ART 4
2-DAY 14 February |
DEATH:
1780 DE SAINT~AUBIN |
BIRTH:
1836 PRINSEP |
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Born on 14 February 1838 (1836?):
Valentine Cameron Prinsep,
British Pre-Raphaelite
painter who died on 11 November 1904. Born in Calcutta, the son of an English colonial civil servant who was able to afford a house in Holland Park, one of the most fashionable areas of London, and to send his son to Haileybury, Valentine Prinsep was also fortunate to have as his teacher, George Frederick Watts (1817-1904), a historical and portrait painter, now regarded as one of the foremost of the Victorian artists. Watts, who seems to have been a permanent guest in the Prinseps' home a meeting place for all the major artists, poets, and writers of the day eventually suggested that Valentine should go to Paris to complete his art education under Gleyre, who was considered by English students to be the best art teacher in France. Prinsep returned to England and exhibited a hundred pictures at the Royal Academy from 1862 and 1904. A versatile artist and a very wealthy one after his marriage to the well-connected Florence Leyland, he painted historical subjects and portraits. He also tried to paint classical and biblical subjects, but the results were dull and no match for the more inspired flights of imagination to be seen in the works of the more famous trio of classical painters, Alma-Tadema [1836-1912], Leighton [1830-1896], and Poynter [1836-1919]. In 1876 Prinsep was commissioned by the Indian government to paint the durbar that was held to proclaim Queen Victoria the Empress of India. The result was a gigantic canvas, At the Golden Gate. — He was the son of Sir Henry Thoby Prinsep [1793-1878], a wealthy merchant with the East India Company by 1827 and then acting secretary to the Government Territorial Department in India, and Sara Monckton Pattle Prinsep. The family returned to London in 1843. Val was encouraged to become a painter by George Frederick Watts (his mother’s house guest from 1850 to 1875) and began his training from Watts in 1856. In 1857 he worked with members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle on the Oxford Union murals, painting Sir Pelleas Leaving the Lady Ettarde. Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones were predominant influences on the Pre-Raphaelite style of his early works, such as The Honey Queen (1859). Prinsep toured Italy with Burne-Jones in 1859, studied at Charles Gleyre’s atelier in Paris from 1859 to 1860 and was in Rome from 1860 to 1861. George Du Maurier, a fellow student under Gleyre, introduced him to the St John’s Wood Clique, of which he became an honorary member. His mature style was influenced by Frederick Leighton, for instance in At the Golden Gate (1882) and Ayesha (1887), and by John Everett Millais in such works as Cinderella (1899) and Goose Girl (1900). Both artists were close personal friends. Prinsep’s late style was also influenced by the Venetian subjects of Luke Fildes and Henry Woods [1846–1921]. In 1876 he was commissioned to paint The Imperial Durbar to commemorate Queen Victoria becoming Empress of India. He became Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy in 1900. He married Florence Leyland, the daughter of F. R. Leyland, and in 1864 commissioned a house from Philip Webb at 14 Holland Park Road, Kensington. The house was completed in 1866 in a red-brick, parsonage style typical of Webb, with Queen Anne Revival details. It was among the first of several grand houses commissioned by artists in that area, designed both to accommodate studio space and to display the artists’ social status. Although Prinsep’s work lacked originality, his personal charm, wealth and social standing gave him an important place in the Victorian art world. — Photo of Prinsep LINKS La Révolution (1896 Diploma Work, 160x110cm) — Home From Gleaning (122x161cm) — Il Barbagianni (78x54cm) The Queen was in the Parlour, eating Bread and Honey (1860, 60x33cm; 370x700pix) At the Golden Gate (1882, 137x96cm; 471x700pix) Cinderella (1899; 516x700pix) — Ayesha (1887, 90x70cm; 512x393pix, 20kb) |
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Died on 14 February 1780: Gabriel Jacques de Saint~Aubin,
French painter, draftsman, and etcher, born on 14 April 1724. — Son
of royal embroiderer Gabriel-Germain de Saint~Aubin [1696-1756], brother
of Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin [17 Jan 1721 – 06 Mar 1786], Augustin
de Saint~Aubin [03 Jan 1736 – 09 Nov 1807], and Sèvres porcelain
designer Louis~Michel de Saint~Aubin. De Saint-Aubin studied under François Boucher [29 Sep 1703 – 30 May 1770]. De Saint-Aubin's drawings include figure studies, genre-like works, and landscapes. He also studied under the painters Etienne Jeaurat [09 Feb 1699 – 14 Dec 1789] and Hyacinthe Colin de Vermont, but failed three times to win the Prix de Rome. He broke with the Académie Royale, preferring to support and exhibit at the Académie de Saint Luc. Although he continued to paint such pictures as A Street Show in Paris (1760), he is best known as a draftsman and etcher. He was a passionate and unconventional observer of the sights of the Paris streets and of the social scene. He was a man who drew at all times and in all places. His contemporary Jean-Baptiste Greuze [1725-1805] spoke of his ‘priapism of draftsmanship’. In his many drawings he combined pencil, black and red chalk, bistre, ink and watercolor to create dazzling spontaneous effects. He drew incidents that struck him as he wandered the streets, or entertainments that he attended. He recorded them, noting dates and times, in sketchbooks or sometimes in the margins and blank pages of printed books that he was carrying (such as a volume of the poems of Jean-Michel Sedaine). These drawings of contemporary incidents include The Fire at the Foire Saint-Germain on the Night of 16–17 May 1762 and The Crowning of Voltaire at the Théâtre-Français in 1778 . He went regularly to the Salon of the Académie Royale and to art sales, covering the margins and flyleaves of his sale catalogues and Salon livrets with tiny sketches of works of art and the passing scene. One hundred of these illustrated catalogues were among his effects when he died, and of these about a third survive. These include the livrets for the Salons of 1761, 1769 and 1777, as well as the catalogues of the sales of Louis-Michel van Loo [1707-1771] in 1772 and Charles Natoire [1700-1777] in 1778, and that of Pierre-Jean Mariette in 1775. Together with his etchings and large watercolors of the Louvre’s Salon Carré at the time of the exhibitions of 1753, 1767, and 1769, they constitute a precious record of Paris art life in the 18th century. LINKS — La Promenade (600x483pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1128pix, 466kb) Theater Scene (Ernelinde, Princess of Norway) (1767, 21x28cm; full size) — Le Salon de 1765 (1765, 25x46cm) A Parisian Fête (1768 _ ZOOM) Cabinet of a Connoisseur (25cmx40cm). |