ART / 4 / 2DAY

search 7500+ artists, their works, museums, movements, countries, time periods, media, specializations

<<< ART 16 Nov

ANY DAY ...IN ART ...IN HISTORY ||| HISTORY “4” NOV 17 ||| ALTERNATE SITES

ART “4” “2”-DAY 17 November

DEATHS: 1767 PITTONI — 1958 COWPER — 1708 BACKHUYSEN — 1842 VARLEY — 1917 RODIN

BIRTHS: 1690 COYPEL — 1793 DANBY — 1612 MIGNARD

^ Died on 17 November 1767: Giovanni Battista Pittoni, Venetian painter and draftsman of religious, historical, and mythological pictures, born on 20 June 1687.
— He was very popular in his day and ranks as one of the best contemporaries of Tiepolo, whom he succeeded as President of the Venice Academy of Painting, 1758-61. Pittoni never left Italy, but he nevertheless received important foreign commissions from the Swedish, Austrian, and German courts. His early work was much indebted to Piazzetta and Sebastiano Ricci, but his style later became lighter and more colorful under the influence of Tiepolo (1696–1770)
— With Giambattista Tiepolo and Piazzetta, Pittoni was one of the three most representative history painters of the Venetian Rococo. Besides altarpieces for Venetian and other churches as well as devotional images for private clients on both sides of the Alps, he painted subjects from mythology and Classical literature for collectors and connoisseurs in a Rococo idiom all his own; it is these secular pictures for which he is best known. Zava Boccazzi’s catalogue raisonné of Pittoni’s paintings (1979) includes 247 extant autograph works and 117 paintings now lost, destroyed or untraced. Binion’s catalogue raisonné of the artist’s drawings (1983) lists 304 sheets. Pittoni’s total output must have been far larger, as is evident from the drawings, many of which are studies for unknown works. For instance, Pittoni must occasionally have painted decorations for secular buildings and palazzi, probably in fresco, though none has yet come to light, with the notable exception of the few frescoes with scenes from the Life of Diana, painted in 1727 in the palazzetto Widman in Bagnoli di Sopra near Padua. (The extensive fresco cycle in Villa Baglioni in Massanzago, earlier believed to be by Pittoni, has now been conclusively assigned to Tiepolo).
— Anton Kern was a student of Pittoni.
— LINKS
— Annunciation (1758, 153x206cm) _ Of the many painters who followed Sebastiano Ricci [1659–1734] and Pellegrini [1675–1741], very few achieved results of any degree of originality. Of those who did Giambattista Pittoni turned the lessons of Ricci to his own use in a personal style whose elegant, rhythmic composition and delicate tonal clarity clearly announce his involvement in the world of rococo. Pittoni's taste for virtuoso display intensified still further towards the end of his career. It was in this period (1758) that he painted the 'Annunciation' to decorate the 'stanza dello studio' of the Old Academy which had been founded in 1750 at the Fonteghetto della Farina. The theatrical layout of the composition and the precious refinement of the drawing lend the sacred subject the air of an animated ballet with wonderfully fresh chromatic harmonies.
— The Death of Saint Joseph (1723; 995x605pix, 57kb)
— Death of Sophonisba — Saints Jerome and Peter of Alcantara
— The Sacrifice of Polyxena — The Vision of Saint Anthony of Padua

^ Born on 17 November 1690: Noël-Nicolas Coypel, Parisian painter who died on 14 December 1734.
— Coypel, family of French painter of which Noël was the head. Noël's son, Antoine has a strong Italian element in his style.
Antoine Coypel's half-brother, Noël-Nicolas painted with much more charm, mainly mythological subjects, but he seems to have had a rather timid personality and did not achieve the worldly success of the other members of the family. Indeed, he was the best painter of the family, but is the least famous. Chardin was briefly his assistant. Antoine's son Charles-Antoine Coypel [11 Jul 1694 – 14 Jun 1752] was a much more forceful character than Noël-Nicolas.
— Son of Noël Coypel [25 Dec 1628 – 24 Dec 1707] by his second marriage, Noël-Nicolas Coypel was trained by his father and at the Académie Royale, Noël-Nicolas was at first overshadowed by his very successful half-brother, Antoine Coypel [12 Apr 1661 – 07 Jan 1722]. Noël-Nicolas Coypel's unremarkable earliest known works, Manna from Heaven and The Sacrifice of Melchizedek (both 1713), were painted the year before his marriage to Françoise Legendre. He was approved (agréé) by the Académie on 31 December 1716 and was received (reçu) as a full member in 1720 with Neptune Rescuing Amymone. This work owes a great debt to the lively and colorful art of Louis Boullogne II, as did its predecessor, The Adoration by the Shepherds (1715).
Often lacking in compositional imagination, Noël-Nicolas successfully based a number of his pictures on reworkings of paintings by other artists. These include a very polished and attractive Sacrifice of Isaac (1721), inspired by Antoine’s version of the same theme (1707), and Arion and the Dolphin (1724), based on a composition by Louis de Silvestre of 1701. A dynamic, well-organized work, Arion and the Dolphin is the only example of an official commission from the Bâtiments du Roi in Noël-Nicolas’s oeuvre.
— Jean-Siméon Chardin was a student of Noël-Nicolas Coypel.

— Madame de Bourbon-Conti (1731, 138x107cm) _ Noël-Nicolas Coypel belonged to a French family of painters of which Noël (1628-1707) was the head. Noël-Nicolas painted mainly mythological subjects, but he seems to have had a rather timid personality and did not achieve the worldly success of the other members of the family. Indeed, he was the best painter of the family, but is the least famous. Chardin was briefly his assistant.

^ Died on 17 November 1958: Frank Cadogan Cowper, English painter born on 16 October 1877.
— Frank Cadogan Cowper, the last of the Pre-Raphaelites, was born at Wicken in Northamptonshire, the son of an author [who did not give him his own first name, otherwise the boy might have been called “cowper son, or cow person”]. He entered Saint John's Wood Art School in 1896 and enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools in 1897. He was greatly influenced during this time by exhibitions of the work of Ford Madox Brown (1896), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1898) and John Everett Millais (1898). Cowper's work was first accepted at the Academy in 1899, and his first notable success was An Aristocrat Answering the Summons to Execution, Paris, 1793, exhibited in 1901. In 1902, after completing his training, Cowper travelled to Italy before working for six months in the studio of E.A. Abbey, R.A., a painter of historical subjects.
      In common with the earlier Pre-Raphaelite painters, minute detail and rich colors predominated in Cowper's work, and his output in early years appears to have been small (he only exhibited one or two pictures each year at the Academy until 1913). Following the example of the Pre-Raphaelite, William Holman Hunt, Cowper took immense trouble researching his subjects, travelling to Assisi before painting St Francis of Assisi and the Heavenly Melody, and having a grave dug for his depiction of Hamlet - the churchyard scene, exhibited in 1902.
      Cowper usually chose historical, literary or religious subjects for his pictures in which it was thought that 'he showed a good deal of invention'. as in St Agnes in Prison receiving from Heaven the 'Shining White Garment'
      Cowper was elected A.R.A in 1907; and was made a R.A. in 1934. In 1910, Cowper was commissioned to paint a mural for the House of Commons depicting a Tudor scene, and in 1912 completed further decorative panels there. In the 1920s he began painting numerous portraits of women, with softer effects and a 'cloying sweetness'. His major patron was Evelyn Waugh.
      During the Second World War Cowper moved to Jersey, but later returned to England, and settled in Gloucestershire in 1944. He continued to exhibit until 1957. He died in Cirencester the following year, aged eighty-one. [he avoided painting cows, or having anything to do with them, it seems, thus never becoming knows as a cow person]
— Photo of Cowper
— LINKS
— Saint Agnes in Prison Receiving from Heaven the Shining White Garment (1905, 74x45cm) Venerated as a patoness of purity, St Agnes suffered martyrdom c.AD 303 under the Emperor Diocletian. Having vowed to live a life of chastity, she refused the suit of a Roman youth, who had her stripped and imprisoned. In prison she was visited by an angel who brought her a robe, white as snow, to cover her nakedness, and when condemned to be burnt as a witch, she was again saved by heavenly intervention. Eventually she was despatched by the sword. The picture was one of Cowper's most impressive works. It dates from the end of the early period when he was attempting to revive the original Pre-Raphaelite style, and in fact seems to borrow from specific paintings. Rossetti's Annunciation of 1850 find echoes in the subject, the relationship of the figures, the pose of the Saint and the motif of flames on the angel's feet. The realistic treatment of the straw recalls Millais' Return of the Dove to the Ark and there is perhaps even a hint of Madox Brown's Take Your Son, Sir in the arrangement of the 'shining white garment'.
     Cadogan Cowper was a portraitist, but he also painted historical pictures. This scene from the life of St Agnes was based on William Caxton’s Golden Legend which tells how, at the age of thirteen, Agnes rejected marriage as she had dedicated her life to God. She refused to renounce this vow of chastity, and was stripped of her garments and taken to a brothel. She prayed for Divine intervention, and her cell was filled by a miraculous light. Her hair grew long, and a white robe appeared before her. Cowper shows the moment when this robe was delivered.
— La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1926, 102x97cm) _ This painting is based on the poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats [1795 – 23 Feb 1821].
— The Four Queens Find Lancelot Sleeping (1954, 103x91cm) _ This painting is one of Cowper's last subject pictures. When exhibited in 1954, four years before his death, the art critic of The Times wrote: 'Mr F Cadogan Cowper, who must be the last Academician to have achieved the supreme distinction of having a rail put round his pictures to keep crowds at bay, shows another belated Pre-Raphaelite work'. It is indeed an astonishing case of Pre-Raphaelite survival. In subject, mood and technique it might belong to the 1900s. Only the features of the four Queens, who look like 1950s film stars, give a clue to its real date. The subject occurs in the Morte D'Arthur, Book 6, ch.3. Morgan Le Fay, 'Queen of the Land of Gore', the Queen of Northgalis, the Queen of Eastland and the Queen of the 'Out Isles', discover Lancelot asleep beneath an apple tree. Each wants him for her paramour, so Morgan Le Fay lays him under enchantment and has him carried to her castle where is asked to choose one of them. Faithful to Guinevere, he refuses, and eventually makes his escape. The theme had previously been treated by David Jones in a watercolor of 1941 — much more 'modern' in style than Cowper's later version. The motif of an armed knight lying full-length in the foreground also occurs in Cowper's La Belle Dame Sans Merci. His RA exhibits include two other Arthurian themes, The Damozel of the Lake and The Legend of Sir Percival (1953).
— Lucretia Borgia Reigns in the Vatican in the Absence of Pope Alexander VI (1914, 221x154cm) _ Cadogan Cowper was a portrait painter, but often painted historical scenes centered on women. Here he re-creates an obscure incident from the history of the Popes. In 1501 there had been a notorious scandal, when the illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia Borgia, took his place at a meeting. The room in the Vatican in which this happened still exists, and Cowper went there to copy it. It is one of the rooms decorated by the Italian Renaissance artist Pinturrichio. Cowper copied the faces of the Cardinals from their original portraits. He invented this suggestive moment, in which two noblemen part Lucrezia's dress so that a Francisan friar can kiss her shoe.
— Portrait of Fraunces, Beatrice, James and Synfye (1919, 86x102cm) Children of James Christie Esq.
— Vanity (1919, 127x91cm) — a different Vanity (1907, 54x37cm)
— Molly, Duchess Of Nona (Maurice Howlett's Little Novel Of Italy) (1905, 33x23cm)
— Venetian Ladies Listening to a Serenade
— The Damsel of the Lake, Called Nimue the Enchantress (1924; 673x550pix, 52kb)

^ Born on 17 November 1793: Francis Danby, English painter of Irish birth, specialized in landscapes, who died on 10 February 1861.
— Danby was born in Ireland but worked in Bristol for the first part of his career, where his landscapes and scenes of rustic life made him the best known member of the Bristol School. In 1824 he moved to London where he concentrated on painting large-scale Biblical subjects and fantasy landscapes rivalling those of John Martin. After his wife left him in 1829 he moved to Switzerland and Paris. He returned to London in 1838 but his paintings became increasingly unfashionable.
— Danby was a landowner’s son and studied art at the Dublin Society. In 1813 he visited London, then worked in Bristol, initially on repetitious watercolors of local scenes: for example View of Hotwells, the Avon Gorge (1818). In about 1819 he entered the cultivated circle of George Cumberland [1754-1849] and the Rev. John Eagles [1783-1855]. Danby’s discovery of the ‘poetry of nature’ in local scenery and insignificant incident was influenced by the theories of Eagles, published as The Sketcher (1856), and, less directly, by those of William Wordsworth, who had been associated with Bristol earlier in the century. Danby’s distinctive work began with the small panel paintings he produced for his Bristol audience. Boy Sailing a Little Boat (1822.) recalls the rustic scenes of William Collins and the Bristol artist Edward Villiers Rippingille, but Danby emphasized the effect of sun and shade rather than sentiment
      Danby became the best-known member of the Bristol school of painters but preferred to exhibit more ambitious paintings in London. The Upas, or Poison-tree in the Island of Java attracted considerable attention when first shown at the British Institution in 1820, by its large scale (168x229cm) and sublime motif: a despairing adventurer coming upon the remains of his predecessors in the moonlit poisoned valley. It has deteriorated badly, like many of his works. Disappointed Love (1821) was his first Royal Academy exhibit. It differs from his Bristol works in its narrative content and in the pathetic fallacy by which the oppressive trees and wilting weeds echo the girl’s despair.
      When Danby moved to London in 1824 he abandoned naturalistic landscape and contemporary genre subjects to concentrate on painting poetical landscapes in the manner of Claude Lorrain and J. M. W. Turner’s Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps (1812), and also large biblical scenes to rival John Martin. Danby’s relationship with Martin was ambiguous, but undoubtedly competitive. Danby was elected ARA following the exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1825 of the Delivery of Israel out of Egypt (Exodus. xiv) (1825). His poetic treatment of landscape seems to have inspired Martin’s Deluge, which was shown the following year at the British Institution. Danby himself was already contemplating painting a Deluge and his An Attempt to Illustrate the Opening of the Sixth Seal in turn owed much to Martin’s conception of the Sublime.
      Danby quarreled with the Royal Academy in 1829, when not elected RA (Constable won by one vote). At the same time his marriage had collapsed, and he had taken a mistress; his wife left London with the Bristol artist, Paul Falconer Poole, whom she subsequently married. The ensuing scandal forced Danby to move abruptly to Paris in 1830. Between 1831 and 1836 he worked in Geneva, producing chiefly watercolors and topographical paintings. He then lived in Paris, copying Old Master paintings. He returned to London late in 1838 where Deluge (1840.) reestablished his reputation when exhibited privately in Piccadilly, London, in May 1840. A huge rock rises in the midst of the flood, swarming with figures who struggle to gain the highest point. Their diminution implies immensity. The color is appropriately, but uncharacteristically, somber. Despite its success, it was his last work of this type.
      Danby continued to paint poetic fantasy landscapes throughout the 1840s and 1850s (e.g. Enchanted Castle - Sunset, 1841), although they became increasingly unfashionable. He also produced landscapes and marine paintings, which derive in color and conception, although not in execution, from those of Turner. These found admirers, although they were too rich in color and imprecise in detail for wide popularity. Evening Gun (1848, destroyed, but replica exists), showing naval vessels in harbor, was well received at the Royal Academy in 1848 and the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1855. Danby moved to Exmouth, Devon, in 1847 where he built boats and painted. He was embittered by a life of nearly constant debt and by his failure to gain academic honors. He died a few days after Poole was elected RA. Two of his sons, James Francis Danby [1816-1875] and Thomas Danby [1817-1886], became painters.
— LINKS
— The Deluge (1840, 284x452cm; 599x954pix, 40kb _ ZOOM to 1782x2835pix, 734kb) _ This painting depicts the story of the Flood as told in the book of Genesis (6:12 - 8:22). It shows the terrible punishment brought down by a wrathful God upon sinful mankind. In this huge, bleak painting Danby shows the weather at its most overwhelming and destructive, God’s flooding of the world described in the Bible (Genesis 7). Helpless naked figures, including a lion {a naked lion, how tragic!}, cling or are caught in the branches of a fallen tree and clamber to the rock’s summit as the waters rise. Black cataracts of water continue to fall as the red sun slips below the horizon. But there is some hope, in the distance bathed in moonlight, is Noah’s Ark, and on the right in a curious episode a glowing angel grieves over a dead mother and her presumably innocent child.
— The Deluge (1840, 71x110cm) _ smaller version.
— The Shipwreck (The Wreck of the Hope) (1859, 77x107cm; 684x952pix, 48kb _ ZOOM to 1782x2835pix, 992kb) _ As so often in paintings by Danby and his contemporary and rival John Martin, humanity appears insignificant and helpless in the face of nature’s power. A wrecked ship lurches to one side, about to be swamped by the stormy seas or dashed upon the rocks. Most of it is already submerged and time is running out for the remaining survivors. One of the lifeboats is upturned in the water, some figures cling to wreckage on the left, while the rest wait desperately in line for the sole escape route to the rocks on the right.
     Those unfortunate enough to be shipwrecked on Chesil Beach in centuries past may have been saved from a watery grave but if they landed on the long stretch of shingle between Abbotsbury and Wyke Regis they had still not reached safety. Along there the beach is separated from the mainland by the brackish waters of The Fleet and although the locals were ready to cross the water in their small boats they were aiming to return with looted goods not passengers.
      Probably the wealthiest ship ever to founder on Chesil Beach was the Dutch vessel Hope. The ship had been away from her home port Amsterdam far many months on a most profitable voyage to South America, trading illegally in the Spanish colonies where Spanish settlers exploiting the gold and silver mines had almost unlimited wealth to pay for European goods. The Hope was in effect smuggling, for although Spain failed to supply her colonists adequately, foreign ships were unwelcome. The rewards for the trade were high, but the risks were great and the Hope was armed with 30 guns to repel any attempt at capture.
      Having almost completed her hazardous voyage home, the Hope encountered storms in the English Channel and on 16 January 1749 she came ashore almost opposite Fleet House. Is there a suggestion of deliberate wrecking on that night? One writer claimed there was no light showing from Portland lighthouses 'whether from intense mists and particular fogginess of the air, or from the neglects of the persons concerned. I shall not pretend to determine'. Whatever the true cause of the wreck, word soon spread that the ship was reputed to be carrying £50'000 in gold and silver and a 'merciless battalion' descended on the beach in search of her treasure. There was little assistance for the Dutch vessel's Captain and crew who had to haul their own boat down the shingle to cross The Fleet. The organised plunder continued for over a week as the looters turned the stones over and over in the raw January weather searching for gold. It was a scene of complete lawlessness and the size of the mob increased each day.
      There is no real explanation as to why it took so long for armed law enforcement officers to control the situation but it may be that those who should have been in charge had their 'agents' down on the beach joining in the plunder. Eventually the looters were dispersed, some of the gold was recovered and one man, Augustin Elliott of Portland and several accomplices, were put on trial. Perhaps not surprisingly, the verdicts were 'Not guilty' for it would have been difficult to find local jurors unconnected with the crowd of thousands involved in stealing the cargo of the Hope.
_ Das Eismeer (1824; 600x802pix, 189kb), by Caspar David Friedrich [1774-1840], has long been misidentified as his lost The Wreck of the Hope, a different ship bearing the same name, lost in a sea of ice.
— Sunset at Sea, after a Storm (1824, 90x143cm) _ This astonishingly dramatic sky shows the clouds of a violent storm dispersing in the red glow of a setting sun. But however beautiful the effect of limpid blue seen through brilliant orange, this sky carries a threat. Just visible in the left foreground is a raft to which cling the few feeble survivors of a shipwreck. They have survived the storm but now night is falling. The drama of the picture made it a hit when it was exhibited at the 1824 Royal Academy exhibition. It made Danby’s name and was bought by the artist Sir Thomas Lawrence.
— Children by a Brook (1822, 35x46cm) _ This is one of several small poetic landscapes with figures that Danby painted during his early years in Bristol. The scene is probably imaginary but inspired by the landscape of the Frome valley at Stapleton. Such works were painted for local collectors, unlike the more spectacular pictures Danby sent up for exhibition in London, where he moved in 1824.
— Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream (20x28cm).

^ Died on 17 November 1708: Ludolf Backhuysen (or Bakhuyzen, Backhuyzen), Dutch Baroque marine painter, active mainly in Amsterdam, born on 18 December 1631.
— After the van de Veldes moved to England in 1672, Backhuysen became the most popular marine painter in Holland. He captures the drama and movement of ships, but seldom achieves the poetic effects of either van de Velde the Younger [1633–1707] or Jan van de Capelle.
— LINKS
— Ships in Distress in a Heavy Storm (1690)
— Fishing Vessels Offshore in a Heavy Sea (1684, 65x98cm; 1325x2000pix; 1828kb)
— Ships Running Aground in a Storm (1695, 173x341cm) _ While Dutch primacy in merchant shipping offered high rewards, its risks were equally significant. On their long journeys to the Mediterranean, the New World, Africa, and the East, merchant vessels were perennially endangered by warfare, piracy, treacherous shores, and storms. Several painters, most dramatically Ludolf Backhuysen, specialized in ships adrift in tempests. Backhuysen executed this painting (his largest surviving one) as if he were observing the disaster in the midst of the roiling seas, thus engaging beholders in the unfolding tragedy, encouraging them to empathize with the ships and their crews and to contemplate the powers of God, beyond full comprehension. But even as such paintings acknowledge the fragility of Dutch seaborne success, their distant shafts of sunlight usually hold out hope for reversals of misfortune. A brighter future may still save Backhuysen's ship at left, its Dutch flag unfurled against lightening skies. Collectors occasionally hung a tempest painting opposite a sunny shipping scene, implying that the power of God and nature, whether terrifying or benevolent, is always magnificent.
— Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast (1667) _ Backhuysen is the last representative of the great tradition of Dutch marine painting; eighteenth-century Dutch artists did much less of consequence in this category than in the others they practised. Backhuysen was born in Emden, Germany, and came to Amsterdam around the middle of the century where he remained for the rest of his life. His high-placed patrons include the burgomasters of Amsterdam, the Archduke of Tuscany, Czar Peter the Great, and various German princes. He is best known for his stormy scenes. When a storm threatened he sometime went by boat 'to the mouth of the Sea, in order to observe the crash of the Seawater under these conditions'. His Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast shows the chilling drama he can bring to the theme. The large cargo ship in the centre is managing to make way along the perilous coast, while on the right, two vessels are in even greater danger. Later his storms become melodramatic, his chiaroscuro effects exaggerated, and his gigantic waves rather schematic and glass-like.
— The Y at Amsterdam viewed from Mussel Pier (1673) [it is NOT the YMCA, but the River Y. Why? For one, the YMCA was founded in 1844, in London, by George Williams. Why Y for the name of the river? Is the Y Y-shaped?]

^ Born on 17 November 1612: Pierre-François Mignard I “le Romain”, French Baroque painter who died on 13 May 1695.
— Pierre Mignard, influenced by training in Italy, became the most outstanding portrait painter of his generation; his career was to some extent hampered by the opposition of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris and Charles Le Brun, and reached its high point when he succeeded the latter as Premier Peintre du Roi.
— Pierre Mignard studied first under Jean Boucher in Bourges, then copied the 16th-century decorations at the château of Fontainebleau by Rosso Fiorentino, Francesco Primaticcio and other artists. He later went to Paris, where in 1633 he entered the studio of Simon Vouet, the most prominent representative of the Italian Baroque style in France. There he formed a lasting friendship with the painter and, later, writer Charles-Alphonse Dufresnoy. Towards the end of 1635 Mignard left Paris for Rome, staying in Italy until October 1657. Monville, his first biographer, recorded several portraits painted in Italy, as well as some large religious compositions, including a Saint Charles Giving Communion to the Dying (1677). Only two portraits are known to survive, those of The Ambassador of Malta to the Holy See: Commandeur Des Vieux (1653) and A Man presumed to be Senator Marco Peruta, which was painted during Mignard’s stay in Venice in 1654. Both portraits already show the quality that was to make Mignard one of the outstanding portrait painters of his time: the ability to catch a vivid and natural likeness, in contrast to the stern stiffness of earlier 17th-century French portraiture.
— Much better known than his brother Nicolas Mignard “d'Avignon”, [07 Feb 1606 – 20 Mar 1668], Pierre Mignard “le Romain” was the rival of Le Brun but an exponent of the same Academic theories. Like Le Brun he was a student of Vouet, but he went to Rome in 1636 and remained there until 1657, forming his style on the approved models of the Carracci, Domenichino and Poussin. He returned to Paris on the orders of Louis XIV and decorated the dome of the Val-de-Grâce (1663), but his principal importance was as portrait painter to the Court. He revived the earlier Italian type of allegorical portrait, and a good example is the Marquise de Seignelay as Thetis (1691). He was strongly opposed to the Académie Royale, and, in spite of his own stylistic origins, championed the Venetian or 'colorist' school; this, however, was probably only to oppose Le Brun. When Le Brun died in 1690 Mignard was at once made Premier Peintre, and, on the King's orders, the Academy had, in a single sitting, to appoint Mignard Associate, Member, Rector, Director, and Chancellor of the body he had so long opposed.
— Among his students were de Poilly, Jacques-Philippe Ferrand, Nicolas Vleughels.

— LINKS
— Self-Portrait (173kb)
— Clio (1689, 144x115cm) _ The Mignards followed the style of the Bolognese painters, especially that of Domenichino. On this painting Clio, the Muse of the historians, is a direct descendant of Domenichino's saints, in a somewhat more theatrical way.
— Perseus and Andromeda (1679, 150x198cm) _ Ovid tells how Andromeda, daughter of an Ethiopian king, was chained to a rock by the seashore as a sacrifice to a sea-monster. Perseus (the son of Danaë whom Jupiter caused to conceive after turning himself into a shower of golden rain) flying overhead on Pegasus, the winged horse, fell in love at first sight. He swooped down just in time, slew the monster and released Andromeda. The picture represents the moment following the freeing of Andromeda.
— The Marquise de Seignelay and Two of her Children (1691, 194x155cm) _ Pierre Mignard, known in his native France as Le Romain, lived in Rome from 1636 (visiting Venice and other northern Italian cities in 1654-5) until summoned home by King Louis XIV in 1657. His style was largely based on Annibale Carracci, Domenichino and Poussin. However, he pretended allegiance to Titian and Venetian colorism on his return to France, mainly to oppose his rival Lebrun, whom he succeeded in 1690 as First Painter to the King and Director of the Royal Academy. Despite all his years abroad, his work looks to us unmistakably French, at least as relating to the France of the Sun King's court: calculated and grand. Hogarth's xenophobic English judgment, half a century later, might apply to this superb portrait: 'insolence with an affectation of politeness'. But Mignard was doing no more than following the wishes of his sitter, the widow of Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Seignelay, Minister for the Navy.
Catherine-Thérèse de Matignon, Marquise de Lonray, veuve de Seignelay, instructed Mignard to portray her as the sea-nymph Thetis, to whom was said (according to Ovid's Metamorphoses XI, 221-3): 'O goddess of the waves, conceive: thou shalt be the mother of a youth who, when to manhood grown, shall outdo his father's deeds and shall be called greater than he.' Past writers have attributed Mme de Seignelay's transformation into a sea goddess to her husband's office, but it was shown that this passage from Ovid is the key to the portrait. Like Thetis, Mlle de Matignon, of old Norman nobility, had been married off against her will to a social inferior: Colbert, her husband's father and the great Minister of the King, was the son of a draper. The goddess's husband, Peleus, had to rape Thetis to 'beget on her the great Achilles', the most celebrated Greek hero of the Trojan War. 'The hero's mother, goddess of the sea, was ambitious for her son' and by descending into the fiery crater of Etna, the volcano seen here smoking in the background, obtained for him armor made by Vulcan, the blacksmith god. This is the armor, 'work of heavenly art', worn in the guise of Achilles by Marie-Jean-Baptiste de Seignelay, the eldest son for whom Mme de Seignelay had just bought a military commission.
The painting's brilliant effect depends in large measure on the vast expanse of Thetis' best ultramarine-blue cloak, contrasting wonderfully with the coral and pearls in her hair, and the mauves and greens of Achilles' garments. Ultramarine was the costliest of pigments, more expensive than gold itself and for that reason seldom used by this date, and never in such quantities. Thus did Mme de Seignelay confound the rumors put about by 'mauvaises langues' that she was bankrupt. And there is more: other rumors circulated that the noble widow either was, or wished to be, mistress to the king. The Cupid proffering a precious nautilus shell brimming over with a king's ransom in jewels publicizes the liaison as a fait accompli. Thus might a classical education, and the talents of a Roman-trained and responsive artist, be put to insolent use 'with an affectation of politeness'.
— The Heavenly Glory (1663) _ The Val-de-Grâce is one of the most important Baroque churches in Paris. It was designed by François Mansart, its dome follows the example of that of Saint Peter's in Rome. The circular fresco of the dome depicts the Trinity in Glory surrounded by saints, martyrs, and illustrious personalities. There are more then 200 figures in the composition including Queen Anne of Austria (the wife of Louis XIII), founder of the church.
— The Virgin of the Grapes (1645, 121x94cm) _ [compare Madonna and Child with Grapes (1537) by Lucas Cranach the Elder]
— The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine (1669; 233kb)
— A Young Lady (1680; 178kb) — Girl Blowing Soap Bubbles (1674, 132x96cm)

^ Died on 17 November 1842: John Varley, London painter and draftsman born on 17 August 1778.
— At the age of 15 he attended an evening drawing school in Holborn, London, run by J. C. Barrow. Throughout his career he worked primarily in watercolor. His first exhibited work was a View of Peterborough Cathedral (1798). In between sketching expeditions to Wales (1798 or 1799, 1800 and 1802) and Yorkshire (1803) he made topographical views of towns — particularly of half-timbered buildings in Hereford, Leominster, Conway, and Chester — drawn in the picturesque idiom of the late 18th century. From 1800 until as late as 1820 he attended evening classes at Dr. Monro’s ‘Academy’ in London and also visited Monro’s cottage at Fetcham, Surrey. In company with Monro he painted the watercolor View from Polsden, Surrey (1800), which shows the influence of Thomas Girtin. This painting is inscribed Study from Nature, an inscription that recurs on some of his work as late as 1831.
— The students of Varley included David Cox, John Dobson, Copley Fielding, William Henry Hunt, John Linnell, William Mulready, James Sant, William Turner.

— LINKS
— Suburbs of an Ancient City (1808, 72x96cm; 766x1024pix, 55kb) _ This picture by one of the founder members of the Old Watercolour Society is an outstanding example of the early nineteenth-century exhibition watercolor. On a large scale and with its grandiose, Poussinesque composition, classical buildings and monumental figures, it perfectly summarizes the aspirations of heroic, classical and literary themes.
— Holy Island Castle (1810, 11x13cm; full size) _ Varley toured Northumberland in 1808, and the area provided him with subject matter for watercolors for several years. This is one of several showing the castle on Lindisfarne, an island connected to the Northumbria coastline by a causeway that disappears at high tide. The castle dates to the sixteenth century, but the historic associations of the island go back to the sixth century. A number of artists in search of picturesque subjects with strong historical associations painted not only the Castle but also the ruined priory on Lindisfarne.
— Untitled landscape (9x14cm; full size) — The Thames (8x16cm; full size)
— Hilly Landscape (10x17cm; full size) — Looking under the Bridge (28x24cm; 390x329pix, 63kb)
— Landscape with tree and cottage (drawing 24x21cm; full size)

^ Died on 17 November 1917: Auguste Rodin, in France.
     Born on 12 November 1840, he was famous as a sculptor (Kiss, Kiss, Thinker, Thinker), but was also an author (Les Cathédrales de France, 1914) and painter..
— The French artist Auguste Rodin had a profound influence on 20th-century sculpture. His works are distinguished by their stunning strength and realism. Rodin refused to ignore the negative aspects of humanity, and his works confront distress and moral weakness as well as passion and beauty.
      François-Auguste-René Rodin was born on Nov. 12, 1840, in Paris. At the age of 14 he entered the Petite Ecole, a school of decorative arts in Paris. He applied three times to study at the renowned Ecole des Beaux-Arts but was rejected each time. In 1858 he began to do decorative stonework in order to make his living. Four years later the death of his sister Marie so traumatized Rodin that he entered a sacred order.
      The father superior of the order recognized Rodin's talents and encouraged him to pursue his art. In 1864 Rodin met a seamstress named Rose Beuret. She became his life companion and was the model for many of his works. That year Rodin submitted his Man with a Broken Nose to the Paris Salon. It was rejected but later accepted under the title Portrait of a Roman. Rodin traveled in 1875 to Italy, where the works of Michelangelo (1475–1564) made a strong impression on him. The trip inspired his sculpture The Age of Bronze, which was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1877. It caused a scandal because the critics could not believe that Rodin had not used a casting of a live model in creating so realistic a work.
      The controversy brought Rodin more fame than praise might have. In 1880 he was commissioned to create a bronze door for the future Museum of Decorative Arts. Although the work was unfinished at the time of his death, it provided the basis for some of Rodin's most influential and powerful work. In 1884 he was commissioned to create a monument that became The Burghers of Calais. His statues St. John the Baptist Preaching, Eve, The Age of Bronze, and The Thinker are world famous. When Rodin was 76 years old he gave the French government the entire collection of his own works and other art objects he had acquired.
— Born Auguste-René-Francois Rodin as son of a Normandy Police officer; at age 14 he was a student at the future École des Arts Décoratives; he made his first independent work in 1864; from 1864 to 1871 he worked at the Sèvres Porcelain Factory; he stayed in Belgium after the war from 1871 to 1877; he went to Florence and Rome and was greatly impressed by Michelangelo's sculptures; he traveled throughout France to study the Cathedrals; in 1889 Rodin had extensive exhibition of his work together with Monet; he moved to a town close to Sèvres in 1890 and four years later moved again to Meudon; Rodin always had a studio in Paris, the last of which is now known as the Musée Rodin.
      Rodin is considered the most important sculptor of the nineteenth century, whose work defied academic tradition and helped lead the way to modernism. He studied in Paris from 1854 to 1857 at the Petite Ecole (a free drawing school) under Lecoq de Boisbaudran. In 1857 he failed the entrance examination of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and to support his family he began to assist commercial sculptors including Carrier-Belleuse.
      In Brussels in 1875-76 Rodin produced his first masterwork, The Age of Bronze, attacked by critics who assumed its realism depended on casting directly from a live model. In 1880 he was commissioned to make doors for the Musée des Arts Décoratifs: this project, The Gates of Hell, occupied him for over twenty years and became a source for numerous sculptures that he cast independently. Two other important monuments, The Burghers of Calais and Balzac, were unveiled in 1895 and 1898. Controversial because of its unconventional poses, dramatic modeling, and candor of emotional and sexual expression, Rodin's work achieved full recognition only after a retrospective at the Paris International Exposition of 1900. Thereafter it was in great demand to a host of international collectors. At his death he bequeathed a large body of his work to the French nation.
— Comments on Rodin
— LINKS
— Victor Hugo, de face (1885 sketch, 23x18cm; full size)
— Victor Hugo, de trois quarts (drypoint, 22x15cm; 2/3 size)
— Standing Women — Salammbo — Semi-Reclining Nude — Reclining Women with Bird
— Rainbow — Minerva — Milton's Devil — Female Nude — Clothed Woman — Before Creation
— The Thinker: the bronze sculpture is 183cm high, 96cm wide, 137cm deep: quarter-size photo (2036x1008pix, 315kb) _ ZOOM to half-size photo (3888x2016pix, 1304kb) _ ZOOM++ to full size photo (7632x3744pix; 1812kb)
— 47 photos of sculptures and 32 reproductions of watercolors at Fine Arts Museums of SF

Died on a 17 November:

1862 Maria Margaretha van Os, Dutch fruit and flower painter born on 01 November 1780, daughter and student of Jan van Os [bap. 23 Feb 1744 – 07 Feb 1808] and sister of Georgius van Os [20 Nov 1782 – 24 July 1861] and of Pieter Gerardus van Os [08 Oct 1776 – 28 March 1839].

^ 1862 Ramsay Richard Reinagle, British painter born on 19 March 1775. He was trained by his father Philip Reinagle [1749 – 27 Nov 1833] and first exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, in 1788. He then went to Italy, where he was in Rome in 1796, and later to Holland to study the Dutch masters. After returning to London, he worked for a period under the panorama painter Robert Barker [1739–1806] before going into partnership with Barker’s eldest son, Thomas Edward Barker [1769–1847], with whom he exhibited panoramas of Italian, Spanish, and French land- and cityscapes in a rival establishment in London until 1816, when it was sold. During this period he continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy, becoming an ARA in 1814 and an RA in 1823. He also showed works at the Society of Painters in Watercolours, of which he became a member in 1806 and was President from 1808 to 1812. Although he painted a number of portraits, he specialized in landscapes of Italy and England, an example of the latter being the watercolor Loughbrigg Mountain and River Brathy, near Ambleside — Sunset (1808). He was also adept at copying the Old Masters, and he is said to have been employed by various picture dealers for restoration work, sometimes of a dubious nature. In 1848 he exhibited as his own a landscape by a young artist named J. W. Yarnold at the Royal Academy, which he had only slightly altered. His deception discovered, he was forced to resign his diploma as a Royal Academician, yet he continued to exhibit there until 1857 and in his impoverished old age received an Academy pension. Three engravings after his drawings appeared in William Bernard Cooke’s The Thames (1811), and others were included in John Tillotson’s Album of Scottish Scenery (1860). He also wrote the ‘scientific and explanatory notices’ for J. M. W. Turner’s Views in Sussex (1819). — Ramsay Richard Reinagle trained his son George Philip Reinagle [1802 – 06 Dec 1835] as a painter, he specialized in marine painting. — LINKS — A Ruined Castle (1806, 63x52cm) — Loughrigg Mountain and River Brathy, near Ambleside - Sun-Set (1808, 51x71cm)

1853 Charles-Auguste van den Berghe, Belgian artist born on 30 April 1798.

1814 Gottfried Mind (or Mindt) “le Raphaël des Chats”, Swiss artist born in 1768. [It seems that the Internet has lost its Mind, if it ever had one: I cannot find there any reproduction of a work by this artist]

1775 Michel-Hubert Descours, French artist born on 12 September 1707. — [Est-elle vraie la rumeur qui courre que si bien Descours donnait des cours, Descours ne donnait pas des Descours, il les vendait? Mais, de nos jours, qui donc sait quoi que ce soit des cours des Descours?]\

Born on a 17 November:

1854 Josef Reznicek Gisela, Austrian artist who died on 24 August 1899.

TO THE TOP

<<< ART 16 Nov

ANY DAY ...IN ART ...IN HISTORY ||| HISTORY “4” NOV 17 ||| ALTERNATE SITES

ART 18 Nov >>>

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO WRITE TO ART “4” NOV
http://www.jcanu.hpg.ig.com.br/art/art4nov/art1117.html
http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/all42day/art/art4nov/art1117.html
http://www.safran-arts.com/42day/art/art4nov/art1117.html
updated Monday 17-Nov-2003 3:39 UT

site safe for children