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ANY DAY ...IN ART ...IN HISTORY ||| HISTORY “4” AUG 18 ||| ALTERNATE SITES

ART “4” “2”-DAY 18 August

DEATHS: 1902 TWACHTMAN — 1642 RENI

BIRTH: 1859 ANCHER — 1869 RUNGIUS — 1862 ROBINSON

^ Born on 18 August 1859: Anna Kirstine Brøndum Ancher [< 1884 portrait by P.S. Krøyer], Danish painter who married painter Michael Ancher [09 Jun 1849 – 19 Sep 1927] in 1880 and died on 15 April 1935. Their daughter Helga Ancher [1881–1964] was also a painter.
      — Anna was born in Skagen. Her parents were not rich, but her father was a grocer and owned the Hotel Brøndum, that is today a fashionable hotel, but at that time just was a small inn and grocery. Because of Anne and Michael Ancher the hotel is today a part of Skagen like the sea and the light.
      Anne was born at the same time as the world renowned author H. C. Andersen was on a holiday in the village. The story tells that he came to the Hotel Brøndum to get dinner. He ordered fish, but Anna's mother who was preparing the dinner, did not have any fish. She ordered some, but because the boy had to go to the other side of village, this took some time. The author got mad and shouted at Anna's mother. When he got the fish, he later wrote about it in one of his stories, that it was a fish a king would call a magnificent dinner. Because of Andersen's shouting, the mother had to go to bed, and a few hours later Anna was born.
      Anna was the first born of a total of five children. The village Skagen was not big. And Anna had never made a painting on the other side of the village from where she was born. As a child she did not move away from her mother's kitchen. Anna as an artist is very important. At that time it was not normally for a women to paint, and in Anna there was a a feeling for the art and for the people that she painted, that made her a great artist. She is considered to be more important, as a painter, than her husband. Michael pictured Anna (from the back) in A. Ancher and M. Krøyer
— Anna studied drawing at Vilhelm Kyhn’s drawing school, Copenhagen (1875–1878), and painting under Puvis de Chavannes in Paris (1889). Her genre paintings and portraits are more intimate than those of her husband. Many of her everyday interiors contain a characteristic image of the shadow of window bars on a sunlit wall, displaying her natural skill as a colorist. An exquisite example is the Blind Woman in her Room (1883), in which the dark, bent figure of an old woman with worn hands is silhouetted against a golden sunlit wall. Women at work, particularly sewing or plucking poultry, are among her favourite subjects, as in the Girl in the Kitchen (1886). The girl stands by the window, turning her back to the viewer and immersed in her daily duties. Her red skirt and black jacket stand out brilliantly against a yellow and orange curtain, enlivened by the sunlight shining on the floor through a half-open door. Like her husband, Anna Ancher was drawn to the work of Vermeer but generally her tastes were not eclectic. She painted several portraits of her mother, one of the last of which dates from 1913; it shows the 87-year-old woman wrapped in blankets and sitting in a chair. The picture may have been influenced by other artists’ depictions of the nobility of old age, such as the famous portrait that Whistler made of his mother (Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1), but has its own, particularly sensitive handling of the frailty of life.
— Anna Ancher was the only Skagen artist that was born and raised in Skagen. She was the daughter of Ane Hedvig and Erik Brøndum who managed the town inn and grocery store. She was very young when the artists began coming to Skagen. She showed a great interest in their activities and work and even began to draw and paint herself. One of the artists who came to Skagen was Michael Ancher. Anna and Michael took to each other immediately and became engaged in 1878 and married in 1880. They had a daughter, Helga, who was born in 1883, and they lived together in Skagen for the rest of their lives. From 1884 they lived in the house on Markvej, which is now the "Michael and Anna Ancher’s House" museum. Anna Ancher’s artistic career was exceptional, primarily due to the fact that she was a woman at a time when it was not usual that women received an artistic education – and they were certainly not accepted at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
     She was, however, accepted at Wilhelm Kyhn’s Art School for Women in Copenhagen, where she attended classes for three winter semesters from 1875 to 1878. Wilhelm Kyhn was of the firm opinion that Anna Ancher should abandon her paint box when she married - i.e. give up painting and devote herself to household duties. Fortunately she did not. She exhibited for the first time at Charlottenborg in Copenhagen in 1880 and quickly achieved success as a painter. Her motives were mainly taken from the private sphere – the home and the world of women and children. It was the colors and the light rather than the epic content of the paintings that were important to Anna Ancher. In that way she was one of the most modern Skagen artists and her paintings point, therefore, forward to the more abstract art that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century.
— LINKS
— Tulips (1919) — Sunshine Room (1921) — Wedding in Skagen (1914)
— Girl in the Kitchen (1883) — Carving a Stick (1880)
— Sunshine in the Blue Room (1881) — Anna's Living Room (1913)
— Young Woman in Front of a Mirror (1899)
— Syende fiskerpige (1890; 494x402pix, 20kb) _ This skilled coloristic representation of a sewing fisherman´s wife in her living room, is especially remarkable by virtue of the intensive use of contrasting effects in the interplay between the warm colors which illuminate the subject and the cold colors which form the shadows.

^ Died on 18 (08?) August 1902: John Henry Twachtman, US Impressionist painter and printmaker born on 04 August 1853.
— He began as a painter of window-shades but developed one of the most personal and poetic visions in US landscape painting, portraying nature on canvases that were, in the words of Childe Hassam, ‘strong, and at the same time delicate even to evasiveness’. His first artistic training was under Frank Duveneck, with whom he studied first in Cincinnati and then in Munich (1875–1877). His absorption of the Munich style, characterized by bravura brushwork and dextrous manipulation of pigment, with the lights painted as directly as possible into warm, dark grounds derived from Frans Hals and Courbet, is reflected in such paintings as Venice Landscape (1878) and Landscape (1882). Later he studied under Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre.
— Born in in Cincinnati to German immigrant parents, Twachtman received early artistic training in his hometown. He began his career decorating window shades and studied drawing at the Ohio Mechanics Institute and McMicken School of Design.
      In 1875, Frank Duveneck, a friend and teacher, invited the young artist to accompany him to Munich. Twachtman readily adopted the characteristic dark palette and rapid, open brushwork of Munich colleagues. After refining his painting skills on a trip to Venice in 1877, he returned to the United States and developed a forceful, realist manner, capturing the energy of city life in New York and Cincinnati.
      Like many great painters [and many more not-so-great], Twachtman was never fully appreciated or well known in his lifetime. His work, which went beyond the representation of things, had a searching, abstract quality that was poorly understood. Fellow painter Edward Simmons recalled walking up and down Fifth Avenue in New York with Twachtman, hoping to sell one of Twachtman's landscapes for $25.
      Twachtman hungered after fame and fortune and was embittered by his failure to achieve them, even in his hometown. In Cincinnati, he once complained, "A good many people, all of them supposed to be up in art matters, have seen my paintings, but I am convinced they care little for them. This is a very old foggied place and only one kind of art is considered good. The old Dusseldorf School comes in for its full share of honor."
      Twachtman went to Paris in 1883 with his wife and son to study with the popular teachers associated with the Academic Julian. Twachtman continued to improve his drawing skills, and the works from this period reflect an increasing interest in composition. The salon-size landscape painting Arques-la-Bataille represents the pinnacle of Twachtman's French period. Its stark composition and tonal palette reveal the influence of James McNeill Whistler as well as the flattened spaces and decorative patterns of Japanese art.
      As seen in Along the River, Winter, Twachtman was especially fond of winter landscapes. He explained to Weir in a letter, "We must have snow and lots of it. Never is nature more lovely than when it is snowing. Everything is so quiet and the whole earth seems wrapped in a mantle, all nature is hushed to silence."
      Twachtman moved back to the United States in 1885 and, after living in various places, moved his family to Greenwich, Connetticut, in 1889 or 1890. Family life at his 7-hectare estate in Greenwich provided the leading subject matter for his art through the next decade. He returned to specific sites on the property and painted them repeatedly during different weather conditions and changing seasons, seeking to convey his personal reponse to the sensuous aspects of nature.
      By the mid-1890s, Twachtman's career became fully identified with the Impressionist movement, and US critics often compared him to Monet. Twachtman's brush- work, however, usually differed from the broken strokes of other US Impressionists. He varied his paint application from rich, tactile strokes to dry, chalky surfaces. His palette brightened during the 1890s when he often depicted close-up views of flowers, corners of the garden, and other favorite spots on the farm, as in The White Bridge and Waterfall, Blue Brook.
      By 1897, Twachtman became a founding member of "The Ten American Painters" (or "The Ten"), a group of artists who seceded from the Society of American Artists and exhibited together for the next 20 years. Of "The Ten," Weir, Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, and Twachtman were united by their rejection of descriptive art in favor of more subjective, innovative interpretations of nature. Twachtman created some of his most bold and experimental works for inclusion in this group's landmark exhibitions.
      Beginning in 1900, Twachtman spent his summers in the artist colony of Glouchester, Massachusetts. A boldness and spontaneity is evident in his late Gloucester subjects, which are among the strongest and most aggressive works of his career. In these paintings he returned to the broadly brushed style of his Munich period and reintroduced black into his palette to capture the grittier images of life in Gloucester's commercial fishing docks. As in Wild Cherry Tree or Harbor View Hotel, his use of daring compositions with simplified, geometric abstractions suggests his innate understanding of 20th century modernism.
      Twachtman, estranged from his family, was living in Gloucester when he died suddenly, a bitter and lonely man.
— Ernest Lawson was a student of Twachtman.
— LINKS
— The White Bridge (1895, 77x77cm; 859x855pix, 134kb — ZOOM to 1964x1957pix, 816kb)
— a different The White Bridge (1898, 77x77cm; 805x800pix, 71kb — ZOOM to 1208x1200pix, 120kb)
— yet another The White Bridge (1900, 77x64cm)
— Waterfall, Blue Brook (1900, 64x76cm; 878x1050pix, 74kb)
— Beneath the Snow. — Gloucester Harbor (1900)
— Canal, Venice (1878) — The Grand Canal (1878) — Springtime (1884)
— Wild Flowers (1892) — In the Sunlight (1893, 76x63cm; 600x503pix, 73kb) — Arques~la~Bataille
— Oyster Boats, North River (1878, 41x61cm)
— Mother and Child — Gloucester Harbor (1900) — On the Terrace (1897)
— Windmills, Dordrecht (1881, 36x51cm)
— In The Greenhouse (1895, 64x41cm)

^ Born on 18 August 1869: Carl Clemens Moritz Rungius, German~US painter specialized in wildlife; he died on 21 October 1959.
— Carl Rungius is recognized as one of North America's greatest wildlife painters. He first visited the Rockies in 1910, and was so impressed by them that he built a house and studio in Banff in 1921. From then until 1958, he returned to Banff every summer to sketch the mountains and wildlife he loved so much. In the fall he returned to his winter residence in New York and continued to paint, often drawing upon the wealth of material in his summer sketches.
— Carl Rungius studied at the Berlin Art Academy between 1888 and 1890. While in Berlin, he frequently sketched animals at the Berlin Zoo. His dedication to painting animals with anatomical accuracy coupled with his determination to learn and paint each animal’s mannerisms and habitat made Rungius a well-respected wildlife artist. Rungius first visited the United States in 1894, and traveled to Cora, Wyoming to hunt and sketch the following year. Rungius decided to remain in the United States spending the next decade of summers in Wyoming and the remainder of the year in his New York studio. During those years, he painted and hunted western big game animals, including moose, pronghorn and bighorn sheep in the Rocky Mountains and he completed these paintings during the long New York winters.
Rungius’ reputation as a premier wildlife artist was enhanced considerably by an expedition to the Yukon Territory in 1905. The artwork and social connections that resulted from that trip launched Rungius into the center of America’s conservation movement, promoted by such famous American sportsmen as President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1910 he accepted an offer to visit the Canadian Rockies. The opportunities to hunt, explore and paint the region were so appealing that in 1921 he built a summer studio called “The Paintbox” in Banff, where he worked from April to October of each year until his death in 1959. Rungius’ ability to capture the heart-stopping chance encounter between man and animal sets him apart from many of his talented colleagues. Equally accomplished as a painter of wildlife and landscapes, Rungius quickly developed an enthusiastic following among fellow artists and patrons.
— LINKS
— American Black Bear (1925) — Caribou, North of Banff (1935) — In His Prime (1940)
— Lake O'Hara (1935) — Montague Island Bear — Morning Mist (1934) — Northern King (1927)
— Quantrell Moose (1930) — Red Fox (1935) — The Humpback — Three Old Gentlemen (1935)
— When Bison Numbered Millions (1930) — Wyoming Sage (1902)
— Moose Going Through Underbrush — On the Range (1920; 339x400pix, 128kb)

^ Died on 18 August 1642: Guido Reni “Le Guide”, Italian Baroque era painter born on 04 November 1575. He studied under Denys Calvaert and Lodovico Carracci. Reni's students included Simone Cantarini.
— Reni painted popular religious works and critically acclaimed mythological scenes. He was born in Bologna and began to study painting at the age of nine, and about 1595 he became a pupil of the Carracci family of Bolognese painters. His studies were rounded off by a trip to Rome in about 1600. From that moment on, antique and recent Roman art became his ideals. He admired Raphael unconditionally. He did, however, come to terms with Caravaggio's naturalism in a group of youthful works such as The Crucifixion of St Peter (1604), where the use of chiaroscuro provided enormous energy.
      He alternated between living in his native Bologna and visits to Rome. After Annibale Carracci's death (1609) he became the leader of the classical school of Emilian painters. His adhesion to this school can be seen in the frescos he painted in Rome in about 1610 in the Quirinal Palace, the Vatican, and various churches (e.g. San Gregorio Magno al Cielo). They were inspired by the return to classical taste and culminated in his most renowned work, the ceiling fresco Phoebus and the Hours, Preceded by Aurora (1614) which has almost mimetic qualities. The large altarpieces he painted in Bologna — The Massacre of the Innocents and Pietà dei Mendicanti — mark the triumph of design, the ability to control and channel feelings, gestures, expressions, drawing, and color into a single, eloquent, and faultless form. Guido Reni's success was underlined by the important commissions he received. They included the cycle of The Labors of Hercules (1617-1621). He exalted the clarity of light, the perfection of the body, and lively color. Toward the end of his life, Reni modified his style. His paintings became so airy as to seem insubstantial and were almost completely monochrome. He also used long, flowing brushstrokes and conveyed an atmosphere laden with intense melancholy.
      Guido Reni was a quintessentially classical academic but he was also one of the most elegant painters in the annals of art history. He was constantly seeking an absolute, rarefied perfection which he measured against classical Antiquity and Raphael. Because of this, over the years the Bolognese painter has been in and out of fashion, depending on the tastes of the times. The eighteenth century loved him, the nineteenth century, persuaded by the violent criticism of John Ruskin, hated him. But even his detractors cannot deny the exceptional technical quality of his work nor the clarity of his supremely assured and harmonious brushwork.

— LINKS
— Hercules Beheads the Hydra (1621; 756x573pix, 46kb — ZOOM to 1512x1142pix, 225kb — ZOOM++ to 2268x1715pix, 245kb)
— Bacchus and Ariadne (1630; 879x889pix, 75kb — ZOOM to 1333x1180pix, 150kb — ZOOM++ to 2012x1769pix, 339kb) [the story of Bacchus and his meeting Ariadne]
— The Boy Bacchus (1618, 87x70cm) _ This graceful and serene painting was made after Reni between 1615 and 1620 after Reni had been several times to Rome.
— Drinking Bacchus (1623, 72x56cm; 843x649pix, 116kb) as a urinating baby.
— Baptism of Christ (1623, 263x186cm) _ Reni's Baptism of Christ, created in the mid 1620s as a major masterpiece of his mature style, is based on principles of composition similar to those applied in The Massacre of the Innocents. The painting is built up into three clearly distinct planes. At the very front, Christ bows beneath the baptismal cup, which John the Baptist pours over him with his raised right hand. The Baptist is standing or, rather, slightly kneeling over Christ on the banks of the Jordan. Below the arc formed by these two figures facing each other in humility, we see two angels who, together with a third figure at the outside left, are holding Christ's robes in readiness. Behind that, the trees, clouds and deep blue sky combine to create a sense of indefinable distance from which the Holy Spirit floats down in the form of a dove.
      The entire scene, in its structure and coloration, is of overwhelming simplicity. The act of baptism itself is entirely void of bright colors. The matte and shimmering flesh tones of the two nude figures stand out clearly against the middle ground and background, where everything is dominated by the solemn purity of the three primary colors red, yellow and blue. On another level, however, all the figures are closely linked in that expression of complete spiritual devotion that Reni could convey like no other artist. Reni was able to create a balance of strictly disciplined compositional form and profound sentiment that his many imitators failed to achieve.
— Massacre of the Innocents (1611, 268x170cm) _ Though the historical significance of Caravaggio and his enormous influence on Baroque painting cannot be overlooked, we should not ignore the fact that there was considerable resistance against the more extreme tendencies in his art, such as the loss of the heroic sphere, or the presentation of the everyday and the ordinary. His greatest rival, whose influence was to extend far beyond that of Caravaggio well into the 18th and 19th centuries, was undoubtedly the Bolognese artist Guido Reni. An early work such as The Massacre of the Innocents bears clear traces of his initial links with Caravaggio and, at the same time, already reveals the most important arguments against him. Before a landscape bathed in light, but set with dark and heavy architecture, a group of eight adults and eight children (including the putti distributing the palm fronds of victory) has been skillfully arranged. The unusual vertical format, rarely used for this theme, and above all the symmetrical structure of figural counterparts indicate that Reni was particularly interested in a specific problem of composition: that of achieving a balance between centripetal and centrifugal movement while combining them in a static pictorial structure. Reni also seeks to achieve this equilibrium in his expression of effects and in the distribution of color accents.
— St Joseph with the Infant Jesus (1635, 126x101cm) _ The resting Mary in the background indicates that the scene is connected with the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt.
— a slightly different (without Mary) St Joseph with the Infant Jesus, from Reni's workshop.
— The Penitent St Mary Magdalene (1633, 234x151cm) [reclining, full-length, looking up to the right to a baby angel] _ The image of the penitent Mary Magdalene enjoyed great popularity between the late sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth century. Cardinal Baronius, in his hard-hitting polemics against Protestantism, employed the subject (along with that of the penitent St Peter) to emphasize the necessity and validity of penance, a sacrament discarded by the reformers. The penitent Magdalene was something of a iconographic specialty for Reni, who painted various versions to please a public that prized them and continually requested them. A splendid example of the mature style of Reni, this painting is characterized by a profound classicism in the monumental and noble figure of the saint. The refined chromatic range, lit by a cold and silvery light, is also typical of Reni's art in the 1630's. The Penitent Magdalene is chronologically connected, though problematically, to a third Barberini Magdalene attributed to Vouet or one of his close followers: datable to 1626-27, the composition of the latter painting is very close to that of the Reni.

— a different The Penitent St Mary Magdalene (1635) [standing, half-length, left hand on a skull, looking up to the left towards outside the frame]
— The Triumph of Samson (1612; 829x672pix, 41kb — ZOOM to 1105x897pix, 72kb — ZOOM++ to 1658x1345pix, 108kb) _ The unusual shape of the picture (each upper corner cut off by two arcs of circle and two straight segments) is a reminder of its original use as a fireplace cover. The well balanced figure of the hero quenching his thirst after his victory is set against a dramatic landscape littered as far as the eye can see with the corpses of his enemies.
— David with the Head of Goliath (1605, 220x145cm) _ This painting can be compared directly with Caravaggio's David With the Head of Goliath (1610) _ See also: Caravaggio's David with the Head of Goliath (1602) — Rembrandt's David Presenting the Head of Goliath to King Saul (detail) (1627) — Stanzione's David with Head of Goliath — Strozzi's David with the Head of Goliath (1635) — Aubin Vouet's David Holding the Head of Goliath — The Master of Tahull's David About to Cut Off Goliath's Head (1123)
— Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist (1640)
— Moses (1610) _ At the beginning of the 17th century the followers of Caravaggio and Carracci vied with each other for predominance. Some sought a classical approach and a serene harmony of forms and colors, others were intent on humbly capturing simple everyday life set in a powerful contrast of light and shadow. But there was no hard and fast dividing line between them and even classical painters like Guido Reni in his Moses is influenced by Caravaggio's heroic dramatic style. This new humble yet monumental language became an international phenomenon.
— The Abduction of Dejanira (259x193cm) _ This painting belongs to the cycle of Hercules, intended for the Duke of Mantua. The artist applies successfully the study of the human body, blending a naturalistic touch with his passion for Greek statues. The joyful ardor which is expressed on the face of the young centaur carrying off Dejanira should be noted.
— Atalanta and Hippomenes (1612, 206x297cm) _ an almost identical, later Atalanta and Hippomenes (1625) _ In the Boeotian version of the legend, followed by Ovid (Metamorphoses 10:560-707), Atalanta was an athletic huntress. Her way with her suitors was to challenge them to a race in which the loser was punished with death. She remained unbeaten and a virgin until Hippomenes (elsewhere named Melanion) took her on. As they ran he dropped three golden apples, given to him by Venus, and since Atalanta could not resist stopping to pick them up she lost the race. They later made love in a temple of Cybele, which offended the goddess so much that she turned them both into lions. This composition is calculated and refined. It highlights the contradictory gestures of Atalanta bending down to pick up a golden apple and of Hippomenes passing her about to win the race. The idea of movement is rendered almost exclusively by the billowing cloaks. The ivory smooth bodies of the two contestants clearly stand out remarkably against the gray-brown background.
   _ Compare La course d'Hippomène et d'Atalante (1765, 321x712 cm; 873x2000pix, 200kb) by Hallé [02 Sep 1781 – 05 Jun 1781]
   _ Atalanta and Hippomenes (1560; 654x1095pix, 79kb) by Schönfeld [1609-1683]
   _ Hippomenes and Atalanta (1630; 274x343pix, 30kb) by Jordaens [1593-1678]
— Phoebus and the Hours, Preceded by Aurora (1614; 482x1195pix, 83kb — ZOOM to 724x1792pix, 223kb — ZOOM++ to 1086x2688pix, 261kb) _ During Guido Reni's second stay in Rome he directly tackled themes from classical Antiquity. While this composition was openly derived from classical art, it was meant in the spirit of purest love and has a genuine if rather insipid beauty. Though a ceiling decoration, it is composed in the form of a frieze as if painted on a wall. Here the artist was rebelling against the spatial researches which at that time were exciting such passionate interest in Lanfranco and Pietro da Cortona.
— Cleopatra (1640, 122x96cm; 869x754pix, 52kb — ZOOM to 2409x2071pix, 441kb) _ The painting was sent as a present to Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici with a letter of 04 January 1640 by Marchese Cospi of Bologna. This very beautiful painting belongs to the last period of Guido Reni, and in its very delicate, pale, refined color especially, it appears as one of the most striking testimonies of the surprising poetical evolution of Reni in the last years of his life. Being celebrated, it was carried off to Paris by the Napoleonic army from 1799 to 1815.
— Charity, — Susannah & the Elders — Deianeira Abducted by the Centaur Nessus (1621)
— Baptism of Christ, (1623) — The Coronation of the Virgin (1626)
— Saint Joseph with the infant Jesus (1635, 126x101cm)
— Angels in Glory, after Luca Cambiaso (1607 etching, 41x28cm)
— The Holy Family with Saint Clare — Head of an Old Man (1630)
— Holy Family with Two Angels — Girl Carrying a Cushion, after Parmigianino
— Girl With a Crucifix, (after Parmigianino) — The Madonna and Child with Saint
— The Holy Family (1590) — Portrait of an Old Woman (1612, 34x28cm)
— 24 prints at FAMSF

^ Born on 18 August 1862: Frederick Cayley Robinson, British Neoclassical painter who died on 04 January 1927. Robinson was born in Middlesex and studied in London and Paris. A pioneer of twentieth century tempera painting, illustrator and theatre designer, he was elected to the NEAC in 1912 and appointed Professor of Figure Composition and Decoration at Glasgow University in 1914. Elected ARA 1921. From 1914 he lived in the block of studios at Lansdowne House, Holland Park, where Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon were also residents.
— LINKS
— A Winter Evening (1899, 61x76cm; 796x1009pix, 57kb — ZOOM to 1592x2017pix, 195kb)
— A winter's evening (1918, 99x77cm; 474x640pix, 47kb)
— Pastoral (1924, 90x116cm)
— Mother and Child - Threads of Life (1894, 61x76cm; 336x400pix, 20kb) _ A pensive woman sits at the left of the composition, facing right, with her right forearm resting on a dining table, in her hand she holds a needle and thread with which she has been embroidering a narrow hanging which lies flat on the table, steam rises from a blue and white bowl at the centre of the table. Behind her, against a lace-curtained window, sits a red-haired girl, facing right, eating from a white bowl which she holds in her right hand. At the back edge of the table wooden Noah's Ark figures stand in line. All is lit from above by a hanging oil lamp. An open triptych showing angels awaking a sleeping shepherd and the Virgin and Child hangs on the right wall.
Presumably painted immediately after Robinson's return from Paris, where he had been studying at the Academy Julian since 1891. During his stay in France Robinson admired the work of Puvis de Chavannes and the Nabis and their influences may be seen in both the technique and obscure symbolism of this work. Enigmatic groupings of two or more female figures around a table in a lamp-lit room, frequently occur in his work. The Depth of Winter (1900, 90x116cm) is a related painting which also features an incomplete embroidery, as does A Souvenir of a Past Age (1894)

^
Died on a 18 August:

1896 Alfred Wordsworth Thompson, US artist born on 26 May 1840. — Life on the Towpath (1881)

1890 Louis-Auguste-Albert Dubois-Pillet, French Neo-Impressionist painter and army officer born on 28 October 1846. He pursued a military career at the Ecole Impériale Militaire at Saint-Cyr, from which he graduated in 1867. He fought in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) and was held prisoner in Westphalia by the Germans; upon release he joined the Versailles army and participated in the suppression of the Commune. Following various assignments in the provinces, in late 1879 he was appointed to the Légion de la Garde Républicaine in Paris.

1795 Bénigne Gagneraux, dies in Florence, French painter and engraver born in Dijon on 24 September 1756.— [La Révolution n'a pas besoin de peintres?] — He was one of the most important artists to emerge from François Devosge’s school of art in Dijon. His reputation, like that of his fellow Dijonnais artist Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, is based on a number of Neo-classical works of a pleasingly poetic character, which Devosge had encouraged. In 1776 he became the first artist from the Dijon art school to win the Prix de Rome with his painting of an uplifting moral subject, Manius Curius Dentatus Refusing the Presents of the Samnites. The Dijon academy was very quickly recognized as one of the most important outside Paris. As a student there Gagneraux was directed towards examples from antiquity, the Italian Renaissance and the work of Poussin. During his four-year study period in Rome (1779–1781) he worked on a copy of Raphael’s School of Athens to fulfil his obligation to the States of Burgundy which sponsored him.
He spent most of his life in Italy, working in the company of Anton Raphael Mengs, Johan Tobias Sergel and Henry Fuseli in the 1770s and with Antonio Canova, Gavin Hamilton, Goethe and Jacques-Louis David in the 1780s. In 1784 he was recognized as an artist of exceptional talent by Gustav III of Sweden, who visited Gagneraux’s studio and bought the large painting Blind Oedipus Commending his Family to the Gods. This subject, which was subsequently taken up by many painters, was unusual for its time. David, however, had produced Blind Belisarius Begging for Alms in 1781, which was similar in subject, sentiment and style.
In common with contemporary history painters in Paris, Gagneraux showed an interest in dramatic subjects, clear and legible gestures and expressions and stark, austere settings. Oedipus was a turning-point in his career. As a direct consequence of the picture’s success, he began to receive commissions from the King of Sweden and members of the court circle. One of the first of these was for a group portrait commemorating L'Entrevue de Gustave III avec le Pape Pie VI dans le Musée Pio Clementino. It was completed on 05 March 1785 and a copy, commissioned by the Pope, was done in 1786. It displayed Gagneraux’s competence as a portrait painter and his ability to mass a large group on a grand scale. He took certain liberties with the architecture in an attempt to idealize it and with the positions of the main figures, which imitated those of the most revered antique statues shown in the background. This imaginative reconstruction of a solemn occasion, in which there was no attempt at absolute historical accuracy, was characteristic of Gagneraux’s approach. There is a duality in Gagneraux’s works, disciplined studies from Egyptian statues and Greek vases in his notebooks were given as much attention as the paintings of more imaginative, fantasy subjects, such as The Magician (1795) or Phaethon Terrified by the Sign of the Lion (1795). The Phaethon is interesting not only for the surprisingly dynamic movement and rich, intense coloring but also for the unusual experimental technique employed. It is painted on gilded paper and laid down on panel, producing exciting light effects in certain areas.

^
Born on a 18 August:

1872 René Victor Auberjonois, Lausanne Swiss draftsman, painter, and illustrator, who died on 11 October 1957. He began his career as an apprentice banker but abandoned this to study music and languages in Dresden, and then painting at the South Kensington School of Art, London (1895). In 1896 he went to Paris where he took courses in anatomy and became the student of Luc Olivier Merson and possibly of Whistler. In 1897 he entered the École des Beaux-Arts but continued to frequent Merson’s studio. At the end of 1899, after a short stay in Bavaria, Auberjonois went to Florence, where he passed several months studying and copying the paintings of the Old Masters and painting the Tuscan landscape. Returning to Paris in 1901, he began to work independently, exhibiting for the first time at the Salon in Paris and at the Exposition Nationale Suisse des Beaux-Arts in Vevey. From 1901 to World War I he lived alternately in Paris and in Switzerland.

1855 (08 Aug?) Alfred Wallis, English painter, fisherman, and scrap merchant, who died on 29 August 1942. Although the exact date of Wallis’s birth is doubtful, he stated in letters to Jim Ede, one of his greatest patrons, that he was born on the day of the fall of Sebastopol. He claimed to have gone to sea at the age of nine and was involved in deep-sea fishing, sometimes sailing as far as Newfoundland. About 1875 he married Susan Ward, a woman 21 years his senior, and shortly afterwards gave up deep-sea fishing to become an inshore fisherman. In 1890 he moved to St Ives, Cornwall, where he set up as a marine scrap merchant. In 1912 he retired. His wife died in 1922, whereupon he took up painting to keep himself company, as he told Ede.

1835 Telemaco Signorini, Florentine painter, writer, critic, illustrator, etcher, and teacher, who died on 10 (11?) February 1901. He was a major figure of the Macchiaioli group, painting primarily landscapes, seascapes and street scenes in towns and villages in Tuscany and Liguria. As with many of the Macchiaioli, he did not always date his paintings, and their chronology must be deduced from exhibition catalogues and other contemporary sources. As a writer and critic he was the most ardent spokesman for, and promoter of the Macchiaioli and wrote with insight and cutting wit about the art world of the second half of the 19th century. — Giovanni Boldini was a student of Signorini.

1811 Anton Schiffer, Austrian artist who died on 13 June 1876.

1802 Paul Emil Jacobs, Danish artist who died on 06 January 1866.

1758 François Louis Joseph Watteau “de Lille”, French painter who died on 01 December 1823, son of Louis-Joseph Watteau “de Lille” [10 Apr 1731 – 27 Aug 1798], whose uncle was Jean~Antoine Watteau [bapt. 10 Oct 1684 – 18 Jul 1721]. François Watteau was first his father’s student at the Lille school of drawing, where in 1774 he was awarded a medal for La Mort de Socrate. This success won him a municipal scholarship to study in Paris, first (1775–1777) under Louis-Jacques Durameau, and then at the Académie Royale. He won a prize for drawing in 1777 and a medal in 1782, and exhibited a drawing entitled The Garden Party at the Exposition de la Jeunesse in 1783. On his return to Lille, he became his father’s assistant in 1786, succeeding him in 1798 as principal teacher and director of the school of drawing. He also became a member of the Lille academy of art. During this period he exhibited regularly at the Lille Salon, and also at two Paris Salons, submitting two companion-pieces, Alexander Defeating Darius (1795) and Alexander Defeating Porus (1802), which won him a gold medal. In 1807 Watteau became assistant curator of the Lille museum that his father had helped to establish. — La Bataille des Pyramides, 21 juillet 1798 (1799; 94x120cm)

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