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ART “4”
“2”-DAY 05 July |
| DEATHS:
1887 VON MARÉES
— 1906 BRETON |
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Died on 05 July 1887: Hans
von Marées, German painter, draftsman, and sculptor, born
on 24 December 1837. — He was a leading representative of the later 19th-century return to Renaissance models, especially the use of figure painting in large-scale decorative schemes. Von Marées was born to a prosperous family in Dessau, Germany. As a young man he went to Berlin to study art at the Akademie and later in the studio of Carl Steffeck, who specialized in equestrian and hunting scenes. Von Marées's early work consisted mainly of equestrian and military subjects. Even after leaving Steffeck's studio and moving to Munich, he continued to choose similar themes for his paintings. He spent much of his later career in Italy. He is best known for a set of large frescoes that he painted in the Stazione Zoologica in Naples. In these and other works he depicted male nudes, often in tranquil bucolic settings or in scenes from classical mythology. His work includes homoerotic drawings and paintings such as Cheiron und Achilles (1883) and Entführung des Ganymed (1887). Von Marées also developed an interest in portraiture. His early self-portraits, the first of fifteen that he would eventually paint, show the influence of Rembrandt. The influence of Venetian painting, with its use of rich colors, can be seen in a number of works that von Marées produced in 1863. He designed decorative panels with mythological themes for the St. Petersburg home of Baron Alexander Lyudwigovich Stieglitz and also painted a woodland scene, Rast der Diana. Von Marées would return to mythological subjects throughout his career. In 1864 von Marées left Germany for Italy, where he would remain for most of his life. Commissioned by Adolph Friedrich Graf von Schack to paint copies of works of the Old Masters, von Marées copied several paintings, but these were, as Christian Lenz states, "not so much painstaking reproductions of the originals as evidence of an independent exploration of the subjects." Not satisfied with the copies, Schack ended von Marées's commission in 1868. While working in Italy, von Marées met and became a very close friend of Adolf Hildebrand, a young German sculptor and architect. When Hildebrand went back to Berlin, von Marées followed. He rented a studio that he shared with Hildebrand, who had become his student and protégé. In 1873 both men returned to Italy when von Marées received a commission to paint the decorations for the Stazione Zoologica in Naples. The two artists collaborated on the project, Hildebrand contributing trompe l'oeil architectural elements for the five large frescoes by von Marées. Two of the frescoes, Aufbruch der Fisher and Das Boot, depict Neapolitan boatmen. In the first, six burly men, three of them nude, the others wearing only shorts, are launching a boat. The second shows five men energetically rowing a boat that transports a bored-looking woman who is paying them no attention. Another pair of frescoes, Orangenhain; Die Frauen and Orangenhain; Die Männer, depict figures in an orange grove. In the former, two women in contemporary dress are sitting on a bench conversing. The most prominent figure in the second is a nude young man plucking an orange from a tree. The other figures in the male scene are an elderly man (clothed) digging with a shovel, and two boys, one clothed and seated, the other nude and lying on the ground. Von Marées would repeat the theme of nude young men in idyllic groves in several subsequent paintings including Drei Jünglinge unter Orangenbaümen (1880). The final fresco, Pergola, shows friends sitting at an outdoor table and drinking wine. Von Marées placed himself and Hildebrand in the scene. The two sit side by side, their heads close together. When the fresco project was completed, von Marées and Hildebrand moved to Florence, where they remained for two years. Their romantic friendship ended when Hildebrand fell in love with and married Irene Koppel, a member of the German expatriate community in Rome who had sat for a portrait by von Marées. Von Marées depicted the end of his intimate friendship with Hildebrand in a drawing, Die Frau zwischen die beiden Männer (1875). In it, von Marées, clad in a loin-cloth, stands to the left, his gaze direct and his arm extended to the nude Hildebrand. The younger man returns only an oblique regard and makes a tentative gesture toward grasping von Marées's open and outstretched hand. A serene Koppel, dressed in a classical robe, looks fixedly at Hildebrand as she places a laurel wreath on his head. Hildebrand and Koppel returned to their native Germany, but von Marées remained in Italy and went back to teaching. Beginning in the mid-1870s he worked with sculptors Artur Volkmann, Peter Bruckmann, and Louis Tuaillon. Von Marées often made sketches for the sculptures that they produced, the subjects of which were generally from classical mythology. Von Marées himself intended to sculpt a marble nude of Nestor and made a series of preparatory sketches but did not complete the project. Von Marées died in Rome. At the time of his death, his work--apart from the frescoes--was not widely known to the public. Some years later, Hildebrand designed a museum built in Munich in von Marées's memory. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the artist and his work, as witnessed by exhibitions in Munich and other cities and by an increase in scholarship and criticism. — LINKS — Self-Portrait (1862, 42x35cm; 400x333pix, 11kb) — Double Portrait: Self and Lenbachs (1863; 600x693pix, 150kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1616pix, 401kb) — Selbstbildnis mit Hildebrand und Grant (1873; 600x613pix, 108kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1429pix, 247kb) — Saint Martin und der Bettler (1869; 600x854pix, 246kb _ ZOOM not recommended to blurry 1400x1994pix, 753kb _ much less ZOOM++ to blurrier 2247x3200pix, 1090kb) — The Oarsmen (1873; 103kb) — Youth Picking Oranges (1878, 96kb) — The Four Ages of Man (1878; 201kb) |
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Born on 05 July 1761: Louis-Léopold
Boilly, French portrait and genre painter who died on 04
January 1845. — Boilly's work illustrated everyday life during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire. Sensitive command of media, color, and composition. Boilly's only teacher was his father, Arnould Boilly, a wood-carver. Boilly came to Paris for the first time in 1785, and remained there permanently. He is said to have painted over 5000 portraits, besides other works. — LINKS — Portrait of a Child (46x38cm) — La Paresse (1824) — Diane et Médor (1829) (2 dogs in human poses) — Portrait Studies (1795) — Study for "La vaccine" (1807) — Les Antiquaires — Les Lunettes, — Finissez Donc, (Le Baiser) (color lithograph, 16x20cm) — Young Woman Ironing (1800) — Madame Vincent (1820) — Sarah Bowdoin (1805, 22x17cm) — The Geography Lesson (1812, 74x59cm) _ Louis-Léopold Boilly was the most gifted genre painter in France during the Napoleonic era and one of the period's most prolific portraitists. Boilly exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon (the State-sponsored exhibition of contemporary art) between 1800 and 1814 and won the recognition of a gold medal of the first class in 1804. This double portrait, shown both at the Salons of 1812 and 1814, depicts Monsieur Gaudry, a civil servant, instructing his daughter in geography. Boilly, as a close family friend, observed the girl's lessons many times. Even the little dog can be identified as "Brusquet," much admired in the family because his constant barking had once succeeded in scaring away a band of thieves who had broken into the Finance Ministry. Historical geography was promoted as a field of study for both boys and girls in Napoleonic France, the maps of whose territories were subject to frequent revision with each new conquest. Here the sphinx and pyramid in the cartouche of the map no doubt refer to Napoleon's Egyptian expedition of 1798-1801; the globe shows Europe and Africa. Moreover, The Geography Lesson portrays a theme popular in the Dutch seventeenth-century paintings that Boilly emulated: the proper duty of parents to nurture and instruct their children [which is better than to torture and destruct them]. |
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Died on 05 July 1906: Jules Adolphe
Aimé Louis Breton, French Realist
painter born on 01 May 1827. — As one of the primary academic painters of the nineteenth century, Jules Breton evolved a painting style that combined a realist selection of thematic material with an interest in creating figural types that reflected the idealism of the classical traditions. His paintings were often regarded as containing poetic references and his compositions suggest a timeless world where the workers of the field symbolically were linked with literary elegies that evoked their best qualities. Although his works were out of favor for a long period of time, and his compositions were often used as convenient examples of so-called "bad-painting" by supporters of the modernist camp who panned any style whose goal was to portray the trials of the human condition instead of being dedicated to destroying the defining characteristics of great traditional art. Breton's celebration of human values of work, family, home and hearth did not fit into their nihilistic paradigm, despite his poignant and poetic themes painted with a compositional force and sophistication of technique that clearly places him amongst the greatest artists of his time. Breton's paintings have returned to public consciousness through recent exhibitions and an interest in collecting his works by private patrons and museums. He is an artist who has benefitted greatly from the long over due revisionist reappraisal of nineteenth century academic painting. Jules Breton was from a rural region in the north western part of France. He was born and spent his youth in Courrières, a small village in the Pas-de-Calais; he died in Paris. His father, Marie-Louis Breton worked for a wealthy landowner whose land he supervised. After the death of his mother, when Jules was 4, he was brought up by his father. Others in the family, who lived in the same house, and had a deep influence on the young artist's upbringing, were his maternal grandmother and especially his uncle Boniface Breton. All instilled in the young man a respect for tradition, a love of the land and, especially, for his native region, which remained central to his art throughout his whole life providing the artist with many scenes for his Salon compositions. He received his first artistic training not far from Courrières at the College St. Bertin near St. Omer. Later (1842) he met the painter Félix de Vigne [1806-1862] who was impressed by his youthful talent and persuaded his family to let him study art. In 1843, Breton left for Ghent (Belgium) where he continued to study art at the Academy of Fine Arts with de Vigne, and an other teacher from the school, the painter Hendrik Van der Haert [1790-1846]. Sometime later (1846), Breton moved to Antwerp where he took lessons with Baron Gustaf Wappers; he also spent much of his time copying the works of Flemish masters. Trained as an academic artist, Breton was well aware of other artistic tendencies such as the role of genre painting. In 1847, Breton finally left for Paris where he hoped to perfect his artistic training at the École des Beaux-Arts. Once there he studied in the atelier of the genre painter Michel-Martin Drolling [1786-1851]. He also met, and became friends, with several of the Realist painters, including François Bonvin [1817-1887] and Gustave Brion [1824-1877] and his early entries at the Salon reflected not only their influence, but also his concerns for the poor brought to the fore by the events of the 1848 Revolution. His paintings Misery and Despair (1848) shown at the Salon of 1849, and Hunger (1850) shown at the Salon of 1850-1851, are representative of Breton's state of mind at the time and of his artistic preoccupations. Both paintings were destroyed. After Hunger was successfully shown in Brussels and Ghent, Breton was encouraged to move to Belgium where he met his future wife Elodie. Elodie, who became one of Breton's favorite models, was the daughter of Félix de Vigne, his early teacher; they were married in 1858. Breton returned to France in 1852. In 1853 he exhibited Return of the Reapers, the first of numerous rural peasant scenes based on his awareness of contemporary themes and influenced by the works of the Swiss painter Léopold Robert [1794-1835]. Breton's interest in peasant imagery was, from then on, well-established and what he is best known for today. In 1854, Breton returned to the village of Courrières where he settled. Once there, he began The Gleaners. This work was inspired by seasonal field labor and the plight of the less fortunate who were left to gather what remained in the field after the harvest. The Gleaners received a third class medal. This award, and the success of the painting among other artists and the public, launched Breton's career; his success continued throughout the Second Empire and beyond. He received commissions from the State and his works were purchased by the French Art Administration and sent to provincial museums. His painting Blessing of the Wheat, Artois, completed in 1857 and exhibited at the Salon of the same year, brought a second class medal and was purchased by M. de Nieuwerkerke for the Imperial Museums. Many other paintings from the 1850s: Recall of the Gleaners or Dedication of a Calvary, both shown at the 1859 Salon, continued to illustrate his tranquil vision of field labor influenced by the painters of the Italian Renaissance. In 1861, Breton received the Légion d'Honneur for such works as The Colza (1860). The 1860s saw a continuation of Breton's dedication to rural themes, but he moved away from concentrating only on peasant life around Courrières to include views of other French regions such as the south of France in Grape Harvest (Salon of 1864), or Brittany with The Great Pilgrimage, 1869. At the 1867 Universal Exhibition, where ten of his works were on view, Breton received a First Class Medal. As Breton continued to exhibit throughout the 1870s and into the 1880s and 1890s, his reputation was assured during the first thirty years of the Third Republic. Later in his career Breton continued his illustrations of peasant life, but in a manner more attuned to Symbolism than to Realism. His poetic renderings of single peasant female figures in a landscape, posed against the setting sun, remained extremely popular especially among US collectors. For example, his Song of the Lark (1884) is a favorite. Because his works were so popular Breton often had to produce copies of some of his best loved images. Breton was extremely popular in his own time, the numerous compositions he exhibited at the Salons and the fact that they were widely available as engravings, made him one of the best known painters of his period not only in his native country, but also in England and in the United States. He became a member of the Institut de France in 1886. Both his brother Emile (1831-1902), who was an architect by training, and his daughter Virginie (1859-1935), were also painters. In addition to being a painter, Breton was also a recognized writer who published a volume of poems and several editions of prose related to his life as an artist or to the lives of other artists that he personally knew. Thus, in several ways, Jules Breton, at the time of his death in 1906, was highly regarded as a painter with a personal vision of rural life. His dedication to a section of the French countryside, his absorption of traditional methods of painting, and the creation of a popular style, helped make Jules Breton one of the primary transmiters of the beauty and idyllic vision of rural existence. — LINKS — The Vintage at the Château Lagrange (1864) — Brittany Girl (1872) — The First Communion (1884) — The Song of the Lark (1884) — The Rest of the Haymakers (1872) — A la Fontaine — Harvesters — Le Départ des Champs — The Last Gleanings — The Reapers — The Recall of the Gleaners (1859) — La Femme à l'Ombrelle (ou Baie De Douarnenez) (1871, 65x91cm) — Evening in a Hamlet of the Finistère — The Potato Harvest — Water Carriers — Les Communiantes — La Bergère (1905, 25x35cm) — Le Pardon De Kergoat (1891, 123x233cm) — Summer (1891, 75x64cm) — L' Arc-En-Ciel (1883, 111x156cm) — Asleep In The Woods (1877, 62x51cm) — La Jeune Fille Vachère (1872, 47x62cm) — Afternoon Meal (20x30cm) — Mise en Tas des Oeillettes (24x 35cm) — The Water Carrier (82x62cm) — Les Vendanges à Château-Lagrange (59x49cm) — La Gleaneuse Fatiguée (1880, 94x64cm) _ Gleaning was usually the job of the poor, especially women and children. Breton shows a single gleaner stretching against a backdrop of the setting sun, while
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Born on 05 July 1885: André Lhote,
French Cubist
painter and sculptor who died on 24 January 1962. — He painted figure subjects, portraits, landscape, and still life; he also was very influential as a teacher and writer on art. Born in Bordeaux, he was apprenticed in 1897 to an ornamental sculptor, and also studied decorative sculpture from 1898 to 1904 at the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux. He began to paint in his spare time. Lhote left the sculpture studio in 1905 to devote himself to painting. He was influenced by Gauguin, then from 1910 by Cézanne. First one-man exhibition at the Galerie Druet, Paris, 1910. Joined the Cubist movement in 1911; exhibited in 1912 at the Salon de la Section d'Or. Applied Cubist stylization as a formal discipline to scenes from everyday life. In 1917, after discharge from the army, became one of the Cubist group supported by Léonce Rosenberg; also began to write regularly for the Nouvelle Revue Française. Taught at the Académie Notre-Dame des Champs 1918-1920 and afterwards at various other art schools, including one he founded in Montparnasse. Lhote wrote a number of books on art, including La Peinture, Le Coeur et l'Esprit (1933), Traité du Paysage (1939). He died in Paris. — LINKS — Paysage verdoyant (1921; 1150x970pix, 102kb) — Paysage sans titre (1910, 33x51cm; 900x1389pix, 139kb) — Entrée du bassin à flot à Bordeaux(1912, 97x130cm; 480x646pix, 28kb) _ Peintre et théoricien, le bordelais André Lhote donne du cubisme une conception différente de celle de ses pères fondateurs : Braque et Picasso. Alors que ces derniers, à force d'analyse, aboutissent à une abstraction, Lhote refuse le monde de "pure conception" afin de préserver une peinture intelligible. Choisissant dans des scènes de la vie courante la source de son émotion, il puise dans le domaine de la géométrie les équivalents plastiques des objets. Le spectacle que lui offre le port de Bordeaux a certainement facilité le passage entre le "désordre émotif" né de sa contemplation et la soumission de cet élan à des signes plastiques purs. |
In 1826 Magnus moved to Stockholm, and, in 1828, he and Wilhelm began publishing
Svenska Foglar, the series of bird illustrations that rapidly established
the brothers’ reputation in Finland and Sweden. The work, completed in 1838, consists
of 180 hand-tinted lithographs. Similarly they did the 500 or so handcolored lithographs
of Skandinaviens Fiskar (1834-1857). Magnus also painted landscapes.
— Helsinki
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