ART “4”
“2”-DAY 11 September |
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Born on 11 September 1843: Georges
Jules Victor Clairin, French painter specialized in Orientalism,
who died on 02 September 1919. — Clairin was a student of Picot and of Pils. He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1861 and began exhibiting at the Salon of 1866. He executed decorative paintings for various public buildings in Paris and in the provinces, but is known primarily for his grand historical compositions, Symbolist themes and for the numerous works he exhibited of and for Sarah Bernhardt. Clairin became the favored portraitist of the actress, depicting her various roles in almost one hundred paintings, notably that of Ophelia, which Bernhardt brought to the stage in 1886. In 1901 an important exhibition at the Galerie Georges Petit was dedicated to Clairin. — Photo of a sculpture of Clairin's head. — LINKS — Elegant Figures Watching the Regatta (1889, 79x132cm) — The Sultan's Favorites (1875, 81x66cm) — Entering the Harem (1873, 90x61cm) — A Bride's Fantasy (57x141cm) — La Fête Fleurie (95x114cm) — On the Balcony (95x111cm) |
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Died on 11 September 1891: Théodule Augustin
Ribot, French Realist
painter of genre, portraits, still-lifes, and etcher, born on 05 August
1823. — Relative? of painter Germain Ribot [1845-1893] or 4-times premier
Alexandre Félix Joseph Ribot [07 February 1814 – 13 January
1923] or psychologist Théodule-Armand Ribot [18 December 1839 –
09 December 1916]? — Ribot, Théodule(-Augustin) (b Saint-Nicolas-d’Attez, 5 Aug 1823; d Colombes, 11 Sept 1891). French painter. After his father died in 1840 Ribot trained himself as an artist while working as a bookkeeper in Elbeuf, a small village near Rouen. In 1845 he married and moved to Paris, where he worked as a decorator of gilded frames for a mirror manufacturer and became a student in the studio of Auguste-Barthélémy Glaize. He painted architectural backgrounds for Glaize and made his own studies from the nude model. Around 1848 he went to Algeria, where he worked as a foreman. After his return to Paris in 1851 he practised a variety of trades to support himself, coloring lithographs, decorating window-shades, painting signs and making copies of paintings by Watteau for the American market. It was not until the late 1850s that he began to produce his own paintings, working on realistic subjects at night by lamplight. This circumstance inspired his interest in the chiaroscuro effects that were to characterize his later paintings. — Théodule Ribot first tried to study art at the trade school in Châlons, École des Arts et Métiers. When his father died in 1840, Ribot had to help support his family. He worked as a bookkeeper in Rouen, married early, and left for Paris in 1845. There he did various jobs, studied in the atelier of Auguste-Barthélémy Glaize (1807-1893), and, in 1848, went to Algeria to work as a foreman for three years. Back in Paris, he befriended the painter Bonvin, who held an exhibition of pictures by his friends in his studio in 1859. These artists, including Fantin-Latour, Alphonse Legros [1837-1911], Antoine Vollon [1833-1900], and J. A. M. Whistler [1834-1903], depicted ordinary subjects from their immediate environments without relying on narrative, and they generally used somber colors, limited illumination, and broader brushwork that contrasted with academic standards and methods. Their work elicited a positive response from Courbet, considered the father of realism in France. Ribot first exhibited at a Paris Salon in 1861, when his kitchen scenes won generally favorable reviews. To underscore a humble life-style for the artist, his early biographers claim that the dark, inky backgrounds of his pictures were the result of Ribot's painting by lamplight in his free evenings at home. He continued to depict working-class and peasant subjects in a style variously described as Dutch or Spanish by critics, and he participated in the Salons and provincial and international art exhibitions. Ribot was rejected from the 1859 Salon, as were A. Legros [1837-1911], Fantin-Latour [1836-1904], Whistler [1834-1903] ... all of them united in their admiration for Courbet and their allegiance to Realism, without however going the plein air way. Always interested in expanding exhibition opportunities for independent painters like himself, Ribot signed a petition in 1863 that decried the Salon jury's numerous rejections again that year and contributed to the official decision to hold the Salon des Refusés. Ribot sold his pictures through art galleries in Paris, such as those of Louis Martinet, Alfred Cadart, and Bernheim Jeune, and the French state bought his Saint Sébastien in 1865. In 1879-1880 a serious illness kept Ribot from painting, and his production fell off after this period. In 1884 his fellow artists, including Jules Bastien-Lepage [1848-1884], Boudin, Fantin-Latour, Monet, Puvis de Chavannes, and Auguste Rodin [1840-1917], held a banquet in his honor and gave him a medal inscribed "A Théodule Ribot, le peintre indépendant." It is ironic, then, that the year after his death a major retrospective exhibition was organized at the official art school, the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. — Le Garçon de Cuisine (39x25cm) _ détail — Le Troubadour (117x81cm) — La Petite Laitière (1865, 46x38cm) — A Girl Arranging A Vase Of Flowers (44x36cm) — Le Cuisinier aux Écrevisses (93x74cm) — La Conversation (56x46cm) — Le Cuisinier et le Chat (35x27cm) — Huîtres et citron (405x500pix, 38kb) auctioned for 18'958 on 15 Apr 2003 at Sotheby's, Amsterdam. — Huîtres et timbale (32x40cm; 281x354pix, 17kb) |
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Born on 11 September 1641: Gérard
de Lairesse,
Flemish Dutch Baroque
painter, etcher, and writer on art, who died on 28 July 1711. — Born in Liège, de Lairesse settled in Amsterdam in 1665, and moved to The Hague in 1684. He was the leading decorative painter in Holland in the second half of the 17th century, working in an academic classical style that inspired his over-enthusiastic contemporaries to call him 'the Dutch Raphael' and 'the Dutch Poussin'. In about 1690, however, he went blind and thereafter devoted himself to art theory. His lectures were collected in two books: Foundation of Drawing (1701) and the Great Painting Book (1707) - which were translated and much reprinted during the 18th century. Lairesse's writings reveal the same academic approach as his paintings he somewhat naïvely confessed that he had a preference for Rembrandt until he learned 'the infallible rules of art'. Rembrandt had painted a portrait of the young Lairesse in 1665, sympathetically showing his disease-disfigured face. — The students of de Lairesse included Jan van Mieris. — LINKS — Allegory of the Sciences (1683; 1600x883pix, 176kb) — Cleopatra's Banquet (1680; 1229x1600pix) — Selene and Endymion (1678; 1600x1070pix) — Allegory of the Freedom of Trade (1672; 907x891pix, 126kb) _ De Lairesse's large-scale historical, allegorical, and mythological paintings and grisailles, done in a style that is in accord with the precepts of classical art theory, won wide acclaim. He was called upon to decorate the ceilings and wall panels of numerous civic buildings, palaces, and stately homes. William III employed Lairesse at Soestdijk and The Hague. He can still be seen to good advantage at The Hague; his most famous work, a series of seven large paintings representing actual and mythological scenes from the ancient history of Rome, is at the Binnenhof there, and his allegorical ceiling celebrating Concord, Freedom of Trade, and Security, formerly installed in the home of a rich Amsterdam burgomaster, is now on view in the Peace Palace. One part of the ceiling, which comprised three sections, is illustrated here. — Allegory of the Five Senses (1668; 785x1030pix, 133kb) _ The senses are represented as women and children engaged in some typical activity and with attributes. Hearing is associated with music. Sight holds a mirror. Taste has a fruit and Smell a bunch of flowers. Touch has a bird perching on her raised hand. — Venus Presenting Weapons to Aeneas (162x166cm; 950x979pix, 97kb) _ The brilliant colors and dramatic lighting lend this fine baroque painting a peerless theatricality and pathos. — Joseph Se Fratribus Patefacit, Eosque Solatur et Patrem Accersit, Genes. Cap. XLV, from a group of Biblical illustrations (engraving 38x50cm) |
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Died on 11 September 1661: Jan Fyt,
(or Fijt), Flemish painter, draftsman, and etcher, who was baptized as an
infant on 15 June 1611. — [Make sure that when you are looking for
a Fyt, people don't misunderstand that you are looking for a fight.] — He was apprenticed in Antwerp in 1621–1622 to Hans van den Berch [Berghe] (not to be confused with Jan van den Bergh of Alkmaar) and probably completed his training under Frans Snyders. At one time he was an assistant to Peter Paul Rubens. In 1629–1930 Fyt became a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke, but he continued to work for Snyders until 1631. In 1633 and 1634 he was in Paris. He then went to Italy. In 1650 he joined the Antwerp Guild of Romanists (exclusive to those who had visited Rome), of which he became the dean in 1652. He apparently worked in Rome, where he joined the Schildersbent and was given the nickname ‘Goudvink’ (‘goldfinch’). In Venice, Fyt worked for the Sagredo and Contarini families. He is also thought to have visited Naples, Florence, Genoa, Spain, and London. By 05 September 1641 Fyt was back in Antwerp, where, apart from a brief trip to the northern Netherlands in 1642, he apparently remained for the rest of his career, except for a trip to Italy in the 1650s, where he painted a Self-portrait in Venice. Like Snyders, Fyt painted elaborate style of decorative still-life associated with the circle of Rubens. His most characteristic paintings depict trophies of the hunt, dead stags, hares, and birds, all treated with a feeling for texture and details akin to that often seen in Dutch still-life. The rare flower paintings by Fyt are exceptionally fine. Fyt was a student of his better known colleague Frans Snyders. In 1629 he became a free master in Antwerp, but he also lived in Paris and in Italy. His oeuvre had a major influence on Pieter Boel, who may well have been a fit student of Fyt. Fyt was a self-confident artist whose sophisticated and expensive work was, in his own words, purchased mainly by the high nobility. His art reflects a more general development towards an aristocratisation of social life. In the noticeable refinement of texture and color, Fyt's relationship to Snyders is similar to that of Anthony van Dyck to Peter Paul Rubens. In Rubens and Snyders robust, highly plastic forms dominate. Not averse to a certain degree of sentimentality, Van Dyck and Fyt seem to exchange this organic powerfulness for a fragile sensitivity. This leads to an art that will speak in particular to lovers of artistic nuance. — LINKS — Fruit and Game (1645, 74x110cm) — Hunting Still Life (1655, 101x134cm) — Big Dog, Dwarf and Boy (1652, 138x204cm; 629x945pix, 108kb) _ The figures were painted by Erasmus Quellinus [1607-1678]. — Bird Concert (135x186cm; 780x1108pix, 168kb) — Bittern and Ducks Startled by Dogs (138x172cm; 830x1046pix, 167kb) — Diana with Her Hunting Dogs beside Kill (79x116cm; 750x1120pix, 167kb) _ Game still-lifes were closely connected with kitchen scenes and pantry motifs, of which they were in many ways a special form. While the social context of a kitchen is not always obvious and may be either the household of the landed gentry or the merchant patrician classes, the majority of early, large-format game still-lifes reflected the interests and spheres of royalty and nobility. The hunt as an aristocratic privilege had only just began to emerge at the beginning of early modern times. Hunts were captured in the form of large-scale panoramic paintings. Also there were numerous glorified transpositions of real hunting scenes into mythological ones. This painting shows an example of this approach. _ detail (1100x767pix, 147kb) — Mushrooms (49x64cm; 770x1021pix, 138kb) _ The fact that this subtle still-life is known under the title Mushrooms is understandable given the prominent place taken by four boletus in the left foreground of the picture. This name fails, though, to do justice to the other elements that, precisely through their presence alongside the mushrooms, form an exceptionally balanced composition: to the left a wicker basket, to the right of it a melon, a root of celery and four thrushes, which, along with the warm, greenish brown coloring, appear to evoke autumn. It is not impossible that a reference to autumn is indeed woven into this jewel of a painting. But apart from the objects themselves there is no unambiguous reference to any symbolic, literary or allegorical significance. This may be precisely one of the charms of what is a fairly self enclosed painting for a modern viewer whose pictorial culture has been so strongly formed by the poetic cult of art for art's sake and form for form's sake, i.e. of "pure" art, which turns its back on any prosaic anecdotal intent. Or whose sensitivity for the refined play of surfaces and for carefully balanced color nuances and the objects that populate everyday life has since been whetted by contact with masters like Jean Siméon Chardin. — Still-life with Dog (77x112cm; 508x707pix, 72kb) — Still-Life (42x58cm; 651x893pix, 101kb) also with dog, a different one, who is looking sadly and perhaps hungrily a some dead partridges... wait, what is that on the left? A stack of about a dozen cigars? The dog does not seem interested in them. — Still-life with Fruits and Parrot (1640, 58x90cm; 540x868pix, 121kb) _ This painting is typical of the artist's rich color and technical brilliance. — Vase of Flowers (82x71cm; 1128x902pix, 101kb) _ Although the oeuvre of Jan Fyt covers the same themes as that of Snyders, and deals with them in a comparable manner, he does not really belong to the School of Rubens. Whereas Snyders' work is rich in glowing colors, Jan Fyt's coloration is darkened by deep shadows which give his paintings a cooler mood. He had a remarkably sensitive eye for the feel of things - rough or smooth - and the way light plays on them, conveying all this with great subtlety of brushwork and color. His Vase of Flowers shows surprising spontaneity, which gives this canvas a far more modern spirit than the work of his contemporaries. — Still Life of Game Birds and Hares, with a Cat Nearby (1660, 109x159cm; 736x1080pix, 90kb; — ZOOM to main detail 736x1080pix, 110kb _ ZOOM++ detail to 1104x1581pix, 213kb) _ Although Jan Fyt was a student of Frans Snyders, he made a significant contribution to the evolution of the game still life in seventeenth-century Netherlandish art. Fyt spent his entire career in Antwerp and tended to use a more somber palette than did Snyders with a greater sense of restraint in the treatment of motifs in each picture. This picture falls into the category of the "Hunting Piece," in which the results of the day's efforts are gathered together for contemplation. Such a conceit gave ample opportunity for a virtuoso display of composition, color and precise observation of surface and light effects. |
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Born on 11 September 1829: Thomas Hill,
US Hudson River School painter, specialized in the US West, who died on
01 July 1908. — Born in Birmingham, England. Died in Raymond, California Thomas Hill is famous for his portrayals of US mountain scenery. In 1853, he studied portraiture and still life painting at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. During the summer of 1854, Hill visited the White Mountains in New Hampshire, where he met and painted with several artists associated with the Hudson River School, a group of nineteenth-century US painters known for their romantic depictions of the US landscape. He traveled to Paris in1866 and 1867 to continue his still life painting studies, but his instructors encouraged him to develop his exceptional talent for landscape painting. Returning to the United States in 1867, Hill became a leading member of the Hudson River School. He was an avid painter of mountain landscapes, from the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. His landscapes reflect a deep understanding of nature through his precise, accurate, and rapidly executed compositions. In 1870, Hill settled in California, spending the winters in San Francisco and the summers in Yosemite Valley. Hill is often referred to as the “Artist of Yosemite”. He was extremely active in the local art community and assisted with the development of the California School of Design. Hill later moved his studio from San Francisco to Yosemite National Park. His most celebrated painting, The Driving of the Last Spike (1881), is a large image commemorating the completion of the Central-Pacific Railroad at Ogden, Utah in 1869. — The name of the painter Thomas Hill has long been linked with that of Yosemite Valley, California, his most frequent subject. When the artist was seventy, an art critic called him "The most ardent devotee at the shrine of Yosemite and the most faithful priest of the valley. His enormous Yosemite panoramas were purchased by many of the social and business leaders of San Francisco, and one of his landscapes won a bronze medal at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Born in England, Hill moved to Massachusetts with his family in 1844. He lived in Boston, Philadelphia, and Cambridge before moving to San Francisco in 1861. Hill first visited Yosemite Valley in 1862, a fact recently confirmed by the diary of a nineteenth-century touriSt. Following a visit to Europe in 1867 and a stay in Boston from 1868 to 1872, Hill made the San Francisco bay area his home, actively participating in the early artistic circles of the city and traveling frequently to Yosemite. In 1883, he established his first summer studio at Yosemite, and in 1886 he moved to Wawona, fifteen miles southwest of the valley, where he maintained a studio and residence the rest of his life. Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite depicts the Yosemite valley as seen from its western entrance. On the left is El Capitan, and on the right is Bridal Veil Falls. The formations named Sentinel Rock and Half Dome are faintly visible in the right background, as are the distant peaks of the High Sierra. This view of Yosemite is one Hill painted frequently, both in horizontal and vertical formats. The Native American encampment and the woman carrying a papoose in the foreground are elements he frequently included in his Yosemite landscapes to provide a focal point and a note of human interest. In romantic terms, the Native Americans add an element symbolic of wilderness, a suggestion of the way the valley looked before Anglo-Americans discovered it in 1851 and drove out the Southern Sierra Miwoks, the native inhabitants of the region. Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite is probably from the 1870s, when Hill painted several of his largest Yosemite panoramas for wealthy Californians. The painting's thick, impasto handling also relates it stylistically to other works of this period. An art critic of 1870 noted Hill's change from his earlier, sketchier style to the heavier technique seen here. "Thomas Hill," he wrote, "has ignored that free sketchy style in which he was so felicitous, and adopted the dry impasto mode of the French school. In the latter he is as yet a probationer; but time may ripen him into a master." It is unlikely that Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite was painted between 1884 and 1887, as it does not seem to be listed in the artist's business notebook from that period, and after 1890, Hill's style became freer and even less detailed than it appears here. Hill's business notebook from 1884-1887 explains a great deal about his working methods. Standard subjects are listed with titles like Morning in Yosemite Valley, and General View from Bridal Veil Meadow. The last is a reference to the type of view shown here. Clients even requested specific seasons and times of day, and Hill duly noted their preferences: "early morning," "mid-day spring time," and "sunset with lndians." According to the notebook, Hill's clientele came from around the world, although most hailed from San Francisco, the eastern and Midwestern United States, and England. Hill's most notable British clients and visitors included the Earl of Durham, the Honorable Evan Charteris, and Lord Henry Paulet. Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite, which found its way back to America from a collection in England, was very likely purchased by British tourists visiting California.5 Hill continued to paint Yosemite for the rest of his career, working in his studio at Wawona and spending the cold Sierra winters in nearby Raymond, California. — LINKS — Yosemite Valley (1900, 76x117cm; 910x1399pix, 735kb) — Emerald Lake Near Tahoe (1900, 45x85cm; 738x1400pix, 424kb) — View of Yosemite Valley (1871, 76x122cm; 863x1400pix, 536kb) — Fishing on the Merced River (1908, 91x137cm) — Encampment Surrounded by Mountains (1890, 67x95cm) — Mount Washington (1869, 91x152cm) — Yosemite Valley (1869, 92x152cm) — Grand Canyon of the Sierras, Yosemite (1871) — View of Lake Tahoe Looking Across Emerald Bay (1874) — California Game (1874) — Castle Craigs, California (1878) — The Muir Glacier in Alaska (1887) — Great Falls of the Yellowstone (1884) — Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite |
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