4 次查看TURNER, Joseph Mallord William (b. 1775, London, d. 1851, Chelsea) Rain, Steam and Speed The Great Western Railway before 1844 Oil on canvas, 91 x 122 cm National Gallery, London While in the 'Fighting Temeraire' Turner seemed to deplore the Industrial Revolution, his attitude in this, one of his last great works, is much more ambiguous. The 1840s was the period of 'railway mania' and the restless Turner appreciated the speed and comfort of this form of travel. An unreliable anecdote by Turner's champion, Ruskin, records the origins of this picture in a train ride during a rain storm, during which the artist is supposed to have stuck his head out of the window. Excited as ever by strong sensations, Turner replicates the experience in paint, although the viewer is imagined as seeing the approaching train from a high vantage point. The bridge was, and is, recognisable as Maidenhead Viaduct across the Thames between Taplow and Maidenhead, on the newly laid Great Western line to Bristol and Exeter. Begun on Brunel's design in 1837 and finished in 1839, the viaduct was the subject of controversy, critics of the GWR saying that it would fall down. The view is towards London; the bridge seen at the left is Taylor's road bridge, of which the foundation stone was laid in 1772. Once again Turner relies on Claude for the diagonal recession from foreground to a vanishing point at the centre of the picture. The aims of the two artists, however, are very different. The exaggeratedly steep foreshortening of the viaduct along which our eye hurtles to the horizon is used to suggest the speed at which the locomotive irrupts into view through the driving rain, headlight blazing. Ahead of it, disproportionately large, a hare proverbially swiftest of all animals bounds across the tracks; we doubt if it will win the race and escape with its life. A skiff is on the river far beneath, and in the distance a ploughman stoically turns his furrow. Virtuoso swirls and slashes, and smears and sprays of paint, simulate rain, steam and speed to blur these figures of the old countryside. Exhilaration and regret are mingled with alarm; in a second we must leap aside to let the iron horse roar by. --- Keywords: -------------- Author: TURNER, Joseph Mallord William Title: Rain, Steam and Speed The Great Western Railway Form: painting Time-line: 1801-1850 School: English Type: landscape
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3 次查看POUSSIN, Nicolas (b. 1594, Les Andelys, d. 1665, Roma) The Finding of Moses 1651 Oil on canvas, 116 x 178 cm National Gallery, London This painting, the latest and grandest of Poussin's three versions of the theme, was acquired by the National Gallery jointly with the National Museum of Wales in 1988 and is shown alternately in London and Cardiff. Poussin illustrated events from the life of Moses at least nineteen times. It has been pointed out that when he could, he avoided painting scenes of saintly visions or martyrdoms, the stock-in-trade of seventeenth-century religious art. He concentrated instead on the central themes of Christianity, relating them both to their historical context in the ancient Near East and to the basic tenets of other religions, following an intellectual fashion of the day. Of the Old Testament subjects which he painted, the majority belong to the category of types, or prefigurations, of Salvation. From Early Christian times the Old Testament was read by Christians for its analogies with the New. Thus the waters of the Nile to which the infant Moses is consigned by his mother in 'an ark of bulrushes', following Pharaoh's cruel order to drown all the male Israelite babies (Exodus 1:2), were likened to the waters of baptism. But Poussin's interest in Moses may have been prompted also by his identification with pagan deities; as a contemporary writer influenced by these ideas wrote of this picture: 'He is Moses, the Mosche of the Hebrews, the Pan of the Arcadians, the Priapus of the Hellespont, the Anubis of the Egyptians.' All these ideas reverberate throughout the painting. The baby on whom Pharaoh's daughter has taken pity resembles the Christ Child blessing the Magi or the shepherds in a scene of the Adoration. In the background on the left an Egyptian priest worships the dog-shaped god Anubis (barely visible now that the surface paint has grown thin and transparent). We know we are in Egypt because on the rock above the main scene a river god, symbolising the Nile, embraces a sphinx, palm trees stand on the shore and an obelisk rises up behind a stately temple. (Curiously, the many-windowed buildings with which Poussin, who had never been there, endows Pharaoh's country now resemble modern resort hotels.) The main interest and beauty of the painting, however, do not reside in its possible symbolism, but in the wonderful grouping of the figures, all women to contrast with an analogous group of men in Christ healing the Blind Man (now in the Louvre), painted for the same patron the year before. Each plays her role in the dramatic tale, the princess generous and commanding, the maids curious and delighted. The humbler figure in a white shift at Moses' head may be his sister who watched from nearby to see what would happen to him, and recommended their mother to Pharaoh's daughter as a wet nurse. It is tempting to see their brilliant draperies as a compliment to Poussin's patron, the Lyon silk merchant Reynon. Bodies and colours, each distinct and separate, combine in ample rhythms across the picture surface, echoed by the rocks beyond. It is at once solemn and joyful, as befits a scene in which a child is rescued from death, and through him an entire people is saved. --- Keywords: -------------- Author: POUSSIN, Nicolas Title: The Finding of Moses Time-line: 1601-1650 School: French Form: painting Type: religious
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Biographical Information2 次查看GLEYRE, MARC CHARLES GABRIEL (1806-1874), French painter, of Swiss origin, was born at Chevilly in the canton of Vaud on the 2nd of May 1806. His father and mother died while he was yet a boy of some eight or nine years of ago; and he was brought up by an uncle at Lyons, who sent him to the industrial school of that city. Going up to Paris a lad of seventeen or nineteen, he spent four years in close artistic study in Hersents studio, in Suisses academy, in the galleries of the Louvre. To this period of laborious application succeeded four years of meditative inactivity in Italy, where he became acquainted with Horace Vernet and Leopold Robert; and six years more were consumed in adventurous wanderings in Greece, Egypt, Nubia and Syria. At Cairo he was attacked with ophthalmia, and in the Lebanon he was struck down by fever; and he returned to Lyons in shattered health. On his recovery he proceeded to Paris, and, fixing his modest studio in the rue de Universit, began carefully to work out the conceptions which had been slowly shaping themselves in his mind. Mention is made of two decorative panels Diana leaving the Bath, and a Young Nubian as almost the first fruits of his genius; but these did not attract public attention till long after, and the painting by which he practically opened his artistic career was the Apocalyptic Vision of St John, sent to the Salon of 1840. This was followed in 1843 by Evening, which at the time received a medal of the second class, and afterwards became widely popular under the title of the Lost Illusions. It represents a poet seated on the bank of a river, with drooping head and wearied frame, letting his lyre slip from a careless hand, and gazing sadly at a bright company of maidens whose song is slowly dying from his ear as their boat is borne slowly from his sight.
In spite of the success which attended these first ventures, Gleyre retired from public competition, and spent the rest of his life in quiet devotion to his own artistic ideals, neither seeking the easy applause of the crowd, nor turning his art into a means of aggrandizement; and wealth. After 1845, when he exhibited the Separation of the Apostles, he contributed nothing to the Salon except the Dance of the Bacchantes in 1849. Yet he laboured steadily and was abundantly productive. He had an infinite capacity of taking pains, and when asked by what method he attained to such marvellous perfection of workmanship, he would reply, "En y pensant toujours" ("By always thinking of it"). A long series of years often intervened between the first conception of a piece and its embodiment, and years not unfrequently between the first and the final stage of the embodiment itself. A landscape was apparently finished; even his fellow artists would consider it done; Gleyre alone was conscious that he had not found his sky. Happily for French art this high-toned laboriousness became influential on a large number of Gleyre's younger contemporaries; for when Delaroche gave up his studio of instruction he recommended his pupils to apply to Gleyre, who at once agreed to give them lessons twice a week, and characteristically refused to take any fee or reward. By instinct and principle he was a confirmed celibate: Fortune, talent, health, he had everything; but he was married, was his lamentation over a friend. Though he lived in almost complete retirement from public life, he took a keen interest in politics, and was a voracious reader of political journals. For a time, indeed, under Louis Philippe, his studio had been the rendezvous of a sort of liberal club. To the lastamid all the disasters that befell his countryhe was hopeful of the future, la raison finira bien par avoir raison. It was while on a visit to the Retrospective Exhibition, opened on behalf of the exiles from Alsace and Lorraine, that he died suddenly on the 5th of May 1874. He left unfinished the Earthly Paradise, a noble picture, which Tame has described as a dream of innocence, of happiness and of beauty: Adam and Eve standing in the sublime and joyous landscape of a paradise enclosed in mountains, a worthy counterpart to the Evening.
Among the other productions of his genius are the Deluge, which represents two angels speeding above the desolate earth, from which the destroying waters have just begun to retire, leaving visible behind them the ruin they have wrought; the Battle of the Lemanus, a piece of elaborate design, crowded but not cumbered with figures, and giving fine expression to the movements of the various bands of combatants and fugitives; the Prodigal Son, in which the artist has ventured to add to the parable the new element of mothers love, greeting the repentant youth with a welcome that shows that the mothers heart thinks less of the repentance than of the return; Ruth and Boaz; Ulysses and Nausicaa; Hercules at the feet of Omphale; the Young Athenian, or, as it is popularly called, Sappho; Minerva and the Nymphs; Venus and Adonis; Daphnis and Chloë; and Love and the Parcae. Nor must it be omitted that he left a considerable number of drawings and watercolours, and that we are indebted to him for a number of portraits, among which is the sad face of Ileine, engraved in the Revue des deux mondes for April 1852. In Clement's catalogue of his works there are 683 entries, including sketches and studies.
See Fritz Berthoud in Bibliothique universelle de Genive (1874); Albert de Montet, Did. biographique des Genevois et des Vaudois (1877); and Vie de Charles Gleyre (1877), written by his friend, Charles Clement, and illustrated by 30 plates from his works.
Source: Entry on the artist in the 1911 Edition Encyclopedia.
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5 次查看CUYP, Aelbert (b. 1620, Dordrecht, d. 1691, Dordrecht) The Dairy Maid 1650s Oil on canvas, 106 x 172 cm The Hermitage, St. Petersburg From the 1650s onward golden sunlight becomes the all-pervading element in Cuyp's paintings. It spreads warmth and beauty over the Dutch countryside, where sturdy animals - most often cows - take the place of human heroes. They stand or rest in complete harmony with nature, breathing the invigorating air of the never-distant sea. Herds of cows in Cuyp's paintings can be seen as allusions to the pride the Dutch took in their celebrated, profitable dairy industry. In literature and emblems of the time the cow was used as a symbol of various abstract ideas (fertility, loyalty, wealth, moderation, and as a symbol of the Netherlands). --- Keywords: -------------- Author: CUYP, Aelbert Title: The Dairy Maid Time-line: 1651-1700 School: Dutch Form: painting Type: landscape
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3 次查看HOBBEMA, Meyndert (b. 1638, Amsterdam, d. 1709, Amsterdam) Road on a Dyke 1663 Oil on canvas, 108 x 128,3 cm Private collection Meindert Hobbema was born in Amsterdam and was a pupil there of the landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael. Ruisdael had moved to Amsterdam from his native Haarlem by 1657 and Hobbema must have entered his studio shortly thereafter. Hobbema's technique in the depiction of landscape and his choice of forest scenes are derived from his master, but Hobbema's landscapes do not possess the grandeur or the threatening and even melancholy aspect of Ruisdael's. Hobbema's is a reassuringly docile vision of landscape, a town-dweller's account of the beauty of the countryside. It is an essentially decorative view, an anticipation of the rococo landscapes of the eighteenth century. The Road on a Dyke shows him placing themes taken from Ruisdael - the pool surrounded by trees, the large over-arching oak dominating the landscape; the country path rutted by the wheels of waggons - in an open, sunlit landscape. The figures and cattle in the right foreground are probably by Adriaen van de Velde, who often collaborated with Hobbema and other landscape painters. Hobbema's career is a reminder of how precarious a living was to be made from painting in Holland in the seventeenth century. In 1668 Hobbema was appointed to the post of wine-gauger to the Amsterdam guild of wine-importers, through his marriage to the maidservant of a burgomaster in Amsterdam. Although by no means an exalted position, the job did at least guarantee a regular income, and Hobbema almost gave up painting entirely: However, it was during these years that he produced some of his finest works, including The Avenue at Middelharnis, painted in 1689. --- Keywords: -------------- Author: HOBBEMA, Meyndert Title: Road on a Dyke Time-line: 1651-1700 School: Dutch Form: painting Type: landscape
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4 次查看JORDAENS, Jacob (b. 1593, Antwerpen, d. 1678, Antwerpen) Satyr and Peasant - Oil on canvas, 188,5 x 168 cm Mus閑s Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels The theme is taken from a fable by the ancient Greek author Aesop. In the right foreground a satyr gets up brusquely from a table to which he has been invited by a peasant family, and admonishes his host, sitting to the left, for cooling his hot porridge by blowing on it, whereas earlier he had warmed his cold hands with the same breath when travelling home with the satyr. The peasant "blows both hot and cold". This still popular expression means that someone does not take a clear position and is therefore unreliable. The earnestness of this moralising message appears, however, to be lost on this country group. The satyr's approach is greeted rather with astonishment. The plump young farmer's wife stops eating, but looks like she still does not understand clearly what is going on. Her child is uninterested by the satyr and looks at the viewer rascally. From inside the shadowed canopy of her wicker chair the grandmother bends her wrinkled head, in pointed contrast to the flushed head of the young peasant woman in the same pose beneath her. To the left the composition is rounded off by a fresh, softly smiling milkmaid. The lumbering dog under the table and the cock proudly enthroned on top of grandmother's chair seem equally unperturbed. The very low horizon, just visible under the peasant's chair, makes the country people tower above the viewer, lending them an imposing monumentality which one would normally expect with high-born people. As simple people they take, with a certain dignity, their appointed place in the social order. Jordaens' lifelike characterisation of the peasants, full of insight into human nature, and their closeness to nature expressed in their unpolished manners must have strongly seduced the city-dwellers commissioning these tableaux, who considered themselves as more civilised. In a later version, also in the Brussels museum, the fable appears to turn into a good-humoured joke. There the warm palette and the rich texture have made way for the more even reproduction of colours and materials that are typical of the artist's later work. Jordaens' oeuvre contains various other paintings on this theme, including one in the G鰐eborg museum that literally repeats the Brussels canvas. --- Keywords: -------------- Author: JORDAENS, Jacob Title: Satyr and Peasant Time-line: 1651-1700 School: Flemish Form: painting Type: mythological
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Walton Henry A Country Maid2 次查看
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A Country Maid10 次查看Oil on canvas
22 1/8 x 25 3/4 inches (56.5 x 65.5 cm)
Private collection
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