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Born on 31 July 1774: Charles Turner,
English engraver and draftsman, who died on 01 August 1857. — Not to
be confused with THE Joseph
Mallord William Turner [23 Apr 1775 – 19 Dec 1851] — In 1789 Charles Turner was apprenticed to John Jones in London, where from 1795 he studied at the Royal Academy Schools. He began publishing his prints in 1796 and also worked in mezzotint, and occasionally in stipple and aquatint for a variety of publishers, mostly in London but also in Scotland and elsewhere. He was a skilful engraver who could adapt his style to reflect that of the painter; he was also hardworking, reliable and enterprising. The speed with which he worked meant that he was able to engrave many plates of topical interest. His first major success was Bonaparte Reviewing the Consular Guards after John James Masquerier [1778–1855], published in 1802 at a time when there were few images of Napoleon available. The painting itself was one that he helped Masquerier to paint, and was supposedly painted from life; in fact it was based on secondary images. His plate (1807) of The Shipwreck (1805; 980x1412pix, 66kb) was the first print after a painting by J. M. W. Turner. in 1828 Charles Turner was appointed Royal Engraver and elected ARA. — LINKS — Portrait of J.M.W. Turner (1852, 17x12cm; 938x666pix, 29kb) — Wilhelm Friedrich, Prinz von Nassau-Oranien (1813; 1272x1060pix, 68kb) — Branch of the Meuse at Liège (color aquatint 23x31cm; 830x1194pix, 72kb), after George Arnald [1763-1841] _ Near the church of Saint-Denis, the Pont du Torrent, shown here, was destroyed in 1826, after the filling of the branch of the Meuse which it bridged. |
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Born on 31 July 1844: Léon~Augustin L'hermitte
(or Lhermitte), French Realist
draftsman, printmaker, painter, and illustrator, who died on 27 July 1925. — He was the only son of a village schoolmaster and his precocious drawing skill won him an annual grant from the state. In 1863 he went to Paris and became a student at the Petite Ecole, where one of his teachers was Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, famed for his method of training the visual memory. Jean-Charles Cazin, a fellow pupil, became a lifelong friend and Lhermitte later got to know Alphonse Legros, Henri Fantin-Latour, Jules Dalou and Rodin, who had all studied at the school. In 1864 his charcoal drawing the Banks of the Marne near Alfort (untraced) was exhibited at the Salon. By inclination and by training a meticulous draftsman, he continued to exhibit his drawings at the Salon until 1889. — LINKS — Le Lavoir près de la Ferme d'Erlan (Pas-de-Calais) (1913, 47x55cm) [The following is not recommended: so-called high resolution image, 2065x2407pix, 1660kb, one of those double images with two sizes between which you can toggle by clicking on a disappearing icon in the lower right corner. The larger size is about 64x75cm on my monitor and its high resolution, it seems to me, does not show more detail in the picture but only the defects of excessive electronic enlargement: overall fuzziness and and a stretch pattern. The smaller image, 21x25cm is OK, but why spend a good part of an hour to download 1660kb when you get a better image, 27x31cm on screen, with just 175kb.] — Harvesters' Country (1882, 215x272cm) — Supper at Emmaus (1892 155x223cm) — A la Fontaine (1895) — Harvesters' Country (1882, 215x272cm) — La Famille (1908) — La Fenaison (1887) — La Leçon de Lecture (1912) — La Leçon de Claude Bernard (1889) — La Moisson près de la Marne (1910) — Le Marché de Chateau~Thierry (1879) — Maternité ou L'Heureuse Famille (1899) — Récolte des Foins (77x99cm; 791x1008pix, 198kb) |
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Died on 31 July 1693: Willem
Kalf, Dutch painter, art dealer, and appraiser, born in
1619 (not, as once thought, in 1622), specialized in Still
Life. — [There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that his mother
was a moosician named Kow] — Kalf was one of the most celebrated of all still-life painters. In 1642-1646 he worked in Paris. On his return to the Netherlands he lived in Hoorn and then in 1653 settled in Amsterdam. His early works were modest kitchen and courtyard scenes, but he soon became the outstanding exponent of a type of still-life in which fruit and precious objects — porcelain, oriental rugs, Venetian glass — are arranged in grand Baroque displays. His pictures have often been compared with those of Vermeer because of his masterly handling of texture and his ability to manipulate warm and cool colors (he frequently contrasts the reddish browns in a carpet with the yellow of a peeled lemon and the blue and white of porcelain). Kalf also painted some interior genre pictures. — Kalf came from a prosperous patrician family in Rotterdam, where his father, a cloth merchant, also held municipal posts. Willem Kalf studied under Hendrik Pot. In the late 1630s he went to Paris and spent a long time in the circle of Flemish artists in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris. In Paris he painted mostly small-scale rustic interiors and still-lifes. Kalf’s rustic interiors are dominated by accumulations of buckets, pots and pans and vegetables, which he arranged as a still-life in the foreground (e.g. Kitchen Still-life). Figures usually appeared only in the obscurity of the background. Though painted in Paris, these pictures belong to a pictorial tradition practiced primarily in Flanders in the first half of the 17th century by such artists as David Teniers. The only indications of their French origin are a few objects that Flemish exponents of the same genre would not have incorporated into their works. Kalf’s rustic interiors had a major influence on French art in the circle of the Le Nain brothers. The semi-monochrome still-lifes Kalf produced in Paris form a link with the banketjes or ‘little banquet pieces’ painted by the Dutch artists Pieter Claesz., Willem Claesz. Heda and others in the 1630s. During the course of the 1640s Kalf developed the banketje into a new form of sumptuous and ornate still-life (pronkstilleven), depicting rich accumulations of gold and silver vessels. Like most still-lifes of this period, these were usually vanitas allegories. — LINKS — Old Woman in the Kitchen (1643; cropped 843x1121pix, 99kb — ZOOM to complete picture 1121x1480pix, 153kb) — Peasant Interior (1645; excluding the unimportant dark ceiling: 814x1085pix, 124kb — complete picture: 1268x1085pix, 169kb) — Inside a Barn (1643; cropped 849x881pix, 73kb — ZOOM to complete picture 1444x1101pix, 177kb) — Still Life with Silver Jug (1657) _ The best representative of the classical period of Dutch still-life painting is Willem Kalf. He was born in Rotterdam, where he was probably influenced by François Rijckhals [>1600-1647], a Middelburg painter best known for his small peasant scenes which include displays of fruit and vegetables, and of impressive pronk still-lifes that include sumptuous gold and silver vessels. Kalf began by painting similar motifs: little pictures of kitchens and barns, as well as large still-lifes of metalwork, glass, and porcelain. As in the work of other pronk still-life painters, the same costly objects appear in his paintings more than once. Since he was a dealer in works of art as well as a painter he may have used objects in his stock as models. — Still-Life with a Late Ming Ginger Jar (1669, 77x65cm) _ Still-life painting occasionally registers the pride that contemporaries took in global trade and colonial endeavor. Like the botanical gardens and finest collections, still-lifes gathered disparate objects from all reaches of Dutch trade, and brought them home, re-presenting them in European terms of science and collecting, without specific concern about their origin. In this painting of fine household items, Willem Kalf effortlessly combined Venetian and Dutch glassware, a recently made Chinese jar for luxury ginger, a Dutch silver dish, a Mediterranean peach, and a half-peeled lemon, the object of citrus trade and of medicinal treatises. He displayed them on an Indian floral carpet, in a dramatic spotlight that invites contemplation and admiration, for the fine wares as well as the artist's recrafting of them. Kalf's jewel technique evokes their value and unifies them in an arrangement, that, however lifelike for each individual object, is clearly pictorial. — Still-Life with a Nautilus Cup (1662, 79x67cm) _ One of the most characteristic types of painting in Holland in the seventeenth century was still-life which was brought to a higher level of refinement there than anywhere else in Europe. Some still-lifes have symbolic meanings — the vanity of earthly wealth — but others, including those of the greatest practitioner of this genre, Willem Kalf, seem to be simply pronkstilleven, lavish displays of ceramics, glassware, gold and silver vessels as well as exotic food. They reflect a new willingness of rich Dutchmen to parade their possessions, an attitude which would have been frowned upon by an earlier, more puritanical generation. Kalf was born in Rotterdam and probably trained in the studio of François Ryckhals in Middelburg, a town with a long established tradition of still-life painting. Subsequently he lived for some years in Paris where he met Flemish still-life artists, whose painterly style softened the linearity of Kalf's earliest manner. Kalf returned to Rotterdam but settled in Amsterdam in 1653 with his wife Cornelia Pluvier, a distinguished glassengraver, poetess and musician. In the following year Kalf was praised by the poet Jan Vos as one of the city's leading painters: he was much sought after by prosperous citizens anxious to record their treasures. This particular painting includes a richly decorated nautilus cup and a Wan-Li bowl, which were no doubt prized possessions of the unknown Amsterdammer who commissioned the still-life. _ detail _ Kalf depicted decorative objects — such as Chinese porcelain soup tureens, preciously decorated nautilus goblets and costly carpets — his paintings seem to have been dominated not so much by wealth and prosperity as by the aesthetic values and optical qualities of perception that emanated from these objects. Thus, the refraction of the light on the objects and the modification of the colors as mirrored by each of the other objects become the real subject of his art. Kalf achieved his effects by giving objects a bright luminescence, further emphasized by a dark background a method which made him a remote kinsman of the Caravaggists. His objects only exist to the extent that they can be perceived, but in order to be perceived they need light to dispel that darkness which is the original state of the world. However, unlike Caravaggio and his successors, Kalf avoided beaming any harsh shafts of light onto an object. Instead, his light is more subdued and diffuse, with a source that cannot be exactly identified (though it usually comes from above). It gives each object a minimum of brightness so that it shines faintly and transparently from within here and there, for example on the edge of a silver bowl, although there are also brightly shining spots in some places. The light dissolves, as it were, the material properties of the objects: delicately thin Chinese porcelain is perceived as fragile, brittle and transparent, penetrated softly by the light. Half-peeled oranges and lemons, with their skins spiralling down artistically, have their fruity flesh displayed in such a way that their drop-like fibres flicker golden in the light. |
| — Still-Life
with Drinking-Horn (1653, 86x102cm) _ Exceptionally for a still-life
specialist, the Rotterdam-born Kalf was praised by an Amsterdam poet as
one of the city's leading painters. Perhaps the praise would not have been
forthcoming had he persevered in his first interest: shabby peasant barn
interiors and still-lifes of humble kitchen implements, painted during his
stay in Paris from about 1640 to 1646. After his arrival in Amsterdam, however,
following his marriage to a cultivated young woman of good family, Kalf
began to paint the type of still-life for which he is best known. Called
in Dutch pronkstilleven ('still-lifes of display or ostentation'), these
compositions, influenced by Flemish antecedents, feature luxury manufactured
goods - silverware, Chinese porcelain, Oriental carpets, fragile glass -
and exotic foodstuffs. They do not seem to have specific symbolic meaning
but must have spoken to contemporary viewers of the wealth of the Dutch
Republic, the might of its sea power and the efficiency of its distribution
systems - for all this is implied in the eastern table carpet and in the
fresh Italian lemon unwinding its peel in the foreground. The buffalo-horn
in a silver mount belonged to the Saint Sebastian Archers' Guild, part of
the city's civic guard. Dated 1565, this beautiful example of the silversmith's
art, now in the Historisch Museum in Amsterdam, also testifies to the old
Netherlandish tradition of municipal freedom, and the will of Dutch burghers
to defend it. Kalf was to paint it more than once; it also appears in pictures
by other artists. Ultimately, however, none of these associations is responsible
for the grave monumental beauty of Kalf's painting. As in all his mature
works, only a few objects are displayed and soberly arranged, in contrast
with the luxuriant profusion of Flemish still-lifes. Against a dark background,
succulent paint, broadly applied, models large forms and captures the very
feel of surface textures. Strong accents of the richest and brightest colors
surge to the surface - the huge scarlet lobster, the clear yellow and white
lemon, touched with pink where it reflects the lobster. And it is the play
of reflections and tinted shadows of these powerful hues which, like a musical
motif, draws the composition together. — Still-Life with Lemon, Oranges and Glass of Wine (1664, 37x31cm; blank space cropped out 967x1097pix, 141kb) _ The middle axis of this painting is formed by a römer wine glass with an elaborate stem. Placed in front of a dark niche, it is partly lit by the small amount of light that shines on it. The light is also refracted by the transparent glass and the wine itself. On the marble table there are three bergamot or Seville oranges and a lemon. Jutting out over the table's edge, a knife with a polished agate handle protrudes through the bright yellow lemon peel, and the porous strip of skin, peeled off in one piece, curls around like a festoon, forming a decorative counterpart to the narrow pointed orange leaves. Showing sweet and sour citrus fruits together in this way, the artist symbolically admonishes the viewer (who can be seen looking in at the window, in the reflection on the glass) to be temperate and to add lemon and orange juice to wine, as they were considered to have medicinal, humoral, and physiological properties. — Still-life (with ornate whachamucallit) (1655, 105x88cm) _ This is a typical illustration of the type of still-life of which Kalf was an outstanding specialist. The still-lifes by Kalf look very different from those of his predecessors (like Pieter Claesz. and Willem Heda). They are, in a sense, much more theatrical; in their sonorous quality they bring to mind the landscapes of his contemporary, Jacob van Ruisdael. In the paintings by Head or Pieter Claesz., the objects are ordered in a simple way; they are just laid out on the table. The light is even; shadows are used only to emphasize each object's plastic form. The still-life is generally set in a rather wide space (the painting itself being oblong). In Kalf's paintings, however, the space is narrowed. The backgrounds is much darker; and in this narrow space, against this background, the still-life seems curiously isolated. A soft light picks out each different object, showing its unique quality and color, as spotlights focus on actors on a dark stage. In the narrow space, the arrangement too is much tighter. For this rich, glowing kind of still-life the 17th centuy used an apt term, "pronkstilleven" (still-life of ostentation); and part of the content of this term is certainly the choice of objects itself. In Heda and Claesz. food and utensils appear that belong to normal life: bread, beer, fish, plates and jugs of pewter or ordinary glass. Kalf (and his contemporary Abraham van Beyeren too) uses almost exclusively objects that are extraordinary: vessels of silver and gold, chalices of china, lobster, tropical fruit, displayed against rich Persian cloth. _ detail (wine glass and peach) — Still Life with the Drinking-Horn of the Saint Sebastian Archers' Guild, Lobster and Glasses (86x102cm) — Still Life with Chafing Dish, Pewter, Gold, Silver, and Glassware (125kb) — Dessert (1649, 151kb) |
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Born on 31 July 1875: “Jacques Villon”
(Gaston Duchamp), French Cubist
painter, printmaker and illustrator, who died on 09 June 1963, half-brother
of Marcel
Duchamp [28 Jul 1887 – 02 Oct 1968], Raymond
Duchamp-Villon [05 Nov 1876 – 07 Oct 1918], and Suzanne Duchamp
Crotti. — [Villon vit long? et large?] — The oldest of three brothers who became major 20th-century artists, including Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Marcel Duchamp, he learnt engraving at the age of 16 from his maternal grandfather, Emile-Frédéric Nicolle (1830–94), a ship-broker who was also a much appreciated amateur artist. In January 1894, having completed his studies at the Lycée Corneille in Rouen, he was sent to study at the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris, but within a year he was devoting most of his time to art, already contributing lithographs to Parisian illustrated newspapers such as Assiette au beurre. At this time he chose his pseudonym: Jack (subsequently Jacques) in homage to Alphonse Daudet’s novel Jack (1876) and Villon in appreciation of the 15th-century French poet François Villon; soon afterwards this new surname was combined with the family name by Raymond. Marcel Duchamp and their sister Suzanne Duchamp [1889–1963], also a painter, retained the original name. Villon’s work as a humorous illustrator dominated the first ten years of his career, but from 1899 he also began to make serious prints, exhibiting some for the first time in 1901 at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. By 1903 he had sufficient reputation in Paris to be an organizer of the first Salon d’Automne. He consciously began to expand his media in 1904, studying painting at the Académie Julian and working in a Neo-Impressionist manner. His printmaking style, formerly influencd by Toulouse-Lautrec, moved towards the fashionable elegance of Paul César Helleu. — André Fougeron was a student of “Jacques Villon”. — LINKS — Le Petit Manège — Girl in a hat and veil (1925, color aquatint, 40x28cm) (after Henri Matisse, but, in my opinion, not much like Femme au Chapeau, 1905) — L'Envolée (color lithograph 27x46cm) — Coursier (lithograph printed in colors, 29x45cm) — Les Yeux Futiles (1956, etching and color aquatint, 15x14cm) — Les Lampes (1951, 25x28cm) — Duo Galant (1905, 23x16cm) — Abstraction (1927, 49x34cm) — Two Women on a Terrace by the Sea (1922, color aquatint, etching, and roulette, 48x61cm) — Autre temps: 1830 (1904, color aquatint and drypoint, 44x35cm) — Jacques (1924, 145x113cm) — Magda Pach (55x46cm; 845x824pix, 62kb) — ZOOM to 2000x1648pix, 326kb) — Walter Pach (55x46cm; 865x1095pix, 113kb — ZOOM to 1999x1644pix, 416kb) — Le Grand Dessinateur (1934, 25x23cm) _ This preliminary study for a painting is a self-portrait of the artist as he sits at his tilted drafting table, a pencil held loosely in his hands. Behind him are three sculptures by his deceased brother, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, including Decorative Basin on the left, and a head of the poet Charles Baudelaire on the table at the right. Villon had been particularly close to his brother, who together with a third brother, the artist Marcel Duchamp, made up one of the most famous families in the history of modern art. The importance given in this drawing to the sculptures of Duchamp-Villon, who died from typhoid fever in 1918, show how his artistic legacy continued to inspire and support his older brother. — L'entonnoir en Champagne (371x482ydb. 91kb) _ Craters blown open by mines or by large-calibre shells were a characteristic feature of any battlefield. In them, soldiers were crushed to death by shells or sought shelter once the artillery had changed targets. On the edge of this one, drawn by Villon, there are little dugouts in which the soldiers waited and rested. Such views abound in the photographs of the period, which deliberately linger over the human and material debris strewn around the crater. For Villon, it is sufficient to depict the depth of the cavity and its steeply sloping walls by means of oblique lines, in the manner of a draftsman. His aim is rather documentary than artistic, he establishes facts with a careful survey of the artificial contours caused by the explosion and leaves the spectator to imagine the power needed to open up the earth in such a way. — Daguerrotype #2 (etching 17x22cm) — Daguerrotype #1 (1927 etching, 16x22cm) — La Faute (1904, 39x30cm) — Mariée (1930) — Devant un Guignol (1909, 40x30cm) — After Jacques Villon (1957, 52x44cm) — Les Cartes (1903, 35x45cm; 362x468pix, 115kb gif) — L'Ombrelle Rouge (1901, 49x39cm; 375x300pix, 36kb) — Le Peintre (1931 etching 18x14cm) |
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Died on 31 July 1888: Frank Montague Holl,
British Social
Realist painter and illustrator born on 04 July 1845. — [Is it
true that when some golfers were discussing how to decorate the rooms of
their new club house, they all agreed that what they wanted most of all
was a Holl in one?] — He received his first art instruction [hollistic of course] from his father, engraver Francis Holl [1815-1884]. At the age of 15 Frank Holl entered the Royal Academy Schools, where in 1862 he was awarded a silver medal for drawing and in 1863 the gold medal for a religious subject, Abraham about to Sacrifice Isaac. In 1864 he exhibited two paintings at the Royal Academy, where he continued to show his work regularly until his death. He was elected ARA in 1878 and RA in 1883. — He was the nephew of engravers William Holl [1807–1871], Henry Benjamin Holl [1808–1884], and Charles Holl [1820–1882]. — Frank Holl originally painted genre pictures, sometimes addressing social evils of the day. These paintings include ‘The Deserter,’ and ‘Newgate-Committed For Trial’ the second being an effective though grim social document. Holl then changed course, to become a leading painter of portraits. Famous sitters included Gladstone, Leverhume, and Joseph Chamberlain. He also painted a portrait of Millais, who remarked that Holl was a ‘nice man,’ but applied too much paint. The rather humble Holl was overawed by the great painter, and his ostentatious surroundings, rather to the surprise of the genial Millais. He became ARA in 1878, and a full RA in 1882. Holl was an unassuming rather nervous character, and the move to portrait painting whilst successful financially, was disastrous for him personally, and was felt by his family to have contributed to his premature death. — The Holl family were active socialists and from an early age Frank was taught that he had a responsibility to help change society. Frank's father was frustrated by the fact that his work consisted of expressing other men's ideas and he told his son that he wanted to be an independent artist but had "been driven by a graving tool to earn his bread". At the age of fifteen Frank Holl became a student at the Royal Academy. His first large painting, A Mother and Child, was a portrayal of working class poverty and like much of his work, reflected his socialist upbringing. However, he was criticised by his tutors for the political content of his work and he agreed to paint biblical subjects to win the Academy's gold medal award. Afterwards he told a friend that in future he would never paint pictures that he did not "feel". In 1868 Frank Holl won a travel scholarship with The Lord Gave, and the Lord Hath Taken Away, a painting that illustrated a family bereavement. When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1869 Queen Victoria [24 May 1819 – 22 Jan 1901, queen from 20 Jun 1837] attempted to buy the painting but the original purchaser refused to sell it. When Holl later painted another painting on the same theme, No Tidings from the Sea, Victoria purchased it for a 100 guineas. Holl's award involved a painting tour of Europe but after two months he wrote to the Royal Academy from Italy saying that he was resigning from the travel scholarship because he wanted to concentrate on painting "the simple, somewhat rugged home-life of the English people". In 1869 joined the staff of The Graphic magazine, an illustrated weekly edited by the social reformer, William Luson Thomas. For the next five years Holl produced a series of pictures that were used to illustrate stories in the magazine. Holl worked on the magazine with other young artists such as Luke Fildes and Hubert von Herkomer who shared his political commitment. The three men often reworked their engravings as large-scale oil paintings, and together they established what became known as the social realist movement. One of Holl's assignments for the Graphic involved a visit to Newgate Prison. While he was there he saw a woman and her children visiting a prisoner. He later used this incident as the subject matter for what most critics believe his Holl's finest painting, Newgate: Committed for Trial (382x531pix, 38kb). In an attempt to capture the emotion of captivity, Holl painting the picture inside Newgate Prison. When Newgate: Committed for Trial was shown at the Royal Academy in 1878 it was virtually ignored, but a portrait that Holl had also submitted was highly praised and as a result he received several commissions from wealthy people who wanted their pictures painted. Holl, who was now a married man with a family to support, decided like Luke Fildes and Hubert von Herkomer to concentrate on portrait painting. Holl tried to find time to paint his social realist paintings and to do so worked a seven day week. When Frank Holl died in 1888, at the age of forty-three, his family and friends claimed that he had died from overwork. His daughter later wrote: "It is not too much to say that my father threw his life away by his utter inability to rest from work." — LINKS — Deserted (1874, 92x136cm) — A Family at Prayer (1868, 87x124cm) _ "The Lord Gave and the Lord Taketh Away - Blessed be the Name of the Lord"; a family at prayer under the guidance of the eldest son, a curate, after the death of the head of the household. — The Convalescent (1867, 47x57cm; 828x1000pix, 397kb) _ a 4-year-old girl sadly lying in bed propped up by pillows. — Hush! (1877 34x44cm) _ Hushed (1877, 34x44cm) _ Holl often chose bereavement as a subject, particularly the grief of a mother for her baby. Child death was sadly a common occurence in Victorian society. These two pictures were once described as 'a pathetic little story in two chapters'. In Hush! a mother devotedly watches over her sick baby, her anxiety mirrored in the face of an older child. Hushed, its companion piece, shows the baby's death. The mother covers her face with her hand in the universal gesture of grief, while her other child appears bewildered. These pictures offer a simple yet moving description. Holl confronts his subject directly, without sentimentality. The sombre coloring and the strong contrasts between light and shade serve to heighten the grim mood. — Samuel Cousins, R.A. (1879, 127x101cm) |
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Born on 31 July 1881: Léontius~Petrus~Ludovicus Spilliaert,
Flemish Symbolist painter and designer who died on 23 November 1946. —
[There is no evidence that Spilliaert invented “spilly-art”, in
which the silly spilly-artist dispenses with a brush and just pours, drips,
or flings paint at a canvas, or vice-versa.] — Spilliaert moved toward a form of Expressionism and his style sometimes recalls de Chirico. The son of an Ostend perfumer, his talent for drawing emerged in childhood and was constantly exercised. In 1902 he met Verhaeren with whom he struck up a lasting friendship. In Paris, he discovered the work of Gaugin, van Gogh and Picasso. He settled in Brussels in 1935. He was a member of various artistic circles: the Independents, Le Sillon, the Contemporary Art group and Les Compagnons de l'Art. His very personal technique combined watercolor, gouache, pastel and sometimes crayon on cardboard or paper. He brings together a naïve sincerity, sometimes containing a degree of eroticism, a very pure line in arabesque, and decorative surfaces akin to those of the the Nabis. — His initial sources of inspiration were the bottles and flasks he saw in his father’s perfumery shop in Ostend. However, in 1889 he studied briefly at the Terenacademie in Bruges. His early work, already impregnated with Symbolism, was fed by his readings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Maurice Maeterlinck, for example. From February 1903 to January 1904 he worked for Edmond Deman, the Brussels publisher associated particularly with Emile Verhaeren, who encouraged him. In 1904 Spilliaert stayed in Paris, where he was on the fringe of Picasso’s circle and discovered the work of Munch and Toulouse-Lautrec, whose influences he acknowledged. He continued to spend most winters in Paris to keep in touch with the city’s cultural life. A stomach ulcer that gave him insomnia turned him into a nocturnal stroller, which gave rise to innumerable works in a mixture of watercolor, pastel, colored pencil and Chinese ink. They revealed the beauties of Ostend by night: deserted dykes and quays, arcades, street-lamps shining through fog and mist. Ditch and Casino at Ostend (1908) prefigures de Chirico. Between 1907 and 1913 he developed an original form of Symbolism, tinged with Expressionism and governed by a strict sense of synthesis. He painted numerous self-portraits, works steeped in mystery and melancholy (e.g. Woman in the Train, 1908) and those inspired by the contrast between a solitary figure and the vastness of the sea or sky (e.g. Woman Bather, 1910). He also created geometric landscapes that verged on abstraction and were unique for the period (e.g. Woman on the Dyke, 1908). At the same time he was developing Art Nouveau motifs as in Pietà (1910), where whiplash arabesques animate the waves. From 1912 he made large-scale pastels (90x70cm) of various harbor scenes, with large schematized figures that influenced Constant Permeke (e.g. Fisherman’s Wife, 1912). He moved in literary and cultural circles and was a friend of the Belgian playwright Fernand Crommelynck, as well as of Stefan Zweig who had followed his career from its beginnings. — LINKS — Self-portrait (52x67cm) — Self-Portrait (1908, 85x69cm) — Self-portrait with Mirror (1908) — The Crossing (1913, 90x70cm; 819x627pix, 93kb) — The Posts (1910, 65x50cm) — Vertigo, Magic Staircase (1908, 64x48cm) — Swans (50x65cm) |
1821 William Hammer, Danish artist who died on 09 May 1889. — {Not
related to Armand Hammer [21 May 1898 – 1990], Arm
& Hammer, or Hammer & Sickle}
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