to Paris. Influenced by Marc Chagall he painted abstract motifs in a clear coloring, adapted from his environment, for example Palette and Brushes (1930). After 1930 he experimented extensively, developing a painting style characterized by a systematic relationship between large shapes. In 1937 van Velde met the playwright Samuel Beckett. In the year of his first one-man exhibition, at the Guggenheim Jeune Gallery in London (1939), he settled in Cagnes-sur-Mer, where he created works that became the basis for his post-war development: a progression from recognizable imagery towards abstract–geometric paintings, which was preceded by changes in his drawings and gouaches.

1866 Ferdinand Hart Nibbrig, Dutch painter and printmaker who died on 12 October 1915. From 1881 he studied at the Quellinus School in Amsterdam, and from 1883 to 1888 he attended classes with August Allebé at the city’s Rijksacademie voor Beeldende Kunsten. At the age of 22 he went to Paris for further training at the Académie Julian and in the studio of Fernand Cormon; there he first saw the work of Paul Signac and Georges Seurat, who strongly influenced his style. He had previously painted in the style of his Impressionist contemporaries Jacobus van Looy and Georg Hendrik Breitner, but after 1889 he modified his palette and began to employ the Pointillist style. In 1889 he returned to the Netherlands.

1797 Johann Fischbach, Austrian landscapist who died on 19 June 1871. — {Did he turn to art after becoming frustrated as an angler because, very often after he had reeled in a trout, the fishing warden would say: “It's too small; throw the fish back, Fischbach!”?} — About the middle of the 19th century, Fischbach designed for himself, in Salzburg, a Swiss-style villa, the architectural style considered at the time ideal for living in harmony with nature. An important co-founder of the Salzburg Kunstverein, Fischbach had a stimulating and lasting influence on the Salzburg art scene, and his series of steel engravings showing views of Salzburg and Upper Austria enjoyed great success. After the death of his son, Fischbach moved to Munich.

1766 Henriette-Felicité Tassaert Robert, French pastellist and engraver who died on 06 August 1818. She was the daughter of of Flemish sculptor Jean-Pierre-Antoine Tassaert [19 Aug 1727 – 21 Jan 1788] and miniaturist Marie-Edmée Moreau Tassaert. She studied under her father before entering the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, where she worked under Johann Christoph Frisch and Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, then continued her training under Anton Graff. In 1787 she became an honorary member of the Akademie in Berlin and in 1792 she married the French lawyer Louis Robert. She specialized in pastel portraits, depicting such famous Berlin figures as J. C. Duport, Director and cellist of the Royal Opera in Berlin, and members of the Prussian royal family, notably Frederick the Great, a portrait that was engraved by Henriette’s brother Jean-Joseph-François Tassaert [1765-1835].

<<< ART 04 Apr

ANY DAY ...IN ART ...IN HISTORY ||| HISTORY “4” APR 05 ||| ALTERNATE SITES

ART 06 Apr >>>

TO THE TOP

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO WRITE TO ART “4” APRIL
http://www.safran-arts.com/42day/art/art4apr/art0405.html
http://h42day.0catch.com/art/art4apr/art0405.html
http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/all42day/art/art4apr/art0405.html
http://www.ifrance.com/7aujourdhui/art/art4apr/art0405.html
updated Sunday 04-Apr-2004 15:26 UT

site safe for children