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ART “4” “2”-DAY  14 March
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DEATHS: 1752 COYPEL — 1682 RUISDAEL
BIRTHS: 1836 LEFEBVRE — 1892 FOLINSBEE
^ Born on 14 March 1836: Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, French Academic painter who died on 24 February 1911.
— Lefebvre studied under Léon Cogniet, and afterwards at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1861. His early works were based upon historical events. However, after the death of close family members in the mid 1860s he began to specialise in painting nudes, such as Chloe. Lefebvre became a professor of the Académie Julian in Paris in the 1870s. The Belgian Symbolist painter Fernand Khnopff numbered amongst his students. Lefebvre received many awards during his long life, including being made Commandeur of the Légion d'honneur in 1898.
— He studied in Leon Cogniet’s studio from 1852 and competed at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1853 until he won the Prix de Rome in 1861. In Rome he was influenced by Mannerism and especially by Andrea del Sarto, whose works he copied. In his Boy Painting a Tragic Mask (1863) Lefebvre introduced the precise draftsmanship, delicate color and a lubricity characteristic of many of his later works. In 1866 he experienced a severe depression caused by the death of his parents and one of his sisters, and by criticism of the last major work he painted in Rome, Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi. After these experiences he turned from history painting to portraits and nudes; he exhibited 72 portraits in Salons between 1855 and 1898 (e.g. Julia Foster Ward), but little is known about them since nearly all remain in private collections. Although he occasionally finished large-scale, ambitious paintings (e.g. Lady Godiva; Diana Surprised), he made his reputation with nudes such as Reclining Woman (1868). Critics praised this painting and recognized its eroticism, yet there was no scandal as there had been with Manet’s Olympia (1863). Lefebvre avoided the signs of contemporary social reality, prostitution, or the model’s personality that characterized Manet’s painting, focusing instead on the woman’s beauty and stressing her passivity and availability.
— Like a typical academic artist, Lefebvre started his career with the traditional subject matter of histories and other narratives. It would not be till later in his career that he would focus exclusively on the human figure in portraiture and especially the female nude, with great ability and success.
      Though his father was only a baker, he nonetheless encouraged his son to pursue painting, sending him to study in Paris in 1852. There, Lefebvre became a pupil of Leon Cogniet and a year later started attending the Ecole des Beaux Arts. His debut at the Paris Salon was in 1855. He then spent the next few years pursuing the coveted Prix de Rome (the main competition for young painters, which would win him five years of study in Rome and a reputation that would all but guarantee a successful career). In 1859 he came close, placing second. Two years later the history painting The Death of Priam would win him first place.
      It would be during his stay in Rome that he would find his individual artistic niche. Able to study the great Italian masters, Lefebvre was fascinated by the Mannerist painters, especially Andrea del Sarto. He copied his work avidly and demonstrated Andrea’s influence in his painting Boy Painting a Tragic Mask (1863)[2]. It was also during this time that his interest in the female nude began, painting his first in 1863. Among other works he did in Rome, he sent the narrative Roman Charity to the salon of 1864 and painted Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi in 1866. The latter narrative, however, was ill received by experts, arousing overwhelming criticism. That same year his parents and one of his sisters died. These negative events in both his personal and professional life sent him into severe depression.
      He emerged from his depression and came back to Paris with a different approach to art and a change of interest in subject matter. He apparently became disenchanted with the traditional formulaic approach to painting, instead turning towards more precise rendering from life. In 1868 he exhibited a Reclining Nude at the Salon, which unlike his last significant work, won him much praise. Two years later, his allegory of Truth became his first great success. A beautiful young woman holds up a mirror (the conventional symbol of truth). This symbol, though, is at the very top of the painting, so, in order to get to it one’s eye has to caress the sensuous feminine curves over the length of the outstretched figure. Shortly after the success of this nude, he was made an officer in the Legion of Honor.
      What followed in the decades to come were variations on Truth. His many beautiful nudes took the roles of Mary Magdalene (1876), Pandora (1877), Diana (1879), Psyche (1883), and Aurora among others. His nudes became so famous that his only rival was considered to be Bouguereau. Unlike Bouguereau’s figures though, Lefebvre used a greater variety of models, which can be seen in his work. It is not surprising then that he exhibited seventy-two portraits at the Paris Salon from 1855 to 1898. Most, of course, are of women. Among those who sat for him include his daughter Yvonne, the Imperial Prince in 1874, and the novelist Alexandre Dumas (1869), who also seems to have admired his nudes, purchasing a Femme Nue in 1892.
      In the 1870’s he became a teacher at the Académie Julien (an atelier that trained women artists as well as men over a decade before they were also permitted into l'École des Beaux Arts). There he is said to have insisted to his students on absolute precision in life drawing. There he became the most admired and sought after teacher of US expatriates, who came to Paris to study. Among his most famous US students, were Frederick Childe Hassam, Frank Weston Benson, and Edmund Charles Tarbell. Following the success of Truth, his accolades kept accumulating. Having won increasingly significant acclaim at the Universal Expositions, he ended up winning the grand prize in 1889. In 1891, he was made a member of the Academie des Beaux Arts. What was admired then about Lefebvre, and can be admired today is the idealized realism of his figures. They are beautiful yet individualized.
— Lefebvre's students included, besides the four already mentioned, Otto Bacher, John Breck, Colin Cooper, C.C. Curran, Charles Davis, Elizabeth Bouguereau, Gaines Donoho, Frank Dumond, Eurilda France, Philip Leslie Hale, William Hart, George Hitchcock, William Kendall, Louis Aston Knight, Ernest Lee Major, Arthur F. Mathews, Julius Garibaldi Melchers, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Elizabeth Nourse, Robert Reid, Guy Rose, Joseph Henry Sharp, Otto Stark, Albert Sterner, Twachtman, Vonnoh, Mary MacMonnies, Belmiro Barbosa de Almeida, Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Louis Marcoussis, Charles Maurin, George Augustus Moore [1852-1933], Alphonse Mucha, Charles Adams Platt, Georges Antoine Marie Rochegrosse, Ker-Xavier Roussel.

LINKS
Fleurs des Champs aka Half-Length Demi-Nude (ZOOM)
Julia Foster Ward (1880, 94x69cm _ ZOOM)
Truth (1870, 265x112cm _ ZOOM) — Clemence Isaure (ZOOM)
Girl with a Mandolin aka AutumnJaponaise aka The Language of the Fan (1882, 131x90cm)
Pandora (1882, 97x75cm) — Young Woman with Morning Glories in Her Hair (67x55cm) — A Lady
La Fiancée (157x132cm) — L'amour Blessé (191x124cm; 1000x650pix, 138kb) — A Woman (241x150cm)
Chloé (1875) _ This is perhaps the most famous, notorious, well loved, well hung and controversial painting in Australia. Chloé was exhibited to great popular acclaim winning gold medals in the Paris Salon in 1875, the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879 and the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880. She was purchased in 1882 by a surgeon, Thomas Fitzgerald (later Sir Thomas) and subsequently loaned to the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1883, after three weeks of exhibition, she fell victim to Victorian "wowserism" (puritanical fanaticism) when outraged citizens objected to seeing the naked female form displayed on the Sabbath. Upon the death of Sir Thomas in 1908, Chloé was purchased by Henry Figsby Young, an ex-digger turned hotel proprietor, for the very considerable sum of 800 pounds. One story relates that Henry took the painting back to his home above Young and Jackson's Hotel and hid it from his wife. While he was away and she was "spring cleaning", the irate wife discovered it and banished it to the public bar, which ironically turned it into a smash hit. It has remained there ever since, apart from touring Australia to raise funds for the Red Cross during World War I and being loaned as the center-piece for the exhibition "Narratives, nudes and landscapes" at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1995. As for the model "Chloé", she had posed for the painting when she was 19, had subsequently fallen in love with Jules Lefebvre and when the artist married her sister, she was devastated. She boiled up phosphorous match-heads, drank the poisonous concoction and died tragically, at 21. Or so they say!
^ Died on 14 March 1752: Charles~Antoine Coypel, French painter, tapestry designer, and writer born on 11 July 1694, grandson of Noël Coypel, half-nephew of Noël-Nicolas Coypel [1690-1734]
— Charles-Antoine Coypel had precocious success as a painter, as his father and teacher Antoine Coypel [1661-1722] was the Premier Peintre du Roi. Upon his father's death in 1722, Charles inherited the elder Coypel's painting and design responsibilities at court, became the chief painter of the duc d'Orléans, and received lodgings at the Louvre. He eventually became Premier Peintre himself in 1747, as well as director of the Académie Royale. Besides talents in painting and engraving, Coypel possessed some literary talent: he produced two tragedies, several comedies, prose, and some poetry. He also excelled as a tapestry designer for the Gobelins manufactory; the twenty-eight scenes he created for the Don Quixote series woven continuously between 1714 and 1794, were his most successful. He received several commissions for paintings for the Palais de Versailles, and he worked for the king's mistress, Madame de Pompadour. In 1747 Coypel received an order to design a series of theatrical scenes for tapestries for the queen of Poland.
— Charles-Antoine Coypel had a resoundingly successful career, largely due to his administrative capacity in the various official positions that he held. In 1747 he became director of the Académie Royale and chief painter to the king. He also was an accomplished writer of verse and plays as well as art criticism. As a painter he was versatile and prolific, but his worst painting, Supper at Emmaus (1746), is pathetically inept.

LINKS
Self-Portrait
(1734, 98x80cm) _ Wearing the official academy costume — a brown velvet waistcoat, lace shirt, and long powdered wig — the French artist Charles-Antoine Coypel gracefully turns towards the viewer. When he made this half-length self-portrait, Coypel was forty years old and already a full professor at the Académie Royale in Paris. With an open-handed gesture, Coypel presents both himself and his work to the viewer. He stands against a portfolio containing colored paper; underneath, a silver holder contains sharpened pieces of chalk, the medium essential to his profession. Written on the portfolio is a dedication: "Charles Coypel has painted himself for Philippe Coypel, his brother and his best friend, 1734."
      Coypel's younger brother was a valet de chambre to King Louis XV, so the picture served also as a tool for self-promotion. Displayed in the Philippe's house, the self-portrait would have boldly presented the confident image of Charles to the powerful members of the king's inner circle. A brilliant portraitist, Coypel excelled in the medium of pastel. He first drew a detailed underdrawing lightly in pencil, then made crisp outlines using a sharpened pastel crayon. The soft, harmonious coloring completes the work and conveys the differences in texture between his thick velvet waistcoat, the gossamer white lace, and the smooth and shiny buttons.
Philippe Coypel brother of the artist (1732, 75x61cm; 962x752pix, 97kb) _ Ce portrait représente Philippe Coypel [1703-1777], Ecuyer du Roi, frère et "ami qui plus est" de l'artiste. Peint l'année de son mariage, il a peut-être été peint comme cadeau à cette occasion, puisqu'il était associé à un pendant, Portrait de Madame Coypel (1732).
Perseus and Andromeda (1727, 131x196cm; 498x760pix, 48kb)
France Offering Thanks to Heaven for the Recovery of Louis XV (1744, 59x50cm; 985x760pix, 72kb)
^ Born on 14 March 1892: John Fulton “Jack” Folinsbee, US artist who died on 10 May 1972.
— Born in Buffalo, died in New Hope, Pennsylvania. In 1914 Jack Folinsbee married Ruth Standish Baldwin of Washington. They settled in New Hope in 1916 at the suggestion of tonalist painter Birge Harrison. Primarily known as a landscape painter, Folinsbee also did portraits. His early impressionist landscapes employ light colors. Following a 1926 trip to France, Folinsbee began to use darker, brooding colors, and his work became more expressionist in approach. Known for his paintings of shad fish along the Delaware River in Lambertville, the painter also depicted the factories around his home and the Maine seacoast. Under Folinsbee's brush subjects that would not rise above the commonplace with lesser artist become beautiful and powerful. The factory, with its dull red walls, a flash of green water, gray smoke stacks and rolling clouds of smoke, epitomizes the spirit of iron and steel. Above all, it has splendor that does not depend on what we are accustomed to consider beauty." — John Fulton Folinsbee attended the Gunnery School, Connecticut, 1907-1911, Art Students League Summer School, Woodstock, New York, 1912.
      Among those who taught him or influenced him are Birge Harrison, John Carlson, Frank Vincent DuMond, Robert Spencer Giotto, Masaccio, El Greco, Paul Cézanne, George Bellows, George Luks. John Folinsbee lived in New Hope from 1916 to 1972. He and his wife, Ruth, moved to New Hope upon the suggestion of Birge Harrison, who had several friends in the flourishing artists' colony. Ruth Folinsbee was involved with the founding of the Philips Mill Association, which brought people together for art exhibitions, theater performances, and social gatherings. She also was one of the original subscribers and stockholders of the Bucks County Playhouse in 1939. John Folinsbee chaired the Art Committee for the Philips Mill Association in 1930. Along with Edward Redfield, Daniel Garber, Lloyd R. Ney, and writer Henry Chapin, John Folinsbee formed the New Hope Scientific Society, a social group which gathered for evening games of poker. Harry Leith-Ross was a close friend from his Woodstock School days, who acted as best man at Folinsbee's marriage to Ruth Baldwin on 10 October 1914. Other colleagues in New Hope included William Lathrop and Robert Spencer. Folinsbee was very close to his son-in-law, Peter G. Cook, also a fine artist.

Cider Mill in Washington, Connecticut (51x41cm; 602x750pix, 185kb) _ Known as Dipple’s Cider Mill, this large factory site began in 1832-33 as a cotton-woolen plant. It was located off River Road on the Shepaug River. It passed through many hands, including Herman Baldwin, owner of a grist mill and shingle mills and a blacksmith shop; Frank J. Kilbourn, owner of a grist mill, feed and cider mills and Charles Dipple, who had a cider mill only. Operations continued until 1947 when Dipple ended all production. This scene was painted by Folinsbee before the mill and its 3.2 m dam were destroyed by the destructive flood of 19 August 1955.
Canal Below New Hope (51x76cm; 529x750pix, 136kb) _ The Folinsbees found their way to New Hope, Pennsylvania, a village on the banks of the Delaware River. New Hope was a picturesque town during the early years of the 20th century and provided a peaceful rustic retreat for the many artists who lived among its gently rolling hills and graceful woodlands. Much of Folinsbee’s work was painted here before development and urbanization forced him to seek inspiration along the rugged coast of Maine. Aware that New Hope and Bucks County were rapidly changing, he endeavored to portray its best features in an attempt to preserve for future generations the appearance of this region.
Evening at Swan’s Island (89x127cm; 549x750pix, 101kb) _ Folinsbee and his family spent their summers in Maine, where the powerful sea and rugged coastline along with its harbor and fishing activities, provided him with fresh inspiration. In 1952, Folinsbee acquired a 7.6-meter lobster boat and named it Sketch. As well as fishing from the vessel, he used it as a floating studio. When the weather permitted and the sea was calm, he would travel the coast, observing and making sketches. Evening at Swan’s Island was produced on one of his boating trips.
Beth and Joan (1924, 81x102cm; 564x750pix, 162kb) _ The medical profession gave Folinsbee a very short life expectancy, and children, he was told, were out of the question. Ruth’s response to the doctor was, "Perhaps the Lord will decide that." Beth was born in 1917 and Joan, two years later. Folinsbee’s interest in portrait painting developed when he began sketching his daughters in their childhood. Although he was primarily a landscape painter, he painted hundreds of portraits during his long career and always claimed that he painted a portrait the way he painted a landscape. Those who have known only Folinsbee’s lusty landscapes may view his portraits with surprise: Great is the contrast between the two facets of the artist’s talents. His portraits are painted with great sensitivity, those of women and children with appropriate delicacy; yet they are as forthright in their way as any landscape he ever painted, being quite rapidly executed, not requiring over two or three sittings. This implies unusual perception in character analysis and a brush that caresses features as expertly as it lays-in the waters of the North Atlantic.
Farm Scene (25x35cm; 540x751pix, 99kb) — Maine Dock Scene (25x35cm; 504x760pix, 112kb)
Edward Redfield Painting (1923, 26x21cm; 600x468pix, 71kb) _ sold for $17'250 at Shannon's in April 2002.
Grey Buildings (41x51cm; 468x600pix, 67kb) _ sold for $16'450 at Shannon's on 24 April 2003.
The Squall (1949, 41x46cm; 600x492pix, 36kb) _ sold for $7500 at Shannon's on 23 October 2003.
^ Buried on 14 March 1682: Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruisdael (or Ruysdael), Dutch Baroque painter, draftsman, and etcher, specialized in Landscapes, born in 1628 or 1629. He died about 4 days before his burial.
— He is regarded as the principal figure among Dutch landscape painters of the second half of the 17th century. His naturalistic compositions and style of representing massive forms and his color range constituted a new direction away from the ‘tonal phase’ (about 1620 to 1650) associated with the previous generation of landscape painters and exemplified by the work of his uncle Salomon van Ruysdael, Jan van Goyen, Cornelis Vroom, Pieter Molijn, and others. Ruisdael showed unusual versatility: he produced several distinct landscape types: mountainous, woodland and river settings, waterfalls, beach and dune scenes, seascapes, panoramas, and winter scenes; and created images that were both innovative and among the best in their category. He was not apparently interested in the fashion for Italianate landscapes but stands out as a unique talent in the context of such notable contemporaries as Aelbert Cuyp and Philips Koninck. His oeuvre comprises about 700 paintings and 100 drawings, the majority undated.
— Meindert Hobbema was a student of Ruisdael.

LINKS
A Cabin on the Hill (24x27cm; 5/4 size, 236kb)
A Dutch Rural Landscape (40x52cm; half~size, 92kb _ ZOOM not recommended to fuzzy full size, 384kb)
Bentheim Castle (mega-image)
— a different Bentheim Castle (1653) _ During the years from about 1650 to about 1655, the heroic quality of Ruisdael's landscapes increases. The forms become larger and more massive. Giant oaks and beeches as well as shrubs acquire an unprecedented abundance and fullness. Colors become more vivid, space increases in both height and depth, and there is an emphasis on the tectonic structure of the compositions. He strove to achieve heroic effects without sacrificing the individuality of a single tree or bush. An outstanding example of this tendency is his mighty view of Bentheim Castle. Ruisdael visited Bentheim, a small town in Wesphalia near the Dutch-German border, when he travelled to the region with his friend Berchem in the early fifties. Bentheim's castle is, in fact, on an unimposing low hill, but in his painting Ruisdael enlarged it into a wooded mountain providing the castle with a commanding position. His invention is a superb expression of his aggrandizement of solid forms during this phase. The dense mass of the mountain, obliquely stretching away into depth, and the coulisses on either side of the front edge of the painting are reminiscent of compositional schemes used by the generation of his teachers, but the spatial clarity is new, as are the strong colors, the energy of the brushwork, and the way he unifies the close view of a nearly overwhelming wealth of detail with the most distant parts of the landscape into a consistent whole. The impact of the broad prospect is as intense as the vegetation seen close up. Ruisdael continued to include Bentheim Castle in his landscapes, seen in various settings and from different viewpoints, until his very last years.
—and yet another different The Castle at Bentheim (1651, 98x81cm) _ Jacob van Ruisdael, the greatest of all Dutch seventeenth-century landscape painters, was born in Haarlem. He was a member of a dynasty of artists and was trained in the studios of his father, Isaac Jacobszoon van Ruisdael and his uncle, Salomon van Ruysdael. Salomon worked in the 'monochrome' Haarlem style of which Jan van Goyen and Pieter Molijn were also practitioners, and Jacob's earliest paintings display a powerful debt to his uncle's work. He joined the Haarlem guild in 1648 and two years later went with his friend Nicolaes Berchem (1620-1683), a painter of Italianate landscapes, to the German border. There, they visited Bentheim, a small town in Westphalia on the border between the United Provinces and Germany. They both sketched Bentheim Castle and later worked up their drawings into paintings. Indeed Ruisdael, whose imagination was particularly inspired by Bentheim, made a whole series of paintings of the castle perched dramatically on an outcrop of rock. Ruisdael's and Berchem's views of Bentheim provide a fascinating comparison between the two artists and their approach to landscape: whereas in a painting of 1656 Berchem turned the castle into a fairy-tale cluster of pinnacles and placed it in the shimmering distance behind a scene of carefree Italian peasants watering their cattle, Ruisdael transformed the low hill on which the castle sits into a sheer cliff, topped by a granite fortress.
Castle and Watermill by a River (1670, 68x57cm; 960x760pix, 420kb _ ZOOM to 2274x1800pix, 2647kb)
Landscape with Waterfall (1665; mega-image) — Mountainous Landscape with Waterfall (mega-image)
The Windmill at Wijk-bij-Duurstede (mega-image) _ The Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede (1670, 83x101cm; 901x1087pix, 182kb) _ A Dutch landscape consists essentially of sky dominating low-lying land, where water (whether it be the sea or some canal) frequently reflects the clouds. In the work of Ruisdael the feeling of infinity, in which man seems lost, attains a Pascalian gravity. In this painting the sky responds in its cloud formations to the mighty wings of the windmill. As in Rembrandt's mature phase, which is approximately contemporaneous, this landscape shows classical elements which strengthen the compositional power. Horizontals and verticals are coordinated with the Baroque diagonals, which are still alive and help to create a mighty spaciousness. The atmospheric quality is as important as ever in uniting the whole impression. Light breaks now with greater intensity through the clouds and the clouds themselves gain in substance and volume. The sky forms a gigantic vault above the earth, and it is admirable how almost every point on the ground and on the water can be related to a corresponding point in the sky. _ detail (1058x758pix, 166kb) _ In this painting the sky responds in its cloud formations to the mighty wings of the windmill.
View of Haarlem (1670; mega-image) — Water mill (1658; mega-image)
Rough Sea (1670) — Wheatfields, detailThe Great Forest.
The Great Oak (1652) _ The painting is signed and dated, however, in the 18th century it was wrongly attributed to Nicolaes Berchem. In fact Berchem painted only the staffage figures of the picture.
Landscape with a House in the Grove (1646, 105x162cm) _ Ruisdael is one of the exceptional painters who appears on the scene as a precocious complete master. He was active as an independent artist before he was inscribed as a member of the Haarlem guild in 1648. More than a dozen of his works are signed and dated 1646, when he was a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old teenager, and in the following year the number increases. In these early works there is no fumbling or groping. On the contrary, from the beginning he surpasses his models by his ability to enlarge a detail of nature into central motif. The sand dunes and clumps of trees around his native town which were his favourite subjects during these years are rendered with loving care and from the moment we recognize his hand until his last years he gave unprecedented meticulous attention to arboreal details. He was the first artist to depict a variety of trees that are consistently and unequivocally recognizable to the botanist on account of their overall habit.
View of Amsterdam (52x43cm) _ The painting depicts the bank of the Binnenamstel, in the background the tower of the Zuiderkerk. _ detail
View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds (1665, 62x55cm) _ Of about the late 1660s are many firsthand views of the Dutch landscape in its various aspects by Ruisdael. The sea, the shore, the vast fertile plains now become important subjects side by side with the woods and waterfalls, and they are always seen under a majestic sky. In his panoramic views of Haarlem with its bleaching grounds, which continue into the seventies, the master's hand is felt in the strength and deceptive simplicity of the compositions. Bleaching fields were familiar sights in his time. After brewing, bleaching linen manufactured in Holland and unbleached cloth imported from England, Germany, and the Baltic countries was Haarlem's major industry. Jacob's 'Haarlempjes' — as they were called in his day — appeal to us because they offer what is now accepted as the most characteristic view of the Dutch countryside while achieving an unparalleled degree of openness and height. The one at Zurich, a summit of Jacob's achievement, is an exemplar of the type. Its sky, as the skies in most of them, takes up more than two thirds of the canvas, but the impression of height is increased here by the vertical format, and still more by the dominant part the towering, strongly modelled clouds play in the awe-inspiring aerial zone. The prospect of the plain is shown from an exceptionally distant and elevated point of view. As a result there is a reduction in both in scale and in overlappings of the watery dunes, woods, and tracts of land. The firm cohesion of the great cloudy sky gains in mass and significance from its relations to the diminutive forms. The eye can explore here - more than in most other 'Haarlempjes' - the vast expanse of the land richly differentiated by the gradations of alternating bands of light and shadow into the distance toward a horizon stretched taut as sinew.
Two Water Mills and an Open Sluice (1653) _ Besides the Bentheim Castle, another motif Ruisdael discovered on his trip to the Dutch-German border region was the water mill. The half-timbered overshot and undershot mills he favoured were found in the eastern provinces of the Netherlands and in the area near Bentheim. Of course, earlier artists included water mills in their pictures but he was the first to make them the principal theme of a painting. The subject became one of the specialities of his student Meindert Hobbema, and today, when we think of them, his paintings not Ruisdael's come to mind. But in judging their respective accomplishments it is helpful to recall that Ruisdael painted powerful ones, such as Two Water Mills and an Open Sluice, which impresses by the cohesion of its forms and clear daylight effect, before Hobbema held a brush in his hand.
The Hunt (107x147cm) _ The animals were painted by Adriaen van de Velde.
The Jewish Cemetery (1660) — another The Jewish Cemetery (1657, 141x183cm) — Ruins sometimes play a prominent role, and gloomy skies set a melancholy mood. Ruisdael's rare ability to create a compelling and tragic mood in nature is best seen in his famous Jewish Cemetery of 1660. The autograph 1657 version is larger and more elaborate. These works are moralizing landscapes that were painted with a deliberate allegorical programme. The combination of their conspicuous tombs, ruins, large dead beech trees, broken trunks, and rushing streams alludes to the familiar themes of transience and the vanity of life and the ultimate futility of human endeavor, while the burst of light that breaks through the ravening clouds in each painting, their rainbows and the luxuriant growth that contrasts with the dead trees offer a promise of hope and renewed life.
      The masterliness of the 1660 painting lies in the artist's clear and concentrated presentation of these ideas. The eye focuses on the three tombs in the middle distance, where the light is centralized. They present a truthful picture of the actual, identifiable sarcophagi as they can still be seen in the Portuguese-Jewish Cemetery at Ouderkerk on the Amstel River near Amsterdam. Ruisdael made carefully worked-up drawings of the tombs, one of which he used as a preparatory drawing for the paintings. But the landscape settings of the paintings bear no resemblance whatsoever to the site at Ouderkerk. They are Ruisdael's inventions. The cemetery never had monumental ruins. Those seen in the Dresden version were transplants from the shattered remains of Egmond Castle near Alkmaar, a site about forty kilometers from Ouderkerk; they also are based on a preparatory drawing. The ruins seen in the Detroit painting are probably derived from the ruins of Egmond's old Abbey Church. A rushing stream does not bisect the actual burial ground. (Would anyone in his right mind place tombs near a vigorous stream which would wreak havoc with the tombstones and coffins beneath them when it flooded?). The stream was included as a traditional allusion to the passage of time. Most remarkable is the barren beech tree in the 1660 picture that gestures toward the three tombs and heavenwards. If ever a tree was capable of seducing a viewer to accept the pathetic fallacy of endowing natural forms with human feelings and emotions it is this dead beech.
      The iconographical programme of Ruisdael's two versions of the Jewish Cemetery leaves no doubt that they were intended as moralizing landscapes. He made no others that can be given a similar unmistakable reading. None of his other existing paintings include tombs; those done by his contemporaries are rare, and some of them are based on his depictions of the sarcophagi at Ouderkerk. However, Ruisdael made numerous pictures that include identifiable or imaginary ruins, dead and broken trees, rushing streams, rivers, and waterfalls. Were these motifs invariably intended by the artist as symbols of transience and the vanity of life, and does the handful of them that include rainbows allude to hope? It has been argued that this is indeed the case, and that these motifs not only offer the iconographical essence of Ruisdael's landscapes but offer the key to the meaning to seventeenth-century landscape painting. According to this interpretation they were intended as visual sermons to convey the biblical message that man lives in a transient world beset by sinful temptation, but may hope for salvation.
Landscape with Church and Village (1670, 59x73cm) _ In the late 1660s, perhaps inspired by the example of Philips Koninck, Jacob van Ruisdael painted a number of extensive landscapes, of which this is a fine example. Like Koninck, he adopts a high viewpoint, devoting more than half the canvas to a cloud-filled sky. It has been suggested that the church in the center is that of Saint Agatha at Beverwijk, about seven miles north of Haarlem, where Ruisdael lived and worked. The tower of that church, however, was different and in any case it is unlikely that Ruisdael was attempting topographical accuracy. The painting was no doubt based on drawings made in the vicinity of Haarlem which Ruisdael then took back to his studio and transformed into an imaginative landscape. There are four other landscapes by Ruisdael which show the same view or part of the same view with small differences of detail.
The Marsh in a Forest (1665, 72x99cm) _ Among Ruisdael's most personal creations are his large forest scenes of the sixties. In the Marsh in a Forest of about 1665 at the Hermitage powerful trees form a mighty group around a lonely pond. The decayed ones speak with their winding branches as vividly as those in full growth. There is more spaciousness now than there was in the earlier phase of the fifties. Massive trees no longer virtually seal off middle and background vistas. One can look into the distance under the trees, and the sky plays a more pronounced role. There is air all round, and the local color, which was very distinct in the bluish green of the fifties, is somewhat neutralized by a greyish tint in the bronze-brown foliage. In this particular picture Jacob van Ruisdael based his composition on a design of Roelandt Savery which was accessible through the engraving of Egidius Sadeler. Yet the transformation of the Mannerist's work into his heroic terms is more significant than the dependence on it. Ruisdael did not accept the bizarre and ornamental play with nature's forms. He created an archetype of the splendour and grandeur of nature.
An Extensive Landscape with a Ruined Castle and a Village Church (1672, 109x146cm) _ Panoramic views of the flat plains in Holland are often said to be the most distinctive contribution of Dutch landscape painting. They differ from the 'world panorama' of earlier Flemish art by seemingly recording the momentary view of a single scene, rather than being composed of a collection of separate visual memories. Formally, they are characterized bb a low horizon line, implying a low viewpoint. Although Ruisdael, perhaps the greatest and the most versatile Dutch landscape specialist, did not invent this type of picture, he became one of its most distinguished practitioners. This painting may represent a view in Gooiland, a district to the east of Amsterdam; there are, however, at least four other, smaller landscapes by Ruisdael that show the same view or part of it with considerable variations, and it is clear that he was not attempting strict topographical accuracy. Despite the pretence of spontaneity, this work, like all landscape paintings of the time, is a synthetic product of the artist's studio. Its dominant feature is the sky, to which two thirds of the picture surface is devoted and which is also reflected in the water of the foreground. This is the real, moisture-laden sky of Holland billowing with clouds, the sun breaking sporadically through scattering shafts of light across the countryside - effects which Constable was later to emulate. Almost more remarkable than the truthful record of the shape, density and illumination of the clouds is the illusion that they are moving through space and over our heads (we tend to think that perspective does not govern cloudscapes, but these seem to taper towards the horizon and broaden at the upper edge of the painting). The long horizon too seems to extend beyond the frame, broken only by church spires and the tiny white sails of a windmill. But our sense of inhabiting the landscape is compromised by our viewpoint in relation to the foreground. By letting us look down into the bastion standing below the horizon line, the painter suggests that we are viewing it from some improbably high place, higher also than the shore on which the peasants graze their flock (both figures and animals were painted by Adriaen van der Velde, a division of labour quite common in Dutch landscapes). This implied detachment, however, strengthens the elegiac mood aroused by the sight of overgrown ruins, melancholy reminders of a distant and more heroic past.
Landscape with Waterfall (1670, 101x142cm) _ This is one of Ruisdael grandest landscapes. After Ruisdael had settled in Amsterdam about 1656-57 his compositions broaden, and a certain heaviness in the foreground disappears. The opening of the view suggests that he was impressed by Philips Koninck's panoramic views, but the fresh atmospheric effect, the brilliant glittering daylight which brightens the landscapes, the reflections, and vivid colors in the shadows are completely personal. In the late fifties Ruisdael also began to represent waterfalls in mountainous northern valleys, and in the sixties they became an important theme in his oeuvre. This motif was popularized by Allart van Everdingen after he returned to Holland in 1644 from a trip to Norway and Sweden, and Ruisdael, who never visited Scandinavia, derived his torrential falls in northern landscapes from Everdingen's art.
Waterfall by a Church (1670, 109x132cm) _ Ruisdael often chose waterfalls as a subject for his landscape paintings after the 1650s, inspired by the dramatic Scandinavian waterfall scenes of Allaert van Everdingen. Ruisdael's paintings were done in Amsterdam, which succeeded Haarlem as the center of landscape painting after the middle of the century. At the same time a heightened expression became fashionable.
Waterfall in a Mountainous Northern Landscape (1665; 970x853pix, 130kb) _ After Ruisdael had settled in Amsterdam about 1656-57 his compositions broaden, and a certain heaviness in the foreground disappears. The opening of the view suggests that he was impressed by Philips Koninck's panoramic views, but the fresh atmospheric effect, the brilliant glittering daylight which brightens the landscapes, the reflections, and vivid colors in the shadows are completely personal. In the late fifties Ruisdael also began to represent waterfalls in mountainous northern valleys, and in the sixties they became an important theme in his oeuvre. This motif was popularized by Allaert van Everdingen after he returned to Holland in 1644 from a trip to Norway and Sweden, and Ruisdael, who never visited Scandinavia, derived his torrential falls in northern landscapes from Everdingen's art.
Wheat Fields (1675, 100x130cm; 786x1034pix, 138kb) _ In Ruisdael's paintings of the 1670s, like this one, flat landscape subjects are characteristic, as are the converging lines of earth and sky and the alteration of shadow and sunlight. The tiny figures who populate Ruisdael's canvases - indeed, all human activities - are ultimately dwarfed by the vast canopy of sky and immense, towering clouds. This vision of nature is impressive and powerful yet never loses its wistful, melancholic beauty.
Winter Landscape (1670, 42x50cm; 850x1028pix, 153kb) _ A survey of the large oeuvre of Jacob van Ruisdael reveals he painted virtually every subject depicted by Dutch landscapists: dunes and country roads, grainfields, panoramas, rivers and canals, woods and forests, ruins, winter scenes, water and windmills, city views, mountain scenes, Scandinavian landscapes, and seascapes and views of beaches as well. Ruisdael's winter landscapes are not the least remarkable in the oeuvre. In this first-rate example of one, forbidding dark clouds hang over a forlorn snow-covered scene. There is no trace here of the gaiety of Avercamp's better known winterscapes and, unlike his, Ruisdael's conjures up no image of skaters and other delights of the season. Its subject is a rarer one: the brooding mood of a winter day darkened by threatening clouds.
— a different Winter Landscape (600x890pix, 165kb _ ZOOM to 1400x2077pix)
The Country Mansion (700x521pix, 62kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1042pix, 215kb)
11 prints at FAMSF

Died on a 14 March:


1887 Gustave-Achille Guillaumet, French painter and writer born on 25 (26?) March 1840. He was a student of François-Edouard Picot, Alexandre Abel de Pujol, and Félix Barrias. After failing to win the Prix de Rome in historical landscape in 1861, he impulsively visited Algeria the following year; this journey, which he repeated ten times, determined his development as an Orientalist painter. He was a regular exhibitor at the Salon from 1861 where his combination of picturesque realism and academic composition was positively received by the State as illustrative of its Algerian policies (e.g. Evening Prayer in the Sahara, 1863).

1730 Gaspar Peeter Verbruggen II, Antwerp Flemish artist born on 04 April 1664. He and his father, Gaspar Peeter Verbruggen the Elder, were both renowned flower and still-life painters. After being taught by his father, he became a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1677. From 1680 onwards, he taught several students including Peter-Franz Casteels, Jacobus Melchoir van Herck, and Balthazar Hyacinthe. In 1691 he was elected dean of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke. In 1703 he went to Holland and settled in the Hague. In 1708 he became a member of Pictura, an artistic circle formed by painters in The Hague. He returned to Antwerp by 1723 where he collaborated with Kaspar Jacob van Opstal II as well as with his father. — Flowers in a Sculpted Urn on a Pedestal (114x79cm; 600x413pix, 114kb).

1671 Willem Eversdyck, Dutch artist.

1410 (burial) Spinello di Luca Spinelli “Spinello Aretino”, Arezzo Italian painter and draftsman born in 1350, taught by Andrea di Nerio. He was one of the most popular, prolific, and important Tuscan painters of the late 14th century and early 15th. His most important commissions were painted in Arezzo, Lucca, Florence, Pisa and Siena. His concern for space and the powerful outlines of his figures reflect a greater understanding of Giottesque principles than that of many of his contemporaries, yet his keen sense of decoration reveals an equal sensitivity to Sienese painting. His influence, alongside that of Antonio Veneziano and Agnolo Gaddi, was fundamental for the course of Florentine painting in the period after the death of the Cione brothers, and it paved the way for such important Late Gothic painters as Lorenzo Monaco and the Master of the Straus Madonna, and, as regards the development of narrative composition, Masaccio and his generation. Spinello's son, Parri Spinelli [1387 – 09 Jan 1453 bur.], was also his assistant. — Giovanni dal Ponte was a student of Spinello.


Born on a 14 March:


^
1912 (15 Mar?) Francis Gruber
, French painter who died on 01 December 1948. — His father, Jacques Gruber [1870–1933], was a stained-glass artist of Alsatian origin. Francis moved with his family to Paris in 1916. Although ill-health during childhood led to the neglect of his formal education, he read widely and precociously and from the age of eight showed an eagerness to paint; even as a child he admired the work of Hieronymus Bosch, Matthias Grünewald and Albrecht Dürer, who were to prove important influences on his work of the 1930s and 1940s, and sought advice from Georges Braque and Roger Bissière, who were close neighbours. Between 1929 and 1932 he was taught at the Académie Scandinave by Charles Dufresne, Othon Friesz and Henry de Waroquier [1881–1970]. He worked essentially from the imagination during these years, although he also produced a few still-lifes. From 1930 he exhibited regularly at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Tuileries. — Gruber, painter of figures, imaginative compositions, still life and landscape, was born at Nancy, son of the stained-glass artist Jacques Gruber. He moved to Paris in 1916. He suffered from asthma from an early age and was unable to have a normal schooling, but read widely such authors as Ibsen, Joyce, Rimbaud, Jarry, and Apollinaire. He began to paint seriously at the age of eight and was encouraged by his father and by Braque and Bissiere, who were neighbors. Gruber studied at the Académie Scandinave 1929-32 under Dufresne, Friesz, and Waroquier. Admired Bosch, Grünewald, Dürer, and became a close friend of Tailleux and Giacometti. His early work was highly imaginative and visionary, but in 1933-1936 he began to paint mainly from the model in his studio or views through the window; in 1937 also began to paint out of doors. Taught at the Académie Ranson 1942-1943. First one-man exhibition at the Galerie Roux-Henstchel, Paris, 1944. From 1942 stayed frequently at Thomery in the Forest of Fontainebleau, and also worked at the Ile de Ré, Belle-Ile, and Aix-en-Provence. Awarded the Prix National in 1947. Died at Boucicaut.— Fils du peintre-verrier Jacques Gruber, l'un des fondateurs de l'Ecole de Nancy, Francis Gruber, influencé par Bosch, Callot et son ami Giacometti, a élaboré durant sa courte vie une oeuvre pathétique. Ami de Tal-Coat (Le Port de Doëlan, 1940), il l'accompagne à Doëlan. — Le Port de Doëlan (1939, 74x93cm) — Job (1944, 162x130cm) _ Gruber was committed to realism and to Communism. Job was painted for an exhibition which opened shortly after the liberation of Paris in 1944. Gruber uses the Biblical story of Job’s suffering as an allegory for the survival of hope under the Occupation of France by Nazi Germany. The inscription, which comes from The Book of Job, translates as: ‘Now, once more my cry is a revolt, and yet my hand suppresses my sobs.’

1903 Adolph Gottlieb, US Abstract Expressionist painter and sculptor who died on 04 March 1974. He was one of the few members of the New York School born in New York, and he studied at the Art Students League under Robert Henri and John Sloan in 1920–1921. He spent the following year traveling through France and Germany and studying at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris. On his return to New York in 1923, he attended the Parsons School of Design and Cooper Union Institute. He was the best traveled of the New York painters (rivaled only by Franz Kline), having been to Paris, Munich, and Berlin before even beginning advanced formal studies, and the breadth of his training and art-historical knowledge served him well in his teaching, which was his principal means of support during the mid-1930s. His first one-man exhibition was in 1930, and he showed regularly thereafter as a member of the emerging New York School respected by his contemporaries for his learned and earnest approach to painting.

1814 Ferdinand Konrad Bellermann, German artist who died on 11 August 1889.

^ 1752 Jean Frédéric Schall (or Challe), French artist who died on 24 March 1825. — {Shall Schall ever have his work shown on the internet? I can find no examples of it now.] — He studied at the École Publique de Dessin in Strasbourg c. 1768 and in 1772 was admitted to the Académie Royale in Paris, where he was a pupil of Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié between 1776 and 1779. He did not become a member of the Académie and so could not exhibit at the Salon until the French Revolution. He worked for private patrons, producing erotic and pastoral subjects in a style influenced by François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Pierre-Antoine Baudouin; many of these pictures achieved popularity in the form of engravings. His most distinctive paintings are single figures of dancers and young ladies in soft, picturesque landscape settings (e.g. A Dancer). In 1793–4 he painted the Heroism of William Tell but this politically engaged subject was exceptional in his output. Although he continued to paint erotic scenes such as the Peeping Toms, his later paintings have a delicate, evocative character that suggests the influence of Pierre-Paul Prud’hon. The moralizing theme and detailed finish of the False Appearance, which was awarded a prize in the Salon of 1798, demonstrate Schall’s ability to adapt both style and content to changing tastes. He also illustrated narrative scenes from historical and literary sources, from which series of prints were made, notably by Charles-Melchior Descourtis. Despite the variety of styles in which he worked, Schall is chiefly of interest as a belated exponent of the Rococo whose work became a major source for the Rococo Revival at the time of his death.

1752 Paul Christiaen van Pol, Dutch artist who died on 21 May 1813.


Happened on a 14 March:


^ 2003 In Vienna, the Albertina Museum, closed since 1994, reopens after a thorough renovation.
     One of its most popular paintings is the Hare (1502) by Albrecht Dürer [21 May 1471 – 06 Apr 1528]. a watercolor well-known from countless reproductions. What has made the Hare so popular may be the touching meekness of the crouching animal. At first sight the look in the animal’s eyes would suggest this, and the illusionistic effect of Dürer’s painting technique makes the viewer almost physically feel the soft fur and the delicate bone structure.
     Above that, the Hare is one of the earliest examples of an attitude of artists for whom something ordinary, a common animal like the hare – not, say, a symbol of power and strength like the lion – has become worthy of being immortalized in a portrait. With the Hare Dürer created something revolutionary: the unbiased reproduction of nature, pursued with scientific precision. This requires detachment from the object on the part of the artist. At the same time, Dürer compassionately endowed the hare with a soul. Dürer’s hare is not a still life and no dead object but a living being of flesh and blood. In works like this, Dürer overcomes the Middle Ages and proves himself a pioneer of humanism, of modern Renaissance.
     Each individual hair of the animal seems to be reproduced accurately. Only on closer inspection can the viewer appreciate the surprising economy of resources with which Albrecht Dürer painted the hare, how simply and clearly the animal’s body was plotted down with broad brushstrokes, with individual hairs being put on with a pointed brush.
     In Dürer’s day and age, lifelike taxidermic specimens were not available. Very likely Albrecht Dürer painted a living hare in his studio, of which the resting position of the animal, sitting with his head raised and his ears pricked up, is also evidence. The window of Dürer’s studio is reflected in the animal’s student.
     No fewer than a dozen reproductions of Albrecht Dürer’s Hare existed already as early as in the last third of the 16th century. In 1796, Austrian Emperor Francis II gave the painting to the founder of the Albertina, Albert Duke of Saxon-Teschen.

^ 2000 Contemporary painting by Rackstraw Downes [1939~] Cambridge, NY - Autumn is auctioned at Sotheby's, New York, for some $15'000 [image below]
Cambridge NY

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