Théodore Géricault by Alexandre Colin (1816)

In the last few blogs I have talked about paintings which, at the time, shocked the establishment. In this blog I will be looking at a painting by one of the great French artists that, no doubt, would have shocked the nation of art lovers if it had ever been exhibited but in fact it only surfaced 170 years after its completion. The artist in question is Théodore Géricault, who is looked upon as one of the early leaders of the Romantic Movement and who went on to inspire another great artist of the Romantic Movement, Eugene Delacroix. The painting that probably would have astonished the art world, if it had been exhibited, was entitled Three Lovers and was completed around 1820 when Géricault was twenty-nine years of age. He must have been working on this painting at the same time that he was painting his great 1819 masterpiece The Raft of the Medusa (see My Daily Art Display of June 10th 2011).

Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault (1819)

Théodore Géricault was born in Rouen, France in September 1791. His family were of the upper middle class bracket. When Géricault was four years old the family moved from Rouen to Paris. He received the normal education as a child and teenager but showed little interest in his studies at the lycée. During his early life Géricault had two great passions in life – art and horses and loved to go horse riding a pastime which would literally be the death of him. When he was seventeen years of age his mother died and he received a sizeable inheritance.

In 1808, aged seventeen years of age, he enrolled at the studio of Carle Vernet, who was best known for his paintings of horses. Two years later, in 1810, he moved to the studio of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, a much admired classical painter where he received a much enhanced academic training in art. After just six months working with Guérin, Géricault left the studio to concentrate on copying the great works housed at the Louvre. He did this for three years.

Charging Chasseur by Théodore Géricault (1812)

In 1812 he entered a painting into the Salon. It was originally entitled Equestrian Portrait of M.D***, later to be changed to The Charging Chasseur. It was a depiction of a mounted Napoleonic cavalry officer who is ready to attack the enemy. The chasseur sits astride his grey stallion, sword in hand, raring to go into battle. The horse, with flying mane and foaming mouth, enforces the animal’s aggressive passion. This was a true war-horse. This was what was good about war – bravery of man and animal and ultimate victory. The painting met with critical acclaim. Everybody loves a winner !

Wounded Cuirassier leaving the Field of Battle by Théodore Géricault (1814)

Two years later, in 1814, buoyed by this success, Géricault once again exhibited The Charging Chasseur along with a newly completed work at that year’s Salon, entitled The Wounded Cuirassier leaving the field of Battle but to his amazement and annoyance the art critics were critical and the public were dismissive of his effort. So, why the change of heart amongst the critics and the public? Géricault loved the subject of horses and horsemanship and during the Napoleonic era such subject matter proved irresistible to him and the French public. For Géricault, his love was to depict the powerful combination of a rider dressed in his magnificent uniform and the sheer animal power of his horse. However, this was not the normal depiction seen in academic battle paintings where the artist focused on a mass of soldiers led into battle by a famous general. These were paintings depicting victorious battles. However, in The Wounded Cuirassier leaving the field of Battle we see a depiction of a single anonymous wounded soldier with his battle-weary mount limping from the battlefield. This was definitely not what the establishment and the art critics wanted to see. Maybe Géricault’s biographer, the nineteenth century art historian, Charles Clément, summed it up perfectly when he wrote of the difference between the two works:

“…In 1812 success was still in the air, whilst in 1814 everyone knew they were facing defeat…….The echoes of the cries of distress from our suffering armies on the plains of Russia resounded through the lands. Hearts were full of fear and terror. It is this universal feeling which Géricault expressed in his painting and explored in the Wounded Cuirassier…..He painted two pictures, the first about glory and the other about faded glory…”

In 1816 with a desire to win a three-year paid scholarship in Rome he competed for the Prix de Rome. However his work just got him to the semi final stage before his offering was eliminated. Still with a desire to go to Italy he decided to fund himself. He stayed in Italy visiting Florence, Rome and Naples before returning to Paris a year later. It was during this period in Paris (1818-19) that he set about painting his famous work The Raft of the Medusa. This was an enormous work of art which measured approximately 4.9m x 7.2m (16ft x 23ft). It was also during this time that he decided to paint, for himself, a small highly erotic work entitled Three Lovers.

Three Lovers by Théodore Géricault (1817-20)

Three Lovers which is now housed in the Paul Getty Museum in Santa Monica measured just 22.5cms x 29.8cms (9 inches x 12 inches). The picture is dominated by a large bed that is framed by furniture and a large curtain which is partly drawn to the side. In some ways it is as if we were theatre-goers and we are looking at a stage with the theatre curtain pulled to one side for us to enjoy the performance, and what a performance!

Sated

At one end of the bed we see a dark haired woman lying somewhat lethargically against some blue pillows. She is naked from the waist up and her arms are spread wide exposing her rounded breasts. She looks closely at a pair of lovers who are making love. By her expression we feel that she is sated, probably having already had her turn of lovemaking with the man who is now pleasuring himself with the blonde woman at the opposite end of the bed. She is now happy to watch as the pair make love. She has now taken on the role as voyeur. The blonde and the man are locked in an intimate embrace. She half kneels on the bed between his thighs. Although he is almost hidden from view his naked legs would suggest he is lying semi-naked beneath his lover. The blonde woman is not naked but her white dress is pulled up to her waist by the man’s encircling arm which exposes her naked thigh and buttock. The way in which she has positioned herself on top of the man and the way she has her arms tightly wrapped around his neck exhibits her obvious arousal.

The stocking

Géricault has depicted the blonde woman’s stocking down at her ankle which adds to the erotic nature of the painting.

It is a highly erotic work of art and because of the nature of the depiction Géricault would almost certainly have painted it for himself. He would never have intended it to be exhibited as he would have known full well that it would have been condemned by both critics and public for its dubious morality in a society which strongly adhered to religious and moral values and which condemned sexual excesses and misbehaviour. Of course having said all that it could well be that such erotic encounters did take place between prostitutes and their customers despite people pretending such excesses did not occur. Maybe Géricault was reminding himself of what did happen in dimly lit rooms where passions prevailed over civic respectability.

Self Portrait by Théodore Géricault

In my last blog I looked at some works by Théodore Géricault.  I examined his paintings which featured horses and the military and his masterpiece The Raft of the Medusa which I had examined in detail in my blog of June 10^th 2011.  I finally looked at a highly erotic work which he painted for his own delectation around about the same time of the Medusa work.  In this blog I want to look at what I consider as his finest works, a series of portraits of men and women who had serious mental issues.

Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault (1819)

Having completed The Raft of the Medusa around 1819 he exhibited it at that year’s Salon under the title Scène de Naufrage (Scene of Shipwreck).  It was hailed as the star piece of that year’s Salon and was well received by the French public including Louis XVIII himself, who had sponsored the exhibition.  Such was the fame of this work that Géricault was invited to London in June 1820 to exhibit the painting at William Bullock’s Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly.  It drew in crowds from all over the country and by the time the exhibition ended at the end of 1820, more than forty thousand people had come to view the masterpiece and as Géricault had negotiated a fee based on the number of people who paid to see his work it is thought that he walked away with twenty thousand francs and so it was just as well the French government would not countenance the purchase of the work when the 1819 Salon closed!

A year later, at the end of 1821, Géricault left London and returned to Paris.  It was at this time that he embarked on a series of ten portraits of people who were suffering from what is termed monomania.  Monomania is an exaggerated or obsessive enthusiasm for or preoccupation with one thing.  It is a type of partial insanity.  The word was first used by the French psychiatrist Jean Étienne Esquirol around 1810 and was a notion typified by the presence of an expansive fixed idea in which the person’s mind was diseased and deranged in some aspects but otherwise normal in others. So why would Géricault focus on this type of person and who commissioned the ten small works?

The man who commissioned the paintings is known to be Étienne-Jean Georget.  Georget was an intern at Salpêtrière, the women’s asylum in Paris, and later the medical supervisor at a private asylum in Ivry.  As to how the two men met is still up for debate amongst art historians.  One theory is that Géricault was treated by the psychiatrist.  He had been suffering from depression accompanied by paranoid delusions which culminated in a nervous breakdown around 1819.  Another possibility was that the two met during one of Géricault’s visits to the hospital morgue where he would go to acquire dissected limbs which he often used in his preliminary studies for major works, such as his Raft of the Medusa painting.  It could have been that Georget had commissioned the work as he believed such an artistic task would help Géricault recover from his own mental dark period.  When Géricault completed the work he gave them to the psychiatrist as a way of expressing his thanks.  Some art historians however believe that it was a simple commission, the result of which would help Georget in his studies into monomania.  However it should not be forgotten that Géricault had an intense interest in the causes and results of mental instability for his grandfather and one of his uncles had died insane. At the time Géricault was formulating his painting The Raft of the Medusa, which featured a group of men adrift on a raft after the sinking of their vessel Medusa, he knew that the key to success would be an authentic depiction of the terrified and dying seamen.   Géricault portrayed the men on the raft as dead or dying, desperately trying to signal for help.  To achieve a sense of realism he had contacted a variety of medical specialists. His principal concern had been to gain access to human bodies in various states of putrefaction, to ensure the genuineness of the finished painting and it could have been that he also talked to the likes of Georget about the psychological trauma suffered by the victims of the Medusa shipwreck.  It is known that he interviewed the surgeon, Henry Savigny, who had been serving on the vessel when the shipwreck occurred and the doctor, at the time, had been putting down in print his experiences and the way it mentally affected the stricken crew members.

Whatever the circumstances were we know the five paintings I am going to feature initially belonged to Georget.  He, like Géricault died when he was in his early thirties.   I mention five works and yet one of Géricault’s early biographers, Charles Clément, talked of there being ten portraits.  However, only five remain.  So did the missing five feature five other mental patients?  What is currently believed is that Georget had asked Géricault to paint a further five works featuring the same five people at a later time so as to highlight the change in their appearance.  For Georget this was the study of physiognomy, an art of judging character from the face and phrenology, which would link the external form of the cranium as indication of mental faculties.  Simply put it was the assessment of a person’s character or personality from his or her outer appearance.  We have no names as to the sitters, just the monomania that is afflicting each of them.  In his book On Madness, published in 1820, Georget is most definite that madness can be seen in the face of the afflicted.  He wrote:

“…In general the idiot’s face is stupid, without meaning; the face of the manic patient is as agitated as his spirit, often distorted and cramped; the moron’s facial characteristics are dejected and without expression; the facial characteristics of the melancholic are pinched, marked by pain or extreme agitation; the monomaniacal king has a proud, inflated expression; the religious fanatic is mild, he exhorts by casting his eyes at the heavens or fixing them on the earth; the anxious patient pleads, glancing sideways, etc…”

Certainly harsh and in some ways unfeeling words from the psychiatrist and are in complete contrast to the sympathetic way Géricault depicted the sitters.

The five surviving portraits are entitled Portrait of a  Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Command;    A Kleptomaniac;  Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy;     A Woman Addicted to Gambling and A Child Snatcher.  It seems likely that the featured women were inmates of the women’s hospital Salpêtrière, while the men were chosen from the many male inmates of the male asylums of Charenton and Bicȇtre.

Portrait of a Woman suffering from obsessive envy by Théodore Géricault (1822)

The first of the five I am featuring Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy, which is housed in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyons.  She avopids our gaze.  Her eyes are red-rimmed.  She has suffered and is probably still suffering.  Her case notes stated that she suffered from “envy obsessions” and maybe the slightest hint of a green tint to her face was the artist’s way to signify her obsession with envy.

Portrait of a Man suffering from Delusions of Military Command by Théodore Géricault (1822)

Next we have a man who suffers from delusions of grandeur and the portrait is entitled A Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Command which is in the Museum Oskar Reinhart in Winterthur in Switzerland.  The man in this particular portrait believed he was Napoleon and maybe Géricault believed that it was not just his sitter who had delusions of grandeur but it was targeted at the man himself, Napoleon, who may also suffered a similar delusional belief in himself as the head of the French Empire.  One needs to remember my previous blog when I featured some of Géricault’s military paintings.  Maybe now, like many French people after the defeat of Napoleon, he had misgivings about the glory of battle.  It is a very sympathetic portrayal of the old man and there is an air of sadness about his demeanour.  He looks like a defeated man and could well be an allegory for a defeated nation.

Portrait of a Kleptomaniac by Théodore Géricault (1822)

My third offering is the painting entitled Portrait of a Kleptomaniac which is housed in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent.  It is a strange depiction.  Just by looking at him we know there is something wrong in his life both physically and mentally.  He is dishevelled.  His sallow skin tone alerts us to him being ill.  His beard is unkempt and his hair is uncombed and messy.  Look at his face.  Look at the redness of his left cheek which looks swollen as if he has been involved in a fight.  He stares out at us, or maybe past us, but we have no idea what he is thinking. It is an empty gaze.  Géricault probably had no idea what his sitter was thinking but he made sure he captured every small detail about the man and maybe he wants us to decide on what has brought this man to the asylum.

Portrait of a Woman suffering from an Obsessive Gambling Disorder by Théodore Géricault (1822)

The fourth painting is entitled A Woman suffering from and Obsessive Gambling Disorder and can be found at the Louvre in Paris.  The old woman in the painting avoids stares out at us but it is a blank stare.  One has no idea what she is thinking.  She is lost in her own world, a world she is resigned to but does not enjoy.   Her eyes are red-rimmed probably brought on by the amount of mental and physical pain she has had to endure.  Her mouth is tense.  You can see in her facial expression that she is disturbed by something but with what?

Portrait of a Child Snatcher by Théodore Géricault (1822)

The final portrait by Géricault is entitled A Child Snatcher.  Before us we have a man who looks distinctly unhappy with his lot in life.   He is dressed in old brown clothes and has a dishevelled look about him.  His face is haggard.  His life has not been easy.  The dark background give us the distinct impression that this man lives in a world of isolation.  It is as if, as a resident of a mental institution, he has been cut adrift by society.  He avoids our gaze and looks to the side in a somewhat shifty manner.  Although we would compartmentalize this type of portrait as one of realism there is an element of romanticism in the way Géricault does not want us to judge the sitter.  Looking at the man we would not know his crime but the title of Child Snatcher tells us all we need to know about a man who in the present day would be probably be classed as a paedophile.

Last self portrait by Théodore Géicault (c. 1823 – 1824)

If you think that the five portraits were very disturbing and yet very real, I will leave you with one other shocking portrait.  It is the last self-portrait by Géricault, which he completed when close to death.  What a terrible sight it must have been as he looked in the mirror as he worked on his own portrait.  Remember this was a young man in his early thirties.

 The five existing portraits were discovered unframed and unstretched by Louis Viardot , the husband of the famous  French mezzo-soprano, Pauline Viardot .  Viardot was an artist himself, and a great admirer of Gericault, and so he recognised the style of the works as that of Géricault.  Géricault’s biographer Charles Clément researched the origin of the works and found that they had all belonged to a certain Dr Lacheze, to whom they had been bequeathed by another medical man, the psychiatrist Dr Etienne Georget.

Théodore Géricault’s tomb at Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris

Théodore Géricault died in January 1824, aged 32 and is buried in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.  This series of portraits featuring mentally disturbed people was completed by an artist who also suffered depression during his later life.  In 1810, he wrote to his best friend, Pierre-Joseph Dedreux-Dorcy:

 “…Now I am disoriented and confused. I try in vain to find support; nothing seems solid, everything escapes me, deceives me. Our earthly hopes and desires are only vain fancies, our successes mere mirages that we try to grasp…”

Whereas Dr Georget was more clinical and some would say somewhat cold-hearted about his desire to have the portraits of these people we can see in the way Géricault depicted them with sympathy and even empathy.

Self portrait by Ary Scheffer (1795)

I have often mentioned in previous blogs that the subject for a blog frequently comes from something I have stumbled upon whilst researching another blog.  Today’s blog is all about the Dutch painter Ary Scheffer who had a connection with the artist I talked about in the last two blogs, Théodore Géricault, but more of that connection later as I first want to look at the life of the Dutchman who was a leading Romantic painter.

Ary Scheffer came from an artistic background.  His father was Johann- Bernhard Scheffer a portraitist who originally hailed from Hamburg but from his early teenage years lived in the Netherlands.  He had married Cornellia Lamme, another artist who concentrated on miniature portraits.  Ary Scheffer’s maternal grandfather was Arie Lamme the Dutch landscape painter.  The couple, who lived in Dordrecht,  had three sons, Ary, the eldest, was born in February 1795, his brother Karel Arnold Scheffer who was born in 1796, went on to become a journalist and writer and their youngest, Hendrik, who also became an artist, was born in September 1798.

The Three Brothers Scheffer in a Landscape by Ary Scheffer (1824)

Ary Scheffer was given his first artistic tuition by his parents but when he was eleven years of age his parents enrolled him at the Stadstekenacademie in Amsterdam on a three year art course.   During that time he put forward one of his paintings, Hanibal Searing to Avenge the Death of his Brother Hasdrubal, in the first Exhibition of Living Masters in Amsterdam in 1808.

The painting is now in the Dordrecht Museum along with a number of his other works which are hung in the Ary Scheffer Room.  That same year, his father became the court painter of Louis Bonaparte, who ruled over the Kingdom of Holland, a position bestowed on him by his brother, Napoleon Bonaparte.  Ary’s father only held the position for a year as in 1809 he died.  Following the death of her husband, Cornelia Scheffer moved to Paris with her three sons where Ary and his brother Hendrik became pupils at the studio of the French painter, Pierre Guérin.   Ary and Hendrik were in good company at the studio as two of their fellow pupils would become the figureheads of the French Romantic movement in art, Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault.

Ary Scheffer later attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and from 1812 for the next thirty five years exhibited works at the annual Salons.  Along with Delacroix and Géricault, Ary Scheffer is recognised as one of the great painters of the Romantic school.  Following the end of the Revolution and the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte the French bourgeoisie once again came to prominence and along with the State were the main patrons of the Arts.   Scheffer’s work was very popular and at the end of each Salon his paintings would be snapped up by eager buyers.

The Soldier’s Widow by Ary Scheffer

In the 1822 Salon he exhibited his very sentimental painting Soldier’s Widow which was very popular and although the whereabouts of the painting is unknown there are a number of monochrome prints of the work.

General Lafayette by Ari Scheffer (1823)

Ary Scheffer was also an excellent portraitist and in 1823 he completed probably one of the best portraits. It was of General Lafayette, the French aristocrat and military officer.  It was a full-length standing portrait that was the most popular image of Lafayette as an older man, who had once been a general in the American Revolution War (1775-83) against the British and a close friend of George Washington.  Lafayette was a popular subject for prints in the first half of the 19th century.  He was a hero to both the French and the Americans; he was the first foreign dignitary to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress and in 1824, on the occasion of Lafayette’s celebrated tour of the United States, Ary Scheffer presented his painting to the U.S. House of Representatives. It has hung to the left of the Speaker’s rostrum since the opening of the current House Chamber in 1858.  Lafayette would later figure in the French Revolution in 1789 and in the July Revolution of 1830 which led to Louis-Philippe becoming ruler of the French nation.  This painting, entitled Gilbert de Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, is now part of the collection of the US House of Representatives in Washington.

When Louis-Philippe came to power in 1830 it marked the zenith of Scheffer’s artistic career.  Scheffer, before the July revolution, had been giving drawing lessons to Louis-Philippe’s children and a great friendship between artist and his pupils blossomed.  Once Louis-Philippe came to power after the 1830 Revolution, Scheffer attained an influential position within the court. Louis-Philippe became the patron of the artist and the Orleans family bought many of Scheffer’s paintings. Scheffer received numerous lucrative commissions for the Musée Historique at Versailles, which Louis-Philippe founded in 1837 and which was situated in the wings of the Palace of Versailles.   The gallery which is one hundred and twenty metres long houses and also includes extensive tables that illustrate the major military events of the history of France.

Princess Marie d’Orléans by Ary Scheffer (1831)

Ary Scheffer also completed a number of Royal portraits including one in 1831 of Princess Marie of Orléans the third child and second daughter of Louis-Philippe and his wife Maria Amalia of the Two Sicilies.  She later became the wife of Duke Alexander of Württenberg.  She was the most talented artist of all the Royal children and was constantly encouraged to pursue her love of art and sculpture by Ari Scheffer.  Sadly she died of tuberculosis when she was just twenty-five years old.

Marie Amélie of Naples, Queen of the French by Ary Scheffer (1857)

Another member of the he French Royal Family who featured in one of Scheffer’s portraits was Marie-Amalia, the niece of Marie-Antoinette and the wife of Louis-Philippe.  Louis-Philippe had reigned as the French monarch from 1830 when he came to power following the July Revolution and ruled for eighteen years but was deposed in the February 1848 Revolution which resulted in he and his wife, Marie-Amalia living a life in exile in England.

Claremont

The couple lived at Claremont, a stately home owned by Leopold of the Belgians, but lent out to Queen Victoria.  In 1850 Louis-Philippe died but his widow remained at Claremont for the rest of her life.   Ary Scheffer visited Claremont in 1857 at which time he completed the portrait of the ex-Queen.   In it we see a frail seventy-five year old lady in mourning.

Death of Géricault by Ary Scheffer (1824)

What persuaded me to feature Ary Scheffer was when I was looking at the death of Théodore Géricault at the young age of thirty-two; I came across a painting entitled The Death of Géricault by today’s featured artist, Ary Scheffer.  It is beautiful work of art which highlights the French Romanticism style, which was so popular at the time.  Look at the man sitting on the chair who was presumably one of Géricault’s close friends.   Look at the way Scheffer has depicted him.  He grasps Géricault’s limp wrist with his right hand whilst he buries his head on his left hand which lies across the back of the chair which he is sitting on.  It is almost a scene from an old silent Hollywood movie or part of an amateur dramatics production.  The physician holds Géricault’s left hand which lies almost lifeless over his heart.  Look at Géricault’s face.  It is sunken.  It is almost skull-like.   In my last blog I featured Géricault’s last self-portrait which was a very disturbing depiction and somebody commented that it could not have been that bad but what we see in Scheffer’s painting is very close to that self-portrait.  This was the end for the great artist.

Self portrait by Alexandre Cabanel (1852)

My featured artist today, Alexandre Cabanel, was one of the most well respected Academic artists of the nineteenth century.  In my next couple of blogs I will look at this remarkable artist and some of his paintings.  His works of art varied from portraiture to historical, classical and religious scenes all executed in an academic style.  The term Academic art, also referred to as academicism or eclecticism, is traditionally used to describe the style of art which was championed by the European academies of art, notably the Académie des Beaux-Arts.  For Cabanel, Academic art was the true art and during his lifetime he would clash with Impressionist painters and their artistic style.  Cabanel was also well known for his décorations d’intériur.

 Alexandre Cabanel was born in September 1823 in Montpellier, France.   He was the ninth child of Pierre-Jean Cabanel and Marie Anne Jean Cabanel.  Even at a young age he showed an early artistic talent and when he was eleven years of age he attended the drawing classes at the Montpellier’s free École des Beaux-Arts, which was run by the French genre painter Charles François Matet.  Matet  was also curator of the Musée Fabre in Montpellier.   Cabanel earned himself some money whilst studying by making copies of artworks which were housed in the city’s Musée Fabre which he then sold.   In 1836, thanks to Matet’s recommendation, the Montpellier council awarded Cabanel his first art scholarship to allow him to study in Paris.

 Three years later Cabanel’s artistic talent was recognised as being so good that he was awarded a second scholarship to return to Paris.  The scholarship was a blessing as his father, who was a cabinet maker, could not have afforded to send him to the French capital.    Alexandre did go, thanks to the municipal two-year grant and in the October of 1840, a month after his seventeenth birthday, Alexandre Cabanel enrolled at the School of Painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris as a pupil of François-Edouard Picot .  Picot was a well established painter who had studied under Jacques Louis-David and had tried to continue David’s artistic style, that of neoclassical values, to which, in his own works, Picot often added a more romantic flavour.

 For Cabanel the École des Beaux-Arts was not just an establishment which taught art it was a place where he was able to study literature, history and religion.  Cabanel received a good, well-rounded education and he thrived on the learning that was offered to him and in a way, it helped him convert his knowledge into visual imagery that would play a part in his future works of art. When his two-year scholarship came to an end in the summer of 1841 his mentor Picot wrote to the Montpellier authorities pleading on Cabanel’s behalf, for a further scholarship for his protégé and in return he would gain employment for Cabanel in the form of a major commission in the Hôtel de Ville in Paris.

Agony in the garden by Alexandre Cabanel (1844)

In 1843 aged nineteen, Cabanel exhibited his first work of art at that year’s Salon.  It was entitled Agony in the Garden, which is currently housed in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes.  In this work Cabanel has placed the Christ figure off-centre.  Behind him are a group of his persecutors.

 All the time Cabanel was attending L’École des Beaux-Arts he had one aim – to have a painting of his accepted into the establishment’s coveted Prix de Rome competition, in which the winning work of art enabled the artist to receive a scholarship for them to study for a number of  years at the Villa Medici in Rome.  There were also Prix de Rome scholarships for the best proponents of architecture, sculpture, music and engraving.

Envoys of the Senate offer the Dictatorship to Cincinnatus by Alexandre Cabanel (1844)

In 1843 he managed to reach the preliminary round of the competition with his work entitled Odysseus is Recognised by his Servant and buoyed up by that minor success he entered the competition again in 1844 this time with his painting, Envoys of the Senate offer the Dictatorship to Cincinnatus but he was only awarded sixth place.

The Mocking of Christ by Alexandre Cabanel (1845)

Better luck came in the 1845 competition when his work The Mocking of Christ, sometimes referred to as Christ at the Praetorium,  was judged and was awarded second place, with a fellow student of Picot, François-Léon Bénouville taking the top prize.   However second prize would not get the artist to Rome but the permanent Secretary to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Désiré Raoul-Rochette, pleaded Cabanel’s case to be allowed to go to the Villa Medici as no Grand Prize for Music had been awarded that year.  A lot of wrangling followed between Rochette and Jean Victor Schnetz,  who was director at the Villa Medici, and who was against awarding Cabanel a scholarship.  In the end Schnetz backed down and Cabanel was granted a simple scholarship to go to Rome, which was to last for five years and the Prix de Rome second prize given to Cabanel was converted into a “Second First Grand Prize”.  All winners of the Prix de Rome received a financial allowance to cover the cost of their trip to Rome plus they were given a sum of money to cover their personal expenses and those they incurred during the production of their work. They also received free room and board.  The artists who came to the Villa Medici were allowed considerable freedom to paint subjects of their own choosing, but throughout their tenure they were all required to complete certain projects.  This allowed the French government, which had funded the scholarships, a way of assessing the progress of the Prix de Rome winning artists.  For the artists it was also a chance to bring their work to the attention of the members of the Academy, who also judged their annual submissions to see if their artistic ability had progressed.

 In January 1846 Cabanel set off for Rome.  It was early on in his stay at the Villa Medici that he met a fellow Montpellier citizen, Alfred Bruyas, who was enjoying the delights of the Grand Tour.   Bruyas was the son of a wealthy banker.  He was formerly taught art and would like to have become a professional painter despite his father’s wishes that he should embrace the world of finance and become partner in his father’s bank.  Bruyas loved art and loved to paint but soon realised he would never become a great artist and so concentrated on becoming an avid and discerning collector of art and a patron of the arts.  Many of his friends were artists such as Gustave Courbet.

Alfred Bruyas by Alexandre Cabanel (1846)

Bruyas supported Cabanel in these early days and in 1846, as a kind of repayment , Cabanel painted Bruyas’ portrait which now hangs in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier.  In the painting, Bruyas is depicted as a gentleman-traveller , dressed in his velvet-collared frock coat with a fashionable yellow waistcoat and pink and white cravat.  He is standing on the terrace of the Villa Borghese in Rome.  Bruyas and Cabanel became great friends during their short time together and Cabanel became very depressed when his friend left Rome in the summer of 1846.  Cabanel  would write to Bruyas telling him of his feeling of great loss when the latter had left the Eternal City.  In one letter, he wrote:

 “…Several times of an evening, I have put down on paper details from my present life so as to send them to you in letters.  On re-reading them, however, even I found them joyless and full of sorrow that I burned them…”

 For many aspiring artists who went to live in Rome they loved the liveliness of the Italian capital with all it had to offer but ,according to Cabanel, all Rome offered him was the chance to paint and copy the works of the Italian Masters.  He cut a lonely figure which was summed up in a letter he wrote to Bruyas in 1847.  In it he wrote that all he had left for consolation was his art :

 “…I have been leading a rather an orderly life, one completely devoted to art.  I have remained as untouched, as pure as Rome’s vestal virgins of days gone by……………….What’s more, I am weary of chasing after happiness that turns out to be an illusion, what’s the use?  Especially when I believe that I have long found it in my art for instance; I devote myself to it with complete freedom just as one devotes oneself to love or poetry…”

La Chiaruccia by Alexandre Cabanel (1848)

In 1848 Cabanel completed three amazing paintings for Bruyas, all of which are now in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier.  They were to be hung together in the form of a triptych.  The first was a painting of an Italian lady in traditional country peasant costume.  It is entitled La Chiarrucia.  The woman who modelled for this work also sat for many of the artists who lived and studied at the Villa Medici.

A Thinker, a Young Roman Monk by Alexandre Cabanel (1848)

The second of his three works, which was to be placed between the other two,  was entitled Un penseur, jeune moine romain,  (A Thinker, a Young Roman Monk)  and depicts a Franciscan monk lost in thought among the ruins of the Forum.

Albaydé by Alexandre Cabanel (1848)

The third, and my favourite, was simply entitled Albaydé.  The character of the title comes from Victor Hugo’s poem Fragments of a Serpent, which was one from a 1829 collection of poems known as Orientalia. The scene would appear to be a harem .  Cabanel has depicted the young woman, an Oriental courtesan, through the lustful eyes of the poet as she lies back languorously and looks out at us seductively with half closed eyes.  The beauty of this woman emanates from her eyes which I saw described as doe-like.  Her silken robe is open to the waist exposing the curve of her breasts.  She clutches a periwinkle vine which lies across her thighs.  It is a very sensuous depiction and she and La Chiaruccia ,either side of the monk, must have made for quite a formidable combination on Bruyas’ wall.

In my next blog I continue with Alexandre Cabanel’s life story and look at more of his exquisite paintings.

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I gleaned most of my information for this blog and the next ones on Cabanel from a great book I came across entitled Alexandre Cabanel – The Tradition of Beauty which was published to coincide with La tradition du beau exhibition of Cabanel’s paintings, which was held at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne in 2011 and the Musée Fabre in Montpellier in 2010.

I had reached the part in Alexandre Cabanel’s life story with him staying in the Villa Medici in Rome studying art, gifted to him as a reward for coming the “Second –First prize” winner in the Prix de Rome competition.  For Cabanel,  life in Rome was all about his art and very little to do with the outside distractions of the Eternal city.  He had admitted to his close friend Alfred Bruyas that he was lonely and just had his art as company.

Triumph of Galatea by Raphael (Villa Farnesina) (1514)

One of the requirements of the artists, who had been awarded the Prix de Rome scholarship to further their studies at the Villa Medici, was that they would submit work for examination annually and those artists who were history painters would also make copies of ancient sculptures and the Old Masters.  Cabanel had already done this sort of thing before coming to Rome when he would copy works of art by Velazquez, and Titian which he saw at the Louvre.  Cabanel was a great lover of the works of Raphael and took the opportunity, whilst in Rome, to copy Raphael’s frescoes which adorned the Villa Farnesina in the Trastevere district of the city.  At this time in his life, Raphael was Cabanel’s favourite artist of the past.

Orestes by Alexandre Cabanel (1846)

As a history painter Cabanel had to study and draw life-sized figures from nature.  They also had to present, on an annual basis, one finished drawing based on a work by an Old Master, and one drawing from the antique. The works of art that the student produced were first exhibited at the Villa Medici in the April. Their work was then sent back to Paris in the May to be judged at the Institute and following that they were exhibited to the public in the autumn.    In 1846, Cabanel’s submission was entitled Orestes, who was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon and who was the subject of many Ancient Greek plays and appeared in many stories by Homer.  Much to Cabanel’s horror his painting was severely criticised by the judges of the Academy who said it was an oversized and inept composition.  The painting is housed in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier.

The Fallen Angel by Alexandre Cabanel (1847)

The next year, 1847, stung by the criticism but not deterred, Cabanel submitted a work entitled The Fallen Angel which is also part of the Musée Fabre collection.  Cabanel’s inspiration for this work was John Milton’s 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost and the fallen angels, Moloch, Belial, Mulciber, Mammon and Beelzebub.  In the work we see the “fallen” angel – fallen from grace and banished by God.  It is a classic portrayal of a naked man by an academic artist with the crafted way he depicts the musculature of the figure.  The angel has both arms raised and his fingers of his two hands interlocked hiding most of his face.  Despite this shielding of his facial expression, it does not hide from us his feelings as we can judge his mood by what we see in his eyes.  There is a look of vengeance and anger in his eyes.  He knows someone will pay for his ejection from the side of God.  He retains his pride but thinks about retribution. The subject shocked the exhibition jurists as no students had ever submitted from Rome a painting which featured the Devil.  This was a history painting submission and certain rules had to be followed and the jurists and academics who examined the work criticised it for bordering on a style of Romanticism.  In her book on Cabanel, Procès verbaux de l’Académie des Beaux-Arts (Minutes of the Academy of Fine Arts), Sybille Bellamy-Brown quoted the Academics’ remarks about the painting.  They stated:

“…The movement is wrong, the draughtsmanship imprecise, the execution deficient…”

Once again Cabanel was distraught at not being able to understand their criticism.  He wrote of his feelings with regards the criticism to his friend Alfred Bruyas, especially as he had worked tirelessly on the painting:

“…That’s my reward for all the trouble I gave myself not to submit an average piece of work…”

John the Baptist by Alexandre Cabanel (1849)

In 1849, his annual submission was a religious work entitled John the Baptist ,which like the other two works can be found at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier.  In this work we see John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness, surrounded on either side by his followers, both old and young.    To the left of the painting we see a staff planted firmly in the ground.  It takes the form of a cross and from the cross flutters a banner on which is written Agnus Dei, (Lamb of God).  The depiction is a dramatic one and, finally for Cabanel, it was well received by the Académie members back in Paris.  Cabanel, as a winner of the Prix de Rome, also had the right to be admitted to the Salon and works he submitted for inclusion at the Salons did not have to be scrutinised by the Salon jurists.  This work featured in the 1850 Salon and at the end of the exhibition was bought by the French State.

The Death of Moses by Alexandre Cabanel (1850)

In his final year, 1850, his annual painting submission was The Death of Moses.  Set in the wilderness, the painting depicts Moses dying in the presence of God whilst in the background we see the Promised Land that the Lord said he would never see due to his lack of belief in the Lord.   Angels surround the dying Moses and comfort him.  The inspiration for such a depiction almost certainly came from the works of art by Michelangelo and Raphael which Cabanel had seen during his five-year sojourn in Rome.   For Cabanel, this was a major work of art and one, which in the beginning, began to worry him as to whether he could deliver the finished product.  His self-doubt can be seen in a passage from a letter he wrote to his brother:

 “…I have imposed upon myself a large, very difficult, formidable task, since I seek to represent the image of the Eternal Master of the sky and the earth—to represent God—and next to Him, one of His most sublime creatures, deified in some way by His contact. This should give you an idea of my all-absorbing preoccupations. Still, this terrible task advances, but not without cruel mishaps. I know that that’s how it is on the path where my instincts have led me, and which is undoubtedly the most beautiful of all the arts, but one has to be strong and love it passionately in order to handle the obstacles one encounters…”

Cabanel left Rome and returned to Montpellier in 1851 and later that year returned to Paris.  He submitted his painting, The Death of Moses to the 1852 Salon and it received rapturous reviews.  The well respected and influential journalist and art critic of the time, Théophile Gautier, wrote in La Presse littéraire of May 16^th 1852:

“…The Salon painting that most directly follows on from elevated, serious, profound art, whose prototypes are Michelangelo and Raphael is The Death of Moses by Monsieur Cabanel, Prix de Rome winner in 1845.  In his case, his stay at Rome, which sometimes can be detrimental to young artists, has indeed been profitable.  One can see how he has eaten the bread of angels and nourished himself on the marrow of lions…”

This was praise indeed and coming from such an influential source, Cabanel’s career in Paris could not have begun any better.

The Glorification of St. Louis by Alexandre Cabanel (c.1853-55)

In 1855 the World Exhibition came to Paris for the first time.  It went on to be held in the French capital on four other occasions.  The Exposition Universelle, as it was known in France, was an international Exhibition held on the Champs-Élysées from May to November.  Part of this World Fair would be dedicated to exhibits of fine art and Cabanel quickly realised to have his paintings exhibited at such an event would gain him world-wide notoriety.  He submitted two of his works of art.  The first one was entitled The Glorifcation of Saint Louis which had been commissioned by the French state for the Gothic chapel of Sainte-Chapelle at the royal Chateau de Vincennes.  The chapel and the subject of the painting were connected as it was at this chapel that Louis IX’s relics of the Crown of Thorns were initially kept.  Cabanel also had an ulterior motive for painting this picture as it now established a connection between himself and the reigning monarch Napoleon III.  Cabanel knew that his future success would be assured if his art went hand in hand with a good working relationship with the monarchy.

Christian Martyr by Alexandre Cabanel (1855)

The second work of Cabanel which appeared at the Exposition Universelle was entitled Christian Martyr.  Although the title would lead one to believe this was yet another work depicting the killing of a martyr it didn’t for it shows a group of Christians, at dusk, lifting the body of a martyred female believer from a boat up to a group of fellow believers above who are ready to carry her into a burial chamber.   The woman dressed in a dark yellow tunic lies lifelessly in the arms of the men who are lifting her up.  Her head lolls downwards and her face has the grey-green pallor of death.  It is a moving depiction and we see an elder standing behind the group of rescuers, with his arms outstretched in prayer for the soul of the martyr.  The man to the right of the scene leans against the parapet anxiously searching into the distance for the approach of the authorities.

The two paintings were also exhibited at the Salon of 1855 and The Christian Martyr painting was subsequently purchased by the Societé des Arts et des Sciences at Carcassonne for its Musée des Beaux Arts.

In my next blog I will continue to look at the life of Cabanel, his portraiture and one of his most famous works, The Birth of Venus.

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 I gleaned most of my information for this blog and the next ones about Cabanel from a great book I came across entitled Alexandre Cabanel – The Tradition of Beauty which was published to coincide with La tradition du beau exhibition of Cabanel’s paintings, which was held at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne in 2011 and the Musée Fabre in Montpellier in 2010.

I also came across an excellent website which goes into much greater detail about Cabanel and is well worth a visit.  It is:

Stephen Gjertson Galleries

http://stephengjertsongalleries.com/?page_id=2851

Alexandre Cabanel by Achille Jacquet (c.1883)

This is the third and penultimate instalment of my look at the life and works of Alexandre Cabanel.  Over the years I have looked at the life of many artists and so often I find that they were rebellious as far as their art and their art training was concerned.  They rebelled at the authoritarian way the Academies taught art and believed that their way was the true way.  However my current artist, Cabanel, was a true believer of the State-run Academies and Academic training.  He was a true Academician.  In the first two blogs about Cabanel, I featured his academic-style history paintings depicting people from mythology and the Bible.   In this blog I want to carry on looking at his life and concentrate on one of his most famous works of art, which is considered to be his greatest masterpiece.  I ended the last blog about Cabanel around the time of the World Exposition in Paris in 1855.  He exhibited a number of works at this event and was awarded the first-class medal and in November that year he was made Knight of the Legion of Honour.

Allegory of the Five Seasons by Alexandre Cabanel (1858)

Cabanel spent much of the next ten years carrying out decorative commissions.  One such commission was to decorate the elaborately carved ceiling of the grand salon of Hotel Chevalier de Montigny which had been purchased by the brothers Isaac and Emile Péreire, who had made their fortune in finance and industry.  This building in Paris is now home to the British Embassy.  During 1857 and 1858 Cabanel painted an Allegory of the Five Senses on the ceiling which was framed by four oval medallions signifying the arts of dance, poetry, fancy poetry and eloquence.  The Péreire brothers were so pleased with Cabanel’s work that six years later they commissioned him to add six vertical wall panels to the walls of the salon.  The panels featuring six female figures represented the hours of the day.

Birth of Venus by Alexandre Cabanel (1863)

In 1863 Cabanel produced one of his most celebrated works of art entitled Naissance de Venus (Birth of Venus).  It was exhibited at that year’s Salon and, in the year of Cabanel’s fortieth birthday, it marked the high point of his career.    The subject of this work of art was based on a story from classical mythology which told of the birth of Venus.  Although the paintings depicting this occurrence focus on the beauty of the event the mythology behind the tale is a little gorier as it tells how she arose from the foam of the sea shore. This miraculous creation came to being after Saturn castrated his tyrant father, the supreme sky god Uranus.   Saturn had sliced off Uranus’ genitals, and threw them into the sea. As the genitals drifted over the water, the blood and semen that issued forth from the severed flesh mixed with the sea water to foment the growth of the child who would become Venus.   The Greek poet Hesiod gives us a less graphic version of the birth of Venus writing that Venus (Aphrodite) sprang from the foam of the sea as a fully developed woman.  Zephyrus, the God of the west wind, then carried her across the sea on a clam shell, to Cythera and then to Cyprus. There, Aphrodite was welcomed by Horae, daughter of Themis, who dressed her up and adorned her with precious jewels before taking her to the Immortals at Olympus.

Bacanal de los andrios by Titian (c.1526)

In Cabanel’s painting, we see Venus resting on the crest of a wave, her long hair cascading around her body, surrounded by five putti.   Many art historians believe that the way Cabanel depicted the posture of his Venus could have been influenced by a painting by Titian and the way he depicted the naked lady in his 1526 work entitled The Bacchanal of the Andrians.

Odalisque with a Slave by Titian (1840)

If we look at the posture of Cabanel’s Venus we can also draw a comparison with the way Ingres depicted the woman in his 1842 work entitled Odalisque and Slave.

 Nudity in works of art at the time of Cabanel were deemed acceptable only if they could be tied in to a mythological theme and by so doing, any hints of eroticism in the depiction were justified and any hint of a public outcry over a lascivious depiction was countered by talk of classicism.  Not all were “taken in” by such a justification as the popular French writer of the time, Emile Zola, decried Cabanel’s depiction of Venus saying:

 “…The goddess, drowned in a sea of milk, resembles a delicious courtesan, but not of flesh and blood – that would be indecent – but made of a sort of pink and white marzipan…”

 Another person that was not swayed by the classical argument for depicting nudity was the eminent French art critic Théophile Gautier who, in June 1863, wrote, an account of that year’s Salon, in the journal Le Moniteur universal and commented about Cabanel’s The Birth of Venus:

 “… One might say, one has drawn aside curtains to reveal a young woman asleep; she reclines on her bed, the crest of a wave, stretches out her arms, pulls up a leg, abandons herself to the waves that rock her, and surrenders her skeins of long hair like seaweed to the rhythm of the blue water.  The swell makes her body arch and accentuates her youthful charms all the more strongly…”

 Criticism of the work on moral grounds were voiced and it would appear that one such critic was close to Cabanel as in a letter he wrote to his niece on May 30^th 1863, he tried to justify the depiction of the nude in his painting.  He wrote:

 “…I do not complain at the little sympathy that my theme provokes in you, yet occasionally it is a mistake to view a painting only in moral terms……usually the subject is merely a pretext to hint at or to express an underlying ideal, an ideal for which the public is more receptive on account of its familiarity with the subject…… I would be glad to eliminate such misgivings among the family in Montpellier…”

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli (1486)

The strange thing about the Salon of 1863 was that there was not just one Birth of Venus but three albeit one did not have that exact title.  The Birth of Venus had been depicted on a number of occasions in the past, the best known of these being Botticelli’s 1486 version.

Birth of Venus by Amaury-Duval (1863)

However, besides Cabanel’s version, two other artists decided to feature the Birth of Venus in the work which they submitted to the 1863 Salon.  The first was a painting by Amaury Duval.

La Source by Ingres (1856)

Duval had been a student of Ingres and his offering may have been influenced by his master’s work La Source which Ingres started whilst in Florence around 1820 but did not complete until 1856 when he was living in Paris.

Venus Anadyomène by Ingres (c.1848)

 Another painting which could have influenced Amaury Duval when it came to the way he depicted the stance of Venus could have been another work by Ingres completed around 1848 entitled Venus Anadyomène.

The Pearl and the Wave by Paul Baudry (1862)

The other Birth of Venus painting to rival Cabanel’s painting at the 1863 Salon came from Paul Baudry.  His work did not have the title “Birth of Venus” but instead because of the inclusion in the work of a depiction of an oyster shell, it was entitled La Perle et la Vague (The Pearl and the Wave) which he completed in 1862 and which now hangs in the Prado in Madrid.  In this work we see Venus not being supported by a wave but lying on a rocky ledge with the foaming sea as a background.  She turns her head towards us as she gazes backwards over her shoulder.  In a series of essays, Old Masters and New Essays in Art Criticism, the influential nineteenth American painter, writer and teacher of art at the Art Students League in New York, Kenyon Cox, praised the painting writing that it was:

 “…the most perfect painting of the nude” in the 19th century…”

 He went on in his essay to highlight the “grace of attitude”, of the well-rounded but slim body of the young woman, with her visible dimple in the shoulder.  He could not praise Baudry’s work enough calling it “a pure masterpiece”

Although the Salon had three Venus painting the general opinion at the time was that the one by Cabanel was the best.

Olympia by Manet (1863)

The public and the authorities liked the work by Cabanel and accepted the classical justification for depicting a nude woman lying on the crest of a wave.  It is ironic that Edouard Manet’s risqué exhibit, Olympia, at the 1865 Salon caused a furore (see My Daily Art Display Oct 12^th 2011).  Many conservative art critics termed the work immoral and vulgar.  So why would this painting of a nude woman suffer such criticism and the Birth of Venus works two years earlier escape such censure?  The answer is probably because the lady in Manet’s work was a courtesan or high-class prostitute and was devoid of any classical mythological or biblical connotation and the way she stares out at us in a provoking and challenging manner was thought to be a step too far and an unwanted reminder that her profession blossomed within Paris Society.

 Alexandre Cabanel’s The Birth of Venus painting was bought by Napoleon III and now can be found in the Musée d’Orsay.  Cabanel sold the reproduction rights of this work to Goupil, the French art dealers.  They had their in-house artist, Adolphe Jourdan, make two smaller copies of the work which Cabanel later re-touched and signed as per his agreement with Goupil.  One, sold as a work by Cabanel, now hangs in the Dashesh Museum of Art in Manhatten having originally been purchased by Henry Derby the American bookseller and art collector.  The other copy was commissioned in 1875 from Goupil by John Wolfe, and his cousin Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, the daughter of a tobacco heir, John David Wolfe, and the only woman among the 106 founders of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  She was a philanthropist, patron of the Arts and avid art collector.  This version, which now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is slightly smaller.

 In my next blog I will take a final look at the life and works of Alexandre Cabanel and concentrate on his portraiture.

 I gleaned most of my information for this blog and the next ones about Cabanel from a great book I came across entitled Alexandre Cabanel – The Tradition of Beauty which was published to coincide with La tradition du beau exhibition of Cabanel’s paintings, which was held at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne in 2011 and the Musée Fabre in Montpellier in 2010.

 I also came across an excellent website which goes into much greater detail about Cabanel and is well worth a visit.  It is:

Stephen Gjertson Galleries

http://stephengjertsongalleries.com/?page_id=2851

Alexandre Cabanel (1823-89)

 In my last look at the life and works of Alexandre Cabanel I want to concentrate on his genius as a portraitist.   In my last blog I had reached 1863, the year in which his most famous work, Naissance de Venus (Birth of Venus), was exhibited at that year’s Salon, which was subsequently purchased by Napoleon III and is now on display at the Musée d’Orsay.  The work received great revues despite the subject’s nudity which caused some adverse comments.   Cabanel, at the age of forty, was honoured that year, when he was bestowed with the status of Officer of the Legion of Honour and was elected a member of the Institut Impérial de France.  On January 1^st 1864 he opened his own studio at the École des Beaux-Arts.  He was reputed to have been an excellent teacher, who was well loved by his students, many of whom went on to win the Prix de Rome.  Many of his students went on to regularly exhibit at the Salon.

 Cabanel’s reputation as a leading artist of the time was well established by 1860 and his mastery of portraiture was well known throughout Europe and he had become the favoured portraitist of the European aristocracy.  In the 1863 Salon besides his Birth of Venus painting he exhibited a portrait of Countess de Clermont Tonnerre who had married into one of the most famous old families in France.

Emperor Napoleon III by Alexandre Cabanel (c.1865)

Napoleon III and his wife, the Empress Eugénie, had, up to this time, commissioned several royal portraits from Franz Xavier Winterhalter, Edouard Dubuffe and Hippolyte Flandrin.  Their portraits of Napoleon III were acclaimed by critics and yet the royal couple were not completely satisfied and so, in 1864, decided to commission Cabanel to paint a new portrait of Napoleon.  For Cabanel, this was the ultimate commission.  The portrait was completed and exhibited in the 1865 Salon and won Cabanel a Medal of Honour.    What the critics liked so much about the work was its simplicity and sophistication.  This was not a normal portrait of a ruler in military uniform.  In this work, the Emperor is depicted wearing a simple black evening suit, under which we see his military sash.  The ceremonial robes can be seen draped on a chair at his side.  There was a sense of modesty about the Emperor although his depiction maintained an aristocratic tone.  It was if he was truly “one of the people” which may well have been part of what the ruler wanted his portrait to depict of him.  The 1886 edition of the Magazine of Art, which was an illustrated monthly British journal devoted to the visual arts, and which was published from May 1878 to July 1904 in London and New York included an article by Alice Meynell, who wrote that Cabanel’s royal portrait remit was to produce:

 “…a portrait which should be more expressive of the stability, suavity, and prosperity of the Empire, and he not only succeeded in this, but produced a work which was in many solid qualities the finest example of his talent…”

The painting is now housed at the Musée du Château de Compiègne.

  The work was acclaimed a masterpiece, not only in Europe, but also in America and, along with Cabanel’s portraits of high-society European women,  it was this work by him which almost certainly inspired wealthy Americans to choose Cabanel to paint their portraits and portraits of their family members.  Portraiture had always been a lucrative genre but the fact that Cabanel was a man of means indicates that, for him, portraiture was not just a means of earning money but was an art genre he loved and many of his portraits were exhibited at the various Salons

Catharine Lorillard Wolfe by Alexandre Cabanel (1876)

Catharine Lorillard Wolfe was an American philanthropist and art collector. She gave large amounts of money to institutions of which her most significant gifts were two bequests to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York . She also left her large collection of popular contemporary paintings to the museum, together with $200,000.

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To have one’s portrait or a portrait of one’s partner painted by a well-known artist was a means of letting the world know that you had “arrived”.  You had made good and the “right” artist could depict you as a man or woman of class and wealth.  Around the 1880’s following the end of the American Civil War many people had amassed fortunes, much of which was spent on art – not just any art but the contemporary art of the European painters, especially works by the French artists.  In America, the period which spanned the final three decades of the nineteenth century was known as the Gilded Age.  The phrase Gilded Age derives from the many great fortunes created during this period and the way of life this wealth supported and the phrase was coined by Mark Twain’s 1873 novel, A Gilded Age, A tale of Today.

Mary Frick Garrett, by Alexandre Cabanel (1883)

Mary Sloan Frick married Robert Garrett, the oldest son of John W Garrett, who was president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and Robert Garrett & Sons Bank.  Cabanel painted this portrait whilst his sitter was on holiday in Paris in 1883.

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America’s industrial economy boomed.  It was a time of great wealth for the industrialists such as John D Rockefeller, with his oil, Andrew Carnegie, with his steel and Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad and steamboat tycoon.  For wealthy Americans like them, having a painting by a French artist hanging in one of the rooms of their large mansions signalled not just your wealth but alluded to your knowledge of European art and thus enhanced your air of intellectual prowess.  For these rich Americans what would be even better than just owning a painting by a well-known French artist, would be to have that artist paint your portrait or your wife’s portrait.  That would really impress your friends!

Olivia Peyton Murray Cutting by Alexandre Cabanel (1887)

 In 1877, Olivia Peyton Murray married William Bayard Cutting, a member of New York’s merchant aristocracy, an attorney, financier, real estate developer, sugar beet refiner and philanthropist.  Ten years later he commissioned Cabanel to paint a portrait of his wife which can now be found at the Museum of the City, New York.

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Alexandre Cabanel’s reputation as an outstanding academic painter and portraitist was acknowledged on both sides of the Atlantic and his work was in great demand.

Mrs. Collis Potter Huntington by Alexandre Cabanel (1882)

Mrs Collis Huntington married Collis Potter Huntington, who was one of the Big Four of western railroading and who built the Central Pacific Railroad, which formed part of the first American transcontinental railroad.

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A man of wealth would like to be portrayed by an artist in quite a sombre mood depicting his serious business-like nature whereas they would like their wives and daughters to be portrayed in the finest clothes, with the most expensive of jewellery but the women were not to be portrayed as being frivolous instead they must be seen as intelligent figures who played, like their husbands or fathers, a key role in society.

In a book which was published to coincide with Alexandre Cabanel’s retrospective 2010 exhibition at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, Michel Hilaire, the director of the Musée Fabre of Montpellier, where many of Cabanel’s work are housed, wrote of Cabanel’s life:

“…It was the end of a fulfilled life and artistic career characterised by hard work, but also full of success and esteem…”

Alexandre Cabanel died at his Paris home on the rue Alfred de Vigny close to the Parc Monceau Paris on January 23^rd 1889, aged 65.

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 For an excellent article on Alexandre Cabanel and his American portraits you should go and read an excellent article by Leanne Zalewski :

http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring05/64-spring05/spring05article/300–alexandre-cabanels-portraits-of-the-american-aristocracy-of-the-early-gilded-age

Last week, I went to the Royal Academy which was staging three very different exhibitions.   Each one had its supporters and it was interesting to walk through each and compare the works on display.   I know that is somewhat foolhardy as one would never contemplate and compare the athletic prowess of a baseball star with a soccer star or a football star with and ice hockey player.  Each has a skill of their own and one cannot make a comparison across different sports so I suppose I should not contrast the works of Allen Jones with Anselm Keifer or Giovanni Moroni.  All are so different and it is up to one’s individual taste as to what  one believes is the most beautiful and the most eye-catching.

For me, the choice was a no-brainer.  I have always liked paintings from the 16^th and 17^th century and I have always admired the genre of portraiture and so my favourite, by far, was the Giovanni Battista Moroni exhibition which is on at the Sackler Gallery until January 25^th.  In my next two blogs, I would like to whet your appetite by looking at the life and some of the works of art of one of the greatest Italian portraitists of the sixteenth century and by doing so try and persuade you to visit the wonderful exhibition.

Giovanni Battista Moroni was the son of architect Francesco Moroni and Maddalena di Vitale Brigati.  He was born around 1522 in the Venetian Lombardy region of northern Italy, in the commune of Albino, in the province of Bergamo.  It was a time close to the end of the Italian Renaissance period which had started back in the fourteenth century.  It was an exciting period of cultural change which brought about new styles of art, music, literature, and architecture.  This was a time designated as the Cinquecento also known as High Renaissance period and it was during this time that a secular theme started to manifest itself in the subject for paintings.  Moroni was apprenticed to Alessandro Bonvicino more commonly known as Il Moretto da Brescia who had a studio in Trento which at the time hosted the great meeting of Catholic clergy at the Council of Trent between 1545 and 1563.  For Roman Catholicism, this was It was the most important ecumenical council which had been called to come up with ideas to counter the Protestant Reformation.

The Tailor by Giovanni Moroni (c.1570)

In this first blog about Moroni I want to concentrate on his portraiture and I have chosen four of my favourite works from the exhibition.  One of his most famous works and considered to be one of the masterpieces of sixteenth century portraiture, is entitled Il Tagliapanni (Portrait of a Tailor), which he completed around 1570.  What is mystifying about this portrait is the fact that the title of the work although telling us this is a portrait of an artisan the costume of the man before us would seem to have aristocratic connotations.   The setting for the portrait is a bare room, which is not well illuminated and which contrasts with the way Moroni has illuminated the head of the tailor form a light source coming from the left of the painting.  The lack of furnishings allows us to concentrate on the subject of the painting.  The figure, who stands by his cutting bench, is the tailor.   He is wearing doublet and hose.  He has a cream fustian jacket and wears full red breeches, which almost, but not quite, hides a similar coloured codpiece.  The colour of the clothing worn by the tailor was a change from Moroni’s normal male portraits as he had, as a rule, had his sitters dress in all-black clothing which was the Spanish fashion-style of male sitters.  Around his waist is a sword belt – another hint of aristocracy.  He looks out at us pensively.  Maybe he just considering carefully what he is about to do.  He has a pair of scissors in his right hand, on the small finger of which is a gold ring set with a ruby.  His left hand spreads out a piece of black cloth which he is about to cut. One can just make out the faint white lines on the cloth which are a guide to the pattern which he is about to cut out.  This is not an impoverished tradesman and much speculation has been made as to who is this man.  Because of the richness of his clothes, some art historians, like Francesco Rossi in his 1991 book Il Moroni, would have us believe that he was an aristocrat who has turned to selling fabrics.  Others believe that not to be the case.  However the manner which the tailor is depicted gives one a distinct impression that the tailor was financially secure.    In the Grazietta Butazzi a leading authority on the history of fashion an article appeared in the 2005 edition on men’s fashion between fifteenth and seventeenth centuries and they were adamant that the style of costume on Moroni’s tailor was not out of place with his professional status as a tailor and that it was similar to garments seen on prints of the time, which depicted men in his trade.

Gian Gerolamo Albani by Giovanni Moroni (1568-70)

The next portrait by Moroni, which I am featuring, is of Gian Gerolamo Albani and with it comes an amusing anecdote.  Albani was a powerful politician and military man in the Lombardy Veneto region.   In 1563 he fell from grace and was exiled for five years on the Adriatic isle of Hvar and banished from Veneto .   Gian Gerolamo Albani had had to endure this fall from power following his implication in the murder by Albani’s son of a family member of the rival Brembati family, Achille Brembati.  From Hvar Gian Girolamo moved to Rome and in 1570, at the age of sixty-one, was made a cardinal in the Catholic Church by Pope Pius V. Pope Pius V, who was born Antonio Ghislieri, and served his time in the Catholic Church as an inquisitor, was a friend of Gian Battista Albani and it was Albani that had once saved the life of the future pope.

Moroni favoured his sitters to adopt a three-quarter style profile but in this portrait of Albani he sits directly facing the viewer.   There is an aura of power about this man before us.  He sits upright in a Dantesca chair, book in hand.  He wears a luxurious black robe which is lined with lynx fur, which can also be seen appearing from slashes around the shoulders and cuffs.  This “slash and puff” fashion style will again be seen in the portrait of his daughter, Lucia.  Around his neck, adding an even more prestigious appearance is a gold chain on which hangs the lion of St. Mark, which alludes to Albani being a member of the Knights of the Order of St. Mark, an honorific Order of Chivalry title conferred on him by Andrea Gritti, who was at the time, Doge of the Republic of Venice.  The winged Lion passant  holding a drawn sword in one paw and an open book with the motto Pax tibi, Marce Evangelista meus (Peace to you, Mark, my Evangelist) in the other.  On the reverse there was a portrait of the Doge and St Mark.

And so to the anecdote I mentioned about this portrait.  The seventeenth century Italian art biographer and painter, Carlo Ridolfi, wrote about the origin of this portrait in his 1648 book Le Maraviglie dell’arte: ovvero Le vite degli ’illustri pittori veneti, e dello sato, (The Marvels of art: namely The Lives of illustrious Venetian painters, and the state):

“…Gian Geralamo Albani, a gentleman from Bergamo, a member of the Albani family, finding himself in Venice, sought Titian out to have his portrait painted.  He was asked from which area he came and let it be known that he was from Bergamo.  ‘What’ replied Titian, ‘do you think you will get a better portrait from my hands than you would get in Bergamo from your Moroni?  Best leave this work to him, for it will be more valuable and more distinctive than mine’.  Sig. Albani then returned to Bergamo and told the story to Moroni who produced this stupendous portrait now belonging to Sig. Giuseppe Albani…”

Portrait of Lucia Albani Avogadro (‘La Dama in Rosso’) by Giocvanni Battista Moroni (c.1555-60)

Whether the story is true or false I will let you decide but Gian Albani must have been already aware of Moroni and his skills as a portraitist as some ten years earlier, Moroni completed a female portrait entitled Portrait of Lucia Albani Avogadro (‘La Dama in Rosso’).  She was one of Gian Albani’s daughters.  This is an exquisite work and can now be seen at the National Gallery in London.  The sitter for this work is Lucia Albani  Avogadro an Italian poet.  Lucia was one of seven children of Gian Gerolamo Albani, the head of the powerful Albani family of Bergamo.  This is not just a painting of a beautiful woman but a depiction of and an insight into of the fashion of the time.  Lucia Albani married Faustino Avogadro , her third cousin, when she was sixteen years old.  Her husband was a member of the powerful aristocratic family from Brescia.

She is depicted in three quarter profile seated on a Dantesca chair.  She wears a glittering red brocade dress with an open bodice which was popular in the 1550’s.  The silk was almost certainly given its exquisite colour by the use of the scales of the female cochineal insect from which the carminic acid is derived and which yields shades of red such as crimson and scarlet.   Once again we see the fashionable puff and slash style on the dress around the shoulders and upper chest .  This fashion style was popular with both men and women.  Portraits of Henry VIII often showed him wearing clothes which had the “puff and slash” stylisation.   The “puff and slash” effect was achieved by cutting slashes in the garment and pulling puffs of the undergarments through those slashes.

The lady sits upright  on the chair.  In her left hand is a fan which rests on her lap.  She is bedecked with expensive jewellery, including bracelets with agates, a ring on the finger of each hand, both set with precious stones.  Around her neck is a single strand of pearls which accompany a set of pearl earrings.  Her hair is swept to the back of her head in a most intricate fashion and is held in place by a gold chain with cabochon emeralds. Lucia was not just renowned for her beauty but for her literary skill as a poet but this portrait bears no reference to her literary work, it is simply a depiction of a beautiful lady and alludes to her aristocratic status.

Portrait of Faustino Avogadro by Giovanni Battista Moroni (c.1555-60)

My fourth and final offering of portraiture by Moroni has a connection to the lady in the previous work.  The work is entitled Portrait of Faustino Avogadro and is sometimes referred to as The Knight with the Wounded Foot or A Knight with his Jousting Helmet.   Giovanni Battista Moroni completed the portrait somewhere between 1555 and 1560 and is currently housed in the National Gallery in London.  Avogadro stands in front of an old wall, the base of which is made of marble.  There is an element of decay about this backdrop with green vegetation growing out of the cracks in the wall and brown streaks of damp running down across the marble

Faustino is predominately dressed in black.  It is a familiar style of the mid 1500’s.  He wears a high-collared white shirt and short puffed black pantaloons.  Over his shirt we see a torp-coloured jacket and over this, lying open, is a gambeson or arming doublet.  This is a padded jacket which was worn as part of protective armour.  It could be worn separately, or combined with chain mail or plate armour. The garment was made using a sewing technique known as quilting and was made of linen or wool.  In battle, a thrust of the enemy’s sword could penetrate the rings of the chain mail and this often drove the damaged rings deep into the wound. A lightly padded garment, such as the gambeson worn under the chain mail reduced the risk of these types of injuries.

Avogadro’s right hand touches the hilt of his long sword whilst he rests his left arm on his lavishly crested helmet which is adorned with an ostrich feather.  Around him are pieces of armour scattered on the floor, the light glinting on the highly polished surface of the steel pieces.  Besides this being a portrait of an aristocratic gentleman it is a depiction which is testament to his military rank and his involvement in tournament combat.  If one looks closely at his left knee one can see a sort of supporting brace on it which is attached to his left foot.  Some art historians believe this contraption was the result of an injury; hence the painting’s “sub-title” The Knight with the Wounded Foot.  However, Cecil Gould, a British art historian and curator, who specialised in Renaissance painting and once a Keeper and was at one time Deputy Director of London’s National Gallery, wrote in his 1975 National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools that the brace we see in the portrait was more likely to be present to help remedy a congenital defect of the ligaments of the left ankle.  One would have thought that such a cumbersome contraption would have put paid to Avogadro’s taking part in tournaments, but apparently not.

Avogadro, like his father-in-law was involved in the deadly feud between the Albani and Brembati families with his servant being sentenced to death for his part in the murder of Count Achille Brembati in 1563.   Following this, Avogadro and his wife Lucia Albani fled their Bergamo home and went into exile in Ferrara to escape the aftermath and consequences of the murder.  A year later Faustino was dead.  It was reported that he fell down a well when he was drunk.  Fell or pushed?  One will never know for sure.  Four years later in 1568, his widow Lucia died, aged 34

In my next blog I will look at some of the religious paintings of Giovanni Battista Moroni.

In today’s blog I complete my look at the 16^th century Italian painter, Giovanni Battista Moroni, and look at some of his religious works.

Moroni had studied under Alessandro Bonvicino (Il Moretto) and in the 1540’s he eventually rose to become the main studio assistant at his Master’s Brescia workshop.  Moroni went on to ply his trade in Bergamo, his home town of Albino and the town of Trent during which time, the town hosted the Catholic ecumenical Council of Trent.  The first Council being held between 1546 and 1548 and Pope Julius III instigated the Second Council of Trent, which began in May1551 and ended two years later.  During these days Moroni received many commissions to paint altarpieces for the local churches.

The Last Supper by Giovanni Battista Moroni (1566-9)

One such religious work was The Last Supper which Moroni completed in 1569.  The setting for the work is a covered logia, which is part of an architectural setting through which we glance out at a distant blue-skied landscape.  The first thing that strikes you about this rendition of the famous religious scene is the man in black who stands behind those partaking in the meal.  We can tell by his dress that he is not one of the Apostles.  He stands behind St John and is acting as a waiter to the diners.  He is the dominant character in the painting but why was he included?  We know the painting was commissioned in December 1565 by the Confraternita del Santissimo Sacramento, a regional Brotherhood of the Blessed Sacrament in the small Bergamo commune of Romano di Lombardia and was not completed until 1569.  There has been much speculation about the identity of the man in black with some people, such as the 19^th century Italian art historian, Milesi Locatelli, who in his 1869 three-volume biography Illustri Bergamaschi. Studi critic-biografici,   and more recently Maria Calì in her 1980 book, “Verita” e “religione” nella pittura di Giovan Battista Moroni, both stated that it was the artist himself but why the confraternity would want Moroni to include himself is hard to rationalize.  Simone Facchinetti who co-wrote the book which accompanies the Royal Academy’s Moroni exhibition believes that the man in black is Lattanzio da Lallio, the parish priest of the Romano di Lombardia church at the time of the painting and his position of power over the confraternity and the fact that he was arranging the painting commission with Moroni, may have allowed/asked the artist to have himself depicted in the painting.

My next couple of religious works by Moroni are very interesting.  The depiction in each case is believed to have come from what was taught by Saint Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises, often termed the Ignatian Spirituality.   The Spiritual Exercises are a compilation of meditation, prayer, and contemplative practice developed by St. Ignatius Loyola to help people deepen their relationship with God.  They were a set of Christian meditations, prayers and mental exercises.  When one prayed, St Ignatius believed that one should meditate on a biblical passage so as to bring the person praying closer to God.  He gave precise instructions on the matter of composition or envisioning the place.  The religious composition is the fruit of mental prayer.  It is a sort of vision arising in the mind of the one who is praying.  It is seeing with the eyes of the imagination a physical location in which the thing the worshipper wishes to contemplate is to be found.

A Man in Contemplation Before the Crucifixion with St John the Baptist and St. Sebastian by Giovanni Battista Moroni (c.1575)

The first painting is entitled A Man in Contemplation Before the Crucifixion with St John the Baptist and St. Sebastian which was completed by Giovanni Battista Moroni around 1575.  The painting is housed in the Bergamo church, Chiesa di Sant’ Alessandro della Croce.  In this work a man in the foreground has turned towards us and points towards a painted scene of the Crucifixion which is being witnessed by St John the Baptist on the left and St Sebastian on the right.  The latter can be seen holding the arrows shot at him during the first attempt on his life.  Sebastian is often depicted in paintings tied to a tree or a pillar and shot with arrows but according to legend he did not die and was rescued by Irene of Rome, later Saint Irene.  Later, around AD 288, he was clubbed to death for openly criticising the Roman Emperor Diocletian.

A Gentleman in Adoration before the Baptism of Christ by Giovanni Battista Moroni (c.1555)

The second work depicts a man praying and at the same time concentrating his mind on a story from the Bible, which in this case is the baptism of Christ by St John. What we see before us is what, through deep meditation, the praying man has conjured up in his mind during prayer. The painting is entitled Gentleman in Contemplation of the Baptism of Christ which Moroni completed around 1555.   The young man, with his hands clasped in prayer, stands upright before the biblical scene he is imagining, separated from it by some architectural ruins.  In the background we have a Lombardy landscape and in the middle ground we see the two figures by a stream which almost certainly alludes to the River Jordan where Christ was baptised by John.  The painting is now part of the Gerolamo and Roberta Etro collection.  Gerolamo, an avid art collector, was the founder in 1968 of Etro the Italian luxury fashion house.

The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine by Giovanni Battista Moroni (c.1545-50)

My final offering of a religious work by Moroni is The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine and was completed around 1550.  It is a beautiful and delicate work of art and is housed at the Ashmoleon Museum in Oxford.  In the painting we see a depiction of St Catherine, an early Christian martyr of royal birth, seated next to the Virgin Mary, who cradles the Christ Child.  Catherine is receiving a wedding-ring from Him, which symbolises her spiritual closeness to God.  In her left hand she holds a palm frond which was adopted into Christian iconography to represent the victory of martyrs, a victory for the faithful against those who want to claim their soul.  St Catherine, who died in Alexandria, Egypt, in the early 4th century AD, when she was in her twenties.  She was martyred at the hands of the pagan emperor Maxentius.

Torre civica, Bergamo

The setting for the painting is inside a room, which has a large window, through which can be seen a town.  It is thought that it is the town of Bergamo, as to the left, one sees the town’s Torre Civica, which was built in the twelfth century.  The small oil on canvas painting, which measures 86cms x 68cms, is thought to have been designed for private devotion.  Furthermore the original recipient of the work is thought to have been a young girl, who would then identify herself with the teenage martyr, Catherine.

Giovanni Moroni was part way through a commission to paint The Last Judgement in the church at Gorlago, a commune of Bergamo, close to his home town of Albino.   He never completed the commission as he died in February 1579.  Although his exact birth date is not known it is reckoned he was in his mid-fifties when he died.

Self portrait by Isaac Levitan (1880)

From the portraiture and the religious works of the 16^th century Italian painter Giovanni Battista Moroni I am moving in a completely different direction.  I am focusing on the Russian Empire and one of, if not the greatest Russian landscape painter of the nineteenth century.  Today let me introduce you to Isaac Levitan.

Portrait of Isaac Levitan by Valentin Serov (1883)

Isaac Ilyich Levitan was born in August 1860 in the small schetl of Kibart.  A schetl is a small settlement with a large Jewish population.    Kibart was close to the border town of Verzhbolovo, and was then part of what was known as Russian Poland.  The town is now part of Lithuania and is known as Virbalis.  Levitan was one of four children who was born into an intellectual working class Jewish family.  His father, Elyashiv Levitan, was a language teacher, teaching French and German at the nearby school in Kowno (now Kaunus, Lithuania) He alaso supplemented his pay as a teacher by acting as a translator for a French building company, which was constructing a nearby bridge over the Lieponio River for the St. Petersburg to Warsaw railway.  Elyashiv spent a lot of his free time educating his children at home.  Both Isaac’s mother and father were interested in art and so, when their son and his brother Axel also showed an interest in it, they were only too pleased to nurture their children’s love of drawing and painting.

Landscape on the Volga by Isaac Levitan (1878)

In the Spring of 1870 the family moved to Moscow and the following year his older brother Axel enrolled at the Moscow College of Art, Sculpture and Architecture, which was one of the largest educational institutions in Russia.  Two years later, in September 1873, Isaac also registered as a pupil at the college to study art.  His initial artistic training concentrated on copying but, after a year, he moved on to a class which focused on nature and art and soon he was embroiled in the genre of landscape painting, which was later to make him famous.  He had first-class teachers at the college, including the landscape painters, Alexi Savrasov, the head of the landscape department, his successor, Vasily Polenov and the Realist painter Vasily Perov, who was the founder of the Peredvizhniki often known as The Wanderers or The Itinerants, who were a group of Russian realist painters who in protest at academic restrictions formed an artists’ cooperative.  The group later evolved into the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions.

Autumn Road in a Village by Isaac Levitan (1877)

Isaac loved the challenge of landscape painting and was greatly influenced by the landscape work of the Barbizon painters as well as the work of the French realist painter Camile Corot.  Things were proceeding well for Isaac until 1875 when, at the age of fifteen, tragedy struck with the death of his mother and in 1877, after contracting typhus and having endured a long illness during which time he could not earn money, his father died.  Now Isaac was without financial support.  He had neither money to pay the college fees nor the money to live.  He was asked to leave the college due to non-payment of his tuition fees but was rescued by the kindness of friends who gave him the money so that he could continue studying and later, thanks to the College Council who appreciated his talent, the tuition fees were waived and furthermore they awarded him a small bursary.

A Sunny Day, Spring by Isaac Levitan (1876)

In 1877, the year that his father died, the fifth Travelling Art Exhibition was held at the Moscow College of Art.  Isaac Levitan submitted two of his works with great hopes of a medal.  He had completed one of the works, Solnechnyi den Vesna (A Sunny Day, Spring) the previous year, whilst his other entry, Vecher (Evening) had been completed in 1877.  Levitan was disappointed in the judges’ decision.  He didn’t receive a medal for either work but was granted a diploma which allowed him to become an art teacher.

The year 1879 proved to be a year of turmoil and triumph for nineteen year old Levitan.  The turmoil occurred on the morning of April 20, 1879; Tsar Alexander II was attacked by a thirty-three year old former student, Alexander Soloviev, as he walked towards the Square of the Guards Staff.  The result of this assassination attempt was a crackdown on groups of people who were believed to be a threat to the Tsar.  The government issued an edict that there would be a mass deportation of Jews from the big cities of the Russian Empire.  This meant that Isaac’s family were forced to move out of the centre of Moscow to the eastern suburb of Saltykovka. Later that year, due to pressure on the local government officials by art lovers, Isaac Levitan was allowed to return to the city.

Autumn Day, Sokolniki, by Isaac Levitan (1879)

The triumph came that December, when Isaac entered his painting, Osenniy den Sokolniki (Autumn Day, Sokolniki) in the second students’ exhibition.  Levitan liked to paint views of different settings in the Moscow area. Considered to be one of the best works of this period is his poignant work entitled Autumn Day, Sokolniki, which he completed in 1879.   The painting reveals to us Levitan’s belief in the connection between nature and human feelings.  The painting is a depiction of a grey-clouded autumn sky and one can imagine the rustling sound of the wind through the trees causing the dying leaves to fall to the ground.  The path which disappears into the distance is the focal point of the painting.  It is empty with the exception of a woman dressed in black, who strolls towards us.

This work of art by Levitan was his reminder of his joy of walking along the forest path of his beloved Sokolniki Park.  The park lies to the northeast of the city and was so named because of its connection with falconry which took place there and was the favourite sport of members of the royal court (sokol is the Russian word for falcon).  This work of art received great revues and the following year it was purchased by the art collector and philanthropist, Pavel Tretyakov, the founder of the famous Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.  This marked the initial public recognition of Isaac Levitan and his art.  The painting can now be seen at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

It was around the end of the 1870’s that Isaac Levitan met the writer Anton Chekhov.  The meeting came about as Anton’s brother, Nikolai, was a fellow student of Levitan at the Moscow College of Art.  This was to be a friendship which lasted all Levitan’s life.

In my next blog I will continue looking at the life of Isaac Levitan and feature some of his most important later works.

Portrait of Anton Chekhov by Isaac Levitan (1886)

Anton Chekhov, the writer and physician, was born in January 1860.  He was the third of six children and was brought up in the coastal town of Taganrog which lay on the north shore of the Sea of Azov in southern Russia.  In 1876, when he was sixteen years old his father, Pavel, was in the process of building a new house but ran out of money and was mired in a huge debt.  Rather than face the prospect of languishing in a debtors prison he escaped the town and moved to Moscow where his elder sons, Alexander and Nikolai were studying. Alexander was attending Moscow University and Nikolai was an art student at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.  Anton Chekhov remained behind in Taganrog to finish his studies at the local secondary school and was also charged with the task of selling the family’s possessions.  It was not until three years later in 1879 that Anton Chekhov joined the family in Moscow.

Anton Chekhov enrolled at the Moscow State Medical University and it was shortly after arriving in Moscow that he was introduced to Isaac Levitan by his brother Nikolai who was a fellow student of Levitan at the Moscow School of Painting.  Anton Chekhov was just eight months older than Levitan and the close friendship between the two great men of the Russian Arts steadily grew and it would last until the end of their lives.  This was a coming together of two Masters of Russian literature and the visual arts, and this close camaraderie led to a close style in the way the two considered and dealt with artistic challenges, so much so that their names are often quoted side by side both in specialized literature and popular writings.

The Watermill, Sunset by Isaac Levitan (1880)

Levitan completed a beautiful but small landscape painting, The Watermill, Sunset.  It measured just 33cms x 52cms.  He painted this work in the summer of 1880 when he was spending time in the small riverside town of Plyos on the banks of the mighty Volga River.  Levitan loved the area and this period could be looked upon as one of the happiest times of his life. His friend Anton Chekhov said that when his artist friend and he were in Plyos he could detect a smile on Isaac’s face.  Sadly, because of family tragedies and his unending fight against poverty, Levitan rarely smiled and was often the victim of melancholia.

Isaac Levitan had developed a great love of nature which almost certainly originated from his time at the Moscow School of Painting and the time he spent with one of his tutors, the Russian landscape painter, Alexei Savrasov.  Savrasov was one of the most eminent of all 19^th century Russian landscape artists and was renowned for his lyrical style and melancholic works of art.  He was looked upon as the creator of the lyrical landscape style.

In all, Levitan painted this view three times.  The first, which we see above, is housed in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and the other two, which were painted later, form part of two private Russian collections.  The scene is set at sunset and the mill is in shadow whilst the forest, on the opposite side of the river in the background is bathed in evening sunlight.  The light slants in from the right illuminating the far bank.  It is the ending of the day and although the blue skies suggest otherwise, the location will soon be cast in darkness.  In the foreground, the focal point is the wooden mill and the small rickety bridge which crosses over the small waterfall, the water of which powers the mill.  In many of Levitan’s paintings he depicts small bridges crossing over water along with jetties which often had boats moored to them.

Levitan’s moody landscapes and the artists and poets who had influenced this style of art were commented upon by Alexandre Benois in his 1916 book, The Russian School of Painting.  He wrote:

“…He brought to a summation that which Vasiliev, Savrasov and Polenov had foretold.  Levitan discovered the peculiar charm of Russian landscape “moods”; he found a distinctive style to Russian landscape art which would have been distinguished illustrations to the poetry of Pushkin, Koltzov, Gogol, Turgenyev and Tyutchev.  He rendered the inexplicable charm of our humble poverty, the shoreless breadth of our virginal expanses, the festal sadness of the Russian autumn, and the enigmatic call of the Russian spring.  There are no human beings in his paintings, but they are permeated with a deep emotion which floods the human heart…”

To supplement his income Levitan gave private painting lessons and he collaborated with the Chekhov brothers on the illustrated magazine “Moscow”.  Levitan also spent time spent time on the popular Russian magazines, “Raduga” (Rainbow) in1883) and “Volna” (Wave) in 1884, where he worked on graphics and lithographs for the publications.  He also collaborated with illustrations for Mikhail Fabritsius’ guide book, The Kremlin in Moscow.  During the summers of the mid and late 1880’s Levitan spent much of his time with the Chekhov family, who had a summer residence on the Babkino estate close to the banks of the Istra River.   The estate was owned by Alexsei Kiselev and he and his wife Marila would entertain artists and writers at their many soirees.  Levitan eventually moved into the Chekhovs home and set up his own studio.   One painting he completed in 1886, whilst staying with the Chekhovs was The Istra River.

In the Crimean Mountains by Isaac Levitan (1886)

His impoverished upbringing during which he often had no idea where or when his next meal would come from combined with the stress of being an artist trying to eke out a living had affected his health and he was diagnosed as having a degenerative heart disease and advised to move to a warmer climate further to the south of the country and so in late March 1886 Isaac Levitan visited the Crimea for the first time.  It was here that he completed more than sixty sketches and paintings during his two months sojourn including one entitled In the Crimean Mountains which depicted an area around the town of Feodosiya, in eastern Crimea.  It is a painting which manages to capture the bright sun and the intense heat of the mountainous setting.  Levitan exhibited all the sketches he had completed whilst staying in the Crimea at the Moscow Society of Art Lovers (MSAL).  All were purchased and with that success came financial stability for Isaac Levitan.

Evening on the Volga by Isaac Levitan (1888)

Between 1887 and 1890 Levitan would travel far and wide spending the long summer months in small towns along the Volga River, such as Plës (Plyos) and Vasil’sursk and two of his paintings of that time, Evening on the Volga (1888) and Evening: The Golden Plyos (1889) depicted the beauty of the river and the townships, which were situated on the banks of the great waterway, during the hours of sunset.

Evening: Golden Ples by Isaac Levitan (1889)

Levitan painted the Volga River scenes in various weather and light conditions and by doing so was able to convey associated moods.  The Volga series established Levitan as the painter of the landscape of mood and his style became popular with other Moscow landscape artists of the time.

The Mediterranean Coast by Isaac Levitan (1890)

Levitan realised that much could be learnt from European artists and so, in March 1890, he embarked on a tour visiting Berlin and Paris and the Cote d’Azur towns of Nice and Menton.  From his visit to the south of France, he completed a work entitled The Mediterranean Coast which is a truly beautiful depiction of the multi-coloured sea and the pebbled shoreline.  He went on to Italy and visited Venice and Florence, Germany and Switzerland.  However Levitan was a true Russian and despite the lure of the artistic life in the European capitals he preferred to return to his homeland.

In March 1891 Isaac Levitan became a member of the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions, and by the end of the year, displayed ten of his paintings at a Moscow Society of Art Lovers (MSAL) exhibition. His exhibits met with unreserved acclaim from both his fellow artists and the public.

Quiet Abode, The Silent Monastery by Isaac Levitan (1890)

Another of Levitan’s works of art I really like was completed in 1890, ten years after The Watermill painting, and was entitled Quiet Abode, The Silent Monastery.  The monastery in question is the Krivooserski Monastery which is close to the river town of Yuryevets, located at the confluence of the Unzha and the Volga Rivers, some 350 kilometres north east of Moscow.   Levitan had visited the area in the summer of 1890.  In the painting we see the monastery in the background nestled amongst the high trees with just the ornate cupolas peaking above the tree canopy.   In the foreground we can see a curved rickety wooden-planked bridge which traverses the slow-flowing river.  The surface of the river shimmers in the sunlight.  Look how beautifully Levitan has depicted the reflection of the monastery and the trees in this still expanse of water.

Anton Chekhov was so impressed with his friend’s painting that he introduced it into his 1895 novel, Three Years, in which he had the heroine of the story, Yulia Sergeievna, visit an Easter Week art exhibition and stand in front of what he described as

“…a small landscape… In the foreground was a stream, over it a little wooden bridge...”

Above the Eternal Peace by Isdaac Levitan (1894)

One of the most haunting works by Levitan was his painting entitled Above the Eternal Peace which he completed in 1894.  The first thing that strikes you about this evocative work is it is the depiction of an endless landscape.  In the background we have a beautiful depiction of threatening heavy grey clouds which are  intermingled with fluffy white ones, all of which are reflected on to the still waters of the lake below.  In the foreground, sitting isolated on a verdant promontory which juts into the lake, is a small church with its gleaming silver cupola.  Behind the church is the graveyard.  It is separated from the church by some birch trees which have been bent over by strong winds.  The graveyard looks abandoned and is rather overgrown and some of the crosses have lean over from the constant force of a strong wind which raced unhindered across the exposed promontory.  The picture was painted on the shore of Lake Udomlia in Tver province, 250 kilometres north of Moscow.

Vladimirka by Isaac Levitan (1892)

My final offering is another haunting work of art, not for its pictorial depiction but because where and what it is being depicted.   It was a depiction of a well-trodden road which led convicts towards their penal colonies in Siberia.  The painting is entitled The Vladimirka Road and Levitan completed it in 1892.  The Vladimir Highway familiarly known as the Vladimirka was a 190-kilometre road which went from Moscow to Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod, Siberia in the east.  Siberia was at this time the customary place of exile, and this road depicted in the painting saw an endless movement of prisoners in shackles being marched from Moscow to the Siberian penal colonies.  Levitan’s work of art is not just another landscape painting it is a combination of his realistic vision with a message.  Before us is a somewhat desolate landscape but the point of the painting is to remind people, who look at the depiction, of the traumatic history of the road.  It was about exile but it was not just about the exile of prisoners to Siberia.  Levitan himself probably reflected on his own life at the time as in 1892 through to the beginning of 1893, by order of the Moscow governor-general, the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, about 20,000 Jews were deported from Moscow.  Isaac Levitan was among those forced from his home and this expulsion because of his religion had traumatised him.

Everything about the painting reflects his troubled mind.  Levitan has depicted the sky and the fields in dull and rather uninviting tones.  Before us we have a flat and almost lifeless landscape with just the odd trees in the background.  There is little or no vegetation and the path has been almost reduced to gravel due to the thousands of prisoners who had been marched along it over the years.   Look at the colours he has used.  Instead of bright greens and yellows he has gone for dull browns and lacklustre darker greens. The sky is grey with no hint of blue to uplift the painting.  There is no sign of the sun which would have brightened the landscape but that was not the intention of the artist.  There are no people depicted as he and many other realistic landscape artists believed the inclusion of people into a landscape painting  detracted from the surroundings.  Most of Levitan’s landscapes are without people.  This work of art was termed a mood landscape in which the artist has transferred his mood into the way he depicts the scene.  There is nothing uplifting about the view.  There is nothing in the scene that would raise one’s spirits but that is just as Levitan wanted it to be.  It was Levitan’s way of depicting hopelessness.  It was the historical hopelessness of those who trudged their way to what would simply be slave labour.  It was his own feeling of despair at his plight as a persecuted Jew.

To put a more uplifting spirit to this road the Bolsheviks, post-Russian Revolution, renamed it Shosse Entuziastov (“Enthusiasts’ Highway”) and many years later it became known as the Volga Motorway.

In March 1894 Levitan moved to the Tver Region, and later to Gorki.  His health was deteriorating and by 1895 the degenerative heart disease which had been diagnosed ten years earlier was making life more difficult for Levitan.  He was in constant pain and had little energy.  His physical ailment triggered mental health issues in the form of depression and it was known that on a number of occasions he attempted to end his life.  The only thing which gave him happiness was his love of nature.  In 1897, he had become world-renowned as a landscape painter and  he was elected to the Imperial Academy of Arts  and in 1898 he was named the head of the Landscape Studio at his alma mater, the Moscow School of Painting.

The Lake by Isaac Levitan (1890)

Levitan spent the last year of his life at Chekhov’s home in the Crimea.  Even though Levitan was aware that he was dying his last works were ones of brightness of colour.  An example of this is one which remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1890.  It was entitled The Lake although Levitan called it Rus’.  It is believed that he labelled the work thus as he believed the painting reflect ed tranquillity and the eternal beauty of Russian nature and embodied all that was good about his homeland –  its landscape, its people and its history.

Portrait of Isaac Levitan by Valentin Serov (1883)

In 1898 Levitan was given the title of academic of landscape painting. He still taught in the Moscow College of Art, Sculpture and Architecture. His paintings were constantly on display at Russia-wide exhibitions, at International exhibitions in Munich and the World Exhibition in Paris. He became internationally famous. His health started failing, his heart disease progressing quickly. He went abroad for some last-ditch medical treatment but any slight improvement was short lived.   Isaac Levitan completed over a thousand paintings, during his short life.  He died on 22 June 1900, just forty years of age. Levitan never married and had no children.   He was buried in the Jewish cemetery at Dorogomilovo, Moscow.   In April 1941 Levitan’s remains were moved to the Novodevichy Cemetery, close to the grave of his friend Anton Chekhov.

In August 2008 in the village of Eliseikovo, Petushinsky District near Vladimir – the Levitan House of Landscape was opened. Isaac Levitan first came to this area in May 1891, on invitation of the historian Vassily Kluchevsky, who had a summer home by the Peksha River. In 1892, Levitan returned, but on this occasion it was not from choice as it was the time when the Russian authorities banished Jews from Moscow.  The great Russain opera singer and friend of Levitan, Fyodor Shalyapin, spoke of the art of his friend:

“…It has brought me to realization that the most important thing in art is this feeling, this spirit, this prophetic word that sets people’s hearts on fire. And this prophetic word can be expressed not only in speech and gesture but also in line and colour…”

Portrait of Alexei Savrasov by Vasily Perov (1878)

My last two blogs featured the life and works of the great nineteenth century landscape painter, Isaac Levitan.  Whilst I was researching his early life as a student at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture I came across the name of Alexei Kondratyevich Savrasov who was one of Levitan’s tutors.  Having a rest from writing about Levitan, I had a look at some of the works of Savrasov, who had influenced Levitan and amongst them I came across the most exquisite painting and the one Savrasov was probably most famous for; but more about that later.

Alexei Savrasov was born on 12 May 1830 into the family of a Moscow merchant.  As a young boy he developed the love of drawing and by the age of twelve he was experimenting with painting gouache and watercolour landscapes and during his early years he managed to exchange his paintings with vendors for chicken feed.  He persuaded his father to let him study art and at the young of eight he attended the painting school.

In 1844, when Savrasov was fourteen years of age, and plans for his future career had to be discussed with the family.  His father was adamant that his son should follow him and become a merchant and thus end all the time his son spent painting which his father regarded as just a hobby.    However for Alexei, his heart was set on becoming an artist.  Alexei eventually had his way and enrolled at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and in 1848 he was fortunate to join the special studio of perspective and landscape painting which was run by Karl Rabus, who was the Professor of Landscape painting.  Alexei loved the genre of landscape painting and began to specialise in it. Soon he was widely acknowledged by the tutors as the best student of landscape painting in the School.    During the last years at the painting school, Savrasov, received a bursary from a well-known Moscow art patron and member of the Moscow Art Society, Likhachev, which enabled him to go on a painting and sketching trip to Odessa, where he captured the beauty of the local landscape.

View of the Kremlin from the Krymsky Bridge in Inclement Weather by Alexei Savrasov (1851)

In 1850 Savrasov graduated from the Moscow School of Painting receiving the official title of “unclassed artist”.  One of the first paintings Savrasov completed after leaving the art school was entitled View of the Kremlin from Krymski Bridge during Inclement Weather.  The storm clouds rush from the right to the left of the painting pushed relentlessly by the strong winds which have caused the branches of the trees to bend towards the river.  The sun has pierced the clouds and illuminated the Kremlin in the background of the painting.  In the foreground of the painting we see that the sun has lit up a small patch of land where the water from the Moskva River laps the sandy ground.  A woman, pail in hand, rushes past.  Her hand clutches her coat to hold it closed while  the wind whips at her skirt which is billowing in the gale.

View in the Neighbourhood of Oranienbaum by Alexei Savrasov (1854)

Savrasov travelled to the Ukraine in 1852 and steadily built up a portfolio of sketches and paintings and with them he started to develop a reputation as an up and coming artist.  Two years later, in 1854, he received a painting commission for several works of art for the Russian Art Academy from the Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna,   She was one of the daughters of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia.    She was an avid and well-known art collector and President of the Russian Academy of Arts in St Petersburg.  To carry out his commission, Savrasov moved from Moscow to the Gulf of Finland, close to St Petersburg.  Two of the paintings he produced, View in the Neighborhood of Oranienbaum and Seashore in the Neighborhood of Oranienbaum, are now looked upon as excellent examples of the genre known as romantic landscapes   These works of art by Savrasov allowed him to depict, with great fondness, the charm and appeal of a summer evening at the sea, with the moistness associated with the sea air in the shade of ancient rocks, whilst envisioning the twilight which we observe under the spread­ing branches of trees.  The works Savrasov produced during this period, and these two works in particular, earned him the title of Fellow of the Russian Art Academy.

Alexi Savrasov had studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture for ten years from 1844 to 1854, some of the time under the tutorship of Karl Rabus.  When Rabus died in 1857 Savrasov was asked to take over Rabus’ landscape class which he did and remained in post until 1882.  During his tenure he took many students under his wing, including the subject of my last blog, Isaac Levitan.  Savrasov was an excellent teacher and much loved and admired by his students.  In 1857 Savrasov married Sophia Hertz, the sister of art historian and archaeologist, K. Hertz; the couple went on to have several children. In their home they entertained artists and collectors including the famous art collector and patron of the arts, Pavel Tretyakov, who gave his name to the Moscow Art Gallery.

After leaving the Moscow School of Art in 1862, Savrasov took up the suggestion made to him by the Art Amateurs’ Society and left Russia on a painting expedition of Europe.   He travelled to that year’s World Fair in London, where he exhibited his painting View of the Surroundings Oranienbaum, and was amazed by what he saw and was unstinting in his praise, writing:

“…no academies in the world could so advance an artist as the present world exhibition…”

View of the Swiss Alps from Interlaken by Alexsei Savrasov (1862)

On the way back home he visited Paris, Switzerland, Copenhagen, Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig.  During his European travels the two landscape painter whom he admired the most were the English artist, John Constable and the Swiss landscape painter Alexandre Calame.   One of the paintings he completed in 1862 originated from his travels through Switzerland.  It was entitled View of the Swiss Alps from Interlaken and was completed in 1862.

Rafts by Alexei Savrasov (1868)

I particularly like his painting entitled Rafts which he painted in 1868.

Elk Island in Sokolniki by Alexi Savrasov (1869)

However the painting of his which drew the most acclaim in this period was a beautiful landscape work entitled Elk Island in Sokolniki, which he finished in 1869 and for which he was awarded the first prize at a painting competition organised by the Moscow Art Amateurs’ Society.  Elk Island straddles the boundary between the centre of Moscow and its suburbs to the north of the city.  It is home to a remarkable variety of animal and plant life.  The area was believed to have been a favourite place for Ivan the Terrible to enjoy falconry and bear-hunting. The area was given the name Elk Island in the early 17^th century, when documents say that the place was used for hunting “all manner of game birds, and especially elk”.

Caves Monastery near Nizhny Novgorod by Aklexei Savrasov (1871)

In December 1870 Savrasov, his wife and family went to live in Yaroslavl which lies on the Volga, three hundred kilometres north of Moscow.   Whilst there he produced the beautiful work of art entitled  Caves Monastery near Nizhny Novgorod, which is now housed in the Gorky State Art Museum in Nizhny Novgorod.  It was one of the largest canvases Savrasov ever painted.    The left hand side of this wide panoramic view is taken up by the confluence of the Oka and Volga Rivers with the blue lagoons whilst the right hand side of the painting depicts the Pechersky Voznesensky monastery.  The original monastery is believed to have been founded around 1330 by St. Dionysius, who, along with several followers, arrived in Nizhny Novgorod from Kiev Pechersk Lavra also known as the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, (pechery meaning ‘caves), hence the title of the painting.  On arrival at Nizhny Novgorod they dug a cave on the shoreline of the Volga and later it became the site of a monastery and church.  The original monastery was destroyed by a landslide in 1597; but in the same year a new monastery was built a short distance upstream.

Detail from Caves Monastery near Nizhny Novgorod

In the right foreground, we see suburban homes with their small gardens awash with greenery which contrasts with the towering white stonework of the monastery.

The Rooks have Come Back by Alexei Savrasov (1871)

The last work of Savrasov, which I am showcasing, is the one I talked about at the start of this blog.  Its beauty and simplicity immediately struck me and I was reminded of one of my favourite artists Pieter Breugel the Elder who had a propensity of including rooks or magpies in his winter scenes, such as his 1565 painting The Hunters in the Snow.  This painting by Savrasov entitled The Rooks have Come Back was completed in 1871 at the height of his artistic career.

Members of the Peredvizhniki group (Savrasov,with beard, standing, third from left)

A year earlier he had became a member of the Peredvizhniki group, often known as  The Wanderers or The Itinerants who were a group of Russian Realist artists, who like many artists throughout Europe railed against the Academic restrictions and decided to go off on their own and set up artists’ cooperative.   The Wanderers eventually evolved into the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions.  It is a simple painting with an equally simple theme – the birds returning home in Spring.  It was a transitional depiction.  A transition of nature from winter to spring heralded by the return of the rooks. This landscape work with all its simplicity was termed a lyrical landscape painting later to be termed a mood landscape painting and Savrasov was one of the founding exponents of this type of landscape art.  His pupil Isaac Levitan would continue with this style.  Of this painting the artist, art critic and leader of the Russian Democratic Art movement, Ivan Kramskoi,  wrote:

“…The Rooks Have Come Back was the best he’d ever seen; and despite the fact that there were similar landscapes painted by other renowned Russian artists, only “The Rooks” mirrored the artist’s soul.

Savrasov’s former pupil and fellow landscape painter Isaac Levitan declared the painting:

“…to be “very simple, but beneath the simplicity there is the tender artist’s soul, who loves nature and values it…”

Although the year 1871 and this painting marked the height of Savrasov’s fame it also marked the beginning of the end of the great man for in  February 1871 Savrasov’s life took a tragic turn with the sudden death of his baby daughter.  This was the third child he and his wife had lost.  Maybe it was “the straw which broke the camel’s back” as Savrasov never recovered from this loss and descended into deep depression and despite friends who tried to help him he took to alcohol to ease the pain..  His work suffered and by 1882 he could no longer hold down the post of professor at the Moscow Art School and was sacked.   His wife eventually left him and took their children with her,  His bad manners and unpleasant demeanour caused friends and family to eventually desert him and his alcoholism and lack of sales of his work culminated  in the 1880’s with him living the life of a pauper.  In 1890 Savrasov went to live with Evdokiya Morgunova, and the couple had two children.

Savrasov’s grave in Vagankovo Cemetery, Moscow

Alexei Savrasov died in September 1897 in a city hospital, in a ward for paupers. When it came to his funeral, the doorkeeper of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and Pavel Tretyakov, who later founded the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, were the only people to attend Savrasov’s funeral .

I will leave you with a quote from his pupil Isaak Levitan, who wrote of his mentor:

“…One of the most profound Russian landscape-artists has passed away. With him, lyricism came to land­scape painting, and boundless love for one’s na­tive land. Yes, Savrasov was the father of Rus­sian landscape painting, and this undisputed merit of his will never be forgotten in the field of Russian art…”

Portrait of Jozef Israels by Jan Veth (1887)

My previous three blogs looked at Russian landscape painters and although they were leading exponents of this 19^th century genre they may have been unknown to many people nowadays.  The artist I am looking at today is probably also not known by most people but he had a great influence of the early works of the Dutch master, Vincent van Gogh.   Just before Christmas I went to Amsterdam to visit the newly refurbished Van Gogh Museum and I suggest that it is “must visit” museum for any travellers to the Dutch city.

Peasant Family at Table, by Jozef Israels (1882)

The museum was awash with colour from Van Gogh’s landscape paintings but I was fascinated by his darker early works and his fascination with the hard-working peasants and I wanted to know more about what influenced him to spend so much of his early life concentrating on depictions of the peasant class.  It was then I came across Jozef Israels and his 1882 painting entitled Peasant Family at the Table, a work of art which led to a similar depiction, by van Gogh, of peasants sitting around a table having a meal which is entitled The Potato Eaters and I featured this work of art in My Daly Art Display (Feb 7^th 2012).  However this blog is not about Van Gogh but the Dutch artist, Jozef Israels who influenced him.  In this first blog about Jozef Israels I want to look at his paintings depicting the harsh life of fishermen and their families.

Josef Israels was a Dutch Jewish painter born in Groningen in January 1824.  His father was to Hartog Abraham Israel, a professional broker and merchant who had married Mathilda Solomon Polack.  Jozef was the third-born of ten children and he had six brothers and three sisters.  As is the case of many young aspiring artists, Jozef’s father did not see his son’s future as an artist but wanted him to carry on the family business and it was only after a long struggle and great determination that Jozef persuaded his father to let him study art.  It was a compromise, as during his artistic studies he worked as a stockbroker’s clerk in his father’s business.   At the age of eleven he received his first drawing lessons from the landscape artist J. Bruggink who worked at Minerva Academy in Groningen and a year later became a pupil of Johan Joeke Gabriel van Wicheren.   In 1838, aged fourteen he was tutored by the Groningen painter, Cornelis Bernudes Buys.

In 1842, shortly after his eighteenth birthday Jozef went to Amsterdam to study drawing under the tutelage of Jan Adam Kruseman and, in 1844, attended art classes at the Amsterdam Royal Academy of Art.  Kruseman had made his name as a painter of historical, biblical and genre scenes but was probably more famous for his portraiture.  In 1845 Jozef Israels left his native Netherlands and travelled to Paris where he worked in the studio of the neo-classical history painter, François-Édouard Picot.  Picot was one of the artists who was favoured by the French rulers of the time.  He was an esteemed artist who taught many of the aspiring artists of the time such as Alexandre Cabanel and William-Adolphe Bouguereau. His romantic historical paintings influenced Israels.  The Romanticism genre of Louis Gallait and Ari Scheffer also left their mark on the twenty-two year old. During his stay in Paris he attended classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts presided over by such artistic luminaries as James Pradier, Horace Vernet and Paul Delaroche and he would spend time at the Louvre where he copied the works of the great Masters.

The Academies at the time pushed the genre of paysage historique, historical landscape painting depicting idealised landscape works of art with their historical connotations.   This art genre went back to the 17^th century Baroque era of Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain and aspiring landscape painters from the Academies made their way to Italy to paint their landscapes interspersed with historical monuments, the settings of which were favoured by the dazzling Mediterranean sunlight. This favourable Italian climate had given the artists the chance to paint en plein air.

However, Jozef Israels, whilst he was living in the French capital, delved into the alternate world of landscape painting, the world of Realism, and the works of the Barbizon painters some of whom he had the chance to meet.  For them it was the landscape which was the beauty in itself and did not require the addition of mythological or biblical figures.  If figures were to be added it should be those of hard working peasants whose inclusion added reality to the work and dispensed with romanticism.  However Jozef Israels was not sold on their ideas for landscape painting and soon reverted to his painting which were more likely influenced by the painter Ari Scheffer (see My Daily Art Display May 15 2012 and Sept 30th 2014) depicting subjects from Romantic poetry or influenced by the work of the Belgian history painter, Louis Gallait and depicted figures from Dutch national history.

In 1847 Israels returned to Holland and his work concentrated on his portraiture and historical subjects, often with Jewish themes.    The problem for Israels was that by the 1850’s,  the genre of history paintings in the Netherlands was falling from favour and he realised that to sell his art he needed to think of a different painting genre.   Fate took a hand as Jozef was taken ill and in 1855, as a cure for his health problems, he moved out of the city and went to live in the small fishing village of Zandvoort, where he believed the sea air would aid his recovery.   He immersed himself in the local village life and became aware of the hard life endured by the village’s fishing community and he decided to record some of their sufferings in his works of art.   His paintings depicted the hard life of the fishermen and their families and the unforgiving nature of the sea.

Passing mother’s grave by Jozef Israels (1856)

In 1856 he painted one of his most famous works featuring Zandvoort fishing folk.  It was a life-size work measuring 224cms x 178cms  entitled Passing Mother’s Grave.  The painting depicts a fisherman passing his wife’s grave.   He walks hand in hand with his son whilst carrying his baby daughter.  The bare-footed trio alluded to the poverty of the fishing folk and for this trio life without the woman had added to their problems.The work is housed in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Fishermen carrying drowned man by Jozef Israels (c.1861)

Another work of art featuring the plight of fishermen and their families was Jozef Israels’ painting entitled Fishermen Carry a Drowned Man which is housed in the National Gallery in London.  It is thought that this work was completed around 1861, sometime after Jozef returned to Amsterdam from Zandvoort but used sketches he had made whilst living in the fishing village.  The work is all about suffering and the hard life experienced by fishermen and their families and it was this eking of sympathy from the observer which was so like that of Jean-François Millet and his peasant paintings. Let’s look at this sombre work with its dark grey skies.  A line of fishermen and their family trudge up the dunes from the shore.  A grief-stricken woman leads the way with her two children at her side.  They too are aware of the loss.  Maybe the woman is the widow of the dead fisherman.  She is leading the line of mourners.  Behind her the body of the dead fisherman is carried by two burly men whilst to the left of them is a weeping woman.  The dead man’s companions follow on carrying the fishing equipment from their boat. The work of art was exhibited at the 1861 Salon and in 1862 at the London International Exhibition and was hailed a triumphant success.

Anxiously Waiting by Jozef Israels

The third painting by Jozef Israels with this fishing/sea-going motif is entitled Anxiously Waiting.  Once again observers of this work can empathize with the woman we see sitting on the dunes looking out to sea. On her knee sits her baby child.  She is bare-footed which tells us of her and her family’s financial state.   The sky has an orange hue indicating an oncoming storm.  We see the white crests of the waves which signify the wind is beginning to increase in its ferocity.  Her husband has left home in the fishing boat and has yet to return and she anxiously awaits sight of his boat.

Unloading the Catch by Jozef Israels

In his painting Unloading the Catch we see that fishing was not just about the men that went to sea but the wives, parents and children who needed to help, notwithstanding their age or their state of health.  Look at the line of helpers.  An elderly woman bent over supporting herself with her cane, a man with a basket over his shoulder holding the hand of his daughter, two mothers carrying their babies , all have to help with the unloading of the day’s catch from the beached fishing boat.

Three Women Knitting by the Sea by Jozef Israels

In a number of his paintings he liked to connect the wives of the fishermen and the sea, the workplace of their husbands and fathers.   In most it was the about the wife, worried about the safety of her husband, and the prospect of him not returning home safely.   A painting by Jozef Israels with a lighter mood was his work entitled Three Women Knitting by the Sea.  In the background we see a fishingboat at sea ,whilst in the foreground, we have the three ladies happily chatting away as they knit.

On the Dunes by Jozef Israels

In his work On the Dunes we see a familiar depiction of a woman sitting on the dunes looking out to sea.  On her back is her empty basket which, once the boat has landed with its catch, will be filled with fish which she will have to carry back to the village.  Her wait will not be long as on the horizon we catch sight of the returning fishing boat.  The sky is light and the sea is calm and for this day her beloved will return home safely.

Mending the Nets by Jozef Israels

An insight into the domestic life of a fisherman’s wife can be seen in his painting Mending the Nets.  The scene is the interior of a cottage.  A mother sits before a tiled fireplace mending her husband’s fishing nets whilst her young child sits in a wooden forerunner to today’s baby buggy.  The baby looks over the side at the cat which she  tantalises with a strand of wool.

In my next blog I will look at some more of the paintings by Jozef Israels, in which he depicted peasant life and I will conclude his life story.

Self portrait by Jozef Israels (1881)

I ended my last blog, which looked at the life of Jozef Israels, around 1856 when he was living in the small fishing town of Zandvoort and spent much of his time sketching and painting scenes involving the local fishing community.

The Day Before Parting by Jozef Israels (c.1862)

Israels left the coastal area around 1858 and returned to Amsterdam where he remained until 1870.  In 1860 he completed a work entitled De dag voor het  schieden (The Day before the Parting), which can now be found in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.   It is a beautiful soulful depiction.  It is a depiction of sadness.  But why the sadness?  Is it like the paintings depicting families waiting for their fisherman husbands and fathers to return from the hazards of the sea?  Actually it is not, it is about death.   The setting is the interior of a cottage.  In the dimly lit background there is a coffin which lies across two chairs.  The wooden coffin is covered with a pall and is barely illuminated by a solitary candle.

Light streams into the room from the left and illuminates the two characters featured in the work.   The lighting of the foreground is in stark contrast to the background.  It was the artist’s clever use of chiaroscuro (the strong contrast of light and dark), which in some ways was a contrast between life and death.  In the foreground we have the mother leaning against the chimney breast as she sits on a chair, besides her in the fire hearth lies an empty overturned wicker log basket.  Her face is red from all the tears she has wept.  She leans forward and rests her face on her right hand whilst her left hand clutches hold of a book, probably the bible and her thumb keeps the place of the passage she was reading.  On the floor, at her feet, sits a young girl.  She leans against her mother to get comfort.  Her right hand lies across her mother’s knee.  She stares at the coffin.  Her left hand lies in her lap, grasping the loop of the cord attached to her toy cradle which lies by her side.  This painting is not only a depiction of sorrow it is a depiction of poverty.  The mother and daughter do not wear shoes despite the coldness of the red-tiled floor.  The fireplace, with its blue surround tiles, is empty and so too is the wicker log basket indicating that they have no fuel for the fire.  The large black chain over the fireplace which would hold pots or a kettle for food and drink hangs idly.  Have they food?

This wonderful work of art received the gold medal when it was exhibited in Rotterdam in 1862 and that same year it was shown at the International Exhibition in London.  Israels himself, some forty years later, admitted that this painting made his reputation.  In 1906 he commented on the work:

 “…I painted it in 1860 – I know it was then because it was the year before I was engaged.  It was made ‘pour la gloire’.  It was exhibited in Rotterdam in 1862 and got the Gold medal, the last year the medal was given…………………….There is good colour in that picture; I could do no better – some people say I cannot do now so well…”

Peasant Children by Jozef Israels

 In May 1863 Jozef Israels married Aleida Schaap and the couple had two children, a daughter Mathilde Anna Israëls who was born in February 1864 and a son, Isaac Lazarus in February 1865.  His son became a fine art painter and was associated with the Amsterdam Impressionism movement.  At the time of his son’s birth Jozef Israel wrote about him saying:

 “…With the help of the Lord, he will become a better painter than his father…”

  Jozef Israels moved to The Hague in 1870 and here he began to associate himself with The Hague School of Painters.  This group of artists were active between 1860 and 1890.  For these artists reality was the key to their work, not idealised reality but depicting true reality, warts and all.  The colours used by these artists was often gloomy and sombre and consisted mainly of various tints of grey, so much so they were often termed the Grey School.  This only changed in the latter years of the School with the influence of the Barbizon painters and the early Impressionists who instilled a lighter and brighter palette.

In 1876, with a number of close artistic colleagues, Israels launched the Dutch Drawing Society (watercolours in those days were termed drawings)

The Cottage Madonna by Jozef Israels (1871)

 During his lifetime, Jozef Israels was one of the most famous living Dutch artist and earned the nickname ‘the Dutch Millet.’  The two artists saw in the life of the poor and humble peasants a motive for expressing with peculiar intensity their wide human sympathy.  Millet’s depictions of peasant life were much lighter in tone and were simply a look at peaceful rural life.  For Israels it was different, his depictions of peasant life was very much more sombre and carried a message of hardship and despair.  The French novelist and art critic, Louis Edmond Duranty who was a great supporter of the realist cause said Israels’ depiction of peasant life was painted with gloom and a sense of anguish.

  Jozef Israëls primarily painted scenes from the lives of simple farm labourers or fishermen. Sometimes, as in my next painting, he singled out tragic moments in their lives. This next work of art really tugs at one’s heart strings.  It is entitled Alone and can be found at the Mesdag Museum in The Hague.  Hendrik Mesdag, a contemporary and great friend of Israels, was a leading artist of The Hague School and he and his wife, Sientje played an active role in The Hague art world.  Hendrik Mesdeg was not just an artist, he was an avid art collector.  His collection grew so much that, in 1877, he had a museum built to house it

Alone in the World by Jozef Israels, (1881)

The setting for the painting, Alone in the World, is the inside a sparsely furnished bedroom of a peasant’s cottage.   There is an air of bleak despondency about the scene we see before us.  A man sits on the side of a bed.  His bony workman’s hands rest on his knees, his posture is unmoving. He is wracked by sadness as his wife has died despite all he had done for her.  Her body lies in the half-light which streams in from the left of the painting on to the bed and also illuminates the table on which are a pitcher of water and an empty glass as well as the bed.  The greyish colour of the dead woman’s skin makes her almost indistinguishable from that of her bedclothes.

It is interesting to note that Jozef Israels and Sientje Mesdeg talked about this work years after its completion and on a broader aspect of art.  They considered the anecdotal aspect of art and whether genre paintings should tell a tale.  They failed to agree. Sientje was adamant that there was never a need for art to tell a story, whereas Jozef Israels countered saying that a “felt” work is good even if badly delineated.  There is no doubt that this work is a “felt” work as we, the observers, can understand the feelings of the man at a time of his great loss.

Convalescent Mother and Child by Jozef Israels (1871)

A painting I really like which combines the reality of illness and sentimentality is Israels 1871 work entitled Convalescent Mother and Child.  In the painting we see a mother slumped in a chair, head lolled to one side, her knitting lies abandoned in her lap.  Walking towards her is her barefooted young child struggling to carry a small table towards her.  The child is trying to be a help to his sick mother.  Look at the concentrated expression on the child as he makes a great effort to move the table towards her.

A Jewish Wedding by Jozef Israels (1903)

In later years his paintings were influenced by the works of Rembrandt and this next work of art, entitled The Jewish Wedding, is a fine example of this.  Jozef Israels was a committed orthodox Jew and his mother had once hoped that he would become a Rabbi.  He produced a number of paintings depicting Jewish ceremonies.  Here before us we see bride and groom under the chupa in the ceremony of sanctification of the joining together of the couple in marriage, surrounded by family and wedding guests.  The couple in the painting are depicted in bright sunlight which was a symbol of the happiness of the occasion.

We Grow Old. Jozef Israëls, 1878

Joseph Israels died in Scheveningen in August 1911. aged 87.

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1913)

The person I am featuring today was an artist of great talent, an avid art collector and an owner of a museum, which housed many of the works he had collected during his lifetime.  I talked briefly about him in my previous blog which was dedicated to his friend Jozef Israels.  Let me introduce you to the marine painter, Hendrik Willem Mesdag.

Along the Dutch Coast by Hendrik Mesdag (1882)

Mesdag was born in Groningen in February 1831.  His father Klaas was a banker and was also active in politics and his mother was Johanna Wilhelmina van Giffen, who came from a wealthy family of silversmiths.  She died when Hendrik was four years old.  Hendrik had two brothers, Gilles and Taco and a sister, Ellegonda.  As schoolchildren, both he and his older brother showed and early artistic talent and their father, who was also an amateur artists, decided to send them for some artistic training.  They both received drawing lessons from Bernardus Buijs who had also taught Jozef Israels and later received drawing tuition from Hinderikus Egenberger.  However, for Hendrik, once he left school at the age of nineteen, art became just an enjoyable pastime, and his future, like that of his father, lay in banking.  Hendrik Mesdag joined his father’s bank where he remained for the next sixteen years.

Fishing Boats in the Surf by Hendrik Mesdag

In April 1856, when Hendrik was twenty-five years old, he married Sientja van Houten, who would later become an accomplished artist in her own right.  She was one of seven children brought up by a wealthy family.  Her father owned a large sawmill just outside Groningen.  Her cousin was the renowned painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

Along the Dutch Coast by Hendrik Mesdag

Hendrik’s love of art during his days as a banker did not diminish, in fact in 1861 he enrolled as a pupil at the Academie Minerva, a Dutch art school based in Groningen.  In 1863 Sientje gave birth to their son Nicolaas, who was called Klaas.  Hendrik’s love of art and his desire to become a full-time professional artist came to a head in 1866 when he decided to give up his work as a banker and concentrate on his art.  To give up a lucrative job took courage but it also required funding and for this he had to thank his wife who had received a sizeable inheritance when her father died and she was able to support him financially.

Pinks in the breakers by Hendrik Mesdag (1880)

Lawrence Alma-Tadema advised Hendrik to go to Brussels to study art and in the autumn of 1866 he goes to the Brussels for three years and studied art under the tutorship of Willem Roelofs, the Dutch painter and watercolourist.  Fate played a hand in the artistic life of Mesdag in 1868 when he and his family went to Norderney for a holiday.  Norderney is one of the East Frisian islands off the North Sea coast.  It is here that Mesdag realises his love of the sea and seascapes and when he returns to Brussels he starts collecting paintings which depict the sea and it is from this time that he decides he wants to be a seascape artist.

Gales in Scheveningen by Hendrik Mesdag (1894)

Once he completes his three year study course in Brussels in 1869, the family move to The Hague where the sea views at the nearby coastal village of Scheveningen, would be plentiful.  Hendrik was admitted to The Hague’s Pulchri Studio Painters’ Society.   The society was formed in 1847 and was a result of mounting dissatisfaction among the young artists in The Hague who complained about their being little or no opportunities for training in art and developing their artistic skills and so the Pulchri Studio was established.  It was also to be an artistic talking-shop where artists could exchange views and ideas.

Les Brisant

It was in 1869 that Mesdag worked on his painting Les Brisants de la Mere du Nord (Breakers of the North Sea) which, when it was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1870,  was awarded the gold medal.  In September 1871, tragedy struck Hendrik and Sentije when their eight year old son Klaas, their only child, died.  It was from that time onwards that Sientje took up painting.

Detail from Panorama Mesdag

Hendrik Mesdag’s collection of paintings had grown so large that it filled his house and in 1878 he decided to build a museum in the garden, next to his house, to accommodate his ever-growing collection.  That same year, his father Klaas died aged 85.  Although most of the works of art by Hendrik Mesdag were seascapes and paintings depicting bomschuiten (fishing boats) one of his most famous works came about in 1879 when he received a commission from a group of Belgian entrepreneurs to paint a panorama.  A panorama or panoramic painting was a massive work of art, which depicts a wide and all-encompassing view of a particular subject.  They could be depictions of a battle, historical event or a landscape and were very popular in the nineteenth century, a time before television or the cinema.  The commission was simple  –  the group wanted Mesdag to complete a painting without any borders !  The Belgians gave Mesdag free rein on the subject of the panorama and he was allowed to pick his team of artists to complete the task.  The commission intrigued Mesdag and he agreed to it and formed a team of artists which included Théophile de Bock and twenty-three-year-old George Hendrik Breitner, who was still a student at The Hague Academy , the artist, Bernard Blommers , as well as his wife Sientje.

Detail from Panorama Mesdag

Mesdag decided this was an opportunity to depict his beloved coastal village of Scheveningen.

In March 1881, Mesdag and his team of painters set to work on the panorama.  They made numerous sketches of the town and the surrounding coast and slowly over the next  four and a half months the panorama often referred to as Panorama Mesdag  evolved.  The work when completed was 14 metres high with a circumference of 120 metres, a square footage of 1600 square metres.  The finished work was housed in a purpose-built museum in The Hague and could be viewed from an observation gallery in the centre of the room.  When one stood at this central observation point, it was if one was standing on top of a high sand dune and one could observe the sea, the beaches and the coastal village of Scheveningen.  The museum housing the panorama was opened to the public on August 1^st 1881 but after five years it went bankrupt.  Mesdag , who was concerned as to the fate of his panoramic painting, bought the museum and kept it open despite it losing money year on year.

Panorama Mesdag as seen from central observation platform

It is still open to the public and it is still one of the The Hague’s greatest tourist attractions.  Can you imagine what it would be like to stand on that central observation platform – take a look now at http://panorama-mesdag.nl/   and see this wonderful work, which is the largest circular canvas in Europe.

In his later years Mesdag received many honours. In 1889, he was elected chairman of Pulchri Studio Painters’ Society, the society he joined twenty years earlier, and remained in that post until 1907. He received the royal distinction of Officer in the Order of Oranje-Nassau in 1894.  In February 1901 Mesdag is promoted to Commander of the Order of the Dutch Lion.

Hendrik Willem Mesdag and his wife Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, (1906)

In March 1909 his beloved Sientje died, aged 74.  Two years later in 1911, Hendrik Mesdag is taken seriously ill and although he recovers, his health slowly deteriorates.  Hendrik Willem Mesdag died in The Hague in July 1915, aged 84.

One may compare the seascapes and depictions of fishing boats with the artist, Jozef Israels, whom I looked at in my last blog.  Israels’ depictions were often full of angst and doom and gloom whereas Mesdag’s works were simply depictions of what he saw, without any need to have the works populated by people and all had a story behind them.   I end with a quote from the author, Frederick W Morton who wrote an artcle in the May 1903 edition of the American art journal, Brush and Pencil .  He wrote about Mesdag’s seascapes:

“…Other artists have painted more witchery into their canvases, more tenseness and terror.  A Mesdag has not the glint of colour one finds in a Clays or the awful meaning one reads in Homer.  On the contrary, many of his canvases are rather heavy in tone and are works calculated to inspire quiet contemplation rather than to excite nervous.  But he is a great marine-painter because he thoroughly knows his subject – he has sat by it, brooded over it, studied it in its every phase – and by straightforward methods, without the trick of palette or adventitious accessories, has sought to make and has succeeded in making his canvases convey the same impression to the spectator that the ocean conveyed to him…”

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Much of the information for this article came from the Mesdag Documentation Society and their excellent website Mesdag.com (http://www.mesdag.com/index.html)

Photograph of twenty year old Marie Bashkirtseff (1878)

I had been researching the life of Jules Bastien-Lepage for a future blog when I came across the fascinating story of a Ukranian lady, a friend of his, who during her very short life excelled as a painter, a sculptor and a diarist.  It was her talent as a diarist and her personal diary which led to her notoriety.  I have split her lifestory, as short as it was, between two blogs, so come with me and explore the life of Maria Konstantinovna Bashkirtseva who became better known as Marie Bashkirtseff and her portraiture.

 Marie Bashkirtseff was born in November 1858 at Gavrontsi, a beautiful country estate close to the provincial town of Poltava in southern Ukraine.  Her father was Konstantin Bashkirtseff and her mother Mariia Babanina, who was a lady, fiercely proud of her Tartar heritage.   The family were wealthy and were looked upon as being of the petite noblesse social class, which was a termed used to describe the lesser nobility of France, especially rural landowners of noble ancestry.  A year later Marie’s brother Paul was born.  Marie was a studious and very intelligent child, speaking Russian and French fluently and even when young she exhibited a dynamic personality.  Her parents split up in 1859 and her mother took her and her brother back to her parents’ home in Tcherniakovka. 

The Umbrella by Marie Bashkirtseff (1883)

In May 1870, when Marie was eleven years old, her grandfather, Stepan Babanin, her brother Paul, and a motley collection of other family members, along with the family physician, Doctor Walitsky, left Tcherniakovka for good and embarked on a voyage of discovery around Russia and Europe.  The extensive journey lasted almost two years until the weary travellers settled down in a villa situated in the foothills of the Mediterranean Alps overlooking the coastal resort of Nice.  It was at this idyllic setting that fourteen year old Marie started to dabble with her artwork and also started to write her diary.  This diary which was eventually published in 1887, three years after her death, was to become a best seller.  In it she would write about her life on the Côte d’Azur with her extended family, her teenage infatuations, her dreams for the future and her loves.  She had a fixed idea of what her diary would be all about, writing:

 “…If I don’t live enough to be illustrious, this diary will be interesting for naturalists; the life of a woman is always curious, day by day, without affectation, as if nobody in the world should ever read it and at the same time with the intention of being read; I’m sure that you will find me pleasant… and I mean everything. Otherwise, what’s the point in writing? Apart from this, you will see that I say everything…”

Portrait of Mme X by Marie Bashkirtseff (c.1884)

 Marie Bashkirtseff received a well rounded education.  She was home-tutored with the family employing governesses and private tutors and she studied a number of languages including English, German, Italian, Greek and Latin.  She was well versed in history, mythology and literature and it was that knowledge that found its way onto the pages of her diary.   She also developed a great love of music and singing.   She was an accomplished pianist, played the harp and was a talented singer and she hoped that one day she would become a professional mezzo-soprano.   This plan for her future was to be dashed after a severe bout of laryngitis which irrevocably affected her vocal chords.  She was devastated at this turn of events, once musing in her diary about what could have been:

 “…My God!  What a beautiful voice I had!  It was powerful, dramatic, captivating; it gave chills in the back. And now I have nothing, not even a voice to speak with!…”

 With music being a thing of the past, Marie needed another outlet for her exuberance and it came in 1877,  when, aged nineteen,  she decided to embark on a career as an artist.  For this to happen she decided that Nice was not the place to be and insisted that the whole family should move to the European capital of art, Paris, for it was here she believed she would receive the best art tuition and be able to study the paintings of the Masters.  The family opposed the move, not because they didn’t want to move to the capital but because of Marie’s fragile health.  They believed that the warm climate of Nice was more suitable for Marie than the colder, damper climate of Paris.  It was not because of their wish to stay warm and enjoy the sunny climate of the south but it was because Marie had been diagnosed with irreversible tuberculosis and doctors had warned against such a move.  However the dominant and forceful character of Marie won the day and that year they left the south of France and moved north.

Portrait of a Woman by Marie Bashkirtseff (1882)

The Parisian establishment, which was in the forefront of art tuition, was the École des Beaux-Arts but this was not an option for Marie as, at that time, women were not allowed to enrol for study at that academy.  Marie then chose to enrol at the Académie Julian, which was the only academy at the time which accepted female students, albeit the men and women trained separately.  However the training for females was similar, even allowing women to participate in life drawing classes with nude models, which was frowned upon by other art establishments.  It was founded by Rodolphe Julian in 1868.  It was a private studio school for art students, which, as well as training aspiring male artists to pass the exams to enter the hallowed and prestigious École des Beaux-Arts,  it also offered independent training in arts to wannabe female painters.  Whilst there Marie received excellent artistic training under the tutelage of the likes of Rodolphe Julian, Tony Robert-Fleury, Gustave Boulanger, and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre.  She revelled in this world of art and even the glamour of her social life took a back seat as she commented in her diary:

 “…as for me, although feeling pleased of being in the ballroom, I’ve been thinking all the time in a pastel painted this morning with which I wasn’t satisfied…“

 Marie was a perfectionist in all that she did and was highly competitive.  This latter characteristic manifested itself in her fierce competition with her fellow student, the Swiss-born painter, Louise Catherine Breslau.  They both exhibited works at the Paris Salons and Marie’s competitive nature soon turned to jealousy, jealous of the artistic ability of her fellow student.  She looked upon Breslau as a competitor in the race to be recognised by the art critics and the public.  Breslau was two years older than Bashkirtseff  but was to outlive her by more than forty years and so was able to consolidate her reputation within the art world.

Parisienne, Portrait of Irma by Marie Bashkirtseff (1882)

Marie Bashkirtseff, besides her dedication to painting, developed another love whilst living in Paris.  She was drawn to the feminist movement .  Hubertine Auclert had founded the feminist movement known as Le Droit des Femmes in 1876, the year before Marie had arrived in Paris.  It was a movement that supported women’s right to have the vote.  Marie, using the pseudonym, Pauline Orell, applied her innate ability as a writer to produce articles in support of feminism.  She had some of her writings published in La Citoyenne, a bi-monthly feminist newspaper first published Hubertine Auclert in Paris in 1881.  In the March 1881 edition an article by Baskirtseff appeared which linked her artistic career with that of the plight of women.  She cynically wrote:

 “…I will not surprise anyone by saying that women are excluded from the School of Fine Arts as they are almost everywhere.  Yet we admit them to the School of Medicine, why not at the École des Beaux-Arts.  Perhaps one fears scandals that would cause the element in this female comedies environment…” 

Jeune Femme Lisant la Question du Divorce d’Alexandre Dumas (Portrait of a Young Woman Reading) by Marie Bashkirtseff (1880)

In 1880 , Marie Bashkirtseff submitted a beautiful work of portraiture to the Salon.  It was entitled Jeune femme lisant la Question du Divorce d’Alexandre Dumas (Portrait of a young woman reading).  It was not simply a portrait of a young woman,  it was a work of art with a message.  We see before us a portrait of a beautiful and stylish young woman who is totally engrossed in reading her book, The Divorce Question by Alexandre Dumas.  The sitter for this portrait is thought to be Marie’s cousin, Dina Babanine, who two years after Marie’s death would marry and become the Countess Toulouse-Lautrec.  There is a feminist statement behind this depiction.  There is the message that beautiful women have intelligence.  The title of the painting tells us the title of the book she is reading.  It was the 1880 work by the well-known author, Alexandre Dumas, who was discussing divorce and the French laws appertaining to the subject.  It was a controversial book and in some ways a ground-breaking one.  The serious and intellectual nature of the book was a statement that women do not, as believed by many, especially men, only read frothy romantic novels.   The artist was also making a statement regarding the important position of women in society.  In this case, it was about her aspirations for female independence.  The right to divorce and break free from an abusive relationship, the same right as men to be trained to become an artist, the women’s right to vote.  It was simply her belief regarding the right of women to be equal to men.

Portrait de la Comtesse Dina de Toulouse-Lautrec, by Marie Bashkirtseff (1883)

Dina Babanin featured in another of Bashkirtseff’s works.  It was a work in pastels, simply entitled Dina Babanine and was completed in 1883.   Dina was Marie’s cousin and also a close life-long friend.  Her early upbringing was in total contrast to that of Marie.  Dina and her brother had been brought up in a very disruptive household.  Her father had his marriage to their mother annulled making his children illegitimate.  This beautifully crafted portrait depicts the beauty of Marie’s cousin.  She wears a pale blue décolleté peignoir with a wide delicate white collar.  Her face, neck and chest have been depicted using delicately blended light tones which enhance the youthful beauty of the sitter.  Her full lips are pressed together but it is her eyes that catch our attention.  They are dark blue in colour.  She does not quite focus upon us.  There is a feeling that she has lost her power of concentration and there is a blankness about her stare.  Like all inquisitive and discerning observers we search for imperfections of her beauty but they are hard to find.  Maybe we comment upon the slight cleft of her chin.  Maybe we remark upon the flatness of her nose.  However we cannot but acknowledge her overall beauty.  Look at the composition.  It is all about the female.  There is no jewellery, no flowers attached to her simple but revealing dress with its plunging neckline.  The artist wanted nothing to divert our attention from her cousin’s beauty and in that she has unquestionably succeeded.

In my next blog I will conclude her life story, look at some of her most famous paintings and reveal more about her diary.

Marie Bashkirtseff (1858 – 1884)

In my previous blog I concentrated on the portraiture of Marie Bashkirtseff but she will probably be remembered best for other genres

One painting by Marie Bashkirtseff which came about during her time at the Académie Julian was one commissioned by the founder of the establishment, Rodolphe Julian.  He asked her to paint a canvas depicting the artists at work in his academy.  The finished canvas was entitled L’Atelier Julian and is now looked upon as one of Bashkirtseff’s finest works.  Initially Marie was not impressed by the commission but could see the benefit for herself, writing in her diary:

“…As for the subject, it does not fascinate me, but it may be very amusing, and then Julian is so taken with it, and so convinced… A woman’s studio has never been painted.  Besides, as it would be an advertisement for him, he would do all in the world to give me the wonderful notoriety he speaks about…”

Atelier Julian (In the Studio) by Marie Bashkirtseff (1881)

The painting portrays the light and airy studio at the Académie Julian where Bashkirtseff and her fellow students would work.  L’atelier Julian is a quite large oil on canvas work measuring 154 x 186cms and is currently housed in the Dnepropetrovsk State Art Museum.  It is a fascinating work featuring sixteen students all taking part in a life-drawing session. The studio looks well organised, although small in size, but that maybe due to the number of people crammed into the room.  As an observer, we firstly focus on the woman seated at the centre of the work.  She wears a bright blue dress.  In her hands are a small brush and a maulstick.  She is working on a painting of the young nude model, who is holding a staff whilst standing on the raised dais so that he can be seen clearly by all the female students.  If we look past this lady we see one of her colleagues staring out at us.  Maybe someone is entering the room to join this artistic group.  Our eyes now leave the lady in blue and we start to scan the rest of the room.  It is a hubbub of activity.  Some of the females are concentrating intently on their canvases whilst others partake in chit-chat. The two females in the foreground, one seated, one standing, engage in conversation.  The lady standing rests her hand on a wine-coloured velvet drape which has been laid over the back of the chair.  Look at the drape.  See how Bashkirtsteff has showcased her artistic ability in the way she has depicted the elaborate folds of the material.  Many artists in the past and in the present time like to show off their artistic skills in this way.  This large and multi-faceted work was exhibited to great acclaim at the 1881 Salon.

Following a visit to Russia in 1882 to visit her relatives she returned to Paris.  She had not been feeling well and decided to visit her doctor.  In Dormer Creston’s 1937 biography on the artist entitled Fountains of Youth – The Life of Marie Bashkirtseff, he quoted her diary entries:

“…At the doctor’s.  For the first time, I had the courage to say: Monsieur, I am becoming deaf.  It can be borne, but there will be a veil between me and the rest of the world…” 

Later that year her health deteriorated further and she noted in her dairy after visiting the physician that the news was not good:

“…I am consumptive, he told me so to-day…”

Despite her failing health she carried on with her art.  She punished herself by working long hours almost as if she realised her time was almost up and none should be wasted.  It was in 1882 that she met the French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage.  He was ten years older than Marie but he became her confidante and mentor and her greatest inspiration.  It has often been mooted that the two became very close romantically.  He persuaded her to look beyond her wealthy lifestyle and observe and depict in her paintings those who were less financially fortunate than herself.  She listened to Bastien-Lepage and soon the subjects of her work changed.  Her works soon depicted the lower classes and street scenes.  This was such a turn-around for a young woman who had only known the life of affluence.

The Meeting by Marie Bashkirtseff (1884)

One of her best loved paintings featuring the “real world” is entitled The Meeting which she completed in 1884 and was exhibited at that year’s Salon.  It is now housed at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.   It was an enormous success, both with the press and public alike.  However, much to Bashkirtseff’s annoyance, her painting was not awarded a medal.  In her diary she wrote of her frustration and disappointment:

 “…I am exceedingly indignant because, after all, works that are really rather poor have received prizes…..There is nothing more to be done. I am a worthless creature, humiliated, finished…”

 Marie believed that being awarded a medal by the Salon jurists would help to immortalise her and that, to her, was of the utmost importance as, at this time, she knew her life was coming to an end.  She desperately did not want to die before her artistic talent was recognised.  She dreaded being forgotten.

 In this next work, Marie Bashkirtseff copies the Naturalist style of her friend and mentor, Jules Bastien-Lepage.   Lepage’s naturalism focused mainly on the countryside but Bashkirtseff decided to follow his style of naturalism or realism but concentrate on an urban setting.  In some ways the work is a genre scene, a depiction of everyday life.  Before us are six young boys, who stand in a circle fascinated with what the tallest boy has in his hand, although it is not visible to us.  Whatever it is, it has them deep in discussion.  Some still wear their school smocks.  The shabbiness of their clothes and shoes marks them as coming from poor working-class families and the setting is a run-down working class area.  We see, behind the group of boys, the old wooden fence with the graffiti and the torn posters all inferring that the setting is one of poverty.

 Bashkirtseff’s choice of depicting working-class schoolchildren in this painting may have come about as it was the subject of schooling which had become a great topic of conversation in the early 1880’s with Jules Ferry, a member of the French government at the time, establishing the law that saw the arrival of free, compulsory, secular education.  However other art critics would have us believe that the depiction of the boys was simply a bourgeois stereotype that people like Bashkirtseff would adopt.   Again some people wanted to look for a message in the painting, a message that may only be there in their eyes.  The feminists pointed to the fact that the group are all males and further suggest that the young girl walking away alone is symbolic of the feminist movement and their desire for better integration in society.  In the book, Overcoming All Obstacles:  The Women of the Académie Julian by Gabriel Weisberg and Jane Becker, the writers wrote about the painting and its lack of recognition by the Salon jurists:

 “…While painters at the Salon designated her for a medal, the jury passed on her submission. The public complained.  While Robert-Fleury was encouraging her to include passages of draped figures (to show off her virtuosity in that skill), Marie refused, not finding drapery fitting to her modern street boys.  Again the critics noted her sincerity of execution, freshness of facture, and realism in taking up the subject. While the work did not receive a medal, it was bought by the state, and several engravings and lithographs were made after it…”

Autumn by Marie Bashkirtseff (1883)

 Although I stated earlier that Bashkirtseff wanted to focus on urban portrayals, my next offering of her work is a beautiful painting entitled Autumn, which moves towards a landscape work.  The setting is a rutted tree-lined road which runs parallel to the river.  Through the trees we see an arched stone bridge which straddles the waterway.  The time must be late summer or maybe early autumn as many of the trees have shed their bronze-tinted leaves while others cling to the branches and retain their summer colour.  To the side of the road is a pavement.  Look at the details Marie has depicted of the sidewalk.  The fallen bench straddles the pavement and the road.  The crumbling stonework of the pavement is clearly visible and which is now home for the fallen, windswept leaves and what looks like an abandoned newspaper lies in the gutter close to the fallen bench.  Beside the pavement we see a stretch of garden fencing which has seen better days.  This is an example of Naturalism in art, a style Marie Bashkirtseff had adopted due to the influence of her close friend, Jules Bastien-Lepage.  The painting is devoid of people and this fact alone means we are not distracted from the artist’s detailed depiction of the area.  It also avoids the work of art being focused on people and the depiction of them may turn the painting into a work of Social Realism with the landscape being looked upon as merely a background to a story within the work.  The colours used by the artist set the scene for a certain time of year and also a certain time of day.  One can imagine the lighting of the scene would be different at another time of day and obviously it would be a far different depiction if this had been mid-winter.

 In a diary entry for May 1884, she wrote:

 “…What is the use of lying or pretending?  Yes, it is clear that I have the desire, if not the hope, of staying on this earth by whatever means possible.  If I don’t die young, I hope to become a great artist.  If I do, I want my journal to be published…”  

Marie Bashkirtseff’s mausoleum in Cimetière de Passy, Paris

Four months after this entry, on October 31^st 1884, Marie Bashkirtseff died of consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis) in Paris.  She was just twenty-five years old and for her, she sadly believed she had achieved little.

Inside of Marie Bashkirtseff’s mausoleum

She was buried in Cimetière de Passy in a large mausoleum, designed as a full-sized artist’s studio and has now become a French Heritage site. The inside of Marie Bashkirtseff’s mausoleum we see in the central background a copy of Marie’s bust which was sculpted by her friend the sculptor René de Saint Marceaux.  Behind the sculpture hanging on the wall is one of Marie Bashkirtseff’s last and unfinished paintings entitled Women Saints. At either side, on pedestals are busts of her parents Sadly almost two hundred of her works were destroyed or looted during the Second World War.  However her journal was published by her family in 1887.  Sadly it was an abridged version which had been heavily censored by her relatives who thought a lot of the contents about them were unflattering seeing to it that a good deal of material was critical and unflattering to the family and unfit for the reading public.  Having said that however, the diary stands as one of the great diaries of its time.  It was not until some years later, with the discovery of Marie’s original manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale de France that it was realised that the diaries published by the family had been heavily edited.   An unabridged edition of the complete journal, based on the original manuscript, has been published in French in 16 volumes, and excerpts from the years 1873–76 have been translated into English under the title I Am the Most Interesting Book of All.

The diaries were started by a girl of fourteen and they began as a simple coming-of-age journal but later developed into an often sad account of how life conspired against her and her fight to survive.

I will leave you with an entry in her diary when she talks about how people may remember her.  She wrote:

“…If I do not die young I hope to live as great artist; but if I die young, I intend to have my journal, which cannot fail to be interesting, published. Similarly: “When I am dead, my life, which appears to me a remarkable one, will be read. (The only thing wanting is that it should have been different)…”

Self portrait by Louise Breslau (1891)

In my recent blogs looking at the life of Marie Bashkirtseff, I talked about the time she spent studying art at the Académie Julian in Paris and her rivalry with her fellow artist Louise Breslau.  Despite the wealthy lifestyle of Bashkirtseff she was still constantly jealous of Breslau, who she perceived as her rival at the academy.  She was also very jealous of Breslau’s friendship with contemporary artists such as Edgar Degas.  So today, I thought I should dedicate this blog to her rival, and look at the life and works of the German-born artist, Louise Breslau.

Two young girls sitting on a banquette by Louise Breslau (1896)

Maria Luise Katharina Breslau, who would later be known simply as Louise Catherine Breslau,  was born in Munich in December 1856 but spent much of her early life in Zurich. She was born into a prosperous middle-class family.   Louise had three younger sisters Marie-Henrietta, Emma and Bernadette.  Her father was an eminent obstetrician and gynaecologist and in 1858 he and his family moved to Zurich where he took up a position as head physician in obstetrics and gynaecology at the University Hospital of Zurich.

Louise suffered badly from asthma when she was young and was often confined to her bed and it was due to this enforced confinement, that to pass the time and counter loneliness, she immersed herself in reading and also developed a love of sketching.

La fille à l’orange by Louise Breslau (1897)

In 1866, When Louise was nine years old, her father died of staph infection which he contracted during the execution of a postmortem examination. Louise, even though still very young, was tasked with helping her mother to bring up her three younger sisters.  When her health worsened, she spent some time in a convent near to Lake Constance where with its warmer climate it was hoped that her health would improve.   It was during her stay at the convent that she became more interested in art and she continued to sketch and paint during her teenage years.  Her love of art and her artistic ability became apparent to her mother who persuaded Louise to attend the drawing classes of the local Swiss portrait painter, Eduard Pfyffer.  She excelled under his tuition but after a while she believed that she had learnt all she could from Pfyffer and she wanted her art to be more than just a pleasing hobby.  All young ladies of a certain class, besides learning about domestic skills, were also encouraged to be able to play a musical instrument and be able to paint or sketch.   However, Louise wanted art not to be just a pleasant pastime, she wanted to become a professional artist and to achieve this she knew she had to leave Switzerland, move to the European capital of art, Paris, and enrol at a specialist art academy.   In 1876 she went to Paris but like many other female artists who wanted the best art training that Paris could offer, she was disappointed with the ruling of the prestigious Académie des Beaux-Arts that only male artists would be allowed to enter their hallowed establishment.  This sexist ruling did not change until 1897.  So, like Bashkirtseff, she enrolled at the Académie Julian who catered for aspiring female painters.

Children reading by Louise Breslau

Her fellow students at the Académie Julian included the Ukrainian artist, Marie Bashkirtseff, Madeleine Zillhardt, the French painter, Sophie Schäppi who, like Louise, had come to Paris from Switzerland and the Irish painter, Sarah Purser.  Louise excelled at the academy and was looked upon by her tutors as one of their best students and this fact did not lie well with Marie Bashkirtseff who was inordinately jealous of her fellow student. In 1879, Louise Breslau, Sophie Schäppi and the singer Maria Fuller moved into a large apartment in the Avenue des Thermes and that same year Breslau had her painting entitled Tout passé accepted at the Paris Salon.  This was a great achievement not only for Louise but also for the female atelier of Académie Julian.

Les amies by Louise Breslau (1881)

Two years later, in 1881, she received an honourable mention at that year’s Salon for her triple portrait entitled, Les amies (Portrait of Friends).  In it we see her friends Maria Feller on the left, Sophie Schäppi in the centre and Louise on the right, with a white dog sitting on top of the scarlet tablecloth.  It is a painting in which we see the three females in a reflective mood.  The painting is now housed in the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva.  Louise Breslau was now acknowledged as an up-and-coming artist.  She opened her own studio and soon started to receive numerous commissions for her work from the wealthy of Paris society.

Le thé à cinq heures by Louise Breslau (1883)

In 1883 she was commissioned by the owner of the French newspaper Le Figaro to paint a portrait of his daughter.   She completed the commission and exhibited the painting entitled Isabelle de Rodays at the 1883 Salon.  She also exhibited another of her works, Five O’clock Tea at that year’s Salon and this can now be found at the Berne Kunstmuseum.

Chez soi by Louise Breslau (1885)

In 1885 Louis Breslau completed another great work entitled Chez Soi which is a portrayal of her mother and sister in an interior setting.  The dog sits at the feet of her mother and this genre piece exudes an air of silent contemplation.  The painting resides in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

Contre Jour (Louise Breslau and Madeleine Zillhardt) by Louise Breslau

The friendship between Breslau and Madeleine Zillhardt would last a lifetime and she would appear in many of her paintings.  After a brief affair in 1886 with the sculptor Jean Carriès, whom she met through Jules Breton, Louise Breslau chose to share her life with Madeleine Zillhardt and in 1902 the two women moved to a studio in Neuilly-sur-Seine where they set up home.

Jean Carries in his Atelier by Louise Breslau

She eventually became the third woman artist, and the first foreign woman artist to be bestowed France’s Legion of Honour award.  During World War I Breslau, although by this time a naturalised Swiss citizen, and Zillhardt, remained at their home at Neuilly. Breslau showed her patriotism towards her new country, France, by drawing numerous portraits of French soldiers and nurses on their way to the Front. Louise was sixty-two years of age when the war ended and she began to withdraw from public view and was contented to stay at home and sit in her garden, painting flowers but she still loved to entertain her friends.

Louise Catherine Breslau died in May 1927, aged 70 after suffering from a long and debilitating illness.   Most of her estate went to her good friend and long-time companion Madeleine Zillhardt.  As per her wishes Louise Breslau’s body was taken to the small Swiss town of Baden where she was buried next to her mother.

Unlike Bashkirtseff, who died at the age of 25, Breslau had many years to forge her artistic reputation.  Bashkirtseff sadly knew, when she was told that she was dying, that she would never have the time to be able to build up such an artistic reputation as Breslau but of course Bashkirtseff will always be remembered for her diaries.  The works of art of Louise Breslau were very popular when she was alive but sadly, after she died, she was almost forgotten.

Natalia Goncharova
1881 – 1962

In my blog today I want to look at the life of the avant-garde Russian painter, stage designer and printmaker, Natal’ya (Sergeevna) Goncharova.   Natalia was born in Russia on her father’s estate in the Tula governate in June 1881.  She was the daughter of Sergey Mikhaylovich Goncharov, a renowned architect and mathematician, and her mother was Yekaterina Il’icha Belyayeva.  However, in her early infant days she grew up in her grandmother’s home at Ladyzhino, near Kaluga. When she was ten years old, the family moved to Moscow and she attended the Fourth Gymnasium for Girls in Moscow and in 1898, when she was seventeen years old she decided to study sculpture and enrolled at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture as a sculpture student where her tutor was Paolo Troubetskoy.  It was at this establishment in 1900 that she met and became friends with fellow student, Mikhail Larionov.  He had enrolled at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture at the same time as Goncharova, studying painting under Isaac Levitan and Valentin Serov.  Larionov was a student with very contentious and provocative views and was suspended from the academy on three occasions for his deep-seated opinions.   He and Goncharova became lifelong friends and he was to have a great influence on her.  It was Larionov who persuaded Goncharova to switch from studying sculpture to concentrate on studying painting.

Natalya Goncharova by Laborov

Goncharova’s early work concentrated on the medium of pastels and her first works were showcased at the Diaghilev’s Russian Art Exhibition, which was held in Paris in 1906 at the Salon d’Automne and a year later her first paintings were shown at the Moskovskoye Tovarishchestvo Khudozhnikov (Moscow Association of Artists) of which she was a member.  At this time, her friend Larionov’s painting style was that of Impressionism and Natalya, for a time, also became interested in the style which had become so popular in France.  In 1908 she took part in the Golden Fleece exhibition and it was during this show that she became more aware of a modern style of art with the works of Bonnard, Matisse, Gaugin and Toulouse-Lautrec.  The influence of these painters made Goncharova rethink her artistic style.

Gardening by Natalya Goncharova (1908)

In 1909 she completed a work of art, which highlighted her much-loved topic that of Russian peasants hard at work on the land.  The painting, which is currently housed at the Tate Liverpool, is entitled Gardening.  It is a painting, which is typical of her depictions of peasant life and was made around the time of her stay on a family estate in rural Russia.  Of this style of painting and her patriotism, she explained:

‘…If I extol the art of my country, then it is because I think that it … should occupy a more honourable place than it has done hitherto…”

In the painting we immediately sense her love for colour and her depiction of the peasants is a somewhat stylistic portrayal.  The display caption at the Tate describes the way she has portrayed the subjects shown in the paintings as:

 “…Her statuesque peasants, with their thickset bodies and massive limbs, are imbued with a heroic grandeur…”

 Her subsequent works were so colourful that they were likened to the work of the Fauves, which was an avant-garde movement that thrived in France during the first decade of the twentieth century, led by the likes of Matisse and Derain, these artists were the first to split from the Impressionism.

Pillars of Salt by Natalia Goncharova (1908)

  In 1910, Goncharova became one of the founder members of the Jack of Diamonds group, sometimes referred to as Knave of Diamonds.  This group of painters was deemed to be the first group of Russian avant-garde artists and it was Mikhail Larionov who came up with the group’s name.   This collection of painters came from both Moscow and nearby provinces and most of them, including Goncharova, had studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.  They were all influenced by the works of Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse.  Once again we see a group of artists coming together with the common idea that they would discard the links with traditional art, and discard the knowledge that they were taught at their alma mater. For them, it was all about change and new artistic ideas.  Goncharova exhibited a number of her works in the group’s first exhibition in December 1910.  Their art was not loved by everybody, in fact it horrified some.  The influential Russian artist, art critic, historian criticised the group of young artists for having gone too far in overthrowing accepted artistic ideals.  Many other critics and members of the public declared that many of the works of art shown at the exhibition were in bad taste, gauche and lacked artistic elegance and some were even criticised as being too violent.

Fishing by Natalia Goncharova (1909)

She exhibited another example of her Primitivist style art at the 1912 Jack of Diamond exhibition.  It had been completed a couple of years earlier and was entitled Fishing.  Again the style is similar to her painting Gardening and is part of the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection and is housed in the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.

The Evangelists by Natalia Goncharova (1911)

 Another one of the paintings which Goncharova exhibited was entitled The Evangelists and this was among her first mature works devoted to a religious subject.   In her 1962 book, The Russian Experiment in Art 1863-1922, art historian, Camilla Gray, the daughter-in-law of Sergei Prokoviev, wrote:

“...The depiction is typical of Russian iconic paintings and so is a combination of old and new influences in Russian art. Perhaps one of the most impressive aspects of these four paintings is their effective use of color, line, and composition to create a strong rhythmic whole. Goncharova manipulates these elements with such understanding and perception that when one looks at the four authors of the Gospels there are no distractions and no weak points — only strength and security in a modern interpretation of tradition and native style. Both line and color become here “expressive entities in their own right” and convey the sense of calm spirituality and wisdom treasured by icon painters. However, what the Neo-primitivists of Goncharova’s time might have treasured most was an almost childish “directness and simplicity” characteristic of folk art which they tried to imitate in their works. Today, the four paintings of the Evangelists may be admired for many reasons, and regardless of the basis for the viewer’s appreciation, they definitely are an integral part of the Russian avant-garde movement…”

This religious work by Goncharova was heavily criticised for its primitive depiction and the critics believed no religious work should be associated with a group known as The Donkey’s Tail as it was bordering on blasphemy and so it was removed from the exhibition.

Peacock in Bright Sunlight (Egyptian style) by Natalia Goncharova (1911)

Natalia Gonchorova produced a series of paintings in 1911 that became known as the Peacocks.  They were highly colourful and were influenced by Larionov and his new style of work at the time which was termed Rayonism or Luchism (luch being the Russian word for “ray”) which was a type of abstract or semi-abstract painting.  The Rayonists sought an art that floated beyond abstraction, outside of time and space, and to break the barriers between the artist and the public. They derived the name from the use of dynamic rays of contrasting colour, representing lines of reflected light — crossing of reflected rays from various objects.  .The painting seen above is an example of this and is entitled Peacock in Bright Sunlight (Egyptian style) which can be found in the Tretyakov Museum in Moscow.  The museum’s description of the work states:

“…The works in question combine the laws of Ancient Egyptian art and traditions of Russian folk art. The figure of peacock is transformed into an expressive sign. The bird’s chiselled head and elegant neck are shown in profile, whereas the magnificent tail is spread in front, as prescribed by Ancient Egyptian art. Between them is a green oval providing a background for the neck, head and body. The peacock seems to be examining its own tail in surprise, the tail resembling a grand architectural structure. It resembles at the same time the Coliseum, an arched iconostasis, a rainbow and palette. Unlike the artists of Art Nouveau, who associated peacock feathers with elegant luxury, Goncharova interprets this motif as primordial power, expressed in colours. The image of peacock seems to embody the ancient symbol of immortality…”

All was not well within the Jack of Diamond group as a rigorous debate took place between, on one side, David Burliuk, who was a fervent supporter and strongly supportive of Western art, and on the other side, Natalia Goncharova and Larionov, who favoured Russian themes. The two parties could not agree a compromise and so the Russian artists split into two camps. In the one corner was David Burliuk with his supporters, such as Alexi von Jawlensky and Wassily Kandinsky, who favoured the art which was influenced by Western painters.  In the other corner was the more traditional camp, including Goncharova and Larionov, who believed that a modern Russian art should address the question of national artistic traditions and therefore they disassociated themselves from the Jack of Diamonds on the grounds that Burliuk was a “decadent Munich follower” while the others, known as Cézanne-ists, were conservative and eclectic..

Sunset Over the Adriatic by the ficticious Genoese painter Joachim Raphale Baronali

A year later in 1911 the more radical artists in the group, including Goncharova and Larionov, broke away and formed a new artist’s group which Larionov launched as Osliny khvost (the Donkey’s Tail), in order to promote avant-garde art inspired exclusively by Russian themes.  The name, The Donkey’s Tail, derived from a famous Parisian hoax in which the art critic, Roland Dorgelès and Fréderic Gérard, proprietor of the Montmartre café, Le Lapin Agile, had painted a lurid red and blue seascape by tying a paintbrush to a donkey’s tail. The work was exhibited as Sunset Over the Adriatic under the name of Joachim Raphale Baronali at the Salon des Indépendants of 1910 apparently without comment.

Frédé and his donkey artist Lolo

That year, Ilya Repin recounted the incident of the donkey’s tail in his review of Izdebsky’s International Exhibition and used the term as a critical epithet for the modernist work on show. Shortly afterwards, the Russian press satirized the Knave of Diamonds exhibition by publishing a cartoon of a donkey painting with its tail, with the cynical caption:

“…Off home already after looking round just one hall. Don’t be shy. Get your sixty kopeks worth and next year come again. Then we will change the name and under the sign of ‘the Donkey’s Tail’ we will show you the way we paint our pictures...”

In adopting this name for his group, Larionov beat the critics with their own stick.  Other artists to join the group were Marc Chagal and Kazimir Malevich.  The group, however, was only short-lived, disbanding at the end of 1912 having only managing to stage one exhibition in the March of 1912.  Goncharova submitted over fifty works of art to this exhibition.

The Cyclist by Natalia Goncharova

Goncharova continued with her Rayonist works of art but unlike her friend Larionov her paintings depicted distinguishable objects or people, whereas Larionov’s paintings became more pure abstract. One of her most famous works of that period was one entitled The Cyclist in which her depiction cleverly captures the energy of the man on his bike as he passes by.  The blurred background adds to the sense of speed and movement.

Goncharova and Larionov were fervent believers of Rayonism, so much so they issued a joint manifesto in 1913 of what Rayonism meant to them.  The manifesto entitled Rayonists and Futurists, The Manifesto, began with:

“…We, rayonists and futurists, do not wish to speak about new or old art, and even less about modern Western art. We leave the old art to die and leave the “new” art to do battle with it; and incidentally, apart from a battle and a very easy one, the “new” art cannot advance anything of its own. It is useful to put manure on barren ground, but this dirty work does not interest us. People shout about enemies closing in on them, but in fact, these enemies are, in any case, their closest friends. Their argument with old art long since departed is nothing but a resurrection of the dead, a boring, decadent love of paltriness and a stupid desire to march at the head of contemporary, philistine interests. We are not declaring any war, for where can we find an opponent our equal? The future is behind us. All the same we will crush in our advance all those who undermine us and all those who stand aside. We don’t need popularization—our art will, in any case, take its full place in life—that’s a matter of time……..”

The American art historian, Camilla Gray, in her book gave her definition of Rayonism as:

“…[as an art style which] encompasses all existing styles and forms of the art of the past, as they, like life, are simply points of departure for a Rayonist perception and construction of a picture…”

Larionov and Goncharova started to believe that light was the indispensable source of our sensory appreciation of the world and believed that for any object to be observed it had to be lit up and the Rayonist style was to incorporate rays of light that then allows us to view a particular scene. Their manifesto explained:

 “…In fact, we do not sense the object as such. We perceive a sum of rays proceeding from a source of light; these are reflected from the object and enter our field of vision…”

The Forest by Natalia Goncharova (c.1913)

In March 1913 Goncharova’s friend Larionov organised an exhibition entitled Mishen (Target) to introduce the Donkey’s Tail group of painters to the Moscow art critics and public.  One of the paintings Goncharova exhibited at the show was entitled La Forêt (The Forest) which is now part of the National Gallery of Scotland collection.  Although this is looked upon as an example of Goncharova’s Rayonist style with its coloured rays shooting out in different directions, it offers up the thought that Goncharova was more influenced by the Cubist style when she painted this work.  The shapes she has used in the depiction of trees in this work was replicated in a number of her works around this time.  It is a truly fascinating work.

The Forest by Natalia Goncharova (c.1913)

Goncharova went on to design ballet costumes and sets for ballets in Geneva and in 1914 she and Larionov moved to Paris to work alongside the great Russian ballet impresario, Sergei Diaghliev, during which time they designed a number of stage sets for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.  Goncharova still found time to carry on painting and exhibited works at the Salon d’Automne, Salon des Tuileries and the Salon des Indépendants.

Goncharova was quite a controversial character.  She was a woman that did not “toe the line” of convention.  It was said that she would sometimes appear topless in public, with symbols painted on her body. In a sense, their use of odd, possibly meaningless symbols united the masses with the past Symbolist aesthetic. In John Bowlt’s 1990 article in the Art Journal entitled Natalia Goncharova and Futurist Theatre, he commented on her bizarre behaviour writing:

“…in private relations and behavior, Goncharova enjoyed a license that only actresses and gypsies were permitted, and perhaps because of this dubious social reputation rather than as the result of any apparent innuendos in her paintings, she was said to traverse the ‘boundary of decency’ and to ‘hurt your eyes…”

According to Mary Charmot who wrote an article in 1955 for the Burlington Magazine entitled The Early Work of Goncharova and Larionov, Diaghliev was full of praise for this unconventional painter who had brought life to his ballets.  He talked of her, saying:

“…The most celebrated of these advanced painters is a woman. [. . .] This woman has all Saint Petersburg and all Moscow at her feet. And you will be interested to know that she has imitators not only of her paintings but of her person. She has started a fashion of nightdress-frocks in black and white, blue and orange. But that is nothing. She has painted flowers on her face. And soon the nobility and Bohemia will be driving out in sledges, with horses and houses drawn and painted on their cheeks, foreheads and necks…”

Project poster for the ballet by Manuel de Falla, El amor brujo by Natalia Goncharova (1935)

Goncharova and Larionov had lived together shortly after their first meeting in 1900 as fellow students at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and they stayed together as an unmarried couple for more than fifty years.  She and Larionov became French citizens in 1939 and in 1955 the two artists married.  The reason for marrying so late in their romantic relationship was believed to be so that their paintings would revert to the surviving partner.  In the latter years Larionov and Goncharova suffered financially.   Goncharova suffered badly with arthritis in her hands and it is said that to carry on painting she had to tie the paint brushes to her wrist.  Goncharova died in Paris, in October 1962 and Larionov died two years later.

So what happened to their works of art?  The story goes that when the couple had both died, most of their collections were inherited by another Russian émigré, Alexandra Tomilina, who had met Larionov in the 1930’s when she was his student, and later became his mistress.   After Goncharova died in 1962, Larionov married Tomilina in order that she would inherit all the paintings, which by this time was numbered in the thousands, and by doing so the two artists would continue to be remembered and therefore it would safeguard both artists’ legacies.  Sadly Tomilina had always viewed Goncharova as a love rival and so hated her, so much so that she gave away, destroyed or disposed of many of Goncharova’s works. Tomalina’s old age became one of a life of poverty and so, desperate to pay off her debts, contacted the Soviet authorities and offered them all the remaining artworks if they would financially support her for the rest of her life.  This they agreed to.  When Tomilina died in 1987, her ashes were buried in Goncharova and Larionov’s double grave

Picking Apples by Natalia Goncharova (1909)

After her death, Goncharova was almost forgotten as a painter in the West. Why?  Maybe it was because she painted in many styles — Cubism, Futurism, Neo-Primitivism, Rayism, and  also maybe because she worked in many forms, from oil painting to textile design. This lack of recognition was all to change in 2007 when her work, Picking Apples, which she completed in 1909, was sold at Christie’s Modern and Impressionist sale in London for £4.9 million ($9.8 million), a record for a female artist, only to be bested a year later when her painting, The Flowers, sold for £5.53 million ($10.8 million).

The Flowers by Natalia Goncharova (1912)

Goncharova’s life, like her art, was very colourful.  She was unconventional and actually fell foul of the law on a number of occasions.  She was tried for pornography after a show of nude paintings in 1910 and as I mentioned earlier, her religious paintings were forcibly removed from several exhibitions and for a time were banned by the Holy Synod.

William Sidney Mount

Genre art is defined as the pictorial representation of scenes or events from everyday life.  They often depict settings such as a marketplace or tavern or simply everyday occurrences in houses or in the street.  They can be either realistic depictions or imagined ones which may have been romanticised by the artist.  These works of art have one or more persons in the depiction carrying on with their everyday life notwithstanding how unglamorous it may be.  When one thinks of genre paintings one immediately thinks of the seventeenth century art of the Low Countries, the art of the Golden Age, and of the art of Gerard Dou, Gerard te Borch, Pieter de Hooch and Jan Steen just to name a few.  I love this type of art and today I am focusing on another artist who was renowned for his genre works of art.  He however was not from Europe but from America.  He was the nineteenth century American genre artist and portraitist, often looked upon as one of the first American genre painter, the great William S. Mount.  In this blog, I will look at his early life, ponder over his connection with music and showcase some of his works which were influenced by his love of music.

William Sidney Mount was born on November 26^th 1807 in Setauket , a small town on the northern side of Long Island, New York. He was the son of Thomas Shepherd Mount and Julia Ann Hawkins.  He was the fourth of five children with three older brothers, Henry Smith Mount, Shepherd Alonzo Mount and Robert Nelson Mount and a younger sister, Ruth Hawkins Mount.  His maternal grandfather was Jonas Hawkins, an American Patriot and a member of the notorious Culper Spy Ring during the American Revolution, whose task it was to send messages to General Washington about the activities of the British Army in New York City which was the British headquarters and base of operations.

Portrait of William Sydney Mount by Charles Loring Elliott. (1848)

William recalled those very early traumatic days as an infant, presumably told to him by his relatives.  According to him he was literally left for dead.  He wrote:

“…The first and most remarkable event of my life occurred when I was about 6 or 7 months old.  I was taken from my Mother (she being very sick) to be brought up by hand – I soon declined for want of proper or abundant nourishment and after several days [was] considered dead by my kind nurse and tenderly laid away as so.  My Father’ sister being sent for to make further arrangements concerning me observed signs of life and immediately commenced nourishing me…”

Due to his mother’s poor health his grandmother played an important role in his upbringing.  In October 1814, a month before William’s seventh birthday, his father died and his mother took him and his four siblings to live on the Stony Brook farmstead owned by her family.  For the next ten years William and his brothers worked on the farm.  It was whilst living at the farmstead that, through his uncle, Micah Hawkins, who had a passion for music and the theatre that William and his siblings developed a love for music, especially the playing of the fiddle which William would often play at barn dances.

Cradle of Harmony

Barn dances were very popular with the farming communities but for them to be a success they needed a good fiddler and one such expert was young William Mount.  Barn dances were raucous and merry events and it could be difficult to hear the lone fiddler amongst the “whooping and hollering” of the dancers and so William decided to invent and instrument which could supply loud music.   In 1852 he designed a violin with a hollow back to make it sound louder than a normal violin and he patented it and called it The Cradle of  Harmony.

 However it was his younger brother Robert, the only one of the family who was not attracted to art who would turn out to be the accomplished musician and dance instructor.  Music however played a part in William Mount’s art as many of his paintings were a blend of music and art.

William Mount worked on the family farm at Stony Brook until 1824, when, at the age of seventeen, he was apprenticed to his older brother Henry, who was a sign and ornamental painter in New York City. It was also around this time that his other brother, Shepherd, became a fellow apprentice. From these small artistic beginnings, all three brothers soon became painters. William, who had taken up drawing seriously when he was eighteen years old studied for a short time with the leading American portraitist of the time, Henry Inman.  However William’s studies with Inman came to an end due to lack of tuition money and his own poor health and he returned home to Setauket in 1827.

Dancing on the Barn Floor by William S Mount (1831)

The painting entitled Dancing on the Barn Floor, which he completed in 1831, was one of Mount’s earliest successes and combines his love of music with his talent as an artist.  The painting is a perfect example of how his studies in perspective influenced him. The converging lines at the centre of the painting are textbook examples of how students were taught to organize their canvases.  The painting is housed in the Long Island Museum of American Art, located in Stony Brook, New York.

Catching the Tune by William Sidney Mount (1866)

Another work by Mount which focused on music was his painting entitled Catching the Tune, which he completed in 1866.  William wrote in his diary that the tune the musician was playing in this painting was Possum Up a Gum Tree, a title still known today and attached to more than one distinct tune in the South and Midwest.  All three men as well as the women onlookers are white. However, what is interesting is that a a study sketch that Mount did for this painting depicts the musicians’ faces with a subtle increase in African features.

The Banjo Player by William S Mount (1856)

Probably two of his most famous works of art are a combination of portraiture and genre painting.   He completed both in 1856 featuring African American musicians.  They were entitled The Bone Player and The Banjo Player and both had been commissioned by William Schaus.  Schaus was the New York city agent for the European firm of the printers Goupil & Company, who had asked for two pictures of African-American musicians, to be lithographed for the European market.   One should remember that the time Mount completed these works was just five years before the outbreak of the American Civil War and feelings regarding slavery was about to split the country.  Mount was not known as an abolitionist but he was an artist who was in tune with the feelings of the African-American folk and his art always depicted the black man with dignity and sensitivity notwithstanding whether they were portrayed at work or at play.  His art made it very clear that everybody, black and white, should be judged for their own worth and not by the colour of their skin.  There was a simplicity about the two portraits.  It was all about enjoyment.

The Bone Player by William Mount (1856)

By entitling the painting The Bone Player, Mount points out that the work of art is all about the musical skill of the man and not the man himself.   The two sets of bones, one in each hand, are made of wood or bone and are clicked together.  This instrument has always been connected with African-American minstrels, and was easily recognised as such by folks on both sides of the Atlantic.  There was a good market in Europe for this type of work with all its mystic and exoticism.  In some ways Mount’s depiction of the African-American in both portraits was neutral and he left it up to the purchaser of the works how they wanted to interpret what they saw in the painting and this neutrality made the works appealing to Americans from both the North and the South.

Dance of the Haymakers by William S Mount (1845)

A painting by William S Mount which brings out the joy of barn dancing is one he completed in 1845, entitled Dance of the Haymakers.  It is said that Mount was inspired to paint this scene when he heard the song Shep Jones’ Hornpipe, composed by his neighbour Shep Jones who can be seen depicted in the painting as the fiddler.

The description of the work was outlined in a letter from William Mount to William Schaus of Goupil, Vibert & Company written on April 16^th 1849.  Mount wrote:

“…[The depiction] represents a barnfloor scene, opening upon a fiddler, two Long Islanders, dancing with great energy, and an old man listening with his fancy evidently touched by the performance at the right, and on the out side of the barn, a negro boy is adding to the excitement and noise by drumming on the door, evidently delighted with the ‘concord of sweet music’ which he thinks he produces.  The noise of the clog hoppers, the music, and the loud laughter of the lookers on, is enough to arouse the village Parson.  The last and not least, a cat watching a dog from ma hollow beneath the door sill, is marvellous for its life and finish, quite equal to the celebrated master pieces of the kind in the Dutch school…”

In my next blog I will carry on the story of William S Mount’s life and look at his wonderful portraiture and some more of his genre paintings.