Calendar page for September from the British Library

Labor of the month from Book of Hours of the Use of Saint-Omer.

"The base of the first page includes the labour of the month: a peasant wielding a flail, a tool used in threshing wheat. Wheat threshing involved hitting the wheat so that the edible grain would separate from the inedible husk. The wheat was then bundled up, and we can see our thresher has several neat bundles stacked outside his miniature gothic structure. " 

Further information about the Calendar from http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2017/01/a-calendar-for-january-2017.html

For many parts of the country, the weather is cooling down and kids are getting ready to go back to school, after enjoying the Labor Day Holiday. San Francisco is moving into what we call our "Indian Summer" when the temperatures soar into the 90's and inland into the tripple digits. Nobody in SF has air conditioning so it's going to be very, very hot.

Scorpio in all his multi legged glory. 

Fully Digitized version: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_36684

http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2017/08/a-calendar-page-for-september-2017.html

On this day. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

August 29, 1780. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (29 August 1780 - 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres's portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest legacy. In this image: The Envoys of Agamemnon, 1801, oil on canvas, École des Beaux Arts, Paris.

Ingres was influenced by past artistic traditions, and in his career assumed the role of a guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style, exemplified by Eugène Delacroix. His expressive distortions of form and space make him an important precursor of modern art, whose work influenced Picasso and Matisse and other modernists.

Born into a modest family in Montauban, he travelled to Paris to study in the studio of David. In 1802 he made his Salon debut, and won the Prix de Rome for his painting The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles. By the time he departed in 1806 for his residency in Rome, his style—revealing his close study of Italian and Flemish Renaissance masters—was fully developed, and would change little for the rest of his life.

Baronne de Rothschild, (1848), Rothschild Collection, Paris

The Turkish Bath (1862–63), The Louvre

 
In 1811 Ingres completed his final student exercise, the immense Jupiter and Thetis, a scene from the Iliad of Homer: the goddess of the Sea, Thetis, pleads with Zeus to act in favor of her son Achilles.
 

The Source (1856), Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Ingres continued to submit works to the Salon in Paris, hoping to make his breakthrough there. In 1819 he sent his reclining nude, La Grande Odalisque. The critics had a field day criticising her anatomy.

While working in Rome and subsequently Florence from 1806 to 1824, he regularly sent paintings to the Paris Salon, where they were faulted by critics who found his style bizarre and archaic. He received few commissions during this period for the history paintings he aspired to paint, but was able to support himself and his wife as a portrait painter and draughtsman.
 
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/romanticism/romanticism-in-france/a/ingres-la-grande-odalisque

Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne, 1806, oil on canvas, 260 x 163 cm, Musée de l'Armée, Paris

His commission to paint Napoleon as Emperor received a very chilly critical reception. So Ingres continued to live and study in Italy.

This work, The Vow of Louis XIII (1824), Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Montauban finally brought him success. He had a long and productive career, ending as Director of the French Academy in Rome. More at . . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Auguste-Dominique_Ingres

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/artist/jean-auguste-dominique-ingres/

His influence on later artists was immense - from Degas to Picasso and Matisse.  Matisse described him as the first painter "to use pure colours, outlining them without distorting them."

French painting from 1774-1830, the age of revolution: http://cdm16028.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15324coll10/id/201214

Today's birthday. Edward Burne-Jones

The Beguiling of Merlin, 1874

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet ARA (28 August 1833 – 17 June 1898) was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. Burne-Jones was closely involved in the rejuvenation of the tradition of stained glass art in Britain. . .

King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, 1884, currently in the Tate Gallery, London.

Burne-Jones's early paintings show the heavy inspiration of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but by the 1860s Burne-Jones was discovering his own artistic "voice". In 1877, he was persuaded to show eight oil paintings at the Grosvenor Gallery (a new rival to the Royal Academy). These included The Beguiling of Merlin. The timing was right, and he was taken up as a herald and star of the new Aesthetic Movement.

Burne-Jones' The last sleep of Arthur at Museo de Arte de Ponce, Ponce, Puerto Rico

Illuminated manuscript of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by William Morris, illustrated by Burne-Jones with a variant of Love Among the Ruins, 1870s


One of his last works: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/victorian-art-architecture/pre-raphaelites/a/burne-jones-hope


. . . long before 1933, Burne-Jones was hopelessly out-of-fashion in the art world, much of which soon preferred the major trends in Modern art, and the exhibit marking the 100th anniversary of his birth was a sad affair, poorly attended.[37] It was not until the mid-1970s that his work began to be re-assessed and once again acclaimed. Penelope Fitzgerald published a biography of him in 1975, her first book.[ A major exhibit in 1989 at the Barbican Art Gallery, London (in book form as: John Christian, The Last Romantics, 1989), traced Burne-Jones's influence on the next generation of artists, and another at Tate Britain in 1997 explored the links between British Aestheticism and Symbolism.

A second lavish centenary exhibit – this time marking the 100th anniversary of Burne-Jones's death – was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1998, before traveling to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Fiona MacCarthy, in a review of Burne-Jones's legacy, notes that he was "a painter who, while quintessentially Victorian, leads us forward to the psychological and sexual introspection of the early twentieth century"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Burne-Jones

Review of the last Pre Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones, Fiona MacCarthy’s “last” Pre-Raphaelite, might just be the most maddeningly elusive artist Britain has ever produced. He was a painter of the imagination, of the might-have-been, of the never-was, all dreamy maidens and sleeping beauties. And yet he was also a painter born into the Industrial Revolution, in 1833 in Birmingham, who thoroughly internalised a Victorian ethos of hard work and sense of moral purpose, whose prodigious output belied his somewhat wispy appearance. His character was equally fluid: he was a charmer who often seemed to be mentally absent, a practical joker of hyper-developed sensibility. How is this man with the booming laugh, the stagy spirituality and the depressive tendencies to be understood?

Art : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Edward_Burne-Jones
Images from Wikimedia

Another week, more art destroyed by the careless and clueless

  Every week, seems like another piece of art is destroyed by the inattentive and clueless (from Apollo Magazine):

Artworks, beware! Last week, a visitor to the Yves Klein exhibition at the BOZAR in Brussels was paying such close attention – to the surrounding exhibits – that they accidentally trod on an iteration of the artist’s Dry Blue Pigment. The work in question consists of a wooden frame placed on the floor and filled with sand dyed in Klein’s signature International Klein Blue. The blue sand was scattered across the gallery floor and one bemused visitor captured the scene for posterity…

Fortunately for all involved, the work uses new pigment and sand every time it is displayed and the museum conservators were able to repair it before the day was out. ‘It’s not the same as damage to a “unique piece”,’ a spokeswoman for BOZAR told the Art Newspaper. 

No such luck for a unique piece of heritage at Prittlewell Priory in Essex, where an 800-year-old sandstone coffin was knocked off its stand and broken earlier this month. The coffin, which was discovered in the grounds of the priory in 1921, is thought to be the last surviving example of its kind. The Guardian reports that the accident occurred after tourists used it as a prop for a bizarre photo shoot – and left without telling staff about the damage. The culprits were caught on CCTV, bending over the security barriers to lower a small child into the casket. As the conservator responsible for repairing the sarcophagus says: ‘You can put all the risk assessments in place but you really don’t expect people to try to get into the artefacts.’

On this day. Rufino Tamayo

August 26, 1899. Rufino Tamayo (August 26, 1899* - June 24, 1991) was a Mexican painter of Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico. Tamayo was active in the mid-20th century in Mexico and New York, painting figurative abstraction with surrealist influences. In this image: Rufino Tamayo's painting "Sandias" or "Watermelons'' is seen in this undated picture. Mexico put out an international alert Sunday, Jan. 31, 1999 for 12 paintings that were stolen from an exhibition last week, including "Sandias" by one of Mexico's most famous painters. The paintings, on loan from private art collectors in Mexico, the United States and Europe, were part of a 43-canvas show the gallery organized to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Tamayo's birth. (*Wikipedia says August 25).

http://cheznamastenancy.blogspot.com/2016/08/happy-birthday-rufino-tamayo.html

Born today. Lavinia Fontina

Self-Portrait at the Clavichord with a Servant, c. 1577

Lavinia Fontana was born in Bologna, the daughter of the painter Prospero Fontana, who was a prominent painter of the School of Bologna at the time and served as her teacher. Continuing the family business was typical at the time.She is regarded as the first woman artist, working within the same sphere as her male counterparts, outside a court or convent. and was the first woman artist to paint female nudes, and was the main breadwinner of a family of 13.

Portrait of Antonietta Gonzalez

https://www.wikiart.org/en/lavinia-fontana/portrait-of-antonietta-gonzalez-1595

Her earliest known work, "Monkey Child", was painted in 1575 at the age of 23. Though this work is now lost, another early painting, Christ with the Symbols of the Passion, painted in 1576, is now in the El Paso Museum of Art.

Portrait of a Lady with a Lap Dog

 She would go on to paint in a variety of genres. Early in her career, she was most famous for painting upper-class residents of her native Bologna, notably noblewomen. Even as her gender may have hindered her career in a society less accustomed to female artists, it may have made women more comfortable sitting for her.

Bianca degli Utili Maselli and six of her children

 Her relationships with female clients were often unusually warm; multiple women who sat for portraits painted by Fontana, such as the Duchess of Sora Constanza Sforza Boncompagni, later served as namesakes or godmothers for her children.She began her commercial practice by painting small devotional paintings on copper, which had popular appeal as papal and diplomatic gifts, given the value and lustre of the metal.

Lavinia Fontana, Minerva Dressing, 1613, Oil on canvas, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

 In addition to portraits (the typical subject matter for women painters^, she later created large scale paintings with religious and mythological themes which sometimes included female nudes. Fontana married Paolo Zappi (alternately spelled Paolo Fappi) in 1577. She gave birth to 11 children, though only 3 outlived her. After marriage, Fontana continued to paint to support her family. Zappi took care of the household and served as painting assistant to his wife, including painting minor elements of paintings like draperies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavinia_Fontana

Women in the arts: https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/lavinia-fontana

Images from WikiArts

Winesberg, Ohio

Today's free book from Amazon is a classic novel by Sherwood Anderson.

Winesburg, Ohio (full title: Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small-Town Life) is a 1919 short story cycle by the American author Sherwood Anderson. The work is structured around the life of protagonist George Willard, from the time he was a child to his growing independence and ultimate abandonment of Winesburg as a young man. It is set in the fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio (not to be confused with the actual Winesburg), which is based loosely on the author's childhood memories of Clyde, Ohio.

Mostly written from late 1915 to early 1916, with a few stories completed closer to publication, they were "...conceived as complementary parts of a whole, centered in the background of a single community."  The book consists of twenty-two stories, with the first story, "The Book of the Grotesque", serving as an introduction. Each of the stories shares a specific character's past and present struggle to overcome the loneliness and isolation that seems to permeate the town. Stylistically, because of its emphasis on the psychological insights of characters over plot, and plain-spoken prose, Winesburg, Ohio is known as one of the earliest works of Modernist literature.

Winesburg, Ohio was received well by critics despite some reservations about its moral tone and unconventional storytelling. Though its reputation waned in the 1930s, it has since rebounded and is now considered one of the most influential portraits of pre-industrial small-town life in the United States.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MF0ZVHK

Born on this day in 1872. Aubrey Beardsley

Ali Baba (Cover design for "The Forty Thieves")

Illustrator and author Aubrey Beardsley was born on this day in 1872. A leader of the Aesthetic movement, His work influenced the opulent style of Art Nouveau in the early 20th century,

Inspired by the style of Japanese woodcuts which were becoming known in the West, his work emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic, although as a life long sufferer of TB, his decadence was solely in his imagination. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A. McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant, despite the brevity of his career before his early death from tuberculosis. In six short years, he had broken though Victorian rules of illustration which emphasized the pretty and the prissy and introduced a revolutionary look which combined a sensuous line with eroticism and humor.

In her terrific 1968 treatise Black and White: A Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley (public library), British novelist, critic, music scholar, and social reformer Brigid Brophy calls Beardsley “the most intensely and electrically erotic artist in the world” and “perhaps the only artist of any kind practicing in [that period] who was never sentimental.” She writes:

Live (love) now: die sooner or later.

That, classically, is the purport of lyrical art. Aubrey Beardsley was above all a lyrical artist — but one who was pounded and buckled into an ironist by the pressure of knowing, which he did virtually from the outset, that for him death would be not later but sooner.

A scholar of Mozart and an astute cross-pollinator of the arts, Brophy — a lyrical genius herself — writes:

Beardsley is lyrical by virtue of his gift of line, which resembles the gift of melodic invention. Sheerly, Beardsley’s lines, like great tunes, go up and down in beautiful places… A Beardsley sequence is like a sonnet sequence. Yet it is never the literary content of an image that concerns him. His portraits, including those of himself, are less portraits than icons. He is drawing not persons but personages; he is dramatizing not the relationships beween personalities but the pure, geometric essence of relationship. He is out to capture sheer tension: tension contained within, and summed up by, his always ambivalent images.

In 1892, Beardsley travelled to Paris, where he discovered the poster art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and the Parisian fashion for Japanese prints, both of which would be major influences on his own style. Beardsley's first commission was Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory (1893), which he illustrated for the publishing house J. M. Dent and Company. Illustrations from Le More d'Arthur: http://artpassions.net/beardsley/beardsley.html

The Peacock Skirt

The dancer's reward. Salome.

The toilette of Salome, illustration to the tragedy 'Salome'; female figure sitting in profile to right before a dressing table, head turned to left, maid standing beside her and attending to her hair. 1893 Pen and black ink.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aubrey-Beardsley

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Beardsley

New Yorker: The faith behind his art.

Images from Wikipedia

Today's birthday: Gustave Caillebotte

August 19, 1848. Gustave Caillebotte (19 August 1848 - 21 February 1894) was a French painter, member and patron of the group of artists known as Impressionists, though he painted in a much more realistic manner than many other artists in the group. Caillebotte was noted for his early interest in photography as an art form. In this image: An employee looks at a painting 'Oarsmen' of 1877 of French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) in the Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany, Thursday, June 26, 2008

Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877. Art Institute of Chicago

Even up to the 1950s, Gustave Caillebotte was relatively unknown despite achieving much in Paris during the reign of the Impressionists. Like many of his fellow avant-garde artists, he was fascinated by the impact of industrialization and modernization on the city of Paris and its inhabitants. While he is classified as an Impressionist, the paintings that are considered by most to be his masterpieces actually fall more into the category of Realism, like the work of his predecessors, Millet and Courbet, and even Degas or Monet's earlier work. Individual paintings in his oeuvre frequently feature the distinctive, loose brushwork and lighter palette of the Impressionist style, but the paintings for which he is best known are large-scale, precise "evocations of photographic naturalism," as one contemporary critic put it, although at the time the comment was meant to be taken pejoratively. Ultimately, what he had most in common with his Impressionist colleagues was his choice of subject matter: he depicted themes from everyday life rather than those favored by formally trained, academic painters. More at ...

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-caillebotte-gustave.htm

In his masterpiece, "Paris Street; Rainy Day," (see above),  Gustave Caillebotte brought an unusual monumentality and compositional control to a typical Impressionist subject, the new boulevards that were changing the Paris cityscape. The result is at once real and contrived, casual and choreographed. With its curiously detached figures, the canvas depicts the anonymity that the boulevards seemed to create. By the time it appeared in the third Impressionist exhibition, held in April 1877, the artist was 29 years old, a man of considerable wealth, and not only the youngest but also the most active member of the Impressionist group. He contributed six of his own canvases to the exhibition; played a leading part in its funding, organization, promotion, and installation; and lent a number of paintings by his colleagues that he owned.  From My Blog in 2014: http://cheznamastenancy.blogspot.com/2014/08/gustave-caillebotte.html

Yellow Roses in a Vase, 1882, Dallas Museum of Art

 

Les raboteurs de parquet (1875), a controversial realist subject, Musée d’Orsay

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-caillebotte-gustave.htm

Painter’s Eye. LA Times http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-caillebotte-20150712-story.html

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/gustave-caillebotte-artist-patron-610757

Fearless Female Friday: Aethelflaed (Æthelflæd). Ruler of Mercia people in the English Midlands, Military leader.

Royal MS 14 B VI http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=royal_ms_14_b_vi_f001r edited close up (image 2)

Queens Aethelswitha and Aethelflaed, In The Cartulary And Customs Of Abingdon Abbey (edited close up)

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/illmanus/cottmanucoll/q/largeimage75052.html

Queens Aethelswitha and Aethelflaed, In The Cartulary And Customs Of Abingdon Abbey (edited close up)

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/illmanus/cottmanucoll/q/largeimage75052.html

Fearless Female Friday: Aethelflaed (Æthelflæd). Ruler of Mercia people in the English Midlands, Military leader.

Born around 870, Aethelflaed was the eldest child of Alfred the Great and Ealhswith (member of ruling family of Mercia) as well as, sister of Edward "the Elder," King of Wessex. In 886, Aethelflaed married Aethelred (Lord of Merica) having one child Aelfwyn (Ælfwynn). In 911, Aethelred was killed in battle against the Danes. Upon Aethelred's death, Aethelflaed became the political and military ruler of the Mercians and received the title, Lady of the Mercians (Myrcna hlædige).

Aethelflaed took an active military role, she built fortresses in western Mercia as a defense against invading and occupying Danes. She also led her forces against the Danes at Derby and captured it in 917, she then took Leicester in 918, without any opposition. The Danes then submitted to her rule and offered their allegiance as protection against Norwegians in Ireland.

Aethelflaed died on June 12, 918, and was succeeded by her daughter Aelfwyn. However, her uncle Edward, who already controlled Wessex, hoped to solidify his control over most of England. He seized the kingdom away from Aelfwyn, taking her captive, leading to a rebellion by the Mercian and Welsh peoples.

https://www.facebook.com/acmrs.org/posts/10155700945350719?pnref=story

What the so called "alt left" was doing in Charlottesville.

On Tuesday, after a weekend that included a white supremacist mowing down and killing a peaceful counter-protester in Charlottesville and Nazis marching on the University of Virginia with torches, the president of the United States stood in front of the American people and said, “What about the ‘alt-left’ that came charging at, as you say, the ‘alt-right’? Let me ask you this: What about the fact they came charging—that they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do.”

  Dahlia Lithwick

 

Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate, and hosts the podcast Amicus.

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There were, as it turns out, a great number of Charlottesville locals present to witness the violence and lawlessness on display in this town—my town—last weekend. I asked local witnesses, many in the faith community, every one of whom was on the streets of Charlottesville on Saturday, whether there was a violent, club-wielding mob threatening the good people on team Nazi. Here’s what I heard back:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/08/what_the_alt_left_was_actually_doing_in_charlottesville.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top

Francesco Albani

August 16, 1578. Francesco Albani or Albano (17 March or 17 August 1578 - 4 October 1660) was an Italian Baroque painter. Albani never acquired the monumentality or tenebrism that was quaking the contemporary world of painters, and in fact, is derided often for his lyric, cherubim-filled sweetness, which often has not yet shaken the mannerist elegance. While Albani's thematic would have appealed to Poussin, he lacked the Frenchman's muscular drama. His style sometimes appears to befit the decorative Rococo more than of his time. In this image: Baptism of Christ ca 1640 (State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. )

Francesco Albani: Holy Family with Angels, 1608-10
Photograph by Sharon Mollerus, Creative Commons licensed

Spring (Venus at her Toilet)1616-17. Oil on canvas, diameter 154 cm
Galleria Borghese, Rome. Web Gallery of Art

Looks like he was born on the 17th day although the month is not clear

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Albani

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/albani_francesco.html

https://www.virtualuffizi.com/francesco-albani.html

2017 SECA Awards at SFMOMA

Liam Everett,Untitled, 2016. Photo courtes the artist and the Altman Siegel Gallery, SF

Since 1967, SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) has honored over seventy Bay Area artists with the SECA Art Award, which includes an exhibition at SFMOMA and inclusion in the accompanying catalogue. Recipients of the SECA Art Award, typically four per award year, are chosen during a ten-month process involving artists, SECA members, museum staff, and members of the local arts community. The exhibition is jointly curated by Jenny Gheith, assistant curator of painting and sculpture, and Erin O’Toole, Baker Street Foundation Associate Curator of Photography.     

Alicia McCarthy, Untitled, 2015, photo the artist and Jack Hanley gallery, SF

Sean McFarland, Untitled, 2016, photo: Courtesy the artis and Casemore Kirkeby Gallery, SF

K.r.m.Mooney, Accord, A Chord 1, 2016, courtesy the artist, Reserve Ames, and Altman Siegel Gallery, SF 

 

 

Lindsey White, Studio 8, 2016, photo. Courtesy the artist

 
The 2017 SECA Art Award exhibition, the first to be held in the new SFMOMA, features five Bay Area artists in their first major museum presentations. Liam Everett, Alicia McCarthy, Sean McFarland, K.r.m. Mooney and Lindsey White join the ranks of those who have received the award since 1967.

“The 2017 SECA Art Award exhibition is the first to take place in the museum in over five years, and the scale and profile of the exhibition has expanded along with the museum,” said O’Toole. “We are excited that a broader audience will be exposed to the work of the best contemporary artists working in the Bay Area today,” continued Gheith. 
 
The exhibition is being held in the temporary exhibition galleries on the museum’s fourth floor, and each artist has a dedicated gallery." Liam Everett’s paintings reveal traces of their making, evidence of deliberate and repetitive actions focused on movement and materials. In her intricately patterned compositions, Alicia McCarthy transforms surfaces into bursts of line and vibrant color. Using made and found photographs, Sean McFarland reckons with the challenges of representing the landscape. K.r.m. Mooney incorporates natural, industrial and hand-crafted elements in sculptures that explore the relationships between bodies and objects. In her most recent work, Lindsey White takes humor seriously, making photographs and sculptures inspired by stage performers such as comedians and magicians."

At SFMOMA. Through September 17, 2017. Images courtesy of SFMOMA

Saturday grab bag: World Elephant Day, Peter de Grebber, Incline Gallery, Basquiat

Peter de Grebber ( 1600- 1652) Another Dutch Golden Age painter whose actual date of birth is unknown. As did many artists in this era, he came from an artistic family. His father was a painter and embroiderer in Haarlem, Holland and the brother of the painters Maria and Albert.

In 1618, father and son went to Antwerp and negotiated with Peter Paul Rubens over the sale of his painting "Daniel in the lions pit". It was then handed - via the English ambassador in the Republic, Sir Dudley Carleton - to king Charles I. Pieter got important commissions not only in Haarlem, but also from the stadholder Frederik Hendrik. As such, he worked on the decoration of the Huis Honselaarsdijk in Naaldwijk and at the Paleis Noordeinde in Huis ten Bosch in the Hague. He painted altar pieces for churches in Flanders and hidden Catholic churches in the Republic. He may also have worked for Danish clients.

Pieter remained single and lived from 1634 until his death at the Haarlem Béguinage.

Besides history paintings, Pieter de Grebber also painted a number of portraits; furthermore many drawings and a few etchings by him have survived. From different influences, such as the Utrecht Caravaggistism, Rubens and also Rembrandt, he came up with a very personal style. He was, together with Salomon de Bray, the forerunner and first peak of the "Haarlem classicism" school, producing paintings characterized by a well-organized clarity and light tints.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_de_Grebber 

  

Vermeer and the Delft School which has information on Grebber 

Overview at Pubhist

  

On #WorldElephantDay we say a big thank you to all of the men & women who serve on the #frontline everyday to protect these majestic animals

World Elephant Day on Twitter

The Guardian. Our Moral duty to care for nature.

The Atlantic. Since 2011, August 12 has been set aside as World Elephant Day. Supported by numerous conservation agencies, it’s a day to “spread awareness, share knowledge, and provide solutions for better care and management of both captive and wild elephants,” according to the organizer’s website. Elephants face numerous challenges, including poaching, habitat loss, exploitation, abuse, and proximity to human conflict and poverty. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists African elephants as “vulnerable” and Asian elephants as “endangered.”

From Chris Packhan:

#WorldElephantDay I #StandWithSTAE @stae_elephants calling for protection of Asia’s endangered #elephants and an end to unethical tourism.

Incline Gallery: Incline Gallery presents NFS, an exhibition where artists have been invited to create works directly on and around the walls of the gallery. Over the course of six weeks 10 Bay Area artists will transform the space through an evolving exhibition of murals and mixed media installations. Visitors will be able to view finished works and works in process from July 20th through August 11th. People are encouraged to visit throughout the exhibition to see these artists pieces unfold directly on the walls. Scheduled gallery hours are Saturdays and Sundays 1-5pm.

"I don’t listen to what art critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is."

August 12, 1988. Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 - August 12, 1988) was an American artist. He began as an obscure graffiti artist in New York City in the late 1970s and evolved into an acclaimed Neo-expressionist and Primitivist painter by the 1980s. In this image: A gallery assistant poses with US artist Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Warrior" at Sotheby's auction house in central London on June 14, 2012. AFP PHOTO / LEON NEAL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Michel_Basquiat