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1 次查看WEYDEN, Rogier van der (b. 1400, Tournai, d. 1464, Bruxelles) Deposition c. 1435 Oil on oak panel, 220 x 262 cm Museo del Prado, Madrid The earliest painting that can be ascribed to Rogier van der Weyden with any certainty is also the artist's greatest and most influential extant work: the great Deposition. It cannot have been painted very long after 1435, the year established by dendrochronological dating methods, which would also fit the circumstances of Rogier's life at the time. On the other hand, it must have been painted before 1443, the date of the earliest copy (in the Sint-Pieterskerk, Leuven). The Deposition was an altarpiece, intended for the chapel of the Confraternity of the Archers of Leuven, who commissioned it. (The two small crossbows in the lower spandrels of the tracery in the picture refer to the Confraternity.). Mary of Hungary (1505-1558), Regent of the Netherlands, acquired the painting from the Archers of Leuven before 1548. Later it came into the possession of her nephew King Philip II of Spain (1527-1598; king from 1556), who finally placed it in the monastery fortress of the Escorial he had founded near Madrid. At that time the Deposition formed the centre of a triptych, but there is no indication that the side wings were originally part of the work, it is more likely that the Deposition was originally a single panel. At about 2.2 meters high and 2.6 meters wide, the painting is very large by the usual standards of Early Netherlandish pictures; in terms of concept it is truly monumental. Ten figures in all cover the painted surface almost entirely, with their heads close to the upper edge of the panel. The body of Jesus has already been removed from the Cross, and is received by two elderly men, the bearded Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus. Surrounded by Jesus's mourning friends they are holding His dead body for a moment before setting it down. Mary is sinking to the ground in a faint beside her son, and is supported by John, the favourite disciple of Jesus, and by one of the holy women. On the extreme right, the despairing Mary Magdalene seems on the brink of collapse. The scene shown would have lasted for only a moment, but there is nothing momentary about its depiction, which is quite detached from the historical event. Rogier achieves this effect principally by placing the group in a painted niche like an altar shrine; the hill of Golgotha, the Place of Skulls where the Cross stood, is suggested only by skulls and arm bones on the narrow strip of stone floor. A connection is thus established with those gilded shrines holding painted statues that were a particularly costly and lavish form of retable. However, Rogier was not imitating a carved altar. He shows "live" figures rather than statues, and the life-like effect is emphasized by their appearance, almost life-size, in the place where mere wooden statues would be expected in an altar. Using such methods, Rogier gives them the three-dimensionality of statues but the look of a painting, which is much more life-like than sculpture. However, such considerations would have played only a minor part in Rogier's decision to set the scene in the painted altar niche. His primary concern was to emphasize the forcefulness of the depiction. Rogier even departs deliberately from what can be rationally imagined, and so breaks with the manner of realistic spatial depiction that had only recently been achieved in painting. The niche he paints is deep enough at the bottom of the picture to accommodate several figures, the upright of the Cross, and the ladder leaning against it; but in some areas at the top it seems to come close to the surface of the picture - the helper on the ladder is pressed tightly into the shallow upper space of the shrine, while the head of the bearded Joseph of Arimathaea just below seems to protrude from the picture. All the figures are brought forward by the golden back wall so that the space surrounds them closely: convincing as their actions may look individually, there would never really have been room for them all. The result is a sense of timelessness and an almost oppressive intensity. The painted niche offered Rogier another advantage: he could retain the gold background usual in medieval painting without offending against the demands of naturalistic depiction. The background of the painting is, in fact, a real gilded surface and also a pictorial representation of one - the back of the shrine. Rogier relates the figures to each other in a masterly composition, yet he emphasizes a number of different accents. The limp body of Christ is at the centre, and appears to be held quite naturally by the two men so that it is almost facing the observer, with hardly anything else encroaching on it. This is the part of the picture intended to inspire the greatest reverence, referring to the sacrament in which, in the Catholic faith, the host and the wine become the body and blood of Christ. During divine service the bread and wine would have stood on the altar below this picture, and when the priest raised the host above his head during the ceremony, the congregation would have seen him doing so directly in front of the painted body of Christ. The almost radiant body is immaculate and beautiful, undisfigured by the marks of scourging, and its delicate but almost swelling form has a distinctly sensuous softness. Only the marks of the five wounds are ugly gashes running with blood. However, the long trickle from the wound in Christ's side passes over the body like a delicate line that traces the curve of the stomach. The other main character in the picture is Mary. The Mother of God, sinking to the ground as if dead, forms a parallel to Christ, allowing the artist to create a link between the two main groups in a bold effect of composition, since they are moving in different directions: Christ is being carried away to the right, while Mary is falling to the left. At the same time, the correspondence between the figures illustrates an important theological idea of the time Mary's own compassionate suffering and her part in Christ's act of redemption. On the right of the picture not directly involved in the action, stands Mary Magdalene. Her magnificent, worldly garments, with the low-necked dress showing her full, sensuous breasts, indicate that she is the "great sinner" who has abandoned her depraved way of life and turned to Christ in repentance. In terms of composition, the Magdalene's figure closes off the picture on the right like a large bracket, matching the similarly bowed figure of John on the left. The curve of Mary Magdalene's cloak, sweeping forward into the picture, is echoed by the hem of the brocade robe worn by Nicodemus, and is continued in the left half of the picture by the folds in the Virgin Mary's blue dress. Such overlapping forms and lines determine the structure of the whole picture: the curve of Christ's body is continued in the Magdalene's left arm, and is crossed by the diagonal running in the opposite direction from the eyes of Nicodemus, through the hands of Christ and Mary, to the eye sockets of the skull. Christ's left arm too echoes the movements that seem to curve and turn on each other at the centre of the picture. The Deposition is among the outstanding masterpieces of Netherlandish art, and one of the mainstays of Rogier's fame. As the work of a painter aged 35 to 40, it can hardly be described as a youthful production, yet only with this painting can we begin to see Rogier more clearly as an artistic personality. Most important of all, the picture shows unmistakable similarities with some of the major works of the Master of Fl閙alle. --- Keywords: -------------- Author: WEYDEN, Rogier van der Title: Deposition Time-line: 1401-1450 School: Flemish Form: painting Type: religious
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2 次查看WEYDEN, Rogier van der (b. 1400, Tournai, d. 1464, Bruxelles) Descent from the Cross c. 1460 Pen over chalk drawing on paper, 240 x 357 mm Mus閑 du Louvre, Paris Paintings in the style of Rogier van der Weyden that are no longer extant are also recorded in several drawings not from the workshop of the Brussels town painter. Among the most notable is this Descent from the Cross, frequently said to derive from an original by Rogier himself, and sometimes even ascribed to Robert Campin. Surrounded by Christ's mourning friends, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are carrying the body just taken down from the Cross to the tomb. The very unusual outer area, with raised sections at the sides where angels hover with the nails and the crown of thorns, may refer to the place where the painting connected with this drawing was installed - perhaps it was to be placed below a tall window. The composition obviously appealed to contemporary taste, and was copied in painting and sculpture several times. It shares important elements with Rogier's most influential work, the Deposition (Prado, Madrid): there are considerable similarities in the construction of the scene, which again is transferred to an altar shrine, and in some of the figures, particularly those of the bearded Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene. The Virgin Mary and the flying angels, on the other hand, are more like the corresponding figures in the Crucifixion Triptych (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), and the figure of St John resembles his counterpart in the Seven Sacraments Altarpiece (Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp). However, while in a work like the St Columba Altarpiece (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) the figures, taken from various different pre-existing models, are merged into a meaningful whole, there are discrepancies in the Descent from the Cross. Joseph of Arimathea seems to be standing still as he holds the corpse, but the legs of Nicodemus suggest that he is walking away, an action that clashes with the Virgin's heartfelt embrace of Christ. And the Magdalene is obviously shown twice, as the woman with the vessel of ointment - the saint's attribute - standing on the extreme right, veiled as in the Crucifixion Triptych, and as the figure of the Magdalene from the Deposition, identifiable as the former sinner by her low-cut, expensive dress. These inconsistencies cannot be reconciled with Rogier's careful, confident style, and the drawing cannot therefore be considered a copy from a work conceived by him. In fact it is not yet clear whether it is a copy at all, or whether it may be a sketch for a design. --- Keywords: -------------- Author: WEYDEN, Rogier van der Title: Descent from the Cross Time-line: 1401-1450 School: Flemish Form: graphics Type: study
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Biographical Information1 次查看In describing Jehan Georges Vibert, an admirer of his wrote this: "One of the most original artists that Le Roux introduced to me is Vibert [.] He is middle-sized, stout for his age, -- for he seems only thirty-five, -- has a full, merry, happy, but very shrewd, sensible face; he loves work, and is, as are all these men, an indefatigable, untiring worker, but he loves also to take his play-hours. In the evening he goes to the, theater, and among his friends and himself removes his thoughts from his work and his studio."[1]
The cheerfulness, playfulness, and hint of shrewdness she describes in Vibert's character are traits that would also distinguish his works and make his reputation.
He was born on September 30th , 1840 in France. In his early years he was trained under Barrias and on April 4th, 1857, entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts. During the early part of his career he painted rather serious and dramatic subjects, such as "The Death of Narcissus" and "Christian Martyrs in the Lion pit."[2] He entered the Salon in 1863; found his first success with a medal at the 1864 salon, and won a financial prize at the universal exposition of 1867.
Around 1867, however, his style changed and instead of the dramatic and serious, he started painting "small things and niggling."[2] Instead of heroic Christians and tragic mythology, he turned to more homey subjects such as The Barber of Ambulart.
In 1870, while Paris was under siege to the Prussians, Vibert fought and was wounded at the battle of Malmaison. His courage, though, earned him the honor of being made a Knight of the Legion of Honor.
Though he was himself a hero, his growing attraction to the less serious subjects of genre did not ebb. Instead, it was stimulated by his interests in comedy and satire. Not only did he enjoy taking a break from work to go out to plays, but he also wrote several comedies, many of which were successfully produced at Paris theaters such as the Vaudeville. As well as from his own comedies, he gathered subject matter from the French fabulist Lafontaine (of whom he had a bust in his house)[1], and the satirist Jonathan Swift.
In 1878 he achieved his first popular success with a huge history painting. "The Apotheosis of Mr. Thiers" was the talk of Paris even before it was completed.[1] However, in spite of the success of this painting, he would spend most of his creative time on the humorous scenes that he enjoyed.
During the later part of his life, his interest turned to the clergy.[1] Paintings such as The Fortune Teller, The Diet, and Monk picking radishes satirized the clergy's irreligious indulgences or depicted them in homey situations to an audience used to seeing the church ennobled in traditional religious and historic works. These would be the paintings that would make his reputation.
In 1882, he was promoted to Officer of the Legion of Honor, for his painting this time. This growing reputation would make him one the the most sought after atelier masters at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. This would lead him to being one of the seven most influential artists of his time, along with Bouguereau, Cabanel, Meissonnier, Gérôme, Bonnat, and Lefebvre.[3]
He died suddenly of heart disease on July 28th 1902.
Looking at his satiric work of the clergy in a broader historical context, one can detect that they are "representative of the liberties emmanating from Enlightenment thinking that led to the world and culture shifting events of the American and French Revolutions. To spoof the clergy," as ARC Board Chairman, Fred Ross, explains "would have been to risk your life or imprisonment a century earlier, or even currently in Rome where Papal power was still at great strength."
"Thus Vibert was part of the growing democratization of Europe in which the artists and writers of the time were exposing the fraud and pomposity of big government and a hypocritical clergy that talked about walking in the shoes of the fisherman, and giving for god all worldly goods, while they themselves lived in the height of oppulance and luxury in great mansions with servants waiting on their every whim."
"The Fortune Teller (Tireuse des Cartes) is a particularly powerful example. What could be a greater spoof on holier-than-thou clerics, than to have two Cardinals soliciting the services of a prognosticator." In a late ninteenth century society that was still bearing the fruit of the Enlightenment, it is no wonder that Vibert's wit and satire could flourish and be valued.
In 1902 an important technical book was published by Vibert call La Science de la Peinture. Very hard to find, this book is one of several from the period that is widely sought by contemporary realists who are trying to resuscitate the techniques and accomplishments of the past, so that future creativity and experimentation can be built on the solid foundation of the masters.
"His works are in the collections of many major and minor museums including: Bordeaux, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Glasgow, Melbourne, New York, Rochefort, Saint Louis, Troyes, Versailles and Washington D.C. He was recently one of several featured artists (including 30 of is works) in a traveling exhibition called Cavaliers and Cardinals: Nineteenth Century French Anecdotal Paintings that was curated by Eric M.Zafran along with a full color catalog published by the Taft Museum in Cincinnati. It went to 3 museums, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington and the Arnot Art Museum in Elmira New York between June 25, 1992 and January 17, 1993. His paintings can be found in many important private collections, including three works in that of the [ARC] Board Chairman and his wife, Fred and Sherry Ross." (FR)
Footnote 1: Letter from Mrs. Brewster of Rome. Artists of the Nineteenth Century and Their Works. Clara Erskine Clement and Lawrence Hutton. 1969 (originally 1877), North Point Inc., St. Louis.
Footnote 2: Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers. M. Bryan. 1910, George Bell and Sons, London.
Footnote 3: Published speech by Fred Ross. Originally given at the University of Memphis, December 1st, 1998.
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Biographical Information2 次查看HARPIGNIES, HENRI (1819-1916), French landscape painter, born at Valenciennes in 1819, was intended by his parents for a business career, but his determination to become an artist was so strong that it conquered all obstacles, and he was allowed at the age of twenty-seven to enter [Jean-Alexis] Achard's [1807-1884] atelier in Paris. From this painter he acquired a groundwork of sound constructive draughtsmanship, which is so marked a feature of his landscape painting. After two years under this exacting teacher he went to Italy, whence he returned in 1850. During the next few years he devoted himself to the painting of children in landscape setting, and fell in with Corot [1796-1875] and the other Barbizon masters, whose principles and methods are to a certain extent reflected in his own personal art. To Corot he was united by a bond of warm friendship, and the two artists went together to Italy in 1860. On his return, he scored his first great success at the Salon, in 1861, with his Lisire de bois sur les bords de l'Allier. After that year he was a regular exhibitor at the old Salon; in 1886 he received his first medal for Le Soir dans la campagne de Rome (Evening in the Roman Countryside), which was acquired for the Luxembourg Gallery. Many of his best works were painted at Brisson in the Bourbonnais, as well as in the Nivernais and the Auvergne. Among his chief pictures are Soir sur les bords de la Loire (1861), Les Corbeaux (1865), Le Soir (1866), Le Saut-du-Loup (1873), La Loire (1882), and Vue de Saint-Priv (1883). He also did some decorative work for the Paris Opera: the Valle d'Egrie panel, which he showed at the Salon of 1870.
Source:
Entry on the artist in the 1911 Edition Encyclopedia Britannica.
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Biographical Information3 次查看MANTEGNA, ANDREA (1431-1506), one of the chief heroes in the advance of painting in Italy, was born in Vicenza, of very humble parentage. It is said that in his earliest boyhood Andrea was, like Giotto [1267-1337], put to shepherding or cattle-herding; this is not likely, and can at any rate have lasted only a very short while, as his natural genius for art developed with singular precocity, and excited the attention of Francesco Squarcione [1397-1468], who entered him in the gild of painters before he had completed his eleventh year.
Squarcione, whose original vocation was tailoring, appears to have had a remarkable enthusiasm for ancient art, and a proportionate faculty for acting, with profit to himself and others, as a sort of artistic middleman; his own performances as a painter were merely mediocre. He travelled in Italy, and perhaps in Greece also, collecting antique statues, reliefs, vases, &c., forming the largest collection then extant of such works, making drawings from them himself, and throwing open his stores for others to study from, and then undertaking works on commission for which his pupils no less than himself were made available. As many as one hundred and thirty-seven painters and pictorial students passed through his school, established towards 1440 which became famous all over Italy. Mantegna was, as he deserved to be, Squarcione's favorite pupil. Squarcione adopted him as his son, and purposed making him the heir of his fortune. Andrea was only seventeen when he painted, in the church of S. Sofia in Padua, a Madonna picture of exceptional and recognized excellence. He was no doubt fully aware of haying achieved no common feat, as he marked the work with his name and the date, and the years of his age. This painting was destroyed in the 17th century.
As the youth progressed in his studies, he came under the influence of Jacopo Bellini [c.1400-1470], a painter considerably, superior to Squarcione, father of the celebrated painters Giovanni [c.1430-1516] and Gentile [c.1429-1507], and of a daughter Nicolosia; and in 1454 Jacopo gave Nicolosia to Andrea in marriage. This connection of Andrea with the pictorial rival of Squarcione is generally assigned as the reason why the latter became alienated from the son of his adoption, and always afterwards hostile to him. Another suggestion, which rests, however, merely on its own internal probability, is that Squarcione had at the outset used his pupil Andrea as the unavowed executant of certain commissions, but that after a while Andrea began painting on his own account, thus injuring the ptofessional interests of his chief. The remarkably definite and original style formed by Mantegna may be traced out as founded on the study of the antique in Squarcione's atelier, followed by a diligent application of principles of work exemplified by Paolo Uccello [1397-1475] and Donatello [1386-1466], with the practical guidance and example of Jacopo Bellini in the sequel.
Among the other early works of Mantegna are the fresco of two saints over the entrance porch of the church of S. Antonio in Padua, 1452, and an altar-piece of St Luke and other saints for the church of S. Giustina, now in the Brera Gallery in Milan, 1453. It is probable, however, that before this time some of the pupils of Squarcione, including Mantegna, had already begun that series of frescoes in the chapel of S. Cristoforo, in the church of S. Agostino degli Eremitani, by, which the great painter's reputation was fully confirmed, and which remain to this day conspicuous among his finest achievements. The now censorious Squarcione found much to carp at in the earlier works of this series, illustrating the life of St James; he said the figures were like men of stone, and had better have been coloured stone-colour at once. Andrea, conscious as he was of his own great faculty and mastery, seems nevertheless to have felt that there was something in his old preceptor's strictures; and the later subjects, from the legend of St Christopher, combine with his other excellences more of natural character and vivacity. Trained as he had been to the study of marbles and the severity of the antique, and openly avowing that he considered the antique superior to nature as being more eclectic in form, he now and always affected precision of outline, dignity of idea and of figure, and he thus tended towards rigidity, and to an austere wholeness rather than gracious sensitiveness of expression. His draperies are tight and closely folded, being studied (as it is said) from models draped in paper and woven fabrics gummed. Figures slim, muscular and bony, action impetuous but of arrested energy, tawny landscape, gritty with littering pebbles, mark the athletic hauteur of his style. He never changed, though he developed and perfected, the manner which he had adopted in Padua; his colouring, at first rather neutral and undecided, strengthened and matured. There is throughout his works more balancing of colour than fineness of tone. One of his great aims was optical illusion, carried out by a mastery of perspective which, though not always impeccably correct, nor absolutely superior in principle to the highest contemporary point of attainment, was worked out by himself with strenuous labor, and an effect of actuality astonishing in those times.
Successful and admired though he was in Padua, Mantegna left his native city at an early age, and never afterwards resettled there; the hostility of Squarcione has been assigned as the cause. The rest of his life was passed in Verona, Mantua and Rome - chiefly Mantua; Venice and Florence have also been named, but without confirmation.
It may have been in 1459 that he went to Verona; and he painted, though not on the spot, a grand altar-piece for the church of S. Zeno, a Madonna and angels, with four saints on each side. The Marquis Lodovico Gonzaga of Mantua had for some time been pressing Mantegna to enter his service; and the following year, 1460, was perhaps the one in which he actually established himself at the Mantuan court, residing at first from time to time at Goito [EN], but, from December 1466 onwards, with his family in Mantua itself. His engagement was for a salary of 75 lire (about 30) a month, a sum so large for that period as to mark conspicuously the high regard in which his art was held. He was in fact the first painter of any eminence ever domiciled in Mantua. He built a stately house in the city, and adorned it with a multitude of paintings. The house remains, but the pictures have perished. Some of his early Mantuan works are in that apartment of the Castello which is termed the Camera degli Sposifull compositions in fresco, including various portraits of the Gonzaga family, and some figures of genii, &c. In 1488 he went to Rome at the request of Pope Innocent VIII. [1432-1492], to paint the frescoes in the chapel of the Belvedere in the Vatican; the marquis of Mantua (Federigo) created him a cavaliere before his departure. This series of frescoes, including a noted Baptism of Christ, was ruthlessly destroyed by Pius VI. [1717-1799] in laying out the Museo Pio-Clementino. The pope treated Mantegna with less liberality than he had been used to at the Mantuan court; but on the whole their connection, which ceased in 14[??] was not unsatisfactory to either party. Mantegna then returned to Mantua, and went on with a series of worksthe nine tempera pictures, each of them 9 ft. square, of the Triumph of Caesar which he had probably begun before his leaving for Rome, and which are now in Hampton Court. These superbly invented and designed compositions, gorgeous with all splendour of subject-matter and accessory, and with the classical learning and enthusiasm of one of the master-spirits of the age, have always been accounted of the first rank among Mantegnas works. They were sold in 1628 along with the bulk of the Mantuan art treasures, and were not, as is commonly said, plundered in the sack of Mantua in 1630. They are now greatly damaged by patchy repaintings. Another work of Mantegnas later years was the so-called Madonna della Vittoria, now in the Louvre. It was painted in tempera about 1495, in commemoration of the battle of Fornovo, which Gianfrancesco Gonzaga [1395–1444] found it convenient to represent to his lieges as an Italian victory, though in fact it had been a French victory; the church which originally housed the picture was built from Mantegna's own design. The Madonna is here depicted with various saints, the archangel Michael and St Maurice holding her mantle, which is extended over the kneeling Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, amid a profusion of rich festooning and other accessory. Though not in all respects of his highest order of execution, this counts among the most obviously beautiful and attractive of Mantegna's works from which the qualities of beauty and attraction are often excluded, in the stringent pursuit of those other excellences more germane to his severe genius, tense energy passing into haggard passion.
Vasari [1511-1574] eulogizes Mantegna for his courteous, distinguished and praiseworthy deportment, although there are indications of his having been not a little litigious in disposition. With his fellow-pupils at Padua he had been affectionate; and for two of them, Dario da Trevigi [c.1420-c.1498] and Marco Zoppo [1433-1478], he retained a steady friendship. That he had a high opinion of himself was natural, for no artist of his epoch could produce more manifest vouchers of marked and progressive attainment. He became very expensive in his habits, fell at times into difficulties, and had to urge his valid claims upon the marquis's attention. After his return to Mantua from Rome his prosperity was at its height, until the death of his wife. He then formed some other connection, and became at an advanced age the father of a natural son, Giovanni Andrea; and at the last, although he continued launching out into various expenses and schemes, he had serious tribulations, such as the banishment from Mantua of his son Francesco, who had incurred the marquiss displeasure. Perhaps the aged master and connoisseur regarded as barely less trying the hard necessity of parting with a beloved antique bust of Faustina. Very soon after this transaction he died in Mantua, on the 13th of September 1506. In 1517 a handsome monument was set up to him by his sons in the church of S. Andrea, where he had painted the altar-piece of the mortuary chapel.
Mantegna was no less eminent as an engraver, though his history in that respect is somewhat obscure, partly because he never signed or dated any of his plates, unless in one single disputed instance, 1472. The account which has come down to us is that Mantegna began engraving in Rome, prompted by the engravings produced by Baccio Baldini [c.1436-1487] of Florence after Sandro Botticelli [1445-1510]; nor is there anything positive to invalidate this account, except the consideration that it would consign all the numerous and elaborate engravings made by Mantegna to the last sixteen or seventeen years of his life, which seems a scanty space for them, and besides the earlier engravings indicate an earlier period of his artistic style. It has been suggested that he began engraving while still in Padua, under the tuition of a distinguished goldsmith, Niccolflo. He engraved about fifty plates, according to the usual reckoning; some thirty of them are mostly accounted indisputableoften large, full of figures, and highly studied. Some recent connoisseurs, however, ask us to restrict to seven the number of his genuine extant engravingswhich appears unreasonable. Among the principal examples are Roman Triumphs (not the same compositions as the Hampton Court pictures), A Bacchanal Festival, Hercules and Antaeus, Marine Gods, Judith with the Head of Holophernes, the Deposition from the Cross, the Entombment, the Resurrection, the Man of Sorrows, the Virgin in a Grotto. Mantegna has sometimes been credited with the important invention of engraving with the bonn on copper. This claim cannot be sustained on a comparison of dates, but at any rate he introduced the art into upper Italy. Several of his engravings are supposed to be executed on some metal less hard than copper. The technique of himself and his followers is characterized by the strongly marked forms of the design, and by the oblique formal hatchings of the shadows. The prints are frequently to be found in two states, or editions. In the first state the prints have been taken off with the roller, or even by handpressing, and they are weak in tint; in the second state the printing press has been used, and the ink is stronger.
The influence of Mantegna on the style and tendency of his age was very marked, and extended not only to his own flourishing Mantuan school, but over Italian art generally. His vigorous perspectives and trenchant foreshortenings pioneered the way to other artists: in solid antique taste, and the power of reviving the aspect of a remote age with some approach to system and consistency, he distanced all contemporary competition. He did not, however, leave behind him many scholars of superior faculty. His two legitimate sons were painters of only ordinary ability. His favorite pupil was known as Carlo del Mantegna [active 1478-1501]; Caroto of Verona [1488-c.1562] was another pupil, Bonsignori [c.1460-1519] an imitator. Giovanni Bellini, in his earlier works, obviously followed the lead of his brother-in-law Andrea.
The works painted by Mantegna, apart from his frescoes, are not numerous; some thirty-five to forty are regarded as fully .authehticated. We may name, besides those already, specified in the Naples Museum, St Euphemia, a fine early work; in Casa Melii, Milan, the Madonna and Child with Chanting Angels (1461); in the Tribune of the Uffizi, Florence, three pictures remarkable for scrupulous finish; in the Berlin Museum, the Dead Christ with two Angels; in the Louvre, the two celebrated pictures of mythic allegory Parnassus and Minerva Triumphing over the Vices; in the National Gallery, London, the Agony in the Garden, the Virgin and Child Enthroned, with the Baptist and the Magdalen, a late example; the monochrome of Vestals, brought from Hamilton Palace; the Triumph of Scipio (or Phrygian Mother of the Gods received by the Roman Commonwealth), a tempera in chiaroscuro, painted only a few months before the master's death; in the Brera, Milan, the Dead Christ, with the two Manes weeping, a remarkable tour de force in the way of foreshortening, which, though it has a stunted appearance, is in correct technical perspective as seen from all points of view. With all its exceptional merit, this is an eminently ugly picture. It remained in Mantegna's studio unsold at his death, and was disposed of to liquidate debts.
Not to speak of earlier periods, a great deal has been written concerning Mantegna of late years. See the works by Maud Crutwell (1901), Paul Kristeller (1901), H. Thode (1897), Paul Yriarte (1901), Julia Cartwright, Mantegna and Francia (188?). (W. M. R.).
Source: Entry on the artist in the 1911 Edition Encyclopedia
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Biographical Information4 次查看MEISSONIER, JEAN LOUIS ERNEST (1815—1891), French painter, was born at Lyons on the 21st of February 1815. From his schooldays he showed a taste for painting, to which some early sketches, dated 1823, bear witness. After being placed with a druggist, he obtained leave from his parents to become an artist, and, owing to the recommendation of a painter named [Jules] Potier, himself a second class Prix de Rome, he was admitted to Leon Cogniet’s studio. He paid short visits to Rome and to Switzerland, and exhibited in the Salon of 1831 a picture then called Les Bourgeois Flamands (Dutch Burghers) but also known as The Visit to the Burgomaster, subsequently purchased by Sir Richard Wallace, in whose collection (at Hertford House, London) it is, with fifteen other examples of this painter. It was the first attempt in France in the particular genre which was destined to make Meissonier famous microscopic painting—miniature in oils. Working hard for daily bread at illustrations for the publishers — Curmer, Hetze and Duboclier — he also exhibited at the Salon of 1836 the Chess Player and the Errand Boy. After some not very happy attempts at religious painting, he returned, under the influence of Chenavard, to the class of work he was born to excel in, and exhibited with much success the Game of Chess (1841), the Young Man playing the Cello (1842), The Painter in his Studio (1843), The Guard Room, the Young Man looking at Drawings, the Game of Piquet (1845), and the Game of Bowls — works which show the finish and certainty of his technique, and assured his success. After his Soldiers (1848) he began A Day in June, which was never finished, and exhibited A Smoker (1849) and Bravos (Les Bravi, 5852). In 1855 he touched the highest mark of his achievement with The Gamblers and The Quarrel (La Rixe), which was presented by Napoleon III, to the English Court. His triumph was sustained at the Salon of 1857, when he exhibited nine pictures, and drawings; among them the Young Man of the Time of the Regency, The Painter, The Shoeing Smith, The Musician, and A Reading at Diderot’s. To the Salon of 1861 he sent The Emperor at Solferino, A Shoeing Smith, A Musician, A Painter, and M. Louis Fould; to that of 1864 another version of The Emperor at Solferino, and 1814. He subsequently exhibited A Gamblers’ Quarrel (1865), and Desaix and the Army of the Rhine (1867). Meissonier worked with elaborate care and a scrupulous observation of nature. Some of his works, as for instance his 1807, remained ten years in course of execution. To the great Exhibition of 1878 he contributed sixteen pictures: the portrait of Alexandre Dumas which had been seen at the Salon of 1877, Cuirassiers of 1805, A Venetian Painter, Moreau and his Staff before Hobenlinden, a Portrait of a Lady the Road to La Salice, The Two Friends, The Outpost of the Grand Guard, A Scout, and Dictating his Memoirs. Thenceforward he exhibited less in the Salons, and sent his work to smaller exhibitions. Being chosen president of the Great National Exhibition in 1883, he was represented there by such works as The Pioneer, The Army of the Rhine, The Arrival of the Guests, and Saint Mark. On the 24th of May 1884 an exhibition was opened at the Petit Gallery of Meissonier’s collected works, including 146 examples. As president of the jury on painting at the Exhibition of 1889 he contributed some new pictures. In the following year the New Salon was formed (the National Society of Fine Arts), and Meissonier was-president. He exhibited there in 1890 his picture 1807; a1so in 1891, shortly after his death, his Barricade was displayed there. A less well-known class of work than his painting is a series of etchings: The Last Supper, The Skill of Vuillaume the Lute Player, The Little Smoker, The Old Smoker, the Preparations for a Duel, Anglers, Troopers,’ The Reporting Sergeant, and Polichinelle, in the Hertford House collection. He also tried lithography, but the prints are now scarcely to be found.
Of all the painters of the century. Meissonier was one of the most fortunate in the matter of payments. His Cuirassiers, now in the late duc d’Aumale’s collection at Chantilly, was bought from the artist for £10,000 sold at Brussels for £11,000, and finally resold for £16,000 Besides his genre portraits, he painted some others: those of Doctor Lefevre, of Chenavard, of Vanderbilt,’ of Doctor Guyon, and of Stanford. He also collaborated with the painter Français in a picture of The Park at St Cloud.
In 1838 Meissonier married the sister of M. Steinbeil, a painter. Meissonier was attached by Napoleon III to the imperial staff, and accompanied him during the campaign in Italy and at the beginning of the war in 1870. During the siege of Paris in 1871 he was colonel of a marching regiment. In 1840 he was awarded a third-class medal, a second-class medal in 1841 first-class medals in 1843 and 1844 and medals of honour at the great exhibitions. In 1846 he was appointed knight of the Legion of Honour and promoted to the higher grades in 1856, 1867 (June 29), and 1880 (July 12), receiving the Grand Cross in 1889 (Oct. 29). He nevertheless cherished certain ambitions which remained unfulfilled. He hoped to become a professor at the École des Beaux Art, but the appointment he desired was never given to him. [...]
Source: Entry on the artist in the 1911 Edition Encyclopedia.
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Biographical Information0 次查看Anna Lea Merritt was born in Philadelphia in 1844, the daughter of Joseph Lea a manufacturer. She studied art in Italy, Germany, and Paris, ultimately settling England in the late 1860s. She married Henry Merrit, artist, and critic, who was twenty two years her senior. Tragically he died three months after the wedding. Anna Merritt edited a selection of her husband’s writings for publication. She built up a thriving practice as a portrait painter, in which artistic sphere she was highly talented - her picture of two little sisters, Jacqueline and Isura Loraine, for example is highly accomplished. In later years she often wintered in Egypt. She lived in Hampshire.
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Contemporary Comment - The Magazine of Art 1895
In the front rank of our noted women-painters stands Mrs Anna Lea Merritt, who, although a native of America, has painted so much and so well in England that English art claims her for its own. Mrs Merritt was not taught in the schools, and to this fact is probably attributable the great individuality to be noted in her works. She belongs to no particular religion in art, and, indeed has attempted no school or class whatsoever, the close air of such on a single attempt, proving intolerable to her delicate chest. But she diligently attended Mr Marshall’s lectures on anatomy, a subject to which she devoted much attention and study, as she did also to drawing from the antique and from life. From Professor Legros she had a few private lessons, and from Mr Henry Merritt (whom she afterwards married) and his friends, Mr Richmond RA, and Sir William Boxall, RA, she received severe but kindly criticism and genuine encouragement.
Much of Mrs Merritt’s work has been in portraiture. Among her best known sitters have been James Russell Lowell, Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Sir William Boxall. Paining concurrently with these, Mrs Merritt has always endeavoured to keep some ideal work on hand. One was purchased under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest. In 1892 and 1893 Mrs Merritt was unrepresented at Burlington House. In the former because ill-health compelled her to winter in Egypt; in the latter because, having undertaken some decorative pictures for the Women’s Building in Chicago, she was obliged to relinquish all other work, and devote all her energies to these, which received an award and medal.
During the last year Mrs Merritt has been engaged upon a work not hitherto usually confided to a woman-the frescoes of St Martin’s Church at Chilworth. These represent for large works from the history of Our Lord, and four single figures of angels and saints, the figures being nearly life-size. The subjects chosen are the Nativity, Raising the Widow’s Son, the Passion, and the Resurrection. Mrs Merrit was at one time a member of the Painter-Etchers’ Society, and in that capacity showed many original etchings. Her first use of the needle was to etch the portrait of her husband for the memoir which she published with his collected writings in 1879
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Biographical Information1 次查看James Jacques Joseph Tissot
by Paul Ripley
Tissot was born Jacques Joseph Tissot in Nantes, to a middle class family. He initially studied art at Beaux-Arts in Paris. Tissot’s early paintings are mainly historical, & heavily influenced by the Dutch School. He came into contact with the Impressionists as a young man, and was leading a fairly unadventurous life. This was changed totally by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Following the crushing French defeat in this war, and the subsequent fall of the Paris Commune, Tissot decided to move to London, which he did in 1871. This move must have caused considerable problems in his life, and the painter needed to earn some money quickly. Tissot started, therefore, to paint accomplished highly finished pictures of London society ,and social events, including the famous ‘Too Early’ These pictures were virtually an instant success with the art viewing and buying public, but not with the critics.
Tissot’s succcess in London aroused considerable jealousy amongst his Impressionist colleagues in France, where he was regarded as a very minor figure. The critical hostility Tissot’s pictures met with, is not easy for us to understand today. The main criticisms were that the pictures were really only painted photographs, and they were vulgar. There is some truth in the first case, though the paintings show dazzling technique, and a dash of Gallic wit and sophistication, home grown English artists were quite unable to match. In the second case the basis of the adverse comment, was the class-consciousness of British society at that time. The pictures were held to show shallow nouveau-riche society at it’s worst.
In 1876 an event occurred which changed Tissot’s life. He met a young and attractive Irish divorcee called Kathleen Newton. Kathleen had married an English army officer in India. She had formed an adulterous relationship with another man, borne his child, and returned home in disgrace, beyond the pale of polite society. Kathleen Newton became Tissot’s mistress, and moved into his London home. This necessitated a radical change in his lifestyle, as the sophisticated, well-dressed, and good-looking painter had become a popular figure socially. Tissot withdrew from the social round, living quietly at his Grove End home with Kathleen. They did, however, entertain less conventional friends from the artistic community. Kathleen Newton became Tissot’s muse, and appeared in many of his pictures. She was in every sense the love of his life.
Another attraction for Tissot was the Port of London, and the river Thames. His paintings with the river as the background have an evocative atmosphere missing in his other work. One can almost smell the smoke, and hear the shouts of the dockers and watermen.
In 1882, Kathleen Newton died of consumption at the age of twenty eight. Tissot never recovered from this tragedy, and moved back to Paris within a week of her death .He was never again romantically involved with woman. His house in London, was sold to Alma-Tadema. Initially Tissot carried on painting society and genre pictures in Paris, but soon gave this up, devoting the rest of his life to painting religious scenes. He visited the Middle- East twice to find genuine backgrounds for his religious paintings. In late life Tissot became increasingly interested in Spiritualism, a vogue of the time, and of course his motivation for this interest is not a mystery.
Tissot died at Buillon on Friday the 8th August 1902.
A great artist, his beautiful fallen woman, and a tragic love story. It has everything!
In recent years Japanese and American collectors have fuelled a vast increase in the value of Tissot paintings. The critics remain hostile. Does it matter?
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1 次查看GREUZE, Jean-Baptiste (b. 1725, Tournus, d. 1805, Paris) Portrait of George Gougenot de Croissy c. 1758 Oil on canvas, 81 x 64 cm Mus閑s Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels It is probably shortly after their marriage on 14 March 1757 that Greuze painted the portraits of George Gougenot de Croissy and his wife, Marie-Ang閘ique de Varenne, the daughter of the King's equerry and counsellor-secretary. Both paintings remained together until 1937, when they were bought by two separate collectors at an auction in Paris. In 1951 the portrait of George Gougenot found its way into the Brussels museum, and that of his wife 25 years later into the New Orleans Museum of Art. George Gougenot was the younger brother of Abb?Louis Gougenot, Greuze's friend and protector. He started his career in the navy, and followed his father as the King's counsellor-secretary. Gougenot was not only an art connoisseur, patron and an erudite man, but also showed interest in more general topics, publishing anonymously a study entitled Etat pr閟ent de la Pensylvanie (1756). In the portrait Gougenot wears a grey velvet costume, decorated with superbly reproduced cuffs and a jabot in "point d'argentan". His hand lies on the Spectator, an English journal, founded in London in 1711 to raise moral standards. The subtle grey gradations accentuate the penetrating look and the intelligent face, with the somewhat disdainful line around the mouth. The powdered wig, the refined representation of the fabric, and the vague, neutral background, produce an atmosphere of distinction and courtliness. In his anecdotal compositions, Greuze exhibits his preference for moralising scenes. Unlike certain contemporaries, among them Hubert Robert, with their love of antiques, Greuze instead prefers to seek his inspiration from rustics and sentimental bourgeois life. Alongside his often grandiloquent representations, Greuze also executed a number of elegant but also psychological portraits, such as the canvas discussed here, a typical example from the Rococo period. Although Greuze is not a born colourist, as are his French contemporaries Jean Antoine Watteau or Jean-Honor?Fragonard, he succeeds in imparting a warmth to this portrait by means of harmonic light gradations. The particular sensitivity with which it is painted can perhaps be explained by the painter's friendship for his noble model. --- Keywords: -------------- Author: GREUZE, Jean-Baptiste Title: Portrait of George Gougenot de Croissy Time-line: 1751-1800 School: French Form: painting Type: portrait
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Artist Letters2 次查看From: Lęon François Comerre
Header: Page 1 of 3
Source: Don Kurtz
Transcript:
My dear friend,
When you are confident in a friend and he has some kind of power you should not hesitate to ask him for favours. Also you won't be surprised if I recommend to you Miss Lecomte daughter of a senatore of the north of France. I promised that you would help her with some nice still lifes she has painted. If it's in your power make sure that one of them would be received. I would be very grateful. You know I don't have many friends among the jury and that's why I am counting on your.
It would be very kind of you to answer this letter when the results are in.
Thank you.
Leon Comerre
Mme Alice Lecomte
2004. Lampe Effects
2005. Bustard.
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Artist Letters3 次查看From: Georges Jules Victor Clairin
Header: Page 1 of 3 Letter about the death of Alexandre Dumas' son
Source: Don Kurtz
Transcript:
Villa Victoria
Cairo, Friday 29, 1895
So the terrible moment arrived !!!! This parting for ever. The telegram just arrived to Cairo. Our French Ministre Mr Cogordan (?) just let me know the horrific. When I kissed good bye our great Boss, my dear friend, I thought I would find him back six months later when I return, but death came to take him over - I went up in a corner of my hotel room and cried - I was thinking about you, I was thinking to Jeannine, to Collette and also to Madame Dumas.
What a deep gap this death will make amongst us ! What can I say more?, dear Friend. I am shaking your hand, crying with you. Please tell to my great friends, Jeannine, Collette, that I am thinking to them. Here the French colony becomes aware that a great french man has left us for ever. As I was known to be a friend of the prominent A. Dumas, the editor o
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Artist Letters {画家信件}3 次查看Paris April 23, 1902
My dear Pretet,
Amongst the persons I recommended to you, there is one to whom I am particularly concerned. He is M. Eugene Guillon, he made the portrait of the Duc d'Alencon. That poor man, I did not see his painting in the Salon, is in a pitiful state, he is one of my good friends and I would be very much obliged if you could do whatever possible for him.
Yours,
W. Bouguereau
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Biographical Information10 次查看The Royal Academy has again lost its President. Lord Leighton died in January, and now, in late summer it is our sad duty to record the death of his successor, Sir John Everett Millais, whose loss will be felt not only by his brother artists within and without the Royal Academy, but by many hundreds of others who admired and enjoyed the pictures that made him famous all over the world. He had been in ill health for a long time. Nearly two years ago the first indications of the disorder of the throat declared themselves, but down to about March last, though hoarseness was troublesome, Sir John Millais's general health was not affected. At that time however, a change for the worse took place. Early in May he caught a cold; the difficulty in breathing became much aggravated, and it was found necessary to perform a tracheotomy. This gave considerable relief for a time, and the improvement was such that Sir John was able to leave his bed and see his friends, with whom he conversed by means of a slate. A few days ago the disease took an unfavourable turn, the distinguished patient became unconscious. The end which was quite peaceful and without pain came at half-past 5 last evening, Lady Millais, Mr Everett Millais, and other members of the family being in the room.
Though some critics may be found to deny that Millais was one of the two or three greatest English painters of this century, declaring that in each direction of his art others have excelled him, some in portraiture, some in landscape, and some in genre, he was undoubtedly one of the most popular and, from some points of view, one of the most interesting of our artists. When one hears of a popular painter, one inevitably recalls that cheap art for the people, religious it may be, or melodramatic, but always very cheap indeed, which serves to bring mediocrity into prominence. With Millais the case was different. His popularity achieved early enough to turn the head of an inferior man, was due to nothing vulgar or pretentious, but solely to charming work and wholesome sentiment. His pictures appeal to us sometimes by the mere force of beauty, and sometimes by their plain pathos and their noble humanity. The Huguenot, for example, who refuses to accept from his lady the badge that is to save him at the expense of his honour, is just as popular as Colonel Lovelace's famous lines have been for more than two centuries, and for precisely the same reason. The Highlander, again whose order of release is brought to him by his young wife, is as pathetic and as popular a figure as can well be put upon canvas. The Black Brunswicker, and The Gambler's Wife, are in much the same vein of sentiment. Cinderella, even in its sixpenny reproductions, had delighted children of all ages; a still more recent picture, unhappily lending itself to the purposes of advertisement, has been an isolated thing of beauty on all our hoardings. Certainly no painter of any eminence has been a more general favourite, while preserving his art and refinement than Sir John Millais.
Nor, probably, are there many painters whose artistic development is more instructive. It often happens that an artist does not develop at all-that is, that his progress consists only in increased technical skill. In Millais's case though the plenitude of skill came long ago, there came also change, development, and progress of a higher and an intellectual kind. Early genius, early enthusiasm for a particular school, and an almost radical change in mature manhood-this is briefly the history of Sir John Millais. Of his early genius he gave ample proof while he was yet only a small boy. His later works have been for many years among the principal attractions at he Academy and other exhibitions.
John Everett Millais, son of John William Millais and Mary daughter of Richard Evermy was born on June 8, 1829. His birthplace was Southampton, but he must be reckoned as a Jerseyman, seeing that his family were among the natives of that island. The earliest recorded fact concerning him is that in 1835, the family being resident at Dinard, in Brittany, the child was in the habit of making vivacious sketches of French artillery officers stationed there. It was evident that he had already found his vocation in life. Drawings and sketches were produced by the dozen, and seemed so promising that when he was only eight years old-terrible ordeal for so young a boy-some of his performances were submitted to Sir Martin Shee, President of the Royal Academy. Sir Martin told the boy's mother that it would be better to train him for a sweep than an artist. But what successful man ever recommends his own profession? The result, however, of an inspection of the boy's work was that in the following year young Millais was sent, with the concurrence of the President to Sass's Academy, where his earliest successes brought him a silver medal from the Society of Arts. His second prize was gained two years afterwards when he was a student at the Royal Academy, and only eleven years old. About this time he was sent to a private school in Caroline Street, Bedford Square, where he remained for two or three years. The master was an able teacher, but young Millais's ruling passion was too strong for his other studies; he preferred his pencil to his books, and drew incessantly; he was nominally a schoolboy, but in reality an art student. The art training of that period was in every respect not absolutely unlike that received by Clive Neecombe and his friend Ridley. Historical pieces, such as would provoke a smile nowadays, were then much in vogue, and were the object of many a young painter's ambition. A good deal of well-painted drapery, and a number of figures, more or less skilfully grouped and all studied from the hantique, Sir, the glorious hantique, constituted as a rule these intelligent compositions. All the same it was not given to every boy of 16 to exhibit his pictures in public, and Millais was only 16 when he painted his first Academy picture of Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru, The work, boyish as it was, was much praised, and was immediately succeeded by more history-Dunstan's Emissaries seizing Queen Elgiva, and in another year or so by The Tribe of Benjamin seizing the Daughters of Shiloh. Then after The Widow's Mite, came the picture of Isabella, in 1849, which marks a turning point in Millais's artistic career. We may note in passing that this picture contains portraits of Mrs Hodgkinson, the wife of Millais's half-brother; of Dante Gabriel Rossetti; and of W Bell Scott. The picture emerged from retirement not many years ago, and was purchased by the Corporation of Liverpool for their Art Gallery.
It was at this time that that a remarkable, if not enduring, movement began in English Art-a movement which proceeded on definite principles, and had definite results. So much has been written from time to time of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood that we need only remind our readers in a few words that Millais at the age of 20, was one of it's members, the others being the two Rossettis, Holman Hunt, Woolner, G Collinson, and F G Stephens. Their journal the Germ was started in 1850 and preached above all things the earnestness of the new group. Their artistic creed enjoined the literal rendering of natural objects, no interference with nature, and no selection beyond the selection of the model. Details, even minute details were not to be generalised or omitted, but were to be rendered in a detailed manner. Roughly speaking the extreme of Pre-Raphaelitism was diametrically the opposite to the extreme of Impressionism. How far the truth of fact is compatible with the truth of Impressionism is a problem for philosophers as well as artists. We need not handle even the question, but note only the fact that at this period of his life Millais, with the natural and laudable enthusiasm of youth, was a member of the straitest sect his fellow artists. It was under this influence that he painted in 1850 Christ in the house of his Parents, a famous work with all the most marked Pre-Raphaelite characteristics, which excited a furious controversy and was condemned y a literary journal by a literary journal as a nameless atrocity. Abuse, of course, is not criticism; but the picture was undoubtedly strong meat for critics meagrely nurtured on the art of 50 years ago. To this period also belong Ferdinand lured by Ariel, Marianna in the Moated Grange, The Woodman's Daughter, and a very large number of drawings for illustrated books. The two following years were years of great success and popularity. We need only mention The Huguenot, Ophelia, The Order of Release, and The Proscribed Royalist, as the work of 1852 and 1853. These but especially The Huguenot, are as widely known as any pictures that have been painted in this century. We wonder in how many houses The Huguenot, and The Order of Release, hang side by side as companion engravings. The Huguenot, sold, we believe, for £150 to Mr Miller, of Preston; it was not seen again in public till the Millais Exhibition at the Grosvenor. To this sum another £50 was afterwards added; a still better result, from the young artist's point of view, was that in 1853 he was elected an Associate of the Academy, and had an assured future before him. He had touched the public sympathies, and the greatest critic of his day, both in letters in our own columns and in his lectures, had publicly commended his work. But for Sir Isumbras at the Ford, his Academy picture of 1857, which is a distinct relapse into Pre-Raphaelitism, and as such was brilliantly caricatured by Frederic Sandys, one would have thought that Millais was forsaking his earlier tenets, for the four pictures of 1852 and 1853 show little enough of the more pronounced mannerisms of the PRB. They are detailed it is true, but not affected or overwrought. Perhaps there is room for the suggestion that Millais, becoming more and more conscious of his versatility, was not long a convinced Pre-Raphaelite, but only reverted in Sir Isumbras, to a style that seemed to suit a romantic subject. One thing alone is certain-that the real course of mental and artistic development is each man's own secret, even if it be not actually unknown to himself. The year before Sir Isumbras, Millais had proved his versatility by turning landscape painter and producing Autumn Leaves, a picture of great beauty, which Mr Ruskin described as by much the most poetical work the painter has yet conceived, and also, as far as I know, the first instance of a perfectly painted twilight. The Black Brunswicker followed in 1861, and the painter of My First Sermon was a full-blown Academician in 1863. It should also be added that about this time he made a great mark as an illustrator of books, working especially for Good Words and the newly established Cornhill Magazine.
The most brilliant artist may consider himself exceptionally fortunate if he receives the highest honours of the Academy at the age of 34; and the Academy which is usually in no feverish haste to recognize genius, was not less fortunate in its new member. Millais's genius had never suffered from disappointment; his whole life, indeed, had been a series of successes; the only question now was how he would bear the full tide of prosperity, which is not less trying than failure to a man of ability. A successful artist, rejoicing in his strength, and presumably free from urgent cares, would he grow and develop, or subside into a comfortable and lucrative groove of his own? Now Millais was by no means a picture manufacturer, and was not content to turn out popular pieces of genre, one after another, as fast as each could be dismissed from the easel. Ambition, an absorbing love of art, and that versatility to which we have already referred, kept him from any such commonplace course. Gradually he drifted away from his earlier manner-Jepthah, in 1867, perhaps marks a turning pint in his career; and if Hearts are Trumps, Yes or No! and similar works lack something of the charm of The Huguenot, the landscapes and admirable portraits of his later years, showing, as they do, the wide scope and range of his powers are an ample compensation. Whether the landscapes would have been better still if he had confined himself to landscape work, or the portraits if he had resolved to paint only portraits, is, of course, another question. Apart from speculations of this kind, Millais's chief characteristic in the eyes of the public was his versatility and his success in distinct branches of the painter's art. His landscapes certainly bear the impress of his own precept that the painter ought to go on his knees before Nature as though he were worshipping in a temple. His object was not to render bizarre effects, not to catch nature in her violent moods, but to study beautiful scenes at the precise time when each is most beautiful. Chill October, painted in 1871, the whole field of nature cold and dying after the usage of the year, and Over the Hills and Far Away, a Perthshire Moor, the work of 1875, are probably his best and best known landscapes. Chill October, by the way, was shown at the Paris Exhibition of 1878, together with A Yoeman of the Guard, and The Gamblers Wife, and is said to have elicited from Meissonier the remark that the English could paint. Among Millais's other landscapes,, mostly painted in Scotland are The Fringe of the Moor; 1875, The Sound of Many Waters; 1877, St Martin's Summer; 1878, The Tower of Strength; 1879, The Moon is up, and yet it is not Night; and Dew Drenched Furze; 1890. Glen Birnham; 1891, Halcyon Weather; and Blow Blow Thou Wintry Wind; 1892.
On the whole the 20 years that followed 1871 may be taken as the period of Millais's greatest work, for, besides, these landscapes of somewhat unequal merit, he produced at this time such well-known pictures as Yes or No? with its less successful sequel Yes; the Princes in the Tower, and a Yoeman of the Guard- remarkable if only for black velvet and dexterous scarlet respectively-Cinderella, which an illustrated journal soon sent to the ends of the world; Sweetest Eyes were ever Seen, Cinderella's model only three years older; An Idyll of 1745, in which two or three timid little Scotch lassies listen, after Culloden to an English soldier boy who is playing the fife for their amusement. All these, or certainly most of them, have been rendered familiar enough by engravings to justify our earlier remarks as to Millais's popularity. If they pleased the public so much better for the public. Unpopularity is neither a criterion of art nor a moral obligation. But still greater works than these belong to Millais's last 20 years-that is if portrait painting is the artist's greatest achievement. It says much for the singular flexibility of his genius that, though he had several accomplished rivals, and one or two superiors, he more than held his own with the long series of portraits that began about 20 years ago. A fashionable portrait painter has to paint a good many undistinguished people, and it is only a consummate artist who can make a mere Portrait of a Nan, interesting. Millais, perhaps had not this supreme gift, but for his best work very high excellence may justly be claimed. He was extremely fortunate in his subjects-Tennyson, Disraeli, Newman, Bright, Mr Gladstone, and a host of minor celebrities are among them. We do not pretend to give anything like a complete list, but most of our readers will remember the Lord Shaftsbury, painted for the Bible Society in 1878; Mrs Langtry, the Jersey Lily of the same year; and Mr Gladstone in 1879. In 1890 he contributed a portrait of himself, for a collection of similar artists in the Uffizi Gallery.; Mr Bright, Mr Luther Holden, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Catherine Muriel Cowell Stepney, a child in black velvet, one of his best works, were at the Academy; and a portrait of Mrs Louise Jopling at the Grosvenor Gallery. In 1881 he exhibited Lord Beaconsfield, at that time unfinished; Bishop Fraser of Manchester; Sir John Astley; Principal Caird, and Lord Wimborne. Cardinal Newman-engraved by T O Barlow-Sir Henry Thompson, and Princess Marie of Edinburgh, appeared in the following year; and in 1883 Lord Salisbury, and his greatest portrait of all Mr J C Hook RA. A break in the series followed, other works mainly occupying the artist in the interval, until we come to the portrait of Mr John Hare in 1892. Then came a long attack of influenza and a blank year, but in 1893 we had two or three striking pictures, and in the exhibition of this year were the Lady Tweedsdale, and the Sir Richard Quain, and others to which we return in other articles.
We might easily follow out the chronicle of his works to a much greater length.; for in these days of artistic appreciation the smallest works of so great an artist as Millais, their history and present home, are objects of professed interest to a number of people. It is, perhaps, enough to mention in this relation that the English public will soon come into possession of several of the painter's finest works, for the Tate Gallery will contain Ophelia, The North –West Passage, The Vale of Rest, and three or four more. Owners of many pictures by him were the late Mr W Graham, the late Mr Price of Queen Anne-street, and Mr Matthews; it is said that Mr C Wertheimer has whole room full of the more decorative pictures, such as Cherry Ripe, and Christmas Eve. To attempt to to fix the artistic position of all these, or of the artist and his work as a whole is as premature as it would be difficult. Time alone can judge, for to time alone must be left the task of assigning modern art its relative place by the side of the art from bygone centuries. At least, however, it , it may be said that our age has seen no English painter at once so variable and so powerful. He passed in the course of 50 years of healthy strenuous work, from the ideal represented by The Huguenot, to the ideal represented by Saint Theresa, and at least every other year he produce what the best judgement of the day pronounced a masterpiece. What exquisite quality and finish in the early work-in the flowers of the Ophelia, for example! What an understanding of childish beauty in My First Sermon and in The Minuet! What brilliancy of painting, what sympathy with the root-sentiments of our British nature in The Boyhood of Raleigh! What grasp of character in, and what powerful pictorial effect, in such portraits as the Gladstone, and the Tennyson, and the J C Hook! What a power of rendering external nature as the eye of ordinary humanity perceives it in Chill October! Immense range, unswerving fidelity, and an almost invariable distinction-these are the qualities in Millais's art which are admitted by all the world. They were brought home to the public mind with irresistible force at the Millais exhibition at the Grosvenor Galley in 1886, and in the work of subsequent years has not weakened the hold which the great artist the once for all obtained.
We need hardly remind our readers of the final honour paid to Millais by his election to the Presidency of the Academy in succession to Lord Leighton. As to his claims and qualifications both social and professional, there could be no doubt. It was only a question of whether his health would prove equal to new and onerous duties. And now that the end has come, all too soon for the Academy and his many friends, it can only be said that, when he was elected, there was reason to hope that these forebodings would not be realized. It should be added that he became a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1878, a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery in 1881, an Associate of the Academie des Beaux Arts in 1882, and a baronet in 1883. His handsome face and healthy frame suggested rather the country squire than the artist; and, indeed, he made no secret of the fact that he loved the moor and the salmon river, especially at Murthly where he spent so many autumns, even more than his brush. He married in 1855 Euphemia Chalmers, daughter of Mr George Gray, of Bowerswell, Perth, and is succeeded in the barontecy by his son Everett, who was born in 1856, and married in 1886 a daughter of the late Mr W E Hope-Vere. One of his daughters is the wife of the Right Hon. Charles Stuart-Wortley MP.
The Queen, having been apprised of the death of Sir John Millais, last evening telegraphed her condolence. The Prince of Wales, the Duke and Duchess of York, and Princess Louise have also telegraphed sympathetic messages. During yesterday there were many callers at Palace-gate, and numerous telegrams were received from America, Paris, and Berlin.
A special executive meeting of the Royal Academy has been called with reference to the funeral, which will probably take place on Tuesday next.
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0 次查看TIZIANO Vecellio (b. 1490, Pieve di Cadore, d. 1576, Venezia) The Tribute Money 1516 Oil on panel, 75 x 56 cm Gem鋖degalerie, Dresden The evidence for his birthdate is contradictory, but he was certainly very old when he died. He received the more important part of his training in the studio of Giovanni Bellini, then came under the spell of Giorgione, with whom he had a close relationship. In 1506-08 he assisted him with the external fresco decoration of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Venice, and after Giorgione's early death in 1510 it fell to Titian to complete a number of his unfinished paintings. The authorship of certain works (some of them famous) is still disputed between them. Titian's first great commission was for three frescos in Padua (Scuola del Santo, 1511), noble and dignified paintings suggesting an almost central Italian firmness and monumentality. When he returned to Venice, Giorgione having died and Sebastiano gone to Rome, the aged Bellini alone stood between him and supremacy, and that only until 1516 when Bellini died and Titian became official painter to the Republic. Meanwhile he was gradually winning free from the stylistic domination of Giorgione and developing a manner of his own. Something of a fusion between Titian worldliness and Giorgione's poetry is seen in the enigmatic allegory known as "Sacred and Profane Love" (Villa Borghese, Rome, c. 1516). This work inaugurated a brilliant period in Titian's creative career during which he produced splendid religious, mythological, and portrait paintings, original in conception and vivid with color and movement. A series of great altarpieces opens with the "Assumption" (Sta Maria dei Frari, Venice, 1516-18), which in the soaring movement of the Virgin, rising from the tempestuous group of Apostles towards the hovering figure of God the Father, contradicts the stable basis of quattrocento and High Renaissance composition and looks forward to the Baroque. The strong, simple colors used here, and the artist's evident pleasure in the silhouetting of dark forms against a light background, reappear throughout the work of this period. There followed the Pesaro altarpiece (Sta Maria dei Frari, Venice, 1519-26), a bold diagonal composition of great magnificence in which architectural motifs are used to enhance the drama of the scene, and the altarpiece of St Peter Martyr (now destroyed but known to us from several copies and engravings), where trees and figures together form a violent centrifugal composition suited to the action; Vasari described it as `the most celebrated, the greatest work... that Titian has ever done'. Titian's finest mythological works from this period are three pictures (1518-23) for Alfonso d'Este--the "Worship of Venus", the "Bacchanal" (both in the Prado, Madrid), and the "Bacchus and Ariadne" (National Gallery, London)--and outstanding among his portraits is the exquisite "Man with a Glove" (Louvre, Paris, c. 1520). About 1530, the year in which his wife died, a change in Titian's manner becomes apparent. The vivacity of former years give way to a more restrained and meditative art. He now began to use related rather than contrasting colors in juxtaposition, yellows and pale shades rather than the strong blues and reds which shouldered each other through his previous work. In composition too he became less adventurous and used schemes which, compared with some of his earlier works, appear almost archaic. Thus his large "Presentation of the Virgin" (Accademia, Venice, 1534-38) makes use of the relief-like frieze composition dear to the quattrocento. During the 1530s Titian's fame spread throughout Europe. In 1530 he first met the emperor Charles V (in Bologna, where he was crowned in that year) and in 1533 he painted a famous portrait of him (Prado) based on a portrait by the Austrian Seisenegger. Charles was so pleased with it that he appointed Titian court painter and elevated him to the rank of Count Palatine and Knight of the Golden Spur--an unprecedented honor for a painter. At the same time his works were increasingly sought after by Italian princes, as with the celebrated "Venus of Urbino" (Uffizi, Florence, c. 1538), named after its owner, Guidobaldo, Duke of Camerino, who later became Duke of Urbino. The pose is based on Giorgione's "Sleeping Venus" (Gem鋖degalerie, Dresden), but Titian substitutes a direct sensual appeal for Giorgione's idyllic remoteness. Early in the 1540s Titian came under the influence of central and north Italian Mannerism, and in 1545-6 he made his first and only journey to Rome. There he was deeply impressed not only by modern works such as Michelangelo's "Last Judgement", but also by the remains of antiquity. His own paintings during this visit aroused much interest, his "Dana? (Museo di Capodimonte, Naples) being praised for its handling and color and (according to Vasari) criticized for its inexact drawing by Michelangelo. Titian also painted in Rome the famous portrait of "Pope Paul III and his Nephews" (Museo di Capodimonte). The decade closed with further imperial commissions. In 1548 the emperor summoned Titian to Augsburg, where he painted both a formal equestrian portrait ("Charles V at the Battle of M黨lberg", Prado) and a more intimate one showing him seated in an armchair (Alte Pinakothek, Munich). He travelled to Augsburg again in 1550 and this time painted portraits of Charles's son, the future Philip II of Spain, and the greatest patron of his later career. Titian's work for Philip included a series of seven erotic mythological subjects (c. 1550-62): "Dana? and "Venus and Adonis" (Prado), "Perseus and Andromeda" (Wallace Collection, London), "The Rape of Europa" (Gardner Museum, Boston), "Diana and Actaeon" and "Diana and Calisto" (Ellesmere Collection, on load to the National Gallery of Scotland), and "The Death of Actaeon" (National Gallery, London). Titian referred to these pictures as "poesie", and they are indeed highly poetic visions of distant worlds, quite different from the sensual realities of his earlier mythological paintings. During the last twenty years of his life Titian's personal works, as opposed to those which busy assistants produced under his supervision and with his intervention, showed an increasing looseness in the handling and a sensitive merging of colors which makes them more and more immaterial. Autumnal tones reflected the artist's meditative spirit. About the same time his interest in new pictorial conceptions waned. About 1550-55 he had painted a powerful "Martyrdom of St Lawrence" (Gesuiti, Venice), which had affinities with Mannerism in the types and movements of the figures. In 1564-67 he repeated the picture (Escorial, Madrid), but now the light, which played a dramatic part in the first version, became the chief feature, creating and dissolving forms. His powers remained undimmed until the end, and his career closed with the awe-inspiring "Piet? (Accademia, Venice, 1573-76), intended for his own tomb and finished after his death by Palma Giovane. Titian's influence on later artists has been profound: he was supreme in every branch of painting and revolutionized the oil technique with his free and expressive brushwork. Vasari wrote of this aspect of his late works that they `are executed with bold, sweeping strokes, and in patches of color, with the result that they cannot be viewed from near by, but appear perfect at a distance... The method he used is judicious, beautiful, and astonishing, for it makes pictures appear alive and painted with great art, but it conceals the labor that has gone into them.' His greatness as an artist, it appears, was not matched by his character, for he was notoriously avaricious. In spite of his wealth and status, he claimed he was impoverished, and his exaggerations about his age (by which he hoped to pull at the heartstrings of patrons) are one of the sources of confusion about his birthdate. Jacopo Bassano caricatured him as a moneylender in his "Purification of the Temple" (National Gallery, London). Titian, however, was lavish in his hospitality towards his friends, who included the poet Pietro Aretino and the sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino. These three were so close that they were known in Venice as the triumvirate, and they used their influence with their respective patrons to further each other's careers. *** Keywords: ************* Author: TIZIANO Vecellio Title: The Tribute Money Time-line: 1501-1550 School: Italian Form: painting Type: religious
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Wardle Arthur Among Friends5 次查看
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4 次查看Oil on canvas
31 1/4 x 20 inches (79.4 x 51 cm)
Private collection
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