ART 4
2-DAY 03 February |
BIRTH:
1894 ROCKWELL |
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Died on 03 February 1900: William
Stanley Haseltine, US painter born on 11 June 1835. [The
11 Jan 1835 date sometimes found for his birth seems to be a typo]. — He was the son of successful Philadelphia merchant John Haseltine [28 Feb 1793 – 11 Dec 1871] and of his wife (married on 11 March 1830) painter Elizabeth Stanley Shinn Haseltine [22 Apr 1811 – 29 Jun 1882], who were the parents of ten other children including the sculptor James Henry Haseltine [02 Nov 1833 – 1907] and the art dealer Charles Field Haseltine [29 Jul 1840 – 1915]. In 1850 William Stanley Haseltine enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia; after two years he transferred to Harvard College, Cambridge MA, graduating in 1854. He first formally studied painting in that year on his return to Philadelphia, working under Paul Weber [1823–1916]. Haseltine went abroad to Düsseldorf in 1855, where he became friends with his compatriots Albert Bierstadt, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze and Worthington Whittredge. He painted throughout Europe for the next three years, returning from Italy to the US in late 1858. He was established in the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York by the winter of 1859 and played an active role in the city’s art world, exhibiting at the Century and Salmagundi clubs and at the National Academy of Design, of which he was an associate by 1860 and an academician in 1861. During the years of the Civil War (from which he was exempt due to a chronic eye ailment), Haseltine journeyed repeatedly to the rocky Atlantic coastline of New England to sketch scenes of sea and shore that form the basis of his strongest work, for example Indian Rock, Narragansett, Rhode Island (1863). — William Haseltine became best known as a landscape and marine painter who had a special talent for conveying light and geological detail. He graduated from Harvard University in 1854 and also studied in Philadelphia with Paul Weber and then went to the Art Academy in Dusseldorf, Germany where he became one of the key US artist figures. In 1856, he traveled and painted the Rhine River and went into the Italian Alps with Emanuel Leutze, Worthington Whittredge, and Albert Bierstadt. Haseltine fell in love with Italy, which became a lifelong "love affair." From 1858 to 1866, he lived and worked in New York City where he had studio space in the Tenth Street Studio Building near studios of Leutze, Whittredge, and Bierstadt. He also did much painting of US landscapes including the coast of Rhode Island and North Shore of Massachusetts. He especially focused on rock formations. After 1866, excepting four years, 1895 to 1899, he lived in Europe, and most of that time he had his studio in an Italian palazzo near Rome. There he specialized in Italian landscapes, many of them purchased by people from the US. — At Sotheby's 28 November 2001 auction, three Haseltine paintings were sold: A View from Mount Desert (1861, 76x102cm) for $748'250 _ New England Rocks (30x56cm) for $159'750 _ Capri Coast (38x58cm) for $98'500. — At Sotheby's 05 December 2002 auction, Haseltine's Rocks at Narragansett, Rhode Island (1863, 31x56cm) was sold for $229'500. — At Shannon's October 2000 auction, Haseltine's Woodland Interior (51x70cm; 438x600pix, 49kb) estimated at $4000 to $6000, was left unsold. It features mossy rocks. — At Shannon's April 2001 auction, a lot of 2 Mountain Landscapes (32x43cm and 22x29cm) by Haseltine, one of which this links to the image (434x600pix, 37kb), sold for $3450 LINKS Ruins of the Roman Theatre at Taormina, Sicily (1889, 83x144cm; 1/5 size, 141kb _ ZOOM to 2/5 size, 534kb _ ZOOM++ to 4/5 size, 2161kb) Indian Rock, Narragansett, Rhode Island (1863, 57x98cm; 3/10 size, 147kb _ ZOOM to 3/5 size, 584kb_ ZOOM++ to 6/5 size, 3548kb) Mont Saint Michel (1868, 35x58cm; half size, 126kb _ ZOOM to full size, 551kb) Rocky Shore (1862, 31x61cm; 398x800pix) |
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Born on 05 February 1894: Norman
Percevel Rockwell, US illustrator and painter famous
for his Saturday Evening Post covers, who died on 08 November 1978.
— He studied at the Chase School of Fine and Applied Art, the National Academy of Art and the Art Students League, New York. He also enrolled at the Académie Colarossi in Paris in 1923 during one of his many trips to Europe where he came into contact with the European abstract avant-garde. Although he was a constant admirer of Pablo Picasso and made several attempts to absorb some modernist techniques, he remained a realist artist throughout his career, drawing on the narrative genre style of such 19th-century artists as William Sydney Mount and Winslow Homer. LINKS — Self-Portrait, Painting Soda Jerk (1953; 600x852pix, 164kb _ ZOOM to 1200x1704pix, 174kb) — Soda Jerk (22 Aug 1953; 363x277pix, 36kb) — Triple Self-Portrait (13 Feb 1960; 430x334pix, 14kb) _ Seen from the back, seated, Rockwell is nearly completing a drawing of his head, and is seen in the mirror into which he is looking. The picture is a small part of the cover mostly taken up by the lettering: Beginning in this issue AMERICA'S BEST LOVED ARTIST FINALLY TELLS HIS OWN STORY NORMAN ROCKWELL My Adventures As An Illustrator By Norman Rockwell — Before the shot (15 Mar 1958) [image >] — [No Ball Game] Rockwell's first Saturday Evening Post cover (20 May 1916; 750x535pix; 300kb) — Abraham Delivering the Gettysburg Address (1942, 125x92cm) — The Lineman (1949, 145x107cm) — The Connoisseur (1962; 1035x843pix, 368kb) seen from the back he is in contemplation before a large abstract painting, which you can see unobstructed in The Connoisseur Removed by “Roman Witzemacher von Schachtenstein” (2004; 1424x1496pix, 559kb) — Is He Coming? (1920) _ the question is asked by a little girl standing next to a fireplace on Christmas Eve. — Mine America's Coal (1943, 54x36cm; 1073x828pix, 297kb) _ Head and shoulders of a smiling coal miner. — Homecoming Marine — April Fool Girl with Shopkeeper (1948; 894x843pix, 331kb) — Hobo and Dog (1924) Saying Grace (1951) The Golden Rule (1961) |
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Died on 03 February 1679: Jan
Havickszoon Steen, Dutch painter born in 1626. Son-in-law
of Jan
van Goyen. Studied under Adriaen
van Ostade. Steen is especially noted for genre scenes. He was born in Leiden and educated at the University of Leiden. He is believed to have studied painting first in Utrecht with the German artist Nicolaus Knupfer, then in The Hague with the Dutch artist Jan van Goyen, whose daughter he married in 1649. Steen lived at The Hague until 1654, when he moved to Delft and, according to tradition, adopted his father's occupation of brewer. Subsequently he returned to Leiden, where he opened a tavern in 1672. Steen was a prolific painter, particularly of lively tavern scenes and of children, although he painted landscapes, portraits, and religious works as well. Among his best-known paintings are The Cat Family (1660), Young Woman at Her Toilette (1663), Wedding (1667), and The Surprise (1675). Much of Jan Steen's career took place in his native Leiden, where he enrolled in the university as a literature student in 1646 and joined the newly founded Guild of Saint Luke in 1648. The following year he married Margaretha, the daughter of the painter Jan van Goyen. After Margaretha's death, Steen married Maria van Egmont in 1673. Steen worked in The Hague from 1649 to 1654; lived in Delft for two years; spent the years from 1656 to 1660 in Warmond; 1661 to 1669 in Haarlem; and finally in 1670 settled again in his native Leiden, where he remained until his death. Contemporary sources are silent about his artistic training. However, his eighteenth-century biographers Arnold Houbraken and Jacob Campo Wyerman place him in the studios of Nicolas Knöpfer in Utrecht, Adriaen van Ostade in Haarlem, and with Jan van Goyen in The Hague. While some of these supposed influences are more difficult to discern in his work, the impact of Isaac van Ostade and of the Rembrandt student Jacob de West, both from The Hague, and of the Utrecht painter Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot, can also be demonstrated. Most of these artists are known primarily for their genre scenes, and with the exception of a small number of early landscapes, it is this subject matter that would occupy Steen throughout his career. However, in addition to a variety of genre types, including outdoor gatherings, tavern scenes, intimate interiors, riotous scenes of domestic upheaval, he painted serious biblical and mythological subjects. Steen developed into a versatile painter, able to work in both the broadly brushed style characteristic of the Haarlem school and the refined technique popularized by the Leiden fiinschilder. Steen is best known for his humorous genre scenes, warm hearted and animated works in which he treats life as a vast comedy of manners. In Holland he ranks next to Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals in popularity and a 'Jan Steen household' has become an epithet for an untidy house. But Steen, one of the most prolific Dutch artists, has many other faces. He painted portraits, historical, mythological, and religious subjects (he was a Catholic), and the animals, birds, and still-lifes in his pictures rival those by any specialist contemporaries. As a painter of children he was unsurpassed. Steen was born in Leiden and is said to have studied with Adriaen van Ostade in Haarlem and Jan van Goyen (who became his father-in-law) in The Hague. He worked in various towns - Leiden, The Hague, Delft, Warmond, and Haarlem - and in 1672 he opened a tavern in Leiden. His father had been a brewer, and in the popular imagination Steen was a drunken profligate, but there is nothing in the known facts to justify this reputation. Many of his pictures represent taverns and festive gatherings, but they often feature moralizing allusions, and he also painted scenes of impeccable genteelness. Apart from his versatility, richness of characterization, and inventiveness in composition, Steen is remarkable also for his skill as a colorist, his handling of salmon-red, rose, pale yellow, and blue-green being highly distinctive. He had no recorded students, but his work was widely imitated. LINKS Self Portrait (1670) Children Teaching a Cat to Dance (The Dancing Lesson) (1668) Interior of an Inn Leiden Baker Arend Oostwaert and His Wife Catharina Keyzerswaert (1658) Prince's Day (1665) The Feast of St Nicholas (1666, 82x70cm) _ Steen painted at least six pictures of the Feast of St Nicholas, the festival traditionally dedicated to Dutch children. On the eve of 5 December, St Nicholas comes to the Netherlands from Spain to leave appropriate gifts in the shoes of children. The good ones receive cakes, sweets, and toys; the naughty ones get canes and coals. A complicated play of diagonals helps bind the family of ten together from the heap of special pastries to the man pointing to the chimney on the right, where St Nicholas made his entry, and from the carved table covered with sweets up to the girl holding the shoe with the distressing birch-rod. Figures which lean in one direction are balanced by those leaning in the other; foreground and background, right and left are held together by gestures, glances, and expressions which give the painting familial as well as pictorial tautness. The smiling boy who points to the shoe makes the onlooker part of this family scene by smiling directly out at him or her. The coloristic effect is brilliant, and does not lack unification or become too diffuse, as is sometimes the case in Steen's work. The Merry Family (1668) The Sacrifice of Iphigenia (1671) The Sick Woman (1665) The Marriage of Tobias and Sarah (1673) |