January 10, 2010 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
In 1869 Renoir and Monet worked together at La Grenouille‧re, a bathing spot on the Seine. Both artists became obsessed with painting light and water. According to Phoebe Pool (1967), this was a decisive moment in the development of impressionism, for “It was there that Renoir and Monet made their discovery that shadows are not brown or black but are coloured by their surroundings, and that the ‘local colour’ of an object is modified by the light in which it is seen, by reflections from other objects and by contrast with juxtaposed colours.”
The styles of Renoir and Monet were virtually identical at this time, an indication of the dedication with which they pursued and shared their new discoveries. During the 1870s they still occasionally worked together, although their styles generally developed in more personal directions.
In 1874 Renoir participated in the first impressionist exhibition. His works included the Opera Box (1874), a painting which shows the artist’s penchant for rich and freely handled figurative expression. Of all the impressionists, Renoir most consistently and thoroughly adapted the new style – in its inspiration, essentially a landscape style – to the great tradition of figure painting.
Although the impressionist exhibitions were the targets of much public ridicule during the 1870s, Renoir’s patronage gradually increased during the decade. He became a friend of Caillebotte, one of the first patrons of the impressionists, and he was also backed by the art dealer Durand-Ruel and by collectors like Victor Choquet, the Charpentiers, and the Daidets. The artist’s connection with these individuals is documented by a number of handsome portraits, for instance, Madame Charpentier and Her Children (1878).
In the 1870s Renoir also produced some of his most celebrated impressionist genre scenes, including the Swing and the Moulin de la Galette (both 1876). These works embody his most basic attitudes about art and life. They show men and women together, openly and casually enjoying a society diffused with warm, radiant sunlight. Figures blend softly into one another and into their surrounding space. Such worlds are pleasurable, sensuous, and generously endowed with human feeling.
January 10, 2010 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
Luncheon on the Grass also Known as The Picnic (“Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe”). 1862-1863. by Edouard Manet
Oil on canvas. Musee d’Orsay, Paris, France
In 1863 French Impressionist painter Edouard Manet-not to be confused with that lover of haystacks Claude Monet-shocked the art world with his painting Luncheon on the Grass. The French would love us to think they are an entire country made up of Bohemian lovers of peace and progressive art, but in reality the Paris at the time was only slightly less conservative than modern day Cincinnati. The painting caused ripples of outrage throughout middle class French society because of its daring depiction of nudity.
Nudity? We are talking about 1863, right? Hadn’t Rubens’ big fleshly sex symbols already been around by then? And what about Venus stepping off that seashell? Hasn’t nudity-especially nude women-always been a staple of art? So why was the portrait of one fully nude woman and one semi-nude woman causing such a firestorm of controversy in the country that would give up the bikini, Brigitte Bardot and the Cannes Film Festival? (Not to mention French-kissing.) Because Manet’s masterpiece dared to show figures who were quite obviously contemporary people, that’s why. That lady who was picnicking naked with two totally clothed male companions was a woman of the time.
Previous to the Impressionist revolution in art, nude figures were indeed quite a staple of paintings since the Renaissance. But these nude figures had historically been separated from their contemporary milieu by way of representation as mythological figures. It was one thing to present the goddess Athena naked, it’s another to present the girl who cleans houses for the rich naked. The problem was compounded for Manet by the fact that Luncheon on the Grass has all the hallmarks of one of those paintings that feature naked girls as spritely wood nymphs. The setting is a forest glen with a half-clothed woman dipping her goodies in a stream. It doesn’t take a massively imaginative person to displace the modern day couples with mythological figures. In a sense, Edouard Manet not only seemed to be purposely creating scandal, but also to be thumbing his nose at tradition.
The outrage at Manet’s painting stems from the still-current tradition of hypocrisy. Despite the fact that it was quite obvious that real life nude models were the inspiration for all those mythological creatures and Greek and Roman goddesses cavorting around naked in so many paintings, it was acceptable because they weren’t really naked women. Manet’s real crime, therefore, wasn’t in presenting all the naughty bits that had, after all, been on display in paintings for centuries, but rather that he was contributing to a blurring of the distinction between the real and the artifice. The fantasy nude women in paintings was, with just a few thousand brush strokes by one man, replaced by the ordinary. Oddly, a fully nude Greek goddess complete with exposed breasts and hairless pubes was preferable to the side view of one breast and no genitalia on the woman in Manet’s painting.
What was at the center of the scandal, whether the critics wanted to admit it or not, was that Manet’s nudity was attacked because it was ugly and degenerate. Strange, that. It was less degenerate to show a fully mature woman with no pubic hair than to cover up the crotch of another woman. The depth of the attack and the revelation that all of this was pure hypocrisy can be illustrated by virtue of the fact that some critics went so far as to disparage the body of the model in Manet’s painting. Oddly enough, one described her as not having a good figure. Can’t help but wonder what his opinion was of Rubens’ ladies of largess might have been.
Today, of course, one would look at the Manet painting and yawn. For its time, however, it was as controversial as anything by Robert Mapplethorpe and it bears repeating as a lesson in the hypocrisy that often surrounds censorship.
January 10, 2010 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
Georges Seurat, 1883-84 (retouched 1887); “Bathing at Asnières“; 79 x 118 1/2 in; Signed, bottom left; National Gallery, London
Painted in the same year as Pissarro’s The Pork Butcher, Seurat’s first large picture shows in contrast the monumental sense of form which complemented the method (still in process of development) of dividing color. This was a move away from Impressionism though there is an Impressionist atmosphere in the landscape background with the river distance, the Courbevoie bridge and the smoking factory chimneys of the industrial Paris suburb of Asnières. In Impressionist fashion also he made a number of small oil sketches from which the final composition was derived. The sketches have the character that belongs to work carried out on the spot.
Asnières was to Seurat and his friend Signac what Argenteuil had been to Monet and Renoir. The Seine and its boats offered a like attraction; the bridge at Courbevoie and the island of the Grande Jatte, seen across the river from the bathing-place on the right, were also to furnish material for magnificent pictures. Une Baignade is a whole collection of Seurat’s motifs—and a truly remarkable work for a young man of twenty-four. The kinship with Piero della Francesca that has often been remarked is distinct in the ordered rhythm of design and the firmly simplified contours. The feeling of repose is heightened by the lateral directions of figures, stylized shadows and river bank.
The picture was exhibited at the first Salon des Indépendants in 1884 and in 1886 was one of the `Works in Oil and Pastel by the Impressionists of Paris’ exhibited by Durand-Ruel at the National Academy of Design in New York. Too original to find immediate favor either in Paris or New York, it received harsh criticism. The critic in an American paper who described Une Baignade as the product of `a vulgar, coarse and commonplace mind’ seems with every epithet to present the exact opposite opinion to that with which the work is regarded now.
December 6, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
Buy Four Cut Sunflowers painting by Vincent van Gogh
Four Cut Sunflowers. August-September 1887. Oil on canvas. Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller, Otterlo, Netherlands.
December 6, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
Agostina Segatori in the Cafe du Tambourin. February-March 1887.
Oil on canvas. Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
November 13, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
1517-19
Oil on wood, 179 x 91 cm
Städtische Museen, Freiburg im Breisgau
The painting was the right panel of the altarpiece in the Abbey Church at Aschaffenburg, near Bad Mergentheim.
According to tradition, Pope Liberius (pope from 352 to 366) and a patrician had the same dream at the same night. The Virgin appeared and expressed her wish to raise a church at the site which she will mark by snow at the middle of the summer. Next day the Esquiline hill was covered by snow and it became the site of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore.
The altarpiece is called the Altarpiece of the Our Lady of the Snow.
November 13, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
Oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg
November 13, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
1523-24
Oil on wood, 193 x 152,5 cm
Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe
This is one of the panels of the two-part altarpiece originally in the church at Tauberbischofsheim. The Carrying the Cross was seen from the direction of the choir while the other part, the Crucifixion, from the nave.
November 13, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
c. 1515
Oil on wood
Musee d’Unterlinden, Colmar
This is the first view of the altarpiece with the wings closed. It is a Crucifixion showing a harrowingly detailed, twisted, and bloody figure of Christ on the cross in the centre flanked, on the left, by the mourning Madonna being comforted by John the Apostle, and Mary Magdalene kneeling with hands clasped in prayer, and, on the right, by a standing John the Baptist pointing to the dying Saviour. At the feet of the Baptist is a lamb holding a cross, symbol of the “Lamb of God” slaughtered for man’s sins. The predella represents The Lamentation.
November 13, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
c. 1515
Oil on wood
Musee d’Unterlinden, Colmar
This is the second view of the altarpiece. When the wings are opened, three scenes of celebration are revealed: the Annunciation, the Angel Concert for Madonna and Child, and the Resurrection.
November 13, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
1755
Oil on canvas, 108 x 208 cm
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca’ Rezzonico, VeniceVenetians would gather in the ridotti (foyers) of the many Venetian theaters to socialize and engage in various pastimes. The Senate issued repeated proclamations banning their use as gambling halls.
This painting, clearly inspired by Pietro Longhi, shows the Sala Grande of the foyer at Palazzo Dandolo prior to refurbishment in 1768.
November 13, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
1782
Oil on canvas, 68 x 91 cm
Alte Pinakothek, Munich
This is one of Guardi’s masterpieces. Because it depicts an event that actually took place we can date it with accuracy. It therefore provides an essential reference point for the whole of Guardi’s oeuvre. The scene was, in fact, one of a number from a cycle that has since been scattered. It shows the celebration organized in honour of the Russian “Counts of the North” who visited Venice in 1782. This canvas shows the famous chorus of orphan girls assembled from the Conservatorio della Pietà, one of the most famous vocal and instrumental ensembles in the whole of Europe. During the first half of the century the Pietà’s all-female orchestra had been conducted by Antonio Vivaldi and had reached a pinnacle of excellence in its performances, impressing the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau among other foreign visitors.
November 13, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
before 1777
Oil on canvas, 54 x 36 cm
National Gallery, London
Francesco Guardi, although remembered almost exclusively for his real and imaginary Venetian scenes, worked with his older brother Giovanni Antonio on paintings in many genres: altarpieces, mythological narratives, battle pictures, and even murals. A newly discovered altarpiece, dating from after his brother’s death around 1777, proves that Francesco continued to paint some large-scale pictures after the dissolution of the family firm. But from around 1760 his main work consisted of views indebted to Canaletto, whose designs he often copied. Soon, however, Guardi freed himself both from literal topography and Canaletto’s more prosaic manner, to concentrate on poetic capricci – airy compilations of Venetian architectural motifs such as this picture, as well as ruins, and evocations of the sparkling waters of the lagoon which he was the first painter to depict. His pastel colours and glancing touch may have been influenced by his sister’s husband, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Guardi’s pictures, however, became smaller and smaller, some barely larger than matchboxes. These were presumably intended as tourist trinkets, souvenirs for the boudoir rather than mementoes of the Grand Tour for great English country houses.
Unlike most views, many of Guardi’s imaginary architectural vistas are vertical in format. After his final return to Venice in about 1756, Canaletto had produced some small vertical pictures of the Piazza San Marco seen from under, or through, its colonnade, and Guardi may have been inspired by these. Canaletto’s viewer stands still like a camera on a tripod, but in Guardi’s picture we are impelled to follow the little figure in lemon yellow carrying its load of what looks like white laundry; we stroll from sunlight into shadow, to emerge once again into a sunlight all the brighter for being framed in light-reflecting darkness, just as the scale of the echoing arches gains from the small stature of the figures beneath. Charity is being dispensed. It may be spring, perhaps early in the morning. Sunshine falls in patches of pale pink, slightly darker on faraway brick walls and on a cloak in the foreground, and, darker still, in the line of a sunlit flagpole. The yellow of our distant guide’s robe is drawn forward onto a brass lantern – sky blue fades to white, lemon yellow and pink colours emerge from a silver haze and merge again to enliven the silver and pewter-grey stone. There is no pure red anywhere and just a few nervous touches and lines of black. The perfect harmony of this unpretentious picture can only be experienced in front of the original – when it is as consoling as music, or the memory of a voyage to the Venice of our dreams.
November 13, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
1766-70
Oil on canvas, 66 x 100 cm
Musee du Louvre, Paris
The painting depicts the audience granted by the Doge to the ambassadors in the Sala del Collegio of the Doge’s Palace in Venice.
November 13, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
1789
Oil on canvas, 42 x 62 cm
Alte Pinakothek, Munich
This painting records a fire that broke out on November 28, 1789. The glow of the fire has inspired an extraordinary, almost spectral night scene with the orange flames forming a barrier between the people and the houses, all painted with vivid, light brushstrokes.
The painting seems the allegory of a dying city, as Venice’s final loss of freedom drew closer.
November 10, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
1773
Oil on canvas, 97 x 121 cm
Derby Museum and Art Gallery, Derby
Wright studied under Thomas Hudson in London. In 1771 he became a member of the Society of Art and in 1784 of the Royal Academy. A visit to Italy, 1773-1775, gave him the opportunity to study the old masters. Caravaggio and his followers seem to have fascinated him particularly as shown in his later work with its dramatic light contrasts. On his return to England he tried briefly to set up a portrait practice in Bath, but then went back to Derby where he remained. Although primarily a portraitist, he also worked on his discovery of the scientific genre painting. He developed an understanding of how to refine the effect of lighting in order to bring emotion into an apparently objective atmosphere. In landscapes, too, he was innovative in his use of light sources.
November 10, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
c. 1768
Oil on canvas, 183 x 244 cm
National Gallery, London
Most of Joseph Wright’s paintings explore the effects of light and illumination. He counted amongst his close friends a number of factory owners and scientists, the very people who were the driving force behind the changes that came with the dawn of the industrial age, which was to bring so much profit and wreak such disaster. He was fascinated by mankind’s encounter with technology innovation and invention, and with the myth of a new era which he monumentalised in his paintings. The light that Caravaggio used to project his revelations and celestial visions seems to have fascinated Wright as well. But the spectator soon realizes that any similarity is misleading. In the work of Caravaggio, the source of light remains unknown so that it seems almost supernatural. Wright, on the other hand, uses light for dramatic effect. The experiment carried out by the elderly, long-haired scholar thus becomes an exciting theatrical scene.
The scientist is demonstrating the principle of the vacuum, Using a pump, he has emptied the glass sphere of air, creating a vacuum in which a bird seems to be struggling to gasp its last breath. Pained, the little girl turns her face away as though witnessing the martyrdom of a saint. Here, we find religious iconography being used to portray a worldly situation, elevating the scientific experiment to a para-religious event.
November 10, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
1785
Oil on canvas, 102 x 127 cm
Derby Museum and Art Gallery, Derby
Wright had never crossed the Atlantic, but reading James Adair’s History of the American Indians (1775) he had found an account of the vigil kept by the widow of a brave ‘for the first moon … under his mourning war-pole’, and had painted his Widow of an Indian Chief to join three other pictures of women empowered by virtue, love or loyalty.
In this picture the Native American’s bearing is that of an antique statue, while the stormy shore with its volcano has more to do with Naples, which Wright had seen as a young man, than with America.
November 10, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
1766
Oil on canvas, 147,3 x 203,2 cm
Derby Museum and Art Gallery, Derby
Like other artists, Joseph Wright went to Italy, but he was more interested in its natural effects than its art. It is apt that he should be known as Wright of derby, for it was there that he was to find pioneers of science and industry who provided him with subject-matter and with patrons. His is a provincial milieu, with serious rather than sophisticated interests, more doggedly bourgeois than the capital, and still optimistic about the benefits of progress. As Hogarth has been the initiator of ‘la peinture morale’, so Wright was the initiator, and the finest exponent, of the century’s final contribution to genre: the industrial picture.
November 10, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
c. 1795
Oil on canvas, 81 x 107 cm
Derby Museum and Art Gallery, Derby
This late work of the artist, depicting a landscape near Chesterfield, shows reminiscences of his journey to Italy.
November 9, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
Allegory of the City of Madrid by Francisco Goya
1810
Oil on canvas, 260 x 195 cm
Museo Municipal, Madrid
At the end of 1809, during the French occupation of Madrid, Goya was chosen as ‘el pintor madrileno por excelencia’ to paint a portrait of Joseph Bonaparte for the City Council. In the absence of the French King, Goya composed this picture, described at the time as ‘certainly worthy of the purpose for which it was intended’, introducing the portrait of Joseph (after an engraving) in the medallion, to which the figure personifying Madrid points. With the changing fortunes of the war this portrait was replaced (by other hands) by the word ‘Constituci, by another portrait of Joseph, again by ‘Constituci’ and at the end of the war by a portrait of Ferdinand VII. Eventually in 1843 it received the present inscription ‘DOS DE MAYO’ (‘The second of May’) in reference to the popular rising against the French in Madrid in 1808. The surprisingly conventional allegorical composition is perhaps dictated by the purpose for which it was originally painted. It contrasts strikingly with the realism and fervour of the scenes from the rising which Goya painted four years later.
November 9, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
1788
Oil on canvas, 127 x 101 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Like Velaquez, Goya was also in demand as a painter of children. After he was appointed Painter to the King of Spain, Charles III, the conde de Altamira commissioned him to paint portraits of his family, including his youngest son, Don Manuel, born in 1784. The fashionably dressed child holds a pet magpie on a string. In the background three cats stare menacingly at the bird, traditionally a symbol of the soul, which gives the painting a sinister and unsettling character. Goya apparently intended this portrait as an illustration of the frail boundaries that separate a child’s world from the ever-present forces of evil.
November 9, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
1786-88
Oil on canvas, 210 x 127 cm
Del Arco Collection, Madrid
There are two other variants by the artist’s hands.
November 9, 2009 - Posted by wendyallartpainting1 - 0 Comments
1804-06
Oil on canvas, 120 x 79 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Bartolom?Sureda was the director of the Spanish royal textile, crystal, and ceramic factories.He taught Goya the technique of aquatint. In 1804 Sureda became director of the porcelain works at the Buen Retiro.
The companion-piece of the portrait, also in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, represents his wife.
