| ART “4”
“2”-DAY 13 November
v.6.a1 |
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Died on 13 November 1671: Jan
Hermanszoon van Bijlert, (or Bylert), Utrecht Dutch Baroque
painter born in 1598 (1603?). — He was the son of the Utrecht glass painter Herman Beerntszoon van Bijlert [1566 – <1615]. Jan must have been trained first by his father but was later apprenticed to the painter Abraham Bloemaert. After his initial training, he visited France and in 1621 went to Italy, as did other artists from Utrecht. Jan stayed mainly in Rome, where he became a member of the Schildersbent; he returned to Utrecht in 1624. In Rome he and the other Utrecht artists had come under the influence of the work of Caravaggio; after their return home, this group of painters, who became known as the Utrecht Caravaggisti, adapted the style of Caravaggio to their own local idiom. The Caravaggesque style, evident in van Bijlert’s early paintings, such as Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene (1624) and The Matchmaker (1626), is characterized by the use of strong chiaroscuro, the cutting off of the picture plane so that the image is seen close-up, and by an attempt to achieve a realistic rather than idealized representation. Van Bijlert continued to paint in this style throughout the 1620s, a particularly productive period. By the early 1620s, like most Utrecht painters, he adopted a classical manner and a lighter palette. — Abraham Willaerts was a student of van Bijlert. — LINKS — Madonna & Child (1635, 115kb) — The Concert (1640, 102x130cm; 630x800pix, 76kb) _ With its scantily clad women of questionable repute this painting is reminiscent of the artistic tradition inspired by the Prodigal Son. These musical courtesans are tempting the viewer with more than music. But there is a certain ambiguity about this attractive panel. Are these ladies meant to warn viewers or titillate them? –- a different Concert (147x120cm; 765x640pix, 35kb) Here a young man is playing a lute and singing with two companions. _ Like many of his fellow painters from Utrecht Bijlert went to Italy in the early 1620s, staying mainly in Rome where he became a member of the Schildersbent. He returned to Utrecht in 1624, by which time the hugely influential adoption of the style of Caravaggio by his contemporaries, Hendrick ter Bruggen, Dirck van Baburen, and Gerrit van Honthorst had already become firmly established. Bijlert's own work in this vein was directly formed by his experience of all three painters, whose influence is clearly detectable in the present work. Baburen and ter Bruggen died in 1624 and 1629 respectively, and this painting probably dates from shortly thereafter, reflecting as it does the contemporary development, led by Honthorst, towards a more classicizing and less rigorously naturalistic style. In style and handling it is particularly close to Bijlert's Lute Player. — Venus and Cupid and an old Woman (1635, 739x800, 49kb) — Musical Company (68x95cm; 460x650pix, 55kb _ ZOOM to inferior copy by another hand, 71x95cm; 884x1201pix, 226kb) _ detail of the original (433x650pix, 50kb) _ Music represents a form of temptation in the work of van Bijlert. He frequently depicted the biblical story of the Prodigal Son who squandered his wealth in taverns and brothels. This musical company embroiders on the biblical theme in a contemporary setting. Being one of the pleasures of this world, here music has a negative connotation. –- a different Musical Company (97x115cm; 765x902pix, 54kb) _ The style of the work is characteristic of Bijlert's early period from the second half of the 1620s and early 1630s, which was strongly influenced by the work of Caravaggio. As a young artist Bijlert visited Rome, where he is recorded in 1621 under his italianised name Giovanni Bilardo in the parish of Santa Maria del Popolo, returning to his native Utrecht in 1624. The present painting is highly Caravaggesque both in subject and in treatment: the half-length, life-size figures are depicted with realistic and precise detail; they are deliberately set against a dark background, strongly lit from the upper right. Yet the precise outlining of the figures, the use of a lighter palette and the overall lucidity of the scene, announces the artist's turn towards a new form of Dutch classicism of which he, like his fellow citizen Gerrit van Honthorst, became an important exponent. –- A Young Man Drinking a Glass of Wine (65x56cm; 1055x900pix, 63kb _ .ZOOM to 1582x1350pix, 109kb) –- Shepherd Holding a Flute (1635, 79x65cm; 860x720pix, 51kb _ .ZOOM to 1720x1440pix, 259kb) _ Like many other Utrecht artists of his time, van Bijlert incorporated Caravaggesque features in many of his genre, historical, and pastoral scenes. In this he was mostly influenced by Gerrit van Honthorst [1592-1656], who, together with Hendrick Terbrugghen and Dirck van Baburen, introduced Caravaggism to Utrecht about 1620. Van Bijlert's Caravaggesque works originated for the most part in the second half of the 1620s, and most represent half-length figures, whose attention is focused on a single act. His pastoral scenes are good examples of the infusion of this style, as can be seen in this life-size shepherd (shown half-length). This painting used to have as a pendant a Shepherdess. Works of this sort by Van Bijlert must have been quite popular, as this pair is an autograph replica of another pair. –- A Woman Holding Pancakes (38x29cm; 841x660pix, 46kb _ .ZOOM to 1682x1320pix, 178kb) Unusual within his œuvre, this painting can be compared with two other signed works by Van Bijlert, an Old lady with glasses and an Old lady holding a glass. These pictures were made after 1650. They resemble the work of Leiden fijnschilders, such as Jacob Toorenvliet. –- Ulysses and Circe (1630, 51x81cm; 688x1110pix, 67kb _ .ZOOM to 1023x1650pix, 138kb) _ This painting depicts an episode from the Odyssey (Book 10). On their journey home after the Trojan War, Ulysses and his companions came upon the island of the sorceress, Circe. With a magic potion, she transformed the men into swine; however Ulysses, having been forewarned by Mercury and having taken an antidote, was able to resist her magic. The painting depicts the moment when Circe lifts her wand to touch Ulysses and activate the spell. Among other artists who have used this subject are Bruegel the Elder, Dulac, Wolgemut, Castiglione, Waterhouse, van Ehrenberg, Ruthart. –- Venus Whipping Cupid (1640, 126x147cm; 836x967pix, 35kb _ .ZOOM to 1254x1450pix, 110kb) while holding him by the hair. This is the pendant to Mars Bound by Cupid. –- A Mother With an Infant in her Arms and a Girl (100x80cm; 765x603pix, 30kb) — An Elderly Man and Woman, and a Younger Woman, outside a House (1665, 127x101cm; 420x320pix, 27kb) _ The younger woman is presumably the couple's daughter. She grasps the stem of a rose bush in her left hand while the older woman holds a peach. —(061113) |
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Died on 13 November 1923:
Walter Dendy Sadler, British
genre painter born on 12 May 1854. — Relative? of William Sadler [1782-1839]? — Sadler was one of the true masters of domestic genre along with his contemporary Frank Moss Bennett. His subjects were usually set in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries with sentimental, romantic and humorous themes. Before painting a scene he would create elaborate settings in which local villagers would often pose as models. Indeed as he often used the same props and models, these can be seen repeated in successive paintings in different guises. The home, the inn, the lawyers office, the garden and the golf course all provide subjects for his wit and clever social observation. — Sadler studied at Heatherley's Art School in London, and with W. Simmler in Dusseldorf. Exhib. at RA from 1873, also at SS, GG and elsewhere. His subjects were mostly costume pieces of the 18th or early-19th C period, often with humorous or sentimental themes, e.g. Scandal and Tea, A Meeting of Creditors, An Offer of Marriage, etc. About 1896 he moved to Hemingford Crag, near St. Ives, Huntingdon, where he died. His pictures were very popular and much reproduced through engravings — Sadler was born in Dorking, and brought up in Horsham, where he showed a precocious talent for drawing. At age 16 he decided to become a painter and enrolled for two years at Heatherly's School of Art in London, subsequently studying in Germany under W. Simmler. He exhibited at the Dudley Gallery from 1872 and at the Royal Academy from the following year through to the 1890s. He painted contemporary people in domestic and daily life pursuits, showing them with comical expressions illustrating their greed, stupidity etc. Dendy Sadler was best known for his pictures of monks — his reputation was established with a picture of monks fishing, Steady Brother, Steady (1875), and his best-known paintings are Thursday also showing monks fishing, and Friday, where they are consuming their catch the next day. The monks are characterized as good natured but foolish looking fellows. The combination of realism with whimsicality follows an English tradition of almost slapstick humour, which seems to work better as black and white illustration in the pages of Punch or in light-hearted articles by artists such as Harry Furniss. Another slightly whimsical picture is End of the Skein. Perhaps more to modern taste are Sadler's less blatant pictures, as For Fifty Years (1894), showing an old gentleman happily offering his arm to his blank-faced bored wife — for him 50 years of domestic bliss, for her half a century of increasing dullness. In pictures like this, or An Offer of Marriage (1895), Sadler also gives some of the best studies of Victorian interiors. He was criticized for this background detail, as it detracted from the subjects of his pictures, but it seems fair to me for a whimsical painting to provide encouragement for the eye to wander around the scene rather than being pushed too hard towards the 'point'. Another painting worthy of note is A Summer's Day. — LINKS — London to York - Time's Up Gentlemen (147x193cm) — Plaintiff and Defendant (131x171cm) — The Monk's Repast (41x51cm; 799x1000pix, kb) — A Good Story (1881, 62x82cm) — Sweethearts (1892, 86x62cm) interior with a young couple talking to an older woman seated in a chair. — Thursday (1880, 86x141cm) _ Sadler was well known for his humorous scenes of religious life. In this picture, which is also known as Tomorrow will be Friday, he shows a group of Franciscans fishing. These friars, as all Catholics at the time, were forbidden to eat meat on Fridays, in commemoration of the day when Christ was crucified. In Thursday, Sadler wrote, 'The background was made up from studies I had painted in Germany, with the help of some foreground studies made in the previous summer at Hurley on the Thames'. A pendant to this picture, Friday, shows the friars enjoying their catch. The 1897 guide to the Tate museum noted that this picture “was one of three that commenced Sir Henry Tate's collection”. –- Girl with a Hoop (46x27cm; 900x452pix, 44kb _ .ZOOM to 1350x678pix, 74kb) carrying it on her shoulder. –- For He's a Jolly Good Fellow and so Say All of Us (97x127cm; 598x797pix, 80kb _ .ZOOM to 897x1195pix, 95kb) –- A Westphalian Peasant Girl Feeding Chickens (1874, 84x60cm; 765x522pix, 25kb) –- The Little Laundress (1879, 45x35cm; 900x676pix, 72kb) yellowed and spotted, in need of restauration. –- With All my Heart (57x44cm; 765x591pix, 47kb) —(061112) |
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Died on 13 November 1903: Jacob
Camille Pissarro, French Pointillist
and Impressionist
painter specialized in landscapes,
born on 10 July 1830. — Father of Lucien
Pissarro. Studied under Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot. — Born to a Creole mother and a French father, Pissarro was sent to boarding school in Paris for five years. After eight years back in Saint Thomas and then Caracas, he returned to Paris in 1855 to study art, working first with Anton Melbye and then at the Académie Suisse where he met Monet, Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin [1841–1927], and Cézanne. Painting out-of-doors, he developed a personal style much influenced by Courbet and Corot [1796–1875] but with a distinct feeling for structure and contrasting tonal values in the landscape. He had his first painting accepted at the Salon of 1859, then joined with Cézanne, Manet (1832–1883), and others in the 1863 Salon des Refusés. The Salon des Refusés was an art exhibition held in Paris in 1863, set up by the government at the urging of the artists involved, as an exhibition of paintings that had been refused by the official annual Salon of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The show's major sensations were two paintings by Edouard Manet , each considered scandalous-- Déjeuner sur l'herbe, for portraying nude and clothed figures together in a scene of everyday life, and Olympia, for portraying a nude prostitute, whose form was not typical of those considered ideal. Other exhibitors were Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and James A. M. Whistler [1834-1903]. Pissarro fled to England during the FrancoPrussian War. Back in Paris, he was a guiding force behind the first impressionist exhibition in 1874 and participated in all seven subsequent group shows. His work gave way in the mid-eighties to a divisionist manner inspired by Seurat [1859–1891], but he returned to a looser, less "scientific" style in the early nineties, and his late serial paintings of cityscapes and harbors are among his greatest achievements. — Pissarro was born in St. Thomas, in the West Indies into the family of a merchant. His father was of French-Jewish origin, his mother was a Creole. First Camille started his career as a businessman, like his father, but his obsession with painting changed the direction of his life. In 1852 he got acquainted with the Danish painter F. Melbye and spent about two years with him in Caracas. In 1855, he came to Paris, where he was impressed by the landscapes of Corot. He painted in Paris and in its suburbs; in 1859, he was admitted to the Salon. In 1859-1861, he attended the Académie Suisse and formed friendships with Monet, Guillaumin and Cézanne. Approximately at the same time his liaison with Julie Vellay started; they would marry ten years later, in 1871; they had eight children; their two sons, Lucien Pissarro [1863-1944], and Georges Pissarro [1871-1961] would both become artists. Rejected by the Salon in 1861 and 1863, Pissarro showed at the “Salon des Refusés” in 1863. Though in 1864-1868 he exhibited at the Salon, his pictures were not popular with public, nobody bought them, and financial difficulties started. In 1866-1868, Pissarro lived and worked in Pontoise, painted landscapes in which he changed from Barbizon Realism of Corot to Impressionism; in 1869-1870 he moved to Louveciennes, where many of his paintings were destroyed by German troops during the occupation of Louveciennes in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. The artist at the time stayed with his family in London. Pissarro’s friend, the painter Daubigny, recommended him to the art dealer Durand-Ruel, who did much for promotion of the Impressionists’ works; he would organize Pissarro’s exhibitions in Paris (1883) and New York (1886). In 1872-1878, Pissarro stayed in Pontoise, working with Cézanne, on whom he exercised considerable influence. At this time his independent Impressionist style fully developed. Pissarro was the leader of the original Impressionists, and the only one to exhibit at all eight of the Group exhibitions in Paris from 1874 to 1886. In 1885, he met Signac and Seurat and for the next five years adopted their Divisionist/ Pointillist style. Pissarro’s interest in Socialism brought him some trouble: in 1894 he had to flee to Belgium from the French persecution of Anarchists, he had become an Anarchist in 1885. In 1896 and 1898, he painted views of the town and harbor of Rouen, remaining faithful to the early Impressionist style. In 1897-1903, he mainly painted views of Paris, also Dieppe and Le Havre. He died in Paris. — Pissarro was born to French Jewish parents on the West Indies island of St. Thomas. Sent to boarding school in France, he returned after six years to work in his parents' store. Pissarro abandoned this comfortable bourgeois existence at the age of twenty-two, when he left for Caracas with Danish painter Fritz Melbye, who became his first serious artistic influence. After returning briefly to St. Thomas, Pissarro left in 1855 for Paris, where he studied at various academic institutions (including the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Académie Suisse) and under a succession of masters (including Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, and Charles-François Daubigny). Corot is often considered Pissarro's most important early influence; Pissarro listed himself as Corot's student in the catalogues to the 1864 and 1865 Paris Salons. While Pissarro was accepted to show at the official Salon throughout the 1860s, in 1863 he participated with Edouard Manet, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and others in the historic Salon des Refusés. At the close of the decade, he moved to Louveciennes (near the Seine, twenty miles from Paris). Working in close proximity with Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, he began to revise his method of landscape painting, privileging the role of color in his expression of natural phenomena and employing smaller patches of paint. This artistic circle was dispersed by the Franco-Prussian War, which Pissarro fled by moving to London in 1870-71. There he met Paul Durand-Ruel, the Parisian dealer who would become an ardent supporter of Pissarro and his fellow Impressionists. Pissarro participated in his last official Salon in 1870. The years after Pissarro's return to France were seminal ones. He settled in Pontoise, where he received young artists seeking advice, including Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin. He took part in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. Pissarro — along with Edgar Degas, one of the Salon's most passionate critics — was the only artist to show at all eight of the Impressionist exhibitions, the last of which took place in 1886. Pissarro experienced somewhat of an artistic crisis in 1885. As he had done consistently throughout his career, he opened himself up to fresh influences by meeting with the younger generation, this time with Paul Signac and Georges Seurat, who were experimenting with a divisionist technique rooted in the scientific study of optics. Pissarro lived long enough to witness the start of the Impressionists' fame and influence. He was revered by the Post-Impressionists, including Cézanne and Gauguin, who both referred to him toward the end of their own careers as their master. In the last years of his life, Pissarro experienced eye trouble, which forced him to abandon outdoor painting. He continued to work in his studio until his death in Paris. — Born in Saint Thomas in the West Indies of a fairly affluent mercantile family, Pissarro was sent to Paris to complete his education. In 1855 he enrolled at the Academie Suisse, where he got to know Monet, and by frequenting the Café Guerbois he soon met the other Impressionist artists. Influenced by Corot, he exhibited at the Salon between 1864 and 1869, and at the Salon des Refuses in 1863. During the Franco-Prussian War he joined Monet in London where they met Durand-Ruel. Actively involved in the creation of the Societe Anonyme des Artistes, he took part in all the Impressionist exhibitions. Around 1865 Pissarro adopted a form of Pointillism, but he eventually reverted to his earlier style. His versatility extended to fan and porcelain painting, engraving and illustration. Politically a radical, he had a strong leaning towards the anarchistic beliefs that were causing alarm throughout Europe society at the time. Pissarro's impressionism has much of the sobriety of Sisley's but less reflective. He was the oldest member of the group, being two years older even than Edouard Manet. Everyone who knew Pissarro seems to have left some account of him, and by all these accounts his life and his character were a catalog of virtues — loyalty to his friends, wisdom as the father of a large family, courage in adversity, and patience, tolerance, honesty, and industry in all circumstances. Although Pissarro was intent upon capturing transient effects just as Monet was, he never abandoned the relative discipline of early impressionism, and for a while late in his career he joined the "neo-impressionists," who tried to solidify impressionism by systematizing its free prismatic shattering of light into a scientific application of color into minutely calculated dots. Pissarro soon abandoned this extreme, but that he was attracted to it at all shows his cautiousness in the use of impressionist effects. While Monet was pushing further into exploration of effects of light in air at the expense of form, Pissarro was retreating. The Market at Gisors is an effort to retain the atmospheric vibration of impressionism while at the same time imposing the discipline of well defined contours on forms monumentally arranged in space. More than any other member of the group, Pissarro encouraged younger men. At least three painters who were notoriously suspicious and thorny to deal with — Degas, Cézanne, and Gauguin — always retained a deep affection for him. Like Monet's and Sisley's, his financial situation was often desperate and at best difficult, but finally, at the age of sixty-two, he had the satisfaction of seeing his reputation established, not spectacularly but sound enough, in a large retrospective exhibition organized by Durand-Ruel. It was a gratifyingly happy ending to an admirable career. — LINKS –- Self-Portrait (1873, 55x46cm; 750x588pix, 53kb _ .ZOOM to 1125x882pix, 72kb _ ZOOM+ to 2486x2024pix, 419kb) –- Self-Portrait (1898; 600x518pix, 45kb _ .ZOOM to 1200x1036pix, 98kb _ ZOOM+ to 1464x1256pix, 161kb) — Self-Portrait (1903, 41x33cm; 750x588pix, 53kb _ ZOOM to 1560x1256pix, 266kb) –- Le Port de Dieppe(1902, 47x55cm) –- Bouquet de Fleurs (54x65cm) –- Place de l'Opéra en temps brumeux — Place du Théâtre Français, Paris: Pluie (1898, 74x91cm; 720x926pix _ ZOOM to 1784x2295pix, 3053kb) _ After a chronic eye infection limited the amount of time Camille Pissarro could spend outdoors, he began a series of views of Paris seen from hotel windows. Hoping to show the beauty of the bustling city, he painted this view down the Avenue de l'Opéra and other vistas at different hours and seasons, and under varying weather conditions. — La Récolte des Betteraves (1881, 26x38cm; 674x1000pix, 530kb _ ZOOM to 1011x1500pix, 1270kb _ ZOOM+ to 1661x2465pix, 2987kb) — Spring Pasture (60x74cm; 661x800pix, 164kb _ ZOOM to 1300x1575pix, 527kb) on a slope, with a woman walking a goat on a leash. — Le Pré aka Two Peasant Women in a Meadow (1893, 93x73cm; 1009x800pix, 250kb _ ZOOM to 1606x1273pix, 531kb) _ detail (1164x1757pix, 543kb) — Morning Sunlight on the Snow, Éragny-sur-Epte (1885, 82x61cm; 1075x800pix, 287kb _ ZOOM to 1658x1234pix, 565kb) — View from the Artist's Window, Éragny (1885, 54x65cm; 665x800pix, 181kb _ ZOOM to 1304x1570pix, 562kb) — Turkey Girl (1885, 81x65cm; 991x800pix, 215kb _ ZOOM to 1593x1285pix, 485kb) — Pontoise, the Road to Gisors in Winter (1873, 60x74cm; 648x800pix, 133kb _ ZOOM to 1288x1590pix, 431kb) — Poultry Market at Gisors (1885, 82x82cm; 796x800pix, 176kb _ ZOOM to 1427x1434pix, 435kb) — La Foire à Dieppe — Toits Rouges (46x48cm) — The Artist's Son, Félix (1881, 54x46cm; 600x499pix, 79kb _ ZOOM to 1509x1256pix, 300kb) he looks sad, perhaps because his long hair makes him look like a girl, but more probably because he is tired of having to sit still for so long. — Cézanne (1874, 73x60cm; 420x320pix, 30kb) _ Pissarro's influence profoundly changed the direction of Cézanne's art as they worked together at Pontoise in the early 1870s. In this portrait of Cézanne, a painting by Pissarro hangs at the lower right. Two political prints show the statesman Adolphe Thiers on the left and the painter Courbet on the right, famous men of the day who both seem to acknowledge Cézanne. The portrait is a tutor's affectionate testament of support and friendship for a brilliant protégé, and a humorous prediction that fame and glory would one day be his. — Quai Malaquais, Après-Midi Ensoleillée — Boulevard Montmartre de nuit — The Boieldieu Bridge to Rouen, Sunset — 45 ZOOMable images at Wikimedia — 848 images at the Athenaeum —(060709) |
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