Bringing in the sheaves in August

 

Bringing in the sheaves in August Bodleian Library MS. Auct. D. 2. 6; c. 1140; England; f.5r ...@BDLSS

August is the month for reaping the wheat & gathering the sheaves.

#medievalcalendar

BL Lansdowne 383; the 'Shaftesbury Psalter'; 12th century; England; f.6v 

@BLMedieval

Women artists born on this day: Judith Leyster, Beatrix Potter

 

Judith Leyster was born #OnThisDay in Haarlem in 1609. She was one of the few professional women painters of the Dutch Golden Age

Self portrait

Her painting, 'A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel', was probably intended as both delightful entertainment and a warning: https://bit.ly/2W10ydH

Beatrix Potter was born #OnThisDay in 1866. She drew these charming illustrations for her 1909 book ‘The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies’.

Read more about her life and view an online gallery here: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/animals/beatrix-potter-flopsy-bunnies-and-british-museum

Bess of Hardwick and Hardwick Hall

 

The fearful symmetry of Hardwick Hall, Bess of Hardwick's great Derbyshire house, designed for her by Robert Smythson in the 1590s. Amazing structure. Just a wall of windows: you can hardly even find the door! Today is Bess's day.

Born into a respectable but poor family, Bess is an example of marrying up and up and up.. Bess left home at the age of 12 to serve at nearby Codnor Castle, and by the age of 15 she had married Robert Barlow, heir to a neighboring gentry family. He was only 13, and died the following year.

The teenaged Bess moved on probably to become a lady-in-waiting to Frances Grey, mother of Lady Jane Grey, which brought her into the top echelons of Tudor society. While serving there she met and married the twice-widowed Sir William Cavendish. Twenty years older than Bess, he had amassed a fortune under the Tudors, and in 1549 the couple were able – on Bess’s advice – to buy the Chatsworth estate in Derbyshire. 

The marriage was happy and resulted in eight children. But in 1557 Bess, still only 30, was widowed again. Faced with Cavendish’s debts she soon remarried: her third husband was the elderly and rich William St Loe, the captain of Elizabeth I’s guard. He died in 1565, leaving most of his estate to Bess. By now wealthy enough to live independently, Bess nonetheless chose to marry yet again. Husband number four was George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, and one of the richest and most powerful men in the country.

For song & games the Eglantine Table, 1568, resides in one bay of Bess's High Great Chamber.

Great chamber of a woman who took marrying a millionaire to the ultimate : throne, tapestry, & A++ plasterwork w/ wild animals paying tribute to the goddess Diana. For Bess of Hardwick, who was born July 27 in 1527.

Another wall hanging chez Bess, starring Lucretia and featuring an allegory of Chastity. Of course! This was Elizabethan England!

The very long Long Gallery at Hardwick Hall. Stroll down it & admire the portraits of the many important friends, relatives, & Bess' guests 

Queen Elizabeth who ended up not being pleased with Bess

Mary Queen of Scots. 

But the marriage soon ran into trouble. One source of strain was created when in 1568 Queen Elizabeth made Shrewsbury the custodian of Mary, Queen of Scots, after her forced abdication. Outwardly prestigious, the task proved both onerous and hideously expensive, and was to continue for 15 years. Mary was shuttled between Shrewsbury’s many houses, a drain on his and Bess’s resources and patience. 

Shrewsbury was also enraged when Bess damaged relations with the queen by secretly engineering a marriage between her own daughter Elizabeth and Charles Stuart, whose heirs had a claim to the English throne. He also resented the time and money Bess was devoting to remodeling Chatsworth on a palatial scale.  Then on 18 November 1590, when the Old Hall was still incomplete, Shrewsbury died, leaving Bess with an even larger income than she had already. A widow for the fourth and last time, Bess was now in her early sixties, staggeringly rich, and – with two large building projects already behind her – she still had an insatiable enthusiasm for building. Now she had the means to start a new project – and this time one that she could begin from scratch, not compromised by the need to extend an existing house.

The temptation proved irresistible. Almost immediately, Bess began planning an even grander house at Hardwick, just yards from the unfinished Old Hall.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/discover-the-hall-at-hardwick-

heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/women-in-history/bess-of-hardwick/

https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/bess-of-hardwick-schemer-social-climber-scourge-of-elizabeth-i/

Today's birthday. Alfons Maria Mucha , the king of Art Nouveau

 

Today's birthday. Alfons Maria Mucha , the king of Art Nouveau

July 24, 2017. Alfons Maria Mucha (24 July 1860 - 14 July 1939), known in English as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist, known best for his distinct style. He produced many paintings, illustrations, advertisements, postcards, and designs. In this image: The "Slav Epic", a cycle of 20 allegories tracing the history of the Slavic people and inspired in part by mythology, by Art Nouveau Czech artist Alfons Mucha, at the National Gallery in Prague."The Slav Epic" by Alfons Mucha, a Czech Art Nouveau gem, went on display in Prague, fulfilling the wish of the artist who spent 18 years on the series of paintings from 1910 to 1928.

The rising tide of fascism during the late 1930s resulted in Mucha's works and his Slavic nationalism being denounced in the press as ‘reactionary.'   Mucha’s Slav nationalism and Jewish roots made him a primary target of the Gestapo during Nazi occupation.

When German troops moved into Czechoslovakia during the spring of 1939, Mucha was among the first persons to be arrested by the Gestapo. During his interrogation, the aging artist became ill with pneumonia. Though released eventually, he may have been weakened by this event. He died in Prague on 14 July 1939, due to lung infection, and was interred there in the Vyšehrad cemetery. 

Savonnerie de Bagnolet, 1897

Biscuits LeFèvre-Utile

Byzantine Heads: Brunette (wikipedia)

Mucha's The Slav Epic cycle No.2: The Celebration of Svantovít (1912) from Wikipedia

Mucha's The Slav Epic cycle No.20: The Apotheosis of the Slavs, Slavs for Humanity (1926). from Wikipedia

Four Seasons

An introduction to the Works of Mucha (Public Domain) http://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/praguepage/muchalecture.htm

Mucha Foundation: http://www.muchafoundation.org

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

Gallery of his work: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Alfons_Mucha

Degas and the ballet

The fundamentals of ballet haven’t changed all that much since its invention in 15th-century Italy. Yet the popular image of this deeply traditional medium has been largely defined by the talents of one thoroughly modern artist: 

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas

.

The coteries of young women in flowering tutus who populate the approximately 1,500 paintings, monotypes, and drawings Degas dedicated to the ballet are among the French artist’s most universally beloved artworks. At first glance, Degas has rendered the sort of pretty, innocent world one might associate with a 6-year-old’s first recital. These works actually speak to an insidious culture that would be shocking to contemporary audiences.

Although it enjoyed unprecedented popularity in Degas’s era, the ballet—and the figure of the ballerina—had suffered a demoralizing fate by the late 1800s. Performances had been reduced to tawdry interludes in operas, the spectacle serving as an enticing respite for concertgoers, who could ogle the dancers’ uncovered legs. 

"I want to look through a keyhole" Degas is supposed to have said. His paintings are clinically detached from the romantic image of ballet. His dancers stretch, strain, scratch their backs. all worked over and over sometimes with a crusty layer of pigment. 

Degas's contemporaries saw something more in his work. Daniel Halevy described it as a "depoetization" of life, a fascination with the simplest, most intimate, least beautiful gestures--ballerinas stretching at the bar, practicing positions, waiting in the wings, taking instruction, scratching themselves, tying their shoes, adjusting their tutus, rubbing sore muscles, fixing their hair, fanning, talking, flirting, daydreaming, and doing almost everything but dancing.

"People call me the painter of dancing girls," Degas later told Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard. "It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes."

Before you break into a chorus of "I'm so pretty," take another look at Degas' obsession with the ballet.  He created hundreds of paintings and sculptures which captured the harsh realities of 19th-century dancers’ lives and hinged on his voyeuristic fascination with the pain ballet inflicted on female bodies. 

The little dancer, age 14. 1880, The sculpture was cast in bronze (some 28 are now known to exist) only after his death in 1917, at age 83.

In the 19th century, ballet was an accompaniment to the opera which was staged, in Paris, within a glittering, opulent building, a stage for the rich and famous to come and view each other and the wares for sale. If anybody has read Nana, they will know exactly how women had to present themselves as part of the goods. But before the women reached the stage, they performed in the dance foyer. A private room that admitted them and those (abonnes) who were eying the "goods" as it were, for sale. Tickets to the foyer were held by "men who held the reins of power." (Ivor Guest. Ballet of the 2nd Empire). By disclosing what most could not see, by using his access to portray a world only accessible to men of privilege,  Degas gave the viewer a feeling of power.  

Nevertheless, they worked hard for their money and an accomplished dancer, one who had passed the various levels of training, could 600 francs a year. If she captured the eye of the right man, she could aspire to more. 

Dancers, 1884-1885

In this pastel, Degas revisited a theme he had already tackled in his work in the 1870s – ballerinas resting. He also went back to his regular studies on the effects of contre-jour, lighting which "reduces to silhouette", suppressing details, erasing the distinctive features of a face or a body, making them anonymous.

But while still employing the old formula, Dancers was innovative in its size and composition, and without doubt, is the best example of what has been called Degas' "classical period". Around 1884, the painter, in fact, simplified his compositions, reduced the depth of his pictorial space, lowered the viewpoint to make it more natural and concentrated on one, single character or group of figures. At the same time, he abandoned the often caricatural approach of his previous works. In doing this, he was responding to a desire expressed by critics and the public: to protest "against the confused mass of colors and the jumble of indecipherable lines that are destroying contemporary painting". From this point of view, Dancers is effectively a manifesto.

Degas uses an almost square format here, which was unusual for him at this time, but which he would often use later. Whereas previously in his "dance classes" he focused on isolated figures.  

Life was cruel to French ballet dancers, and they didn’t have it much easier at the hands of Degas himself. Although the artist was known to reject the advances of his models, his callousness manifested in other ways. To capture the physicality and discipline of the dancers, Degas demanded his models pose for hours at a time, enduring excruciating discomfort as they held their contorted positions. He wanted to capture his “little monkey girls,” as he called them, “cracking their joints” at the barre. “I have perhaps too often considered woman as an animal,” he once told the painter 

Pierre Georges Jeanniot

 in a moment of revealing honesty.

Degas was undoubtedly a merciless, cantankerous man. He was a misogynist—peers seemed almost afraid of his antagonism towards women—an especially troubling reputation considering the already sexist norms of his society. Contemporary viewers now delight in the artist’s profoundly evocative hand and brilliant, textural applications of color. While it’s possible to admire Degas’s dancers from a formal standpoint, this narrow appreciation ignores the abuse these poor girls suffered. A closer look at these works shows how the painter did indeed cut through the ballet’s kitschy artifice, uncovering a milieu of misery, hardship, and raw beauty

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/xwE7rgYgnWm68w 

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-sordid-truth-degass-ballet-dancers

Rembrandt meets an elephant

 

Hansken’s skull and other items on display in the exhibition “Hansken, Rembrandt’s Elephant” at the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on July 1, 2021. An exhibition in Amsterdam explores the wandering life and untimely death of Hansken, an Asian elephant who became a spectacle in 17th-century Europe. Julia Gunther/The New York Times.

In Rembrandt’s 1638 etching “Adam and Eve in Paradise,” there are two symbols of good and evil. A dragon hovers over the couple as they contemplate the forbidden apple, representing the danger of temptation. And in the background, a little, rotund elephant romps in the sunlight, a sign of chastity and grace. The meaning of these symbols, while obscure today, would have been recognizable in 17th-century Europe.

The dragon Rembrandt drew was a figment of his imagination. But the elephant looks surprisingly true to life. How did Rembrandt, who never traveled outside the Netherlands, know what an elephant looked like?

The answer to this question comes in the form of an exhibition, “Hansken, Rembrandt’s Elephant,” at the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam. The exhibition, running through Aug. 29, tells the story of a female Asian elephant, taken to the Netherlands in the 17th century, who spent the rest of her life in Europe and became a popular and famous spectacle.

This elephant’s life has been a particular obsession of Dutch naturalist and art historian Michiel Roscam Abbing for almost two decades. He published his first slim volume about Hansken in 2006, but continued to search for additional documentation about her whereabouts and biography for the past 15 years, resulting in a new book and the Rembrandt House show.

What he discovered is that Hansken had an outsize importance in art, popular entertainment and science during her short life of about 25 years. She was depicted at least three times by Rembrandt; she traveled to the Baltics by ship, and by foot all the way up to Denmark and down to Italy; and she became the first Asian elephant to be described by Western science.

“It’s a very tragic story, actually, but it’s also fascinating,” said Leonore van Sloten, a curator at the Rembrandt House. “It’s just incredible to think that there is so much information about one animal.”

“She was brought to a world where she didn’t belong,” van Sloten added, “but she became a kind of window onto how life was at that time.”

Hansken was born in 1630 on the island of Ceylon, present-day Sri Lanka. The Dutch East India Company was doing business with the island, and the Netherlands’ ruling governor, Prince Frederick Henry, asked officials to send him back a young elephant as a curiosity.

Elephants were a true rarity in Europe before modern times.

“In the 15th century, there was one elephant in Europe,” Roscam Abbing said. “In the 16th century, we know of two or three elephants, and the same is true for the 17th century.”

The trip took about seven months, and Hansken arrived in the Netherlands in 1633. Frederick Henry kept her in his royal stables, along with other exotic animals. But, perhaps because of the expense and difficulty of her upkeep, he later gave her to a relative, Count John Maurice.

She changed hands at least twice more before she was bought by Cornelis van Groenevelt, an aspiring entertainer, for 20,000 guilders, or the equivalent of about a half-million dollars today. Hansken spent the rest of her life with van Groenevelt, who rode her from town to town as an attraction.

Van Groenevelt taught the elephant tricks — how to carry a bucket, lie down, wield a sword and fire a gun — that were depicted in prints by Swiss artist Jeremias Glaser, and in other drawings and etchings by unknown artists, sometimes as advertising for her shows.

One of Hansken’s first stops was in Amsterdam, in 1637, which is probably the first time Rembrandt saw her. He created a detailed sketch of her that same year, capturing the textures and folds of her skin and the curvature of her trunk. The drawing probably served as a study for the later “Adam and Eve” etching.

“He was interested in the animal as such, and not in the tricks she performed,” Roscam Abbing said. “These other artists focused on her shooting a pistol or carrying a bucket with water, but not Rembrandt. He was interested in capturing the elephant itself.”

Roscam Abbing was able to document Hansken’s arrival in at least 136 cities and towns in Europe. She visited Amsterdam four times during her life. Rembrandt may have seen her two or three of those times. Around 1641, he sketched her again, depicting three versions of her from several angles, and in different poses: eating, reclining and walking.

After years of touring and performing, probably with poor nutrition and care (because Europeans knew almost nothing about caring for such an animal), Hansken collapsed in the Piazza della Signoria, a major square in Florence, Italy, on Nov. 9, 1655, around age 25.

Her final moments were captured in three drawings by an Italian artist, Stefano della Bella, who happened to be there.

“It was unclear what happened to her; it was at first thought that she had been poisoned,” van Sloten said.

After a medical examination, it was determined that she had died of a fever from an infection. She had severe abscesses on her feet.

Van Groenevelt sold Hansken’s body to the grand duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando II de’ Medici, who was interested in the natural sciences. He had her corpse studied extensively and described in scientific literature. Both her skin and skeleton were later put on display in the Uffizi Gallery.

The skin deteriorated and was thrown away in the 19th century, but Hansken’s skeleton survives today and is part of the permanent collection of the Museo della Specola at the University of Florence.

Her skull is on loan to the Rembrandt House as part of the exhibition.

“There are no bones that you can still see of any other contemporary of Rembrandt’s, not even the bones of Rembrandt himself,” van Sloten said. “So it’s an incredible notion that we can stand next to her.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

https://www.arthistorynews.com/articles/2474_Rembrandts_elephant_named_for_certain