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Manchester Art Gallery. Part 3.

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My third and final look at some of the artwork on view at the Manchester Art Gallery is a collection of many painting genres all of which appealed to me.

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The Desert by Edwin Landseer (1849)

Sir Edwin Landseer was the favourite artist of Queen Victoria and much loved by the British public for his sentimental, though closely observed, animal paintings. He is probably best known for his 1851 painting Monarch of the Glen which is now part of the Scottish National Gallery collection and the four bronze lions that stand guard at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, London.  However, in the Manchester Gallery there is another full-sized animal painting by the artist, entitled The Desert which he completed in 1849.  It is a painting of a dead lion, and the work is often referred to as The Fallen Monarch. The lion has always been regarded as the national symbol of the British people, epitomising bravery, fortitude and royalty. 

Tate & Lyle Golden Syrup

The painting is thought to have provided the inspiration for the logo of Lyle’s Golden Syrup, which first appeared in 1885. In the case of the syrup tin the logo depicts a story from the Old Testament, in which Samson kills a lion and later finds that a swarm of bees has formed a honeycomb in its carcass. It is accompanied by the biblical quote ‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness‘.

Water of the Nile by Frederick Goodall (1893)

Edward Wadie Said was a Palestinian American a professor of literature at Columbia University.   In his 1978 book entitled Orientalism, which was hailed as his best-known work and one of the most influential scholarly books of the 20th century, he defined the term Orientalism as:

“… the acceptance in the West of “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and so on…”

The orientalists were not only fascinated by historical Egypt, but they were also amazed by the beauty of its environment and the 1893 painting by the English artist, Frederick Goodall, entitled Water of the Nile is a classic example of Orientalism in art.  In the foreground, on the riverbank, we see Egyptian women wearing traditional clothes, filling their water jars from the Nile River.  To the right of the women is a young boy remonstrating with his animals who he has brought down to the water’s edge.  To the left we see a man riding his camel as he heads towards the pyramids, seen in the background.

Cattle fording a Stream by Henry Moore (1862)

Henry Moore (not the famous sculptor), the English marine and landscape artist, was born in March 1831 in York.  In the Manchester Gallery there is a fine example of his rural landscape prowess with his 1862 painting, Cattle Fording a Stream.  It is a beautiful autumnal moorland landscape which is made melodramatic by the colourful sunset sky.  In the foreground we see depicted a herd of large horned russet-coloured cattle being driven across the ford by two men on horseback.  It is a leisurely cattle drive.  Some of the cattle halt their progress to take a drink.  One of the men herding the beasts sits up and looks back at the following animals which are being marshalled along by a second rider.  To the left, a dog keeps one of the herd from moving out of line.  Beyond, in the upper left of the painting, we see stacked sheaves of hay in a field. To the right, behind a tree-covered mound, is a cottage with smoke coming from the chimney.  It is without doubt that the dominating aspect of this painting is the sky with its streaked cloud formations giving a great sense of depth through the use of brilliant pink and orange hues.

The Norman Archipelago (Channel Islands)
The Norman Archipelago (Channel Islands) by John Brett (1885)

When I think of John Brett my mind always goes to his work, The Stonebreakers, which is in the Walker Art Gallery collection in Liverpool but his painting hanging in the Manchester Gallery could not be more different.  Brett was an English painter, whose main works featured coastal scenes and landscapes. He was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites and the writings of John Ruskin.  He had taken part in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s group exhibition in London in 1857 and during the 1870s he had become well known for his large seascapes, which featured accurate geological detail and meteorological conditions, which can be likened to an almost hyper-realistic representations.  His seascape painting at the Manchester Gallery is entitled The Norman Archipelago and is a panoramic view of the Channel Islands, from Sark, looking across a calm sea towards Guernsey, Herm and Jethou.  To the left, in the middle-ground, we see a small sailing vessel, which is navigating its way close to a current which has been created as the ebbing tide empties out through a narrow channel between rocks seen in the centre of the depiction.  In the background, on the horizon, we see low pink clouds against a bright blue sky, below which are a number of other white-sailed boats plying their way across calm waters.

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Early Lovers by Frederick Smallfield (1885)

Frederick Smallfield was an English oil and watercolour artist, whose work was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite artists of the time.  He had trained at the Royal Academy Schools in the late 1840s, at the same time as various members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, although there is nothing to show that he was a close acquaintance of theirs.

The painting by Smallfield on display at the Manchester Gallery is entitled Early Lovers.  It is a depiction of two young lovers set against a rural landscape scene.  It is thought to illustrates the 1827 poem, entitled Ballad, by Thomas Hood

Twas twilight, and I bade you go,

But still you held me fast;

It was the Time of Roses, –

We pluck’d them as we pass’d. –

What else could peer thy glowing cheek,

That tears began to stud?

And when I ask’d the like of Love,

You snatched a damask bud;

The setting is a gently undulating verdant landscape of rich farmland imbued with trees and hedgerows. The scene is illuminated by a low light, suggestive of evening or early morning.  In the depiction we see a young girl sitting on a stile.  She has shoulder-length fair hair and wears a mauve dress over a white petticoat.  A straw hat is slung casually around her neck on a pink ribbon.  She is not alone, as we also see an older youth wearing a dark jacket, sporting a red neckerchief.  He is probably a local farm worker.  The young man is perched besides her, straddling the stile.  Balanced on his head is a flat cap which cannot contain the unruly red locks of his hair.  The young couple clasp hands as they gaze lovingly at each other.  To the right of the stile, entwined in the hedgerow, are a Dog Rose in bloom as well as Honeysuckle.

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A 1944 Pastoral : Land Girls Pruning At East Malling by Evelyn Mary Dunbar

Evelyn Mary Dunbar was a British artist, illustrator and teacher who was born in Reading in 1906.  In April 1940 she was appointed by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, (WAAC), as an official war artist.   Her remit was to record civilian contributions to the war effort on the home front. At the beginning she concentrated on the work of the Women’s Voluntary Service, (WVS), and later in the war, she depicted members of the Women’s Land Army, which was set up to encourage women to work on farms to help the war effort.   When the war ended Dunbar had completed and had accepted by the WAAC some forty paintings.  The Manchester Art Gallery has in its collection one of her later works entitled A 1944 Pastoral: Land Girls Pruning at East Malling. Evelyn spent some time at the Kent village in the winter of 1944/5, when one of the principal activities was pruning of fruit trees, particularly of apple trees. Until more disease-resistant rootstocks were introduced from the United States and latterly from Poland, the influence of East Malling Research Station on the British commercial apple industry was vast.   The painting depicts a rural setting in winter with a view along a long avenue of trees of an orchard. Hills are visible in the distance beneath a cloudy sky.  We see groups of women from the Women’s Land Army pruning the trees and carrying away the dead wood. Standing in the foreground are three women pruning the nearest trees, two of whom are standing on white ladders. Another woman in the left foreground can be seen bringing another ladder into the orchard.   The scene is surrounded by a brown painted frame containing different motifs, including gloved hands each holding a pair of secateurs, a bowl of apples, a plate of apples, a gloved hand holding a small saw, and a gloved hand holding a serrated knife. The site of this orchard is close to East Malling Research Station in Kent which was established in 1913 as a government owned establishment and was the leading fruit research centre in the UK.

'In Manus Tuas, Domine'
In Manus Tuas, Domine’ by Briton Riviere

My final selection of the paintings I saw when I went to the Manchester Art Gallery is one by the nineteenth century British artist Briton Riviere, who was famous for his animal depictions.  He once wrote about how he became proficient in this genre:

“…The only way to paint wild animals is to gradually accumulate a large number of studies and a great knowledge of the animal itself, before you can paint its picture … I paint from dead animals as well as from live ones. I have had the body of a fine lioness in my studio … I have done a great deal of work in the dissecting rooms at the Zoological Gardens from time to time…”

The painting that I saw in the gallery was entitled In Manus Tuas, Domine which is part of a Latin phrase which translates as Into thy hands O Lord, I commend my spirit.  It is a phrase recited by many who are facing death.  The depiction is of a fearless young fair-haired knight astride a white horse, escorted by his three bloodhounds.  They are at the mouth of a dark cave and both rider, horse and dogs seem fearful of what they may find inside.  The animals cower and seem to be digging their heels into the ground to stop any forward motion.  The young rider is wearing a soft black cap and dressed in a full suit of shining silver-coloured armour, complete with star-shaped spurs. His helmet, which is trimmed with pink and black ostrich plumes, is tied to his saddle. The knight, unlike his animals, is putting a brave face on, despite his fear and no doubt the phrase in the title of the painting is passing his lips.  He looks directly ahead into the darkness as he raises the cross-hilt of his sword before him. The sword forms a cross, symbolising the victory of man’s faith and may be apt as he leaves the daylight to enter the dark chasm. To defend himself he also carries behind him a black shield painted with a narrow blue cross, and a lance.  To add to the terror, a red-eyed bat flies out of the dark tangle of branches towards the knight and what might be the tail of a snake, can be seen disappearing into a hole.

I hope that my three blogs will tempt you to visit the Manchester Art Gallery. It is well worth a visit.


Jenny Eugenia Nyström

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Britain over the years have had many talented children’s book illustrators.  There are the likes of Beatrix Potter with her illustrative work seen in books of Peter Rabbit and his Friends.  There was Ernest Howard Shepard, an English artist and book illustrator, known especially for illustrations of the animal and soft toy characters in The Wind in the Willows and Winnie-the-Pooh.  Let us not forget Quinton Blake for his illustrations in the Roald Dahl books.  There is Roger Hargreaves for his illustrations for his Mr Men and Little Miss books and Raymond Briggs for his unforgettable illustrations for his wordless picture book, The Snowman.

The book cover is an illustration of a sail boat coming into a forested shore. On the shore, sleeping against a tree, is a giant furry monster with bare human feet and the head of a bull. Above the illustration, written in uneven block capital letters against a white background, is the title of the book "Where the Wild Things Are" and below the illustration, "Story and pictures by Maurice Sendak".

America has its share of great children’s book illustrators such as Maurice Sendak, an American illustrator and writer of children’s books. He became widely known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, first published in 1963.  Sendak also wrote works such as In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, and illustrated many works by other authors including the Little Bear books by Else Holmelund Minarik.  One of course calls to mind Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. His books and illustrations are loved by children and adults from all around the world, his books are quirky treasures that leave a lasting impression.  He wrote his first children’s book, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, in 1937, and the book that catapulted him into success, The Cat in the Hat, in 1957.

Image of Tomte

A Tomte

In today’s blog I am looking at the life and work of one of Sweden’s great illustrators, Jenny Eugenia Nyström, who was the first woman in Sweden to be awarded a royal medal for her historically themed painting. Her legacy was established by the popularity of her depictions of tomte, a mythological creature often associated with Christmas.  Jenny Nyström’s artwork was modern as well as humorous. It was not unusual to see a “tomte” captaining an airplane, driving a car, a truck, a motorcycle or even a train. She was not afraid to use exotic animals like elephants and giraffes as “tomte” assistants for delivering Christmas presents across Sweden. The images also contained several elements of traditional folk Christmas imagery such as Christmas goats, Christmas trees, sleighs, toboggans and more. 

Christmas card with jultomte by Jenny Nyström, (circa 1899)

Jenny Nyström was born in the Kalmar County district of Malmen, Sweden on June 13th 1854.  She was the daughter of Daniel Isacsson Nyström, the cantor of the Kalmar Castle church, a local schoolteacher and an accomplished piano player who gave piano lessons.  Jenny’s mother was Anette Eleonora Bergendahl. Jenny Nyström had three brothers, Emil, Leonard and Axel and one sister Augusta.  She was the third of the five children, and reportedly was an energetic and imaginative youngster who later spoke about her happy and idyllic upbringing in Kalmar, a town in the southeast of Sweden.  She had a happy home life living with her parents, siblings as well as her maternal grandparents, two maternal aunts and her maternal great grandmother.  Her father attended to her education whilst her mother was remembered by her daughter for her storytelling.

 Bear Reading Going Upstairs Godt Nytt Ar by Jenny Nyström (c.1910) 

In November 1863, when Jenny was nine years old the family left Kalmar and moved to the Gothenburg suburb of Majorna where her father had a teaching post.  Jenny was devastated to leave her Kalmar friends and wrote about her new home:

“…In the beginning, I found my stay in Gothenburg very boring, when I had no playmates, and when I got them, they just made life miserable for me, as they imitated my Kalmar dialect. I couldn’t speak clean.  I often longed to go back to Kalmar and to my little playmates there and then to these nice windmills, in whose wings we hung, when it didn’t blow too hard, and after the outbuilding roof where we used to sit and sunbathe, and after grandpa’s old garden with the frog pond…”

Along with the family came the Nyström’s maid, Karin Johansdotter who would be part of Jenny’s “family” for many years.  Up until this time Jenny had been home-schooled by her father but once in Gothenburg, she attended Mrs Natt och Dag’s local primary school and after graduating from there she attended the Kjellbergska flickskolan (Kjellberg Girls’ School), a school founded by a fund granted in the will of the wealthy merchant Jonas Kjellberg.   The all-girls elementary school was to provide education to make it possible for females to support themselves professionally.

Tomte by Frederik Wohlfart

In 1869, aged fifteen Jenny received her first art education at the Göteborgs Musei-, Rit- och Målarskola, today known as Konsthögskolan Valand, where one of her tutors was Fredrik Wohlfart, a Swedish genre painter and caricaturist from the Düsseldorf School.  Wohlfahrt was best known for a series of paintings depicting popular figures of elves and it was he who inspired Jenny to depict images of tomte, one of the most popular Scandinavian mythological characters.  Christmas in Sweden is celebrated in a very unique and different manner, owing to the differences in its culture and traditions. Christmas celebrations there begin on St. Lucia Day, which is on December 13. Tomte comes into picture after the Christmas dinner, when someone from the family dresses up like him. Tomte, believed to live in the forests or in a farm, is known for looking after the livestock of the farmers after the Christmas dinner. Tomte was converted to the Swedish Santa Claus over a period of time and soon began to deliver gifts as well. 

Harvest Joy by Jenny Nyström

One day, in 1871, seventeen-year-old Jenny Nyström was visiting the Gothenburg Art Museum and was sitting and drawing.  Another visitor to the museum that day was regional governor Albert Ehrensvärd who noticed her sketching and admired her work, so much so, he invited her to Stockholm to visit art galleries and to go to the city’s National Art Museum.  She accepted the offer and whilst in Stockholm she was introduced to Christoffer Boklund, professor at the Stockholm Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

Jenny Nyström illustrated Viktor Rydberg’s poem “Tomten” in Ny Illustrerad Tidning in 1881.

In August 1873, two years after her first visit to Stockholm she returned to the city and enrolled at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts and there she enjoyed life as an art student for the next eight years.  Although Nyström had been brought up in a happy household it was not a rich upbringing and when she was at the Academy, she had to fund herself.  To earn money, she would go out and sell subscriptions for the magazine, Ny Illustrerad Tidning, a publication for which she also provided illustrations.  More importantly Jenny slowly built up a number of patrons from Gothenburg who bought her work, one of which was the regional governor Albert Ehrensvärd who guaranteed her the sum of 100 kroner a month.

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Gustav Vasa inför king Hans (Gustav Vasa as Child in front of King Hans) by Jenny Nyström (1881)

Another of her patrons was James Dickson, a Scottish-Swedish merchant, industrialist, banker and philanthropist who was based in Gothenburg.   She also received an annual stipend from the Academy from 1877 onwards. Nyström fared well at the Academy and in 1881, she received the highest commendation available: the royal gold medal for her historically themed painting Gustav Vasa inför king Hans (Gustav Vasa as Child in front of King Hans).  The royal medal provided opportunities for scholarships abroad and success for the students. The motifs that were ranked highest were the biblical, mythological and historical last came folk life depictions, landscape painting and still lifes.

From my Atelier in Paris by Jenny Nyström (1884)

In July 1882, she was awarded one thousand Swedish Krona from the Academy’s special support fund and with this money she was able to travel to Paris.  Paris being looked upon as the centre of the art world was very popular with foreign artists and many Swedish artists lived in Paris such as Carl Larsson, his wife Karin and Anders Zorn. Unable to gain entrance to the French Academy of Fine Arts due to its male-only policy, Jenny enrolled at the Académie Colarossi in November and then the Académie Julian.  While in Paris, she painted diligently so as to have her work accepted by the Salon. In 1884 her painting From my Atelier in Paris was exhibited at that year’s Salon.

The Convalescent by Jenny Nyström via DailyArt app, your daily dose of art getdailyart.com
The Convalescent by Jenny Nyström (1884)

In 1884 she also completed 0ne of my favourite of her works, The Convalescent. Around the turn of the 20th century, convalescing women and girls were a popular theme in visual art. In her painting The Convalescent, Jenny Nyström has chosen to depict the subject from the narrative perspective of the classicist tradition. We see before us an idealised young female figure at centre of the work, hovering between life and death. In stark contrast, next to her, we see the shamelessly healthy-looking and pretty girl standing by her side. The invalid looks upwards, probably praying for good health and trusting her fate in God’s hands. The picture is full of overt symbols, like the dead potted plant set against the bouquet of living flowers. The compositional pattern, which is centred on the histrionic body language and facial expressions of the figures, has its roots in an older anecdotal tradition. In early 19th-century genre painting, we often see figures posing as they do here, as if being in a stage spotlight, creating a sense of distance. The image of a convalescing female became a symbol of subordination, of the fragility of “womanliness”, and hence proof of women’s inability to participate in public life. These pictures can be seen as a reaction to the emancipation of women at that time and an attempt to return them to the home and the private sphere.

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Husband of Jenny Nyström, Daniel Stoopendaal (1853-1927) by Jenny Nyström (1887)

In 1880, whilst still a student at the Academy she attended a student concert at Katarina Church in Stockholm. where she met her future husband, Daniel Stoopendaal.  He was a medical student.  In the Autumn of 1884, the couple got engaged.  Jenny Nyström moved back to Stockholm at the start of the year in 1886 and worked as an illustrator for several different publishers. On May 24th 1887 she married Daniel Stoopendaal in the Adolf Fredrik church, and that autumn they moved into a large city apartment on Tegnérgatan.  In 1889, a few years after her mother had died, Jenny Nyström’s father moved in with her and her husband.  Their first child Curt was born on June 25th 1893.  Sadly, Daniel was ill for most of his life with tuberculosis.  He never completed his medical studies and Jenny was the breadwinner of the family supporting them through the sale of her paintings.  It was a hard struggle for her to sell her work.  In the end she had to sell her work to different publishers and other employers.

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vi två (The two of us) by Jenny Nyström (1895)

From the time her son Curt was born he often made an appearance in her paintings wearing a red skull-cap and dressed in a “kolt” (traditional outfit). She also painted a portrait of herself with two-year-old Curt in 1895, which she called Mor och son. Today it is known as Vi två (The Two of Us). 

Brita and Bertil by Jenny Nyström (1911)

It was around this time that she began to concentrate on illustrating a large number of children’s books and historical novels. She also painted cover images for newspapers and journals. She had a breakthrough in 1911 when she signed a contract to make greeting cards for Axel Eliasson’s publishing house, but this meant that she needed to produce a certain number of watercolours each month as a background illustration for the cards. These illustrations gained great exposure due to the appealing nature of her drawings. The Swedish publication series Barnbiblioteket Saga, which was initiated by schoolteachers in the late 19th century was one of the most ambitious and extensive reading promotion projects ever undertaken in Sweden. It looked into the world of children’s books In Barnbiblioteket’s Saga, 1910, a biographical entry on Jenny Nyström reveals why she chose to illustrate children’s stories

“…The reason I mainly illustrate children’s books is probably because I have always loved children and have always wanted to show children something of the fair sunny land east of the sun and west of the moon, beauty which has remained in my memory from my childhood in Kalmar. Maybe now you can also understand why I prefer to draw beautiful images…”

Jenny Nyström carried on with her painting and illustrative work until the end. She died in her home in Stockholm on 17 January 1946 aged 91. Of her last minutes on this earth her long-time housekeeper described her passing as:

“…It was like blowing out a candle…”

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Jenny Nyström’s last resting place

Jenny Nyström was buried at Norra cemetery beside her husband Daniel Stoopendaal and her father Daniel Nyström. Seventy five years after her death her illustrated cards are still being printed and her academic artwork and her watercolours fetch high prices at the larger auction houses.

Thomas Cooper Gotch. Part 1.

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Self Portrait with Two Square Brushes by Thomas Gotch

My featured artist today is the British painter, Thomas Cooper Gotch.  Little has been written about Thomas Gotch and in a way, he appears to be the forgotten man.  Part of the reason for this is that he was an unassuming man who preferred to take a step back rather than be in the limelight.  Another possible reason was that he never associated himself with painting “schools” and it is hard to compartmentalise his painting style.  In the pre-1890’s, his works were mainly depictions of open spaces, subdued in colour and yet full of detail, but then later came his more symbolist-style works.  Gotch was unhappy in the way some of his contemporaries painted only what would sell, or as he put it, they painted down to the level of the market, and further derided them by saying that they grew rich as tradesmen but following that path, they lost as artists.  Having said that, Gotch was aware that he had to survive financially and took on painting commissions, especially portraiture ones.  Once he had earned the money from a portraiture commission, he was happy to return to his Newlyn home, Wheal Betsy, overlooking Mount’s Bay and relax by working on one of his charming landscapes featuring local views of his beloved Cornwall.

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Thomas Cooper Gotch, with the fair hair, sits on his maternal grandmother’s knee whilst his older brother John Alfred Gotch stands by the side of his mother.  The father stands at the back of the family group.

To fully understand the person, we need to look at his family and his early life.  Thomas Cooper Gotch was born on December 10th, 1854 in the Mission House, Kettering, in rural Northamptonshire, a landlocked county located in the southern part of the East Midlands region.  His parents were John Henry Gotch and Mary Anne Gale Gotch. He was the fourth surviving son of the couple.  His father, John Henry, and his father’s two brothers, John Davis Gotch and Frederick William Gotch had inherited the family wealth when their father passed in 1852.  The three men had been bequeathed two businesses, a family shoe and boot establishment which was subsequently managed by John Davis Gotch and the J.C. Gotch and Sons bank, managed by his father, John Henry Gotch.  The artist’s father, John Henry was well suited to run a bank as he was an exceptionally talented mathematician.  His younger brother Frederick William played no part in the family businesses and instead became a renowned Hebrew scholar and later was elected President of the Baptist Union.

 

A Cottage in a Garden

A Cottage in a Garden by Thomas Gotch

All was going well for the family businesses until 1857 when a combination of events led to a financial disaster for the family.  Firstly, 1857 was the year of a financial panic in the United States which resulted in the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy.  Due to the advance of telecommunications at the time, it meant that the world economy was also more interconnected, which also made the Panic of 1857 the first worldwide economic crisis.  Secondly, and more connected with the Gotch bank, John Henry Gotch had been authorising a number of unsecured financial loans, a number of which were given to the Rev. Allan Macpherson, the curate of Rothwell, without due diligence and with the downturn of 1857 the bank collapsed as did the shoemaking business under the terms of unlimited liability.  The bankruptcy meant that the brothers had to sell their Mission House and auction off most of the furnishings as well as selling the adjoining shoe factory to pay off creditors.  John Henry Gotch sadly realised that authorising so many loans without investigating the circumstances of the borrowers was his fault.

Ruby

Ruby by Thomas Gotch

Perhaps poking fun at the prevalence of red-headed women in Pre-Raphaelite art, an acquaintance bet Gotch that he could not paint a red-haired subject with red cheeks in red clothes. This painting of Ruby Bone, a local girl who would have been little over two years old when she sat for the portrait, was the artist’s response. The warm oranges and reds of the sitter’s hair and clothes are balanced against the dull green-grey of the background and off-white of her dress and buttons.

After the financial collapse of the two businesses, John Henry Gotch, along with his wife and family were now homeless and had to rely on the kindness of relatives, including his wife’s brother’s family, the Hepburns, for somewhere to stay.  In 1858 they managed to rent a house in Ilford, Essex and this is where his wife gave birth to a daughter, Jessie.  It took John Davis Gotch until 1863 to have the bankruptcy discharged thanks in the main to money that he borrowed from the Hepburns.  He then set about to revive the family shoemaking business and invited John Henry to join him.

The Lady in Gold - A Portrait of Mrs. John Crooke

The Lady in Gold.  A Portrait of Mrs John Crooke by Thomas Gotch

The present picture dates from the turning-point in Gotch’s career since it was painted in Newlyn early in 1891 and exhibited at the Royal Academy that summer, shortly before he made the visit to Florence which had such a dramatic effect on his style. The sitter’s husband had already commissioned Gotch to paint a small watercolour portrait of her, which was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1890.

Thomas Cooper Gotch attended the Church of England boarding school, Foy’s Academy in West Brompton and, along with his brother Alfred, was looked after during long weekends and school holidays by Thomas and Mary Ann Hepburn.  By 1863 the family’s financial problems had eased and Thomas Gotch along with his parents and four siblings returned to live together in Kettering.  Thomas Gotch remained at the Foy’s boarding school until 1869, aged nine.  He returned to live with his family in Kettering and attended the Kettering Grammar School where he was given an “A” for effort but struggled. He left school in 1872 and in March 1873 he began working at his father’s boot and shoe business.

The Orchard

The Orchard by Thomas Gotch (1887)

Working in the shoe and boot industry was not what Tom wanted but on the other hand he did not know what he wanted!  He had a hankering for writing and submitted a few of his stories to a publisher to be edited but there is no record of what was thought of his literary efforts but what we do know is that he continued writing stories throughout his life.  So, what made Thomas Cooper Gotch take up painting?  He never recorded his decision to take up painting in any of his diaries or writings so there is a mystery about what first led him towards an artistic career.  It is known that his mother, Mary Anne, enjoyed sketching and her sister, Sarah Gale had married John Frederick Herring Snr., an animal painter, sign maker and coachman in Victorian England.  It was also at the insistence of his mother that Thomas always took his painting paraphernalia with him when he went off on holiday.  Whatever happened, Thomas Gotch decided to follow the artistic path of life and in May 1876, aged 21, he applied to attend Heatherley’s Art School, one of the oldest independent art schools in London, submitting the required specimens of his work.  Attending Heatherley’s was a steppingstone to entering other art schools.  Whilst at Heatherley’s Thomas Gotch had his work critiqued by well-known practicing artists.

Rosalind

Rosalind by Thomas Gotch

Buoyed by the praise he received from the lecturers at Heatherley’s, Thomas Gotch applied to the Academy Schools and was taken aback when he was refused entry. A second application was also rejected and Thomas began to believe the training he had been receiving at Heatherley’s was at fault and so, in October 1877, accompanied by his friend Edward Laurie, he travelled to Antwerp where they enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where the Professor of Art was the Belgian painter and watercolourist, Charles Verlat.  It was not a happy time for Gotch who railed against the school’s endorsement of traditional subject matter and the use of a dark palette whilst he preferred brighter colours and a more decorative approach.  He commented on this to his long-standing friend and previous fellow Heatherley’s student, Jane Ross.  In his letter to her, he wrote:

“…Here we must do what we are told with as good as grace as we can and if we break the rules are reminded that we are only allowed in the school as a favour.  Each week, there is a fresh figure wheeled into the room and all who are drawing figures have obediently to draw that and nothing else…”

Clouds

Clouds by Thomas Gotch

At the end of February 1878, Thomas Gotch, having completed his painting and drawing examinations, decided to leave Antwerp.  He was disheartened by the experience and would have returned home but his brother Alfred joined him in the city and although he could not persuade his brother to stay at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, he did persuade him to carry on with his art and return to London and resume his artistic studies at Heatherleys.  Thomas returned to Heatherleys at the end of March 1878 and also enrolled as a private student with the English portrait painter, Samuel Lawrence.  Following a number of arguments with the family he realised that to be financially independent he would have to become a successful artist.  During the summer of 1878 he set himself the task of completing a number of landscape paintings.  He and his artist student friend, John Smith, rented a small house in the village of Goring-on-Thames and set about painting scenes of the surrounding countryside and various farmyard scenes.  Thomas Gotch was accepted into the Slade School of Fine Art in October 1878 where he remained for two years.  His love of literature encouraged him and some of his fellow art students to form a Shakespeare Reading Society at which they would read the plays. 

……………………………………………..to be continued.

Thomas Cooper Gotch. Part 2.

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Thomas Cooper Gotch

Sometime in 1878 their reading group, set up by Thomas Gotch, had a new member.  Her name was Caroline Burland Yates.  Caroline was one of three sisters born to Esther Burland and wealthy property owner, Edward Yates. The family was from the Liverpool area, later moving to Sway in Hampshire. Caroline was the youngest of the three daughters and educated by a governess.  Caroline attended finishing school in Switzerland where she became fluent in French.  She, like Thomas Gotch, had studied at the Heatherley School before arriving at the Slade.

A Golden Dream
A Golden Dream by Thomas Gotch

Thomas’ progress at the Slade was outstanding and he was the firm favourite of his principal lecturer, Alphonse Legros, the French-born painter who later took British citizenship.  During his first year at the Slade, Gotch produced many paintings and sketches which were sold at exhibitions in London.  One of Thomas Gotch’s closest friends at the Slade was fellow artistic aspirant, Henry Tuke. Through his friendship with Henry Tuke Thomas met other members of the Tuke family and became friendly with his sister Maria Tuke and medical student brother William Tuke.  Thomas was asked by William, and some of his fellow medics, to help form a group of art and medical students which would become a friendly debating society.  Thomas, who was extremely popular with the female students at Slade, and so, was asked to entice some “beautiful but well educated” young women into joining the society. 

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The Misses Santley by Henry Tuke

Many agreed to join, two of whom were the Santley sisters, Edith and Gertrude as well as Carrie Yates.  Thomas Gotch’s close friend, Henry Tuke, depicted these three in his famous work entitled The Misses Santley which was shown at the Royal Academy.  It shows the influence of Henry Tuke’s Slade professor, Alphonse Legros who encouraged his students to study the works of the Old Masters.  Frederic Leighton, then president of the Royal Academy, is reported to have said: “Can it be an old master? It could not be by a young man.”    The work depicts three women who were all fellow students of Thomas Gotch and Henry Tuke at the Slade.  The young woman on the right, holding a music score, is Edith Santley, the daughter of the famous baritone Charles Santley.  Next to her is her sister Gertrude, and in front left of the painting stands Carrie Yates, who would later marry Thomas Gotch.

Cornfields above Lamorna
Cornfields above Lamorna by Thomas Gotch

During the summer of 1879 Thomas Gotch and Harry Tuke went on a painting trip to Cornwall, visiting Penzance and Newlyn, where they were joined by Caroline Yates and her sister Esther.  The following summer Thomas Gotch and his sister Jessie spent part of the summer in the small North Wales coastal town of Beaumaris on the isle of Anglesey meeting up with Willie and Maria Tuke.  In October 1880 Thomas Gotch left England and arrived in Paris where he lodged at the Hotel d’Angleterre for a month whilst he negotiated his entrance to John Paul Laurens’ atelier.  In the meantime, in fact a month earlier, Carrie Yates along with two fellow art students, Jane Ross and Alma Broadridge had travelled to Paris and enrolled at the Académie Julian. 

Hilda and Margaret, daughters of Professor sir Edward Poulton
Hilda and Margaret, daughters of Professor Sir Edward Poulton by Thomas Gotch

Thomas Gotch was influenced by the historical works of Laurens as he was interested in figurative painting.  His other overwhelming interest was also Carrie Yates.  They had become remarkably close and she was teaching him French.  She was lodging at the Hotel de Paris and Thomas had an apartment on the top floor of a building at 17 rue de Tournon. Although it was a Bohemian establishment, the rooms were spacious.   Thomas and Carrie visited the artists’ colony at Barbizon.  The relationship between the two became ever stronger and before he returned to London to submit a painting for the Academy exhibition, he proposed marriage.

Death the Bride by Thomas Gotch (1912)

Thomas and Carrie travelled back to England in July 1881 and visited each other’s families to get the parental permission to marry.  Carrie had spent the summers of 1879 and 1880 in Newlyn and loved the place.  The couple decided that Newlyn in Cornwall should be the setting for their marriage and so they both travelled there and secured separate lodgings.  Twenty-six-year-old Thomas Cooper Gotch and twenty-seven-year-old Caroline Burland Yates married on August 31st 1881 at St. Peter’s church which was built in 1866 and nestles underneath Tol Carn, the ancient pile of rocks associated in Cornish legend with Bucca-boo, a male sea-spirit in Cornish folklore, a merman that inhabited mines and coastal communities as a hobgoblin during storms and who was said to steal the nets of fishermen.

A Cottage Interior, Newlyn
A Cottage Interior, Newlyn by Thomas Gotch

The newlyweds honeymooned at Mullion, a quiet village on the Lizard Peninsula in south Cornwall.  Once the honeymoon was over Carrie returned to London.  Prior to her wedding she had been sharing a house with her sister, Esther (Ess) and now she needed to take back to Newlyn her share of the furniture.  Meanwhile Thomas Gotch had begun painting scenes of Newlyn and became friends with three Birmingham painters, Walter Langley, Edwin Harris and William Wainwright.   Thomas Gotch and his depictions of Cornish life thrived and maybe it was marriage that buoyed his love of the area.

Portrait of Madame G by Thomas Gotch

In October 1881, Caroline and Thomas returned to Paris.  Thomas returned to the Laurens atelier and Carrie went back to Académie Julian where there was a separate atelier for women.  Thomas also engineered the acceptance at the Laurens atelier of his friend Harry Tuke.  That Christmas was spent in Paris but the couple returned to England in time for Easter 1882.   During that three-month period Thomas Gotch worked on a portrait of his wife, entitled Portrait of Madame G, which he presented and was accepted at the April 1st 1872 Salon.  This life-sized portrait of his wife depicts her dressed in a dark navy dress with gold and white cuffs and collar.   Thomas never put the painting up for sale and it adorned the walls of the houses they resided in.

Evening by Thomas Gotch

One of the reasons the couple returned to England that April was for Carrie to consult her doctor and have it confirmed that she was pregnant with her first child and to break the good news to their family members.  Their visit to England was only short but gave them time to employ a nurse for when the new baby arrived.  They all returned to France and rented a small property at Marchand de Bois, Brolles which was owned by a wood merchant.  It was a good-sized house for the young couple and access to half of a large garden.  Brolles was an idyllic spot situated in a very rural area and the nearby landscapes coupled with the fine summer weather allowed them to paint en plein air.  The young couple had domestic help with a young French maid, Marie, and Windsor, the English nurse who looked after Caroline during her pregnancy.

Phillis Marian Gotch was born in Brolles on September 6th 1882.  It is thought the name “Phyllis” came from the fact that Thomas’ first painting to be exhibited at the Royal Academy was entitled Phillis and the name “Marian” derived from a character of that name (a pseudonym for his wife), who was a character in his fictionalised novel A Long Engagement.

In late September Thomas and Carrie had to quickly return to England with nurse Windsor as she had told them that she could no longer put up with life in France and they needed to replace her.  They left Brolles leaving the maid Marie in charge of the house.  Their stay in London had to be quickly curtailed when Thomas and Carrie received a letter from their French landlord telling them that Marie and her friends were leading a riotous lifestyle in their house during their absence !

Winter Sketch, Provence, France
Winter Sketch, Provence, France by Thomas Gotch

Although the quiet picturesque landscape around the village of Brolles offered Thomas Gotch the ideal vistas for his paintings there was a problem in finding suitable models from within the village and eventually he and Carrie decided they must give up their rural idyll and return to the French capital where it would be easier to find models for his paintings.  So, in February 1883 the couple were once again living in Paris, Thomas returned to the Laurens atelier and Caroline to the Académie Julian.

Looe
Looe by Thomas Gotch

Life in France ended for Thomas and Carrie when she became ill with a serious lung infection.  The couple and their daughter returned to England where they received a second opinion from a London specialist.  He confirmed the diagnosis and Carrie was told she had to rest.   Their daughter Phillis was taken to Thomas’ parents who began to look after her along with the re-hiring of their first nanny, Windsor.  Thomas took Carrie to Newlyn that summer to give her a chance to recuperate whilst he continued to paint depictions of the Cornish fishing village.  Carrie’s breathing problems slowly lessened, probably due to the clean and fresh sea air of the Cornish coast and soon she was able to walk freely.  By the end of the summer Carrie had recovered her health and the couple returned to London where the specialist gave her a clean bill of health.

…………………………………to be continued.

Thomas Cooper Gotch. Part 3.

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Although returning to live in Newlyn was tempting Thomas decided on another course of action and took his wife on the long voyage to Australia on the fully rigged sailing passenger clipper, Torrens., leaving England on October 30th 1883.  Their daughter Phyllis remained in Kettering with her grandparents.   Thomas and Caroline arrived in Port Adelaide on January 8th 1884 where they transferred to the SS South Australia and sailed to Melbourne where they were met by John Speechley Gotch, a wealthy distant relative who had met Tom when he visited England in 1874.  John Gotch was an art lover and he arranged for Thomas and Carrie to hold a joint exhibition of their work which they had brought with them, at Melbourne’s Fletcher’s Art Gallery in February 1884. 

Mental arithmetic
Mental Arithmetic by Thomas Gotch

The most important painting exhibited by Thomas Gotch was one entitled Mental Arithmetic.  It depicts an elderly bearded fisherman sitting holding a knife and plate of food being watched by a small girl.  It is thought that Thomas painted this in November 1883 from sketches he made that summer in Newlyn.  Melbourne City Gallery wanted to buy the painting but baulked at the £200 selling price.  However, John Gotch bought it and donated it to the gallery.  Many of John Goth’s paintings and sketches were sold as well as work by his wife Carrie and the couple made more than enough money to pay for their sea passages.

Qua-Qua, south of Johannesburg
Qua-Qua , South of Johannesburg by Thomas Gotch

Tom and Carrie returned to England on the Torrens calling at Cape Town, St Helena and the Ascension Island for the vessel to replenish supplies.  They eventually returned to London on July 3rd 1884.  The couple left the English capital and journeyed to the West Country looking for suitable accommodation.  They tried Brixham and Looe but finally settled on the Cornish town of Polperro where they lodged at the Louriet Hotel and were soon joined by their ten-month-old daughter and her nurse.

Child Enthroned by Thomas Gotch

Children featured in many of Gotch’s paintings.  Probably the best known is his 1894 work entitled Child Enthroned.  Like many other depictions of the young there is a mystical element about the portrayal of the young girl.   His eleven-year-old daughter Phyllis was the model for The Child Enthroned.  Her father’s Madonna like depiction was, he said, down to his time spent in Italy in the summer of 1891.  The painting is testament to Gotch’s ability as a portrait painter, especially his love of child portraiture and his competency in depicting fine detail in ornate fabrics.  The painting when exhibited to the public that year at the Royal Academy was rapturously received and established Gotch’s reputation as an artist.

Alleluia by Thomas Gotch

Another painting featuring Gotch’s daughter was his 1896 work entitled Alleluia. It was a major demonstration of his Pre-Raphaelite style.  Along the top of the painting, we see inscribed in Gothic lettering on a background of gold leaf, a Latin quotation which reads:

“…Sancti tui domine benedicent te gloriam regni tui dicent – Alleluya…”

 The inscription is taken from Psalm xlvii: 6 and 7, which was printed in the catalogue of the 1896 Royal Academy exhibition:

“…Sing praises to God, sing praises: Sing praises unto our King, Sing praises, For God is King of all the earth: Sing praises with understanding…”

It is a painting featuring thirteen richly clad children singing against a gilded background and his thirteen-year-old daughter is at the centre rear of the group with her hands clasped in prayer.  In front of her is a small figure with amber curls.  This is her cousin Hester Gotch.  When it was first shown at a local exhibition in Newlyn it was criticised by the local press because they believed Gotch had broken with the Newlyn tradition of painting.  The art critic of the Cornish Telegraph quipped that he doubted whether the time it took to complete (nine months) was worth the effort.   The art critic of the local weekly newspaper, West Briton, criticised the work saying:

“…It would be easy enough to say outright that we don’t like the thing and have done with it.  It is not possible to take ordinary children of today and pictorially attempt to transform them into choiring cherubim, without coming within consciousness of incongruity…”

Fortunately for Gotch when he submitted the work to that year’s Royal Academy exhibition the receiving jury accepted the painting had it hung at the most advantageous position, (hung on line). The work of art, which is part of the Tate Britain collection, was bought for the Nation under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest, following its exhibition at the Royal Academy.  The Chantrey Bequest, set out in the will of sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey, was of primary importance to the foundation and development of a national collection of British art at the Tate Gallery and it constituted the gallery’s main purchasing fund from its opening in 1897 until 1946.

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A Pageant of Childhood by Thomas Gotch (1899)

Another of Gotch’s paintings featuring a group of children was completed in 1899. It was entitled A Pageant of Childhood.  It depicts a procession of nine children of varying age, the eldest at the rear and the youngest at the front crossing a tiled hall in front of a fresco of Father Time, who we are aware will, in due course, carry off even the youngest of the children.  It is a colourful depiction of children enacting an historic pageant.  Some like the two boys at the centre play long horns whilst behind them are two girls, one with a drum and one with a set of symbols.  Take a look at the various children.  Some, with thoughtful expressions, are taking the enactment very seriously whilst others appear light-hearted and, in some respect, they personify children of different ages at play, a representation of the stages of life.  It was Gotch’s own evocation of innocence and youth.  The painting was completed just before the family left Newlyn and exhibited at the Newlyn Gallery in March 1899.  It was shown at the 1899 Royal Academy exhibition and appeared at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery, after which the Liverpool Corporation purchased the work and is part of the Walker Art Gallery collection.  This painting was completed close to the time that the Gotchs moved to a new house and went to live in Shottermill.

Postcard advertising auction of ‘Penwith’, Shottermill in 1906

Thomas Gotch’s House Penwith on sale in 1907

Thomas Gotch had decided to relocate his family to Shottermill close to the town of Haselmere, West Sussex, forty miles south west of London and twenty-five miles from the south coast of England.  At the end of 1898 Thomas started building his new home, named Penwith and the family were able to move in in October 1899.  Penwith was situated on a hillside at the end of a long twisting drive, which rose above the ponds of Shottermill.  It was a large six-bedroom residence with two drawing rooms, a large kitchen and two purpose-built studios.

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The Dawn of Womanhood by Thomas Gotch (1900)

In 1900 Thomas Gotch’s main work was entitled The Dawn of Womanhood which appeared at the 1900 Royal Academy Exhibition.  The painting depicts the child enthroned being confronted by the vision of approaching motherhood.  The phantom figure on the left represents Womanhood.  She is dressed in opalescent drapery of pale blue, gold and silvery primrose.  She is wearing a mask, as legend has it that all who are no longer children must conceal themselves which probably harks back to the story of Eve, who after eating the forbidden fruit was ashamed of her nakedness and sought to conceal it.  Sitting on the steps of the throne, to the right, is the familiar winged sprite representing the spirit of childhood, who is aware of the strange presence and makes ready to take flight for ever from the girl on the throne.

The Exile
The Exile: Heavy is the Price I Paid for Love by Thomas Gotch (c.1930)

Painted around that time, in 1930 — a year before Thomas Cooper Gotch’s death — The Exile is shrouded in mystery. As of now, we know nothing about the identity of the sitter or about the suggestive, tantalizing title of her portrait.

Thomas Gotch exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1880-1931, in all showing seventy of his paintings. He was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1885 and the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour in 1912. He was a founder member of the New English Art Club in 1886 and served as President of the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists between 1913 and 1928.   Gotch was fêted at the Salon and won medals in Chicago and Berlin.

Thomas Cooper Gotch died aged seventy-six of a heart attack while in London for an exhibition on May 1st, 1931.  He was buried in Sancreed churchyard in Cornwall.   Also in the graveyard of St Sancredus are buried fellow Newlyn School artists, Stanhope Forbes and Elizabeth Forbes.

Thomas Gotch’s wife, Caroline, died on December 14th, 1945 aged 91 and their only child, Phyllis Marian Gotch became Marquise de Verdières when she married André Marie, Marquis de Verdières in 1922. She died in Hong Kong on April 24th, 1963 aged 81.   She is buried with her parents in Cornwall’s Sancreed Churchyard.

Alice Ravenel Huger Smith

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Self portrait (1908)

Self Portrait (1908)

At the turn of the twentieth century, the South Carolina city of Charleston was a shadow of its former glory. Charleston had historically nurtured a celebrated art and architectural heritage during the Colonial Period and Antebellum period but following the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the Reconstruction period 1865-77, it struggled to continue doing so. Between the two World Wars, beginning in the second decade of the 20th century, Charleston experienced a renaissance that flourished in part due to the work of authors, architects, artists, poets, & preservationists who rallied behind the common cause of ‘the betterment of the city’. It was a period known as the Charleston Renaissance and is credited with helping to spur the city’s tourist industry. Of the various artists associated with the movement, four of them stand at its forefront: Alfred Hutty, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Anna Heyward Taylor, and Elizabeth O’Neill Verner. In this blog I am looking at the life and artwork of one of the four, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith.

Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Age 25.

Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, aged 25.

Alice Ravenel Huger Smith was born in Charleston on July 14th 1876. She was the fourth of five children and was descended from prominent rice planters and was the daughter of Daniel Elliott Huger Smith and Caroline Ravenel and was part of a socially prominent Charleston family. Although artistically self-taught she later did attend some classes in drawing and painting at the Carolina Art Association. Louise Fery, a Frenchwoman, instructed her students in the basics and, most importantly for Alice, in the technique of watercolour. The Art Association was established in 1857 by a group of prominent low country planters and factors and was officially chartered by the General Assembly on December 21, 1858. Its purpose was the cultivation of the arts and art education. It is now part of the Charleston’s Gibbes Museum of Art.  Alice Smith began her artistic career by making money from her portraiture, copying old family images and painting friends and relations.  She also dabbled with painting fans and dance cards. 

Celestial Figs by Alice Smith.  Colour woodblock print. (1917)

Of her early artistic influences, one was Birge Hirston, the American genre and landscape painter, teacher, and writer who was a prominent practitioner and advocate of Tonalism.  Tonalism was an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s when American artists began to paint landscape forms with an overall tone of coloured atmosphere or mist.  Alice met him during his extended visit to Charleston in 1908.  Later she would credit Hirston as being her guide when it came to her romantic style with regard to her landscape depictions.

HELEN HYDE (1868–1919) TEN WOODBLOCK PRINTS, MEIJI PERIOD (20TH CENTURY) Woodblock Print by Helen Hyde

Another influence which inspired Alice Smith was the Japonisme aesthetic of the American etcher and engraver, Helen Hyde, who is best known for her colour etching process and woodblock prints which echoed the portrayal of Japanese women and children. Around about 1917, Smith undertook an intense study of Japanese colour woodblock prints, largely from the ukiyo-e school, which had been collected by her cousin, the Harvard professor Motte Alston Read. Motte Alston Read built up a collection of almost four hundred Japanese woodblock prints during the first two decades of the twentieth century, working meticulously to assemble a group of prints that were representative of the history of Japanese woodblock printing. She also began to teach etching during the 1920s, and one of her most famous students was Elizabeth O’Neill Verner.

Smith catalogued the collection and, began trying out with actual blocks and she taught herself how to print in the traditional Japanese manner.  She managed to produce a body of work which was characterized by sophisticated design and yet retained a sense of tranquillity.  In 1923 Smith helped the founding of the Charleston Etchers Club, a collaborative group that jointly acquired a press and shared expertise and criticism. However, by the late 1920s Smith gave up her work in prints and began to concentrate on watercolour.

Branford-Horry House by Alice Smith (1917)

Branford-Horry House by Alice Smith

Alice Smith is probably best remembered for her scenic views of Charleston streets and in 1917 she produced a beautiful graphite sketch of one of Charleston’s famous buildings, the Branford-Horry House.  The house was built for William Branford, a wealthy planter, in 1765-67 and is rated one of Charleston’s finest examples of a three-story brick Georgian townhouse, or “double house.” In 1801 it was purchased by Thomas Horry, who had married Branford’s daughter. His son, Elias Horry, president of the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company, inherited the house and altered it somewhat. The house is a three-story Georgian brick building with stucco-covered walls. Unfortunately, in 1988, a speeding car crashed into the house, knocking out two of the columns and sending one into the front door of the house.

St Phillips Church Spire, Charleston by Alice Smith

St Phillips Church Spire by Alice Smith

Another graphite on paper sketch of a Charleston building is Alice’s depiction of St Philip’s church spire.  St. Philip’s is the oldest congregation in the United States south of Virginia.  The church was built in 1836 and the spire completed in 1850.  On November 7, 1973, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark.

House-Tops-View-from-69-Church-Street-689x1024

House Tops View from her home, 69 Church Street Charleston by Alice Smith

Alice Smith became so interested with the old buildings of Charleston that in 1917 in collaboration with her father, Daniel, she had a book published, The Dwelling Houses of Charleston, South Carolina, in which the authors demonstrate how the fashions of its architecture, often brought over from England, have maintained local characteristics and resulted in a distinctive style.

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For Alice and her father, it had not simply been their object to list or to describe these dwelling houses after the manner of a guidebook, but to show how the fashions of its architecture, though imported and constantly modified by new ideas brought chiefly from England, had yet maintained local characteristics, resulting in quite a distinctive style which has steadily persisted and been developed.

The Winter Vegetable Garden from the series A Carolina Rice Plantation of the Fifties by Alice Smith (c.1935)

The Winter Vegetable Garden from the series A Carolina Rice Plantation of the Fifties by Alice Smith (c.1935)

However, Alice Smith is best known for her lyrical and expressive depictions of the Carolina Lowcountry, the cultural region along South Carolina’s coast, including the Sea Islands. It was once known for its slave-based agricultural wealth in rice and indigo, crops that thrived in the hot subtropical climate, and is known now for its historic cities and communities, natural environment, cultural heritage, and tourism industry.  Smith summed up her love of the area saying:

“…my own lovely flat country of rice fields, of pinewoods, of cypress swamps, of oaks, lotus, and all their attendant feathered folk would yield me a full harvest if diligently spaded…”

Sunday Morning at the Great House by Alice Smith

Sunday Morning at the Great House from the series A Carolina Rice Plantation of the Fifties by Alice Smith (c.1935)

Around about 1924 Alice Smith changed her favoured painting medium and resorted to working with watercolours. After experimenting with oil paints and printmaking, Smith eventually settled on watercolour in which she would work for the rest of her life.  The reason being she said was that watercolours were most conducive to achieving the atmospheric effects she sought in her landscapes. Her landscape depictions are generally devoid of figures as she wanted to concentrate on the beauty of nature itself.  Many of her mature watercolours depict scenes from rural salt marshes.

Mending a Break in a Rice-Field Bank from the series A Carolina Rice Plantation of the Fifties

Mending a Break in a Rice-Field Bank from the series A Carolina Rice Plantation of the Fifties by Alice Smith (c.1935)

Alice Smith was also a noted illustrator, and contributed illustrations to two volumes her father, the historian Daniel Smith, who wrote about the history of Charleston and its architecture, as well as other books relating to South Carolina, most notably the 1936 book, A Carolina Rice Plantation of the Fifties, which contained thirty paintings in water-colour, by Alice Huger Smith, and a narrative by Herbert Ravenel Sass, with chapters from the unpublished memoirs of her father Daniel Huger Smith.

A Winter Field Still in Stubble from the series A Carolina Rice Plantation of the Fifties by Alice Smith

A Winter Field Still in Stubble from the series A Carolina Rice Plantation of the Fifties by Alice Smith (c.1935)

Alice was also engrossed in recording vanishing ways of life in South Carolina and her best-known work is the series of thirty watercolours known as her Rice Plantation Series which can be seen at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston’s Historic District. She donated the Rice Plantation Series to the Gibbes in 1937.  Alice was able to pictorially tell the history of plantation life in the antebellum South, and by doing so, she took it upon herself to preserve that period in a series of nostalgic images that would be accompanied by her father’s memoirs and an essay on rice cultivation by the historian Herbert Ravenel Sass.  Alice made these plantation paintings during the height of the Jim Crow era, when black people in Charleston and throughout the country were subjected to humiliating discrimination and life-threatening abuse.  She was well aware of this as she, a single woman, lived in downtown Charleston, close to areas of extreme poverty, surviving only through the sale of her art.  As I said at the beginning, this period was in the 1930’s when Charleston was a city in limbo.  Gone were the days of the glorious affluence of the rice years with its economic revival still years away.  It was a time for those who lived in Charleston to hanker for the “good old days” and like to remember when times were relatively calm, when blacks knew their place and white planters were firmly in charge, when life for the privileged class was simple and wealth abundant.  In Alice Smith’s 1950 autobiography, Reminiscences, she wrote about change:

“…Small places and big places alike show it. Perhaps small happenings show it as sharply as great events, and one looks with surprise at the differences that one never noticed during the endless moments of what might be called trivial evolution…”

The Grove of Oaks from the series A Carolina Rice Plantation of the Fifties by Alice Smith (c.1935)

The Grove of Oaks from the series A Carolina Rice Plantation of the Fifties by Alice Smith (c.1935)

Her series of watercolours reflect her sense of change, and her profound nostalgia.  Maybe it was a nostalgic view of plantation life of the past but maybe it was pure fantasy but one has to remember paintings were made to be sold and maybe the public preferred this “happy plantation life” image rather than the cruelty that existed and by studying her depictions the public it probably helped people believe that the past was lovely.

A Visit from the old Mistress by Wilmslow Homer (1876)

A Visit from the Old Mistress by Winslow Homer (1876)

Almost sixty years before Alice Smith’s Plantation series the great American painter Winslow Homer created his 1876 work, A Visit from the Old Mistress, a picture depicting an idealised situation when blacks as freed slaves and living in a ramshackle cabin were shown as mixing happily with a white person, their former mistress of the “big house” who, until recently, owned them. It represented a scene from the present, a meeting of different classes and colour which caused an inevitable awkwardness when it was exhibited.

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Woods at River Bend on Wando River, by Alice Smith (c. 1936)
 

Alice Smith donated the Rice Plantation Series to the Gibbes in 1937, and since that time the watercolours have been among the most popular works owned by the museum. The problem however was that the delicate works on paper were slowly deteriorating due to the acidic boards mounted to the back of each of the paintings. The acid then began to discolour the works and deposit on them brown spots known as foxing and with many of the watercolours, the damage was well advanced.

At the Head of the Valley by Alice Smith

The management of the Gibbes, realised the need to intervene, reverse the damage, and prevent future damage through professional conservation of Smith’s entire series of watercolours. To accomplish this, they established the Welsh-Blakely Fund, a substantial financial commitment that funded the five-year conservation project carried out by the Straus Center for Conservation at the Harvard University Art Museums.

Along the Beach by Alice Smith (c.1926)

Like many other leading painters from the Southern states of America during the early twentieth century, Alice Smith had a steadfast belief in the South, which was both idealized and energetically favourable, but this was simply down to her love of where she lived.  Smith was at the centre of Charleston’s artistic reawakening during the early twentieth century.

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Alice Ravenel Huger Smith died on February 03, 1958, aged 81 and is buried at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston.

Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky. Part 1. School Days

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Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky (self-portret).jpg
Self portrait by Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky (1915)

Today I am talking about Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky, who was one of the great nineteenth century Russian painters. The visual expression of the artist’s painting has its roots in realism, the desire to depict the reality of life. 

Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov was born on December 6th, 1868 in the small rural village of Shitiki of the Belsky district of the Smolensk province (today, the Oleninsky district of the Tver region) in the west of Russia, some 360 kilometres west-south-west of Moscow, and 60 kms from the border with Belarus.  The second part of his name was attached only in 1905 when the artist received the title of Academician. Bogdanov-Belsky recalled this momentous event:

“...My common name was as though ennobled by the Emperor himself, writing it personally in a diploma with a hyphen – “Belsky…”

Nickolai came from a poor peasant family which in a Russian-language site was described as:

Он, внебрачный сын батрачки,

He’ the illegitimate son of a batrachka

A batrachka is defined as an order of amphibians which includes the frogs and toads.  So, I guess that means his family was harshly classified as the lowest of the low !  Nikolai was born into a life of abject poverty and his childhood was harsh and unforgiving.  He lived with his mother at the house of his uncle, where they were unwanted guests and merely tolerated. According to church records, Bogdanov-Belsky began learning to read and write from a bell ringer. He continued into the 2nd grade of the Shopotovsky primary school where the local priest was also the teacher. The boy’s artistic abilities began to manifest themselves from the age of six and he was noticed by Sergei Alexandrovich Rachinsky, the founder of the folk school in the village of Tatevo, and from the autumn of 1878 to the spring of 1882, Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky attended this school. The boy worked hard and was helped along by Sergei Aleksandrovich Rachinsky and lived in the Rachinsky household. Rachinskyi was a legendary and wealthy man, who was a professor of biology, who lived on a large estate.  Racznski had been Professor of Botany at Moscow University but left the scientific department in 1867 and created a school for peasant children on his estate in Tatev. However, to gain entrance to this school one had to pass an exam and in the case of Nicholai, he had to draw one of the school’s teachers in profile which is quite a difficult task for a child but his test piece was good enough for him to be accepted into the Sergei Aleksandrovich Rachinsky People’s School.

An der Schulschwelle von Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov Belsky
On the Threshold of School by Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky (1897)

What was it like for Nickolai to face his first day at this new school?  The answer probably lies in his 1897 autobiographical painting which he painted, aged twenty-nine.  It was entitled On the Threshold of School.  In it we see a boy holding his breath as he stood outside his classroom, plucking up the courage to enter.

Writing by Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky (c.1908)

Another schoolroom scene was painted by Nikolai in 1908 simply entitled Writing.

Nikolay Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky. Verbal counting
Oral Counting by Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky (1895)

One of Nickolai’s well-known works featuring school life is his 1895 painting entitled Oral Counting which is also referred to as Verbal Counting or Mental Arithmetic.  This is also Nikolai’s dedication to Sergei Aleksandrovich Rachinsky, a university professor and hereditary nobleman, who had befriended young Nikolai and set up a school which gave him and other barefoot peasant children from the village a start in life in the form of a decent education.  In the painting, we see the figure of a schoolteacher, an intellectual in a bow tie and a black tailcoat seated among ordinary rural boys who have come to learn mathematics.  The school room in the depiction is part of the school built with funds from Rachinsky in his ancestral village of Tatevo.  It became the first Russian educational institution with full board for children of peasants. Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky himself was fortunate enough to study there.  Throughout his life, Nickolai would return with thoughts of gratitude remembering the warmth of school life and he devoted more and more of his new canvases to the teaching profession, and the process of schooling.  There is no doubt that his years spent at the Rachinsky school left an indelible mark on his soul  Rachinsky was very definite as to what the peasant classes needed, saying:

“…The first of the practical needs of the Russian people … is communication with the Divine…….The peasant is not drawn to the theatre in search of art, but to the church, not to the newspaper, but to the Divine Book…”

The reasoning behind this was that Rachinsky also believed that Dante and Shakespeare would be available for understanding to those who learnt Church Slavonic writing, while Beethoven and Bach would become closer to a person familiar with church chants. 

Nicolai Bodanova-Belsky’s depiction testifies to Rachinsky’s main passion – mathematics, and the emphasis that was placed on it in his teaching. Rachinsky created the textbook entitled 1001 Problems for Oral Counting, and the puzzle seen on the blackboard in the painting is one such problem. Apparently, this example seen on the blackboard can be solved by knowing about the regularities of adding squares of some two-digit numbers named after the famous Russian teacher. So, according to Rachinsky’s sequences, the sum of the squares of the first three numbers on the board will be equal to the sum of the next two. And since in the first and second cases this number is 365, the answer to this already classical problem is extremely simple….. 2, but you knew that !!!!!!!!!

Nikolay Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky. Future monk

Future Monk by Nickolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky (1889)

In 1881, Rachinsky sent thirteen-year-old Nickolai to receive an initial art education at the icon-painting workshop at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, where the boy studied for two years. In 1884, after two years studying at the monastery school Rachinsky enabled Nickolai to enrol at the Moscow School of Painting and Architecture.  He thrived at the school and achieved many commendations for his landscape work.   He remained there for five years, and at the end of the course he had to produce a diploma painting, so as to receive the title of “class artist”.  He was unsure what to paint although his fellow students and teachers presumed it would be a landscape painting.  He decided to go back to the village of Tatevo to visit Raczynski and ask for his advice.  Together they come up with the idea that the painting should feature monks.  The painting he completed was entitled Future Monk.  It seems the young teenager in the picture has set his sight on becoming a monk and to go to the monastery.  The eyes of the “future monk” stare out at us with grim determination.  He is already dreaming of monastic life and spiritual feats that it will bring.  The work was approved by the examiners and bought from the exhibition by Kozma Terentievich Soldatenkov, the largest collector of works of art, and then given to by Empress Maria Fedorovna. Immediately the artist was ordered to paint two more versions of the painting. The painting had been an absolute success!

Sunday Reading by Nickolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky (1895)

In 1890 Nickolai travelled to Constantinople and Mount Athos, a mountain and peninsula in northeastern Greece which is an important centre of Eastern Orthodox monasticism. On Athos, Bogdanov-Belsky met Filippe Malyavin, who is engaged in icon painting there. He also met sculptor Vladamir Beklemishev, a professor who later became the rector of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.  Between 1894 and 1895 Nickolai is in St Petersburg where he continues his art studies at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.  One of his lecturers was Ilya Repin.  In 1895 Nickolai completes one of his best loved paintings, Sunday Reading.  The painting is well received and is sold and with the money raised he goes to Paris, where he attends the private studios of Fernand Cormon and Filippo Colarossi.

Country Boys by Nickolai Bogdanov- Belsky (1916)

There can be no doubt about the love Nickolai had for painting children of peasant stock.  He would travel back and forth between St Petersburg where he rented an apartment and the village of Tatevo where he had his studio.  He once wrote:

“…I spent so many years in the village, so close to the village school, so often I watched peasant children, so loved them for their spontaneity, their talent, that they became heroes of my paintings…”

In my final look at Bogdanov-Belsky’s peasant children paintings I want to show you his 1916 work entitled Country Boys. The main characters in this depiction are two bare-footed boys, one of whom is sitting on a rickety wattle-fence which appears to be just strong enough to support him. He wears a peaked cap on his head, which was a typical head gear of the 19th and early 20th centuries and sported by people in towns and rural settings alike. He is wearing a patched shirt and ill-fitting trousers with a hole at the knee.  Something has distracted him making him turn to the side but we are unable to elicit what has caught his attention.  His friend, standing beside him, is also wearing shabby clothes which could well have been “hand-me-down” ones from an elder brother. This is a Realism painting.  The artist is simply depicting how things are for the rural poor.  This is not a painting denouncing social inequality.  In a way it is a poetic and lyrical depiction in the way Nickolai has given us a setting, a resplendent representation of nature, in which, behind the fence we see a chamomile field, forest and an overcast sky.

………………..to be continued.

Nickolai Patrovich Bogdanov-Belsky. Part 2.

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The Peredvizhniki of 1886

Seating from left to right: Sergei Nikolajewitsch Ammosow; Aleksandr Aleksandrowitsch Kisselew; Nikolai Wassilijewitsch Newrew; Wladimir Jegorowitsch Makowski; Aleksandr Dmitrijewitsch Litowschenko; Illarion Michailowitsch Prjanischnikow; Kirill Wikentjewitsch Lemoh; Iwan Nikolajewitsch Kramskoi; Ilja Jefimowitsch Repin; Iwanow (dient im Vorstand der Genossenschaft); Konstantin Jegorowitsch Makowski

Standing from left to right: Grigorij Grigorjewitsch Mjassojedow; Konstantin Apollonowitsch Sawizki; Wassili Dmitrijewitsch Polenow; Jefim Jefimowitsch Wolkow; Wassili Iwanowitsch Surikow; Iwan Iwanowitsch Schischkin; Nikolai Alexandrowitsch Jaroschenko; Pawel Alexandrowitsch Brjullow; Alexandr Karlowitsch Beggrow.

Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky has often been referred to as a “wanderer” (peredvizhnik), because he joined the Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions (the Peredvizhniki) in 1895.  The Peredvizhniki came about when in 1863 fourteen students at the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts refused to participate in the annual gold medal competition because they felt the required subject, “The Entry of Odin into Valhalla,” and the Academy’s continued insistence on the supremacy of history painting was completely irrelevant to contemporary Russian life. They rejected the Academy and its rules and this had dire consequences for them as it meant they had also rejected the major patron in Russia, which was the Tsarist government. This resulted in a number of the artists being forced to organise their own exhibitions, when they could gain permission, so that they stood any chance of earning money which was needed if they wanted to continue with their artistic careers.

Nicholas II (1868-1918), Emperor of Russia by Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky (1908)

Having graduated from the Academy of Arts in 1903, Nickolai was awarded the official title of Academician of Painting. Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky’s fame as a painter of portraits had spread so far that Emperor Nicholas II ordered him to paint his portrait in 1904. Nickolai and the emperor met in 1906, and the portrait was completed in 1908.  The emperor was delighted with the portrait and went on to buy two further works by Nickolai, Reading in a Rural School and The Game of Checkers.

Portrait of Prince Alexander Konstantinovich Gorchakov (1904), Nikolai Bogdanov-Belski

Portrait of Prince Alexander Konstantinovich Gorchakov by Nikolai Bogdanov-Belski 

Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky completed many more portraits of people who were close to the Royal family such as that of the Prince Alexander Konstantinovich Gorchakov, who married Daria Mikhailovna Bibikova, a lady-in-waiting to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. 

Shepherd Girl, 1924 - Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky
Shepherd Girl by Nickolai Patrovich Bogdanov-Belsky (1924)

In 1914, Bogdanov-Belsky became a full member of the Academy of Arts and he was elected Chairman of the Arkhip Kuindzhi Society, a society founded by Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi a Ukrainian landscape painter of Greek descent, who was once professor-head of landscape workshop at the St Petersburg Academy.  Bogdanov-Belsky held the position as chairman until 1918.  For Nickolai everything changed in 1917 with the collapse of the monarchy and the revolutionary turmoil.  He found it impossible to recover from this shock of what was going on all around him and found it impossible to adapt to a new way of life.  Salvation came in the form of an invitation from his friend, the Russian Impressionist painter, Sergei Vinogradov who had relocated to Latvia and invited Nickolai to join him.

Evening (Angler), 1925 - Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky
Evening (Angler) by Nickolai Bogdnov-Belsky (1925)

In the Autumn of 1921 Nickolai relocated to Latgale, the easternmost region of Latvia. He continued to paint depictions of familiar subject matters that he loved so much: rural nature and peasant children.

Nickolai often spoke about his love of Latgale and Latvia:

“…Latvia generally is very picturesque, and especially Latgale. Its nature reminds me very much of the Northern part of Smolensk province, where I was born and spent my childhood…”

Needlework Lesson by Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky (1936)

For the next twenty years, his artwork appeared in many exhibitions in galleries at Tallinn, Oslo, Munich, Toronto, Helsinki, Berlin, Hamburg, Prague, Copenhagen, and Belgrade. He and his art were in great demand and in 1936 for his significant contribution to the culture of Latvia he was awarded the highest award of Latvia – the Order of Three Stars.

Forest by Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky (1930)

Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky followed in the footsteps of the great Russian landscape painters and through his landscape work has managed to emphasise the interest in national nature, the depiction of his native land. His landscape depictions are all about light and air, and the atmosphere of this canvas mesmerises the viewer with its brightness, spontaneity, tranquillity and life-affirming motif.  A prime example of this is his 1930 landscape painting entitled Forest.  Nickolai was a great exponent of the plein air technique, which allowed him to catch the most fleeting and subtle fluctuations of light, its changeability and liveliness.  In this painting Nickolai has used a sunny and bright palette.  The sunlight plays on the tree leaves in the fore and mid-ground whilst the spruce forest in the background, which we see is in the shade, and this affords us the feeling of a fresh coolness which would have been so looked-for on a hot summer day.  Meandering and rutted rural paths create interesting subtleties in the vertical composition, that the artist had chosen. The blues of the skyline with white clouds that Nickolai has used contrasts strikingly with a various shades of green used in the body of the work.  It is a typical work of art by Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky.  It is a work of life, of simplicity,  tranquillity, and acute observation. He had always been commended for his landscape paintings.  His very first one, Spruce Forest which he completed when he was starting out at the Academy was hailed by one of his tutors, the Russian painter Vasily Polenov:

“…Your painting captivates me by the simplicity and inner beauty of the landscape. Your forest lives and breathes – this is the main thing…”

NIKOLAI PETROVITCH BOGDANOFF-BELSKY 1868 Shepotovo/ near Smolensk - Berlin 1945 A sea in the forest Oil on canvas, 70 by 88 cm, lower left signed and dated 'N. Bogdanoff-Belsky 1938', on the right min. worn, framed. We are grateful to Mr. Alexander Kuznetsov for his friendly assistance in cataloguing this work.
Forest Lake by Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky (1938)

Another glorious landscape work by Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky was his landscape work entitled Forest Lake which he completed in 1938. Look at how he has depicted reflections on the still water of the lake.

Boy in a Forest by Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky (1925)

His 1925 work, Boy in a Forest, combines his two favourite motifs, peasant children and landscapes.

The last lifetime exhibition, which was showing Bogdanov-Belsky’s work took place in 1941 in Moscow.  In 1944, Bogdanov-Belsky became seriously ill, and had to leave Latvia to seek medical attention.  Despite the war, he and his wife Antonina Maximilianovna Erhard, a Baltic German, travelled to Germany to be operated on in a Berlin clinic. Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky died in Berlin on February 19, 1945, during the bombing of the city and was buried in the Russian Orthodox cemetery at Berlin-Tegel.  Many of his paintings and archive documents remain in Germany and this legacy is looked after by the artist’s descendants.

I will leave you with two quotes of Bogdanov-Belsky which reveal his love for his art:

“…Art gives people the joy and happiness to recognize beauty...”

“…Children have always fascinated me, I have dedicated my life to them and still do …the world of a child is truly good!…”


Paul Sérusier.

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The paintings by today’s artist are highly colourful and whose early works showcased the people and landscapes of Brittany.  His works have a strong resemblance to paintings by Paul Gaugin and as you read further on you will see the reason for this similarity.  My artist today is the French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Sérusier.

Paul Sérusier, or to give him his full name, Louis-Paul-Henri Sérusier, was born on November 9th, 1864, in Paris.  He was born into a prosperous middle-class family.  His father, of Flemish descent, was a successful businessman in the perfume industry, and was able to afford to give his son a good education. In 1875, aged ten, Paul entered the Lycée Fontane, later known as Lycée Condorcet, one of the four oldest high schools in Paris and also one of the most prestigious.  It was here that Sérusier studied classical philosophy, Greek and Latin, and the sciences. Also attending this school were fellow students and future artists Maurice Denis, Édouard Vuillard, and Ker-Xavier Roussel.  Sérusier graduated from the Lycée in 1883 with two baccalaureates, one in philosophy and one in the sciences.  Paul’s father wanted his son to have a career in business and arranged for him to join the company of his friend as a salesman but after a short period Paul realised that life in business was not for him as he had set his heart on becoming an artist and in 1885 he enrolled at the Académie Julian where once again he was with his friend Maurice Denis and a life-long friendship between the two began.

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The Weaver by Paul Sérusier (1888)

Before we look at Sérusier’s post 1888 paintings I wanted to show you one of his Realist paintings which he completed in early 1888 before he made the trip to Pont Aven.  It is so different in comparison of what was to come.  It was entitled The Breton Weaver.

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Pont-Aven: towards the Bois d’Amour

Pont-Aven, a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany in northwestern France became one of the most popular and influential art colonies, visited by hundreds or even thousands of artists, well into the twentieth century. In 1888, Sérusier arrived at Pont-Aven and his attention was soon attracted by a group of artists who crowded around Emile Bernand and Paul Gauguin. Sérusier was finally introduced to them and even received a lesson from Gauguin. Gauguin encouraged the young artist to free himself from the limitations of imitative painting, and instead use pure colours.  He was also advised to overstress his impressions, and by doing this, give to the painting his own, decorative rational and symbolic structure.

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Bois d’Amour in Pont-Aven by Paul Sérusier.  Later known as The Talisman.

That summer, Paul Sérusier listened to and took part in conversations with Bernard and his friend Paul Gauguin discussing their ideas concerning moving on from Impressionism and its fixation with studies of light and nature and rather simplify, interpret, and arrange nature.  At the beginning of October 1888, with artistic advice from Gauguin, Sérusier painted Bois d’Amour in Pont-Aven.  It is a pioneering work in its use of flat surfaces in random colours.  So, what made Sérusier choose this location?  The French writer Denise Lelouche described the location writing:

“…The Bois d’Amour, where all the painters from the Pont-Aven community liked to come, seduced by the stillness of the place, the beauty of these venerable trees, the richness of the reflexions constantly disturbed by the flow of the river colliding with the granitic rocks, and the clouds sweeping and shading the light according to the wind…”

The Bois d’Amour, or “Wood of Love” is located on the heights of Pont-Aven and used to be a hotspot of inspiration for the artists staying in Pont-Aven.  The story behind this painting starts in October 1888 when twenty-four-year-old Paul Sérusier, travelled to the artist’s colony at Pont-Aven in Brittany, with a letter of introduction to Paul Gauguin. With his letter to Gauguin from Émile Bernard, his idea was to make studies of nature in the picturesque countryside around Pont-Aven.  Sérusier later described his experience to Maurice Denis, recounting how he and Gauguin had walked to the Bois d’Amour, a picturesque landscape of forest and rocks along the river Aven, not far from the village. Gaugin encouraged Sérusier to forgo modelling, perspective, and all such attempts at three-dimensional effects and to use a simplified colour palette It was here that Gaugin asked Sérusier how he saw these trees? Sérusier replied that they were yellow. Gaugin then continued that Sérusier should put some yellow. This shadow, it’s rather blue, paint it with pure ultramarine. Those red leaves? Put vermillion.  On the back of the Bois d’Amour canvas, Sérusier wrote

“…Made in October 1888 under the direction of Gauguin by P. Sérusier at Pont-Aven…”

Breton Women, the Meeting in the Sacred Grove, c.1892 - Paul Serusier

Breton Women, the Meeting in the Sacred Groveby Paul Sérusier (c.1892)

Sérusier returned to Paris with the painting and showed it to his fellow students at the Académie Julian. Many derided the work for its garish blocks of colour but several, particularly Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, and Paul Ranson, Henri-Gabriel Ibels and Renée Piot, were highly enthusiastic about this new way of depicting a landscape.   Sérusier proposed to them the creation of the artistic fellowship of the Nabis, a term which in Hebrew means “prophet”.  He was to play an important role, both as an artist and as a theoretician.  The painting was placed in the studio of the oldest of the painters, Paul-Élie Ranson, age twenty-four, at 25, boulevard du Montparnasse. It was Ranson who gave the painting the name The Talisman.  When it was first exhibited in 1903, Maurice Denis wrote:

“…Thus we were presented, for the first time, in a form that was paradoxical and unforgettable, the fertile concept of a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order…”

The reputation of Paul Sérusier and his painting, The Talisman, was kept alive by the efforts of Maurice Denis, who was the chief theorist and historian of the Nabis, He became the guardian of the painting in about 1903 and wrote continually about the importance of the artist and the work. After the death of Denis in 1943, the painting became part of the collection of the French government, and eventually of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

Ironically, The Talisman was not a completed work as Sérusier intended it to be a simple sketch which would later be used for a future work.

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Landscape at Le Pouldu by Paul Sérusier (1890)

This group of young Académie students known as Les Nabis held Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne in high esteem and set their minds to renew the art of painting, but each varied greatly in their individual styles. Their common belief was that a work of art was not a depiction of nature, but a synthesis of metaphors and symbols created by the artist.  The Nabis felt that as artists they were creators of a subjective art that was deeply rooted in the soul of the artist.  Les Nabis held their final exhibition in 1900 and then went their separate ways.

Undergrowth at Huelgoat, 1905 - Paul Serusier

Undergrowth at Huelgoat by Paul Sérusier (1905)

Sérusier returned to Paris in the Autumn of 1889.  The following year he gave up his studies at the Académie Julian saying he no longer believed in the academy teachings.  In the summers of 1889 and 1890, Sérusier returned to Brittany to work with Gauguin in the coastal Breton village of Le Pouldu. There, he was deeply moved by the simple and pious life of the Breton people.   After Gauguin  left for Tahiti in April 1891, Sérusier remained for the summer in Brittany as he found plenty of atmosphere there and did not feel any need to go elsewhere.  The works he painted during this period are brightly coloured; in Gauguin’s style, but were said to be less forceful and more ‘anecdotal’.

Shepherd in the Valley of Chateauneuf - Paul Serusier

Shepherd in the Valley of Chateauneuf by Paul Sérusier (1917)

In 1891 Sérusier established his atelier in the towns of Huelgoat and two years later in Châteauneuf-du-Faou, where he continued to paint Breton women, usually immersed in their everyday chores, allowing himself to be guided by the example of his master and by his interest in Japanese prints. His trips to Paris were reduced to short breaks during the winters, in order to exhibit with his fellow Nabi artists.

Sérusier enjoyed his time in Paris as in the French capital he had the company of his Polish mistress, Gabriela Zapolska, but when she suddenly left him in 1895, he decided to isolate himself in the Britanny commune of Châteauneuf-du-Faou.  Sérusier became depressed with his life during 1897 and in 1898 went through a period of intellectual doubt only resolved in 1902.

 

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Washerwomen by Paul Sérusier (1886/1897)

Although the date given for the completion of Sérusier’s Washerwomen painting is around 1897, it is thought that work started on this depiction around 1886 when he was attending the Académie Julian.

Portrait of Paul Ranson in Nabi Costume by Paul Sérusier (1890)

One of Sérusier’s fellow member of Les Nabis was the French painter Paul Ranson and in 1890 Sérusier completed a portrait of his friend. In the depiction Ranson, who was famed for his religious works, is portrayed in the role of a bishop seen clutching an ornate crosier in his left hand whilst studying the text of an illuminated book.

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Breton Wrestling by Paul Sérusier (1891)

One of the popular sports during the days Sérusier was living in Brittany was Breton Wrestling, where it is known as gouren. Gouren is a style of folk wrestling which has been established in Brittany for several centuries. 

A pencil portrait of Desiderius Lenz in 1860 by Gabriel Wüger 

In 1898, mainly thanks to his friend, the Dutch Post-Impressionist and Christian Symbolist painter, Jan Verkade, who was close to the Nabi group he found a kind of solace. Sérusier visited Verkade at the monastery of Beuron in Southwest Germany, where Verkade had been living since his conversion to Catholicism and entering the Benedictine Order. Whilst living at the monastery, Sérusier was taught by the artist and Benedictine monk Desiderius Lenz, who together with Gabriel Wüger founded the Beuron Art School.

Still Life with Churn, 1925 - Paul Serusier
Still Life with Churn by Paul Sérusier (1925)

From then on, Sérusier developed a complex theory on the use of colour consisting in the separation of warm and cold colours, in order to avoid chromatic dissonance. At the same time, Gauguin’s influence began to give way to a more hieratic and allegorical painting, inspired by medieval tapestries. He spent a great deal of time studying Egyptian art, the Italian primitivists, and the tapestries of the Middle Ages so that he could create decorative works of a mysterious and calculated timelessness

tableau-mme-sérusier

In 1908, Sérusier began to teach painting at the Académie Ranson in Paris and one of his first students was the artist daughter of an army officer, Marguerite Gabriel-Claude.  She was born in Lons-le-Saunier on March 12, 1879.  She attended the maison d’éducation of the Légion d’honneur and later was a student at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. She then enrolled at the Académie Ranson where she met and became friends with Sérusier.

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 41. PAUL SÉRUSIER | MARGUERITE SÉRUSIER READING NEAR THE RIVER.
MARGUERITE SÉRUSIER READING NEAR THE RIVER by Paul Sérusier

Friendship soon turned to love and on February 22nd, 1912, Abbé Ackermann, who had been Paul Sérusier’s former philosophy teacher at the Lycée Condorcet, blessed the marriage of the two artists at the Paris Church of Saint-Sulpice. The couple went to live in Sérusier new house at 27 Duchenn Glaz. That same year Sérusier completed a painting of his wife entitled Madame Sérusier à l’ombrelle.

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Marguerite Sérusier , Landscape with Valleys, c.1910, painted screen, Paris, Musée d’Orsay.

Marguerite Sérusier loved the art of tapestry, and it was she who encouraged her husband to persevere in wall art. Thus, around 1913, the plasters of the vestibule, the corridor and the staircase of their residence were decorated with astonishing achievements on religious, pagan or esoteric themes. It was also Marguerite who encouraged her husband to resume his project of decorating the walls of the baptistery of the parish church of Saint-Julien in Châteauneuf-du-Faou, which was carried out from 1914 to 1917.

His experience as a teacher led him years later to publish his 1921 guidebook ABC de la peinture.

Whilst visiting his wife in hospital in Morlaix, Paul Sérusier died of a heart attack on October 6th, 1927, a month before his sixty-third birthday. His wife Marguerite died in September 1950 and is buried in Morlaix with her husband.

Natalie Papamichael. Part 1.

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Natalie Papamichael in her studio

I have told you on a few occasions that I tend to write about artists who have passed away and steer clear of living artists as they may take offence about what I have written!  My featured artist in the next two blogs is a living painter who I was fortunate to meet and talk to her about her art.  She is an utterly fascinating person, as are her works of art.  She is strong-willed and holds very strong opinions with regards feminism and things that face us with twenty-first century living.  Her works, which I will show you, are hard-hitting and thought-provoking and although they may not be liked by all, I am amazed by them and of course you all well know that I like paintings with a background story. My artist today, Natalie Papamichael, who is based in Brighton on the south coast of England where she has her own studio, which I was fortunate to visit.  However, let me start this story before she was born and as we meander along her life’s path, I will introduce you to some of her paintings.

Natalie Papamichael in her studio with some of her paintings

Natalie was born on September 5th 1971 in Slough, Berkshire. She has one sister, Helen, who is three years older than her. Her father Nicholas came from Greek and Cypriot parentage and grew up in Alexandria, Egypt. He and his brother left Egypt to study in UK in 1956. Natalie’s mother, Nicole, is French and came from Paris. She moved to the UK in order to study English and it was in London that the couple met. They married in Athens in 1965 and had intended to live in Greece but a far-right military junta overthrew the caretaker government that ruled the country in April 1967 and the couple decided that it would be safer to stay and live in England. They settled in south-east London. Natalie’s father, a mathematician, worked at Brunel University in the Uxbridge area of west London, and her mother worked at the French Consulate in central London. Natalie was born on September 5th 1971. Her only sibling, a sister, Helen, was born in May 1968.

Self portrait as Medusa by Natalie Papamichael (2016)

Natalie started her schooling, aged five, at the Seer Green Church of England Primary School in 1976, and in 1983 she moved to the Chesham High School, Buckinghamshire where she remained until the age of sixteen. In 1987, having achieved good grades in nine GCSE subjects, she attended the Further Education establishment of Amersham College where she attained her A Levels in French, English Literature and Art. Natalie left the college in 1989 and applied for a place on an Art Foundation Course but was rejected. Subsequently she was offered a place on the “Reserve List” but still feeling aggrieved that they had turned her down initially, she rejected the place and decided to spend her “Gap Year” in Paris, where she had some friends and relatives. There she began working as an au pair, an occupation her sister had undertaken years before.

Self portrait as Marie Antoinette by Natalie Papamichael (2018)

Natalie returned to the UK where she had a place at Leeds University to study French and Brazilian Portuguese. Her reason for choosing this combination of subjects was less to do with future career ideas but more to do with the fact that she would get to spend time in Brazil and France. However, her university plans were abandoned when she became very unwell. Her illness was due to her excessive alcohol consumption combined with a debilitating eating disorder. Her weight at that time was down to below eighty pounds. In the meantime, her parents had taken the decision to leave England and return to Greece where her father had been offered a job. Unfortunately, the job offer fell through but they still decided to leave England. Natalie’s father was a Socialist and the re-election of Margaret Thatcher was more than he could bear !!! Her father eventually was offered a temporary teaching post at the University of Braga, near Porto and he and his wife travelled to Portugal. Later, due to her illness, Natalie joined them.

Watercolour pencil sketch on paper of Lily Cole by Natalie Papamichael (2005) with pencilled notes of her life at the time

At this time, her sister was living in Paris and so Natalie decided to leave Portugal and join her in the French capital. Initially she lived with her sister but later lived on her own in many different arrondissements around Paris. She loved Paris and continued with her painting. She would often visit the Musée d’Orsay where she would sit for many hours sketching. She loved films and would regularly go to the cinema. Another pleasing pastime was reading and she loved to while away the time sitting and reading in the many city parks. Natalie took on a variety of jobs such as working in some Irish pubs. She also had part time jobs at Chicage Meatpackers, Habitat, Galleries Lafayette and finally she got a job which she stayed at for several years as a receptionist at KPMG. At weekends she would sometimes visit and stay with relatives who lived in the suburbs of Paris.

Totem 01 by Natalie Papamichael (2019)

But all was not well and she began to have health problems due to her continuing high alcohol consumption exacerbated by her constant partying and this coupled with an eating disorder soon took its toll. She had made many friends and went to parties but as her drinking got worse, she became much more isolated and began to self-harm. Finally, she was admitted as an in-patient at L’ Hôpital Sainte Anne. She recalled later:

“…I did not realise at the time that it was a psychiatric hospital. I discovered that it was a famous psychiatric hospital in 2006, when I was sitting in a lecture at the Courtauld Institute. My tutor was talking about Nancy Spero and Antonin Artaud. She mentioned that Artaud had been in Hôpital Sainte Anne in Paris. I nudged my friend (who was also half French, half Greek) and told her I was in that hospital. She said did I realise it was a psychiatric hospital! I then looked into the history of the hospital and realised it had really interesting links to another artist, Unica Zurn. What was also very interesting about this was that Unica Zurn had lived a few doors down from where I lived with my sister in Rue Mouffetard…”

Massacre of the Madwomen by Natalie Papamichael (2019)

The narrative behind Natalie Papamichael’s 2019 painting entitled Massacre of the Madwomen resonated with her own story and her time spent in L’hopital Sainte-Anne in Paris. The characters that she used are pertinent for the stories that they are taken from. The women she enacts are the typical ‘hysterics’.  Her work is based on a black and white print of the event entitled Massacre at la Salpêtrière, 3 September 1792.

La Salpêtrière was a famous asylum in Paris, which, during this period, was operated more like a prison, housing women who were prostitutes, the poor, the mentally ill and the disabled. The Massacre was part of the bloody September massacres in Paris during the French Revolution. On the nights of September 3rd and 4th 1792, La Salpêtrière was stormed with the intention of releasing the detained women. However, out of fear that the inmates would join the foreign and royalist armies, thirty-five of the women were dragged into the streets and murdered. Natalie’s painting is a re-imagaing of the Massacre once again using her own performance still images as well as characters from other sources, such as her favourite films, The Red Shoes and Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari.

Self Portrait with her painting *Society of Outsiders” by Natalie Papamichael (2018)

When Natalie was finally released from the Paris hospital she began to concentrate on her art and plan for the future. She created many paintings whilst in hospital which she exhibited at Finnegan’s Wake. Her excessive drinking became worse and after a progressive mental and physical descent, she managed to stop drinking. She has not had a drink now for twenty-seven years!. Natalie knew the only thing she really wanted to do was art. She had hoped to apply for entrance to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris but they did not recognise her English qualifications and so in 1996 she returned to London. She gained employment as a receptionist at Talkback TV Production and it was whilst working there that they allowed her to work part time so she was able to enrol on a part-time Foundation Course at the prestigious London art school, Central Saint Martins. In 2000 she married Mark, an English teacher and musician, at a civil ceremony at Brighton Registry Office, followed by a small wedding in Agios Dimitrios, a small church at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens. Having completed the Foundation Course at CSM, she went on to do a full time BA in Fine Art at the school. During her final year at Central St Martins, she became pregnant with their first child. She used her pregnant body for performances at a time when she was looking at the feminist performance artists of 1979’s. She became involved with the Women’s Art Library, researching feminist performance artists of the 1970s and creating her own performances. In 2002 her first born, Ziggy, was born. Four years later, in 2006, she studied for a MA in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, a degree she attained the following year. It was at the Courtauld that she explored the exclusion of women from academic training and how art history had recorded the struggle of female artists to gain deserved recognition.

Self portrait with Ziggy (as Madonna and Child) by Natalie Papamichel (2013)

One of her most beautiful works is her 2013 painting, Self portrait with Ziggy (as Madonna and Child) which she completed in 2013.  She used the Madonna and Child painting by Artemisia Gentileschi as the direct reference and re-interpreted this to show the reality of motherhood.  It is such a tender depiction of Natalie and her first-born son.  Did the baby sit still for the portrait?  Actually she used a teddy bear !! (She said that she collaged two photos together, the calm pose was the one with the teddy bear and the other was the one with Ziggy crying).

868px-Madonna-and-child-Gentileschi
Madonna and Child by Artemesia Gentileschi (c.1612)

Maud Allan, born as either Beulah Maude Durrant or Ulah Maud Alma Durrant in August 1873. She was a Canadian dancer, chiefly noted for her Dance of the Seven Veils.  She was a favourite of the music hall and popular theatres, where a population from diverse social backgrounds went to watch a variety of plays, sketches, comedy and songs- much like a modern variety show.

Maud Allan

As a tribute to Allan, Natalie has crafted her oil on aluminium painting Self-portrait as Salome (after Maud Allan).

Self-portrait as Salome (after Maud Allan) by Natalie Papamichael

……………………….to be continued


The idea to write about Natalie Papamichael came from an interview I read in Natasha Moura’s excellent art blog:  Women’n Art





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