ART 4
2-DAY 07 January |
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Died on 07 January 1722: Antoine
Coypel, French painter born on 11 April 1661. — He would be the most distinguished artist of the Coypel family, stylistically drawn away from the influence of his father Noël Coypel [25 Dec 1628 – 24 Dec 1707] and Charles Le Brun [1619-1690] by the attractions of the style of Rubens [28 Jun 1577 – 30 May 1640] and the theories of Roger de Piles. Antoine Coypel is the father of Charles-Antoine Coypel [11 Jul 1694 – 14 Jun 1752] and the half-brother of Noël-Nicolas Coypel [17 Nov 1690 – 14 Dec 1734]. {Was Coypel coy? pale?} Antoine Coypel went to Rome as a child with his father and there is a strong Italian element in his style. This comes out particularly in his most famous work, the ceiling of the Chapel at Versailles (1708) which derived from Baciccio's ceiling in the Gesù in Rome. This and Coypel's decorations at the Palais Royal in Paris (1702, destroyed) rank as the two most completely baroque schemes found in French art of this period. The Versailles ceiling is more successful than much of Coypel's work, which often combines the bombast of the Baroque and the pedantry of the classical style without the virtues of either. Antoine studied at the Collège d’Harcourt and then trained in his father’s studio and at the Académie Royale. In 1672 Noël Coypel was made Director of the Académie de France in Rome, and Antoine, who accompanied his father to Italy, benefited from the education given to the students there. He also joined in their long sessions spent copying frescoes by Raphael [26 Mar 1483 – 06 Apr 1520] in the Vatican Loggie and the works of Agostino Carracci [15 Aug 1557 – 22 Mar 1602], Annibale Carracci [03 Nov 1560 – 15 Jul 1609], Lodovico Carracci [21 Apr 1555 – 13 Dec 1619], and Domenichino [21 Oct 1581 – 06 Apr 1641] in the Palazzo Farnese. He met Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini [1598-1680] and Carlo Maratti and was awarded a drawing prize by the Accademia di S Luca. During his return journey Antoine stopped in northern Italy to study the works of Correggio [1489 – 05 Mar 1534] — which were to have a decisive influence on him — as well as those of Titian [1485 — 27 Aug 1576] and Veronese [1528 – 19 Apr 1588]. On reaching Paris in April 1676 he resumed his place as a student at the Académie Royale, where he was awarded second prize for painting in November of that year. LINKS — Self~Portrait (1734) Democritus (1692, 69x57cm) The Swooning of Esther (1704, 105x137cm) — Louis XIV reçoit l'ambassadeur de Perse — Venus Imploring Jupiter in Favor of Aeneas — Head of a Young Man (1717, red, black, and white chalk with stumping; 25x19cm) _ The most important French painter of his generation, Antoine Coypel worked during the period of transition from the monarchy of Louis XIV (reigned 1643-1715) through the Regency (1715-1723) and the ascendance of Louis XV (reigned 1715-1774). A beautiful colorist also steeped in the academic tradition of drawing, Coypel used red, black, and white chalk together on this sheet to achieve tonal range. This drawing is connected to Coypel's greatest achievement: the series of large painted decorations for the Gallery of Aeneas in the Palais Royal in Paris. This study of facial expression shows one of the mourners attending the funeral of Pallas, a scene from the Aeneid of Virgil [70-19 BC]. This painting still exists, though in a ruined state. But most of the paintings for the Gallery of Aeneas did not survive at all. However there are numerous drawings for the project. — Athalie chassée du temple (1696, 156x213cm; 535x768pix, 38kb) _ La tableau fait partie d'une série de sept oeuvres à sujet biblique exécuté entre 1695 et 1697 que l'artiste reprendra à partir de 1710 en grand format pour une tenture de tapisserie dite de l'Ancien Testament. Les attitudes théâtrales et les mimiques parlantes des personnages relèvent de la recherche de “l'expression des passions”, souci constant chez Coypel, influencé en cela par Le Brun. |
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Born on 07 January 1852: Pascal-Adolphe-Jean
Dagnan-Bouveret, French Realist
painter and photographer who died on 03 July 1929. — Dagnan-Bouveret, was born in Paris; he died in Quincey, Haute-Saône. He refused to leave France when his father Bernard Dagnan, a tailor and businessman, moved to Brazil in 1868. So, in Melun, he was taken in by his maternal grandfather Gabriel Bouveret, whose surname he added to his own in gratitude. Dagnan-Bouveret was trained at the École des Beaux-Arts (beginning in 1869) in the ateliers of Alexandre Cabanel [1823-1889] and then of Gérôme [11 May 1824 – 10 Jan 1904]; the latter's teaching remained the most dominant influence on Dagnan's work, though he also studied under Corot [1796-1875]. One other artist, and a slightly older colleague, whose work had an impact on Dagnan's was Jules Bastien-Lepage [1848-1884], who taught Dagnan the significance of using rural life as a contemporary theme. Although Dagnan was a Parisian who kept an atelier in suburban Neuilly-sur-Seine for most of his career, he married into a Franc-Comtois family. He is always mentioned among a group of Franc-Comtois artists including Gustave Courtois [1852-1923] (a cousin of his wife), Louis Girardot [1856-1933], and Jules-Alexis Muenier [1863-1942] all of whom had been students of Gérôme, a painter who was also from the same general region of France. As a naturalist/regionalist Dagnan established his reputation with compositions representing the rural life of the Franche-Comté and of Brittany. These paintings made him one of the most respected members of an international naturalist circle that allowed Dagnan to have a very strong influence over other painters, working in a similar vein on the European continent, in England, and in the US. It is only later in his career, first in the mid 1880s and then more dramatically in the 1890s, that Dagnan turned to religious themes. These became increasingly more visionary and supernatural during the early years of the 20th century. Spiritual themes reflected Dagnan's determined turn toward religious revivalism, a genre that obsessed many painters in the 1890s; it also reflected the powerful influence of his wife whose own devout Catholicism was influential in moving Dagnan toward some of his religious themes. Dagnan's spiritual paintings found strong support in the atmosphere of the Catholic Revival in France; his paintings such as the mystical Supper at Emmaus and the Consolatrix Afflictorum, among others, were exhibited in a separate location at the Paris World's Fair of 1900 at a moment when Dagnan's work was highly praised by the establishment. His paintings were also well recognized in the United States as they were reproduced in US periodicals, and collected by such independent tastemakers as George Baker, Mrs. Potter Palmer, and Henry Clay Frick. Dagnan was also a portraitist of talent and in his later years he divided his activity between portraits and religious scenes. He painted members of some of the best established families of the Third Republic; he also did portraits of actresses (Mme. Bartet) and military leaders (Maréchal Foch). His first popular Salon success came with the anecdotal genre painting Une noce chez le photographe (1879), but the works which established Dagnan-Bouveret's reputation are his naturalist scenes inspired by life in the Franche-Comté and Brittany including Un accident (1880), Chevaux à l'abreuvoir (1885), Le Pardon en Bretagne (1887), Bretonnes au Pardon (1889), Le Concert dans la forêt or Les Conscrits (1890). The latter work reiterated the intense nationalistic fervor of the period by centering the activities of recruitment on the strength and support of the rural areas of France — regions that remained totally behind the central government. The success of these paintings in the 19th century and the impact they still have for us today are in great part due to the influ ence of photography in their creation. As a student of Gérôme, Dagnan-Bouveret with many of his colleagues (from Europe and from the US) learned how to use photography as a tool to arrive at a more naturalistic, decidedly casual, rendering for the scenes of daily life. Dagnan-Bouveret was closely associated with J.-A. Muenier, a painter who also maintained a fervent interest in photography. Both men traveled to Algeria together, in 1887-1888, where they actively photographed numerous scenes in Algiers in order to feed their developing interest in orientalist themes. The photographic record of their trip together provides an extensive documentary foundation for seeing how these artists were able to use this medium. Understandably, Dagnan did not merely take photographs so that he could copy them for his paintings. Rather, he saw the new medium of photography as a creative tool which, when added to the academic tradition of painstaking preparation of a given composition, added significantly to the way in which Dagnan-Bouveret could increase the intricacy and exactitude of his compositions while reinforcing the general interest in reality. Dagnan was also a pastelist and a member of the Société des Pastellistes. In addition to the influence Dagnan-Bouveret exerted on art students through his exhibitions or when they came to his studio in order to request his advice, he came in contact with others at the Académie Colarossi where he taught between 1885-1890 with G. Courtois. LINKS Whitney Warren Sr. (1916, 26x19cm, full size) Hamlet et les fossoyeurs (1883) — Le Pardon en Bretagne (1886, 115x85cm; 2887x2088pix, 2170kb) — Bretonnes au Pardon (1887, 125x141cm; 1696x1907pix, 1348kb) _ Naturalism’s popularity reached its peak in the late 1880s. Contemporary interest aroused by subjects involving detailed imagery of rural life explains this objective painting’s huge success at the 1889 Salon, where it won an award. As an ethnographic image of pious customs, this painting shows the Pardon ceremony, an indulgence granted by the church to the faithful, and is used as a pretext for an analytical vision of a world that resisted the fin de siècle transformations. At that time, Brittany was the focus of great attention from artists painting in various different styles. Gaugin’s work can be used to establish one of the most striking contrasts with this canvas. Photographs that Dagnan-Bouveret took in Rumengol helped to produce the end result, as did successively reworked portraits of individual models. This work, which the painter assembled in the studio, reveals considerable prior effort to establish the compositional construction and a complex methodology to organise the scene. — Les Conscrits (1889, 168x146cm) — Une Bernoise (1887)— Ophélia (157x104cm) — Une Noce chez le photographe (1879, 82x120cm) — Le Christ et les disciples à Emmaüs — Consolatrix Afflictorum — Dans l'étable — Marguerite au Sabbat — Une Jeune Bretonne — Childs Frick — The Last Supper — Dans la forêt (1893, 155x125cm) — Dans le pâturage (1892, 96x91cm) — Bretons en prière (1888 124x85cm) — Jeune Homme Breton (1887, 42x25cm) — Gustave Courtois (1884, 122x82cm). Black-and-white: — Gabriel Bouveret — Chevaux à l'abreuvoir (1884, 229x188cm) — Le Pain Bénit (1885 etching, 33x23cm; full size) — L'accident (89x130cm) _ In front of the huge fireplace of a country home, grandma, grandpa, dad, an uncle, a hired hand, a four-year-old boy, and a cat (under the bed) watch the doctor bandage the hand of a twelve-year-old boy. What accident made that necessary is not clear. |
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Died on 07 January 1507: Cosimo
Rosselli (Filippo di Lorenzo), Florentine painter born in
1439. Rosselli's successful career (the highpoint of which was painting frescoes in the Sistine Chapel together with Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino) was based on his facility and high standard of craftsmanship rather than on any great distinction or originality as an artist. In Florence his painting includes frescoes in SS. Annunziata and S. Ambrogio. His students included Fra Bartolomeo and Piero di Cosimo. — Piero di Cosimo was an assistant of Rosselli. — Rosselli's students included Fra Bartolommeo, Mariotto Albertinelli, Francesco Botticini, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. LINKS The Last Supper Crossing of the Red Sea Sistine Chapel fresco (690x1112pix; 194kb _ ZOOM to 1400x2223pix, 642kb) _ Built between 1475 and 1483, in the time of Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere, the Sistine Chapel has originally served as Palatine Chapel. The Chapel is rectangular in shape and measures 40.93 m long by 13,41 meters wide, i.e. the exact dimensions of the Temple of Solomon, as given in the Old Testament. It is 20.70 m high and is roofed by a flattened barrel vault, with little side vaults over the centered windows. The architectural plans were made by Baccio Pontinelli and the construction was supervised by Giovanino de'Dolci. The wall paintings were done by Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, Luca Signorelli and their respective workshops, which included Pinturicchio, Piero di Cosimo and Bartolomeo della Gatta. Michelangelo Buonarroti was commissioned by Pope Julius II della Rovere in 1508 to repaint the ceiling; the work was completed between 1508 and 1512. He painted the Last Judgement over the altar, between 1535 and 1541, being commissioned by Pope Paul III Farnese [12 Oct 1534 – 10 Nov 1549]. — The Sermon on the Mount and the Healing of the Leper Sistine Chapel fresco (600x951pix, 276kb _ ZOOM to 1335x2193pix, 727kb) — The Giving of the Tables of the Law and the Worship of the Golden Calf Sistine Chapel fresco (600x962pix, 316kb _ ZOOM to 1400x2244pix, 806kb) — The Burial of Christ (600x396pix, 96kb _ ZOOM to 1400x880pix, 235kb) — Adoration by Magi (1480, 891x1262pix, 225kb _ ZOOM to 1782x2524pix, 625kb) — Vocation and Vesting of Saint Filippo Benizzi (1475, 600x896pix, 236kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1347pix, 420kb) _ Born on 15 August 1233 into a noble family of Florence, Italy, Philip Benizi (or Benitius) became a brilliant student of medicine at Paris and Padua, receiving his doctorates in medicine and philosophy by age 19. He practiced medicine for about a year, but following a vision of the Virgin Mary, he quit to join the Order of Servites [13 Mar 1249~] as a lay brother at Monte Senario in 1254. He was ordained a priest at Siena in 1258. He tried to hide his education so he could remain a simple member of the order, but he was persuaded to use his gifts and background to further the Servite mission. He became novice master at Siena in 1262. Sent to Forli, Italy to resolve a conflict between the papacy and the emperor, he was heckled and then physically attacked while preaching. Philip turned the other cheek. Father Philip's non-violent ways occasioned the conversion of Peregrine Laziosi [1265-1345] who later became a Servite saint. Benizi was superior of several Servite friaries. He was elected prior-general of the order on 05 June 1267. He attended the Council of Lyons. He codified the Servite rules. The Second Council of Lyons in 1274 put into execution the ordinance of the Fourth Lateran Council, forbidding the foundation of new religious orders, and absolutely suppressed all mendicant institutions not yet approved by the Holy See. The enemies of the Servites renewed their assaults, and in 1276 Innocent V [1225 – 22 Jun 1276] in a letter to Philip Benizi declared the order suppressed. Benizi went to Rome, but before his arrival there Innocent V had died. His successor, Adrian V, was elected on 11 July 1276 and died on 18 August 1276. Finally John XXI [1215 – 20 May 1277], on the favorable opinion of three consistorial advocates, decided that the order should continue as before. Philip Benizi worked to bring peace to the Guelphs and Ghibellines in 1279. During the almost three year vacancy of the Holy See after the death of Clement IV [23 Nov year unknown – 29 Nov 1268], Benizi was considered papabile; when he heard the rumor, he went into hiding on Mount Tuniato until after the 01 September 1271 election of Pope Gregory X [1210 – 10 Jan 1276]. Benizi worked with Blessed Andrea Dotti [1256 – 31 Aug 1315], a former military commander who had joined the Servites in 1278 after hearing a sermon by Philip Benizi. Benizi helped Saint Juliana of Cornillon found the Servite Third Order. He sent the first Servite missionaries to the East in 1284. He lived his last few months in retirement in a Servite house in Todi. where he died on 22 August 1285. He was the first Servite to be canonized, which was done on 12 April 1671 by Pope Clement X [13 Jul 1590 – 22 Jul 1676]. Saint Philip Benizi's feast day is on 23 August. |
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Born on 07 January 1549: Francesco
Giambattista da Ponte Bassano, Italian Mannerist
painter who committed suicide by throwing himself out of a window on 03
July 1592. His father, Jacopo Bassano, [1517 13 Feb 1592] was the most celebrated member of a family of artists who took their name from the small town of Bassano, about 65 km from Venice (original name: Jacopo da Ponte). Francesco the Younger had three painter brothers: Gerolamo [1566-1621], Giovanni Battista [1553-1613], and Leandro [26 Jun 1557 15 Apr 1622]. They continued their father's style. Francesco and Leandro both acquired some distinction and popularity working in Venice. — From one of the 16th century’s largest and most productive north Italian families of painters, Francesco Bassano was one of four sons born to Jacopo Bassano. Jacopo was trained in Venice, and after returning to Bassano established an important workshop there. He became known by the name of the town, and together with his sons Francesco, Giovanni Battista, Leandro, and Gerolamo ran a large and well organized operation. In addition to altarpieces and other paintings of a religious nature, the Bassano workshop produced mainly works celebrating country life and nature as shaped by the work of farmers. These paintings were so well received that the younger men were required to paint endless new versions of them, frequently entire series. It is difficult to distinguish between their various hands, thus authorship of specific works is disputed. In 1579 Francesco moved from Bassano to Venice, where he committed suicide. LINKS — Jacopo and Francesco jointly painted The Element of Water (1577, 144x187cm; 892x1263pix, 126kb — ZOOM to 1338x1894pix, 291kb) _ This nocturne shows a fish market being set up on a riverbank at dawn. The vendors display a variety of seafood, while other activities involving water, such as laundering, ferrying, and drinking, take place nearby. Above, Neptune, god of the sea, drives his chariot across the sky. The dramatically lit landscape with many figures and meticulously rendered still-life details represents a new type of pastoral scene devised by Jacopo Bassano and his son Francesco. The large Bassano family workshop produced several series of such landscapes — the Four Seasons, the Four Elements, the Months, and well-known biblical stories. These proved so popular that the Bassanos made replicas of them for decades. This painting, in which Francesco is believed to have had the primary role, is from a suite of the Four Elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water). It is the earliest surviving version of a subject copied well into the 1580s. — Autumn (1577, 115x145cm; 762x1008pix, 71kb) — Summer (97x127cm; 770x1026pix, 182kb) Jacopo and Francesco jointly painted Christ in the House of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus (1577, 98x126cm) _ Beginning in the mid-1570s the Bassanos, father and sons, specialized in Biblical scenes or allegories in which they stressed genre details over narrative content. In these pictures they marketed what they knew best –– life in the countryside around the provincial town of Bassano. This image of Christ being welcomed into the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus emphasizes not the protagonists but the exaggerated abundance of foodstuffs and utensils and the preparations for a sumptuous meal. The Bassanos favored nocturnal scenes with a variety of light effects, using glowing colors and scintillating highlights to increase the sense of material reality. — The Return of the Prodigal Son (1580; 632x906pix, 50kb) |
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Died on 07 January 1928: Albert-Marie-Charles
Lebourg, French painter born on 01 February 1849. — He had an early interest in architecture and studied under the architect Drouin at the Ecole Municipale de Dessin in Rouen. He became increasingly interested in art and through Drouin met the landscape painter Victor Delamarre [1811–1868] who advised and taught him. Giving up architecture altogether, he then attended the École Municipale de Peinture et de Dessin in Rouen under Gustave Morin [1809–1886]. In 1871 he met the collector Laperlier through whom he obtained the post of professor of drawing at the Société des Beaux-Arts in Algiers. He remained there from 1872 to 1877, producing works such as Une Rue à Algers (1875). He also experimented with depicting a single site in a variety of different lights, in a manner similar to the late works of Monet. After giving up his teaching post in Algeria in 1877 he returned to Paris where he attended Jean-Paul Laurens’s studio from 1878 to 1880. It was at this point that he became aware of Impressionism; later he became friendly with Degas, Monet and Sisley. He first exhibited at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français in 1883 and again in 1886, and after the foundation of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (1889) he exhibited there regularly from 1891 to 1914. Between 1884 and 1886 he spent much time in the Auvergne region, producing such Impressionist works as Neige en Auvergne (1886), in which a river re-establishes the habitual presence of water in his work. After living and working in numerous places in northern France, Lebourg went to the Netherlands (1895–1897), and in 1900 he spent a short period in Britain, which confirmed his love of Turner, Constable, and Gainsborough. He continued working in a luminous Impressionist style with landscapes such as Petite Ferme au Bord de l'Eau (Ile de Vaux) (1903), up until 1921 when he was paralyzed by a stroke. LINKS Swiss Lake Landscape (372kb) — Boats by the Banks of Lake Geneva at Saint-Gingolph (822x1018pix, 167kb) — Notre Dame de Paris and the Bridge of the Archévêché (631x1013pix, 139kb) — 94 images at Webshots |
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Born on 07 January 1865: Valentin
Alexandrovitch Serov, Russian painter specialized in portraits,
who died on 22 November 1911. Serov was born into the family of composer Alexander Nikolayevich Serov [11 Jan 1820 20 Jan 1871 Gregorian]. In 1872-1873 the little boy with his widowed mother, née Bergman, lived in Munich, where he had lessons from the artist K. Kepping. In 1874, they moved to Paris, where Valentin regularly visited the studio of Ilya Repin, who was very fond of the little boy. In 1875, the Serovs came to live at Abramtsevo, the estate of the industrial tycoon Savva Mamontov, and the cultural center of the time, where artists, musicians and actors were always welcome. Valentin grew up in an atmosphere of constant creativity, which characterized the Mamontovs’ household. He was lucky in getting a professional education from early childhood from the best Russian artists, and he soon showed himself to be a remarkably precocious draftsman. He would catch the likeness of a model often more quickly and surely than the older artists in the ‘facetious drawing competitions’, which were so much a part of the gay and idyllic life of Abramtsevo. At the age of 15 Serov entered Academy of Arts in the class of professor Pavel Tchistykov. There he met his lifelong friend Vladimir Derviz. His first exhibited works Girl with Peaches. Portrait of Vera Mamontova. (1887) and Girl in the Sunlight. Portrait of Maria Simonovich. (1888) were a sensation. Critics called them a new word in painting. At the time of painting them Serov was unfamiliar with the works of the French Impressionists, yet he came very close to Renoir in these luminous, sunny, splendidly composed portraits. Serov tried himself in different genres: he was a beautiful landscape painter in a more sensuous and less nostalgic vein than another teacher of his, Isaac Levitan: Pond in Abramtsevo. (1886), The Overgrown Pond. Domotcanovo. (1888), Village. (1898), Watermill in Finland. (1902). Serov’s historical paintings are also of value and interest: Peter II and Princess Elizabeth Petrovna Riding to Hounds. (1900), Peter the Great. (1907). Serov became the most successful and brilliant portraitist in Russia of the 1890s and first decade of the 20th century. His most famous portraits are Portrait of the Actress Maria Yermolova. (1905), Portrait of Henrietta Girshman. (1907), Portrait of Ida Rubenstein. (1910), Portrait of Princess Olga Orlova. (1911). He traveled much, participated in exhibitions in Russia and abroad. In 1897-1909, Serov taught in Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He was a superb technical master of the many media in which he practiced and that too did not fail to impress his students. Among his students were N.N. Sapunov, M.I. Mashkov, P.V. Kuznetsov, N.P. Krymov, K.S. Petrov-Vodkin, C.Y. Sudeykin, K.F. Yuon and others. In 1903, he was elected the academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. LINKS Self-Portrait (1883) |
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Died on 07 January 1830: Thomas
Lawrence, British painter and draftsman born on 13 April
1769. Sir Thomas Lawrence was one of the foremost English portrait painters of his day. He was born in Bristol. A child prodigy, he was largely self-taught, although he spent some time at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1789 Lawrence won recognition for his portrait of an actress, Miss Farren (1789). He became much in demand, and in 1792 he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds [16 Jul 1723 – 23 Feb 1792], as principal painter to King George III, who knighted Lawrence in 1815. Lawrence was made a member of the Royal Academy in 1794 and served as president of the academy from 1820 to 1830. Lawrence was a brilliant stylist and technician, whose vitality, rich color, and dramatic silhouettes anticipated romantic painting. Although uneven in quality, his work at its best is marked by a taste and elegance that lends distinction to the portraits of his sitters. These portraits include Lady Peel (1827); Pope Pius VII and Archduke Charles of Austria; and The Calmady Children (1825). Lawrence was the first English painter to achieve success in Europe. With Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough [1727 – 02 Aug 1788] he stands at the apex of English portrait art. Lawrence was the most fashionable English portrait painter of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was the son of an innkeeper who owned the Black Bear at Devizes, where the young Lawrence won a reputation as a prodigy for his profile portraits in pencil of guests. Later he began to work in pastel, and in 1780, when his family moved to Bath, he set up professionally. He had little regular education or artistic training, but was working in oils by the time he moved to London in 1787. There he studied at the Royal Academy schools for a short time and was given encouragement by Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was handsome, charming, and exceptionally gifted. His early success was phenomenal, and when he was 20 years of age he was summoned to Windsor to paint the portrait, later widely acclaimed, of Queen Charlotte. He was elected associate of the Royal Academy in 1791 and academician in 1794. Lawrence was a highly skilled draftsman. He soon abandoned pastels but continued to make portraits in pencil and chalks. These were separate commissions and were rarely studies for paintings, as it was his usual practice to make a careful drawing of the head and sometimes the whole composition on the canvas itself and to paint over it. There are highly interesting references to his working methods in the Diary of Joseph Farington [1747-1821]. After the 23 February 1792 death of Reynolds, Lawrence was the leading English portrait painter. His works exhibit a fluid touch, rich color, and an ability to realize textures. He presented his sitters in a dramatic, sometimes theatrical, manner that produced Romantic portraiture of a high order. After the death of John Hoppner [04 Apr 1758 – 23 Jan 1810] he had as patron the Prince Regent, who knighted him in 1815 and sent him in 1818 to the political congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle and Vienna, where he painted 24 large full-length portraits of the military leaders and heads of state of the Holy Alliance. Executed with sovereign verve and elegance, these works now hang together in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle - a unique historical document of the period. By these works Lawrence was recognized as the foremost portrait painter of Europe. On his return to England in 1820 he was elected president of the Royal Academy. Lawrence was also a distinguished connoisseur. His collection of old-master drawings was one of the finest ever assembled, and he was instrumental in securing the collection of Greek sculptures known as the Elgin Marbles for the nation and in the founding of the National Gallery. LINKS Miss Martha Carry (1789, 76x64cm) Diana Sturt, Lady Milner Calmady Children (1824) Mrs. Henry Baring and her Children The Fluyder Children, (1805) Queen Charlotte (1790, 239x147cm) _ The youngest of five children of somewhat improvident parents, Lawrence was an infant prodigy. At ten he was drawing profile likenesses of the clients of his father's inn at Devizes, and it was assumed early on that his talent for portraiture would support his family. Around 1787 he was brought to London by his father, began to paint in oils and to show at the Royal Academy. His fame as a painter of full-length portraits in oil was sealed at the Academy exhibition of 1790, which included, among a varied group of a dozen pictures by him, this masterly likeness of Queen Charlotte. Praised outside the royal family, the picture was never acquired by them, perhaps because the king was upset by the queen having posed bareheaded after Lawrence disliked the bonnet and hat she had chosen to wear. The queen herself found the 20-year old artist 'rather presuming' when he asked her to talk during the sitting, in an effort to animate her features. Eventually it was the Assistant Keeper of her Wardrobe who completed the sittings for such details as the bracelets bearing a portrait miniature of the king and his cipher. Lawrence, a draughtsman of extreme precision, worked very hard at the 'appearance of facility'. His dazzling brushwork, inspired by Rubens [28 Jun 1577 – 30 May 1640], Van Dyck [22 Mar 1599 – 09 Dec 1641], Rembrandt [15 Jul 1606 – 08 Oct 1669] and Titian [1488 – 27 Aug 1576], enabled him to enjoy painting draperies, unlike his ageing 'rival' Reynolds, who often left them to assistants. But there is more to admire here beside the rustling shimmer of the queen's silks, gauzes and laces. Queen Charlotte had been shocked and saddened by the onset of George III's illness shortly before the portrait was painted. X-rays show that Lawrence modified the careworn expression which he had first observed. Yet even in the final portrait, so formal in conception, so grand in execution, something of the queen's malaise remains touchingly evident. The landscape background shows a view of Eton College as seen from Windsor Castle. The trees are turning red as they might well have been in late September when the queen posed for Lawrence, but also so that the color contrasts of carpet and dress may be echoed in the russet foliage against a blue sky. Although she cannot see the view behind her, the direction of the queen's glance draws our own eyes to these vivid yet melancholy harbingers of winter. |
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Born on 07 January 1787: Peter Patrick
Nasmyth, Scottish landscape painter, who died on 17 August
1831. |