ART “4”
“2”-DAY 26 December |
| BIRTH:
1734 ROMNEY |
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Died on 26 December 1686:
Henri Mauperché (or Montpercher), Parisian painter and
printmaker born in 1602. — Mauperché, along with Pierre Patel the Elder, was one of the few imitators of Claude Lorrain to work in France. In Rome from 1634 onwards, he came under the influence of the Bamboccianti. In 1648 he was one ot the fourteen founder-members of the French Academy in Paris. — Mauperché may have studied under Daniel Rabel at some period before 1634, in which year he went to Rome with Louis Boullogne I. There, almost certainly, they became acquainted with Jean Blanchard, Sébastien Bourdon and Herman van Swanevelt. Mauperché was back in Paris in 1639, working with Blanchard for Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu, at the Palais-Royal; the contract (12 March 1639) for the works to be undertaken mentions topographical views and landscapes with ruins, a contract in which Mauperché is described as Peintre Ordinaire du Roy. About 1646–1647 he painted a Paysage avec Voyageur and a Paysage au pont as part of the commission to decorate the interiors of the Cabinet de l’Amour at the Hôtel Lambert, Paris, where he worked alongside Swanevelt, Jan Asselijn and Pierre Patel I. He was married for the first time in 1647, with Blanchard as one of the witnesses. In 1648 he was among the group of artists accepted (agréé) by the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. In 1654 he engraved his only dated work, the Plan de Liancourt, a bird’s-eye view of the château and gardens in Oise owned by the du Plessy family. The following year he became a professor at the Académie Royale. — Landscape with Jephthah and his Daughter (122x111cm; 957x869pix, 146kb) _ The painting was formerly attributed to Pierre Patel the Elder. The subject plays an insignificant role in this essentially decorative canvas. The perspective implies that it was meant to be placed relatively high up. — Classical Landscape with Figures (71x112cm; 313x500pix, 48kb) — Paysage au pont (1647, 74x47cm; oval 556x353pix, 80kb) — Paysage avec le Repos pendant la Fuite en Égypte (1671, 114x147cm; 580x440pix, 101kb) |
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Born on 26 December (15 Dec Julian) 1734: George
Romney, British painter who died on 15 November 1802. — He is generally ranked third in the hierarchy of 18th-century society portrait painters, after Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. His art is often repetitive and monotonous, yet at its best is characterized by great refinement, sensitivity of feeling, elegance of design and beauty of color. As a society painter he typified late 18th-century English artists who, compelled by the conditions of patronage to spend their time in producing portraits, could only aspire to imaginative and ideal painting. — Fashionable portrait painter of late 18th-century English society. In his portraits Romney avoided any suggestion of the character or sensibilities of the sitter. His great success with his society patrons depended largely on just this ability for dispassionate flattery. Line rather than color dominates; the flowing rhythms and easy poses of Roman classical sculpture underlie the smooth patterns of his compositions. James Crank was a teacher of Romney. From 1755 to 1757 Romney was the student of Christopher Steele, an itinerant portrait and genre painter. Romney's career began when he toured the northern English counties painting portraits for a few guineas each. In 1762 he went to London. His history painting The Death of General Wolfe won him an award from the Society of Arts; nonetheless he turned almost immediately to portrait painting. In 1764 he paid his first visit to Paris, where he was befriended by Joseph Vernet. Romney especially admired the work of Nicolas Le Sueur, whose use of the antique strongly appealed to him. In 1773 he went to Italy for two years, where he studied Raphael's Stanze frescoes in Rome, Titian's paintings in Venice, and Correggio's at Parma. Travel abroad matured his art, and a new gracefulness appears in portraits such as Mrs. Carwardine and Son (1775) and the conscious elegance of the large full-length Sir Christopher and Lady Sykes (1786). Romney was by nature sensitive and introspective. He held himself aloof from the Royal Academy and his fellow artists, making his friends in philosophical and literary circles. About 1781-1782 he met Emma Hart (later Lady Hamilton), who exercised a morbid fascination over him. For Romney she became a means of escape into an imaginary, ideal world. His "divine Emma" appears in more than 50 paintings, in guises ranging from a bacchante to Joan of Arc. Almost all were painted from memory. — Daniel Gardner was a student of Romney. — LINKS — George, First Marquis of Townshend (1792, 147x123cm; 1/5 size 188kb _ ZOOM to 2/5 size 839 kb _ ZOOM++ to rather fuzzy 4/5 size 1206kb) — David Scott, Esq., of Dunniald (1780, 256x153cm; 1/7 size, 164kb _ ZOOM to 2/7 size, 762kb) — William Sotherton, The Younger, of Darrington (1788, 76x63cm; recommended quarter size, 111kb _ ZOOM to half size, 463kb) — Portrait of a Gentleman (Colonel Thomas) (1780, 76x63cm; recommended quarter size, 98kb _ ZOOM to half size, 335kb) — Madame de Genlis (1792, 60x51cm; recommended half-size, 200kb _ ZOOM to full size, 797kb) — Mirth (Sketch for Head of Comedy) (1788, 60x45cm; recommended quarter size, 55kb _if you want to see better the badly cracked paint, ZOOM to half size, 208kb) — Troilus & Cressida, act II, Scene II (hand colored engraving, 57x42cm, half-size, 237kb _ ZOOM to full size, 978 kb) _ In the play Troilus and Cressida, act II, Scene II, Cassandra, brandishing an axe (in the painting), raves: “Cry, Trojans, cry! lend me ten thousand eyes, / And I will fill them with prophetic tears.” — Emma Hamilton (43x36cm) — Emma Hamilton As Miranda (32x27cm) — Frederick, 5th Earl Of Carlisle (74x62cm) — Reclining Female Nude (63x76cm) — Miss Constable (1787, 76x64cm) — Lady in a Brown Robe (1785, 65x65cm) — The Leigh Family (1768) — Miss Willoughby (1783) — Lady Hamilton in a Straw Hat (1785) — Lady Hamilton as 'Nature' — Tom Hayley as Robin Goodfellow — Lady Sarah Curran (600x489pix, 92kb) |
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Died on 26 December 1909: Frederic
Sackrider Remington, in Canton, New York, Western painter
and sculptor born on 04 October 1861. Frederic Remington, one of the preeminent artists of the US West, was born in New York. The son of a comfortable, if not wealthy, family, Remington was one of the first students to attend Yale University's new School of Fine Arts. At Yale he became a skilled painter, but he focused his efforts largely on the traditional subjects of high art, not the Wild West. When Frederic was 19, his father died, leaving him a small inheritance that gave him the freedom to indulge his interest in traveling in the West. As with other transplanted upper-class easterners like Theodore Roosevelt and Owen Wister, Remington quickly developed a deep love for the West and its fast disappearing world of cowboys, Indians, and wide-open spaces. Eventually buying a sheep ranch near Kansas City, Remington continued to travel around his adopted western home, endlessly drawing and painting what he saw. In 1884, Remington sold his first sketches based on his western travels, and two years later his first fully credited picture appeared on the cover of Harper's Weekly. After that, his popularity as an illustrator grew steadily, and he returned to New York in order to be closer to the largely eastern market for his work. Frequent assignments from publishers, though, ensured that Remington was never away long from the West, and gave him the opportunity to closely observe and sketch his favorite subjects: US Cavalry soldiers, cowboys, and Amerindians. An example of his work as an illustrator is online: Theodore Roosevelt's Ranch Life and the Hunting-Trail. Remington's output was enormous, and during the last 20 years of his life he created more than 2700 paintings and drawings and published illustrations in 142 books and 42 different magazines. Though most of his paintings were created in his studio in New York, Remington continued to base his work on his western travels and prided himself on accuracy and realism-particularly when it came to horses. He even suggested that he would like his epitaph to read: "He Knew the Horse." When he died on 26 December 1909 in Connecticut, from acute appendicitis, Remington left a body of work that was popular with the public but largely ignored by "serious" museums and art collectors. Since then, though, Remington's paintings, drawings, and illustrations have become prized by collectors and curators around the world. With his dynamic representations of cowboys and cavalrymen, bronco busters and braves, 19th-century artist Frederic Remington created a mythic image of the US West that continues to inspire America today. His technical ability to reproduce the physical beauty of the Western landscape made him a sought-after illustrator, but it was his insight into the heroic nature of US settlers that made him great. This painter, sculptor, author, and illustrator, who was so often identified with the American West, surprisingly spent most of his life in the East. More than anything, in fact, it was Remington’s connection with the eastern fantasy of the West, and not a true knowledge of its history and people, that his admirers responded to. Remington briefly attended the Yale School of Art and the Art Students League of New York before heeding the call to "go West." As a young man, he traveled widely throughout the country, spending most of his time sketching the people and places in the new US frontier. In 1886 he established himself as an illustrator of Western themes, and sold his work to many of the major magazines of the time. While most of his best known work was in illustration, he was also a fine painter, capturing on his canvases the sweeping vistas, heroic figures, and moments of danger and conflict that came to define the archetypal romance of the West. Whether portraying a Crow brave facing death at the hands of his enemies in Ridden Down or cowboys eluding Indian pursuers in A Dash for the Timber, Remington returned time and again to his signature theme: the life and death struggles of the individual against overwhelming forces. — LINKS — Hussar, Russian Guard Corps (49x53cm) — Uhlan (1893, 71x51cm) — The Moose Hunt (1890, 60x53cm) — The Smoke Signal (1905; 592x932pix) — Missing (1899; 562x963pix) — The Outlier (1909; 1000x671pix) — Great Explorers (1905) — Bringing Home the New Cook (1907) — Cavalry Officer — Cowboy (1902) — Cow Puncher (1901) — Infantry Soldier — Warning Shot — The Advance Guard — On the Trail — Rounding-up the Bear — Great Explorers — Buffalo Runner — Buffalo Runner (1907) — Army Packer — Breaking Horses |
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