BLACK FUMES MMV
ART “4”
“2”-DAY 04 July
v.5.60 |
| DEATH: 1671 COSSIERS |
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Born on 04 July 1845: Frank Montague Holl,
British Social
Realist painter and illustrator who died on 31 July 1888. — {Is
it true that when some golfers were discussing how to decorate the rooms
of their new club house, they all agreed that what they wanted most of all
was a Holl in one?} — He received his first art instruction {hollistic of course} from his father, engraver Francis Holl [1815-1884]. At the age of 15 Frank Holl entered the Royal Academy Schools, where in 1862 he was awarded a silver medal for drawing and in 1863 the gold medal for a religious subject, Abraham about to Sacrifice Isaac. In 1864 he exhibited two paintings at the Royal Academy, where he continued to show his work regularly until his death. He was elected ARA in 1878 and RA in 1883. — He was the nephew of engravers William Holl [1807–1871], Henry Benjamin Holl [1808–1884], and Charles Holl [1820–1882]. — Frank Holl originally painted genre pictures, sometimes addressing social evils of the day. These paintings include ‘The Deserter,’ and ‘Newgate-Committed For Trial’ the second being an effective though grim social document. Holl then changed course, to become a leading painter of portraits. Famous sitters included Gladstone, Leverhume, and Joseph Chamberlain. He also painted a portrait of Millais, who remarked that Holl was a ‘nice man,’ but applied too much paint. The rather humble Holl was overawed by the great painter, and his ostentatious surroundings, rather to the surprise of the genial Millais. He became ARA in 1878, and a full RA in 1882. Holl was an unassuming rather nervous character, and the move to portrait painting whilst successful financially, was disastrous for him personally, and was felt by his family to have contributed to his premature death. — The Holl family were active socialists and from an early age Frank was taught that he had a responsibility to help change society. Frank's father was frustrated by the fact that his work consisted of expressing other men's ideas and he told his son that he wanted to be an independent artist but had "been driven by a graving tool to earn his bread". At the age of fifteen Frank Holl became a student at the Royal Academy. His first large painting, A Mother and Child, was a portrayal of working class poverty and like much of his work, reflected his socialist upbringing. However, he was criticised by his tutors for the political content of his work and he agreed to paint biblical subjects to win the Academy's gold medal award. Afterwards he told a friend that in future he would never paint pictures that he did not "feel". In 1868 Frank Holl won a travel scholarship with The Lord Gave, and the Lord Hath Taken Away, a painting that illustrated a family bereavement. When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1869 Queen Victoria [24 May 1819 – 22 Jan 1901, queen from 20 Jun 1837] attempted to buy the painting but the original purchaser refused to sell it. When Holl later painted another painting on the same theme, No Tidings from the Sea, Victoria purchased it for a 100 guineas. Holl's award involved a painting tour of Europe but after two months he wrote to the Royal Academy from Italy saying that he was resigning from the travel scholarship because he wanted to concentrate on painting "the simple, somewhat rugged home-life of the English people". In 1869 joined the staff of The Graphic magazine, an illustrated weekly edited by the social reformer, William Luson Thomas. For the next five years Holl produced a series of pictures that were used to illustrate stories in the magazine. Holl worked on the magazine with other young artists such as Luke Fildes and Hubert von Herkomer who shared his political commitment. The three men often reworked their engravings as large-scale oil paintings, and together they established what became known as the social realist movement. One of Holl's assignments for the Graphic involved a visit to Newgate Prison. While he was there he saw a woman and her children visiting a prisoner. He later used this incident as the subject matter for what most critics believe his Holl's finest painting, Newgate: Committed for Trial (382x531pix, 38kb). In an attempt to capture the emotion of captivity, Holl painting the picture inside Newgate Prison. When Newgate: Committed for Trial was shown at the Royal Academy in 1878 it was virtually ignored, but a portrait that Holl had also submitted was highly praised and as a result he received several commissions from wealthy people who wanted their pictures painted. Holl, who was now a married man with a family to support, decided like Luke Fildes and Hubert von Herkomer to concentrate on portrait painting. Holl tried to find time to paint his social realist paintings and to do so worked a seven day week. When Frank Holl died in 1888, at the age of forty-three, his family and friends claimed that he had died from overwork. His daughter later wrote: "It is not too much to say that my father threw his life away by his utter inability to rest from work." — LINKS — Deserted (1874, 92x136cm) — A Family at Prayer (1868, 87x124cm) _ “The Lord Gave and the Lord Taketh Away, Blessed be the Name of the Lord”; a family at prayer under the guidance of the eldest son, a curate, after the death of the head of the household. — The Convalescent (1867, 47x57cm; 828x1000pix, 397kb) _ a 4-year-old girl sadly lying in bed propped up by pillows. — The Song of the Shirt (1874, 48x66cm) — Hush! (1877 34x44cm) _ Hushed (1877, 34x44cm) _ Holl often chose bereavement as a subject, particularly the grief of a mother for her baby. Child death was sadly a common occurence in Victorian society. These two pictures were once described as 'a pathetic little story in two chapters'. In Hush! a mother devotedly watches over her sick baby, her anxiety mirrored in the face of an older child. Hushed, its companion piece, shows the baby's death. The mother covers her face with her hand in the universal gesture of grief, while her other child appears bewildered. These pictures offer a simple yet moving description. Holl confronts his subject directly, without sentimentality. The sombre coloring and the strong contrasts between light and shade serve to heighten the grim mood. — Samuel Cousins, R.A. (1879, 127x101cm) — The Wide Wide World (1873, 76x64cm; 510x421pix, 43kb) _ This painting of a young woman dressed in black and seated on a bench on a railway station platform is a re-working of a single figure from Holl's Leaving Home (1873), which shows the girl at the right side of the composition, as she quietly counts the money in her purse. Beside her on the bench is a soldier - presumably on his way to join his regiment, and anxiously attended by a wife - and an old man. Standing at the left of Leaving Home is a ticket collector, and other travelers are seen beyond as they crowd on to the platform. In 1879 Leaving Home was reproduced as a line engraving in the Art Journal, and was described thus in an accompanying article: There are few places of public resort presenting more numerous and greater variety of materials for the study of incident and character than a great railway station: it is at certain times of the day a vast field of observation wherein one sees much that is manifest to all, while imagination suggests to the mind even more, which may take any form of good or ill that thought may prompt or indicate. Mr. Frith, in his large, and now well-known, picture The Railway Station, has made good use of the materials supplied by the bustle and excitement of such a scene; and Mr. Holl, acting under more circumscribed limits, has availed himself of a similar opportunity, only he has been contented with what appears to be the representation of the temporary occupants of a platform of some country railway station, instead of following Mr. Frith's example, and showing the vast area of one of our principal metropolitan terminuses. ... On the right side is seated a young and ladylike female, whose dress indicates, in some degree, her lonely condition. She has opened her purse, evidently not too plentifully furnished, and is counting out the money it contains after paying the cost of her ticket to her place of destination. The subject of Holl's Leaving Home originated as a wood engraving illustration for The Graphic, which periodical in the 1870s gave particular encouragement to the realistic representation of scenes of social distress. It was apparently originally intended to be called Third Class, a title suggested by the lettering on the plate glass of the window, but seems to have been entitled At a Railway Station - A Study, when it appeared in the magazine on 10 February 1872. The circumstances of Holl's making this engraving, and its submission to the editor of The Graphic, Mr. Thomas, are described by the artist's daughter A.M. Reynolds in The Life and Work of Frank Holl (1912). Holl's graphic work was much admired by Vincent Van Gogh, who wrote: I have enough decoration for my studio - I bought very cheaply some beautiful wood-engravings from The Graphic, in part prints not from the cliché but from the blocks themselves. Just what I had been wanting for years, drawings by Herkomer, Frank Holl, Walker, and others. (letter of 07 Jan 1882 to his brother Theo Van Gogh), and: For me the English black-and-white artists are to art what Dickens is to literature. They have exactly the same sentiment, noble and healthy, and one always returns to them. (letter to Rappard, mid-September 1882). Van Gogh's comparison of such images to the novels of Dickens is particularly interesting in relation to the present painting, because in both the exhibited version and the present related composition Holl has included a billboard advertising an illustrated edition of Nicholas Nickleby of Dickens. Holl's daughter, in The Life of Frank Holl, wrote of his admiration for Dickens, explaining that although he never made literal illustrations of themes from the novels, nonetheless, as one stands before certain of my father's earlier pictures ... one seems to be looking backward at a dead tradition, the very life of the middle classes of the Victorian era. Some connection was perhaps intended between the somber figure of the painting's young woman, whose clothes indicate that she has suffered the loss of a parent, and whose position is one of financial insecurity and personal loneliness, and Dickens' heroine Kate Nickleby, the gentle sister of Nicholas, who on the death of their father is left penniless and who therefore seeks work as a dress-maker and is at the same time exposed to the evil machinations of her uncle Ralph Nickleby. |
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Born on 04 July 1837: Charles~Émile~Auguste
Durand “Carolus~Duran”, French Academic
painter specialized in Portraits,
who died on 18 February 1917. — {Sa vie durant Durand du rang des
Durands se distingua en arborant le nom Carolus-Duran.} — He came from a humble background and by the age of 11 was taking lessons at the Académie in Lille from the sculptor Augustin-Phidias Cadet de Beaupré [1800–] who taught him to sketch. At 15 he began a two-year apprenticeship in the studio of one of David’s former students, François Souchon [1787–1857], whose name he still referred to several years later when he exhibited at the Salon. In 1853 Carolus-Duran moved to Paris. He copied in the Louvre where he must have met Henri Fantin-Latour, then taking life classes at the Académie Suisse (1859–1860). He exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1859. His first period in Paris, from 1853 to 1862 (interspersed with visits to Lille, where he received portrait commissions and an annuity in 1861), shows the influence of Gustave Courbet, whose After Dinner at Ornans (1849) he had been able to see in the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Lille. Thanks to Fantin-Latour or Zacharie Astruc, whom he had known in Lille, he soon befriended Courbet, Manet and the Realist artists, painting their portraits with a serious Realism full of concentrated energy: Fantin-Latour and Oulevay (1861, 50x61cm), Zacharie Astruc (1861, 41x31cm) and Claude Monet (1867). — Carolus-Duran received his first artistic training in Lille, and then studied in Paris for five years beginning in 1853. He returned to Lille in 1858, and began a successful career as a portraitist. Upon his second visit to Paris in 1859-1860, the artist became close friends with Édouard Manet, Henri Fantin-Latour, Félix Bracquemond, and other young painters and art critics who shared his interests in realism and in the painterly traditions of Venetian and Spanish art. In 1862-1866 Carolus-Duran traveled to Italy; he returned briefly to France before leaving for Spain, where he remained until 1868. By 1869 Carolus-Duran had established himself in Paris as a fashionable portraitist. In 1873 he opened a studio for young painters; John Singer Sargent was among his most talented students. By the mid 1870s Carolus-Duran had turned from his early realist style to one more concerned with painterly effect. Although primarily a portraitist, Carolus-Duran also painted landscapes, history paintings, ideal nudes, and still lifes. He was extraordinarily successful, and continued to reap honors and financial rewards to the end of his life. He died in Paris. — The students of Carolus-Duran included John Singer Sargent, Irving Wiles, Otto Bacher, Burr Nicholls, Harper Pennington, Theodore Robinson, James Beckwith, Albert Gustave comte de Belleroche, Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel, Ramón Casas i Carbó, Kenyon Cox, Joseph Farquharson, Takeji Fujishima, Henri Haro, Jules Haro, Alexander Mann, Roderic Anthony O’Conor, Frank O’Meara, Claude-Émile Schuffenecker, Jan Grzegorz Stanislawski, Henry Van de Velde. — Portrait of Carolus-Duran (700x555pix, 64kb) by Sargent. — LINKS — Le Baiser (1868; 600x601pix, 41kb) Self portrait of Carolus-Duran with his wife as newlyweds. — Marie-Anne Carolus-Duran, iv ans (1874, 130x85cm; 1/4 size, 122kb _ ZOOM to half~size, 478kb _ ZOOM+ to full size, 2047kb) _ The artist's little girl, with a little dog (bichon frisé?). — L'assassiné (1027x1571pix, 129kb) _ Ce tableau est sans doute, de manière superficielle, influencé par Courbet. Mais c'est surtout à la tradition des scènes de la campagne romaine, avec leurs paysannes et leurs brigands, qu'il renvoie. La vraie filiation du tableau de Carolus-Duran doit être faite avec Les Moissonneurs de Léopold Robert ou, surtout, Horace Vernet et un tableau comme Les confessions d'un brigand (). Comme Vernet d'ailleurs, il fut directeur de l'Académie de France à Rome. — Mme. Neyt (1871, 62x47cm; 1547x1203pix, 98kb) — Édouard Manet (1876) — Nadezhda M. Polovtseva (1876; 71kb) — Margaret Anderson, Wife of the Honorable Ronald Grenville (1891; 94kb) — Merrymakers (1870, 93x140cm; 350x526pix, 32kb) — Robert de Montesquiou dans le rôle du Passant (1885) _ see Robert de Montesquiou (1897; 598x419pix, 29kb) by Boldini [31 Dec 1842 – 11 Jan 1931], and: _ by Jacques-Émile Blanche [01 Jan 1861 – 20 Sep 1942] Robert de Montesquiou (1887) _ by Whistler [11 Jul 1834 – 17 Jul 1903] Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1892) _ by Antonio de la Gándara [16 Dec 1862 – 30 Jun 1917] Comte Robert de Montesquiou (1892) _ by Fulop Elek Laszlo [06 Jan 1869 – 22 Nov 1937] Comte Robert de Montesquiou (1905) _ by Paul César Helleu [17 Dec 1859 – 23 Mar 1927] Robert de Montesquiou (drawing of head in profile) _ Count Robert de Montesquiou [07 Mar 1855 – 11 Dec 1921] was one of the most flamboyant and arrogant men of his time. A somewhat poet, more an art critic but above all, a society dandy. He was considered the prince of the Aesthetic movement in Paris and was one of the first to proclaim the virtues of Art Nouveau. The women of Society flocked to him for advice and he had immense connections for artists who were in his favor. On a whim he would crush any artist he didn't like. Around him floated a wide circle of artists including actress Sarah Bernhardt, composers like Gustave Moreau and Gabriel Fauré; one of his young 'disciples' the pianist Léon Delafosse; painters James McNeill Whistler, Antonio de la Gándara, Carolus-Duran, Paul César Helleu and Boldini; and there was Stephane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and John Singer Sargent; along with writers such as Marcel Proust; the list is almost endless. If you were in the Paris art scene and wanted to be a "somebody", you most certainly had to know Montesquiou. For someone that held so much influence and power over artists and the art scene in Paris, these overt displays of affection (whether from the artist or the patrons commissioning it) were as much about fear as it was about friendship. That so many artists paid tribute to the man was the equivalent of kissing the feet of a king. All were hoping to avoid being unlucky enough to fall out of his favor and feel the scorching sting of his wrath. — Philippe Burty (1874, 47x40cm; 358x300pix, 17kb) _ Although Carolus-Duran is best known for his formal "society" portraits, he also painted a series of informal and direct likenesses of friends and family members. Philippe Burty, a close friend of the artist, was one of the more progressive art critics of his era; he was a particularly strong early supporter of the Impressionists. Philippe Burty [1830-1890] was one of the more progressive art critics and writers of his generation. His many articles in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (for which he was an art critic from 1859), La République Française, and other journals directed attention to innovations and new developments in the fine and decorative arts. During the 1850s Burty was instrumental in popularizing and soliciting support for the mid-nineteenth-century revival of the art of etching. By the 1860s he turned his attention more towards the decorative and applied arts. This involvement brought him into contact with the art of the Orient, and he became an avid collector of Japanese art. Burty coined the term "japonisme" and wrote several articles on the contemporary taste for Japanese art and culture in France. He was also an outspoken and early champion of the Impressionists, defending their painterly techniques and aesthetic theories against the attacks of more conservative contemporaries. Carolus-Duran's portrait of Burty was completed in 1874; the exact circumstances under which it was painted are unknown but can probably be surmised. At the 1874 Salon exhibition in Paris, Carolus-Duran's fashionable portraits of women were criticized by proponents of naturalism (such as Émile Zola and Jules Castagnary). Burty remained staunch in his support of the artist, however, praising his freer style of painting and the subtler, more refined tones and draftsmanship that characterized these works. It may be that this intimate and compelling likeness represents the bond then forged between artist and critic. Throughout his career, Carolus-Duran produced small, informal likenesses of friends and relatives in addition to his more formal and elegant "official" portraits. For the most part, these are simple heads or bust-length likenesses, with the sitter seen in full face or in profile against a vigorously brushed backdrop. They are more freely and expressively painted than the artist's society portraits; many, like the Portrait of Philippe Burty, carry inscriptions that indicate that the artist presented the finished work to the sitter as a token of friendship. Examples of similar likenesses by Carolus-Duran include a portrait of his sister Maria (1875, 54x41cm); a portrait of the art critic Zacharie Astruc (1860); and a double portrait of the artists Henri Fantin-Latour and Henri-Charles Oulevay (1861). Many of the artist's portraits — both the small, intimate likenesses and the larger formal paintings — embody a dialogue with the art of the past. The influence of court portraits by Velásquez, Goya, or Titian, for example, is evident in the elegant compositions and stately poses of Carolus-Duran's society portraits. The virtuoso brushwork and rich palettes of these earlier masters — and their more contemporary presence in the work of the realist painter Gustave Courbet — stimulated Carolus-Duran's own strikingly vibrant and direct painting technique. The simple compositional format of the Portrait of Philippe Burty hints at Venetian portraits of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (such as those by Giovanni Bellini, or the early Titian) as well as their northern counterparts, by the German Hans Holbein the Younger [1498-1543]. In fact, Carolus-Duran named Holbein (along with Rembrandt and Frans Hals) as one of his primary influences. The traditional contrast of a simple, almost iconic, profile likeness against a vibrant backdrop — so characteristic of portraits by the sixteenth-century German master — is effectively fused here with Carolus-Duran's bravura brushwork and thickly impastoed highlights. |
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Died on 04 July 1671: Jan
Cossiers (or Coustiers, Causiers), Flemish painter and draftsman
born on 15 July 1600. — After serving an apprenticeship with his father, Anton Cossiers (fl 1604–1646), and then with Cornelis de Vos, he went first to Aix-en-Provence, where he stayed with the painter Abraham de Vries [1590–1656±6], and then to Rome, where he is mentioned in October 1624. By 1626 he had returned to Aix and had contact with, among others, the humanist Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc [01 Dec 1580 – 24 Jun 1637], who recommended him to Rubens. By November 1627 Cossiers had settled back in Antwerp. The following year he became a master in the Guild of Saint Luke, and in 1630 he married for the first time; he married a second time in 1640. — Before settling in Antwerp in 1627, Cossiers served two apprenticeships and traveled throughout Italy and France. A year later he became a master in the Guild of Saint Luke. His earliest known works were mostly life-sized scenes of the daily life of colorful subjects such as smokers, gypsies, and fortune-tellers. A colleague recommended Cossiers to the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, but their collaboration did not happen until nearly a decade later. During the second half of the 1630s, Cossiers made numerous paintings from Rubens's designs. Following Rubens's death in 1640, Cossiers painted biblical and other religious narratives for churches in the southern Netherlands. His late work is noted for its subtle use of color and for its sympathetic emotional portrayals of his subjects. — LINKS — Fortune Telling — a different La diseuse de bonne aventure (112x169cm) _ détail (le client ou la cliente) _ Ce tableau a été attribué autrefois à Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez; à Antonio Pereda; et à Juan Carreño de Miranda _ Le thème de la diseuse de bonne aventure, prétexte à représenter quelqu'un se faisant berner par une bohémienne, a connu un vif succès au début du XVIIe siècle. Il a été traité par des artistes aussi différents que Caravage et Georges de la Tour. Comme tous les peintres qui abordent cette scène, Cossiers se plaît à mettre en valeur son aspect pittoresque et son côté moralisateur. Il adopte ici une composition conforme à la tradition caravagesque : des personnages à mi-corps groupés en frise sur un fond uniforme. La figure du jeune homme [? on dirait plutôt: femme], au centre de l'oeuvre, capte tous les regards ; elle est puissamment mise en valeur par un brusque effet de lumière qui fait ressortir tous les éléments d'un costume chamarré. Le tableau vaut surtout par ses nombreux détails, fruit d'une observation minutieuse de la réalité. On révèlera ainsi le jeune acolyte en train de dérober la bourse du malheureux jeune homme ou, plus savoureux encore, le groupe de la bohémienne portant ses deux enfants sur son épaule. Avec son exécution brillante et ses accents de couleurs qui tranchent sur un camaïeu de bruns, l'oeuvre s'impose comme un somptueux morceau de peinture. Il est vrai que Cossiers, après un séjour italien, a travaillé à Anvers sous la direction de Rubens — Ecce Homo (73x54cm) _ Tableau sans doute peint à Anvers vers 1620, avant les séjours de l'artiste, entre 1623 et 1626, à Aix-en-Provence et à Rome. — Réunion de fumeurs et de buveurs (1626, 63x93cm) _ ce sont les peintres Jan Cossiers, Simon de Vos, Johan Geerlof, alors présents à Aix-en-Provence — The Head of a Young Boy (1658, 20x15cm) _ Cossiers probably drew this portrait sketch of his son Cornelis from life. He quickly captured the tilt of his son's head as he stares fixedly over his right shoulder. Loose, flowing strokes capture his strong profile, slightly open mouth, and tousled, shoulder-length hair. Black chalk delineates the boy's features, such as the hair, nose and upper lip, while subtle touches of red chalk describe the flesh tones. Cossiers made many sketches of his children, including the six sons from his second wife. He arranged the sketches, few of which survive, in accordance with the children's ages, beginning with the sheet representing the youngest boy. The number 36 in the upper left corner of the sheet indicates that there were once at least thirty-six numbered drawings grouped together. |
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Born on 04 July 1883: Ruben
Lucius “Rube” Goldberg, Pulitzer Prize winning
cartoonist (elaborate, involved contraptions that accomplish simple tasks),
sculptor, and author. He died on 07 December 1970. — Goldberg was born in San Francisco. His father, a practical man, insisted he go to college to become an engineer. After graduating from University of California at Berkeley, Rube went to work as an engineer with the City of San Francisco Water and Sewers Department. He continued drawing, and after six months convinced his father that he had to work as an artist. He soon got a job as an office boy in the sports department of a San Francisco newspaper. He kept submitting drawings and cartoons to his editor, until he was published. An outstanding success, he moved from San Francisco to New York drawing daily cartoons for The Evening Mail. A founding member of the National Cartoonist Society, a political cartoonist and a Pulitzer Prize winner, Rube was a beloved national figure as well as an often-quoted radio and television personality during his sixty-year professional career. Through his 'INVENTIONS', Rube Goldberg showed difficult ways to achieve easy results. His cartoons were, (as he said), symbols of man's capacity for exerting maximum effort to accomplish minimal results. Rube believed that there were two ways to do things: the simple way and the hard way, and that a surprisingly number of people preferred doing things the hard way. Rube Goldberg's work will endure because he gave priority to simple human needs and treasured basic human values. He was sometimes skeptical about technology, which contributed to making his own mechanical inventions primitive and full of human, plant and animal parts. While most machines work to make difficult tasks simple, his inventions made simple tasks amazingly complex. Dozens of arms, wheels, gears, handles, cups, and rods were put in motion by balls, canary cages, pails, boots, bathtubs, paddles, and even live animals for simple tasks like squeezing an orange for juice or closing a window in case it should start to rain before one gets home. Rube's drawings depict absurdly-connected machines functioning in extremely complex and roundabout ways to produce a simple end result; because of this RUBE GOLDBERG has become associated with any convoluted system of achieving a basic task. Rube's inventions are a unique commentary on life's complexities. They provide a humorous diversion into the absurd that lampoons the wonders of technology. Rube's hilarious send-ups of man's ingenuity strike a deep and lasting chord with today's audience through caught in a high-tech revolution are still seeking simplicity. Hardly a day goes by without The New York Times, National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal or some other major media invoking the name Rube Goldberg to describe a wildly complex program, system or set of rules such as our "Rube Goldberg-like tax system". The annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest at Purdue University as well as the increasing number of state-wide high school contests, which are covered widely by the national media, brings Rube's comic inventions to life for millions of fans. The work of Rube Goldberg continues to connect with both an adult audience well versed in the promise and pitfalls of modern technology (can anyone over 40 program their VCR?) as well as younger fans intrigued by the creativity and possibility of invention. — LINKS — Cartoons by GOLDBERG ONLINE: — Baseball and Business — Photo taking contraption — How to Keep Shop Windows Clean — Simplified Pencil Sharpener — Dodging Bill Collectors — Keep from Forgetting to Mail your Wife's Letter — Picture Snapping Machine — Safety Device for Walking on Icy Pavements — How to Keep the Boss from Knowing you are Late for Work — How to Tee up a Golf Ball Without Bending Over — Our Special Never-Miss Putter — Golf Inventions |
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Born on 04 July 1845: 1920 Pál
Szinyei~Merse, Hungarian painter who died on 02 February
1920. — After studying under the portrait painter Lajos Mezey [1820–1880] in Nagyvárad, Szinyei Merse attended the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich from 1864 to 1869, studying under Karl Piloty from 1867. His first mature work, the portrait of his younger brother, Zigismond Smoking a Turkish Pipe (1866), reveals his mastery of realism. Oil sketches from this period, such as the Nun with a Knight (1867) and Faun (1867), show an unaffected vision and a poetic style that contrast sharply with the historical interests of his contemporaries. Szinyei Merse also turned to contemporary subjects, as in Bathing Hut with Boy (1868), in which the harmony between the human figure and the landscape is achieved by the use of grey nacreous tones. In Mother and her Children (1869) he managed to create a refined version of an everyday scene by exploiting effects of light and pure color. His discovery of complementary and contrasting color effects and of the importance of tonal values led him, before other artists in Central Europe, to plein-air painting, as can be seen in Drying Clothes (1869) and in The Swing (1869). His experiments were themselves complemented in French painting, which he first saw in Munich, and he was reassured by Courbet, whom he met there. He therefore realized that a study-trip to Paris would be useful, although he was unable to go there until 1908. — Mother and Child (1869, 137x94cm; 1000x678pix, 127kb) — Faun and Nymph (study) (1867, 33x22cm; 848x562pix, 132kb) — Lovers standing (1869, 33x22cm; 844x570pix, 108kb) _ painted on reverse of Faun and Nymph. — Lovers seated (1869, 53x63cm; 778x920pix, 166kb) _ Time after time, Szinyei returned to the theme of a party relaxing in the outdoors, proceeding systematically from the sketches made for his first plein-air painting in 1867 to the final version of Picnic in May. Lovers also forms part of this process: a colorful group, in this case two people, is shown on a hillside. Instead of the previously preferred gardens at springtime, now the early summer meadows are chosen as scenery. In the evenly dispersed light the pale local colors are harmoniously adjusted to one another. This gentle coloration establishes the lyric, effect of the picture. The interlocking eyes, the masterly execution of the hands, the softly curling outlines within the closed composition and the dreamlike background all contribute to the intimate atmosphere of the painting. The fine Naturalism of the picture reminds the viewer of Le foins (1877) of Bastien-Lepage []. About 1890 the Nagybánya painters, who could be regarded as Szinyei's followers, were all enthusiastic about this particular French painter, yet at the time they still could not have seen the early works of Szinyei, which were held in America. Thus the contimuity of Hungarian painting suffered a setback. — The Swing aka Vacationers aka In the Garden (1869, 54,2x41cm; 902x736pix, 207kb) — István and Béla (1868, 56x55cm; 820x822pix, 78kb) — Mallows (1868-69, 20x16cm; 824x632pix, 145kb) _ Mallows constitute a family of flowering plants. — Clothes Drying aka Young Master (1869, 38x31cm; 904x722pix, 142kb) _ Like many of his other works, Szinyei painted this picture in Munich, but it has none of the spirit of the Academy there. It is a brilliant picture sketch inspired by a Hungarian scene. It shows the maids hanging out the washing in the garden in the summer sunlight, with the "young master" looking on. As in his picture sketch The Swing, Szinyei was primarily concerned with translating light into color. He disregarded the academic rules and painted his visual experience in carefree composition. He grasped the essence of Impressionism, although he had no knowledge of the similar endeavors by French artists, had never been to Paris, and had only seen the realist paintings of Gustave Courbet and some very early works by Edouard Manet at the International Exhibition at Munich (Claude Monet painted his first Impressionist painting in Grenoble in the same year.) — Study of a Horse by a Chestnut Tree (1869, 61x46cm; 946x688pix, 75kb) — Zsigmond Szinyei Merse (1868, 64x49cm; 745*988pix, 60kb) _ This is the first brilliant picture of Szinyei, which he painted in Jernye, where he spent his summer holiday. He portrays Zsigmond, his younger brother with a red cap and a chibouk. He appears to be musing on something. The picture painted with delicate realism is the work of a mature artist. — Ninon Szinyei Merse (1870, 61x48,3cm; 638*866pix, 45kb) _ Szinyei was working in Hungary during the Franco-Prussian war and painted several pictures of members of his family in a naturalist style, including this portrait of his elder sister. — Rózsi Szinyei Merse, the Artist's Daughter (1897, 48x38 cm; 822x644pix, 155kb) — The Artist's Wife Dressed in Yellow (1874, 98x76 cm; 846x640pix, 90kb) _ The artist never accepted commissions to paint portraits; all the portraits he painted featured members of his family. These representations, each of which is a pearl of intimate Realism, reach the soul of the model. Szinyei began to paint portraits of this wife on several occasions, but he was not always able to finish them, because his wife, in sharp contrast with Szinyei's contemplating character, was ever so busy that she had difficulty tolerating the sittings. She sat both for Woman in a Lilac Dress (1874) and for the Portrait in Shawl, which was not finished in 1880: the deep scarlet velvet dress his wife is shown wearing was completed only about 1890, long after the couple's divorce in 1887. (Szinyei's daughter was sitting as model). The painting is dominated by the delicate and sensitive beauty of the model's face, radiating from the background of warm colors. In Szinye's pictures, the women are often shown wearing in their hair or on their hats colorful flowers, or as in the case of Portrait in Shawl, laces and ribbons. We can almost be certain that he did not use them just to conform with the fashion of the age. These colorful patches were necessary to emphasize the beauty of the face and the fine rosiness of the skin, as well as to produce a definite separation from the dark background. — Woman in a Lilac Dress (1874, 102x77cm; 878x638pix, 100kb) _ The portrait shows the young wife of the artist. Significant as it may be in Szinyei's oevre, it means a step back in comparison with Picnic in May. The female figure with the landscape in the background is not in harmony with it. The picture was painted in the artist's studio. Szinyei's wife divorced him in 1887 and died at the age of 101. — Baby Felix (1874, 32x26 cm; 808x676pix, 154kb) _ the artist's son Felix at the age of four months. — Majális (Picnic on May Day) (1873, 128x163cm; 780x986pix, 146kb) _ detail 1 (876x756pix, 105kb) _ detail 2 (606x1028pix, 97kb) a self-portrait _ Szinyei made friends with Böcklin, who was also working in Munich. Szinyei asked for Böcklin's advice when he painted Majális, which can be considered as his most significant picture. The picture shows a group of people sitting on a slope. They are enyoying the cool shadow of a tree off picture. The picture gives the same impression as those of French impresssionists, only the technique is different. He painted the landscape from memory in his studio, leaving the place for the figures which he painted one by one after models at various times. The figure who is lying on a blanket and eating a leg of chicken is the painter himself. The picture was not well received: his fellow artists and even Böcklin did not appreciate it. Szinyei wanted to give it as a present to the Hungarian National Museum, but it did not accept it. The painter and his picture were not appreciated until the Millennium Exhibition in 1896. [magyarul] — The Artist's Studio (1873, 35,7x43cm; 996x844pix, 144kb) — On a Garden Bench (sketch) (1873, 20,4x33cm; 648x950pix, 69kb) _ Zsófia Probstner, Szinyei's bride, under trees in a greenish glimmer. This was his most beautiful picture after Picnic in May. — The Artist's Wife (1880, 62x47cm; 1000x740pix, 118kb) — Puszta with Stork (1870, 21x43 cm; 442x988pix, 127kb) — Awakening of Spring (1878, 21x17cm; 812x678pix, 207kb) — In the Green Grass (1873, 23x28cm; 732x906pix, 193kb) — Capri 1903, 31x39 cm; 720x898pix, 173kb) — Chestnut Tree 1907, 100x122cm; 766x880pix, 86kb) — Thawing Snow (1895, 48x61cm; 771x992pix, 115kb) — Balloon (1882, 42x39cm; 838x766pix, 100kb) _ The immediate inspiration for this painting, one of the artist's most original ideas for a picture, came from his brother in-law's balloon ride in 1878, as witnessed by Szinyei. This is recorded in the subtitle "Béla Probstner Bids Farewell to Sáros". Following this balloon ride, Szinyei's brother-in-law left for a long journey first in Western Europe and then in the Far East, in the course of which he even spent a few years in Japan. In the painting which conveys an optimistic mode, the striped balloon triumphantly reigns over the sky. The person high above is no longer interested in his fellowmen swarming below; his eyes rest on the line of the treetops. He floats, drunken of freedom, thus becoming the symbol drunken of freedom, thus becoming the symbol of the free flight of thoughts, the freedom of art which does not disappear into cosmic distances, but remain close to Earth, the living environment of people. — Field 1909, 60x70 cm; 714x820pix, 124kb) — Autumnal Landscape 1900, 70x91cm; 735x996pix, 123kb) — Lark (1882, 163x127cm; 976x726pix, 89kb) _ With this picture, Szinyei carried on with the subject matter of "Picnic in May" after a break of several years. He painted the landscape from memory, but he had a model to pose for the nude. Details of the compositions, i.e. the landscape, the nude and the sky, are not in closely connected, so the picture, no matter how beautiful it is, does not rival Picnic on May Day . — Brook (1884, 37x57 cm; 670x1002pix, 78kb) — Poppies in the Field (1902, 88x80cm; 908x1000pix, 251kb) _ The artist who had an unbiased and humble approach to landscape attempted to create a clear and simple composition. He soon found diagonal composition which best suited his character and gestures, which kept on returning in a lot of his works in a number of variations. The picture shows again a slope, as in Picnic in May, or Snowbreak. As another compositional bravura, the artist placed figures walking uphill in the focus of a semi-circle of flowers. However small those figures are, they dominate the picture. Szinyei Merse started painting landscapes with poppies in 1895 which continued the colors of his youth. Like Monet of the impressionists, Szinyei Merse also noticed the beauty of the contrast of red and green in the field full of poppies. The rising air around landscape and figures in the sunshine does not allow fine details to be perceived. Thus, all elements of the picture merge with the harmony of uniform vision in spite of its intense colors. This picture with poppies, painted in Jernye, is the subtlest of all versions and expresses best what the Hungarian landscape looked like on a bright summer day. — Poppies in the Field (1896, 39x63,2cm; 556x920pix, 136kb) _ Of the pictures showing poppies (1895, 1896, 1900, 1902), this 1896 version and the one from 1902 mentioned above are the most interesting. Although in a slightly different arrangement and format, this painting shows the artist's favorite components of landscapes in a similar composition. Due to the vertical format of this picture, the blue sky with the white clouds, as well as the peasant woman and her son walking along the yellow path, are given greater emphasis. Of all the versions, this one is the best thought-out, with the most balanced color composition and the best representation of the Hungarian countryside's character. — Winter (1904, 90x117cm; 736x967pix, 164kb) — Blooming Apple Trees (1902, 50x65 cm; 748x976pix, 205kb) |
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