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ART “4” “2”-DAY  07 September
DEATHS: 1883 COLE — 1910 HUNT — 1968 FONTANA — 1949 OROZCO — 1735 RIVALZ
BIRTH: 1860 MOSES
^ Died on 07 September 1883: George Cole, English self-taught painter of landscapes, animals, and portraits.
— Born in 1810 in London, he married Elizabeth Vicat in 1831. He began by painting several large canvas advertisements for a traveling circus. He spent some time in the Netherlands studying the Dutch Masters, In 1838 he moved to Portsmouth, where he painted mainly animals. In 1845 His Don Quixote and Sancho Panza with Rosinante in Don Pedro's Hut attracted much attention at The British Institution, which was established as a rival to the Royal Academy. He moved back to London in 1852 or 1853. Inspired by the works of the 17th century Dutch Masters and after a varied early career as a portraitist and animal painter, Cole established himself as a prolific and popular painter of the English pastoral. He became particularly associated with the landscape of Hampshire, Surrey, Cornwall, Wales, Sussex etc. By the 1870’s he had reached the apogee of his artistic career, enjoying great success and prosperity.
— Father of landscapist George Vicat Cole [17 Apr 1833 – 06 Apr 1893], with whose works his are sometimes confused.

— Sheep in a Landscape (43x63cm; 562x796pix, 68kb)
— Timber Wagon (1875 106x152cm)
— Ferreting In Surrey (1860, 49x67cm; 668x1000pix, 147kb)
^ Died on 07 September 1910: William Holman Hunt, Londoner Pre-Raphaelite painter born on 02 April 1827. — Not to be confused with US painter William Morris Hunt [31 March 1824 – 08 September 1879]
— William Holman Hunt was born in London. A clerk for several years, he left the world of trade to study at the British Museum and the National Gallery. In 1844 he entered the Royal Academy. Here he joined with Millais and Rossetti to develop the Pre-Raphaelite theories of art and, in 1848, to found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His first painting to interpret these themes was Rienzi, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849. In 1854 Hunt went to the Holy Land to portray scenes from the life of Christ, aiming to achieve total historical and archaelogical truth. He returned to Palestine in 1869 and again in 1873. Throughout his life Hunt remained dedicated to Pre-Raphaelite concepts, as exemplified in such works as The Light of the World, The Scapegoat and The Shadow of Death. Hunt died in Kensington, London.
— Hunt worked as an office clerk in London from 1839 to 1843, attending drawing classes at a mechanics’ institute in the evenings and taking weekly lessons from the portrait painter Henry Rogers. Holman Hunt overcame parental opposition to his choice of career in 1843, and this determined attitude and dedication to art could be seen throughout his working life. In July 1844, at the third attempt, he entered the Royal Academy Schools. His earliest exhibited works, such as Little Nell and her Grandfather (1846), reveal few traces of originality, but the reading of John Ruskin’s Modern Painters in 1847 was of crucial importance to Holman Hunt’s artistic development. It led him to abandon the ambitious Christ and the Two Marys in early 1848, when he realized its traditional iconography would leave his contemporaries unmoved. His next major work, The Flight of Madeline and Porphyro during the Drunkenness Attending the Revelry (1848), from John Keats’s Eve of Saint Agnes, though displaced into a medieval setting, dramatized an issue dear to contemporary poets and central to Holman Hunt’s art: love and youthful idealism versus loyalty to one’s family. His first mature painting, it focuses on a moment of psychological crisis in a cramped and shallow picture space. The Keatsian source, rich colors and compositional format attracted the attention of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, leading to his friendship with Holman Hunt and thus contributing to the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the autumn of 1848.
— In 1844, Hunt was admitted as a student to the Royal Academy, where he met John Millais [08 Jun 1829 – 13 Aug 1896] and Dante Gabriel Rossetti [12 May 1828 – 09 Apr 1882]. For some time he shared a studio with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the pair, along with Millais and a few others, who had a common contempt of contemporary English art and its academic rules, started the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which aimed at restoring English painting to its former heights. John Ruskin supported the group and supplied a theoretical foundation for its aims.
          Hunt believed that renewal of art must involve a return to honored religious and moral ideals, and these became the center of his work. He used biblical subjects; to paint scenery for these themes he visited Palestine several times, see The Scapegoat (1856) and The Finding of Savior in the Temple (1860). He also frequently took themes from old English myths and sagas, from Shakespeare, and Keats, filling them with an intense symbolism in which every small detail contributed to the picture's message and which is not easy to understand to a modern viewer. The years 1866-1868, he worked in Florence.
        At first Victorian England did not accept his works. Thus The Awakening Conscience (1853) infuriated the public; it was normal for a Victorian man to keep a mistress, but nobody spoke about it aloud and who was this Hunt to accuse others? When the public gradually grew to accept to Hunt his work was highly regarded. Hunt's series of magazine articles gathered in the book Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1905) is a valuable record of the movement.
— Hunt, a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was born in London, the son of a warehouse manager. Throughout his life he was a devout Christian. He was also serious minded, and lacking in a sense of humour. Hunt joined the Royal Academy Schools in 1844, where he met Millais and Rossetti, and, in fact brought them together. In 1854 Hunt decided to visit the Holy Land, to see for himself the genuine background for the religious pictures he intended to paint. The first tangible results of this journey were two paintings, The Scapegoat, and The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, which was exhibited nationally to great acclaim in 1860, and sold for the sum of 5,500 guineas, Hunt was advised on the price by Charles Dickens.) This sale, which included the copyright established the painter both financially, and artisticly. Hunt’s famous picture The Light of the World, was one of the greatest Christian images of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hunt worked at night on this picture, in an unheated shelter in a wood near Ewell in Surrey.
      Hunt did not have the natural talent of Millais, or the intellect and vision of Rossetti. He made up for this by sheer hard work and commitment. He could have been a very successful portrait painter had he chosen to be so. In later years, as his sight started to fail, perhaps, his colors became increasingly harsh. He was still capable of great things, however, as shown by his wonderful late picture The Lady of Shallott, surely one of the most powerful Pre-Raphaelite images. In his last years Hunt became the patriach of Victorian painting. He was awarded the Order of Merit by King Edward VII in 1905. Hunt married firstly Fanny Waugh, and after her death in childbirth her younger sister Edith. He was also a far more attractive personality than is generally supposed, with a wide range of interests, which included horse racing and boxing.
— Robert Braithwaite Martineau was a student of Hunt.
— LINKS
— Self-Portrait (1845, 46x39cm)
— Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1867; 192x91cm) _ This painting is based on Isabella, or the Pot of Basil by John Keats [31 Oct 1795 – 23 Feb 1821].
— May Morning on Magdalen Tower, Oxford (1890, 155x200cm, 840x1092pix — ZOOM to 1700x2205pix, 2178kb)
— smaller, very slightly different, version: May Morning on Magdalen Tower, Oxford (1893, 39x49cm, 931x1177pix, 184kb — or see the 931x1177pix picture in a 2354x2350pix round frame, 2104kb) _ Following a custom thought to derive from the ancient druids, a service was held on the tower of Magdalen College, Oxford, on May Day morning. Choristers and college staff sang hymns to welcome spring at the break of day. The light blue sky and pink clouds convey the freshness of the early morning light, while the abundant flowers remind us of the imminent arrival of summer. At the far right is an Indian Parsee, or sun-worshipper.
— Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1883, 30x23cm)
— The Dead Sea from Siloam (1855, 25x35cm)
— Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus (1851)
— The Light of the World (1853, 126x60cm)
— The Lady of Shalott (1892) — Shadow of Death (1873, 93x73cm)
— Il Dolce Far Niente (1866) — The Lantern Maker's Courtship (1854)
— The Awakening Conscience (1853)
— A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids (1850, 111x141cm)
— The Scapegoat (1854) — On English Coasts (1852) _ sheep
— The Triumph of the Innocents (157x248cm)
— The Hireling Shepherd (1851, 77x110cm) — Claudio and Isabella (1853, 78x46cm)
^ Died on 07 September 1968: Lucio Fontana, Argentine~Italian sculptor and painter born on 19 February 1899.
— Entre 1905 y 1922 Lucio Fontana hizo sus estudios primarios y secundarios en Milán, y los de arte en la Academia de Brera, de esa ciudad. Pasa los seis años siguientes en su Rosario natal, donde inicia su obra de pintor y escultor, y vuelve a instalarse después en Milán (1928-39): se vuelca entonces a la abstracción, sin abandonar del todo lo figurativo. Se asocia, en 1935, al grupo Abstraction-Creation, y empieza su labor como ceramista. La guerra lo devuelve a la Argentina y se afinca en Buenos Aires, en 1939: aquí se cuenta entre los fundadores de la Escuela de Arte Altamira, en la cual dicta clases; y en este período hace esculturas figurativas. Publica, en 1946, aunque firmado por sus alumnos, el "Manifiesto blanco", al que seguirá, en 1947, cuando ha retornado — definitivamente — a Milán, el "Manifiesto especialista", primero de una larga serie que informa su revolucionaria obra de la época.
Concepto Espacial      La gran ruptura artística de Lucio Fontana — dicho sea en términos teóricos y también materiales — ocurre en 1949, cuando empieza a realizar sus telas con perforaciones (buchi), que serán sucedidas, una década más tarde, por las telas con tajos (tagli), como en la obra aquí presentada. Es evidente la naturaleza conceptualista y gestual de estas creaciones de Fontana — que él llevará además a otros soportes, como el papel y el metal —, y su sentido estético: al rasgar la tela y quebrar su continuidad, acaba con la idea que de ella tuvo y tiene la pintura, la de una superficie ilusoria capaz de albergar una representación ficticia; por lo tanto, recupera la verdad de esa tela en beneficio de una nueva (forma de) creación. El tajo, que conecta el anverso y el reverso del lienzo, integra el espacio real a la obra y abre una vía de comunicación con el infinito, aboliendo la necesidad de pintar.
— [Concepto espacial (1959, tela rasgada, 65x72cm) >]
— Lucio Fontana explored the problem of representing space. Born in Argentina, Fontana studied sculpture at Milan's Brera Academy in the late 1920s. His early sculptures embraced both figurative and abstract forms. In addition to his work as a sculptor, Fontana wrote and collaborated on a number of theoretical manifestos. He is best known for pioneering the concept of "Spatialism," which, like Cubism, radically disavowed the practice of creating the illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface. Beginning in 1949, Fontana turned to painting in order to confront this issue directly. First he punctured holes in canvases as a means of integrating the imaginary space represented on the surface of his paintings with the real space that surrounded them. By the late 1950s he was slashing monochromatic canvases with a razor blade. In doing so, the artist transformed a seemingly destructive gesture into an act of creation that challenged traditional easel painting and the sanctity of the picture plane. In 1959, Fontana resumed his work as a sculptor with a series of spherical works known as Nature forms.
— LINKS
+ ZOOM IN +^ Died on 07 September 1949: José Clemente Orozco, Mexican Social Realist muralist born on 23 November 1883, considered the most important 20th-century muralist to work in fresco.
— Self-Portrait >>> [click on it to ZOOM IN]
— Orozco contributed to the revival of fresco technique, design, and subject matter, and is regarded as one of the foremost mural painters in the western hemisphere. Orozco was born in Zapotlán del Rey, Jalisco State, and educated at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In 1922 he became one of the leaders of the Syndicate of Painters and Sculptors that sought to revive the art of fresco painting, under the patronage of the Mexican government. Orozco's most important early work was a series of frescoes for the National Preparatory School in Mexico City, commemorating the revolutionary uprisings of peasants and workers in Mexico. Between 1927 and 1934 he worked in the United States. There he executed a set of murals entitled The Dispossessed at the New School for Social Research in New York City. In Pomona College, Claremont, California, he painted a fresco on the theme of the Greek hero Prometheus. His mural panels for the Baker Library at Dartmouth College depict the history of America in the Coming of Quetzalcoatl, the Return of Quetzalcoatl, and Modern Industrial Man. In the 1930s he painted his great murals in Mexico City and Guadalajara, and in the 1940s he explored on canvas the unique style, marked by diagonals and neutral color, that he already had conveyed in his murals. In his later years, Orozco's simple, dramatic style became more expressionistic; his subject matter remained the suffering of humanity. Orozco died in Mexico City.
— La pasión de Orozco por el arte se manifestó cuando, a los siete años, se mudó con su familia a Ciudad de México, donde pudo conocer el trabajo de Posadas. Después de estudiar agricultura y arquitectura, se dedicó a pintar. Sus estudios formales los realizó en la Academia de San Carlos, donde se acentuaban las viejas fórmulas europeas, contendidas en el estudio del “Dr. Atl” Gerardo Murillo [1875-1964]. El grupo de estudiantes llamado el Centro Artístico, conducido por Dr. Atl, presionó al gobierno para permitir los murales públicos pero la idea nunca se llevó a cabo. Mientras realizaba trabajos satíricos para Dr. Atl., la vanguardia soportó la guerra civil mexicana, que dejó una huella en él; Orozco tuvo que estar varios años en los Estados Unidos. Volvió en 1920 y disfrutó el auspicio del gobierno de Obregón. La mayoría de los murales famosos de la Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, fueron hechos por él. Cuando el apoyo del gobierno fue retirado en 1927, Orozco volvió a Estados Unidos, donde pintó murales en Pomona, California, Nueva York y Dartmouth. Viajó a Europa en 1932 y volvió a México en 1934. Fue entonces cuando su grandeza se estableció. De ahí en adelante trabajó sobre muchos murales, algunos de los más famosos, son los de la Universidad y del Palacio de gobierno en Guadalajara y El Hospicio Cabañas. Los murales de Orozco se caracterizan por temas más universales, arrolladores y monumentales, comparados a los de sus colegas, cuyos temas son más bien nacionalista o propagandistas.
— LINKS
— Los Muertos (1931, 111x92cm) _ José Clemente Orozco's commentary on war and death had no specific point of reference. His works on the Mexican Revolution were ambiguous with respect to who was responsible for the desolation. Through an abstract language he constructed a symbolic universe, instilling in the spectator an impression of chaos and the finiteness of existence. Violence did not spring up in a specific country or from a single event, but could happen anywhere. Los muertos, dated 1931, refers us to the chaos caused by the 1929 Depression, emphasized by the grid of buildings which seem to fall like tombs into empty space.
— Paisaje de Picos (1943, 99x121cm) _ José Clemente Orozco's painting enters into dialogue with its present-day audience as if it had been painted just yesterday. This is because of the symbolic language it employs, which allows it to comment on the conflict of war in an abstract manner which can refer to different moments in time. While the painting was at the time of its creation a statement on the Second World War, it is not a specific statement on ways of waging war in the style of photo-journalism, but rather an appeal to current sentiments through its transparent vocabulary.
— Zapata (1930, 178x123cm) _ Emiliano Zapata [08 Aug 1879 – 10 Apr 1919] became a symbol of the Mexican Revolution after his assassination. The charismatic Zapata crusaded to return to Mexico’s peasants the enormous holdings of wealthy landowners. José Clemente Orozco, a leader of the Mexican mural movement during the 1920s and 1930s, presented Zapata as a ghostlike figure who appears in the open door of a peasant hut. He is framed by a patch of bright sky and the intersecting diagonals of outstretched arms and pointed sombreros. Given Zapata’s heroic status, it is curious that Orozco placed him in the background of the composition. The picture is dominated by the frightened, oppressed peasants (for whom he fought) and the ruthless enemy soldiers. Menacing details, including the bullets, the dagger, and especially the knife aimed at Zapata’s eye, allude to the danger of the revolution and Zapata’s own eventual death. The painting’s dark reds, browns, and blacks, applied to the canvas in rough, expressionistic strokes, evoke the Mexican land and the bloodletting of its people. Orozco painted this dramatic canvas during his self-imposed exile in the United States, where he moved to escape riots inspired by anti-Catholic murals he had created in Mexico City. Orozco later claimed that he painted Zapata, which was sold to the actor Vincent Price, to get the money for his trip back to New York after completing a mural commission in California. — See also Emiliano Zapata (1931) and Zapata (1930 lithograph, 52x40cm; 400x314pix, 58kb) by Siqueiros.
—American Civilization - The Gods of the Modern World: detail, post-Cortes section (1932 fresco)
— Prometheus — Cactus — Academics — Table of Universal Brotherhood (1931 fresco)
^ Born on 07 October 1860:
Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses, US Folk painter who died on 13 December 1961.
— Truly a senior artist, Moses only began a serious painting career at the age of 78 and kept at it until the grand old age of 100! This exhibition documents not only her signature folk imagery but engages the onlooker in Moses's extraordinary career, her love of life, and her savvy marketing skills. Visitors will follow a checkerboard design, starting with the outside banner. (One of Moses's favorite images was a Vermont checkerboard house.) Throughout the exhibition, "Grandma Says" chat signs (about life on the farm, candle making, the seasons, old age) will introduce the rich chapters of her life's story: Birth of an Artist:
      Moses's first seventy-five years constitute her "early years." A "corner of Grandma's studio," complete with a replication of the view out her window, her kitchen table palette, brushes, and paint are all displayed, plus rarely seen examples of the artist's handiwork, early yarn paintings and dolls.
      Classic scenes of ice skating, harvesting, hunting, and socializing with the neighbors follow in the tradition of Flemish and Dutch genre painting. Even without formal training, Moses captured the essence of what it meant to be part of the land and a participant in rural activities. One such activity now seeing a revival is quiltmaking, and, within the exhibition, our visitors will see a quilting bee in progress. Children and adults can design their own quilt by placing modular quilting shapes on a large felt board, and a farm play bench will also be part of an interactive corner.
      Images of happier, simpler times before the Great War, the Depression, and World War II are here: apple butter making, tapping maple trees, milking cows, shoeing horses--yet Moses also knew how to cope with city slickers. A "marketing corner" displays her many awards, products, fabric designs, and a taped interview with Edward R. Murrow.
      Facing failing vision and arthritis in her hands, Moses switched to painting with her left hand but never let up on the number of pictures produced per year, although her work became broader and more painterly in technique. The legend of Grandma Moses is one of senior citizen wizardry, a marvel of crusty ingenuity and independent living. (At the health center where she spent her final days, she once stole her physician's stethoscope, warning him: "You take me back to Eagle Bridge and you'll get back your stethoscope.") Presidents, Hollywood figures, art collectors, reporters, all mourned the death of Grandma Moses. Her pictures allow us to recreate her life, her joy of painting, and her wonderful vision of the world.

—      Grandma Moses was the spry, indomitable "genuine American primitive" who became one of the US's most famous painters in her late seventies. The simple realism, nostalgic atmosphere and luminous color with which Grandma Moses portrayed homely farm life and rural countryside won her a wide following. She was able to capture the excitement of winter's first snow, Thanksgiving preparations and the new, young green of oncoming spring. Gay color, action and humor enlivened her portrayals of such simple farm activities as maple sugaring, soap-making, candle-making, haying, berrying and the making of apple butter.
      In person, Grandma Moses charmed wherever she went. A tiny, lively woman with mischievous gray eyes and a quick wit, she could be sharp-tongued with a sycophant and stern with an errant grandchild. Cheerful, even in her last years, she continued to be keenly observant of all that went on around her. Until her 101st and last birthday, 07 September 1961, she rarely failed to do a little painting every day.
      Grandma Moses, whose paintings hang in nine museums in the United States and in Vienna and Paris, turned out her first picture when she was 76 years old. She took up painting because arthritis had crippled her hands so that she no longer could embroider. She could not hold a needle, but she could hold a brush, and she had been too busy all her life to bear the thought of being idle.
      Two years later a New York engineer and art collector, Louis J. Caldor, who was driving through Hoosick Falls saw some of her paintings displayed in a drug store. They were priced from $3 to $5, depending on size. He bought them all, drove to the artist's home at Eagle Bridge and bought ten others she had there.
      The next year, 1939, Grandma Moses was represented in an exhibition of "contemporary unknown painters" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She did not remain unknown for long. A one-person show of her paintings was held in New York in 1940, and other one-person shows abroad followed. Her paintings were soon reproduced on Christmas cards, tiles and fabrics in the US and abroad. She was the guest of President and Mrs. Harry S. Truman in 1949 at a tea at which the President played the piano for her. NY Governor Rockefeller proclaimed the painter's 100th and 101st birthdays "Grandma Moses Days" throughout the state, declaring in 1961 that "there is no more renowned artist in our entire country today."
       But to say that she was a US painter is less than the full portrait of Grandma Moses; European critics called her work "lovable," "fresh," "charming," "adorable" and "full of naive and childlike joy." A German fan offered his explanation for her wide popularity:
      "There emanates from her paintings a light-hearted optimism; the world she shows us is beautiful and it is good. You feel at home in all these pictures, and you know their meaning. The unrest and the neurotic insecurity of the present day make us inclined to enjoy the simple and affirmative outlook of Grandma Moses."
      As a self-taught "primitive," who in childhood began painting what she called "lambscapes" by squeezing out grape juice or lemon juice to get colors, Grandma Moses has been compared to the great self-taught French painter, “le douanier” Henri Rousseau, as well as to Breughel. Until the comparisons were made, she had never heard of either artist.
      Grandma Moses did all of her painting from remembrance of things past. She liked to sit quietly and think, she once said, and remember and imagine. "Then I'll get an inspiration and start painting; then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live." She would sit on an old, battered swivel chair, perching on two large pillows. The Masonite on which she painted would lie flat on an old kitchen table before her. There was no easel. Crowding her in her "studio" were an electric washer and dryer that had overflowed from the kitchen.
      For subject matter, Grandma Moses drew on memories of a long life as farm child, hired girl and farmer's wife. Her first paintings had been sent to the county fair along with samples of her raspberry jam and strawberry preserves. Her jam had won a ribbon, but nobody noticed those first paintings. She would paint for five or six hours, and preferred the first part of the session because, as she said, her hand was fresher and "stiddier." At night, after dinner, she liked to watch television Westerns, not for the drama but because she liked to see horses.
      Grandma Moses spent a lot of her time on what she called her "old-timey" New England landscapes. She painted from the top down: "First the sky, then the mountains, then the hills, then the trees, then the houses, then the cattle and then the people." Her tiny figures, disproportionately small, cast no shadows. They seem sharply arrested in action.
      She learned as a child to observe nature when her father took the children out for walks. He was a Methodist, but never went to church, and he allowed his children to believe what they wanted. Instead of going to church, they went for long walks in the woods.
      Grandma Moses had had a hard life most of her many years, but neither her fame nor her advanced years cut into her formidable production. During her lifetime she painted more than 1000 pictures, twenty-five of them after she had passed her 100th birthday. Her oils have increased in value from those early $3 and $5 works to $8000 or $10'000 for a large picture. Otto Kallier, owner and director of the Galerie St. Etienne in New York and president of Grandma Moses' Properties, Inc., will not discuss her earnings, but they are reliably estimated to have reached nearly $500'000.
      Grandma Moses Story Book, an anthology for children illustrated by forty-seven color reproductions of her paintings, was published in 1961, and 20'000 copies were sold before publication.
      Grandma Moses, the former Anna Mary Robertson was born at Greenwich NY,one of five daughters and five sons of Russell King Robertson and the former Margaret Shannahan. What little formal education she had was obtained in a one-room country school. At the age of 12 she left home to work as a hired girl. She worked in the same capacity until she was 27 years old, when she was married to Thomas Salmon Moses. He was the hired man on the farm where she was doing the housework. The couple took a wedding trip to North Carolina. On the way back, they decided to invest their $600 savings in the rental of a farm near Staunton VA.
      They remained in Virginia for twenty years. Ten children, five of whom died in infancy, were born to them. In addition to caring for the children and running the house, Mrs. Moses made butter and potato chips, which she sold to neighbors. The couple returned to New York State and began farming at Eagle Bridge. Mr. Moses died there in 1927. For several years his widow continued to operate the farm with the help of her son, Forrest. But she had to give up farm chores, and then embroidery, when arthritis attacked her hands.
      She had been embroidering in wool pictures that were reminiscent of Currier and Ives prints of country scenes. Grandma Moses' first paintings were copies from the prints and post cards. Gradually, however, she began to compose original scenes, drawn from her memories of farm life in past generations.
      My Life's History, her autobiography, was published in 1951. In it Grandma Moses expressed her basic philosophy:
      "I look back on my life like a good day's work, it was done and I feel satisfied with it. I was happy and contented, I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered. And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be."
      On the day of her death, President Kennedy said: "The death of Grandma Moses removed a beloved figure from American life. The directness and vividness of her paintings restored a primitive freshness to our perception of the American scene. Both her work and her life helped our nation renew its pioneer heritage and recall its roots in the countryside and on the frontier. All Americans mourn her loss."

— LINKS
— Fall (1958) — The Shepherd Comes Home, yarn picture.
— All Out for Sport (1949) — A Beautiful World (1948) — My Hills of Home [Flash]
— Early Sugaring Off (1944, 89x114cm) _ Grandma Moses' colorful and lively Early Sugaring Off, with its sprinkling of glitter to add a sparkle to the snow, is a prime example of American Primitive art. Born Anna Mary Robertson in Washington County, New York. Having never had an art lesson, at age 76 she began painting simple, but realistic scenes of rural life. She had her first one-woman show at age 80 and painted 25 pictures in the year after her 100th birthday. Critics have praised her work for its freshness, innocence, and humanity.
— The Old Hoosick Bridge (1947) _ Grandma Moses captured with paint her memories of a long rural life. She first took up a paintbrush in 1937 at the age of 77. Several years later, the US discovered her paintings and immediately fell in love with this elderly artist from Upstate New York. Why? Certainly Grandma Moses’ personal charm had much to do with it. A spunky, earthy woman, she charmed America with her country ways, her homespun aphorisms, and her pride in her canned jams and preserves. Her paintings were true to their creator. They depicted scenes Grandma Moses remembered — some from her childhood, others from her years as a farmwife. Covered bridges, for example, were “land marks in days gone by.” The Old Hoosick Bridge captured one particular structure that, in her words, “is no more.” Perhaps in that sentiment lies the appeal of Grandma Moses’ paintings, for she seems to capture a style of life that people in the US like to believe once was, but sadly “is no more.”
^ Died on 07 September 1735: Antoine Rivalz (or Rivaltz), French painter born on 16 March 1667. — [Did Rivalz have rivals?]
— En 1726, Antoine Rivalz fonde une véritable école de dessin, indépendante de celle de Paris, qui deviendra en 1750 l'Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture de Toulouse, la seule en province à bénéficier du soutien royal. Jean-François Lassave, Jacques Gamelin, Jean-Baptiste Despax, Pierre Subleyras, artistes toulousains de renom, fréquentent l'Académie et prolongent l'inclination classicisante de leur maître.
— LINKS
— Autoportrait devant l'esquisse de la chute des anges rebelles (1726, 83x64cm)
— Jean-Pierre Rivalz (124x99cm) Après avoir suscité de multiples interrogations sur l'identité de l'artiste qui l'a réalisé, ce portrait a finalement été attribué par en 1956 à Antoine, qui l'a vraisemblablement peint sur une ébauche de son père. Jean-Pierre Rivalz, peintre et architecte de la ville de Toulouse, est ici représenté dans cette double fonction, à mi-corps devant une table de travail encombrée de livres et de pinceaux, consultant le traité de Vitruve, et tournant le dos à son tableau figurant l'Annonciation. Antoine, de retour d'Italie, aurait recomposé le trop paisible portrait de son père, réalisé dans sa jeunesse, sur un mode plus tumultueux et passionné: l'habit comporte des plis nombreux, la pile de livres s'écroule, la main froisse avec nervosité des pages où se reflète abondamment la lumière. Dans cette toile, toute droite est bannie, alors que les courbes sont soulignées, donnant une touche baroque à ce portrait, qui a amené à considérer pendant longtemps cette toile comme un autoportrait de Jean-Pierre Rivalz.
— La Présidente de Riquet en Diane Chasseresse (123x101cm) _ L'iconographie de cette oeuvre, qui paraît décalée par rapport aux thèmes habituellement traités par Rivalz, se justifie par la personnalité de son commanditaire. Agé de 65 ans, Jean- Matthias de Riquet, l'époux du modèle, semble avoir imposé le caractère mythologique de ce portrait. Le nu héroïque sert de prétexte, à travers le genou et le sein découverts, à un érotisme tout à fait exceptionnel dans le climat social de Toulouse. Par un style vigoureux, Rivalz rompt avec l'élégante mièvrerie des portraits mythologiques qui caractérisaient le siècle précédent, et exclut notamment tout sourire de ce visage.
— Enlèvement des Sabines (120x171cm) _ After a stay in Rome, Rivalz became the painter of the city of Toulouse. This painting is inspired by the following text:
_ Iam res Romana adeo erat ualida ut cuilibet finitimarum civitatum bello par esset; sed penuria mulierum hominis aetatem duratura magnitudo erat, quippe quibus nec domi spes prolis nec cum finitimis conubia essent. Tum ex consilio patrum Romulus legatos circa vicinas gentes misit qui societatem conubiumque novo populo peterent: urbes quoque, ut cetera, ex infimo nasci; dein, quas sua virtus ac di iuvent, magnas opes sibi magnumque nomen facere; satis scire, origini Romanae et deos adfuisse et non defuturam virtutem; proinde ne gravarentur homines cum hominibus sanguinem ac genus miscere. Nusquam benigne legatio audita est: adeo simul spernebant, simul tantam in medio crescentem molem sibi ac posteris suis metuebant. Ac plerisque rogitantibus dimissi ecquod feminis quoque asylum aperuissent; id enim demum compar conubium fore. Aegre id Romana pubes passa et haud dubie ad vim spectare res coepit. Cui tempus locumque aptum ut daret Romulus aegritudinem animi dissimulans ludos ex industria parat Neptuno equestri sollemnes; Consualia vocat. Indici deinde finitimis spectaculum iubet; quantoque apparatu tum sciebant aut poterant, concelebrant ut rem claram exspectatamque facerent.
      Multi mortales conuenere, studio etiam videndae novae urbis, maxime proximi quique, Caeninenses, Crustumini, Antemnates; iam Sabinorum omnis multitudo cum liberis ac coniugibus venit. Inuitati hospitaliter per domos cum situm moeniaque et frequentem tectis urbem vidissent, mirantur tam breui rem Romanam crevisse. Vbi spectaculi tempus venit deditaeque eo mentes cum oculis erant, tum ex composito orta vis signoque dato iuventus Romana ad rapiendas virgines discurrit. Magna pars forte in quem quaeque inciderat raptae: quasdam forma excellentes, primoribus patrum destinatas, ex plebe homines quibus datum negotium erat domos deferebant. Vnam longe ante alias specie ac pulchritudine insignem a globo Thalassi cuiusdam raptam ferunt multisque sciscitantibus cuinam eam ferrent, identidem ne quis violaret Thalassio ferri clamitatum; inde nuptialem hanc vocem factam.
      Turbato per metum ludicro maesti parentes virginum profugiunt, incusantes violati hospitii foedus deumque invocantes cuius ad sollemne ludosque per fas ac fidem decepti venissent. Nec raptis aut spes de se melior aut indignatio est minor. Sed ipse Romulus circumibat docebatque patrum id superbia factum qui conubium finitimis negassent; illas tamen in matrimonio, in societate fortunarum omnium civitatisque et quo nihil carius humano generi sit liberum fore; mollirent modo iras et, quibus fors corpora dedisset, darent animos; saepe ex iniuria postmodum gratiam ortam; eoque melioribus usuras viris quod adnisurus pro se quisque sit ut, cum suam vicem functus officio sit, parentium etiam patriaeque expleat desiderium. Accedebant blanditiae virorum, factum purgantium cupiditate atque amore, quae maxime ad muliebre ingenium efficaces preces sunt. TITI LIVI AB VRBE CONDITA LIBER I, IX (English translation at Livy's The History of Rome)
— L'Annonciation (70x57cm)
^
Born on a 07 September:

1892 Michele Calcella, Italian artist who died in 1989. — Relative? of sculptor Andrea Cascella?

1853 Anton Piotrowski, Polish artist who died on 12 September 1924.

1592 Waal Cornelis de Wael (or Waal), Flemish painter, draftsman, and dealer, who died on 21 April 1667. He was the son of painter Jan Baptist de Wael I [1558–1633], from whom he and his brother Lucas de Wael [03 Mar 1591 – 25 Oct 1661] learnt to paint. They both went to Italy in 1610 and by 1613 had settled in Genoa. There Cornelis founded the Cenacolo Fiammingo, where he trained many young painters. Their circle of expatriate Flemings included Anthony van Dyck, who lived with them for a time and painted a double portrait of them (1627). Cornelis may have collaborated with van Dyck; he may also have worked with the Italian landscape painter Giovanni Battista Vicino ( fl c. 1650), as various landscapes by Vicino have figures in them by either de Wael or a painter from his circle. During visits to Rome, Cornelis came into contact with the Schildersbent, the confraternity of northern artists there, and in 1627 he was recorded in the documents of Rome’s Guild of Saint Luke. He moved there from Genoa in 1656, following an outbreak of the plague. Cornelis received commissions from Italian churches but is best known for his military pieces, harbor views and bambocciante or low-life subjects. Jan Baptist de Wael II [25 Jul 1632 – 1669+] was the son or nephew of Cornelis de Wael.

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