Showing posts with label Impressionism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Impressionism. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Georges Seurat Drawings & Studies in French Museums

Georges Seurat
Study of a Cast of the Ilisos from the Parthenon Pediment
ca. 1875
drawing
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat
Académie
1877
drawing
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat
Satyr (after Poussin) and other Figures
ca. 1879-80
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie, Besançon

Georges Seurat
Standing Woman
1881
drawing
(formerly owned by Pablo Picasso)
Musée Picasso, Paris

Georges Seurat
On the Road
ca. 1881-82
drawing
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat
The Black Bow
ca. 1882
drawing
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat
The Laborer
ca. 1882-83
drawing
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat
The Wall Painter
ca. 1882-83
drawing
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat
The Sleeper
ca. 1883
drawing
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat
Study for Bathers at Asnières
1883
oil on panel
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat
Pink Landscape
1886
oil on panel
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat
Model in Profile
1887
oil on panel
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat
Deathbed of Seurat's Aunt, Anaïs Faivre Haumonté
ca. 1887
drawing
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat
Corner of the Studio - The Stove
ca. 1887
drawing
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat
Scene on Stage
before 1891
drawing
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat
The Veil
before 1891
drawing
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

"A Parisian, Seurat studied briefly at the École des Beaux-Arts under Henri Lehmann, a pupil of Ingres, and always retained a classical sense of formal design.  But he was also drawn by Delacroix's exploration of colour and, though shocked by his first sight of Impressionism in 1879, responded to the use of separate colours and the broken, all-over texture of individual touches.  Yet he was also drawn to the art of Couture and of Puvis, and chose to immerse himself in colour theory and in the psychology of perception.  His first known paintings are small studies of landscapes in oils on wood, fresh in colour and light, and neat in design.  At the same time he invented a mode of drawing in black crayon on grainy paper that enabled him both to simplify forms and to realise them in fine variations of tone.  . . .  Seurat died aged 31, probably of diphtheria.  One wonders how he would have continued.  1892 saw memorial shows of his work in Paris and Brussels but wider recognition of its importance was slow in coming.  In 1900 his major paintings could still be acquired at knock-down prices and it was only in 1957 (Paris) and 1958 (Chicago and New York) that major retrospectives were dedicated to him.  An almost complete Seurat exhibition was shown in Paris (Grand Palais) and New York (Metropolitan) in 1991-2."

– Erika Langmuir and Norbert Lynton, Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists (2000)

Saturday, March 12, 2022

Caspar David Friedrich - Chalk Cliffs on the Island of Rügen

Caspar David Friedrich
Chalk Cliffs on the Island of Rügen
1818
oil on canvas
Kunst Museum Winterthur, Switzerland

Infinity through a Keyhole

When we walk on a beach, the sea resembles a vast plain, sometimes disturbed by waves or storms, yet essentially horizontal.  Finding ourselves on a cliff (or nowadays in a flying machine) the gaze longs to pierce that flat surface.  We guess at the depths it conceals.  If only we could plunge beneath it and search out the treasures submerged there. 

In Friedrich's painting we discover, as do the three persons shown, a view of the the sea through a natural gap.  The cliffs glow white on either side, with a fragment upraised in the center like a crystal stalagmite.  Above, the prospect is enclosed by two trees that resemble a triumphal arch.  They obscure the horizon of this level sea dotted with tiny sails whose destination is indeterminable.  The viewer has a sense of floating high above. 

Looking at Backs

Friedrich's protagonists are turned away from us.   Their perspective on the scene is also ours.  The woman at left looks toward the standing man at right who leans against a tree trunk and stares down on the moving boats.  The third member of the group, bending low to the ground, appears to be a botanist.  Three ranges of vision: medium-distance, long-distance, close-up.  All three ask to be combined, none should be ignored, despite the vertigo this is bound to induce. 

Unrecognized Forerunner

By his choice of subjects and his palette, Friedrich anticipated the Impressionists, in the same way and at the same time that Turner did – yet the Impressionists themselves, while familier with the British master were unaware of the German, solely for reasons of cultural politics.  After France's 1871 defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Germany came to be regarded as barbaric, artistically barren, shrouded in Wagnerian mists.  Renoir's predilection for violet-colored shadows, for example, could have come direct from Friedrich, though in fact it didn't.  

The overall thematic tone of the Rügen picture is profoundly Romantic, with its longing to wander, its craving for some great beyond, for a vague dream of infinity, and its ruminative undertone of mortality.  In his many evocations of ruins and tombs, Friedrich allied himself with earlier Dutch landscapists like Ruisdael.  

Caspar David Friedrich
Chalk Cliffs on the Island of Rügen (detail)
1818
oil on canvas
Kunst Museum Winterthur, Switzerland

To Look is To Meditate

These persons who grant us none of their attention, who lose themselves in contemplation of the fading day or the tiny boats, are meant, of course, as our own representatives.  Friedrich is determined to confront the night – and face up to ruins – while striving to perceive some glimmer of light that might flash into revelation.  He means for us to seize any fugitive glow that emerges from the gathering shadows, and so prolong our reflections on life and on death.  

– translated and adapted from Le Musée imaginaire de Michel Butor: 105 œuvres décisives de la peinture occidentale (Paris: Flammarion, 2019) 

Monday, January 31, 2022

French People Disporting Themselves Outdoors

Gustave Caillebotte
Les Périssoires
1878
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes

Édouard Manet
Argenteuil
1874
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tournai

Eugène Boudin
Beach at Trouville
1865
oil on cardboard
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Edgar Degas
Seaside Riders
ca. 1860
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Edgar Degas
The Parade
ca. 1866-68
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Théodore Géricault
Start of the Horse Race
ca. 1820-23
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Marie Laurencin
The Amazon
1923
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Camille Pissarro
Haymaking at Éragny
1892
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Camille Pissarro
Woman Bathing her Feet in a Brook
1894-95
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Ferdinand de Puigaudeau
Le Calvaire de Rochefort en Terre
ca. 1895
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Morlaix

Ker-Xavier Roussel
The Terrace
ca. 1892
oil on panel
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Hubert Robert
Laundresses
1792
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Jean-Antoine Watteau
Le Pèlerinage à l'île de Cythère
1717
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Antoine Watteau
Le Pèlerinage à l'île de Cythère (detail)
1717
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Antoine Watteau
Le Pèlerinage à l'île de Cythère (detail)
1717
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

The Beast in the Space

Shut up. Shut up. There's nobody here.
If you think you hear somebody knocking
On the other side of the words, pay
No attention. It will be only
The great creature that thumps its tail
On silence on the other side.
If you do not even hear that
I'll give the beast a quick skelp
And through Art you'll hear it yelp. 

The beast that lives on silence takes
Its bite out of either side.
It pads and sniffs between us. Now
It comes and laps my meaning up.
Call it over. Call it across
This curious, necessary space.
Get off, you terrible inhabiter 
Of silence. I'll not have it. Get
Away to whoever it is will have you. 

He's gone and if he's gone to you
That's fair enough. For on this side
Of the words it's late. The heavy moth
Bangs on the pane. The whole house
Is sleeping and I remember
I am not here, only the space
I sent the terrible beast across.
Watch. He bites. Listen gently
To any song he snorts or growls
And give him food. He means neither
Well or ill towards you. Above
All, shut up. Give him your love. 

– W.S. Graham (1967)

Graham composed this poem twenty years before he died.  What he contrived was that it would ripen into the future (instead of fading, as the larger share of the world's work appears doomed to do).  This particular poem claims an increasing rather than a diminishing level of vitality because seemingly only just now, when a new reader finds it, has it reached the maturity of meaning which its maker foresaw for it, but could not entirely bestow on it while he remained alive.  Graham's precedent here, and possible inspiration, is Keats –

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb, 
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm'd – see here it is
I hold it towards you –

Sunday, January 30, 2022

French Portrait Painters Producing Workaday Likenesses

Suzanne Valadon
Portrait of Lily Walton
1923
oil on canvas
Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago

Édouard Vuillard
Madame Vuillard in profile
ca. 1888
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Portrait of Jeanne Wenz
1886
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Édouard Manet
Portrait of Georges Clemenceau
1879-80
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Camille Pissarro
Portrait of Paul Cézanne
1874
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Paul Cézanne
The Lawyer (Uncle Dominique)
1866
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Louis Jacquesson de la Chevreuse
Portrait of my sister, Amynthe
1865
oil on canvas
Musée du Vieux Toulouse

François-Joseph Navez
Portrait of painter Jacques-Louis David
1817
oil on canvas
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Jean-Louis Laneuville
Portrait of Louis-François Bertin
1796-97
oil on canvas
Vallée aux Loups, Châtenay-Malabry, Hauts-de-Seine

Jean-Laurent Mosnier
Portrait of a Young Gentleman
ca. 1790-95
oil on canvas
Holburne Museum, Bath

Anonymous French Artist
Portrait of a Woman
18th century
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Portrait of sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Younger
1772
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Hilaire Pader
Portrait of Jean de Bernuy
1664
oil on canvas
Château de Merville

Nicolas Mignard
Portrait of Scipion du Roure
1658
oil on canvas
private collection

attributed to Mathieu Le Nain
Portrait of a Youth
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Dear Bryan Wynter

1

This is only a note
To say how sorry I am
You died. You will realize
What a position it puts
Me in. I couldn't really
Have died for you if so
I were inclined. The carn
Foxglove here on the wall
Outside your first house
Leans with me standing
In the Zennor wind.

Anyhow how are things?
Are you still somewhere
With your long legs
And twitching smile under
Your blue hat walking
Across a place? Or am
I greedy to make you up
Again out of memory?
Are you there at all?
I would like to think
You were all right
And not worried about
Monica and the children
And not unhappy or bored.


2

Speaking to you and not
Knowing if you are there
Is not too difficult.
My words are used to that.
Do you want anything?
Where shall I send something?
Rice-wine, meanders, paintings
By your contemporaries?
Or shall I send a kind
Of news of no time
Leaning against the wall
Outside your old house.

The house and the whole moor
Is flying in the mist.


3

I am up. I've washed
The front of my face
And here I stand looking
Out over the top
Half of my bedroom window.
There almost as far
As I can see I see
St Buryan's church tower. 
An inch to the left, behind
That dark rise of woods,
Is where you used to lurk.


4

This is only a note 
To say I am aware
You are not here. I find
It difficult to go
Beside Housman's star
Lit fences without you.
And nobody will laugh
At my jokes like you.


5

Bryan, I would be obliged
If you would scout things out
For me. Although I am not
Just ready to start out.
I am trying to be better,
Which will make you smile
Under your blue hat.

I know I make a symbol 
Of the foxglove on the wall.
It is because it knows you. 

– W.S. Graham (1975)

Saturday, January 29, 2022

French Portrait Painters Fulfilling Fashionable Commissions

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of Monsieur de Noirmont
ca. 1700
oil on canvas
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon

Noël-Nicolas Coypel
Portrait of Madame de Bourbon-Conti as Venus
1731
oil on canvas
John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida

Nicolas Lancret
Portrait of actor Charles-François Racot de Grandval
ca. 1742
oil on canvas
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Jean-Bernard Restout
Young Woman with a Guitar
1768
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Portrait of the Prince of Nassau
ca. 1770
oil on canvas
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Anicet-Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier
Portrait of Louis XVI
ca. 1785
oil on canvas
Musée de la Légion d'Honneur, Paris

Jacques-Louis David
Portrait of Madame Raymond de Verninac
1798-99
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Le Chevalier de Chateaubourg
(Charles-Joseph de la Celle)
Miniature Portrait of Sophie Piper
1799
gouache on ivory
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Antoine-Jean Gros
Portrait of Joachim Murat, King of Naples
ca. 1812
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Portrait of Madame Moitessier
1856
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Henri Fantin-Latour
Portrait of Madame Lerolle
1882
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Berthe Morisot
Woman on a Sofa
ca. 1885
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

François Flameng
Portrait of Lady Duveen née Salamon
1910
oil on canvas
Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston upon Hull

Édouard Vuillard
Portrait of Princess Elizabeth Bibesco née Asquith
ca. 1920
oil on canvas
Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil

Edmund Dulac
Portrait of Elizabeth Allhusen
1922
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston upon Hull

Sequestrienne

Don't look at me
for answers. Who am I but
a sobriquet, 
a teeth-grinder,
grinder of color,
and vanishing point?

There was a time
of middle distance, unforgettable,
a sort of lace-cut
flame-green filament
to ravish my
skin-tight eyes.

I take that back –
it was forgettable but not
entirely if you
consider my
heavenly bodies . . .
I loved them so.

Heaven's motes sift
to salt-white – paint is ground
to silence; and I,
I am bound, unquiet,
a shade of blue
in the studio.

If it isn't too late
let me waste one day away
from my history.
Let me see without
looking inside 
at broken glass.

– Dorothea Tanning (2002)