ART 4
2-DAY 09 January |
BIRTH:
1590 VOUET |
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Died on 09 January 1821: Pierre-Alexandre
Wille, Parisian artist born on 19 July 1748. — He was the son of engraver Jean-Georges Wille [05 Nov 1715 – 15 Apr 1808]. Between 1761 and 1763 Pierre-Alexandre was trained by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, who was a friend of his father, and later by Joseph-Marie Vien. Approved (agréé) by the Académie Royale in 1774, he devoted himself to painting sentimental genre scenes, such as the Last Moments of a Beloved Wife (1784), in Greuze’s manner. He also did paintings for his father to engrave, including French Patriotism (1781) and The Double Reward of Merit (1785). Having played an active role in the French Revolution, he is barely documented thereafter. A drawing of Danton Led to the Scaffold was attributed to him by Maison. — Profile of a Man (1769 drawing 37x28cm; 3/4 size) — Head of a Young Girl (1775 drawing, 33x23cm; half-size _ ZOOM to full size) — Marie Antoinette and her Two Children (drawing, 14x11cm; full size) — Genre Scene: Four Figures (rough sketch, 14x14cm; 2/3 size) — Le patriotisme français ou le départ (1785, 162x129; 571x455pix, 164kb gif) _ Le buste sculpté désigné par le père de famille représente Louis XVI. |
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Born on 09 (08?) January 1590:
Simon Vouet, Parisian Baroque
painter and draftsman who died on 30 June 1649 and was buried on 01 July
1649. {A quel saint se vouait ce Vouet?} Vouet was a leading Baroque painter and an arbiter of taste for almost 20 years. The son of an artist, he settled in Italy in 1613, living chiefly in Rome, with periods in Genoa, Venice and Naples. His style shows an individual talent and a profound study of Italian painters, especially Veronese. Vouet soon enjoyed high favor, including the patronage of Pope Urban VIII. In 1627 he was invited back to France, where he became First Painter, a position challenged only once, in 1640-1642, when he was brought into an artificial rivalry with Poussin. Vouet taught or collaborated with almost all the painters of the next generation in France, notably Le Brun, Le Sueur and Mignard. His portraits of the court of Louis XIII and most of his large-scale decorative schemes for Parisian houses and country chateaux have been destroyed. — Although at the time regarded as one of the leading French painters of the first half of the 17th century, Vouet is now known more for his influence on French painting than for his actual oeuvre. He made his reputation in Italy, where he executed numerous portraits for aristocratic patrons and was commissioned for religious subjects. Although the early Italian works show the influence of Caravaggio, his work was subsequently modified by the Baroque style of such painters as Lanfranco and the influence of the Venetian use of light and color. When he was summoned back to France by Louis XIII in 1627 he thus brought with him an Italian idiom hitherto unknown in France that revitalized French painting. His style became highly popular among Parisian aristocrats who saw in Vouet a painter capable of decorating their hôtels and châteaux in a manner that would rival the palazzi of their Italian counterparts. He quickly established a large workshop through which passed many of the leading French painters of the mid-17th century. There followed numerous commissions for allegorical works, religious subjects and decorative paintings for royal residences and the burgeoning hôtels and châteaux in and around Paris. The schemes introduced a new type of illusionistic decoration with steep perspective that influenced a generation of decorative painters. Few of his canvases are signed and dated and many of his decorative schemes have been destroyed; precise attribution is made more difficult because of his prolific output and his extensive use of his workshop to fulfil his numerous commissions. Although much of his oeuvre has been lost, it is known from the work of such distinguished engravers as Claude Mellan and Michel Dorigny, who reproduced and circulated his work. — Vouet's assistants included Pierre Boucle, Charles Le Brun, Pierre Patel, François Perrier, Charles Poërson. — Vouet's students included Jacques-Samuel Bernard, Thomas Blanchet, Nicolas Chaperon, Michel Corneille, Charles-Alphonse Du Fresnoy, Claude François, André Le Nôtre, Louis Lerambert II [1620-1670], Eustache Le Sueur, Nicolas-Pierre Loir, Pierre Mignard I, Rémy Vuibert, Abraham Willaerts, Valentin de Boulogne, Claude Mellan. LINKS — Angel with Superscription from the Cross (1625, 104x79cm; 1917x1463pix, 275kb) — Angel Holding Vessel and Towel for washing hands of Pilate (1625, 103x77cm; 1722x1471pix, 190kb) _ These angels carry symbols of the Passion. This one holds the pitcher, basin, and cloth used by Pontius Pilate to wash his hands of responsibility for Christ's crucifixion. The first one carries the tablet inscribed in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin:
The Holy Family with the Infant John the Baptist (1626, 75cm diameter) — Saint Sebastian's Wounds Treated by Pious Women (1621; 600x408pix _ ZOOM to 1400x952pix) — Cupid and Psyche (1627; 600x920pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2147pix) — A Young Woman (1627; 600x408pix _ ZOOM to 1400x952pix) The Last Supper (1620) _ The theatrical scene is an anticipation of the great compositions of Vouet in Paris. Crucifixion (1622, 375x225cm) _ The painting was executed in Rome and transferred to Genoa where Vouet spent a year in the service of Paolo Orsini and the Doria family. His stay in Genoa, and above all the contact with Orazio Gentileschi who was also there, resulted in a change in the style of Vouet: he abandoned Caravaggism and turned towards a pure Baroque style. Saint Jerome and the Angel (1625, 145 x180cm) _ Simon Vouet was the most versatile of all the French painters in Rome in the 1620s. His earliest pictures are the closest to those of Caravaggio, but his art lacked almost all Caravaggio's sense of drama. Instead, he concentrated on flashy and facile effects, which were, of course, to stand him in good stead at the court of Louis XIII, where he was to become the first French painter to be able to understand and interpret the Italian Baroque. He was good at lighting effects and sharp contrasts of color. An example of this is the Saint Jerome and the Angel. This painting is devoid of the drama which marks Caravaggio's Saint Matthew and the Angel, Vouet relied much more on his technique of strong lighting and bold brushwork, and was never interested in penetrating the essence of his subject-matter. |
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Died on 09 January 1898: Henry
Stacy Marks, London painter born on 13 September 1829. — He studied under J. M. Leigh [1808–1860] from 1847 and in January 1851 enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools. In 1852 Marks and P. H. Calderon spent five months studying in Paris under François-Edouard Picot and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The next year he made his début at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, where he exhibited annually until 1897. He was elected ARA in 1871 and RA in 1878. Marks was a key member of the Saint Johns's Wood Clique and a notorious practical joker. — Henry Stacy Marks originally was trained to work in the family business – Marks & Co, Coachmakers, in Langham Place, London. However, he showed little aptitude for commercial work, and was allowed to study art. He went with Philip Calderon to Paris and worked for Picot there, after which he became a student at the Royal Academy Schools. His early career was mixed, selling a few paintings, doing portraits, book-plates, any wood drawing that came his way, a term as a drawing professor, and another as a glass painter at the firm that became Clayton & Bell. His reputation was established with the picture The Franciscan Sculptor and his Model (1860) which sold for £300, and commissions for paintings and frescoes followed. Saint Francis Preaching to the Birds won Marks his ARA in 1871, and Science is Measurement was his diploma work for his RA in 1878. Many of his early pictures were on Shakespearian themes, but it is for his later pictures of birds that he is best known, many of them arising from work he did at London Zoo for the exhibition Birds in Bond Street (1889) by the Fine Art Society. Other subjects included elderly gentlemen oddly reminiscent of paintings by Hubert von Herkomer, and good genre character studies such as An Odd Volume (1894), showing a book collector absorbed reading in a bookshop, and The Amateur, which depicts a man who, having roughly carved the figure of a parrot in wood, is looking rather too pleased with himself. Marks's pictures were typically light-hearted rather than weighty, and as Gleeson White correctly predicted in 1909, 'it would not be astonishing if [his pictures] retained the respect of future collectors long after many far more ambitious contemporary works ceased to charm'. Marks was inclined towards the Pre-Raphaelite school, being attracted by the naturalism and painstaking painting style. He was a friend of John Ruskin, who often went with him to London Zoo, and another close friend was G. D. Leslie RA. — Photo of Marks LINKS Science is Measurement — A Select Committee (339x258pix, 26kb) _ eight parrots. — Bardolph (43x53cm; 310x266pix, 21kb) _ The bar-addicted character Bardolph in plays of Shakespeare is a crony of Falstaff.P |