Jacques-Louis David. Painter of the French Revolution

 

Jacques-Louis David. Artist of the French Revolution

Jacques-Louis David, (born August 30, 1748, Paris, France—died December 29, 1825, Brussels, Belgium), the most celebrated French artist of his day and a principal exponent of the late 18th-century Neoclassical reaction against the Rococo style.  Here he is looking very romantic and revolutionary. 1794

David won wide acclaim with his huge canvases on classical themes (e.g., Oath of the Horatii, 1784). When the French Revolution began in 1789, he served briefly as its artistic director and painted its leaders and martyrs (The Death of Marat, 1793) in a style that is more realistic than classical. Later he was appointed painter to Napoleon. Although primarily a painter of historical events, David was also a great portraitist (e.g., Portrait of Mme Récamier, 1800).

Death Of Marat. 1793

Napoleon admired The Intervention of the Sabine Women and saw possibilities for self-aggrandizement in the talent displayed. Soon David, without acquiring political office, was again a government painter, first under the Consulate and then, after 1804, under the Empire. He was not, however, the only prominent Frenchman to move from the Jacobin left to the Bonapartist right, and he had evidently always been a worshiper of historical heroes. His most important Napoleonic work is the huge Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Joséphine on December 2, 1804 (1805–07), sometimes called Coronation of Napoleon in Notre-Dame; in it Neoclassicism gives way to a style that combines the official portraiture of the old French monarchy with overtones—and occasional straight imitation—of the masters of the Italian Renaissance. 

Napoleon in his study 

This picture was followed in 1810 by the large Napoleon Distributing the Eagles and in 1812 by The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries, a sharply perceptive portrait notwithstanding its conspicuously propagandistic intention.

After the fall of Napoleon in 1815, David was exiled to Brussels. Cut off from the excitement and stimulus of the great events he had lived through, he lost much of his old energy. Toward the end of his life, he executed, probably with considerable help from a Belgian pupil, François-Joseph Navez, one more remarkably convincing portrait: The Three Women of Gand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Jacques-Louis_David

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres . Today's birthday guy. The man who invented neoclassical painting.

 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 common with his portraits, La Grande Odalisque is not burdened with narrative or moral content. It is an image about the pleasure of looking, an eroticism that is heightened by the nude’s unattainability: the impossibility of her beauty, the illusionary tactility of the materials that surround her, and an air of detachment created through the even tone of her skin, the economic use of shadow and the harmonized colors. It has been hailed as ‘the first great nude in the modern tradition’.

 

 

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

http://www.artble.com/artists/jean_auguste_dominique_ingres

http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/artist-info.1411.html 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Jean_Auguste_Dominique_Ingres

 The coquettish Comtesse d’Haussonville (1845), from the Frick Collection. She is also an eye-catching beauty, but this time extravagantly clothed. Like La Grande Odalisque, it is an effective publicity image, because it has the familiar qualities of modern advertising photographs: flawless skin, smooth surfaces and soft lighting, creating a heightened reality that today would be down to digital enhancement, but then was achieved through the astonishing virtuosity of Ingres’s painting technique.

Ingres was steeped in the academic tradition, which centered on study from the nude and classical art. He became the defender of a rigid classicism which contrasted with the Romanticism of Delacroix.

Ingres saw himself as a history painter, the highest goal of academic art. Portraiture he thought of less importance, but he is now most famous for works like 'Madame Moitessier' as well for his escapist scenes of the Orient.

Ingres came to national prominence as a pupil of Jacques-Louis David and as a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. He won a scholarship to Rome in 1801 which he took up in 1806, partly because of an unfavorable reception at the Paris Salon.

Under the influence of Italian art (particularly Raphael) he mastered portraiture. He also painted small pictures illustrating literary texts, scenes from French history or the lives of artists, which were sold to the French crown. He returned to France, where he became Director of the French Academy. Ingres was also an accomplished violinist who could have had a successful career as a musician: the French phrase for having a second string to one's bow is a 'violon d'Ingres'.

https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.1411.html

Man Ray, surrealist painter & photographer

 

Happy Birthday Man Ray

"The most successful art to me involves humor."—Man Ray, born on this day in 1890 

“I have finally freed myself from the sticky medium of paint, and am working directly with light itself.” 1 So enthused Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky) in 1922, shortly after his first experiments with camera-less photography. He remains well known for these images, commonly called photograms but which he dubbed “rayographs” in a punning combination of his own name and the word “photograph.”

 

Man Ray’s artistic beginnings came some years earlier, in the Dada movement. Shaped by the trauma of World War I and the emergence of a modern media culture—epitomized by advancements in communication technologies like radio and cinema—Dada artists shared a profound disillusionment with traditional modes of art making and often turned instead to experimentations with chance and spontaneity. In The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows, Man Ray based the large, color-block composition on the random arrangement of scraps of colored paper scattered on the floor. The painting evinces a number of interests that the artist would carry into his photographic work: negative space and shadows; the partial surrender of compositional decisions to accident; and, in its precise, hard-edged application of unmodulated color, the removal of traces of the artist’s hand. 

In 1922, six months after he arrived in Paris from New York, Man Ray made his first rayographs. To make them, he placed objects, materials, and sometimes parts of his own or a model's body onto a sheet of photosensitized paper and exposed them to light, creating negative images. This process was not new—camera-less photographic images had been produced since the 1830s—and his experimentation with it roughly coincided with similar trials by Lázló Moholy-Nagy. But in his photograms, Man Ray embraced the possibilities for irrational combinations and chance arrangements of objects, emphasizing the abstraction of images made in this way. He published a selection of these rayographs—including one centered around a comb, another containing a spiral of cut paper, and a third with an architect’s French curve template on its side—in a portfolio titled Champs délicieux in December 1922, with an introduction written by the Dada leader Tristan Tzara. In 1923, with his film Le Retour à la raison (Return to Reason), he extended the rayograph technique to moving images.

Around the same time, Man Ray’s experiments with photography carried him to the center of the emergent Surrealist movement in Paris. Led by André Breton, Surrealism sought to reveal the uncanny coursing beneath familiar appearances in daily life. Man Ray proved well suited to this in works like Anatomies, in which, through framing and angled light, he transformed a woman’s neck into an unfamiliar, phallic form. He contributed photographs to the three major Surrealist journals throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and also constructed Surrealist objects like Gift, in which he altered a domestic tool (an iron) into an instrument of potential violence, and Indestructible Object (or Object to Be Destroyed), a metronome with a photograph of an eye affixed to its swinging arm, which was destroyed and remade several times.

Working across mediums and historical movements, Man Ray was an integral part of The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition program early on. His photographs, paintings, drawings, sculptures, films, and even a chess set were included in three landmark early exhibitions: Cubism and Abstract Art (1936); Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism (1936–37), for which one of his rayographs served as the catalogue’s cover image; and Photography, 1839–1937 (1937). In 1941, the Museum expanded its collection of his work with a historic gift from James Thrall Soby, an author, collector, and critic (and MoMA trustee) who had, some eight years earlier, acquired an expansive group of Man Ray’s most important photographs directly from the artist. Within this group were 24 first-generation, direct, unique rayographs from the 1920s that speak to Man Ray’s ambition, as he wrote in 1921, to “make my photography automatic—to use my camera as I would a typewriter.” Natalie Dupêcher independent scholar, 2017

https://artblart.com/2009/01/31/exhibition-man-ray-unconcerned-but-not-indifferent-at-the-hague-museum-of-photography-the-netherlands/ 

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/man-crush-when-man-ray-met-lee-miller-8463783.html

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/ray-man/

Lavinia Fontana. Born on August 24 , 1552. First professional woman artist

 

 Happy 466th birthday to Renaissance artist LaviniaFontana! 

First professional woman artist

Internationally renowned 

Portraitist to nobility

Household breadwinner

In 1577 Fontana married the minor painter Gian Paolo Zappi. He was willing to subordinate his career to her own; he also became her agent. After her marriage, Fontana sometimes signed her work with her married name. She enjoyed the patronage of the family of Pope Gregory XIII and painted the likenesses of many eminent people. In addition to her career as an artist, she was the mother of 11 children.

 Art critics surmise that Zappi also painted some of the drapery and background in Fontana's paintings.

http://ow.ly/7La350ihhPU

Bianca degli Utili Maselli surrounded by her five sons, one daughter, slightly dazed dog, & bird. Fantastic study in family resemblance & textile complementarity by Lavinia Fontana of Bologna,

Lavinia Fontana, (born 1552, Bologna [Italy]—died August 11, 1614, Rome), Italian painter of the Mannerist school and one of the most important portraitists in Bologna during the late 16th century. She was one of the first women to execute large, publicly commissioned figure paintings.

Fontana studied with her father, Prospero Fontana (c. 1512–97), a minor painter of the school of Bologna, who taught his daughter to paint in the Mannerist style. By the late 1570s she was known in Bologna for painting fine portraits, including Self-portrait at the Harpischord and the very formal Gozzadini Family (1584). The attention to detail in her portraits is reminiscent of the work of another northern Italian Renaissance painter, Sofonisba Anguissola. Fontana’s works were admired for their vibrant colour and the detail of the clothes and jewelry that her subjects wore.

Woman with very cheerful little pooch, painted by Lavinia Fontana of Bologna.

 Stay away from my sweet doggie! Threatening look from Costanza Alidosi in 1594, as recorded by Lavinia Fontana

She made great strides in the field of portraiture, which garnered her fame within and beyond Italy. In fact, Fontana is regarded as the first woman artist, working within the same sphere as her male counterparts, outside a court or convent.

At age 25, Fontana married a fellow painter from a noble family, who acted as his wife’s assistant and managed their growing household,  For 20 years beginning in the 1580s, Fontana was the portraitist of choice among Bolognese noblewomen. She also painted likenesses of important individuals connected with the University of Bologna.

Fontana’s fame spread to Rome, where she moved in 1604. There she became a portraitist at the court of Pope Paul V and was the recipient of numerous honors, including a bronze portrait medallion cast in 1611 by sculptor and architect Felice Antonio Casoni.

NMWA EXHIBITIONS

Italian Women Artists from Renaissance to Baroque, 2007

An Imperial Collection: Women Artists from the State Hermitage Museum, 2003

Lavinia Fontana of Bologna (1552-1614), 1998

Four Centuries of Women's Art: The National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1990–91

Online

"Lavinia Fontana," http://www.nmwa.org/legacy/bios/bfontana.htm (January 15, 2002).

The Lives of Renaissance Women,http://www.bctf.bc.ca/lessonaids/online/LA9245.html (January 15, 2002). □

Richard III: fact and fiction

On 22 August 1485, the last English king to be killed in combat died at the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was none other than Richard III, a monarch whose reputation is still debated, known variously as the King under the Carpark, Shakespeare's hunchback ruler, and the (alleged) murderer of his young nephews, Edward V and Richard, Duke of York. In this blogpost, we set out some of the manuscript evidence for the reign of this controversial sovereign.

One of the earliest notices of the Battle of Bosworth is found in the calendar of an early 15th-century Book of Hours known as the 'Beaufort/Beauchamp Hours'. This calendar contains a number of added notices of births, deaths and other notable occurrences, extending as far as the deaths of Queen Jane Seymour in 1536 and Elizabeth Lucar in 1537. In the margin of the calendar page for August, the same scribe has made retrospective notes of two significant events:

7 August: 'This day landed King Harry the viith at Milfoord Haven, the yere of our Lord m.cccc.lxxxv.'

22 August: 'This day King Harri the viith wan the feeld wher was slayn King Richard the third. Anno domini 1485.' 

The calendar page for August in the 'Beaufort/Beauchamp Hours', with added notices of the landing of Henry Tudor at Milford Haven and the death of Richard III at Bosworth: Royal MS 2 A XVIII, f. 31v

We can tell immediately that these notes were made after the Battle of Bosworth Field, since Henry Tudor is described prematurely at his landing as 'King Harry the 7th'. Richard is styled 'king' in the notice of his death, which does at least acknowledge the legitimacy of his rule. The lack of space in the margins of this calendar doubtless prevented the annotator from recording a more detailed description of Richard's personality and achievements.

Another posthumous report of Richard III's reign is found in an early 16th-century chronicle that extended originally as far as the rule of Henry VII. This chronicle supplies a dispassionate account of Richard's life, set out as part of a genealogical tree of the English rulers:

'Richard that was sonne to Richard Dewke of Yorke and brother unto Kyng Edward the iiiith was Kyng after hys brother and raynyd .ii. yeres and lyth buryd at Lecitor.'

A genealogical chronicle of the rulers of England, including an account of the reign of Richard III: King's MS 395, f. 33r

Richard is also illustrated in a roundel that accompanies the text, wearing a crown and carrying a sceptre in his right hand. This cannot be considered a realistic likeness, since all the portraits in this manuscript are similar in style and have the same palette of colours. But it is an antidote to the conventional image of King Richard, represented in the more famous painting held at the National Portrait Gallery. What is also noteworthy in the same manuscript is that no mention is made of the succession and brief reign of Edward V, Richard's nephew, or of the mysterious disappearance of the young princes.

The portrait of Richard III in the genealogical chronicle: King's MS 395, f. 33r

So what can we glean about Richard III from other manuscript sources? Like his predecessors, Richard was renowned as a law-giver. In one English statute book made in 1488 or 1489, just a few years after his death, Richard is shown in an historiated initial crowned and robed, holding a sceptre and orb, and surrounded by leading clerics and other courtiers. There is nothing to suggest here that his rule was considered illegitimate in any way. Indeed, at the time that this manuscript was produced, Henry VII's position on the throne was still precarious, since he was being challenged first by Lambert Simnel and then, in the 1490s, by Perkin Warbeck. Henry is illustrated in the same volume in exactly the same way as Richard III (f. 339v). You could not tell from this book alone that one of these kings had overthrown the other in battle.

The statutes issued by King Richard III in a legal manuscript made in London: Hargrave MS 274, f. 328v

Detail of the portrait of Richard III in this legal manuscript: Hargrave MS 274, f. 328v

Another visual statement of the legitimacy of Richard III's rule, this time dating from his own reign, is found in a manuscript of the English translation of De re militari by Vegetius. The decorated initial that opens this volume contains the royal coat of arms supported by two boars (Richard's emblem) and surmounted by a crown. At the foot of the same page is the griffin of Salisbury, perhaps to denote that the book was made for Edward of Middleham, prince of Wales and earl of Salisbury, Richard's son and heir apparent until his untimely death in 1484. On another page of the same manuscript is the coat of arms of Anne Neville, Richard's wife and queen of England (f. 49r).

The royal arms of King Richard III in a manuscript of De re militari: Royal MS 18 A XII, f. 1r

A final and contemporary indication of Richard's own personality is provided by books that belonged to him, including before he became king. One manuscript of the Romance of Tristan bears the inscription 'Iste liber constat Ricardo Duci Gloucestre'. After his death it passed into the hands of his niece, Elizabeth of York, who was married to Henry VII in order to unite the two dynasties. Her inscription, 'sans remevyr Elyzabeth', is found at the bottom of the page. This evidence reminds us that Richard was styled 'duke of Gloucester': in the wake of the discovery of his skeleton, York and Leicester waged claims to being the appropriate home for his reburial, while Gloucester was largely overlooked. It also suggests that he may have had an interest in courtly literature, some indication of the circles in which he moved and what was required of a Renaissance prince. This would also have extended to having knowledge of ancient and more recent history. Among the other manuscripts known to have been owned by Richard is a copy of the Chroniques de France, from 1270 to 1380, which is inscribed part-way down one page 'Richard Gloucestre'.

'This book belongs to Richard, duke of Gloucester', in a manuscript of Roman de Tristan: Harley MS 49, f. 155r

A manuscript of the Chroniques de France owned by 'Richard Gloucestre': Royal MS 20 C VII, f. 134r

Detail of Richard's name in Royal MS 20 C VII, f. 134r

Of course, there are other aspects of Richard's rule that we have not considered here. One of these is the sinister removal from power of his nephew, King Edward V, and the subsequent (assumed) deaths of the two princes in the Tower. To be accused of regicide and infanticide, even in an era when rulers were prepared to do anything to secure their position, is a massive stain on Richard III's reputation. The fate of Edward and his younger brother must always be set against attempts to rehabilitate Richard, and cannot be easily argued away. Equally, we are lacking a full understanding of Bosworth Field itself, and of how Richard's fortunes swayed on the battlefield. It is sometimes difficult to dislodge Shakespeare's account of the battle, and of Richard himself, from the popular memory. But the surviving manuscripts from his lifetime do at least provide us with a much more rounded vision of this most disputed of English monarchs.

blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanus

written by Julian Harrison