| ART
“4” “2”-DAY 21 November
v.8.a0 |
| BIRTH:
1898 MAGRITTE |
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Died on 21 November 1927: Laurits Regner
Tuxen, Danish painter born on 09 December 1853. — He was instructed in the tradition of academic realism at the Kunstakademiet in Copenhagen between 1868 and 1872, but later studies in Paris, with Léon Bonnat, and Rome (1879–1880) guided him towards naturalism. As professor (1880–1905) at the School of Artistic Studies, Copenhagen, founded to counteract the conversatism of the official Royal Academy of Fine Arts there, Tuxen was able to introduce naturalism to Danish students, making the way for 20th-century modernism. Until the end of the century, Tuxen lived and worked a great deal in Paris, where he adopted a cosmopolitan style that set him apart from his Scandinavian contemporaries. His fame rested on his position as one of Europe’s leading court painters for over 30 years. He introduced relative freshness and modernity to such royal group portraits as Christian IX and his Family at Fredensborg Castle (1886) and the British equivalent, H.M. Queen Victoria and Family at Windsor Castle, Jubilee (1887). With his well-developed feeling for colour harmony and virtuoso manipulation of bright hues, he painted directly on to the canvas without preliminary drawing, although he did produce a number of remarkably free oil sketches, for example Queen Victoria (1894) and a study for The Duke of York’s Wedding (1894). His royal sitters are informally grouped as ordinary human beings and not the sublime divinities celebrated in royal portraits of the absolutist era. — Tuxen grew up in Copenhagen. His father was an officer in the navy and Tuxen originally wanted to be a marine painter. Together with Krøyer he was recognized as being one of the cleverest students at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and was, therefore, encouraged to study figure painting, which was regarded as being the most distinguished genre. Tuxen came to Skagen for the first time in 1874, where he met Michael Ancher with whom he developed a life-long friendship. It was, however, 27 years before he came to Skagen again in 1901. In the interim he had studied further in Paris with P.S. Krøyer, and he was the initiator of the Artists Independent Study Schools in Copenhagen. Furthermore, he traveled extensively because of large works commissioned by European royal families. Among other things he painted huge family portraits of the Danish King Christian IX and Queen Louise and their family, Queen Victoria and her family, and the Russian Tzar’s family. Tuxen’s first wife, the Belgian Ursule de Baisieux, died from tuberculosis in 1899. In 1901 he married Frederikke Treschow from Norway and they settled in Copenhagen together with Tuxen’s two daughters, Yvonne and Nina. The same year they bought Madam Bendsen’s house in Skagen, which they renovated into a grand summer residence christened “Dagminne”. During the following years, Tuxen painted a large number of paintings in Skagen. Now it was especially the near things that occupied him: the family, friends, landscapes, the sea and the flowers in the garden. He was also very much engaged in the establishment of Skagens Museum. — Tuxen came to Skagen a couple af times in the 1870's, before becoming a much sought-for portrait painter in the courts of Europe. But after the death in 1899 of his first wife, the Belgian-born Ursula de Baisieux, and his second marriage in 1901 with Frederikke Treschow, he bought a house in Skagen. Here, in the "Tuxen Villa", he spent much of his time together with Krøyer and Michael and Anna Ancher. In this period as an artist he was mainly occupied by the subjects of family life, his wife and daughters, and of Skagen in the changing light of summertime. The "Tuxen Villa" is today a museum. — LINKS — Self-Portrait (1911; 314x300pix, 20kb) — The Wedding of Nicholas II and Grand Princess Alexandra Fyodorovna (1895, 66x88cm; 575x776pix, 276kb) — The Coronation of Nicholas II and Alexandra Fyodorovna (1895, 66x88cm; 667x515pix, 93kb) _ The coronation of Nikolay Alexandrovich and Alexandra Fyodorovna took place on May 14, 1896, at the Assumption Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin. This ceremony was an important state occasion, for it signified acknowledgement of the monarch's power over Russia and consecration of that power by the Church. Nicholas II, Alexandra Fyodorovna, and Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna are shown standing on a special platform set with thrones. Among the people depicted are the Romanovs' relations from among the royal families of Europe. The artist chose to show the moment when Metropolitan Palladius of Saint-Petersburg invited Nicholas to recite The Symbol of Faith. The coronation ceremony was followed by a liturgy with the Emperor receiving communion at the altar. Church bells rang out and a 101-gun salute was fired to announce the end of the coronation ceremony to the public outside the Cathedral. In keeping with tradition, after the ceremony the Emperor presented awards, remitted arrears, and pardoned prisoners. — Sildig aften ved Vesterhavet (1906, 50x61cm; 340x410pix, 32kb) — Trankogning ved Nymindegab (1880, 148x199cm; 440x600pix) — First Wife, Ursula de Baisieux (1890; 548x400pix, 21kb) — At the Johannisfeuer in Skagen (1920, 110x88cm; 539x438pix, 257kb) — The Artist's Mother and Daughter (1902; 652x522pix, 29kb) — Efter badet (1908, 46x61cm; 643x893pix, 142kb) _ Nögen kvinde i klitterne ved Skagen strand med liggende hund (blurry detail, 377x381pix, 39kb). –(051120) |
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Died on 21 November 1717:
Jean-Baptiste Santerre, French painter
born on 23 March 1651. — {descendant de Jean Sans Terre? John
Lackland [24 Dec 1167 – 18 Oct 1216]} {Etait-il sans terre Santerre?}
{Un Santerre qui s'enterre sent la terre.} — The 12th child of a merchant, he was apprenticed to the portrait painter Jean Lemaire before entering the busy studio of the history painter Bon Boullogne [bap. 22 Feb 1649 – 17 May 1717]. Although Santerre made some history paintings, he began to specialize in portraiture early in his career. The Portrait of Two Actresses (1699), clearly influenced by François de Troy, shows Santerre’s interest in the well-known portrait painters of his time. Nevertheless, he was among the first painters in France to absorb the influence of Rembrandt, as in Young Girl at a Window. In such portraits as Girl with a Veil (1699) he made an original contribution to French painting by successfully combining the fantasy portrait of northern tradition with the allegorical portrait currently fashionable in France. — LINKS — Self~Portrait (90x80cm) –- Suzanne au Bain (1704, 205x145cm; 785x560pix, 45kb _ .ZOOM to 1080x771pix, 101kb) _ Santerre was mainly a religious painter but his paintings lacked true inspiration. However, his Susanna at the Bath reveals an almost disturbing eroticism and something of that peculiarly chilly Rococo quality which is to be found in Falconet's nude statuettes. Few comparable pictures were to be produced at Venice, whereas Santerre initiates a whole troop of 'baigneuses' who go on dabbling with the erotic possibilities of water as late as Fragonard, all seeming ultimately to derive from Correggio's Leda. And out of this revolution was to come the achievement of Boucher as well as Fragonard. –- Suzanne au Bain (engraving 44x31cm; 785x572pix, 49kb _ .ZOOM to 1177x858pix, 136kb) — Deux Actrices (1699, 146x114cm) — Marie Adélaïde de Savoie, Duchesse de Bourgogne (1709, 275x184cm) — Sainte Thérèse en Extase (1710, 267x171cm) –(061118) |
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Died on 21 November 1874: Mariano Fortuny
y Marsal (or: y Carbo?), Spanish painter born on 11 June
1838. — {Etait-il fortuné, Fortuny?} — During his brief but highly successful career he became one of the leading Spanish painters of the mid-19th century. His fame and fortune were primarily the result of his historical genre paintings. His work drew both on earlier Spanish art, especially the paintings and etchings of Goya, and on contemporary foreign works, notably the paintings of the Italian Macchiaioli and those of the French artist Ernest Meissonier. Father of Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo [11 May 1871 — 02 May 1949]. — He was born at Reus to poor parents. He attended the primary school of his native town, where he received some art instruction. When he was twelve years old his parents died and he came under the care of his grandfather, who, though a joiner by trade, had made a collection of wax figures, with which he was traveling from town to town. The boy modeled and painted many of the figures; and two years later, when he reached Barcelona, the municipality gave him a scholarship equivalent to forty-two francs monthly.. He entered the Academy of Barcelona and studied there for four years under Claudio Lorenzale. In March 1857 Fortuny received a scholarship to go to Rome. There, for more than two years, he copied the works of old masters. On 22 October 1859 Spain declared war on Morocco. Fortuny was sent by the authorities of Barcelona to document the war in paintings. Spain easily crushed Morocco, which on 25 March 1860 agreed to a cease fire, and on 26 April 1860 signed the treaty of Tetuán. Fortuny returned to Spain in the summer of 1860, and was commissioned by the city of Barcelona to paint the capture of the camps of Muley-el-Abbas and Muley-el-Hamed by the Spanish army. After making a large number of studies Fortuny went back to Rome, and began the composition on a canvas fifteen meters long; but though it occupied much of his time during the next few years, he never finished it. He visited Paris in 1868 and shortly afterwards married the daughter of Federico Madrazo Küntz [1815-1894], director of the royal museum at Madrid. Another visit to Paris in 1870 was followed by a two years stay at Granada, but then Fortuny returned to Rome, where he died of malarial fever, contracted while painting in the open air at Naples and Portici in the summer of 1874. Fortuny's work is distinguished by facility in painting and brilliant hues, but his art is that of a master of technique rather than of a deep thinker. In such pictures as La Vicaria and Choosing a Model, and in some of his Moorish subjects, like The Snake Charmers and Moors playing with a Vulture, he showed himself to be endowed with a sensitive appreciation of shades of character. His love of detail was instinctive, and he chose subjects where he could displaying his skill as a craftsman. — LINKS –- The Café of the Swallows (1868; 854x621pix, 63kb _ zoom to 1708x1242pix, 252kb _ ZOOM to 2562x1862pix; 559kb _ .ZOOM+ to 3415x2483pix, 1091kb) _ .detail 1 (890x1242pix, 153kb) _ .detail 2 (947x1204pix, 171kb) _ .detail 3 (901x1185pix, 173kb) –- Moroccan Man (1869; 848x544pix, 48kb_ ZOOM to 2418x1445pix; 595kb) _ .detail 1 (813x725pix, 71kb) _ .detail 2 (888x1088pix, 125kb) _ .detail 3 (860x1201pix, 182kb) –- The Choice of a Model (1874, 53x81cm; 748x1200pix, 92kb) –- The Painter's Children in the Japanese Room _ (1874, 44x93 cm; 741x1650pix, 128kb) _ This painting is without doubt a small jewel. Though, because of its size it might be considered a minor work, it is actually one of his most brilliant. The painter, the first Spaniard to become a trully cosmopolitan artist, enjoyed international fame and earned a large number of commissions throughout his short life. However in this small work — Fortuny was certainly a specialist in small formats — he wasn't working "on commission". He painted it just a few months before he died, never really finishing it, and is a reflection of his search in the last years of his life to find new roads and outlets for his painting. Thus, while some elements of the scene — such as the girl's leg — are perfectly drawn with meticulous detail, other parts of the painting show such loose, separated brush strokes that one might say that this presages Impressionism. The children in the painting are Mariano [1871-1949] and Maria Luisa [1868-1936], the product of his marriage to Cecilia Madrazo, the daughter of Federico de Madrazo y Küntz [1815-1894] and grandaughter of José de Madrazo y Agudo [1781-1859]. — A Summer Day, Morocco (25x66cm) — Idyll (1868) — The Court of the Alhambra (1871, 75x59cm) — Odalisque (1861, 60x81cm) –- S*>#Standing Man (33x23cm; 799x549pix, 94kb) he is seen from the back, badly in need of a haircut, wearing camouflage pants and a white shirt stripped down to his waist; he is facing a camouflage-painted wall; on the ground are some other camouflage-patterned things which might be a helmet and a jacket. –- Pórtico Árabe (14x20cm; 639x900pix, 96kb) –(061120) |
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Died on 21 November 1849: François~Marius
Granet, French painter and sculptor born on 17 September
1775. — Son of a master mason, Granet received early artistic training from J.-A. Constantin [1756-1844] at the free drawing academy in Aix. A fellow student was the highborn Auguste de Forbin [1777-1841], who became his most important friend and patron. In 1793 Granet participated in the siege of Toulon, where he met Bonaparte and worked as a draftsman with the artillery battery. Three years later he made his first visit to Paris, where he admired and copied Dutch and Flemish paintings in the Louvre. In 1798 Granet returned to Paris to join Forbin in the atelier of David, but he had to leave after a few months from lack of funds. The next year, however, he showed at the Salon; his successful Little Cloister of the Feuillants, a Parisian monastery interior, announced the dominant theme of his subsequent work, which owed more to his study of seventeenth-century northern masters than it did to the brief stay in David's studio. In 1802 Granet and Forbin went to Rome, where Granet remained generally for the next twenty-two years, making a living during the first years by selling views of ancient monuments. His internationally acclaimed Choir of the Capuchin Church in Rome (1815), of which he painted a later variant, sealed the artist's success. His precisely painted pictures appealed through their dramatic chiaroscuro and masterful articulation of architectural forms. In the Italian and French countryside Granet also created many fluid oil and watercolor landscape sketches, whose simplified forms and subtle light effects prefigured the art of Corot. By the end of the 1830s the vogue for Granet's quietly religious paintings waned. In the meantime he had begun an important career as a museum official. Having left Rome in 1824 to accept a position offered by Forbin, Granet became chief curator at the Louvre in 1826 and then curator of Louis-Philippe's new Musée Historique de Versailles in 1833. He was also named, in 1844, honorary director of the museum in his hometown of Aix. His long-time friend Forbin died in 1841, and in 1843 Granet married the recently widowed Marie-Madeleine Appoloni ("Nena"), whom he had known since the early days in Rome. Upon her death in 1847 Granet went to his country residence in Aix, where he remained after the revolution of 1848. The next year's bequeathal of studio and collection to the Aix museum constitutes a rare example of the preservation of an artists's atelier at the time. — LINKS –- The Choir in the Capuchin Church on the Piazza Barberini, Rome (1815, 132x105cm; 884x769pix, 58kb — .ZOOM to 1964x1538pix, 216kb) — La Trinità dei Monti et la Villa Médicis à Rome (1808) — Crypt of San Martino ai Monti, Rome (1806, 126x159cm; 850x1099pix, 130kb) _ Among the first of a number of artists to take a pictorial interest in Roman ritual, rather than in the traditional Christian iconography, was the young Provençal Granet, who while studying in Rome began painting church interiors with officiating clergy. This new genre anticipated the medievalism of his Troubadour compatriots and found a ready market. His haunting Crypt of San Martino ai Monti, a view of the vaults which were once part of the ancient Baths of Trajan, includes a female corpse in its white shroud, while a hooded priest and his acolyte prepare for the committal. — Stella in Prison (1810, 194x144cm; 958x700, 90kb) _ The French painter Jacques de Stella [19 Sep 1596 – 29 Apr 1657], in prison in Rome as painted by Granet, might seem another persecuted genius. In fact the Madonna and Child that Stella has drawn on his cell walls has attracted the admiration of his jailor and fellow inmates, and there is already the promise of hardship overcome. — L'Usurier. |
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