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ART “4” “2”-DAY  02 November
AUNTIE
MINIM
abspic
4~2day
DEATHS: 1661 SEGHERS — 1909 FRITH
BIRTH: 1699 CHARDIN
^ Died on 02 November 1661: Daniel Seghers (or Zeghers), le Jésuite d'Anvers, Antwerp Flemish painter born on 05 (03?) December 1590.
— Flemish painter, student of Jan Brueghel the Elder in Antwerp. He became free master of the Antwerp Guild of Painters in 1614, while at the same time joining the Jesuit Order as a lay brother. He made numerous trips abroad, including Rome. He painted for Prince Frederick Hendrick of Nassau and the Elector of Brandenburg.
— The son of the silk merchant Pierre Seghers [–1601], he was brought up in the northern Netherlands where his widowed mother had emigrated following her conversion to Calvinism after her husband’s death. Daniel apparently began to study painting c. 1605. He was enrolled as a master in Antwerp in 1611, with Jan Breughel the elder named as his teacher. Seghers converted back to Catholicism and entered the Jesuit Order as a lay brother in Mechelen in 1614. He is recorded as a painter at the Collège de Bruxelles in 1621, when he produced two large Garlands of Flowers for the cathedral of St Michel in Brussels. In 1625 he took his final vows as a Jesuit priest, and from then onwards he signed his pictures as Daniel Seghers Societatis Jesu. After his ordination, he went to Rome, where he spent two years. In 1627 he returned to Antwerp and remained there until his death, working as a flower painter at his monastery.
— Seghers entered the order of the Jesuits in 1614, learned the style of floral painting directly from Jan Bruegel dei Velluti, assistant and friend of Rubens. He was in Rome for a short stay, returning then to his fatherland, where he continued his prolific production until his death. The artist specialized in a particularly special and acclaimed type of painting that made him famous throughout Europe. His compositions repeat the same scheme without great variations: rich garlands of flowers painted with meticulous attention to naturalistic phenomena according to the Flemish tradition of which Bruegel had been the leader, and false frames in stone that surround sacred scenes or figures of saints placed in the center, painted by other artists of Bruegel's circle.
— Daniel Seghers was born in Antwerp in 1590. He was a student of Jan Brueghel the Elder and joined the Saint Luke Guild of Antwerp in 1611. On 10 December 1614 he became a lay brother of the Jesuit order and made his vows in Brussels in 1625. After Seghers joined a monastery, he worked for high-ranking rulers, whom he was allowed to receive there. He got commissions from numerous European princes, such as Prince Frederick Henry of Orange and Nassau, who repeatedly sent him gifts. He was visited in his studio by potentates such as Charles I and Charles II of England, and the Archdukes Ferdinand and Leopold Wilhelm. Seghers specialized in painting garlands of flowers to frame religious scenes. This style can be traced back to the Madonna in a Floral Wreath, by Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder. But unlike the mentioned painting, Seghers paid more attention to a flower motif, trying to recover their spiritual symbolism, and religious scenes served to him as a background. Seghers was famous far beyond the borders of his country. He received a large number of commissions, was also renowned as a landscape artist and exerted a lasting influence on a large number of students.
— Jan Philips van Thielen, and Elligen were students of Seghers.
LINKS
Floral Wreath with Madonna and Child (108x80cm; 1100x800pix, 163kb) _ Religious flower still-lifes are a special category, first developed by Seghers. While Dutch paintings of flowers, particularly tulips, clearly showed a tendency towards secularization (with noticeable emphasis on the economic and aesthetic value of flowers rather than their religious significance), Seghers tried to recover their spiritual symbolism, in accordance with the counter-reformational aims of the Jesuit order. They are set against dark backgrounds of cartouches or niches in shades of brown, with floral wreaths in glowing colors climbing up like garlands. Instead of being illuminated from outside, the wreaths seem to have a luminosity of their own.
      Seghers generally had the Madonna painted in relief by some artist colleague (in this case by Cornelis Schut and J. van Thielen) before surrounding it with flowers and/or fruit. Thus his pictorial concept served to emphasize its character as a religious object, without any real presence of Mary or Jesus. They were devotional pictures, intended to confirm the practice of church worship, communicated through the illusionist reproduction of the religious object itself. It was not the artist's intention to produce a true-to-life fictitious reality that would enable the believer or viewer to bypass the Church and to enter into devout communication.
Garland of Flowers (130x98cm, 1236x901pix, 173kb) _ Garlands of flowers became a specialty within the overall genre of Flemish floral painting. The theme was developed by Jan Brueghel and perfected by his best-known student, Daniel Seghers. The garland customarily surrounds a medallion or cartouche containing a religious image that was usually added by another specialist artist.
Saint Gosswin Surrounded by Flowers (95x68cm).
Floral Wreath with the Virgin and Child (86x62).
^ Born on 02 November 1699: Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, French Rococo painter specialized in still life, who died on 06 December 1779.
— Taught by Pierre-Jacques Cazès, Chardin rose from a relatively humble background to become one of the most admired painters of mid-18th-century France and to hold the influential position of Treasurer of the Académie Royale. His austere still-lifes and bourgeois domestic genre scenes were highly praised by Diderot in his Salon reviews, and, though his reputation went into decline after his death, Chardin was by the middle of the 19th century once again among the most highly esteemed of French painters. His works and technique continued to find particular favor with artists and connoisseurs. Although he is often referred to as Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, there is no documentary evidence to confirm this additional name.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Pehr Hilleström were students of Chardin.
LINKS
Self-Portrait (1771; 1019x800pix, 57kb) and, in the same pose, Self-Portrait at the Easel (1770, 41x33cm; 742x580pix, 38kb) in which Chardin depicts himself tracing and coloring his portrait on blue paper over canvas, the same portrait we are seeing. He is holding the pastel used to render the skin tone of his face and hand. Pastel is a form of coloured crayon made up of powdered pigments and diluted mediums. Its tactile qualities were appreciated by 18th century portrait painters like La Tour and Perronneau. Chardin, who is known for his still-lifes and genre scenes, used it for the portraits he executed, toward the end of his life, of his wife and particularly of himself; this is probably the last of his self-portraits.
La Bulle de Savon (1739, 61x63cm; main detail 1000x780pix, 94kb — ZOOM to full picture 1170x1312pix, 110kb)
The Buffet
(1728, 194x129cm) — The Ray (1728, 114x146cm) _ These two painting are the artist's diploma pieces, on the occasion of his reception into the Académie royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1728. Artists who were not members of the Académie, and who therefore could not exhibit their work in the Salon, took part once a year in what was known as the 'Salon de Jeunesse', held on the feast of Corpus Christi in the open air, in the Place Dauphine, and lasting two hours. On 03 June 1728 Chardin exhibited several pictures there, including The Ray and The Buffet. Some academicians who saw the work persuaded Chardin to present himself for membership of the Académie royale; on 25 September of the same year, contrary to the usual practice, Chardin was accepted and admitted on one and the same day. The Académie did not insist on a picture specially painted for the occasion, as was usually the case, but retained The Ray and The Buffet as his diploma pieces. It is related that the artist had deceived several academicians, among them Largillière and Cazès, by showing them some of his still-life paintings which they took for Flemish works. Certainly, the source of inspiration is obvious in The Ray, which surpasses the best work of Jan Fyt.
      The rich quality of the paint surface, which is in perfect condition, has been revealed by the recent cleaning of the varnish. The picture is exceptionally well preserved for a work by Chardin; his paintings often suffered from too heavy a use of oil with his pigment. Perhaps this one owes its good condition to the fact that it dates from his early days, when he was applying himself to improving his technique by creating a chef-d'oeuvre carefully executed according to the best principles of true craftsmanship. Later, he trusted too much to his inspiration, and yielded to his passion for worked-up impasto.
The Attributes of the Arts (1766, 113x145cm, 1/3 size, 1555x2000pix, 2281kb) _ This picture may appear to reproduce the casual clutter of an 18th-century tabletop. Not so. Chardin carefully selected objects to convey specific meanings. A palette with brushes, placed atop a paint box, symbolizes the art of painting. Building plans, spread beneath drafting and surveying tools, represent architecture. An ornate bronze pitcher alludes to goldsmithing, and the red portfolio symbolizes drawing. The plaster model of J. B. Pigalle's Mercury, an actual work by a friend of Chardin's, stands for sculpture. The cross on a ribbon is the Order of Saint Michael, the highest honor an artist could then receive. Pigalle was the first sculptor to win it. So this painting sends multiple messages: it presents emblems of the arts and of artists' glory and honors a specific artist, Pigalle. A still life (or painting of things inanimate or already dead), which is composed from scratch by its creator, can be used to convey complex meanings.
The Silver Tureen (1728, 76x108cm) _ Chardin was a contemporary of Boucher, but no two artists could have been more different. Chardin invariably imbued his deceptively simple compositions with a disregard for mere prettiness. In this still-life Chardin has given ordinary objects of everyday life an aura of dignity and value. The cat creates a sense of conflict between the living and dead animals, underscoring a theme common in Chardin's genre scenes: the evanescence of life.
A "Lean Diet" with Cooking Utensils (1731, 33x41cm) _ Chardin's carefully constructed still lifes do not bulge with appetizing foods but are concerned with the objects themselves and with the treatment of light. An anecdote illustrating Chardin's genius and his unique position in 18th-century painting is told by one of his greatest friends, the engraver Charles-Nicolas Cochin, who wrote a letter shortly after Chardin's death to Haillet de Couronne, the man who was to deliver Chardin's eulogy to the Academy of Rouen, of which Chardin had been a member. One day, an artist was making a big show of the method he used to purify and perfect his colors. Monsieur Chardin, impatient with so much idle chatter, said to the artist, But who told you that one paints with colors.? With what then? the astonished artist asked. One uses colors., replied Chardin, but one paints with feeling.
The House of Cards (1737, 60x72cm) _ At a time when large-scale heroic narrative painting was thought to be the most meritorious, Chardin, thwarted by his lack of academic training in drawing, became one of the greatest practitioners of the 'lowly' art of still life. Born in Paris, where he spent most of his life, he first trained at the guild school of Saint-Luc, before gaining admittance to the French Royal Academy in the category of a still-life and animal painter. By the end of his life his works were to be found in most of the great private collections of the time. Although totally dependent on observation and on working closely from nature, Chardin evolved methods of painting at a distance from the model, so that he was able to reconcile particular detail with a more generalized effect. While some critics deplored his inability to paint more 'elevated' subjects others, like the influential philosopher Diderot, praised the 'magic' of his brush: 'This magic defies understanding...it is a vapour that has been breathed onto the canvas...Approach the painting, and everything comes together in a jumble, flattens out, and vanishes; move away, and everything creates itself and reappears.'
      In the early 1730s, perhaps in response to the amicable taunt of Joseph Aved, a portrait-painter friend, Chardin also turned to small-scale figure painting, influenced by the Dutch and Flemish seventeenth-century masters of everyday scenes. Encouraged by the success of these homespun compositions of kitchen maids and serving men at work, he moved from the sculleries of the bourgeoisie to their living quarters. By narrowing the focus to the half-length figure, he was also able to enlarge it in scale, as he does here. In this wonderfully intimate and contemplative picture, he portrays the son of his friend Monsieur Lenoir, a furniture-dealer and cabinetmaker.
      The House of Cards owes its subject to the moralizing vanitas paintings of the seventeenth century. The verses under the engraving of the picture, published in 1743, stress the insubstantiality of human endeavors, as frail as a house of cards. But the painting tends to undermine the moral. Its rigorously geometric and stable composition gives an air of permanence which contradicts the fugitive nature of the boy's pastime, and of childhood itself. Chardin's 'magic accord' of tones envelops the scene securely in its warm and subtle light, at once direct and diffused. His technique remained secret, although it was suspected that he used his thumb as much as his brush. We can well believe, however, his response to the inquiry of a mediocre painter, 'We use colors., but we paint with feeling.'
— another The House of Cards (1737, 82x66cm) _ This is the last of the four versions of the subject by Chardin. A commentator claimed: “The simple and at the same time elegant composition, the physical and psychological characterization of the boy recalls the famous painting Les Joueurs de Cartes by Paul Cézanne. ” Well, Cézanne painted not one but no less than five Les Joueurs de Cartes (including Les Joueurs de Cartes and another Les Joueurs de Cartes) and I don't see resemblance in any of them. Judge for yourself.
The Draftsman (1737, 81x64cm) — Still-Life with Pipe and Jug (1737, 32x40cm)
The Attentive Nurse (1738)
The Canary (1751, 50x43cm) — Le Benedicite (1744, 50x38cm)
Girl with Racket and Shuttlecock (1740, 82x66cm) — Au Retour du Marché (1739)
Le Dessinateur I (1737, 80x65cm) and the almost identical Le Dessinateur II (1737, 81x64cm)
La Jeune Institutrice (1736, 62x67cm) — Girl Peeling Vegetables (46x37cm)
^ Died on 02 November 1909: William Powell Frith, English genre painter born on 19 January 1819.
— Frith was born in Yorkshire, where his father a self-made man had become a prosperous innkeeper in Harrogate. He had two brothers and a sister. It would seem that Frith senior was ambitious for his talented son, not surprisingly, given his own early life in domestic service. Contrary to comment made elsewhere, Frith's father was an affectionate parent, who had a good relationship with his son. In March 1835 Young Frith, accompanied by his father, and carrying a large portfolio of his drawings boarded the stagecoach to London. It is fascinating to record that the scheduled time for this journey was twenty four hours, just before the dawn of the railway age. Once established in London the young painter attended Sass's Academy, where he was rigorously trained in the basic techniques of panting. He later attended the Royal Academy Schools.
      Frith's early paintings were mainly historical genre. He became part of a group of slightly younger artists who called themselves 'The Clique.' Fellow members of this group were Augustus Egg [1816-1863], H. N. O'Neil, John Phillip [1817-1867], and Richard Dadd [1817-1886], the painter who became insane, killed his own father, and continued to paint in the asylum.
      Frith worked diligently, and success came early. He became ARA in 1845, and a full Academician in 1852. In 1851 the painter visited Ramsgate, the result of this being the first of his famous large scale crowd scenes Ramsgate Sands, which after over three years work was exhibited at the RA in 1854, and bought by Queen Victoria. Frith was a successful artist overnight. He received a large sum for the painting, but failed to keep all the rights to income from it, such as the sale of engravings. This was an error that the commercially astute painter did not repeat. Frith continued in this vein with Derby Day, 1858, The Railway Station, 1862, and Private View at the RA, of 1883. These pictures form a valuable record of life in Victorian England, and must have been the result of a stupendous amount of work. Frith seems to have been drawn towards crowds in his private as well as his artistic life. He lived in Bayswater, with his wife Isabelle, with whom he had twelve children. Not content with this, the fruitful Frith established another family only a mile away with Mary Alford, with whom he ultimately had seven more children. For a considerable time Isabelle Frith was in blissful ignorance of her husband's extramural activities. Her suspicions became aroused, however, when she saw her husband posting a letter near their home, when he was supposed to be on holiday in Brighton. Following the death of Isabelle in 1880, Frith married his mistress. Frith was a popular, genial figure, with a reputation for helping younger artists.
      In 1863, Frith was informed by Sir Charles Eastlake, President of the Royal Academy, that the Queen wished him to paint a picture of the forthcoming wedding ceremony of her son the Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Frith duly painted the picture for a fee of three thousand pounds, and it involved more than a year's concentrated work. He had felt compelled to undertake this commission and actually charged the Queen less than he would have charged another patron. Logistically the execution of the picture was a nightmare, as members of the Royal Family had problems attending their sittings due to their heavy commitments. Many of the other aristocratic sitters had the same problems in attending, caused in large part by their arrogance and stupidity. Frith was quite capable of repaying their arrogance with like behavior, by the simple expedient of telling them that he would have to inform the Queen of their failure to attend. This he did in a very straightforward manner! The date of the Royal Wedding was 10 March 1863, the occasion being marked with much enthusiasm and popular rejoicing. Frith, not surprisingly, used photographs as an aid in painting these large canvases.
      Following the Private View at the Royal Academy, in 1883 the artist's output, and, the quality of his work started to decline. Frith then started to concentrate on writing his reminiscences at considerable length-and very good they are too. He also wrote the biography of John Leech (1817-1864 humorous artistic contributor to Punch.)
— William Powell Frith was the son of domestic servants. He was born in Alfield, a village near Ripon, in 1819. The family moved to Harrowgate when he was 7 years old.
     His father encouraged William's artistic talents, he began his art training at Saint Margaret's School, Dover. Frith began attending Henry Sass Academy in London during 1835. A contemporary student there was Edward Lear. Frith then won a place at the Royal Academy Schools in 1837.
     While a student Frith earned money by painting portraits. In 1845 he was appointed an associate of the Royal Academy and was made a full member in 1853. Frith exhibited the first of this three great modern-life subjects, Life at the Seaside: Ramsgate Sands in 1854. This was followed by Derby Day (1858) and The Railway Station (1862). These paintings proved very popular and Frith sold a large number of engravings of these works. Soon after the Railway Station he received a commission to paint the group scene of the Prince of Wales wedding. In 1875 Frith's painting Before Dinner in Boswell's Lodgings (1868) was sold for £4567. At the time, it was the highest salesroom price paid for the work of a living artist. He was critical of trends in modern art. He decried the Pre-Raphaelites and other schools inspired by the Impressionists. He authored articles against them in the Magazine of Art.
     Frith was a noted genre painter, important in that he produced pictures that encapsulated contemporary Victorian life. His early work was mainly scenes from the classics, from more modern literature and history paintings. He never stopped painting these scenes. He found his niche, however, with Ramsgate Sands (Life at the Seaside) (1851), the first of many panoramas of Victorian life. The two most famous were Derby Day (1858) and The Railway Station (1862), the latter showing a scene in Paddington Station. He painted these on large canvases with crowds of people and paid close attention details. While many painters had attempted the classics, his contemporary scenes were innovative and attracted considerable attention. They are today wonderful historical documents.
      Frith's fame led to a commission from the royal family to paint a group portrait of the Prince of Wales' 1863 wedding to Danish Princess Alexandra. While prestigious, the commission proved to be among the most difficult for the acclaimed artist--thanks largely to the youngest member of the wedding party--the Prince if Wales' German nephew Wilhelm. (Wilhelm wa of course the future Kaiser Wilhelm II.) His mother Victoria had returned to Windsor 8 months after the wedding so she and Wilhelm could sit for the portrait. Wilhelm had acquired himself with some familial notoriety by flinging his 5-year old Aunt Beatrice's muff out a carriage window and then during the ceremony tossing the dirk in the kneesocks of his highlands kilt costume across the floor of St. Georges chapel during the ceremony. Willy as he was called within the family apparently was little changed upon his return. Willy was fascinated to watch the painting take shape, but was also struck by the artist's whiskers. "Mr. Fiff, you are a nice man, but your whiskers ..." His Aunt Helena immediately put her hand over his mouth. Willy struggled free and repeated himself even more loudly. She stopped him again, but could not keep from giggling herself. She led him away and gave him a lecture on courtesy.
      Frith could hardly order the "royal imp out" he came upon the idea of allowing Willy to paint his own daubs on a small part of the vast canvas. This work for a while until his nurse came in and found his face streaked with paint. He had been wiping the brushes on his face. The nurse cried out in horror. Frith assured her that he could clean Willy up with a little turpentine. Unfortunately Willy had a scratch on his face and he started screaming. He struck the artist as hard as he could with his little fist. He then sought refuge under a table and howled until exhausted. Afterwards he proved a very uncooperative sitter and Frith failed to achieve more than a vague likeness.
      Frith's work was severely criticized by the art establishment and considered "vulgar". The artist was accused of being more interested in subject than in painting, "devoted to telling stories on canvas ....eminent among men who paint for those who like pictures without liking art"'. Of course it was just this approach that made him popular with the contemporary public and the reason his work attracts so much attention today. His works do indeed tell stories. In the Railroad Station next to a mother with two small children, the boy in the velvet suit, a man is being arrested by plain clothes detectives. Frith continued to paint crowd scenes but in his later years his work was considered old-fashioned.
LINKS
A scene from Molière's L'Avare (1876, 89x140cm)
An Incident In the Life Of Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1872 115x145cm)
At my Window, Boulogne (1872, 91x71cm) — The Family Lawyer (1857, 65x66cm)
When we devote our youth to God, 'tis pleasing in His eyes - a flower, when offered in the bud, is no vain sacrifice (1852, 93x73cm)
The Witch's Trial (1848, 48x76cm) — A May Day Celebration (102x142cm) — Claude Duval (78x109cm) — Life At The Seaside, Ramsgate Sands (40x80cm) — The Ardour (61x51cm) — The Lovers (23x21cm)
The Railway Station (1862, 38x80cm) _ detail 1 _ detail 2 _ The railroad became the key to 19th century industrial development and before the invention of the automobile, the principal mode of trnasportation. Frith's Railroad Station provides a wonderful insight in transportation in the 1860s and how people dressed. It pictured London's Paddington Station.
11 illustrations for the play The RelapseDuel Scene from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (1843 engraving, 15x20cm)
^
Died on a 02 November:


2002 Selden Rodman, born on 19 February 1909, poet, critic, promoter of Haitian and other folk art, author of more than 40 books including Mortal Triumph and Other Poems (1932), New Anthology of Modern Poetry (1938), 1947 Horace Pippin, a Negro Painter in America (1947) Mexican Journal (1958, in it he asked painters Tamayo and Siqueiros what each thought of the other). — Links to art by Pippin [1888-1946]

2001 Epifanio Irizarry Jusino, 86, in his native Ponce, Puerto Rico, impressionist painter.

1949 Paul Michel Dupuy, French artist born on 22 March 1869.

1927 Rodolphe Wytsman, Belgian artist born on 11 March 1860.

1753 Candido Vitali (or Vitale), Italian artist born in 1680.

1739 Charles Jervas, Irish painter and collector, active in England, born in 1675. From 1694 to 1695 he was Godfrey Kneller’s student and assistant in London. Around 1698 he painted small copies (Oxford, All Souls, Codrington Lib.) of the Raphael cartoons at Hampton Court Palace, which he sold to Dr George Clarke of All Souls, Oxford. In 1699 he went to Rome via Paris, funded by Dr Clarke and others. In 1709 he returned to England and built up a successful practice as a fashionable portrait painter. He had literary ambitions and painted portraits of a number of his intellectual friends, including Jonathan Swift (1710) and Alexander Pope (both London, N.P.G.). Pope had painting lessons from Jervas and in 1713 addressed a poem to him, which was prefixed to Dryden’s translation (1716 edn) of Charles-Alphonse Du Fresnoy’s De arte graphica (1641–5). Jervas’s own translation of Cervantes’s Don Quixote was published posthumously (under the name Jarvis) in 1742. — Thomas Gainsborough was a student of Jervas.

1705 il cavaliere Daniel Seiter (or Saiter; Seutter; Seyter; Soiter, Syder), Austrian painter and draftsman, active in Italy, born in 1647. He brought an art combining the influences of Johann Carl Loth, Pietro da Cortona and Carlo Maratti to the Savoy court in Turin.

1624 Cornelis van der Voort (or Voorde, Voerst), Flemish artist born in 1576.

^
Born on a 02 November:


1837 Emile Antoine Bayard, French artist who died in 1891.

1649 Jean-Baptiste Corneille, French painter and engraver who died on 12 April 1695. He studied under his father, Michel Corneille I [1601 – 13 Jan 1664], and then with Charles Errard fils. A precocious student, in 1664 he won a gold medal at the Académie Royale. From 1665 he was in Rome, later returning to France to work as a history painter. He became a member of the Académie Royale in 1675 with Busiris Making a Sacrifice to the Idols. In 1679 he married Madeleine, daughter of the well-known printseller Pierre Mariette, from whom he learnt engraving. — Brother of Michel Corneille II [02 Oct 1642 – 16 Aug 1708] — The Angel Appearing to St Roch
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