updated
Thursday 30-Sep-2004 0:19
UT
ART “4”
“2”-DAY 30 September |
| DEATH:
1781 LE PRINCE |
| BIRTHS: 1840 VIBERT
— 1865 LÉVY~DHURMER |
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Born on 30 September (06 July?) 1840: Jehan
Georges Vibert, French Academic
painter who died on 28 July 1902. — The cheerfulness, playfulness, and hint of shrewdness in Vibert's character are traits that also distinguish his works and make his reputation. In his early years he was trained under Barrias and, on 04 April 1857, entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts. During the early part of his career he painted rather serious and dramatic subjects, such as The Death of Narcissus and Christian Martyrs in the Lion pit. Vibert entered the Salon in 1863; found his first success with a medal at the 1864 salon, and won a financial prize at the universal exposition of 1867. In about 1867, however, his style changed and instead of the dramatic and serious, he started painting "small things and niggling. Instead of heroic Christians and tragic mythology, he turned to more homey subjects such as The Barber of Ambulart. In 1870, while Paris was under siege by the Prussians, Vibert fought and was wounded at the battle of Malmaison. His attraction to the less serious subjects of genre grew, stimulated by his interests in comedy and satire. He also wrote several comedies, many of which were successfully produced at Paris theaters such as the Vaudeville. As well as from his own comedies, he gathered subject matter from the French fabulist La Fontaine (of whom he had a bust in his house), and the satirist Jonathan Swift. In 1878 Vibert achieved his first popular success with a huge history painting, The Apotheosis of Mr. Thiers. In spite of the success of this painting, he would spend most of his creative time on the humorous scenes that he enjoyed. During the later part of his life, his interest turned to the clergy. Paintings such as The Fortune Teller, The Diet, and Monk picking radishes satirized the clergy's irreligious indulgences or depicted them in homey situations to an audience used to seeing the church ennobled in traditional religious and historic works. These would be the paintings that would make his reputation as one of the seven most influential artists of his time, along with Bouguereau, Cabanel, Meissonnier, Gérôme, Bonnat, and Lefebvre. Vibert's works satirizing the clergy are representative of the liberties emmanating from Enlightenment thinking that led to the world and culture shifting events of the US and French Revolutions. To spoof the clergy would have been to risk your life or imprisonment a century earlier, or even currently in Rome where Papal power was still at great strength. Thus Vibert was part of the growing democratization of Europe in which the artists and writers of the time were exposing the fraud and pomposity of big government and a hypocritical clergy that talked about walking in the shoes of the fisherman, and giving for god all worldly goods, while they themselves lived in the height of oppulance and luxury in great mansions with servants waiting on their every whim. La Tireuse des Cartes is a particularly powerful example. What could be a greater spoof on holier-than-thou clerics, than to have two Cardinals soliciting the services of a prognosticator. In 1902 an important technical book was published by Vibert: La Science de la Peinture. — Vibert est fils de Théodore Vibert [1816-1850] qui, en 1841, achète l'établissement situé au 7, Rue de Lancry exploité par son beau-père, Jean-Pierre Marie Jazet, graveurs à succés de la Maison Goupil, et devient éditeur de gravures. La même année, il succède à Henri Rittner comme associé auprès d'Adolphe Goupil pour faire le commerce d'estampes sous la raison sociale "Goupil & Vibert". En 1846, Alfred Mainguet, avocat, lui rachète la moitié de ses parts et devient le troisième associé de "Goupil, Vibert & Cie". Théodore Vibert se donne tout entier au projet ambitieux qu'il a élaboré avec Adolphe Goupil: la succursale de New-York, ouverte en 1848. Il décède en Mars 1850 et Adolphe Goupil est alors désigné tuteur de ses deux enfants dont l'un, Jehan Georges Vibert, aura une carrière de peintre édité par la Maison. Le peintre J.G Vibert est largement édité par la Maison Goupil: Adolphe Goupil [1806-1893] est son tuteur depuis la mort de son père Théodore Vibert. Vibert fit une carrière brillante. Il s'était spécialisé dans des sujets mettant en scène des ecclésiastiques. — Vibert's students included Pinckney Marcius-Simons and Ferdinand Roybet [1840-1920]. — LINKS — Le Médecin Malade (1892) illustrant une comédie de Vibert. —The Final Touch (74x100cm) — The Diet (71x61cm) — Tea for the Bishop (46x61cm) — The Wrath of the Bishop (28x36cm) — La Tireuse de Cartes (69x102cm) — Napoléon et son fils _ The only son of Napoléon I [15 Aug 1769 – 05 May 1821] and Marie-Louise [12 Dec 1791 – 17 Dec 1847], Napoléon-François-Charles-Joseph Bonaparte [20 Mar 1811 – 22 Jul 1832] was at birth titled “roi de Rome”. — Gulliver of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift — Chatting by the Fountain (97x74cm) — Preparations for the Procession — L'Aveu (1896, photogravure couleurs, 27x35cm; 575x733pix, 197kb). |
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Died on 30 September 1781: Jean-Baptiste
Le Prince, French painter, draftsman, and engraver born
on 17 September 1734. — Born to a family of ornamental sculptors and gilders, he became famous for creating a new kind of genre picture, based on the direct observation of Russian subjects, and also for perfecting aquatint technique. Sometime around 1750 he became a student of François Boucher, thanks to the protection of the Maréchal de Belle-Isle [1684–1761], governor of Metz. Boucher’s saturated brushwork, highly finished surfaces and incisive drawing had a decisive impact upon the young artist, as did, perhaps, the diversity of his output. He was also inspired by 17th-century Dutch and Flemish genre and landscape painters. — A great traveler (Finland, Lithuania, Russia, Siberia), he introduced Russian subjects into France. Born in Metz, Leprince became known in France for his history paintings, landscapes, portraits, and genre scenes, as well as for his engravings. He studied with the greatest official painter of eighteenth-century France, François Boucher (1703-1770), often painting pastoral scenes in his master's rococo style. In 1758, when he was twenty-four, Leprince went to Russia for five years to work for the Imperial Palace in St. Petersburg. He decorated much of that palace and many others with his interior designs and paintings. He returned to France in December 1763. — Two influences were paramount for Le Prince: his teacher François Boucher and his stay in Russia. Born to a family of ornamental sculptors and gilders, Le Prince began studying under Boucher about 1750. His master's tightly controlled brushwork and highly finished surfaces influenced him greatly, along with Boucher's affection for scenes with shepherds and shepherdesses. By 1757 Le Prince was painting at the Imperial Palace in Saint Petersburg. He traveled extensively in Russia, perhaps even to Siberia. Returning to Paris five years later and eager to make a name for himself, Le Prince created paintings and etchings of the Russian countryside and daily life, often using Russian costumes and small mannequins to get the exactitude he desired. Le Prince not only became famous for creating this new kind of genre picture, but he also perfected the technique of making aquatints. Upon becoming a member of the Académie Royale in 1765, Le Prince exhibited fifteen paintings at that year's Salon, all Russian subjects. The Beauvais Tapestry Manufactory wove his Russian Games tapestry cartoons many times. After 1770 Le Prince's health declined and he left Paris for the French countryside, where he painted landscapes and pastoral subjects. — Le Prince's students included Jean-Baptiste Marie Huet, Charles-Clément Bervic, Louis-François Cassas. Louis-François. — LINKS — Un Baptême Russe (1765, 73x92cm) _ Peint au retour d'un voyage en Russie, ce tableau fut présenté comme morceau de réception à l'Académie. Il appartient au goût des "russeries" que Le Prince exploita tout au long de sa carrière. — The Tartar Camp (1765, 175x223cm) — The Necromancer (1775, 77x63cm) Three versions of this subject are known, including one in the Hermitage, St Petersburg. It is not known which of the three was the one exhibited at the Salon of 1775. Evidently a popular composition, it was also engraved in 1785. Le Prince specialised in genre scenes often, like this one, with an exotic flavor. — The Four Seasons: Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer (1763 Four paintings, Autumn 49x87cm, Winter 50x87cm, Spring 49x86cm, Summer 50x87cm). These allegorical oil paintings, each still in its elegant original frame, probably decorated the interior walls of an important home, and, consequently, are very thinly painted. Each one uses a female nude to personify one of the four seasons. Le Prince's Seasons derive almost directly from the designs of Boucher, if we judge from the strong similarity between Spring and an engraving after Boucher entitled Venus Crowned by Cupids. — The Russian Cradle (1765, 59x74cm; 518x640pix, 94kb) _ In a rural setting, a peasant family sits admiring a baby in a cradle suspended from the branches of a tree. The composition takes its name from the distinctive hanging cradle made of boughs lashed together. Surrounded by goats and sheep, an old woman in a red dress and decorative headscarf holds a distaff and points towards the infant as if telling its fortune. The blue sky with pink-tinged clouds recalls the influence of François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Le Prince's former teacher. Jean-Baptiste Le Prince served in Saint Petersburg at the court of Catherine the Great between 1760 and 1762. Upon his return to Paris in 1765, he made this painting and thirteen others that he exhibited in the Salon. To an eighteenth-century French audience, this improbable scene would have seemed exotic and picturesque. In reality, Russian peasants were still serfs tied to the land and its owner; it is unlikely that they would have enjoyed the leisure time depicted here. Based on drawings and recollections from the artist’s extensive travels throughout Russia, The Russian Cradle proved immensely popular and was replicated in drawings, prints, and even as decoration on Sèvres porcelain. — La Visite (1779, 88x129cm; [Flash]) |
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Born on 30 September 1865: Lucien
Lévy~Dhurmer, French Art Nouveau painter and potter
who died on 24 September 1953. — From 1879 he studied at the Ecole Supérieure de Dessin et de Sculpture in Paris. In his first exhibition at the Salon in 1882 he showed a small porcelain plaque depicting The Birth of Venus in the style of Alexandre Cabanel and he continued to exhibit there regularly. From 1886 to 1895 he worked as a decorator of earthenware and then as artistic director of the studio of Clément Massier [1845–1917] at Golfe Juan, near Cannes. Around 1892 he signed his first pieces of earthenware inspired by Islamic ceramics and made a name for himself primarily as a potter at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1895. An innovator in ceramic shapes, techniques and glazes, he participated in the revival of the decorative arts at the end of the 19th century. During this period he spent some time in Italy, notably in Venice where he familiarized himself with 15th-century Italian art. In 1896 he exhibited for the first time at the Galerie Georges Petit: about twenty pastels and paintings were displayed, revealing his individual style and gifts as a portrait painter. The female form, influenced by the art of Leonardo and the Pre-Raphaelites became, with landscape, one of his favored themes and was invested with mystery, using a technique at once full-bodied and refined (e.g. Eve, 1896). In the 20th century he gradually departed from Symbolism except in some representations of women illustrating the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Gabriel Fauré and Claude Debussy and in some landscapes (e.g. Winter, Petit Trianon, 1929) — One of the best and strangest French Symbolists. Master of pastels, painter of fantastical scenes, portraits and beautiful Mediterranean landscapes. From 1879, attended drawing and sculpture classes at his local school in Paris. In 1886, he met Raphael Collin, who advised him. From 1887-1895 he lived at Golfe Juan, working as a decorator of porcelain figurines and objets d'art. Discovered classical art on a trip to Italy. Returning to Paris in 1869, he exhibited under a pseudonym, adding the last two syllables of his mother's maiden name (Goldhurmer) to his own, probably to avoid confusion with another artist called Lévy. His characteristic style, a hazy academicism, was appreciated in equal measure by the public and by other artists. While maintaining an academic approach to detail, he assimilated the lessons of Impressionism, creating works whose astonishingly successful coloristic harmony invariably relates to the idea or vision he sought to invoke. After 1901, he gave up his Symbolist themes to some extent, the exception being his idealised female nudes which ilustrate the music of Beethoven, Fauré and Debussy. — LINKS — Eve (1896, 49x46cm) — Notre Dame de Penmarc'h (1896, 41x33cm) _ Lévy-Dhurmer s'est inspiré de modèles vivants pour la réalisation de cette toile : il s'agit d'une Bretonne et de son enfant, vêtus de leurs austères costumes bigoudens. A l'arrière-plan, apparaissent les rochers de la pointe de Penmarrc'h, prolongés au second plan par la grève de St Guénolé à marée basse. Il ne s'agit pas d'un simple portrait, mais plus d'une transposition. En effet, tout comme le firent Gauguin et Henri Martin à la même époque, Lévy-Dhurmer idéalise la réalité en attribuant à cette paysanne et à son enfant les insignes de la sainteté et de la divinité : auréoles et geste de l'enfant bénissant, corps hiératiques et regards fixes, semblables à ceux des personnages des icônes byzantines. Il s'agit bien là d'une Vierge à l'Enfant dans la pure tradition de la Renaissance italienne, mais transposée ici dans la culture populaire bretonne empreinte d'une piété simple et naïve. Le musée de Brest conserve une esquisse préparatoire (de plus grand format) de ce tableau, rare oeuvre symboliste d'inspiration bretonne. — Feu D'Artifice a Venise (1917, 90x57cm) — Portrait of Georges Rodenbach (1895) _ Rodenbach [16 Jul 1855 – 25 Dec 1898] was a Symbolist poet and novelist whose writing was inspired by scenes of his country, Belgium. — Woman with a Medallion (Mystery) (1896) — Medusa (The Angry Wave) (1897) |
