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ART “4” “2”-DAY  25 April
NAME
THAT
abspic
4~2day
DEATHS: 1892 BRADFORD — 1931 MINTCHINE — 1690 TENIERS
BIRTHS: 1921 APPEL — 1824 BOULANGER
^ Died on 25 April 1892: William Bradford, cool US painter and photographer born on 30 April 1823.
— He became a full-time artist about 1853, after spending a few years in the wholesale clothing business. In 1855 he set up a studio in Fairhaven MA, and made a living by painting ship portraits. At the same time he studied under the slightly more experienced marine painter Albert van Beest [1820–1860], and they collaborated on several works. By 1860 Bradford had moved to New York and was starting to gain a reputation for such paintings of the coast of Labrador as Ice Dwellers Watching the Invaders (1870), which were based on his own photographs and drawings. From 1872 to 1874 he was in London, lecturing on the Arctic and publishing his book The Arctic Regions (1873). Queen Victoria commissioned him to paint an Arctic scene that was shown at the Royal Academy in 1875. On his return to the US, Bradford was elected an associate member of the National Academy of Design. In later years his tight, realistic style went out of favor as French Impressionism became increasingly popular.

— LINKS
— The Coast of Labrador (1864, 71x112cm; 1/3 size, 130kb _ ZOOM to 2/3 size, 491kb) _ with a large abandoned shipwreck.
— The Coast of Labrador (1866, 72x113cm; 1/3 size, 148kb) _ without any shipwreck, but with a man sitting in his beached rowboat.
— The Coast of Labrador (1879, 46x76cm; half~size, 136kb) _ without any shipwreck or rowboat, but with two large ships and many small ones, all afloat and under sail.
— Whalers Trapped by Arctic Ice (1879, 28 x 44 in; 791x1261pix, 170kb)
— Sealers Crushed by Icebergs (1866, 72.5 x 120.5 in; 757x1263pix, 129kb)
— Scene in the Arctic (1880, 75x121cm, 3/10 size, 109kb _ ZOOM to 3/5 size, 421kb) with ship and iceberg.
— Clipper Ship Northern Light of Boston (1854, 33 x 45 in; 824x1254pix; 182kb)
— Arctic Caravan (45x78cm) — Ships and Iceberg (46x77cm)
— Straits of Belle Isle (31x51cm) — Winter Sunset (65x105cm)
— Yosemite (1878 drawing, 51x76cm; half~size, 186kb)
— 68 images at Webshots
^ Born on 25 April 1921: Karel Appel, Dutch Abstract Expressionist painter, sculptor, ceramicist, designer, printmaker, and writer. — {Est-ce qu'on faisait appel à Appel pour les sujets difficiles?}{It does not seem that other artists did paint still-lifes with Appel, though some did paint still-lifes with apple.}
— He was first encouraged to paint by an uncle, who gave him a set of paints for his 15th birthday, and he also took painting lessons. From 1940 to 1943 he studied at the Rijksakademie of Amsterdam, where he became friendly with Corneille. His earliest works recalled the painting of George Hendrik Breitner; during World War II, however, he began to paint with a more vigorous palette, with a clear interest in German Expressionism and above all in the work of van Gogh.
      There was a turning-point in Appel’s style in 1945 when he attempted to start anew by working in the spirit of children's drawings. He found inspiration in the art of the Ecole de Paris and in particular of Matisse and Picasso. This influence remained visible in his work until 1948, for example in a series of plaster sculptures that he made at this time. From 1947, his completely personal, brightly colored universe of simple, childlike beings and friendly animals populated gouaches, oil pastel drawings, painted wood sculptures and, gradually, oil paintings. His sense of humor comes to the fore in grotesque assembled pieces and wooden reliefs and paintings such as Hip, Hip, Hooray (1949).
     In 1947-1948 Appel made some rough painted wood reliefs incorporating corks, pieces of timber and so on, and with imagery of children. He founded with Corneille and Constant in 1948 the Experimental Group in Amsterdam, contributed to the periodical Reflex and took an active part in the Cobra group 1948-1951 with Jorn and others.
     In 1948, together with Dutch artist Corneille [03 Jul 1922~], Danish artist Asger Jorn [03 Mar 1914 – 01 May 1973], and Belgian artist Pierre Alechinsky, Appel helped form an experimental group called CoBrA (from the initials of the members' home cities: Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam). Finding inspiration in folk art, children's drawings, and prehistoric art, CoBrA glorified instinct and opposed rigorously intellectual approaches to art, aims it held in common with a similar movement in the United States, abstract expressionism.
     In 1950 Appel moved to Paris with Corneille and Constant [21 Jul 1920~]. His paintings soon becoming more thickly painted and with swirling forms, with grotesque imagery of animals, monsters and the human figure. In 1957 he visited Mexico and the United States. In the late 1960s he moved to the Château de Molesmes, near Auxerre, southeast of Paris. During the 1950s and 1960s he made numerous murals for public buildings. He began to make relief paintings in 1968, followed by painted sculptures in wood and polyester, and later in aluminium. More recently he lived in New York and outside Florence.

— LINKS
— Rencontre des Mondes (1958; 654x952pix _ ZOOM not recommended to blurry 1316x2221pix, 747kb)
— Femme et chien dans la rue (1953; 574x443pix _ ZOOM to 1339x1034pix, 462kb)
— Abstract Composition (1958, color lithograph 58x52cm) [“Dog and Puppies Camouflaged in Primary Colors”?]
— Coversation [sic] (1960, 45x56cm) two black shapes leaving little space for the red-yellow-gray-white background.
— untitled (1964, 41x30cm) plate on p. 63 in the book 1¢ Life, color lithograph 41x30cm) [“Blue Bird Whispers to Red Face”? on yellow background]
— untitled (1964, 41x30cm) plate on p. 74 in the book 1¢ Life, color lithograph 41x30cm, similar color scheme as p.63: red figure about to kiss blue figure, on yellow background.
— untitled (1964, plate on p. 103 in the book 1¢ Life) frog-eyed five-color face. “Give me a Kiss Paff / I / he / they // you / she / us”
all in one seed
hello
hello
don't talk me peace when stars make war explode galaxy place dry seed in desert
place faith  in emptiest heart  the yellow  light-tail bird  fly arrow heart  white bird
chitter-chatter, chee-chee, ah-ah-ah
LISTEN

— untitled (1964, 41x30cm) plate on p. 128 in the book 1¢ Life: yellow face, green hair, green background.
— untitled (1964, 41x30cm) plate on p. 129 in the book 1¢ Life) dark blue face and appendages on blue background below orange pelt on green background.
— untitled (1964, 41x30cm) plate on p. 132 in the book 1¢ Life) blue monster with red mouth, on background yellow at top and orange at bottom half.
— untitled (1964, plate on p. 133 in the book 1¢ Life) same monster, but only sketched, only the mouth colored.
— Hiep, hiep, hoera! (1949, 82x127cm) _ Appel was associated with the Cobra group between 1948 and 1951. This painting is a typical Cobra work with its bright colors and child-like imagery. The title is unusually expressive for Appel and was intended to celebrate the artistic freedom from tradition which he felt he, and other members of Cobra, had achieved. The figures in the paintings are hybrid creatures with both human and animal or bird attributes. Appel thought of them as 'people of the night', hence the dark background. He often took inspiration from children's drawings, believing that 'the child in man is all that's strongest, most receptive, most open and unpredictable'.
— Mensen, vogels en zonnen (1954, 173x243cm; 364x512pix, 46kb) _ This painting was made after the dispersal of the Cobra group. However, it demonstrates the artist's continuing commitment to the Cobra ideals of primitive, expressive figuration and spontaneous vigorous gesture. The artist worked with the paint at high speed and with no preconceived scheme, turning the canvas around from time to time. The figurative elements were reworked last. Their schematic appearance recalls children's paintings, combining naivety with aggression. Of his growing interest in the physical substance of paint or 'matter', Appel said, 'The matter was important, as a physical battle and as a means of invention'.
— Danse amoureuse (1955, 114x146cm) _ Appel's paintings of the 1950s are characterised by bold and vivid colours and by the powerful physical presence of the painted surface, which evokes the swift and energetic manner of their execution. This commitment to an unrestrained form of spontaneous expression derived from the ideals of the shortlived Cobra group (1948-1951) of which Appel was a founder member. Cobra's aim to reinvigorate art was inspired by many forms of primitive art including the art of children. At times Appel's imagery is highly reminiscent of child art. Here the figuration is less overt, the pair of dancing figures being caught up in a complex explosion of line and color.
— The Crying Crocodile Tries to Catch the Sun (1956, 145.5 x 113.1 inches; 573x447pix, ) _ Appel, like Asger Jorn, was a member of the Cobra group, which emphasized material and its spontaneous application. Although the group was short-lived, its concerns have endured in his work. The single standing figures of humans or animals he developed during the 1950s are rendered in a deliberately awkward, naive way, with no attempt at modeling or perspectival illusionism. Thus, the crocodile in this painting is presented as a flat and immobile form, contoured with heavy black lines in the manner of a child’s drawing. Appel’s paint handling activates a frenzy of rhythmic movement in The Crying Crocodile . . . despite the static monumentality of the subject. Drips and smears are interspersed with veritable stalactites of brilliant, unmodulated color that buckle, ooze, slash, wither, and thread their way over the surface. The physicality of the impasto and its topographic variety allow it to reflect light and cast shadows dramatically, increasing the emotional intensity of violent color contrasts. In 1956 Appel summarized the genesis of his work: “I never try to make a painting; it is a howl, it is naked, it is like a child, it is a caged tiger. . . . My tube is like a rocket writing its own space.”
^ Died on 25 April 1931: Abraham Mintchine, Jewish Ukrainian painter born on 14 April 1898. [Was he also known as Greenbeard?] [Est-ce pour éviter d'avoir à peindre mainte machine, que Mintchine a quitté l'Union Soviétique, qui lui avait ruiné la santé?]
— In 1911 he became an apprentice with a goldsmith. He started to paint in 1914 and may have been a student of Alexandra Exter at the Kiev Academy. After Simon Petlyura [17 May 1879 – 26 May 1926, assassinated in Paris by Shalom Shvartsbard in revenge for his persecution of Jews] came to power in January 1919 in the independent Ukrainian republic that emerged after the collapse of the Russian empire, the persecution of Jews, the pogroms, and then the Soviet rule that came after the 18 March 1921 Polish-Russian treaty of Riga and the exile of Petlyura, all took their toll on Mintchine's health. He contracted tuberculosis.
      Mintchine left the Soviet Union in 1923 for Berlin, where he drew costumes and backgrounds for the Jewish theater. He held an exhibition of his paintings, of a style close to Cubism, in Berlin in 1925. None of his artwork of that period has survived. He settled in Paris in February 1926, where he continued to suffer from tuberculosis, but he was beginning to be appreciated when he died of a heart attack.

— Enfant avec arlequin (81x60cm) _ Bonnet rose, chaise cannée et veste mordorée, les culottes sont courtes mais les chaussettes hautes: l' arlequin de chiffon s' étire entre les mains de l' enfant ravi.
— Jeune paysan sous le chêne (116x89cm) _ L'olivier et la vigne recueillent le sommeil de l'homme aux pieds nus.
— Fille de Louise Manteau (92x73cm) _ La fillette princière présente son large chapeau rouge bordé de noir et son chien noir, aux yeux rouges.
— Irene Mintchine (73x100cm) _ La lumière de l' ange doré veille sur le berceau d'Irène, le bébé de Mintchine né en 1928.
— Pierrot (92x60cm) _ Pierrot, au chapeau ailé, présente, avec mélancolie; un, deux, trois coquillages roses sur la table de ses rêves.
— Vase de fleurs (65x54cm) _ Dix fleurs des champs bataillent dans le pichet brun. — d'autres Fleurs (1930)
— Vue de Paris (65x92cm) — Le buveur (100x65cm) — Nu (80x54cm) —Paysage (19x24cm)
— Joute aquatique (89x116cm) — Figure allégorique (65x54cm) — Le colporteur (92x65cm)
— Portrait d'homme (92x73cm) — Flowers and Birds (81x60cm) — A boating scene (60x81cm)
^ Born on 25 April 1824: Gustave-Clarence-Rodolphe Boulanger, French academic painter who died in October 1888.
— Born of Creole parents, Boulanger became an orphan at 14. His uncle and guardian sent him to the studio of Pierre-Jules Jollivet [26 Jun 1794 – 07 Sep 1871] and then in 1840 to Paul Delaroche [17 Jul 1797 – 04 Nov 1856], whose prosaic Realism and dry, careful technique influenced Boulanger’s style of painting. A first visit to Algeria in 1845 gave him an interest in North African subjects, which was taken up later by his friend Jean-Léon Gérôme [1824-1904]. In 1849 he won the Prix de Rome with Ulysses Recognized by his Nurse, in which he combined academic figure drawing with Pompeian touches inspired by Ingres’s Antiochus and Stratonice (1840).
     Boulanger’s knowledge of the ruins at Pompeii, which he visited while studying at the Ecole de Rome, gave him ideas for many future pictures, including the Rehearsal in the House of the Tragic Poet (1855), in which the influence of Stratonice is still obvious. This was later developed into the Rehearsal of the ‘Flute Player’ and the Wife of Diomedes (1861), which recorded the preparations being made for a performance given before the imperial Court in Napoleon’s mock-Pompeian Paris house. Boulanger specialized in painting studies of daily life from ancient Greece and Rome, as well as Arab subjects. He also painted a number of decorative schemes, at the theatre of the Casino in Monte Carlo (1879), at the Paris Opéra (1861–1874) and other locations, opportunities gained through his friendship with Charles Garnier, his fellow pensionnaire at the Ecole de Rome. He entered the Institut de France in 1882 and became an influential teacher, well known for his dislike of the Impressionists and their successors.
— The students of Boulanger included Frederick Childe Hassam, George Hitchcock [29 Sep 1850 – 02 Aug 1913], Fernand Khnopff, George Augustus Moore [1852-1933], Hamdi Osman, Walter Gilman Page [13 Oct 1862 – 24 Mar 1934], Georges Antoine Marie Rochegrosse, Robert Vonnoh [17 Sep 1858 – 28 Dec 1933], Julian Alden Weir, Otto Bacher, John Breck, Charles Davis, Gaines Donoho, Ernest Lee Major, Arthur F. Mathews, Julius Garibaldi Melchers, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Elizabeth Nourse, Robert Reid, Otto Stark, Albert Sterner, Edmund Charles Tarbell, Twachtman, Mary MacMonnies, Ali Ahmet, Frank Weston Benson, Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel, Thomas Wilmer Dewing.

— LINKS
— La Fille De Ferme (1862, 125x75cm) — A Woman with an Urn (1888, 74x51cm)
— A Tale of 1001 Nights (1873, 48x71cm) — Reception Of An Emir (1871, 67x47cm)
— C'est Un Emir (1870, 71x104cm) — An Arab Horseman (1865, 54x82cm)
— La Danse Amoureuse (141x85cm) — The Flute Concert — The Return (44x68cm)
— The Slave Market — Une Marchande De Bijoux A Pompeii (41x25cm)
— Phryne (1850, 185x152cm) _ “Thy flattering picture, Phryne, is like thee, / Only in this, that you both painted be.” (John Donne) _ Femme fatale, on a luxurious bed, lounging against soft, colorful cushions and throws, an'oriental' figure fixes her challenging gaze on the viewer. Her white robe has slipped from her body, and she wears nothing more than some jewelry and a kind of headdress. She playfully fingers her necklace with one hand, while the other holds a mirror with an elaborately decorated handle. Her name can be found on the green pillow to her left: Phryne. Phryne was a true femme fatale and the painter, Gustave Boulanger, sought to express this in her seductive pose. She had many lovers, among them the celebrated Greek sculptor Praxiteles. She was his model for a famous statue of the Greek goddess of love, the Knidian Aphrodite. This artwork - and thus Phryne - introduced an erotic component into classical sculpture.
_ In the fourth century BC, beautiful and talented Muesarete, from Thespiae, in Boeotia, went to live in Athens, where she was nicknamed Phryne ("toad") because of her sallow complexion. She became famous as a hetaira (“companion”, somewhat like a modern Japanese geisha, but even more respected) and soon became one of the wealthiest women in the ancient world. After the walls of Thebes were destroyed by Alexander the Great in 335 BC, Phryne offered to rebuild them, provided the walls were inscribed with “Destroyed by Alexander the Great, rebuilt by Phryne the hetaira.” The Thebans turned her down. Artists and sculptors loved her: olive skin, dreamy eyes, and voluptuous-yet-innocent figure. The painter Apelles was inspired by her at the festival of Poseidon in Eseusin to paint his Aphrodite Anadyomene (Aphrodite rising from the sea). Praxiteles, one of her lovers and the greatest sculptor of his day, carved her as Aphrodite of Cnidus — the first nude statue of the Goddess. Phryne once asked Praxiteles to give her the most beautiful of his sculptures, and the story goes that lover-like he agreed to give it, but refused to say which he thought the most beautiful. So a slave of Phryne rushed in saying that a fire had broken out in the studio of Praxiteles, and that most of his works, though not all, were destroyed. Praxiteles at once rushed out crying that his labor was all wasted if indeed the flames had caught his Satyr and his Cupid. But Phryne told him that he had suffered no such loss, but had been trapped into revealing which were the most beautiful of his works. So Phryne chose the Cupid. (according to Pausanias Description of Greece)
Compare:
_ Praxiteles giving Phryne his Statue of Cupid (1794, 43x49cm) by Kaufmann [1740-1807]
_ Phryne at the Festival of Poseidon in Eleusin (1889) by Siemiradzki _ detail
_ Phryne before the Areopagus by Gérôme _ Phryne's lawyer got her acquitted of a capital offense (blasphemy and/or corruption) by baring her chest, but Gérôme has him baring all of her.
_ A modern statue of Phryne (1997) by Audfray.
_ Another Aphrodite (= Venus in this Roman copy) by Praxiteles.
_ Poem Praxiteles and Phryne by William Wetmore Story [1819–1895]

^ Died on 25 April 1690: David Teniers II, Flemish Baroque painter, known for his genre scenes of peasant life, born on 15 December 1610.
— He was the son and student of David Teniers the Elder. In 1637 he married Anna, daughter of the painter Jan Brueghel the Elder “Velvet” [1568-1625]. Teniers painted almost every kind of picture, but chiefly genre scenes of peasant life, many of which were subsequently used for tapestry designs in the 18th century. His early works in this vein show the influence of Adriaen Brouwer (e.g., Twelfth-night). Many of his finer works date from 1640 to 1650. He was brilliant at handling crowd scenes in an open landscape and adept at characterizing his figures with a warm, human, and often humorous touch (e.g., The Village Fête, 1646). His landscape settings are atmospheric, and his still-life details precise. In the same decade he also painted a number of monumental processions (e.g., Procession of the Antwerp Civic Guards, 1643).
      Teniers developed a second career in 1651 when he moved to Brussels, becoming court painter and keeper of the art collections to the regent of the Netherlands, the archduke Leopold William. He painted several views of the Archduke's picture gallery. He also made many small-scale individual copies of paintings in the Duke's collection by foreign artists, especially Italians. Of these, 244 were engraved in 1660 under the title Theatrum Pictorium. As a pictorial inventory of a great 17th-century collection, this book of engravings was unique in its time and still constitutes a valuable source for the art historian.
      Teniers was also court painter to Don John of Austria, who succeeded the Archduke as regent in 1656, and was one of the prime movers in the foundation of the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts (1663) and subsequently the Academy in Antwerp (1665). Teniers' son, also named David [1638-1685], often imitated his father's work. There are several of his altarpieces in churches in Belgium.
—      David Teniers, the son of the painter David Teniers the Elder, was born in Antwerp in 1610. His father was his first and principal teacher in painting. While David Teniers the Elder had been unsuccessful and was even put into debtors' prison, Teniers the Younger became known all over Europe.
       In the early 1630s Teniers the Younger became close with Brouwer, who had a great influence on him. At that period he worked in Antwerp, where, in 1632, be became member of St. Lukas Guild, and, in 1645, was elected its deacon. In 1637, he married a daughter of Velvet Brueghel, Ruben's friend. The marriage appeared to be a successful financial enterprise: the dowry was serious, and besides it brought Teniers into the circle of acquaintances of the great master.
      In 1651, the Teniers moved to Brussels, where he had been appointed a court painter and the director of the art gallery of the Spanish governor-general, Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm. He was a founding member of the Antwerp Academy of Art (1663). Very productive master, he left more than 2000 works and had great success with Flemish aristocracy. He followed fashion and whims of his clients. He painted everything: genre pictures, still lifes, animals, scenes of hunt, landscapes, portraits, religious scenes and allegorical subjects. One of his early works Members of Antwerp Town Council and Masters of the Armaments Guild is a rare example of group portrait in Flemish art.
     His multiple pictures of scenes of popular Flemish life, painted in attractive shades of blue, red, cream and grey, with light effects and transparent shadows, are much influenced by Brouwer. Twelfth Night (The King Drinks). Kitchen Scene. Peasants Dancing outside an Inn. etc.
      Of particular note are his Art Gallery of Leopold-Wilhelm pictures, which precisely documented the famous works from the archduke's collection. Teniers also made small-scale copies of 246 pictures from this collection, a photographic record, which helped to retrace the fate of some masterpieces.
       Teniers' works were very popular during the 18th century and all the Royal houses of Europe raced to but them. One of the best collections is in Hermitage. David Teniers the Younger died in Brussels in 1690.

— LINKS
— The Painter with his Family (1646; 600x873pix, 224kb _ ZOOM to 1400x2036pix, 529kb)
— The Prodigal Son (1640, 57x77cm; 1734x2350pix, 1934kb) _ According to the Bible, the prodigal son was a youth who wasted his wealth on riotous living, then returned home poor and repentant. Here, in a tavern, the prodigal son shares the last of a rich meal with two prostitutes. A large bed looms suggestively behind them. Completing the theme of wine, women, and song, two street musicians play a flute and a violin. On a nearby chair, the young man's bright red cloak and sword suggest the temporary nature of his stay. The artist excluded any reference to the prodigal son's ultimate forgiveness by his loving father, focusing instead on the young man's sins. To make his message against immoral living clear, Teniers included a clothed monkey who is eating an apple, an ancient symbol of love, and dragging a ball and chain. Enslaved to sex, the monkey represents the prodigal son's bondage to vice.
— Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery (1647, 106x129cm) _ David Teniers, court painter to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm Hapsburg, the Governor of Flanders, and keeper of his very fine collection of painting and sculpture, made several of these gallery portraits. The Archduke (in tall hat) is depicted showing to visitors the wealth of his pictures, most of them Venetian, almost half of them by Titian. Other Venetians represented are Giorgine, Antonello da Messina, Palma Vecchio, Tintoretto, Bassano and Veronese; also there are Mabuse, Holbein, Bernardo Strozzi, Guido Reni and Rubens. The sculpture supporting the table, representing Ganymede, is a bronze by Duquesnoy the Younger. Teniers himself is represented as the figure on the far left. It has been suggested that Velázquez borrowed the device of the half-open door at the back of this picture for his Las Meninas; at least Las Meninas can be understood as a similar picture, designed to illustrate the enlightened patronage of the patron and the corresponding pride of the court artist. The painting was presented to Philip IV of Spain by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm before 1653.

— Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in his Gallery (1651, 96x129cm) _ In 1646 Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria was appointed Governor of the Low Countries and took up residence at the Coudenberg Palace in Brussels. He already owned an attractive collection of paintings, which he constantly expanded by buying Flemish paintings and, principally, works by the top Italian masters. In 1651 Teniers was appointed court painter and curator of the Archduke's gallery. In this capacity it is very likely that he was charged with acquiring in England the Italian paintings of the illustrious Hamilton collection and those of King Charles I, as it is certain that he undertook a trip across the channel in the same year. The Archduke, very proud of his sumptuous Italian collection, charged Teniers with reproducing the 244 most prestigious works in reduced format. These copies were to serve as models for the engravings illustrating the Theatrum pictorium Davidis Teniers..., a monumental collection published at Antwerp in 1660. Also asked to paint a grand view of the collection, the artist undertook this first task with great talent and considerable mastery. This painting, dating from 1651, is the very first of a numerous series of views of the Archduke's collection that Teniers was to paint. This harmonious, symmetrical, linear and very precise composition shows us part of the Governor's very recent Italian collection. Dressed in the fashion of the Spanish Grandees, he is standing under the central arcade and studying a drawing presented to him by the painter. Other sketches and "objets d'art" are spread out on a stone table supported by a bronze base representing Ganymedes and the eagle, a work that Emperor Rudolf II commissioned from the famous sculptor Adriaen de Vries in Prague. The elegantly-dressed figure to the left, holding a statuette, is probably a courtier. Space is too short here to give a complete listing of the works decorating the Archduke's gallery. It is not difficult to identify these masterpieces, which the Archduke took with him to Vienna when he left Brussels in 1656, as Teniers was careful to indicate the artist on each picture frame. Most of these paintings are still in Vienna, where, with Leopold Wilhelm's other collections, they form the main core of the Pinakothek of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
— Before the Inn (37x49cm) _ Whereas Adriaen Brouwer chose to place particular emphasis upon the grim existence of the poor, David Teniers the Younger concentrated upon more idealised works. As usual, he pays a great deal of attention to the landscape in his Before the Inn. The drinkers are almost incidental.
— Flemish Kermess (1652, 157x221cm) _ As a painter of landscapes, genre scenes and still-lifes, David Teniers the Younger is one of the most popular artists of the Flemish school of the 17th century. Initially influenced by Adriaen Brouwer, Teniers abandoned his predecessor's truculent, anecdotal genre around the time of his death in 1638, going on to develop a much more refined style, vigorous, delicate, and full of verve, as well as a brilliant and clever painting technique distinguished by a very light brush and subtle coloring. He was already at the summit of his art when in 1651 Archduke Leopold Wilhelm appointed him painter to the Brussels court. This prince's protection guaranteed him an immense success. Commissions flowed in from foreign sovereigns, in particular Phillip IV of Spain, forcing the artist to produce ever more and faster. The quality of his works, with simpler and less vigorous compositions, and less delicate coloring, inevitably suffered.
      This canvas, of a size rare in Teniers' oeuvre, and dated 1652, shows a charming, well-behaved village kermess. The diagonal composition divides the painting into two, with a dark and less developed part to the left contrasting with the well-lit part to the right where the festivities are taking place in front of a series of houses. Divided into small groups, peasants in festive dress are dancing, eating, courting, chatting or simply listening to a bagpipe player. High-ranking figures who have just alighted from a barouche which remains in the shadow are approaching the kermess, but without real contact with the festive countryfolk. It is very possible that these elegant walkers, shown face-on, represent the painter himself accompanied by his wife Anna, the daughter of Jan "Velvet" Brueghel, and that the castle in the background to the left is the manor of Drij Torens at Perk that the artist rented for a number of years before purchasing it in 1662. The joyful, relaxed family festivity is evoked by the warm harmony of brown and yellow tones, subtly broken by local patches of red, turquoise and, in particular, superb whites.
— a different Flemish Kermess (1640; 600x1075pix, 228kb _ ZOOM to 1400x2508pix, 500kb)
— Peasants Dancing outside an Inn (1650, 135x205cm; 750x1159pix, 155kb) _ Teniers was born in Antwerp and was taught by his father. He was received as a Master of the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp in 1632-1633, becoming its Dean in 1645-1646, and in 1663 he became a founder member of the city's Académie Royale. For many years from 1651 Teniers worked in Brussels for the Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm, and subsequently for his successor as Governor, Don Juan of Austria. Apart from his paintings, Teniers's duties as art adviser to Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm are best seen in the publication Theatrum pictorium of 1660, an illustrated catalogue of part of the Archduke's collection. Teniers made many of the small preparatory painted copies, prior to engraving (there are some in the Royal Collection and several in the Courtauld Institute Galleries, London), and oversaw the etchings for the catalogue. He spent five years in England from 1650 to 1655, apparently buying paintings as part of his activities as a dealer. Teniers was a man of considerable wealth, purchasing a country estate in 1662 and finally being ennobled in 1680. His first marriage was to Anne, the daughter of Jan Brueghel the Elder, but she died in 1656.
      The painting, which would appear to date from the mid- or late 1640s, is essentially a genre scene of a type that had been pioneered by painters like Jan Brueghel the Elder, Frans Francken II and David Vinckboons. The broad characterisation of peasant types by Teniers is to some extent derived from Adriaen Brouwer, but the squat proportions of the figures, with their large heads and big feet, are typical of the artist's style. Not all the figures, however, are peasants. The couple in the left foreground, accompanied by a child and a dog, are bourgeois types. So too is the woman nearby being helped to her feet. Dress and coiffure suggest social distinctions that may give the painting extra meaning.
      The inn in the left half of the composition occurs again in a painting in Dresden, but the general layout of the composition with buildings on the left, a tree with or without a fence marking the centre, and a distant view on the right is a well-established format in Teniers's work. Otherwise it is the range of observation and contrasting actions that holds the attention. The bagpiper leaning against the tree, the man vomiting, the man near the centre leaning on his stick, the dancers, the woman looking out of the window of the inn are all memorable figures in a painting of varied emotions and changing rhythms. The figure helping the woman to her feet anticipates Watteau, who was a keen admirer of Teniers. Genre, landscape and still life are all combined in this composition, which provides abundant proof of the artist's skills.
— Peasants Merry-making (1650, 69x86cm; 676x837pix, 132kb) which is a later version of The Village Feast (1646, 98x130cm; 647x871pix, 102kb)
— a different though similar Village Feast (53x98cm; 775x1254pix, 145kb) _ After the refined realism of Brouwer, genre painting reverted to a more decorative concept, in keeping with the general character of Flemish art of the period. The driving force behind this development was David Teniers the Younger, who became a leading figure in this branch of painting, thanks to his remarkable productivity and the high esteem he enjoyed. Village Feast is one of his many paintings of village life, a recurring theme throughout his oeuvre. In scenes like this, he depicts humble peasants as the upper classes liked to see them portrayed: as simple, unthinking creatures gratefully enjoying their humble existence. But Teniers raises such scenes to a higher artistic level through his skilful composition, balanced coloration and above all the radiant light which illuminates his paintings.
— Return from the Hunt (1670, 28x35cm) _ The dynamic, cosmic vision in the tradition of Rubens is absent from David Teniers the Younger's Return from the Hunt. The artist was seduced by Dutch landscape art with its lightness of touch, and clear, impressionistic atmosphere. In Teniers' work, colors and contours are diaphanous and almost dissolve into one another.
— The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1645, 52x81cm) _ The temptations or trials of St Anthony, who was tormented by spectres, witches and devils while living as a hermit among the barren cliffs, had often been depicted in Netherlandish painting. The basic type of mountain cliffs and fantastic figures in human and animal forms shows a clear relationship to Bosch and Bruegel. As well as peasant scenes, landscapes and mythology, Teniers had an interest in depicting ghosts, witches and alchemists.
— The Temptation of Saint Anthony (600x454pix, 95kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1060pix, 209kb)
— Temptation of Saint Anthony (26x36cm)
— Rocky Landscape with the Temptation of Saint Anthony (1650; 600x958pix, 198kb _ ZOOM to 1400x2234pix, 455kb)
— The Sacrament Miracle of Saint Gudula (600x390pix, 83kb _ ZOOM to 1400x910pix, 188kb)
— Landscape with Fishermen (600x957pix, 165kb _ ZOOM to 1400x2234pix, 354kb)
— Landscape with Rainbow (600x798pix, 149kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1862pix, 323kb)
— Village Landscape (1650; 600x790pix, 133kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1843pix, 302kb)
— A Dinner Party (1634; 600x866pix, 167kb _ ZOOM to 1400x2020pix, 362kb)
— Girl Washing Pots (1634; 600x459pix, 111kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1070pix, 363kb)
— Neptune and Amphytrite (600x751pix, 179kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1752pix, 399kb)
— Wooded Landscape with Robbers (1634; 600x758pix, 199kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1768pix, 450kb) _ from the studio of Teniers.
— Armorial Tapestry (1690, 194x305cm) [1/8 size] _ detail 1 [1/4 size] _ detail 2 [1/2 size] _ detail 3 [full size]
— Un Jeu de Morra (58x84cm) — The Music Party or Flemish Interior...
— Peasant Walking (1670, 26x20cm) — Revelers in a Tavern Interior (48x64cm)
— Latona and the Frogs (1645, 25x38cm) — The Family Party (or Family of the Artist) (1660, 50x66cm)
— 28 images at FAMSF


Died on a 25 April:

^ 1948 Luc-Albert Moreau, French painter and printmaker, born on 09 December 1882. Originally destined for a legal career, he studied law for some time before working as a solicitor’s clerk. Uninterested in law, he then began to study Asian and African languages and obtained a diploma from the Ecole des Langues Orientales in Paris in 1906. Soon afterwards he began making infrequent visits to the Académie Julian in Paris, working in the studio of Jean-Paul Laurens, and there met and befriended Jean-Louis Boussingault and André Dunoyer de Segonzac. He then spent a short period at the Académie de la Palette where he received lessons from Charles Guérin, Georges-Olivier Desvallières and Pierre Laprade. In 1907 he worked with Boussingault and Dunoyer de Segonzac at a villa in St Tropez rented from Paul Signac. He first exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1908 and at the Salon des Indépendants in 1909.

1932 Albert Gabriel Rigolot, French artist born on 28 November 1862. — [Il avait beau essayer d'être grave et sérieux, il ne pouvait jamais s'empêcher d'être Rigolot]

1898 Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier I, Swiss artist born on 27 April 1829. He was apprenticed to an enameler in Geneva and took drawing lessons from Jules Hébert (1812–97). From 1850 to 1853 he lived in Düsseldorf, where he was taught by Carl Ferdinand Sohn and Rudolf Jordan. The naturalistic and discursive painting Village Church with Congregation (1856) was based on his ethnographic studies in the Bernese Oberland and stresses psychological characterization through individual facial expressions at the cost of narrative.

^ 1870 Daniel Maclise, Irish painter born on 25 January 1806. — {Est-ce que, quand il était écolier il se montrait très doué pour le dessin, mais pas pour la lecture, de sorte que son instituteur ne cessait de répéter: “Il faut que Mac lise.”?}— Born in Cork, he made pencil portraits in Cork, and went to London in 1827 where he studied at the school of the Royal Academy. His frescoes in the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords, The Meeting of Wellington and Blücher (1861) and The Death of Nelson (1864) are his most notable works. He was also known as an illustrator of books for Tennyson and Dickens. His sketches of contemporaries in Fraser's Magazine (1830-38) were published in 1874 and 1883. — LINKS — Madeleine After Prayer (127x100cm) — The Origin of the Harp (1842)

1691 (25 June?) Jean de Troy, French painter born on 04 April 1638. . — [Ses parents ont-ils tenté de le faire baptiser “Un” pour qu'il puisse abréger son nom: “1~2~3”?] — Son of painter Antoine de Troy [1608 – 15 Sept 1684] and brother of portrait painter François de Troy [09 Jan 1645 – 01 May 1730]. — Jean de Troy established an academy of art in Montpellier. He was long known only as an academic history painter, but 20th-century research has identified several fine portraits by him on the basis of style, of which the most remarkable is that of Jeanne de Juliard, Dame de Mondonville (1680)

^ 1675 Claude Lefèbvre, in Paris, French painter, sculptor, and engraver baptized as an infant on 12 September 1632 in Fontainebleau. He was the son of painter Jean Lefèbvre [1600–1675], and joined the studio of Claude d’Hoey [1585–1660] at Fontainebleau. In 1654 he was a student of Eustache Le Sueur in Paris and in 1655 of Charles Le Brun. Under Le Brun’s direction he seems to have assisted with the cartoons for the series of tapestries illustrating the History of the King. He appears to have painted a Nativity for Louis XIV, but Le Brun apparently considered his compositions weak and advised him to specialize in portraiture; in 1663 Lefèbvre was received (reçu) as a member by the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture with his portrait of Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Lefèbvre was an assistant professor at the Académie from 1664. At the height of his fame he exhibited ten pictures (nine of which were portraits) at the Salon of 1673. Apart from that of Colbert, Lefèbvre’s painted portraits are now known only through the work of such engravers as Gérard Edelinck, Nicolas de Poilly and Pierre-Louis van Schuppen. Among works attributed to him on the basis of such evidence is the portrait of Charles Couperin with the Artist’s Daughter. He was also a talented engraver, and examples of his work in this medium include a Self-portrait and a portrait of Alexandre Boudan. Claude Lefèbvre should not be confused with Roland Lefèbvre, a portrait painter who died in London in 1677.— Relative? of Jules-Joseph Lefebvre [1836-1911]?

1655 Giovanni-Andrea Donducci “il Mastelletta”, Italian artist born on 14 February 1575.


Born on a 25 April:

^ 1887 Adrian Gösta Fabian Sandels, Swedish painter who died on 14 August 1919. — {If he'd had a twin, they would've been a pair of Sandels, but the humor might have worn out their souls.}— He attended the painting school of the Konstnärsförbund in Stockholm in 1905 and the following year moved to Paris, accompanied by Birger Simonsson [1883–1938]. There he became influenced by the varied styles of Cézanne, van Gogh and Edvard Munch. In 1908 he went to Spain and in 1909, 1910 and 1911 he contributed works to the series of exhibitions of De Unga (The Young Ones), held in Stockholm.. His work of this period, such as The Woman Who Cleans Windows (1911), was firmly structured and painted using diagonal brushstrokes. In 1913 he visited St Chamas in Provence in France with Simonsson and Sigfrid Ullman [1886–1960] and the following year he went with Simonsson to Kungälv near Göteborg where he worked until 1916. During this period he painted a number of Expressionist works of figures on the seashore executed in loose brushstrokes, including Found on the Shore (1914), which depicted the discovery of a body by the sea. Highlighting the polarities of style within his late works, there are also such paintings as Cardplayers (1918) that are smoothly worked with a formal composition. He spent the summers of 1917 and 1918 in Bohuslän and in 1919 travelled to Spain and Mallorca where he painted such works as Street in Palma de Mallorca (1919). Despite his early death, Sandels was an important figure in the development of modernism in Swedish art. — Gösta Sandels föddes i Göteborg som son till fotografen Carl Sandels. Redan när Gösta var fyra år gammal flyttade familjen till Norge och ett antal år senare till Stockholm. Skälet till dessa flyttningar är mig obekant, men man kan väl gissa att det hänger samman med faderns yrke. Det var i Stockholm Gösta Sandels fick sin konstnärliga skolning, först hos Althin och därefter i Konstnärsförbundets skola. Där var han kollega med bland andra Birger Simonsson och Sigfrid Ullman. Speciellt den förstnämnda tycks ha blivit Göstas vän. Från 1907 och fram till första världskrigets utbrott reste Sandels i stort sett årligen till Frankrike, ibland även till Spanien (enligt "Göteborgskoloristerna"). Gösta Sandels kan vid denna tid knappast ha varit färdig som konstnär, än mindre känd. Frågan är hur han finansierade resorna? Var det välbärgade släktingar eller andra mecenater som bidrog? Jag är tacksam för upplysningar på denna punkt! 1914 har han dock på allvar återvänt till västkusten. Göteborg och Kungälv på vintrarna, utefter Bohuskusten på somrarna. Sandels har vi denna tid kommit in kretsen runt Birger Simonsson och ingick i "de 4 S-n": Birger Simonsson, Gösta Sandels, Sigfrid Ullman och norrmannen Henrik Sörensen. Gruppens "beskyddarinna", kanske mer moraliskt än ekonomiskt, var välkända Charlotte Mannheimer och hennes make. Pålitlig och entusiastisk stöttare, inte minst av Sandels, var också Conrad Pineus, konstsamlare av rang. Sandels hade nu mognat som konstnär, hans identitet och "signatur" var uppenbar. Påverkad av Matisse-strömningarna var han helt visst, det förbigick få konstnärer vid denna tid. Van Goghs teknik och temperament passade honom och han lärde också av Edward Munch. Gösta Sandels kallas ofta kolorist eller Göteborgskolorist. För att vara Göteborgskolorist var han då före sin tid, begreppet var inte uppfunnet vid denna tid. Benämningar är på det hela taget ointressanta, låt oss nöja oss med att konstatera att färg var ett viktigt och mäktigt inslag i hans måleri. Paletten innehöll framför allt vinrött, smaragdgrönt, havsblått, svart, ockragult och gråviolett. Kolorister, Matisse-anhängare, m.m. fanns det gott om vid denna tid. Stockholmsfalangen, inte minst Grünewald, målade tekniskt och artistiskt på ett sätt som tilltalade en bred Stockholmsk publik. Göteborgarna var mer orienterade mot ett lyriskt måleri, gärna naturlyriskt. Sandels följde vid denna tid snarast den senare gruppen, säkert påverkad av Birger Simonsson m.fl. Men Sandels tavlor adderade ett moment: dramatiken! Få tavlor lämnar mig oberörd. 1917 flyttade Sandels till Stockholm. Detta ändrade också hans konst. Från korta, snabba penseldrag, i van Gogh-anda, till långa svepande drag. Första världskriget hade förhindrat allt resande. 1919 gavs möjligheten igen. Den relativt nygifte Gösta gav sig i väg, tillsammans med hustrun, på en resa som gick över England, Frankrike till Spanien (Mallorca, Valencia, Malaga, Granada). I Granada fick han feber. I feberyrsel drabbades han av en olycka och dog i augusti 1919, endast 32 år gammal. — Flickporträtt (315x250pix, 27kb)

^ 1867 August Eiebakke, Norwegian painter who died on 21 July 1938. — {When he returned home, they said: “Aye, ye're back”?}— He went to live in Kristiania [now Oslo] when he was 15. He wished to train as a sculptor and enrolled at the Royal School of Drawing in Kristiania in 1883, studying there until 1889 under Julius Middelthun, Mathias Skeibrok [1851–1896] and Harald Petersen [1850–1933]. At this time Eiebakke grew more interested in painting and from 1886 to 1887 took instruction from the leading Norwegian Naturalist painters Christian Krohg, Hans Heyerdahl and Eilif Peterssen. Eiebakke made his début at the Kristiania Autumn Exhibition in 1887 with a landscape and an interior. He exhibited regularly at this exhibition and won special praise for Laying the Table in 1891. During this period Eiebakke concentrated on realistic depictions of human subjects and landscape. In 1892 he spent several months at Kristian Zahrtmann’s school of painting in Copenhagen and for a time his work showed the influence of his teacher. In 1893 he went to Paris and the following year made the first of many visits to Italy. Here he approached a more stylized, Neo-Romantic form resembling the style that Danish colleagues such as Peter Rostrup Bøiesen [1882–], Karl Schou [1870–1938] and Vilhelm Tetens [1871–1956] were using. For a time he also worked on religious themes, for example Jesus and Thomas.

^ 1826 Jean-Baptiste Huysmans, Belgian artist who died in 1906. — Not to be confused with Jacob Huysmans [1630-1696]; nor with Cornelis Huysmans van Mechelen [bap. 02 Apr 1648. – 01 Jun 1727]; and especially not with Jan-Baptist Huysmans [1654-1716] — [His best-known masterpiece is not A Rebours (1884), which is not a painting. A Rebours is a novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans [05 Feb 1848 – 12 May 1907] who was also an art critic who made the Impressionists known with his L'Art Moderne (1883) and Certains (1889)] — Peintre de sujets religieux, de scènes historiques et de panneaux décoratifs, qui se consacre à l'orientalisme après 1857. Il étudie à l'Académie d'Anvers de 1843 à 1849 et débute au Salon d'Anvers en 1849. Il vit à Paris pendant de nombreuses années. Il voyage en Grèce, dans tout le Proche-Orient, en Egypte et en Algérie à partir de 1856. Il a exécuté de grandes compositions pour des églises de Jérusalem. — Algérienne à l'éventail (446x550pix, 41kb) — Fathma (598x400pix, 59kb) — Une rue d'Alger

1807 Louis Apollinaire Sicard, French artist who died in 1881. — {Was art by Sicard sick art? Is that why I don't find any examples of it on the internet?}

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