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ART “4” “2”-DAY 10 AUGUST

DEATHS: 1655 DE VADDER — 1976 SCHMIDT~ROTTLUFF — 1911 ISRAËLS — 1784 RAMSAY — 1923 SOROLLA

BIRTH: 1865 MORRICE

^ Died on 10 August 1655: Lodewijk (or Lodewyk) de Vadder, Brussels Flemish painter, draftsman, engraver, and tapestry designer, baptized as an infant on 08 April 1605. — [Not to be confused with >>>]
— On 15 May 1628 he was received as a master in the Brussels Guild of Saint Luke, probably, like his brother Hubert de Vadder, after an apprenticeship to his elder brother, Philippe de Vadder. Lodewijk de Vadder is best known as a landscape painter, although he also made landscape engravings and drawings. He was granted a privilege to make tapestry cartoons by the Brussels city magistrate in 1644. In this capacity he worked mainly for weavers such as Jean Courdijn and Baudouin van Beveren. The latter referred to him as the best landscape painter in the country and in 1644 paid him 1000 florins for a series of designs of The Story of Diana and Pan.
— LINKS
— Landscape before the Rain (32x46cm; 604x955pix, 82kb)
— The Soignes Forest (175x230cm; 830x1095pix, 190kb) _ A number of Brussels artists developed an individual landscape style with which to convey the characteristic appearance of the heavily forested area around their city — the 'Soignes forest painters' produced large and elegant wooded landscapes using an oil painting technique recalling that of Rubens. The human figures in their paintings are customarily shown as tiny compared to the luxuriant nature that fills the compositions with large, dark bodies of trees. The leading Brussels landscape artists were, besides de Vadder: Jacques d'Artois [1603-1686] and Lucas Achtschellinck [1626-1699]. Their landscapes have something of the character of tapestries and probably had a similar decorative function.
— Landscape (24x27cm; 600x686pix, 72kb)

^ Died on 10 August 1976: Karl Schmidt~Rottluff, German Expressionist painter and print-maker, born in 1884.
— He was a painter in oils and watercolor of figures, landscapes and still life, wood-engraver, lithographer, etcher, and sculptor. Born Karl Schmidt at Rottluff near Chemnitz, Saxonia. Friendship with Heckel from 1901, and began to paint. Studied architecture at Dresden Polytechnic 1905-6, and through Heckel met Kirchner and Bleyl; the four artists founded in June 1905 the group Die Brücke. Early paintings with strong colors and a profusion of brushstrokes, followed from c.1910-11 by a more arbitrary, strongly-constructed style with block-like simplifications. First one-man exhibition at the Galerie Commeter, Hamburg, 1911. From 1907-1912 spent part of each year in or near Dangast. 1915-18 in the army. Lived mainly in Berlin from 1911, with regular visits during the summers up to 1943 to the North Sea or Baltic coast and the spring months 1932-1943 in the Taunus. Large graphic output up to about 1927 of over 600 woodcuts, lithographs and etchings. He was one of the artists most persecuted by the Nazis, who in 1941 forbade him to paint and placed him under the supervision of the SS. In 1947 appointed professor at the School of Fine Arts in Berlin. Died in Berlin.
— LINKS

<<<— Self Portrait with Monocle (1910; 952x640pix, 63kb: click image or ZOOM to 1903x1280pix, 161kb)
— Selbstbildnis (1914 woodcut, 35x30cm)
— Head of Christ (1919 stained glass; 851x640pix, 51kb)
— Im Kiosk (1912; 483x529pix, 30kb) _ detail first head (951x640pix, 77kb)
— Devotion — Kuss in Liebe (1918 woodcut, 50x39cm)
— Dr. Rosa Schapire (1919, 101x87cm) _ Dr. Rosa Schapire was trained as an art historian at Zurich and Heidelberg Universities. She was one of the first supporters of Die Brücke group, of which Schmidt-Rottluff was a founder member. They were close friends from 1908 and in 1924 Schapire published a catalogue of the artist's graphic work. This portrait was painted during the summer of 1919 at Hohwacht on the Baltic coast and was given to Schapire as a Christmas present by the artist and his wife. The artist painted Schapire several times between 1911 and 1915, as well as making her the subject of woodcuts and a lithograph. Schapire lived in exile in England after 1919, bringing her collection, including this picture, with her.
— Frau mit Tasche (1915, 95x87cm) _ Schmidt-Rottluff used the forms of African masks to help him capture the reality around him. Here, the woman’s face is elongated with extended cheeks and nose in the manner of West African masks. This is set against her fashionable European accessories — the bag and pearls. The painting was completed shortly before Schmidt-Rottluff’s departure for the Russian Front during the First World War. Its first owner considered it to have captured a melancholic wartime mood.
— Zwei Frauen (1912, 77x85cm) _ Although this work was painted on the North Sea coast near Dangast in Germany, its vivid colours and the angular forms of the women’s bodies suggest an idealised vision of Africa or the South Pacific. For Schmidt-Rottluff and other artists of Die Brücke the appreciation of African carvings and the art of South East Asia was an integral part of their consciously bohemian lifestyle. They were inspired by artefacts in the Dresden Ethnographical Museum, which they saw as embodying an unspoilt, more authentic culture.

^ Died on 10 August 1911: Jozef Israëls, Dutch painter specialized in genre painting, born on 27 January 1824.
— Born into a poor Jewish family, Jozef Israëls started taking drawing lessons in 1835 at the Academy Minerva in Groningen. In 1842 he studied in Amsterdam under Jan Adam Kruseman [1804-1862] and took lessons at the Royal Academy from Jan Willem Pieneman [1779-1853]. Deeply moved by Scheffer's Gretchen, he went to Paris in 1845, working assiduously by entering the studio of François-Édouard Picot [1786-1868], copying Old Masters in the Louvre, and taking classes at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1847 he returned to Amsterdam, and his Ophelia (1850), much indebted to Scheffer, established his reputation. In 1853 Israëls returned to Paris, finally met Scheffer, and visited Barbizon.
      Two years later, suffering from bad health, Israëls spent seven weeks in the coastal village of Zandvoort living in a carpenter's cabin. The life of the poor fishing community with which he became so familiar developed into the major theme in his art. The success of his Passing Mother's Grave (1856), a large work addressing the fateful life of a fisherman widower and his two children, encouraged the artist to abandon history painting. After a tremendously successful showing of Fishermen Carrying a Drowned Man (1861) at the 1861 Paris Salon and the 1862 London International Exhibition, his reputation was firmly established abroad. With the grandiose treatment that he applied to these works, Israëls introduced into Dutch art a realist style in emulation of Courbet.
      In 1863 he married Aleida Schaap, with whom he had a daughter, Mathilde Anna, and a son, Isaac, who would also become an established painter. In The Hague, where he moved in 1871, Jozef Israëls eventually built a large studio where his models posed in his "fisherman's corner."
      Israëls was one of the leading members of De Haagse School, which included such artists as Johannes Bosboom [1817-1891], Jacob Maris [1837-1899], Matthijs Maris [1839-1917], Anton Mauve [1838-1888], Hendrik Willem Mesdag [1831-1915], and Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch [1824-1903]. In addition to fishermen scenes and portraits, he expanded his subject matter with peasant scenes, and later in his career he returned to the subject of death and old age, as well as treating Jewish and biblical themes. He traveled extensively and was much honored at home and abroad. Israëls was the most acclaimed Dutch painter in his time, eagerly sought after by collectors in Great Britain, the United States, and other countries. Hailed as a second Rembrandt, he participated in many exhibitions, and his work was disseminated through reproductions. In 1910 he was honored with an exhibition at the Venice Biennale. He died one year later in Scheveningen and received a state funeral.
— Photo of Israels
— LINKS
— Interior of a Hut (577x750pix, 166kb) — Peasant Family at Table (1882)
— Awaiting The Fisherman's Return (83x114cm) — Mending the Nets (42x56cm; 777x1000pix, 169kb)
— Peasant Woman by a Hearth (47x36cm) — The Pancakes former title Making Cakes (1875, 65x55cm; 380x326pix, 17kb)

^ Born on 10 August 1865: James Wilson Morrice, Canadian landscape painter who died on 23 January 1924.
— Born in Montreal, the son of a wealthy textile merchant, he attended the University of Toronto from 1882 to 1886, then studied law from 1886 to 1889. Then he began to paint. He went to Europe in 1890 and studied briefly at the Académie Julian in Paris. He received some advice from Harpignies, and was influenced by Whistler on a visit to Dordrecht in 1892.
     Morrice worked in Paris most of his life, with numerous painting trips to other places. He painted with Prendergast and Conder at Saint-Malo in 1891. He met Glackens and Robert Henri in 1896. In Morrice's early period he painted in Italy and Belgium and at Le Pouldu, Concarneau, Dieppe, and Dinard. He returned periodically to Canada and sketched with Cullen and Brymner in Montreal, Quebec, and along the St. Lawrence. From 1905 Worrice developed a freer and more colorful style, partly under the influence of Matisse and Marquet. Morrice worked at Tangier in contact with Matisse in the winters of 1911-1912 and 1913-1914, and later at Marrakech and Tunis. He painted in the West Indies in 1920-1921. Morrice died in Tunis. He was the first Canadian artist to achieve a wide international reputation.
— Born in Montreal, in an upper-class family, Morrice studied Law, but soon decided to devote himself to his true passion, painting. He first goes to London, but soon finds out that all young painters have their eyes on Paris and we find him there in the Spring of 1892.
     His first friends are US painters: Maurice Prendergast, and later Robert Henri and William Glackens, three of the artists that will exhibit in 1908 under the name "The Eight". The young artists make sketches in the streets of Paris (L'Omnibus), or on the beaches of Dieppe and Saint-Malo, using little sketchbooks or small wooden panels; the bigger canvases are painted later in their studios.
     The Impressionists are now better known in Paris, but Morrice and his friends do not seem to be aware of their technical advances, preferring darker tones, suitable for their night scenes (nocturnes); their idol is the American expatriate James McNeill Whistler, whose ideas on the relationship between painting and music greatly appealed to Morrice (his other passion was music, and he played the flute).
     It is not in Paris, but during a visit to Québec, in the winter of 1896-1897, that Morrice discovers the brighter colors of the Impressionists, the only ones that can accurately render the bright light of a Canadian winter. He may have tried to emulate the works of his painting companion Maurice Cullen, a young Canadian recently returned from Paris; they spent a few days together at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré.
     Morrice does not immediately adopt the Impressionist technique of the divided touch. The paintings done just before 1900 are rendered in a very thick paint, which he then rubs to smoothen the surface; the modulations of color are then painted over, in very light passages. The results are very subtle harmonies that reveal themselves slowly to the spectator; excellent musician, Morrice has learnt how to include the time factor in his paintings.
      Venice at the Golden Hour marks a turning point: if its sky and facades are a last echo of Whistler, we easily recognize the Impressionist touch in the shimmering sunset reflections on the Grand Canal. It is a happy period in the painter's life: he moves to a new apartment overlooking the Seine, travels extensively (France, Spain, Venice), and meets the woman what will share his life, Léa Cadoret. He also make makes new friends: British novelist Somerset Maugham will use him as a model for his poet Cronshaw in Of Human Bondage. And Morrice exhibits more and more, getting good reviews, at least in Paris; Canada is less receptive for the time being.
     Morrice's palette becomes lighter after 1903: he uses very diluted paint over a white preparation, but his harmonies are as subtle as before. Paintings done after drawings and sketches brought back from Dieppe, Marseilles, Venice, Montréal and Québec, and later from Concarneau and Le Pouldu in Brittany (long sojourn in 1909-1910), show this new style. Some bright colors even suggest a Fauve influence.
     About 1908, Morrice meets the most famous of the Fauves, Henri Matisse. Both paint together twice in Tangiers, Morocco (Fruit Market, Tangiers): in early 1912, and again a year later. The Canadian painter is somewhat influenced by the audacities of the French: some of Morrice's Moroccan works show the growing importance of the decorative effect.
     Until now, Morrice had painted mostly landscapes; Blanche, exhibited in 1912, is the first of a series of portraits and model studies (Nude with a Feather) that he will pursue for a number of years, particularly during World War One, when travel was more difficult. At the beginning of the war, in February 1915, Morrice visits Cuba (House, Cuba) with Canadian friends.
      He often came back to Montréal, usually around Christmas; the visit of 1914, unfortunately saddened by the death of both his parents, will prove to be his second to last. The artist often brought paintings with him, and sent them to the annual Salons: Art Association of Montreal, Royal Canadian Academy. Canadian critics, more aware of the recent developments of art in Europe, as well as of Morrice's Parisian success, finally recognize his talent. But it is too late: disappointed by the lack of sales, Morrice stops exhibiting in Canada after 1916. The post-war years are saddened by illness (stomach problems linked to alcohol abuse) but, about Christmas 1920, well again, Morrice spends a few weeks in Canada, painting around Québec City.
      He then spends a few weeks in Trinidad, before going back to Paris. Trinidad (Beach landscape, Trinidad) marks the beginning of a new period: having abandoned the wood panel sketches for watercolors, Morrice transposes its technique, lighter and more fluid, into the paintings done after his trip: freer style, very light paint, contours underlined in a slightly darker tone; a reminiscence of Gauguin, perhaps, but the Canadian Morrice prefers colder tones.
      The watercolors he brought back from a trip to Algiers at the beginning of 1922 continue in this style. We can even find an echo of Cézanne, which Morrice admired, in some Algerian compositions, although Morrice never tried to use Cézanne's complex spatial constructions, prelude to Cubism, which the Canadian painter never understood. In spite of a relapse of his illness, Morrice goes to Tunis in January 1924; he does not have time to work: he dies after a few days in hospital.

— LINKS
— House in Santiago (1915, 54x65cm)
— The Ferry, Québec (1907, 62x82cm; 304x412pix, 34kb) combines two views: the train station at Lévis (across the St. Lawrence River from Québec), and a view of Cape Diamond taken aboard the ferry itself
— La plage, Paramé (1902, 60x73cm; 334x412pix, 29kb) _ Paramé is located immediately to the east of the walled town of Saint-Malo, France, vaguely seen in the background
— Dieppe (1906 50x61cm; 421x513pix, 54kb) _ Located on the Channel, a few hours by train from Paris and close to England, Dieppe was one of the most popular French sea resorts at the beginning of the 20th century.
— Femme au lit (Jane) (1897, 41x33cm; 610x492pix, 35kb) _ The identity of Jane is not known.
— Figures in an Evening Coast View

^ Died on 10 August 1784: Allan Ramsay, Scottish Rococo era painter, specialized in Portraits, born in 1713. He studied under Francesco Solimena. Ramsay's students included Philip Reinagle.
— Ramsay was active mainly in London. He was the outstanding portraitist there from about 1740 to the rise of Reynolds in the mid 1750s. Ramsay studied in London, in Rome, and in Naples (under Solimena), and when in 1739 he settled in London he brought a cosmopolitan air to British portrait painting. His portraits of women have a decidedly French grace (The Artist's Wife, 1755) and in this field he continued to be a serious rival to Reynolds, who was upset when Ramsay was appointed Painter-in-Ordinary to George III in 1760. Ramsay, however, gradually gave up painting during the 1760s to devote himself to his other interests. He was the son of Allan Ramsay, the poet, and inherited his father's literary bent. Political pamphleteering, classical archeology (he revisited Rome in 1754-57), and conversation took up much of his later years. He was successful in literary circles and Dr. Samuel Johnson said of him: 'You will not find a man in whose conversation there is more instruction, more information, and more elegance.'
— The painter Allan Ramsay was the eldest son of the poet Allan Ramsay (1685-1758). He was trained in Italy, and worked first in Edinburgh. From 1757, when he painted his first portrait of George III, then Prince of Wales, Ramsay was increasingly in demand as a royal portraitist. In 1762, he settled in London, and in 1767 was appointed portrait painter to George III.
Though this appointment provided generous and steady income, it brought Ramsay to the decline of his artistic individuality. All his best works were fulfilled before the royal appointment. His style used to be simple and delicate, he especially excelled in portraits of women. As he had a lot of commissions for royal portraits, he had to drop the rest of his practice. Also his art weakened, the painting became like a mechanical process for him, until an accident to his arm in 1773 prevented him from painting altogether. Ramsay’s best paintings however will always be among the supreme achievements of British art.
— LINKS
— George III (1762, 80x64cm) _ Allan Ramsay imitated the ceremonial portrait current at the time in France and Italy. George III (04 June [24 May Julian] 1738 – 29 January 1820), king of Great Britain. He was the first of the House of Hanover to command general respect on becoming sovereign, and at the outset he conciliated all classes of his subjects. In 1761 he married Charlotte Sophia, princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. During the administration of George III's favorite prime minister, Lord North, the American colonies, protesting England's attempts at taxation, proclaimed, on 04 July 1776, and eventually achieved their independence. The peace treaty was signed in February 1783. George III welcomed the union between Ireland and Great Britain, but refused the proposed Catholic emancipation, which led to the resignation of William Pitt in 1801. In 1810, his favorite child, Princess Amelia, fell dangerously ill; this caused an attack of mental derangement, not the first he had had. On 05 February 1811, his eldest son George, Prince of Whales... er... Wales (later George IV)[12 August 1762 – 26 June 1830] [portrait by Gainsborough] was appointed regent. George III was hopelessly insane until his death; he also lost his sight. His ailment is now believed to have been caused by porphyria.
— Queen Charlotte with her Two Children (1765, 249x162cm) _ Ramsay painted numerous portraits of distinguished personages in a style that anticipated Sir Joshua Reynolds' grand manner, but his more lasting reputation rests on his less formal and more intimate studies. His portraits of women are especially notable for the warmth, tenderness, and bloom of their presentation, as well as for the technical facility with which lace and ruffles are reproduced. The influence of French Rococo portraiture is clear in the lightness and unpretentious elegance of these works.
— Prince George Augustus of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1769, 127x102cm) _ Allan Ramsay was official painter to George III and Queen Charlotte from the date of the accession in 1760, although technically he only succeeded John Shackleton as Principal Painter in Ordinary in 1767. By this date, however, he had already painted the State Portraits for which he is justly famous. Indeed, the success of the State Portraits was such that he was required to paint numerous replicas for most of the rest of his life. Ramsay was born in Edinburgh and his artistic abilities were brought to the attention of George III, when still Prince of Wales, by the 3rd Earl of Bute who served as mentor to the future king. Ramsay's style was influenced by two visits to Italy, the first between 1736 and 1738 in Rome and Naples and the second between 1754 and 1757 in Rome, but the compositions of his State Portraits, and above all the soft pastel colors, bespeak the influence of French painters such as Quentin La Tour, Jean-Baptiste Perroneau and Jean-Marc Nattier. It is significant that in the first instance Ramsay was appointed Principal Painter in preference to Sir Joshua Reynolds. Ramsay, like Gainsborough, established a good rapport with the Royal Family. However, he gave up painting around 1770 and devoted the rest of his life to writing essays and pamphlets on political subjects, becoming a friend of Samuel Johnson, who praised him highly for his literary merits. Prince George of Mecklenburg-Strelitz [1748-1785] was the younger brother of Queen Charlotte. The portrait was probably painted when the prince was in London between November 1768 and August 1769. He is shown wearing the uniform of an officer of Cuirassiers, a unit of the 4th Regiment of Austrian-Salzburg Dragoons or 'Serbellonis' of which he was later Colonel from 1778 to 1786. He attained the rank of Major-General in the Austrian army. The portrait, which was presumably painted for Queen Charlotte, is a late work by Ramsay characterized by looser brushwork combined with the gentle coloring associated with the artist. There is a certain firmness in the drawing which attests to Ramsay's skill as a draftsman, a facility apparent in his numerous drawings (Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland). The pale transparent flesh tones were the result of applying grey-green strokes over a red underpainting, while in the background the landscape appears to be veiled in mist. It is a romantic portrait with a mood of quiet heroism. The evenness of the paint, the muted light, the silvery tone, the attention to detail, and the quite outstanding rendering of different textures create a feeling of calm that is in contrast with Prince George's love of soldiering. The head and shoulders have been painted on a separate piece of canvas that has been set into a larger piece, a practice much favored by the artist.
— David Hume (1766) _ Hume [1711-1776] was a Scottish empiricist philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who conceived of philosophy as the inductive, experimental science of human nature. Taking the scientific method of the English physicist Sir Isaac Newton as his model and building on the epistemology of the English philosopher John Locke, Hume tried to describe how the mind works in acquiring what is called knowledge. He concluded that no theory of reality is possible; there can be no knowledge of anything beyond experience. Despite the enduring impact of his theory of knowledge, Hume seems to have considered himself chiefly as a moralist.
— Portrait of the Artist's Wife (1755, 76x64cm) _ Ramsay painted the portrait of his wife, Margaret, during his visit to Italy, where he was a friend of Pompeo Batoni whose influence can be seen on this painting. The portrait is a renowned masterpiece of the artist.
— Mrs. Martin (1761)

^ Died on 10 August 1923: Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, Spanish painter born on 27 (28?) February 1863.
— Sorolla y Bastida, nacido en Valencia y fallecido en Cercedilla (Madrid), es considerado uno de los máximos representantes del Impresionismo español, del que hizo una interpretación muy personal basada en el protagonismo de la luz y el movimiento de las figuras representadas.
— He studied (1878–1880) at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Valencia, initially also attending the Escuela de Artesanos. He was influenced by the work of the previous generation of Valencian painters, especially Francisco Domingo y Marqués, who drew his attention to 17th-century Spanish realism. Also important at this stage in Sorolla’s development was the impact of the work of Ignacio Pinazo Camarlech, whose paintings prompted Sorolla to work out of doors, and that of Emilio Sala Francés. Sorolla first visited Madrid in 1881, for the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes. In the Prado at that time he made many copies from the works of Velázquez and Juan de Ribera; he was interested particularly in Velázquez’s treatment of light and in the vigor of execution of Ribera. A capacity to combine contemporary with traditional approaches is to be found in his Dos de Mayo (1884; Madrid, Mus. Sorolla), where Pinazo Camarlech’s plein-air principles are applied to a traditional historical composition on the theme of the heroic defense of Madrid against Napoleon’s troops. From this point onwards Sorolla started to seek out his own path between idealizing and realistic tendencies.

— LINKS
— Return from Fishing Towing the Bark (754x1200pix, 59kb) _ It was not of this picture that it was said that it was “all bark and no bite”.
— Señor Crotto (600x535pix, 25kb)
— El palmeral - Elche (1918, 350x231cm) — La bata rosa (1916, 210x128cm)
— Pescadora valenciana (1916, 46x37cm) — Las dos hermanas (1909, 175x115cm)
— El Sr. Taft, Presidente de los Estados Unidos (1909, 150x80cm)
— El Rey Don Alfonso XIII con el uniforme de husares (1907, 208x108cm)
— Maria (1900, 110x80cm; 1454x1000pix, 324kb) — Maria en la Granja (1907, 170x85cm)
— Maria con sombrero (1910, 40x80cm) — Al baño, Valencia (1908, 103x73cm)
— Antes del baño (1909, 177x112cm) — Saliendo del baño (1908, 176x111cm)
— En la Playa (1908, 82x105cm; 864x1152pix) _ detail (864x1152pix) — Niños en la Playa
— They Still Say That Fish Is Expensive! (1894, 153x205cm; 680x902pix, 64kb)
— José Luis Benlliure López de Arana (1918, 100x65cm)
— El niño de la bola (1887, 100x74cm) — Grupa valenciana (28 May 1906, 200x187cm)
— ¡Otra Margarita! (1892, 130x200cm) _ Best known for his paintings of a sun-drenched Spain, Sorolla believed that, with this tranquil yet tragic scene, he had at last defined his pictorial objectives. Painted when he was twenty-nine following twenty years of study, ¡Otra Margarita! brought him both self-assurance and recognition, despite lingering hesitations and apprehensions that he experienced when producing it. This key painting which was awarded a gold, first class medal in Madrid's International Exhibition of 1892 and praised in Spain's periodicals, represented the conclusion of a period of artistic struggle for Sorolla. Following the Madrid exhibition, ¡Otra Margarita! joined other pictures bound for the International Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where it again won a first place medal, as well as the plaudits of a US public. Reportedly, this sombre scene attracted crowds, who were moved to tears by the painting, and established a reputation for the young Valencian in the United States.
     By 1900, just when artists in Paris recognized Sorolla and admired his painting as original, independent and audacious, Sorolla abandoned all that was sorrowful or conscience-invoking in his art. He turned instead to a joyous interpretation of color and light. The hot Spanish sun as it played upon the people and beaches of Mediterranean Spain became his principal subject and continued his successes in European exhibitions. Then, in February 1909, he at last "brought the sun," as he put it, to Americans chilled by wintry snows. Record-breaking attendances at exhibitions of his paintings in The Hispanic Society of America, New York, and then in Buffalo and Boston – and return engagements in 1911 in New York, Chicago and St. Louis – testify to the appeal of his exhilarating views of a Spain saturated with warmth, color and sunlight, which Sorolla presented with spontaneity and bravura brushwork. As a portraitist rivalling John Singer Sargent, Sorolla filled many commissions while in the States, among them the portrayal of President Taft. On a larger scale, Sorolla commemorated his land and its people in huge wallcovering canvases of The Provinces of Spain, painted from 1911 to 1919 for the Hispanic Society, where they remain as part of the largest collection of his works outside Spain.
     With ¡Otra Margarita! , Sorolla in 1892 clearly succeeded in satisfying his artistic aspirations for realistic painting that would convey the essence of everyday life. His aesthetic concerns represent Spanish thought on art then shared by some critics. Assaying the period's conflicting schools of naturalism in 1894, Madrid artist and critic Pedro de Madrazo saw one school as consisting of false and ephemeral interpretations of nature resulting in overly familiar genre, costume and landscape pictures, while the other affected a more universal "art for art's sake" approach. Two years earlier, Madrazo had defined the two dominant trends in Spanish art as "modern academicism," based upon early nineteenth-century Spanish academic teachings focusing on the study of "the natural," and an opposing realist style that recalled seventeenth-century Spanish realism while tending toward the fin-de-siècle realism of Barcelona's "modernismo" artists. Placing Sorolla among those artists practicing his preferred "modern academicism," Sorolla's entries in that year's Madrid International Exhibition – including ¡Otra Margarita! – were praised as works created by one of the few exhibitors who knew how to draw. But a Spanish critics, deploring an "explosion" of democratic ideals introduced in sentimental paintings of everyday people, felt that the "sad grayness" of such pictures by "modernismo" artists must cede to a Latin, Spanish taste for vivid, harmonious color. ¡Otra Margarita! straddled such convictions, Sorolla here embracing contemporary concerns without dismissing his academic training. Another Spanish critic wrote that art should be based in social philosophy and psychology, and that it should penetrate the social spirit and new dramas stirring contemporary society. When these critiques were published in a Barcelona journal carrying a reproduction of ¡Otra Margarita! in February 1893, Sorolla's prize-winning painting was critically approved as a moving scene.
     Just as realist artists must often "invent" their painted realities, Sorolla, for the creation of ¡Otra Margarita! , recomposed, with models he placed within a railway car, a scene he observed while traveling from Valencia to Madrid. The metaphorical significance of the central subject of the painting, whom he identified in his title, ¡Otra Margarita! , but called simply "Pobre Margarita" in a preparatory study, has passed unnoticed by critics. Clearly Sorolla's solitary seated female prisoner recalls the young Marguerite of Goethe's Faust, by 1892 a well-established figure in European artists' pictorial repertoires. Many portrayals of this "most beautiful creature of Goethe's genius" – whose temptation by Mephistopheles led to her fall – were recognized in Spanish journals during the 1880s and 1890s. German artists, well represented in Madrid's 1892 International Exhibition, especially favored this attractive subject that evoked the audience's sympathies. Though most artists interpreted her as a beautiful but sad and contemplative female whose tragedy stirred the emotions, her imprisonment was also pictured, as in a painting of 1870 by Felon. Thus, Sorolla's title parallels his plain, forlorn ¡Otra Margarita! with the familiar Goethe-inspired image which arouses pity and empathy for this pathetic woman in chains, eyes downcast, who is a victim, perhaps unjustly so, of his own time. However, the painterly touches of sunlight that penetrate the dismal railway cabin – Sorolla's first attempt to render sunshine – provide a ray of hope for this disconsolate prisoner. ¡Otra Margarita! therefore involves not only social commentary as has been thought, but offers Sorolla's response to a popular and often over-sentimentalized pictorial theme. It was Sorolla's youthful rebelliousness, which he later acknowledged, that compelled him to recast this theme to reflect the realities he knew. Not Goethe's fallen woman, Sorolla's ¡Otra Margarita! is yet another Marguerite – a pathetic creature, a helpless young Spanish Margarita ruined by misfortune and reduced to shame. Her name also brings to mind the Marguerite Mary of the Gospel.

^
Died on a 10 August:

1847 Adam Wolfgang Töpffer, Geneva painter, caricaturist, and engraver, born on 20 May 1766. He was trained as an engraver in Lausanne and while there illustrated Horace-Bénédict de Saussure’s Voyage dans les Alpes (1779) in 1786. He studied under Joseph-Benoît Suvée in Paris (1789–1791) and was influenced by Jean-Louis Demarne. On Töpffer's return to Geneva he went on painting expeditions with Pierre-Louis De La Rive; these studies of the environs of the city inspired his best work. In 1796 he exhibited caricatures at the Salon in Geneva and from 1804 to 1807 was in Paris, where he was Drawing Master to Joséphine Bonaparte. From 1810 he concentrated on painting such scenes from local village life as Open-air Sermon (1810). His anecdotal, animated landscapes were very popular not only in Switzerland but also in France, where he exhibited at the Salons of 1804 and 1812 in Paris. He won a gold medal at the latter Salon for the contemporary history painting Re-establishment of Religion in France after the Revolution (1811), a subject he had first treated at least twice in 1803. In 1816 he visited England, where he exhibited at the Royal Academy. Under the influence of English painting his work became more colorful, vigorous and economical. He also admired Hogarth’s work and emulated his style in his own political caricatures (e.g. La Planche appartient à M. Frédéric Raisin, 1817). On his return to Geneva in 1816 he began to produce such sparse, sober and balanced paintings as Vue du Mont Blanc. After a visit to Italy in 1824, he was inspired to do quick sketches of city life on the streets of Geneva. He was the most comprehensive recorder of the city and its surroundings of any 19th-century Genevese artist.

1817 Léon-Matthieu Cochereau, French artist born on 10 February 1793. — Interior of the Studio of David

1669 Paulus Orlando Bor (or Borro), Dutch artist. — [Was Bor, or Borro, a bore or a burro? Is that why there is no example of his work on the internet?]

1456 Rossello di Jacopi Franchi, Italian artist born in 1377.

^
Born on a 10 August:

1867 Valerius de Saedeler, Dutch artist who died in 1941 or 1942.

1845 Francesco Vinea, Italian artist who died on 22 October 1902.

1836 Vittorio Avondo, Italian artist who died on 06 December 1910.

1749 Christian August Lorentzen, Danish artist who died on 08 May 1828. — [Was there ever a Lorentzen low-rent zen center?]

1650 Leender Knyff, Dutch artist who died in 1721 on 1722.

1617 Ambrosius Brueghel, Antwerp, Flanders, painter who died on 09 February 1675. — After the death of his father, Jan 'Velvet' Brueghel [1568 – 13 Jan 1625], Ambrosius was placed under the guardianship of Rubens, Hendrick van Balen, Cornelis Schut, and Pieter de Jode. — Ambrosius Brueghel was grandson of Pieter Brueghel the Elder [1525-1569], half-brother and possibly student of Jan Brueghel the Younger [13 Sep 1601 – 1678], nephew of Pieter Brueghel the Younger [1564-1638]

1578 Matteo Roselli, Italian artist who died on 18 January 1650.

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