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ART “4”
“2”-DAY 31 August |
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Died on 31 August 1762: conte
Pietro Antonio Rotari, Italian painter and printmaker born
on 30 September 1707. {other sources say 20 September, probably a typo;
or 04 October, probably the date of his baptism}. — Born in Verona, Rotari studied drawing under Robert van Auden Aerd, and then under Antonio Balestra. Rotari studied in Venice, then in Rome under Francesco Trevisani, and went Naples to work at the studio of Francesco Solimena. He went back in Verona in 1734, where he opened his own private academy in which he began to produce historical and religious paintings which would bring him local and international fame. He left in 1754 for Vienna, and then Dresden at the invitation of Frederick Augustus III of Poland. In Dresden he received the invitation of the Empress Elizabeth of Russia, daughter of Peter the Great, to come to St. Petersburg as First Painter of the Court. It was in St. Petersburg, from 1756 onwards, that Rotari was to perfect that genre to which his name, like that of Greuze, is linked: small canvases of idealized heads which depict with subtlety and seeming artlessness, the expressions and emotions of adolescent children. He died in St. Petersburg. — Pietro Antonio Rotari was born in Verona, the son of a distinguished local physician and scientist. He received drawing lessons as a child from the Flemish engraver, Robert Van Auden-Aerdt, and from an early age produced etchings, mostly of sacred themes. He was apprenticed to the Veronese painter Antonio Balestra, who greatly influenced his early style of history painting, from 1723 to 1725. In 1726 he went to Venice to study the city's old master and contemporary paintings, in particular the works of Piazzetta [1683-1754] and Tiepolo [1696-1770]. From 1727 to 1731 Rotari lived in Rome under the aegis of a Veronese canon, Francesco Biancolini, and studied under Francesco Trevisani [1656-1746]. Rotari's local reputation was established when a painting of his was sent from Rome to the Accademia Filarmonica in Verona in 1728 and was praised by the noted scholar and author, Francesco Scipione Maffei. Rotari interrupted his Roman sojourn in 1729 to visit Naples, where he studied the works of Francesco Solimena and other artists attached to the Bourbon court of Ferdinand IV. In 1734 Rotari returned to his native Verona, and in the following year opened a private academy of painting. Rotari forged these eclectic influences into a style that brought him modest success with commissions for churches and palaces in Bergamo, Brescia, Casale Monferrato, Guastalla, Padua, Reggio Emilia, Rovigo, Udine, Verdara, and Verona. At the same time he received numerous commissions from Italian patrons as diverse as Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, the Palatine elector Karl Theodor, and Queen Louise Ulrike of Sweden. On 07 February 1749, Rotari, in recognition of his merit as a painter, was given the title of "Conte dal Senato Veneto" by the Venetian Republic. In 1750 Rotari moved to Vienna to work for Empress Maria Theresa, producing mythological and religious paintings and portraits of the nobility. There he saw the work of Jean-Etienne Liotard, and his own paintings began to reveal the clear, cold colors, porcelain surfaces, and smooth handling associated with the Swiss artist's oils and pastels. About 1752-1753 Rotari was summoned to Dresden by King Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. There he painted devotional works and portraits of members of the Saxon court. He developed there the genre upon which his fame rests: elegant and idealized bust- and half-length studies of attractive young women in ethnic or regional dress exhibiting a broad range of expressions such as melancholy, surprise, joy, and languor. In 1755 Empress Elizabeth of Russia invited Rotari to St. Petersburg and the following year appointed him court painter. He spent the remainder of his life working in the city and its environs for the Imperial family and for the Russian aristocracy. He produced, together with assistants, hundreds of so-called character heads, bust-length images of young woman displaying superficial psychological and emotional states. Rotari is historically important as one of the main representatives of a group of Italian artists who worked in Germany, Poland, and Russia, spreading a sort of international rococo style whose Italian origin is often hardly recognizable. He instituted at St. Petersburg a private academy of painting, and his most important Russian students were the painters Alexei Petrovich Antropov and Feodor Stepanovich Rokotov. Rotari died at the Imperial court at St. Petersburg. — LINKS — A Shy Woman with Black Lace Head Scarf, Green Coat Trimmed with White Fur (45x35cm) [holding up a hand under coat thus shyly hiding half of lower face, with a Mona Lisa half~smile] — Ekaterina Petrovna Holstein-Beck, Later Princess Bariatinsky (56x45cm; 852x1031pix, 72kb) — A Woman with Red Coat with Fur Trim, Blue Hat, White Blouse (45x35cm; 1068x856pix, 92kb) _ zoom in on face (1079x856 pix, 121kb) — Girl Writing a Love Letter (1755, 85x69cm; 880x860pix, 86kb) _ main detail (1080x860pix, 142kb) _ Pietro Rotari exemplified the type of highly successful, itinerant artist of the eighteenth century who traveled to wealthy patrons. He created many genre portraits, including images of pretty young girls smiling, frowning, dozing and casting coquettish glances. Rotari's cool palette, smooth brushwork and graceful reserve made him one of the most pleasing artists of the eighteenth century. Viewing this young woman writing a love letter from close up, we are invited to experience the cozy sensation of her daydream, which is presumably about her boy friend. — A Woman with Blue Scarf and Striped Shawl (45x35cm; 1077x820pix, 129kb) — A Woman with Gold Jacket, Fur Hat with Gold Tassel (45x35cm; 1081x840pix, 121kb) — A Woman with Green Vest, White Blouse and Red Choker (45x35cm; 1079x804pix, 93kb) — A Woman with Plaid Scarf with Lace Trim, Red Vest & White Blouse (45x35cm; 1081x820pix, 124kb) — Saint Sebastian, after Antonio Balestra (1725 etching, 13x17cm) — Sleeping Girl (106x84cm; 950x753pix, 111kb) _ The young woman is asleep sitting, with an open book in her right hand. A young man is about to tickle her face with an ear of wheat. |
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Died on 31 August 1955: Willi
Baumeister, Stuttgart German writer and abstract painter
born on 22 January 1889. |
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Died on 31 August 1709: padre Andrea
Pozzo (or Puteus), Italian Baroque
era painter born on 30 November 1642. — Andrea Pozzo was an extraordinarily versatile artist, an architect, decorator, painter, art theoretician, one of the most significant figures of Baroque Gesamtkunst. He entered the Jesuit order at an early age, and his artistic activity is also related to the order's enormous artistic enterprises. His masterpiece, the decoration of Rome's Jesuit churches Il Gesu and San Ignazio, determined for several generations the style of internal decoration of Late Baroque churches in almost all Europe. His fresco in San Ignazio, with its perspective, space~enlarging illusory architecture and with the apparition of the heavenly assembly whirling above, offered an example which was copied in several Italian, Austrian and German churches of the Jesuit order. Pozzo even published his artistic ideas in a noted theoretical work entitled Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum (1693) illustrated with engravings. On the invitation of Emperor Leopold I, in 1704 be moved to Vienna, where he worked for the sovereign, the court, Prince Johann Adam von Liechtenstein, various religious orders and churches. Some of his tasks were of a decorative, occasional character (church and theatre scenery), and these were soon destroyed. His most significant surviving work in Vienna is the monumental ceiling fresco of Liechtenstein Palace, The Triumph of Hercules, which, according to the sources, was very admired by contemporaries. Some of his Viennese altarpieces have also survived. His compositions of altarpieces and illusory ceiling frescoes had many followers in Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and even in Poland. — LINKS — The Apotheose of S. Ignazio (1689, ceiling fresco) _ detail: The Continents 1 _ detail: The Continents 2 _ This spectacular composition is almost an inventory of Baroque architectural ceilings and their final triumph. According to Jesuit ideas, the space within a church was a single area in which the faithful congregated. In S. Ignazio space is stretched (Pozzo was clever at the illusion of "doubling" the perspective of the real architecture) before exploding into light and glory. Saints, angels, allegories, and floating clouds accentuate the virtuoso effect. The impression is one of exuberance and freedom. In reality, it was worked out using scientific criteria. Designed to be viewed from a point in the centre of the nave, which is marked by a white stone, Padre Pozzo's ceiling produces the illusion of a palace opening on the sky. — Saint Francis Xavier (1701, 235x137cm) _ After the liberation of Hungary from the Turkish occupation, the church of Our Lady in Buda Castle passed into the ownership of the Society of Jesus. Their annals referred as early as 1701 to a "new and elegant" altarpiece of St. Francis Xavier, while a minute record from 1710 also describes the subject of the picture and its great artistic value. In this latter notice it is also mentioned that the altarpiece was painted by the greatly loved member of the order, the highly gifted Andrea Pozzo. The note about this brilliant and versatile Baroque artist (he was a painter, drawer, aquarellist, architectural designer, as well as an art theoretician), written in the year following his death, should be taken as fully authentic. It is inspired by the pleasure the Jesuits of Buda felt with the possession of at least one work of art from his splendid oeuvre. The picture represents one of the most glorious successes of St. Francis Xavier as a Jesuit missionary in India: the very moment of his baptizing Queen Neachile of India, an eminent member of the royal family, giving her the name Isabella. Until then the Queen, a devout adherent of the ancient Indian religion, had been a most stubborn enemy of the Christian faith, so her conversion was regarded as a singular achievement of Christian missionary work in the Far East. In Pozzo's oeuvre there are also some other variations on the same theme. In the Buda altarpiece the main figures of the scene are brought into relief by a monumental shaping; the modelling of light and shadow lays emphasis on the moment of administering the sacrament. The balance of the composition is given by a kneeling boy who holds a baptismal bowl in his hands, a figure entirely absent in the other variations. — Ange gardien (1694, 173x122cm). |
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Died on 31 August 1963: Georges Braque,
French Fauvist,
then Cubist
painter, sculptor, printmaker, illustrator, born on 13 May 1882. — His most important contribution to the history of art was his role in the development of what became known as Cubism. In this, Braque’s work is intertwined with that of his collaborator Pablo Picasso, especially from 1908 to 1912. For a long time it was impossible to distinguish their respective contributions to Cubism, for example in the development of collage, while Picasso’s fame and notoriety overshadowed the quiet life of Braque. —Braque spent his youth at Le Havre where he became an apprentice house painter and attended night classes in drawing; he then moved to Paris. His early paintings (1907) were in the Fauve style but he soon came under the influence of Cézanne. This led to a close friendship with Picasso and subsequently to the development of Cubism. The paintings of the two artists for the next years (1910~1914) were often quite similar. After serving in World War I, Braque returned to a less austere kind of Cubism. Toward 1920 the lingering geometric traits of Braque's Cubism began to be softened by elaborations of brushwork and looser drawing. Though he ocassionally did figure paintings, especially of ancient Greek subjects, and a few small landscapes of the Norman Coast, his best work was in still~life, particularly his paintings of the 1920s and 1930s. During World War II Braque's health suffered but there was still-life in him and he managed to paint many large canvases, somewhat looser in execution than his previous work. Braque also made prints, color lithographs, plaster reliefs, a few small sculptures and jewelry. In the 1950s he worked with the theme of birds in flight. After World War II his paintings became more colorful and impressionistic. — One cannot speak of the Fauvist and Cubist movements in twentieth-century art without uttering the name of Georges Braque. Often seen as merely supplementing the project so loudly engaged by Picasso, Braque was in fact a crucial thinker of the modern aesthetics that influenced the work of Picasso and others. An examination of his life is at once a biographical investigation and an historical survey of the avant-garde. Georges Braque was born in Argenteuil, France, one of the centers of the Impressionist movement in the later half of the nineteenth century. Both his father and grandfather owned a prosperous house-painting business, and the young Braque would travel along on assignments, already gaining an awareness of the integral relationship between paint and space. At 15, after the family had relocated to nearby Le Havre, Georges enrolled in an evening course at the local academy of fine arts. This time spent after school, as well as on the job, pushed Braque to get an apprenticeship in house painting and interior decoration at the age of 17. From Le Havre, he moved to Paris and began a lifelong exploration of color and space, searching for the most beautiful combination of the two. In 1902, after a year of military service and with the financial support of his family, Braque made the decision to become an "artist." This meant enrolling first in a private art academy in Paris and then attending the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts. He spent two more years as an official student of art, regularly attending the Louvre for inspiration (mostly Egyptian and Greek classical sculpture) and exploring the different approaches to color and form used by the Impressionists and the post-Impressionists. 1905, however, was a turning point in Braque’s career. At Paris’s Salon d’Automne exhibition, he witnessed for the first time the wildly explosive color of the aptly self-titled Fauves. Braque rapidly took as his own this style that seemed to privilege arbitrariness and violent display. During the next two years, Braque relocated several times, each time imbuing his new locale (be it Antwerp or the Mediterranean coast) with representations exploding in color. His confidence in style can best be seen in coastal works like The Port of La Ciotat and View from the Hôtel Mistral, L’Estaque. Upon his return to Paris in 1907, Braque found himself a commercial success. His exhibition at the Paris Salon des Indépendants generated sales for much of his work and attracted a prominent dealer, Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler’s small gallery in Paris would, with Braque’s work always displayed prominently, shape the evolution of the modern aesthetic. And it was through Kahnweiler that Braque met Pablo Picasso. After exchanging a few superficial remarks about painting, Braque, nary seven months Picasso’s junior, expressed severe criticism of the master’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Braque is remembered as declaring, “In spite of your explanations, your painting looks as if you wanted to make us eat tow, or drink gasoline and spit fire.” It was exactly this kind of critical honesty from an artistic peer that the young Picasso craved, and the two formed one of the tightest, most influential relationships in the history of art. Braque and Picasso worked together for years, feverishly trading ideas back and forth. This tight collaboration produced hundreds of works almost indistinguishable from one another, making it difficult to determine whether Picasso or Braque initiated this revolutionary movement. We can surmise from stylistics, however, that Picasso probably give birth to the groundbreaking and liberating idea, while Braque provided the movement with its geometrical tendencies (see Houses at L’Estaque). By the middle of 1908, the style was crystallized. During one of Braque’s shows at Kahnweiler’s gallery, the esteemed Paris critic Louis Vauxcelles commented on the performance of the "cubes". Cubism was officially born. By 1911, Braque’s style had become more hermetic and used complicated, analytical notions to explode the flat image outward. Man with a Guitar, exemplary of the period, combines the flat, pictorial space with multiple viewpoints and light sources, creating numerous simultaneously overlapping images. In 1912, after courting his wife-to-be, Marcelle, Braque began a lengthy experiment in collage and overlay, using three pieces of wallpaper to extend his drawing Fruit Dish and Glass into three-dimensional space. In 1914, Braque entered the war as an infantry sergeant and was decorated twice for his bravery in the field. However, he suffered a serious head wound the year after, and was sent to a convalescent home at Sourges. Without much energy to paint or sculpt, Braque began recording the main aphorisms he thought of when he was painting. Some examples of these aphorisms include: “Il faut se contenter de découvrir, mais se garder d'expliquer.” "L'ombre intérieure revêt la plupart des formes naturelles des objets qui sont la sphère, le cône, le cylindre". "Je cherche à rendre la perspective uniquement par la couleur". "Je pense en formes et en couleurs". "Travailler sur la nature c'est improviser", "J'aime la règle qui corrige l'émotion", "Les senses déforment, l'esprit forme." These and many other sayings were collected by his friend Pierre Reverdy and published as Pensées et Réflections sur la Peinture. After several years of convalescence, the artist rejoined the increasingly popular Cubist movement. His companions were enveloped in the "synthetic phase" in which more color and larger shapes were employed. With the spirit of a rediscovery, Braque joined them, painting such works as Woman Musician and Still Life with Playing Cards. In 1922, Braque relocated to an exquisite house on Paris’s left bank and allowed his notoriety to find most of his commissions. These included stage designs for the ballets of Russian composer Sergey Diaghilev. In addition, Braque did many works on canvas, though at this point the subject matter was almost wholly devoted to the still life (see his cheminées). By 1931, Braque had devoted almost all his energy to a new medium: white drawings reminiscent of the ancient Greek works he so loved as a youth. Braque’s later works, especially after the Second World War, often cope with the need for cubist study; first billiard tables, then studio interiors, then lastly grotesque birds. While his later pieces never had the critical appeal of the older works, Braque nonetheless spent his last years as an honored member of French society, with his cubist works given numerous showings around the world. In 1961, he became the first living artist to have his works exhibited in the Louvre. Braque died away as a rich and famous artist, a position only his friend Picasso could rightly understand. — LINKS — Port en Normandie v(1909, 96x96cm; 939x916pix, 157kb) — Paysage de l'Estaque (1906, 61x50cm; 576x700pix, kb) — Maisons à l'Estaque (1908, 73x60cm; 1040x835pix, 119kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1135pix) — Le Viaduct de l'Estaque (1908, 65x81cm; 842x1058pix, 660kb _ ZOOM to 1805x2268pix, 3140kb) _ Between 1906 and 1910, Georges Braque made several trips to the south of France and the port at L'Estaque, just west of Marseilles. There, he found the new landscapes to paint using the nonnaturalistic colors of the Fauves. During his 1907 stay, Braque also became influenced by the art of Paul Cézanne, who had painted there earlier. Like Cézanne, Braque reduced the site to simple geometric forms. Moving beyond Cézanne's solid masses, however, Braque made the tilting planes obey his own laws, rather than nature's. Two years after finishing this picture, Braque abandoned Fauvism for Cubism. — Viaduct à l'Estaque (1908, 72x59cm; 1028x819pix, 156kb) _ same subject as above, different painting. — Château de la Roche~Guyon (1909, 92x73cm; 1070x809pix, 147kb) — Anvers c(1042x1280pix, 150kb) — Le Violoniste v(oval 1072x753pix, 151kb) — Le Portugais aka L'émigrant v(1912, 117x81cm; 1206x824pix, 149kb) — Absinthe (oval 640x527pix, 77kb) — Poissons Noirs (1942, 33x55cm; 600x968pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2259pix) — Nature Morte: le Jour (1929; 138kb) — Le Chaudron (701x413pix _ ZOOM to 1361x802pix) — Nature Morte Avec Bananes (1924, 32x65cm; 1/3 size, 58kb _ ZOOM to 2/3 size, 195kb) — Job (1911 drypoint and etching 14x20cm; 3/4 size) _ apparently not a biblical character but perhaps help wanted ads. — Deux Citrons (1962 color lithograph, 22x35cm; half~size, 39kb _ ZOOM to full size, 166kb) — Doris (etching from Hesiode: La Théogonie, 1930, 37x30cm; 2/5 size, 60kb _ ZOOM to 4/5 size, 211kb) — L'Oiseau blanc (1961 color lithograph, 36x29cm; 2/5 size, 47kb _ ZOOM to 4/5 size, 168kb) — Fenêtres: Oiseaux Gris (1962 color woodcut, 46x71cm; 1/4 size, 50kb, more than enough to appreciate in all detail _ but, if you want to see for yourself that bigger is not better, ZOOM to half~size, 192kb _ or even ZOOM++ to full size) — Oiseau de passage (1962 color etching, 59x41cm; quarter~size, 48kb _ ZOOM to half~size, 182kb _ ZOOM++ to full size, 739kb) — Fruit Dish t(1912; 1000x809pix, 178kb) — Woman at the Mirror t(1945; 960x740pix, 59kb) — Grand Nude t(1000x723pix, 146kb) — Barques à l'Ancre b(1930; 559x967pix _ ZOOM not recommended to blurry and patterned 1305x2257pix) |
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