Luca Signorelli. Part 2.

Frescos at the Chapel of St Brizio inside the Orvieto’s Duomo

Part 1. Antichrist and The Destruction of the World frescos

In this second part of the blog looking at the works of Luca Signorelli, I want to examine his frescos in the Chapel of St Brizio at the Cathedral of Orvieto which are considered to be his foremost masterpieces.

The cathedral basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, Ovierto.

The cathedral in Orvieto, the cathedral basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, began to be built in 1290 at the request of Pope Nicholas IV with the intention of creating a single large place of worship for the city to replace the two churches that pre-existed, the episcopal church of Santa Maria and the parish church of San Costanzo, both of which made way for the new cathedral. This change was part of a broader urban redevelopment project driven by the frequent presence of the papal court in the city, which required a grand church for papal ceremonies. The building of the main cathedral was considered architecturally completed in 1532.

The Madonna di San Brizio altarpiece

In 1396, a century after construction began, Tommaso di Micheluccio from Orvieto left a legacy in his will to fund the construction of a chapel dedicated to the Assumption. This chapel was completed in 1444. Until 1622, the chapel was called La Cappella Nuova, as it was the last one to be built  after that of the La Cappella del Corporale (Corporal Chapel)  

La Cappella del Corporale (Corporal Chapel)  

Why was it named the Corporal Chapel? The corporal is an altar linen used in Christianity for the celebration of the Eucharist. It is a small square of white linen cloth, usually somewhat smaller than the width of the altar on which they are used, so that they can be placed flat on top of it when unfolded.  During the Liturgy of the Eucharist, various altar vessels are placed on the corporal, including the chalice, the paten, and the ciborium containing the smaller hosts for the Communion of the laity

In 1263, while a Bohemian priest was celebrating mass in Bolsena, drops of blood came down from the host and went to wet the corporal. Pope Urban IV, knowing of the miraculous episode, had the Holy Linen transported to the city of Orvieto, where, the following year, he instituted the feast of Corpus Christi.  Every year the city of Orvieto commemorates the miracle of Bolsena and the institution of the feast of Corpus Christi with the procession of the Sacred Corporal, accompanied by the parade of the historical procession in medieval costumes.

In 1622,  the venerated image of the Majesty of the Table was transferred to the Capella Nuova.  Legend had it that it was painted by St. Luke, but in reality the work is of the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. This relic was also known as the “Madonna di San Brizio”, because in 1464 the image of the saint had been added next to the Virgin, then removed; it ended up giving its name to the entire chapel, La Cappella di San Brizio, known simply as San Brizio,

Chapel of San Brizio

The idea to add the Chapel of San Brizio onto the main building of the cathedral in 1396 was a way to expand the thirteenth-century building.  The actual extension was not completed until 1444.   Three years later, on June 14th, 1447, the Opera del Duomo signed a contract with Fra Angelico to paint frescos on the Chapel vault, on the theme of the Last Judgment.

Frescoed vault by Giovanni da Fiesole known as Fra Angelico, Chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio, Cathedral of Orvieto. Italy

Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli began the decoration of the vault but only managed to complete the work on the ceiling depicting Heaven with the Saints, arranged in different ranks, surrounding Christ as the Judge sitting on a throne, before he was summoned to Rome by Pope Nicholas V to work on the Niccoline Chapel in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican City. In 1449, work in the Orvieto Cathedral came to a halt. 

In 1489 Pietro Perugino, an Italian Renaissance painte, was approached to complete the work. However, he never began and for the next fifty years the decorations to the chapel were abandoned.  In April 1499 the cathedral authorities approached Luca Signorelli for him to complete the vault frescos which had now been untouched for fifty years following Fra Angelico’s departure.  Signorelli, along with his school of apprentices, assistants, and students, completed the frescos on the vault with scenes of the Choir of the Apostles, of the Doctors, of the Martyrs, Virgins and Patriarchs.

The vaulted ceiling

On completing the work on the vaulted ceiling, the cathedral board were so pleased with the results that in late 1499 they commissioned Signorelli to paint frescoes in the large lunettes of the walls of the chapel. He began in 1500 and the chapel frescos were completed in 1503. Art historians consider the frescoes in the chapel are the most complex and impressive works by Signorelli. As far as the subject matter, The Apocalypse, is concerned, it is one of the most important subjects of Christian iconography. It is likely that for the ceiling frescoes (the groups of Apostles, Angels, Prophets, Patriarchs, Doctors of the Church, Martyrs and Virgins) Signorelli simply completed the programme that had originally been devised by Fra Angelico. But the frescoes on the side walls, although the basic subject would have been planned in accordance with the Cathedral’s administrators and theologians, they are wholly the product of Signorelli’s fertile imagination. The side walls are covered with seven large scenes:

the Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist,

the Destruction of the World,

the Resurrection of the Flesh,

the Damned,

the Elect,

the Paradise,

the Hell.

The works of Signorelli on the vaulted ceiling and on the upper walls represent the events surrounding the Apocalypse and the Last Judgment.

Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist by Luca Signorelli (1500-04)

The Apocalyptic events he depicted began with the Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist, and proceeded to Doomsday and The Resurrection of the Flesh. These frescos occupy three vast lunettes, each of them a single continuous narrative composition.  Signorelli began in 1499 and the chapel frescos were completed in 1503. Art historians consider the frescoes in the chapel are the most complex and impressive work by him.

One such fresco focused on the Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist. It is a vision of apocalyptic deception, mass manipulation, and spiritual warfare.  The Bible (Matthew 24: 23 – 25) recounts Jesus’ warning of false prophets:

“…Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look! Here is the Messiah!’ or ‘There he is!’ – do not believe it. For false Christ’s and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you ahead of time…”

Fra Bartolomeo: portrait of Girolamo Savonarola

Many believe that Signorelli’s depiction could also have been a reference to Girolamo Savonarola, the notorious Italian Dominican friar and preacher. who was identified as a false prophet.  Savonarola was excommunicated for heresy and sedition and later hanged and burned at stake in Florence on May 23, 1498. Signorelli began the work just a year after the execution of Giralamo Savonarola.  It was at a time people were suffering tyrannical cruelty, resulting in many impoverished citizens were being exploited.  People were becoming obsessed with death, political turmoil, and the meaning of true righteousness.

At first glance, the fresco appears to depict a Christ-like figure giving a sermon to an entranced gathering. But this is not Christ the Messiah. It is the Antichrist whose motions mimic those of the real Christ as seen in traditional scenes of the Sermon on the Mount. However, we need to look closer at the scene.    Just behind the speaker’s ear a demonic figure whispers commands of what the Christ-like figure should say. The portrayal of evil here is not monstrous, it is eloquent. It is believable, and troublingly recognisable. A crowd gathers. For some the speech is fascinating and believable.  For others, it has caused great distress. It is this which reminds us that deception affects us differently depending on the thought process of each listener

Scenes of violence

False raising of Lazarus

In the mid-ground, horrifying scenes unfold, acts of violence, manipulation, and miraculous deceptions, including a false Lazrus-like raising of the dead. In the sky we see the Archangel Michael is heading towards Earth to fight the Antichrist.

In the lower left corner there are two darkly clothed gentlemen; the man to the left is apparently a self-portrait of the artist, while the man to the right is thought to have been a portrait of Fra Angelico.

The Antichrist does not brandish a sword. He simply wields words, ideas, of how to mesmerise the crowd. The Antichrist mimics the divine and offers signs and wonders so as to best influence the senses of the onlookers so that it causes them to find a way to avoid truthful reality.  The depiction prophesises a warning that the art of twisting the truth becomes the most dangerous lie of all.

………………………..to be continued.

Much of the information was gained from Wikipedia plus a few excellent websites:

The Patroclus

Traveling in Tuscany

POTTYPADRE

Web Gallery of Art

Italian Renaissance Art

The Art Story

Duomo di Orvieto

Luca Signorelli. Part 1.

Early life and the Sistene Chapel fresco.

Luca Signorelli self portrait

As we have just had three important days in the Christian calendar I thought I would have today’s blog all about one of the great Italian religious painters, Luca Signorelli, sometimes known as Luca da Cortona because of the town of his birth.   Signorelli is undoubtedly most revered for his portrayal of figures in action together with his incomparable grasp of the human anatomy which can best be seen in the beautiful Orvieto frescoes. Luca was a painter of the High Renaissance period which represents the summit of Renaissance art and the culmination of all the exploratory activities of the quattrocento,  or millequattrocento, which is Italian for ‘fourteen hundred’ and means the fifteenth century. It therefore embraces cultural and artistic activities in painting, sculpture and architecture during the period 1400-1500.

A Corpse-carrying Nude man by Luca Signorelli (1496).  Musée du Louvre

Signorelli’s depictions of the human body were so precise that for him to have gained such knowledge and such levels of accuracy without carrying out actual dissections of the human body would have been impossible as at this time there was not sufficient literature that would have allowed an artist to learn so much about the different aspects of the human body.   Artists sometimes could further knowledge of the human anatomy if they could dissect human bodies whilst others would dissect animals in order to develop their understanding of things like muscle balance. This close study of human anatomy resulted in artists being able to accurately go into much more detail when depicting the human body

Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Luca Signorelli (1502)

Signorelli had built up such a great reputation as a painter that he was invited to form part of an elite group of artists which were sent for by Pope Sixtus IV to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel. The Italian Renaissance painter, architect, art historian, and biographer known for his work Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Giorgio Vasari,  said of him:

“…he was an artist who with his profound mastery of design, particularly in nudes, and with his grace in invention and in the composition of scenes, opened to the majority of craftsmen the way to the final perfection of art…”

Luca’s childhood days are poorly documented, but it is thought that Luca d’Egidio di Ventura de’ Signorelli was born around 1450 in Cortona, a small hill town and commune in the province of Arezzo, in Tuscany.

The Capture of Christ by Luca Signorelli (1502)

As a child he showed an interest in art and in the 1460s, Signorelli signed up to an apprenticeship with Early Renaissance painter, Piero della Francesca.  He was said to have been a talented student and quickly took on board the principles of mathematics, geometry, and perspective that his tutor taught him.  Around 1470, Signorelli, in his early twenties. married Gallizia di Piero Carnesecchi, and the couple went on to have three sons, Polidoro, a future painter and builder, Antonio who became assistant to his father, and Pier Tommaso. The couple also had two daughters, Gabriela, and Felicia. Documents show that in 1472 Luca was known to be living and working in the city of Arezzo, located about fifteen miles from his hometown of Cortona and two years later he was working in the nearby Città di Castello.

Stendardo della Flagellazione (The Flagellation Standa) by Luca Signorelli (c.1475)

One of Signorelli’s earliest extant paintings is his work entitled Stendardo della Flagellazione (The Flagellation Standa) and it is believed that it was completed around 1475.  The work bears the artist’s signature, “OPUS LUCE CORTONENSIS,” confirming Signorelli’s authorship and reflecting his Cortona origins. The Flagellation Standard by Luca Signorelli, created as a double-sided processional banner for the Confraternity of the Raccomandati in Fabriano. Its role was to act as a primary devotional function by inspiring lay participants to engage in acts of penance and charity. The banner was carried during public processions, particularly those involving self-flagellation during Holy Week or times of crisis, with the banner’s vivid depiction of Christ’s scourging encouraging communal meditation on the Passion, fostering empathy and moral discipline among confraternity members who mimicked the Savior’s suffering to achieve spiritual redemption. The work was commissioned by the Confraternita dei Raccomandati di Santa Maria del Mercato church in Fabriano.  The church is now destroyed.  The commission was for a work of art which could be included in processional demonstrations of public flagellation. The depiction is based upon the biblical passages of John 19:1,

“…Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged…”

Jesus had been sentenced to death on the Cross by Pilate. But first he was to be flagellated, and soldiers tied him to a pillar and then scourged him.  In his painting Signorelli depicted the event against an architectural background. The work is dated to the period prior to the artist’s journey to Rome in 1482, probably sometime around 1475.

Nursing Madonna in Glory by Luca Signorelli (c.1475)

Signorelli’s work is thought to be one side of a double-sided panel, with the second side being The Nursing Madonna.  The reason behind the second work being that the fraternity also carried out philanthropic work to help orphaned and abandoned children. At some point between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, the two sides were separated. Both sides are now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, to which they were brought in 1811 after the church’s suppression. The suppression of the Italian Church, particularly the Jesuits, during the Napoleonic era was a significant event in the history of Italy.

Moses’s Testament and Death by Luca Signorelli (1482)

Luca Signorelli was known as a master of fresco painting and one of his frescos can be seen at the Sistine Chapel in Rome. The 15th century decoration of the walls includes the false drapes, the Stories of Moses, and of Christ and the portraits of the Popes.  It was completed by a team of painters made up initially of Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, Luca Signorelli and their respective workshops, which included Pinturicchio, Piero di Cosimo and Bartolomeo della Gatta.  The fresco by Signorelli depicts the cycle of the life of Moses and can be found on the south wall of the chapel.  Signorelli’s fresco entitled Moses’s Testament and Death illustrates the last chapters in the life of Moses.

Let us look closely at everything that is going on in this multi-populated fresco.

On the right foreground of the fresco sits the hundred-and-twenty-year-old Moses on a rise, holding his staff and with golden rays circling his head. At Moses’s feet stands the ark of the Covenant, opened to show the jar of manna inside and the two tablets of the law.

 In the left foreground of the picture we see Joshua being appointed as Moses’s successor. Joshua kneels before Moses, who gives him his staff.

 In the centre of the background, we see Moses being led by the angel of the Lord up Mount Nebo, from which he will be able to look across to the Promised Land that by the will of God he will never enter.

His death is depicted in the background, in the land of Moab, where the children of Israel mourned him for thirty days. Moses’s followers are shown mourning his passing in Moab. Here, he lays amidst the group, enshrouded in white linen. At the far left is the cave in which he will be entombed.

Art historians believe that Signorelli collaborated on this work with his friend, Bartolomeo della Gatta, a painter, illuminator, and architect.  The more active figures being executed by Signorelli. One such figure, a seated nude youth in the centre of the foreground, is believed to have served as a reference for the twenty nude figures – what Michelangelo called the Ignudi – painted on his famous chapel ceiling 25 years later.

Ignudo, Fresco, Cappella Sistina, Vatican by Michelangelo (1509)

However Signorelli is probably best known for his frescos at the Chapel of St Brizio inside the Orvieto’s Duomo…………………………………..

…………………..to be continued.

The information for this blog came from a number of websites, the main ones being:

The Art Story

The History of Art

Grokipedia

Walter Ufer. Part 2.

Life in Taos, New Mexico

Walter Ufer

Having taken his wife’s advice with regards approaching Chicago’s dignitaries and offering to paint their portraits, Ufer called upon the Carter H Harrison, the 30th mayor of Chicago, who had held office from 1897-1905 and then again from 1911-1915.  Harrison proved reluctant but eventually agreed but added that in his opinion there were better portrait artists than Ufer.  His agreement to sit for the portrait came with a number of provisos.   He told Ufer that he would not pay for commission as the prestige of having it hung in city hall would be sufficient “payment”.   Later however, he grudgingly agreed to pay for the painting materials and frame.  Harrison also said that before the portrait would be hung on the walls of the City Hall it had to be accepted by the jury for submission into the Chicago Society of Artists Exhibition.

Going East by Walter Ufer (1917)

This contact with the mayor proved to be fortuitous as Harrison’s syndicate of German American businessmen, agreed to sponsor three trips for Ufer to travel to Taos, New Mexico along with fellow artist Victor Higgins. Harrison, who like many art patrons of the time, was fascinated by the American West and its indigenous cultures, and viewed it as a distinctively American subject matter.   For Ufer, these journeys to New Mexico gave him an opportunity to observe the natural beauty of the New Mexico landscape, with its intense clarity of the light, and at the same time witness the rich cultural heritage of the Pueblo people. The trips over the next two years were to be an opportunity to record on canvas what they observed.   These journeys to the West proved to be an eye-opener for Ufer who fell in love with the country and its native inhabitants. Ufer made his first trip to New Mexico at the end of the summer of 1914 visiting Santa Fe, Chimayo, and the pueblos of San Juan, Isleta, and Taos. Ufer completed over thirty ten and a half by twelve and a half inch canvases as well as a group of twenty-five by thirty-inch paintings, mostly portraits painted in Isleta and San Juan.

South Pueblo, Taos Indian Pueblo, New Mexico

When Ufer arrived in Taos, which at the time was a small, remote town situated at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The population of town was made up of Catholic Hispanics who worked the land; Native Americans, a farming society, who also worked as servants, artists’ models, and other lowly menial jobs. There were also a smattering of Anglos, such as artists, bankers, and merchants.  Six of the Anglos that Ufer met after he arrived were artists, a painting group that formed the Taos Society of Artists the following year. North of the town was the famous Taos Pueblo, where Native Americans lived in a multi- storied structure similar to ones they had lived in four hundred years earlier.  None had the basic necessities such as electricity or running water.

The Battery by Walter Ufer (1918)

In the Winter of 1918, whilst back in New York, Ufer visited a friend of another of his wealthy patrons, William H Klauer, and completed the bird’s-eye view painting The Battery from the view he had from the apartment window overlooking the Battery district of Lower Manhattan in winter.  It is the depiction of bustling crowds around the square.  Ufer was a patriotic artist and in this work we can see American flags fluttering over tall buildings, one of which housed an army recruiting office.   Soon after the finishing this painting Walter Ufer returned to his beloved Taos where he remained for the rest of his life.

Former members of the Taos Society of Artists photographed by C.E. Lord in the Couse garden, 1932. Back row: Ufer, Dunton, Higgins, Adams. Seated: Hennings, Phillips, Couse, Berninghaus. Front row: Sharp; Blumenschein. Missing: Critcher and Rolshoven.

Soon after Ufer arrived in Taos he was drawn into the town’s artistic community known as the Taos Society of Artists (TSA) that had formed in 1915   The group was formally established by a group of six painters: Bert Geer Phillips, Ernest L. Blumenschein, Joseph Henry Sharp, Oscar E. Berninghaus, E. Irving Couse, and W. Herbert “Buck” Dunton. The Society’s undertaking was to promote the art of Taos and the Southwest, sending traveling exhibitions of their work to major cities across the United States. Walter Ufer officially joined the Society in 1917, and soon became one of its most active and powerful members.

Bob Abbot and his Assistant by Walter Ufer (1935)

The TSA artists, with additional members, also became known as the “Taos Ten” were all captivated by the region’s rugged landscape and its native inhabitants. However, each artist had their own unique style and viewpoint. Walter Ufer came to the group bringing with him his European training and modernist propensities, and he was able to add an individual voice. Ufer was known for his strong compositions, the use of a vibrant colour palette, and a more direct, and less romanticized portrayal of his subjects in comparison to some of his fellow members. However, he still collaborated closely with the other members of the TSA all the time sharing ideas and participating in the Society’s collective efforts to gain national recognition for Southwestern art. The TSA played a very important role in popularizing images of the American West and its indigenous peoples and enhanced the nation’s perception of this unique region.

Indian Corn by Walter Ufer

Ufer had moved to Taos on his own leaving his wife Mary behind in Chicago.  She would not join her husband until 1916.  Shortly after arriving in Taos Ufer was quick to contact the community leaders such as the local doctor, Thomas P. Martin, whom he lodged with for the first summer.  The doctor treated many of the TSA artists and often was paid for his services in the form of paintings.   The same system of payments was also afforded to many of the local businesses.

Anna by Walter Ufer (1920s)

Ufer soon built up a large collection of paintings and exhibited seventeen paintings in the reception room of the Palace of the Governors. His offering achieved excellent reviews with an article in the November 1914 issue of the local newspaper, El Palacio entitled “Exhibit by Chicago Artist,” the reviewer called each of Ufer’s landscapes a gem, although his figures are his forte.”  It was his masterly ability to paint figures that enhanced Ufer’s reputation as an artist, one which would grow most significantly from his work with the human figure even though he was a master of being able to conquer the ambiance of mother nature.

Crossing the Rio Grande (c.1930)

Walter Ufer moved between Taos, New Mexico in the summer and Chicago during the winter months.  He had broken off relations with his former patrons and from 1919 to 1924, the New York art dealer John E. D. Trask had become Ufer’s personal agent. Trask was well-connected in the art community, which had him well positioned to sell his clients’ work.  He was pleased to have Ufer as a client as he believe3d that the artwork of Ufer would create a type of image with a broad appeal and often voiced the opinion that every American home should have a painting by Walter Ufer, an artist whose reputation was well established.

Self portrait, Paint and the Indians by Walter Ufer (1923)

Trask was a great promoter of Ufer’s works and had them placed in several museums, art associations and private collections. Besides Chicago collectors and the Art Institute of Chicago, Ufer’s paintings were acquired by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the National Academy of Design. At this point, the sale of Ufer’s paintings was as strong as any artist working in Taos, perhaps in America and his earnings were high with Ernest Leonard Blumenschein, an American artist and founding member of the Taos Society of Artists, claiming that Ufer was earning $50,000 a year.  This has since been queried as the sales records in Ufer’s archives does not support Blumenschein’s contention. In those archival records Ufer’s gross income totalled approximately $10,000 annually until the middle 1920’s at which time art market collapsed.

The Audience by Walter Ufer (1917)

Things began to go wrong for Ufer once his promoter and agent Trask retired.  Ufer tried to sell his work to galleries in New York and Chicago but with little success and this heralded the start of Ufer’s downfall.  Sales of his artwork fell dramatically and yet Ufer failed to rein in his expensive lifestyle and soon his spending habits were outstripping his earning power.  When in Chicago he continued to stay at the expensive Bismarck Hotel, always on the look-out for a sale while consuming increasing amounts of alcohol. Even though he maintained his Chicago contacts, he had difficulty selling his pictures.  Ufer’s finances took another downward turn with the arrival of the Great Depression, and he was forced to borrow money and yet seemed oblivious to his personal circumstances.  Eventual realisation caused him to turn even more to alcohol and periods of debilitating depression.  By the early 1930s Ufer had lost his battle with alcoholism and found it difficult to paint and even when he did, the results were of poor quality in comparison to his earlier work.

Callers by Walter Ufer (1926)

His wife, Mary, who was living apart from her husband in Chicago begged him to leave Taos and join her in Chicago where, she believed it would be cheaper for two to live.    Regrettably, Walter was adamant that his home and life was in Taos and that he would again enjoy success with his artwork and once again regain his national reputation.  His health had slowly deteriorated and despite the support from afar from his wife and a few friends, the end came on August 2nd, 1936, when Walter Ufer died after experiencing a ruptured appendix.  He died in St. Vincent’’ Hospital in Santa Fe, from peritonitis a fortnight after his sixtieth birthday.

Once again information for this blog came from a number of excellent websites:

Walter Ufer (1876-1936) Essay by Dean Porter, Ph.D. © Illinois Historical Art Project

NICEARTGALLERY

Walter Ufer

Part 1. The Beginning – America and Germany

Self portrait by Walter Ufer (1920)

In the next two blogs I am going to look at an artist and his work, who started life in Germany, emigrated to America with his family where his artistic journey began.  He returned to Germany for a few years before returning to New York and Chicago.  In the second part of the blog we follow his journey to the American Wild West where he spent the rest of his life. Let me introduce you to Walter Ufer.

French Peasant Woman by Walter Ufer

Walter Ufer was born on July 22nd, 1876, in Hückeswagen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, four years before his parents, Peter, who was an metal engraver of hunting scenes and carver of meerschaum pipes. His wife, the former Alvina Meuser, along with Walter and their sons crossed the Atlantic in search of a new life in 1880.  His parents and his older brother Otto had headed for the Kentucky city of Louisville hoping to achieve a better life for the family.  In 1881 a year after arriving in America, Alvina gave birth to a third child, Herman.  Life proved difficult as his father failed to find a market for his work in Louisville and so, to make ends meet, he turned to carving furniture and, appropriately for a community relying heavily on the tobacco industry, corncob pipes. Eventually, he established himself, making fishing reels, while developing a talent for engraving metalic gun stocks, an occupation he practiced until his death.

Academic figure drawing by Walter Ufer (1913)

Walter Ufer, whilst growing up, was a child who suffered many illnesses, nevertheless, he had to work to help with the family finances.  He sold newspapers and, at age twelve, and later earned money by lighting gas lamps on the streets of Louisville. As a teenager, his father, taught Walter the art of engraving, and the headmaster of his Fourth Ward Grammar School in Louisville encouraged him to pursue art. Walter enjoyed sketching and painting and would often give his classmates pictures of plants, birds, animals, and maps he had drawn.

Old Munich by Walter Ufer

At sixteen, Walter Ufer became an apprentice to Johann Juergens, an engraver for the Courier Journal Job Printing Company, one of Louisville’s major lithographic firms. There he learned the craft of lithography and, importantly, design, on the job as well as receiving private tutelage three nights a week in Juergens’s home.

Woman from Dachau by Walter Ufer (1912)

In 1893, seventeen-year-old Ufer travelled for the first time to Chicago in order to catch a glimpse of “real art” at the World’s Colombian Exposition. Walter was mesmerised by sculptures, paintings, drawings, and engravings, which filled eighty galleries and over a hundred alcoves. Depictions varied from domestic and historical, landscapes, portraits, still lives, mythological and religious. This visual profusion of art excited him and he knew his future lay in the world of art and he believed that Chicago was the place to be for his future artistic career.

Portrait of a Man by Walter Ufer (1912)

And yet Walter Ufer was drawn to Europe and this coincided with Johann Juergens opening his own lithographic firm, Langebartels and Juergens Lithographers, in Hamburg and he was looking for a hardworking young man to work there. The position was offered to Walter Ufer who jumped at the chance to travel to Europe and on November 2nd 1893 seventeen-years-old Walter crossed the Atlantic on the liner SS. Columbia.

One October Evening by Walter Ufer (1913)

His work as an apprentice lithographer and typesetter in Hamburg, allowed him to gain practical skills in graphic arts. He would also study in the evenings at the Hamburg Applied Art School. It is thought that this early introduction to printmaking techniques influenced his later strong sense of design and composition in his artwork but his real desire was to have a future in fine art, and so he embarked on more formal academic instruction in art which led him to Dresden and the city’s Royal Academy of Fine Art. Alas, Ufer’s three-year stay at the Royal Academy ended when he ran out of money and his mother persuaded him to return home.  He hated being forced to return but he managed to get a position as an engraver at the Louisville Courier Journal where Walter remained for two years.

Portrait of Mary (1913)

By 1900, Ufer had had enough of Louisville and returned to Chicago where he found employment as a commercial designer at Barnes-Crosby Company during the day and still allowing him time in the evenings to attend the Francis J. Smith School which was affiliated with the Académie Julien in Paris.  In 1904, Walter became an art instructor at the school where a mutual friend introduced him to student, Mary Monrad Frederiksen.  Friendship turned to love and on April 26th, 1906, twenty-nine-year-old Walter Ufer married his thirty-six-year-old bride.  Was it true love ?  It was a strange coupling as Mary was a woman who came from a socially and culturally prominent background while Walter came from a working-class upbringing, and a man who was said to have an ill-temper.  Was Walter happy with the marriage or was there some doubt in Ufer’s mind as he began to look upon his wife not as an asset and supporter but as someone who would stand in the way of his artistic development.  He once wrote about his misgivings:

“…I was falling in love. Gracious this wouldn’t do — I wanted to get to Europe again. Terrible battles went on within me. I wanted to tell her this, yet I didn’t have the nerve to do it. This was agony …. I wanted to tell her …. that I only wanted to paint …. I admitted to myself that I loved her — but my career — Gone to Hell…!

In 1911 the Walter and his wife returned to Germany and the city of Munich where he resumed his artistic studies at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts, and here he studied under the German painter and illustrator, Walter Thor.  Two years later, in July 1913, Walter Ufer went back to America on the SS Kaiser Franz Joseph I. He travelled alone having persuaded his wife to go and live with her mother in Denmark until he had got settled in America.  Maybe he believed he needed to establish himself in the art world of Chicago before she joined him or maybe it is all about how he believed his wife was becoming burdensome and affecting his artistic output but whatever the reason he and Mary lived apart for the next six months.

Portrait of Mrs Walter Wardrop by Walter Ufer (1916) Mrs. Walter Wardrop (Harriet Sullivan Wardrop) was born in Chicago in 1872 to Irish immigrants. In 1895 she married Walter Wardrop, who began his career in the bicycle industry and eventually became a publisher and authority on commercial vehicles in the early days of motoring. 

Walter Ufer disembarked at New York and set about trying to sell his paintings, many of which he had completed whilst in Europe.   According to his biographer Stephen Good, Ufer hung up a number of his paintings at the Artists Packing and Shipping Company premises and then invited a number of well-known art dealers to attend and view his work.  It didn’t work out for Ufer as these dealers were looking for work by established painters and were not interested in a thirty-seven-year-old painter who had spent much of his professional career in Germany’s academies. Ufer was upset at their lack of interest for his work.

Taos Peak by Walter Ufer (1914)

Ufer left New York and returned to Chicago, leasing a studio in the Beil Atelier Building at 19 East Pearson Street for $50 a month.  In 1913, he submitted some of his work to the jury of the Chicago Art Institute’s exhibition, but all were rejected.  This and the lack of sales for his work depressed Ufer and suddenly he was starting to question his own ability and although his wife continued to offer support, he would not invite her to join him in America.  Mary eventually returned to Chicago in February of 1914, and her husband’s fortunes began to recover and, in that year, Ufer finally had four of his paintings (Old Munich, Portrait, Munich Au, and Coletta) accepted in that year’s Art Institute Exhibition.  Ufer still had to gain financial security, and his wife advised him to paint portraits of the Chicago wealthy dignitaries and for once he heeded her advice. It was taking his wife’s advice and visiting the Chicago mayor to offer to paint his portrait that would change his whole life

………to be continued.

Most of the details for this blog came from two excellent websites:

Walter Ufer (1876-1936) Essay by Dean Porter, Ph.D. © Illinois Historical Art Project

NICEART GALLERY

Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin.

Henri Martin in 1882

The artist whose life and works I am looking at today is the Post-Impressionist painter Henri-Jean Guillaume “Henri” Martin.  He was born on August 5th, 1860, at 127 Grande-Rue Saint-Michel in Toulouse.  His father was a French cabinet maker, and his mother was of Italian descent.

Self portrait by Henri Martin (1910)

The self-portrait hangs in the Musée d’Orsay and their commentary on this work is:

“…In this self-portrait dated just after 1910, Henri Martin makes reference to both the new techniques introduced by the Neo-Impressionists and to the grand pictorial tradition. Thus, there are many borrowings from a re-reading of the past, starting with the arched shape of the painting. This recalls basket-handle arches typical of the Middle Ages.
The palette the artist is holding clearly has an expressive role, symbolising his profession. Martin explicitly quotes primitive painting. Finally, it follows in a long tradition of interior portraits.
On the other hand, the technique of this painting links this work with Neo-Impressionism. By adopting the division of colours, Martin tries to capture the vibrating light of the south of France. He uses dots and stripes of colour, placed close together on an already thick layer, recalling a technique much favoured by Albert Dubois-Pillet, one of the founders of the movement.
Applied to a rigorous but fluid drawing style and to a skilful but seemingly quite natural composition, this technique which surprised in 1884 and shocked in 1886, in 1912 found itself, in this painting, harmoniously integrated into the great French pictorial tradition…”

Orephée by Henri Martin (1878) One of Martin’s early mythological work inspired by the tragic Greek figure Orpheus.

Henri Martin, after completing his schooling, managed to persuade his father to permit him to study to become an artist. His artistic career began in 1877 at the Toulouse School of the Fine Arts, where his tutor was Jules Garipuy, a French painter and educator who would later become director of the city’s Beaux-Arts Academy in 1885.

Les Bords de la Garonne, le poète, by Henri Martin (1906)

In 1879, Martin moved to Paris and where, with the help of a municipal scholarship, he was able to study in Jean-Paul Laurens’s studio.

Paolo Malatesta et Francesca da Rimini aux enfers by Henri Martin

Four years later, in 1883, he received his first medal at the Paris Salon for his painting, Paolo Malatesta et Francesca da Rimini aux enfers.   The depiction comes from a character in The Divine Comedy by Danti Aligheri.   Francesca da Rimini was a contemporary of Dante Alighieri and he used her as a character in his book The Divine Comedy. The Lord of Rimini was at war with Francesca’s father Guido I da Polenta of Ravenna, and so to broker peace between the two families, Francesca was married to the Lord’s cripple son Giovanni Malatesta. It wasn’t a match made in heaven. Francesca ended up having a long-standing affair with Giovanni’s brother Paolo, who was also married. That all ended when Giovanni walked in on Francesca and Paolo and killed them both. In The Divine Comedy, Dante and Virgil enter the second circle of hell (the circle for the lustful) to find Francesca and Paolo swirling in a whirlwind.

Berenice by Henri Martin (1889)

Whilst he had been studying at the School of Fine Arts in Toulouse, he met fellow student Marie-Charlotte Barbaroux, whom he married in 1881. It was thought that Barbaroux modelled for her husband’s mesmeric 1889 painting entitled Berenice.  The depiction of the woman was based upon a short story by the American author Edgar Allan Poe which was first published in 1835.  The story tells of  Egaeus, the narrator, who falls in love with his beautiful cousin Berenice. She suffers from a mysterious debilitating illness, causing her to fall into a trance-like state. As Berenice’s health deteriorates, Egaeus develops intense obsessions, focusing latterly on her teeth. The girl eventually dies and Egaeus is grief-stricken. He visits her grave, as if in a dream, and later discovers her extracted teeth in a box beside him. Henri Martin appears to have been inspired by this passage from Berenice:

‘…The forehead was high, and very pale … and the once jet-black hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets, now of a vivid yellow, and jarring discordantly … with the reigning melancholy of her countenance…”

Mystic Scene by Henri Martin (1895)

In 1885, the year after he won his first medal at the Paris Salon, Martin was awarded a travel scholarship for his painting, Titans Scaling the Sky. The scholarship allowed him to travel to Italy and tour the country, where he was able to study the work of the Italian Masters as well as works by some of  his contemporaries such as the French symbolist painter Edmond Aman-Jean and the French painter and printmaker, Ernest Joseph Laurent, a well regarded figure in the academic art establishment, known for his large-scale historical and religious paintings. 

Le Marquayrol at Labastide-du-Vert by Henri Martin (1905)

Once Henri Martin had left the world of academia, he became interested in Neo-Impressionism but in a more casual style. His style was close to the divisionism of Seurat.  When he was in Italy Martin developed his own particular style, known as Divisionism, which is an artistic technique characterized by the separation of colours into individual dots or patches that interact optically.  It formed the technical basis for Neo-Impressionism.   The difference between divisionism and pointalism is that whereas the term divisionism refers to this separation of colour and its optical effects, the term pointillism refers specifically to the technique of applying dots. Henri Martin’s method was typically softer, less rigid, and more intuitive. He used divided brushstrokes – often short, comma-like marks rather than precise dots as seen in the works of Seurat.  Henri Martin was awarded the Gold Medal for a work he submitted to the Paris Salon in 1889.  The art critics identified it as pointillism.  Also in 1889 Martin became a member of the Legion of Honor.   He was commissioned to execute some important frescoes in the Paris city hall in 1895, and the new huge building of the Capitol of Toulouse.   

Fête de la Fédération au Champs de Mars, le 14 juillet 1790 by Henri Martin

In 1900 at the the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris he was awarded the Grand Prix for his work, Fête de la Fédération au Champs de Mars, le 14 juillet 1790, which is now housed in the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse. It depicts the celebration of the centenary of the French Revolution and this work brought him considerable public and critical attention.

The Muse by Henri Martin (c.1896) The painting was presented at the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français in Paris in 1898.

His journey around Italy opened Martin’s eyes to a new way of painting. Prior to his trip his artwork conformed to the old Classicism style, a style which held a high respect for a classical period, classical antiquity in the Western tradition.  Maybe he was swayed by the clear bright light of the skies in Italy which he encountered.  The change of style could also be due to the influence of the artwork of the Italian Primitives.  In the mid-19th century, the term Primitive Art, was primarily applied to 14th and 15th century Italian and Flemish art, which at the time of Henri Martin, was appreciated for what was looked upon as its simplicity, sincerity, and expressive power which awoke in Martin intense poetic sentiments which he would  bring to his newly found style of painting. A more poetic approach to his painting style.

Banks of the Garonne by Henri Martin

Les Vendangeuses  (The Grape Pickers) by Henri Martin (1920)

A painting by Henri Martin entitled, Les Vendangeuses  (The Grape Pickers) came up for auction at Christies in April 2021 and sold for EUR 218,750.  It was a work commissioned by Martin’s doctor, Dr. Henri Tissier, and remained on the wall of his Art Deco salon for a hundred years.  The Tissier’s home was located on Boulevard Raspail, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.  It was a true Art Deco architectural jewel and had been built by Léon Tissier (Henri’s brother) in 1913.  Henri Martin, who was also the Tissier’s neighbour. Dr. Tissier and his wife were close to many artists, including the sculptor Bouchard and the interior designer Henri Bellery-Desfontaines.   Both contributed to the decoration of the Tissier’s apartment, whose exceptional furniture was presented at the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris.  Les Vendangeuses, which Henri Martin completed in 1921, is a depiction of a tranquil, bright rural scene showing women picking grapes.  It is a remarkable example of Henri Martin’s refreshing approach to pointillism.  It is a work with strong post-impressionist accents and is also a tribute to the artist’s native land and a pledge of the friendship that bound him to the Tissier couple.

It is thought that the woman to the right dressed in a pale pink dress that contrasts with the blue of the other clothes, stands out particularly and could well represent Marie-Charlotte Barbaroux, Martin’s wife.

The Capitole of Toulouse

In Toulouse there is no Mairie, but rather a majestic Capitole. An emblematic building which is home to the town hall, a theatre and rooms of state. On the first floor, there are magnificent reception rooms that are decorated with art including ten giant canvases by Henri Martin and, notably, the Salle des Illustres where his paintings retrace the history of Toulouse.

Salle Henri Martin, Capitole de Toulouse.

Salle Henri Martin, Capitole de Toulouse.

 L’été ou les faucheurs (Summer or The Reapers) by Henri Martin (1903) In the Henri Martin Hall, The Capitole Toulouse.

Henri Martin completed many prestigious public commissions, which can be found at the Capitol of Toulouse, the prefecture of the Lot in Cahors, the Sorbonne in 1908, the Paris City Hall, a cabinet of the Élysée in 1908, the Council of State in 1914-1922, the Town Hall of the Fifth arrondissement in 1935.

Henri Martin’s final home at Domaine de Marquayrol at Labastide-du-Vert

Henri Martin was quite an introvert and later in life began to hate living in Paris and hanker after a return to his beloved south-west France.  He moved away from the French capital around 1900 and after a number of years trying to find the perfect place to live, settled on a house, the Domaine de Marquayrol, which overlooked the village of  Labastide-du-Vert, a commune in the Lot department in the Occitania region in Southwestern France. near to the town of Cahors.

The Church at Labastide by Henri Martin (1920)

Labastide du vert village by Henri Martin

It was an area of great natural beauty, a region characterized by rolling hills, vineyards, and the winding Lot River valley. Marquayrol became his primary residence and his artistic sanctuary for the rest of his life. He lived there with his wife, Marie-Charlotte Barbaroux, and their four sons Many art historians believe that Martin performed some of his best work in this new tranquil environment. His mature output depicted tranquil landscapes and village scenes and these canvases, which were rich in soft light and rhythmic brushwork, remain the trademark of his oeuvre.

 Henri Martin died at Labastide-du-Vert on November 12th, 1943, aged 83.

Below are some of the websites I used to get information for this blog:

France info

Le Monde

Outre Journal

Arthive

ArtFund

NICEARTGALLERY

Wilhelm Ferdinand Bendz

Somebody just asked me how I came to write about a certain artist.  In the case of today’s blog it was just a strange coincidence………

In November 2012 I wrote a blog about the Barber Institute, an English art museum on the Birmingham University campus.  The reason for visiting this gallery was to take in the exhibition of the Norwegian painter, with the English-sounding name, Thomas Fearnley. 

Church at Ramsau by Thomas Fearnley (1832)

As I walked into the exhibition that day, the first painting I saw was a plein air oil on paper, laid on canvas work which Fearnley completed in 1832 while on his trek from Germany to Italy. Fearnley painted this finished composition from nature in September 1832. The artist was travelling to Italy when he stopped at the village of Ramsau. The title of the work was simply Ramsau.  This was a town I knew well from the days I travelled around southern Bavaria.  It was a beautiful painting, and I vividly remember the beautiful depiction as if I had just seen it today.  It is a truly magnificent landscape work.

Wilhelm Bendz by Christen Kobke (c.1830)

The reason I mention this work is because the artist I am looking at today, Wilhelm Ferdinand Bendz, also produced an artwork featuring that same church with its mountainous background.  Bendz was principally a painter of figure subjects and his landscapes are rare. This view was painted in September 1832 when he too was making his way from Munich to Rome. He stopped briefly at Ramsau in Austria and made several lively sketches of the church and mountains. His painting was dated the same month and same year as Fernley’s painting !   More about that coincidence later.

Winter Landscape from Funnen by Wilhelm Bendz (1831)

Wilhelm Ferdinand Bendz was born in the Danish town of Odense on the island of Funen on March 20th 1804 His father was Lauritz Martin Bendz, at one time, chief of police in Odense and High Court Judge in Funen and Langeland.  His mother, his father’s second wife, was Regine Christence Bang.  Wilhelm had four brothers and four sisters as well as three stepsisters and one stepbrother from his father’s first marriage.

A Smoking Party by Wilhelm Bendz

Wilhelm Bendz, at the age of sixteen, having completed his schooling in Odense, travelled to Copenhagen where he enrolled at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and studied there from 1820 to 1825.  Here he studied under Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, whowent on to lay the foundation for the period of art known as the Golden Age of Danish Painting, and is referred to as the “Father of Danish painting”. In his final year at the academy, he submitted work in an attempt to win the Academy’s prestigious gold medal prize which came with a travel scholarship.  However, at the time, the Academy only awarded the Gold Medal to history paintings, which at the time was considered to be the most respected painting genre.   Bendz, however, decided to concentrate on portraiture and genre works and his early paintings would often portray his artist colleagues and their daily lives.

A Young Artist  (Ditlev Blunck) Examining a Sketch in a Mirror by Wilhelm Bendz

One such work was his 1826 painting entitled A Young Artist (Ditlev Blunck) Examining a Sketch in a Mirror.  Wilhelm Bendz was a great believer in artists’ new role in life.  He believed they were no longer simply specialist craftsmen but, for him, artists should be viewed as intellectual workers.   The artist in this picture is Bendz’s fellow Academy student, Ditlev Blunck, who is engaged in painting a portrait of fellow student, Jørgen Sonne, a painter who would become known for his battle scenes.   The painting which Bendz completed in 1826 depicts young Ditlev Blunck, a fellow Academy student of Bendz, taking a break from painting to examine a sketch he has made for the portrait.  The artist is standing in a crowded room surrounded by his tools and paraphernalia: a paintbox, palette, and easel as well as a skull and a sketchbook suggesting that careful studies had preceded the final painting.  Only the back of the painting can be seen with the front seen only in the mirror. It is believed that the depiction is indicative of the era’s view of art as a mirror held up to life and signals that his work is serious, and requires thorough study before execution.

Model Class at the Copenhagen Academy by Wilhelm Bendz (1826)

Bendz completed Model Class at the Copenhagen Academy in 1826 and it is considered to be one of his greatest works.

Christian Holm by William Bendz (1826)

Another of Bendz’s works which focused on artists at work was one he completed in 1826 – a portrait of his fellow Academy student, Christian Holm, at work on his painting. Christian Holm became a well-known Danish painter known primarily for his animal and hunting scenes.

A Sculptor in his Studio Working from Life by Wilhelm Bendz (1827)

A Sculptor in His Studio which he completed in 1827 is one of Bendz’s masterpieces.  It depicts the working environment of a sculptor with meticulous attention to tools, materials, and the creative process. The painting demonstrates his skill with complex interior lighting.  The depiction is of sculptor, Christen Christensen, at work.  Christensen was a Danish sculptor and medallist, who studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and was at the same time articled to the sculptor Nicolai Dajon. He won the Academy’s small and large silver medals in 1824, the small gold medal in 1825 and finally the large gold medal in 1827.

Interior from Amaliegade, Captain Carl Ludvig Bendz Standing and Dr. Jacob Christian Bendz Seated by Wilhelm Bendz (ca. 1829)

Bendz’s two brothers featured in an internal scene, in Bendz’s genre work entitled Interior from Amaliegade.

The Raffenberg Family by Wilhelm Bendz (1830)

The Waagepetersen Family by Wilhelm Bendz

Bendz often received lucrative commissions for family portraits.

Artist in the Evening at Finck’s Coffee House in Munich by Wilhelm Bendz (1832)

After leaving the Academy, Bendz was employed as an assistant at Christoffer Eckersberg’s studio.  In late 1830 Bendz won an award which granted him a travel scholarship allowing him to leave Denmark and travel to southern Europe. After short stop-overs at Dresden and Berlin, he settled for a year in Munich, a city which had developed into a vibrant centre for the arts.  This opportunity exposed Wilhelm to new artistic influences and techniques as well as knowledge of contemporary German painting, known as the Munich School, which seems to have influenced his style.   It was here that he completed one of his most valued paintings, a composed group portrait entitled Artist in the Evening at Finck’s Coffee House in Munich.

The Church at Ramsau by Wilhelm Bendz (1832)

In the autumn of 1832, twenty-eight-year-old Bendz left Munich and continued his exhausting journey over the Alps towards Rome.  On this journey he was accompanied by Joseph Petzl, a German genre painter and Thomas Fearnley, a Norwegian romantic painter. It is here that I return to the start of the blog and the two similar depictions by Fearnley and Bendz of the church at Ramsau.  The answer as to how Bendz and Fearnley completed paintings depicting similar views of the church in the mountains at the same time is now clear.  They were fellow travellers and both had decided to record the beautiful scene.

Mountain Landscape by Wilhelm Bendz (1831)

The three men finally crossed the Alps and made their way to Venice.  The extremely difficult journey took its toll on Bendz and after moving from Venice to Vicenza to stay with a friend before heading to Rome, he collapsed and died of a lung infection on November 14th 1832 aged 28. Wilhelm Bendz’s artistic contribution was not appreciated during his short lifetime but his legacy grew significantly in the decades following, as art historians recognized his technical skill and unique perspective on the Danish Golden Age. Bendz’s technical skill was in the way he handled light, especially in interior scenes and how he enhanced the artistic achievements of the Danish Golden Age. His works displayed both academic precision and personal expression.  He was a master at depicting the social life of artists and intellectuals, and this artwork provided valuable visual documentation of cultural circles in Copenhagen during the 1820s and early 1830s.

Marie de Roode Heijermans and her “infamous” painting.

Marie de Roode Heijermans

The artist I am looking at today is Catherine Mariam ‘Marie’ de Roode-Heijermans who was born in Rotterdam on October 14th, 1859.  She was the daughter of Herman Heijermans, a journalist, and his wife Matilda Moses Spiers. She grew up in a large, liberal Jewish family in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. Marie was the second oldest of eleven children and the older sister of Herman a playwright, Louis a community physician, Ida a children’s pedagogue and Helena who was a school principal. Marie did not finish high school but was given drawing lessons from the Dutch painter, Suze Robertson.

She studied at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (Royal Academy of Art, The Hague) and Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten Academy of Visual Arts, Rotterdam. One of her teachers was Jan Philip Koelman.   In 1881, aged 22, she obtained the drawing certificate at the Hague Drawing Academy. After leaving the Academy Marie worked as an art teacher for several years.  Following this period as an educator she left for Brussels, where she took more art lessons at the studio of the French painter, Ernest Blanc Garin. Here, in the Life Clas, she was allowed to paint from nude models, something that was not yet allowed to women in the Netherlands. 

Her crowning artistic achievement came in 1892 with her painting ‘Hospice des Vieillards which appeared at the Paris Salon in 1892 and following on from this Marie received a three-year working grant from the Belgian Queen Regent.

Victime de la misère (The Victim of Misery) by ‘Marie’ Heijermans (1897)

Five years later, in 1897, a piece of Marie’s artwork received more publicity but this time, for all the wrong reasons.  The painting is now deemed to be the most outstanding works of the artist’s career. It was a depiction that focused upon social themes, which validates Marie’s artistic commitment to portray the difficult living conditions many people had to endure. The painting entitled Victime de la misère (The Victim of Misery) was exhibited at the World Exhibition in Brussels. King Leopold II of Belgium who saw it considered it to be deeply offensive. and soon after his visit to the exhibition it was removed. Marie Heijermans tried to force its reinstatement through the courts, but all her efforts were in vain.

In the late 1920s the work had been bought by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam but the depiction was criticised by art critics. For them, this purchase by the museum was unacceoptable as the councilors had, in their eyes, believed the musum had spent tax-payer’s money unwisely. Following the bad press the work was relegated to the museum’s basement at the request of the councilors and the museum mitigated their decision stating “lack of space” forced them to do this.

So what was this furore about? What made the depiction offensive? Why hide it from public view?  Why this censorship? Often paintings are censored for political or religious reasons, because the artists who created them desired to communicate through them, a message that upset certain governments and religious groups. However, there are other reasons for censorship such as paintings that affect morality and behaviour.  Censorship in all its forms is a manifestation of the fears and tensions of a time when various groups attempt to prevent conversations and behaviours that are different from their own from spreading in society, and by doing so, believing that they can prevent social changes.  However, this work by Heijermans did not hint at political or religious connotations.

The elderly “client”.

Maybe the title of the painting gives us a clue – Victime de la misère (The Victim of Misery).  From these words we must deduce that the depiction will be somewhat harrowing and maybe it was believed that instead of exhibiting it for its artistic merit, it should be hidden away to avoid upsetting viewers and causing offence.  The canvas had been hung for a month, but when the Belgian king was due to visit the exhibition, those in charge considered it to be too offensive and had it removed. Marie Heijermans tried unsuccessfully through the courts to have it reassigned to the gallery walls.  However, the Belgian and Dutch authorities backed the gallery decision and declared the work to be a disgrace. Only one voice from the media defended Marie’s work and he was Jan de Roode in Het Volksdagblad, the first workers’ newspaper published in the Netherlands.

Top hat and the “payment” for services rendered.

So let us take a closer look at the depiction for clues.  Before us we see a small room, with little furnishing, sparsely decorated with few objects. This could be described as a simple humble room without any luxuries. The painting shows a young naked girl sitting on a stool at the side of the bed.  Surely that is not reason enough for it to be taken off the museum wall and hidden in the basement. 

The Three Graces by Rubens (1638)

Numerous artists over the years have depicted naked young women in their works. They were depictions of goddesses, nymphs, and portrayed young women exhibiting themselves in seductive poses which for some men allowed them to fantasize and romanticize and what could be. These were looked upon as being acceptable due to the concept being mythological. So what makes this work by Heijermans suffer the wrath of the censors? 

Olympia by Édouard Manet (1863)

Heijerman’s painting was not the first to fall foul of the censors for its depiction Édouard Manet’s 1863 famous painting Olympia, reworked the traditional theme of the female nude, using a strong, uncompromising technique. Both the subject matter and its depiction explain the scandal caused by this painting at the 1865 Salon.  Nowadays the sight of the naked woman would not have caused a ripple of disgust, but we need to remember that it was painted in 1897 and moral standards were different in those days. The female nude outside those pre-established contexts of mythology was found unacceptable and deemed immoral, an viewed as an assault on good morals.

This painting depicted prostitution and for many this was an unacceptable reality of life and one which, like the painting itself, should be hidden from view. In the foreground we see the young woman sitting on a large, padded stool next to an empty bed which had just been slept in. Her head is bent downwards.  She appears utterly miserable and so we refer to the paintings title – The Victim of Misery.  The young woman appears to be from a low social class, and her nakedness and an unmade bed points towards her being a prostitute. Look at the end of the bed and next to the woman, we see a chair with some discarded clothes, the man’s top hat and a 20-franc note, the latter is probably the payment she received for her services. In the background, we see  a distinguished elderly gentleman with his back to us, adjusting his cravat, dressing himself in a white shirt and black vest before a mirror and we can deduce he is from a very different societal class compared to that of the woman. He is her customer. There is a stark contrast between the satisfied air of the corpulent gentleman and the dejected look of the young woman.

Now collating this information, we can see what Marie Heijermans had depicted and what was her implied message to the viewers.  She has through this poignant work denounced the fact that this woman (and many like her) were forced into prostitution. In case we were allowed to doubt the truth of what we are seeing Marie has given the work a title that does not allow us any doubt as to what should be apparent – that this young woman was a victim of prostitution and that society had failed her.

Justus Johannes de Roode

Marie Heijermans was a member of the Cercle des Femmes Peintres, a Brussels-based association of visual artists who were active between 1888 and 1893.   On August 23rd 1899 she married the journalist Justus Jan de Roode, who later became editor of Het Volk,  a Belgian newspaper that focused on “news with a human undertone”. He was also staff member of the International Labour Organization. The couple had no children. He had been one of the few people which denounced the removal of Marie’s censured painting.

In the years 1921-1926, the couple stayed in Geneva Switzerland, where De Roode was working for the Bureau International du Travail (BIT).  Heijermans favoured subjects for her paintings were the elderly, nursing homes, hospices and workers. In 1999-2000, the Marie Heijerman’s painting, – Victime de la misère (The Victim of Misery), was included in the exhibition featuring women artists, As you Will: Women artists in Belgium and The Netherlands (1500-1950).  This travelling exhibition was held at the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone in Antwerp and the Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Arnhem. In 2002, the painting featured in the Amsterdam Historical Museum exhibition, Love for Sale, which documented four centuries of prostitution in Amsterdam. The exhibition brought together many amazing documents, photographs and paintings about prostitution.  Heijerman’s Victime de la misère was said to be one of the highlights of the exhibition. In 2014 it was exhibited again, this time at the Stedelijk, in the exhibition Men for Women, 5 Centuries of Art, an exhibition which challenged the notion that women were largely absent from art before the late 1800s.

Heijermans died in Amsterdam on October 26th 1937, aged 78. Her husband Justus Johannes de Roode died on January 14th 1945, three weeks before his 79th birthday.

Below are some of the websites where I was able to get information for this blog.

Women’n Art

Hein Klaver Kunsthandel

Huygens Institute

JStor

Paul César Helleu and Alice Guérin.

Paul César Helleu

At the end of my previous blog about the French artist Léon Bonnat, I talked about how he had bequeathed most of his art collection and the majority of his work to the local Bayonne museum and how the town named the Museum after him and yet it is now known as the Musée Bonnat-Helleu.. So who is “Helleu”?

Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

The donation of Paulette Howard-Johnston, the youngest child of Paul and Alice Helleu made the museum one of the places of reference for the works of Paul César Helleu from 1988 onwards. It houses his works thanks to his daughter’s donation, as well as the donations and bequests of Paulette Howard-Johnston’s nieces, Éliane Orosdi and Ghislaine de Kermaingant,  when in 2009, she died.  In her will,  the Bonnat Museum was designated as the heir to her collection of more than 300 new pieces.  In 2011, the museum closed its doors for a major renovation, while thanks to this last bequest made by the Helleu family, the museum became the Musée Bonnat-Helleu.

Portrait of Madame Helleu reading by Paul César Helleu

Paul César Helleu was born on December 11th, 1859, in the Brittany town of Vannes.  His mother, Marie Esther Guiot and his father, César Helleu, who was a customs receiver, were married in 1855 and had two sons Paul and his elder brother Édouard.   Paul took an interest in art when he was young. Following the death of his father when Paul was just a teenager, he decided he wanted to further his art studies by going to live in Paris.  His widowed mother was against this idea but Paul persisted and travelled to Paris to continue his schooling at the Lycée Chantal.  In 1876, at the age of sixteen Paul graduated and was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts, at the atelier of Jean Leon Gerome, where he began his formal academic training in art.

The Saint Lazare Train Station by Paul César Helleu (1885)

It was also in the Spring of 1876 that Helleu attended the Second Impressionist Exhibition at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris. A total of nineteen artists participated in the exhibition, including prominent figures such as:  Degas, Monet. Morisot and Gustave Caillebot. Whilst in Paris,   Helleu made the acquaintance of John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, and Claude Monet. He was struck by their modern, bold alla  prima artistic technique, which was an approach to painting that involved applying layers of paint, also known as wet-on-wet, and completing a painting in a single sitting. This meant working with wet paint and not letting the layers dry, before applying the next layer. In Italian, the phrase alla prima translates to “at first attempt”.  Helleu was also impressed with their plein air style of painting.

The Interior of the Abbey Church of Saint Denis by Paul César Helleu (c 1891)

Following graduation, Helleu found employment at the prestigious faience (earthenware) workshop, Joseph-Théodore Deck Ceramique Française.  Joseph-Théodore Deck was a 19th-century French potter, and an important figure in late 19th-century art pottery.  In 1856 he established his own earthenware workshop and began to experiment with styles from Islamic pottery, and particularly the Iznik style.  At the time Paul César Helleu joined the workshop, Japonisme, the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design following the forced reopening of foreign trade with Japan in 1858 was all the rage. Helleu created decorations for dishes.

Giovanni Boldini self portrait (1892)

Portrait of Marthe de Florian, a French demi-mondaine and socialite,  by Giovanni Boldini (1898)

Around this time, Helleu met Giovanni Boldini, an Italian genre and portrait painter who lived and worked in Paris.   His portraiture focused on all the grandes dames of Paris, and for them to have their portrait painted by Boldini was looked upon as the crowning event of the social season. Boldini became a friend and mentor to Helleu, and his style of painting had a great influence on his artwork. The other great influence for Helleu was his friendship with John Singer Sargent, often referred to as the leader of “posh portraiture” in Britain, that majorly encouraged Helleu. Helleu even sold his first painting to Sargent. 

Portrait de Madame Chéruit by Paul César Helleu (1898) Madeleine Chéruit was a French fashion designer. She was among the foremost couturiers of her generation, and one of the first women to control a major French fashion house.

This time in Helleu’s life coincided with France’s Belle Époque era. The term, Belle Époque, literally means “Beautiful Age” and was a name given in France to the period between the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 up to to the start of World War I in 1914. During those forty plus years of peace, the living standards for the upper and middle classes increased, (albeit the lower classes did not benefit in the same way, or to anywhere near the same extent).  It was the well-off who termed the phrase Belle Epoque labelling it a golden age in comparison to the humiliations that came with the Prussian invasion and what was to come, the devastation and occupation of the First World War.

Mademoiselle Vaughan by Paul César Helleu (1905)

It was a time of booming progress and prosperity in Europe, with Paris the centre of the fast-flowing changes in economics, technology, and the arts. However, as the name denotes, beauty was a key element of this prosperous period.  The upper-class patrons would often commission artists to paint their portrait or one of a family member, in a luxurious and extravagant manner highlighting both their beauty and wealth.  The finished portraits heightened an artist’s reputation, ensuring more clients for the artists.

Alice Helleu by Paul César Helleu (1885)

This blog is not only about Paul César Helleu but also his muse, lover, and later his wife, Alice Louis-Guérin. Helleu met Alice in 1884 when her mother asked him to paint a portrait of her fourteen-year-old daughter, Alice. At the age of twenty-four, Helleu appears to have fallen in love with her during this first meeting.   Alice remained the artist’s favourite model throughout his life and she was also a muse for many other artists.  Her beauty and sophistication also helped introduce her husband into the elite circle of artists, writers and society figures of the French capital.  The Count de Montesquiou, who was a noted dandy and one of the leading figures in the artist’s group of friends, described her appearance as

“…La multiforme Alice, dont la rose chevelure illumine de son reflet tant de miroirs de cuivre…”

 (‘The multifaceted Alice, whose rosy hair illuminates so many copper mirrors with its reflection.’)

Madame Helleu à son bureau by Paul César Helleu.

Helleu often avoided standard conventional rules of portrait composition, and would frequently depict his sitters from behind – standing before a mirror, or sitting at a desk, as was the case of his painting entitled Madame Helleu à son bureau. Note the porcelain koi carp hanging in the upper left corner which was an example of Japonisme which was all the rage in Paris at the time.   The desk depicted in the painting and which appears in numerous works by Helleu is still in the artist’s family.  The painting hanging above it is Boldini’s Leda and the Swan.

Madame Helleu assise à son bureau dans le salon de l’atelier de l’artiste, capturant une scène intérieure intime avec une élégance raffinée. (Madame Helleu seated at her desk in the artist’s studio salon, capturing an intimate interior scene with refined elegance.)

His painting entitled Mrs. Helleu sitting at her desk in the artist’s studio living room confirms Paul and Alice Helleu were had superb taste and these portraits depict Alice seated at a secrétaire in the couple’s drawing room of their Paris apartment, into which they moved in 1888. I suppose these two paintings cannot be considered as portraits in the conventional sense of the word, but rather as interior still life works, in which the furniture and surroundings are as vital as the sitter.

Madame Helleu by John Singer Sargent (1889)

Alice Guérin was depicted in a number of paintings by Paul Helleu’s friend John Singer Sargent.

Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife by John Singer Sargent (1889)

In his 1889 painting, Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife, Sargent depicts a tranquil outdoor scene, portraying the French artist Paul Helleu engaged in the act of sketching. Alongside him, sits his wife Alice who appears happy and relaxed.  The figures of husband and wife are set against a lush, natural environment that suggests a calm and comforting ambiance. Sargent’s painting also manages to capture their fashionable clothing with Paul wearing a formal suit and Alice attired in an elegant dress.  Both wear wide-brimmed hats that both provide shade and stylishly adorn their heads.

Portrait of Artist’s Wife by Paul César Helleu

Paul Helleu was one of Sargent’s closest friends.  Initially, they had met in Paris in 1878.  Paul was 18 years old and Sargent 22. Sargent’s artistic career had already taken off, and he was becoming known to the public as a great portraiture artist and was receiving many commissions for his work. However, on the other hand, Helleu was selling little of his work, and because of this, he was suffering from depression.  Paul Helleu was financially strapped with hardly enough money to even eat and had to leave his studies in art due to lack of funds.  Sargent, got to hear about the plight of his friend and visited him at his studio and although he never alluded to his friend’s dire financial difficulties, Sargent selected one of Helleu’s paintings, and commended it for its artistic merits. Helleu was so flattered that the successful Sargent would think so kindly of his work that he offered to give it to him.  The story goes that Sargent responded to Helleu’s offer, saying:

“…I shall gladly accept, Helleu, but not as a gift. I sell my own pictures, and I know what they cost me by the time they are out of my hand. I should never enjoy this pastel if I hadn’t paid you a fair and honest price for it…”

He paid Helleu one thousand francs for the painting.  Helleu never forgot Sargent’s generosity and moral support and later, when Sargent was suffering from depression after the death of his father, Paul and Alice Helleu went to stay with him in England.

Portrait of Madame Helleu by Paul César Helleu.

Paul César Helleu and Alice Louis-Guérin married, two years after their first encounter, on July 29th, 1886, at Neuilly sur Seine.  She was two months away from her seventeenth birthday and Paul was twenty-six years old.  They went on to have four children, Hélène in 1887, Jean in 1894, Alice in 1896 and Paulette in 1904.

Details of Femme aux chapeau – Drypoint by Paul Helleu

Drypoint Portrait of a Young Woman wearing a Hat by Paul César Helleu (c.1900)

It is believed that during a trip to London in 1885 Helleu once again met Whistler who introduced him to James Tissot a French society painter, illustrator, and caricaturist who was living in the English capital.  It was this established artist who taught Helleu the unique medium of etching.  Helleu became fascinated by drypoint etching.  Drypoint is a printing technique in which the printmaker scratches the lines on the printing plate with a sharp pointed tool. The printmaker holds the tool like a pencil and pushes the excess metal to either side of the furrow. It is this curl of rough metal, known as the ‘burr’, that gives the drypoint print its character. The ink is held in the burr as well as in the furrow and gives the edges of the printed line a soft, blurred quality. In Helleu’s work (above) the burr on the woman’s choker gives it a very velvety look.  Over the course of his career, Helleu produced more than 2,000 drypoint prints and he quickly mastered this technique, using the same flair with his stylus as he demonstrated with pastels.  It was the brilliance of his drypoint etchings that ensured Helleu’s place as one of the greats of the Belle Epoque, and he journeyed to Britain and America, and his artworks boosted his fame across both sides of the Atlantic.

Alice au chapeau noir by Paul César Helleu

Helleu and his wife had made many friends in Paris including Countess Greffulhe, a French socialite, known as a renowned beauty and queen of the salons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain which allowed Helleu to successfully expand his career as a portrait artist to elegant women in the highest ranks of Paris society

Paul Helleu’s yacht Étoile

Paul Helleu, wife Alice and baby daughter Paulette on L’Étoile (c.1904)

In 1904, Helleu was awarded the Légion d’honneur by the French president, Émile Loubet, and became one of the most celebrated artists of the Edwardian era in both Paris and London. He was an honorary member in important beaux-arts societies, including the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the International Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers, headed by Auguste Rodin. 

New York City’s Grand Central Terminal.

During his second trip to the United States in 1912, Helleu was awarded the commission to design the ceiling decoration in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal. Helleu decided on a mural of a blue-green night sky covered by the starry signs of the zodiac that cross the Milky Way.

Paul César Helleu (1859-1927)

Helleu made his last trip to New York in 1920 for an exhibition of his work, but he realized that the Belle Époque era was over. He sadly realised that he had lost touch with that vibrant era.   Shortly after his return to France, he destroyed nearly all of his copper plates.   While planning for a new exhibition with Jean-Louis Forain, a French Impressionist painter and printmaker, Helleu died of peritonitis following surgery in Paris, on March 23rd, 1927 at age 67.

Information needed for this blog came from Wikipedia and Facebook plus the following websites:

Brave Fine Art

Contessa Gallery

Stephen Ongpin Fine Art

John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery

Sotheby’s

Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat. Part 2

The Portrait Artist

Léon Bonnat painting a portrait of artist, Alfred Roll (1918)

Léon Bonnat was born in Bayonne, France and lived there until he was thirteen years old.  Léon’s family then moved to Madrid where his father took on a book shop.  Léon’s love of art began to materialise after he went to live in the Spanish capital and, to encourage him, his father would take his son to the Prado.  He remembered those museum visits, saying:

“…I was brought up in the cult of Velasquez. I was very young, in Madrid; my father, on bright days such as one only sees in Spain, sometimes took me to the Prado Museum, where we did long stops in Spanish cinemas. I always left them with a feeling of deep admiration for Vélasquez… “.

Italian Woman with Child by Léon Bonnat

In 1853, when Léon was twenty, his father died and the family returned to their French hometown of Bayonne.  After studying at the Ecole de Dessin de Bayonne, he went to live in Paris and study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.  In Paris, he was able to view paintings by the great Masters of French and Dutch art and particularly remembers seeing the works of Rembrandt and the influence his works had on him, commenting:

“…What is striking about Rembrandt is the power, the strength and the brilliance. He represents life in all its intensity. We see his characters, we talk with them, he resuscitates and revives an entire era. a marvellous and unique gift of interpretation, he joins the sensitivity, the goodness of a heart which vibrates to all the miseries, to all the joys, to all the emotions of humanity. He does not belong to any school. He has opened the new path which closed behind him…”

Roman Girl at a Fountain by Léon Bonnat (1875)

In 1857 he came second in the Prix de Rome competition and left Paris and spent three years at the Villa Medici.  The Villa Medici, now the property of the French State was founded by Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and has housed the French Academy in Rome and welcomed winners of the Rome Prize since 1803, so as to promote and represent artistic creation in all its fields.

L’Assomption de Marie by Léon Bonnat (1869)

L’Assomption de Marie in situ in the Church Saint-André à Bayonne (Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France)

In 1869 Bonnat was awarded the Medal of Honor of the Salon for his painting L’Assomption.

The Martyrdom of Saint Denis by Léon Bonnat (1880)

One of Bonnat’s last religious paintings was his 1880 painting entitled The Martyrdom of Saint Denis.  St Denis was a 3rd-century Christian martyr and saint.  Denis was Bishop of Paris and through his speeches, made many conversions but he was looked upon by the local Roman priest as a danger and had Denis together with his faithful companions, the priest Rusticus and deacon Eleutherius, executed.  The place of the execution, by beheading, was on the highest hill in Paris, which is now known a Montmartre.   Denis was said to be against the beheading taking place at this spot and “folklore” has it that after Denis was beheaded, the corpse is said to have picked up his severed head and walked ten kilometres from the top of the hill, and during that entire walk he preached a sermon. 

Basilica of St Denis, Paris

Detail of the north portal sculpture; the martyrdom of Saint Denis, Eleuthere and Rustique 

Denis finally collapsed at the place where he wanted to be buried, the spot where now stands the Basilica of St Denis and which is also the burial place of the Kings of France.  Saint Denis is the patron saint of both France and Paris.

View of Jerusalem by Léon Bonnat

Although, as we will see later, Bonnat was best known for his portraiture and his early historical and religious subjects, but his landscapes and Orientalist depictions are looked upon as among his most intensely personal and beautifully crafted works.  Léon Bonnat travelled to the Middle East in 1868 together with a party that included the French painter, Jean-Léon Gérôme, his pupil Paul-Marie Lenoir,  the Dutch artist Willem de Farmas de Testas and Gérôme’s brother-in-law Albert Goupil.  The journey began in January 1868 at the Egyptian port of Alexandria and by the third of April, the group had arrived at the gates of Jerusalem.   Willem de Famars Testas recalled their first glimpse of the walled city:

“…The first glimpse of Jerusalem was gripping, the sun-illuminated city was silhouetted against a violet thundery light, while the outlying land lay under the shadow of clouds…”

Léon Bonnat recorded the impressions and the specifics of their arrival at the gates of Jerusalem in April of that year in one of his may oil on canvas sketches entitled View of Jerusalem.

An Arab Sheik by Léon Bonnart (c.1870)

One of Léon’s works from this period was entitled An Arab Sheik which he completed once back in Paris.  It is thought that Bonnat’s depiction emerged from combining multiple resources such as the French model who posed for the seated figure; the saddle we see which Bonnat brought back from his travels and a multitude of sketched notations which he made during his travels in the Middle East.  Combining all this data Léon managed to create a painting that appears authentic, and yet, it is stereotypical of what Europeans believed about the Arabic world and its people such as the way the sheik holds his sword depicting his strength and fierceness and enhances how Europeans believed that that cultures in the Middle East and elsewhere were ruled by violence, in contrast to the supposedly more “civilized” societies of Europe and North America.

Christ on the Cross by Léon Bonnat(1674)

Bonnat’s haunting work entitled Christ on the Cross was commissioned in 1873 for the courtroom of the Cour d’Assises of the Palais de Justice in Paris.  The reasoning behind the commission was that it would embody divine justice in the eyes of the accused and by reminding them of the sufferings of Christ to save the fishermen. The painting was submitted  at the 1874 Salon.  The painting measures 1.59 meters in width and 2.27 meters in height. Bonnat’s depiction fundamentally renews the traditional representation of Christ on the cross. Christ is shown with a crown of thorns, his body is muscular and pale, and he wears a simple white loincloth. Blood is visible from the nails piercing his hands and feet. The background is dark and sombre. The crucified Christ is characterised in an extremely realistic way, accentuating Christ’s suffering due to the torture he received. Christ on the Cross is one of the best known and best loved crucifixion paintings of the western world. The painting can be viewed at the Petit Palais, Museum of Fine Arts of the City of Paris.

Victor Hugo by Léon Bonnat (1879)

For an artist to survive financially he or she must sell their work.  Once back in France, after his three-year stay at Villa Medici in Rome, Léon realised that the sale of his historical and religious paintings had fallen off and he had to look for another painting genre which would attract more buyers.  While Bonnat created many religious and historical works, his long-lasting fame rested on his exceptional career as a portrait painter. In an era before photography became the norm, painted portraits were central for chronicling the likenesses of important individuals, and Bonnat became one of the most sought-after portraitists of the French Third Republic and beyond. His sitters included presidents, politicians, writers, scientists, artists, and members of high society.

Jules Ferry by Léon Bonnat (1888) Jules François Camille Ferry was a French statesman and republican philosopher. He was one of the leaders of the Moderate Republicans and served as Prime Minister of France from 1880 to 1881 and 1883 to 1885.

Bonnat artistic brilliance as a portrait artist was his extraordinary skill in capturing not just a physical likeness but also the sitter’s charm, personality and social standing. His portraits are typified by their unruffled gravity, psychological perception, and scrupulous attention to every detail, whether it be the texture of fabrics to the detailed features of the face and hands. Bonnat often used dark, neutral backgrounds, which allowed viewers to focus entirely onto the subject, which were often illuminated by a carefully controlled light source, a technique evocative of the Spanish painter, Velázquez.

Portrait of Marthe and Therese Galoppe by Léon Bonnat (1889)

Marthe and Therese Galoppe were prominent figures in 19th-century France, known for their social standing and involvement in Parisian society. The painting captures their youthful beauty and grace, reflecting the evolving role of women in society during that time. Bonnat’s portrayal of the Galoppe sisters is significant as it showcases women not just as muses but as individuals with their own identities, challenging traditional views of women in art.

Armand Fallières by Léon Bonnat (1907) French statesman who was President of France from 1906 to 1913.

Among his most famous sitters were famous figures were the statesman Adolphe Thiers, the revered author Victor Hugo, the pioneering scientist Louis Pasteur, fellow painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, and French Presidents like Jules Ferry and Armand Fallières. Bonnat’s portraits served not only as personal records but also as official images that helped shape the public perception of these influential individuals. His success in this genre brought him considerable wealth and prestige.

Portrait of Léon Gambetta by Léon Bonnat (1888) Gambetta was a French lawyer and republican politician who proclaimed the French Third Republic in 1870 and played a prominent role in its early government.

Madame Pasca by Léon Bonnat (1874) Alice Marie Angèle Pasquier was better known by her stage name Madame Pasca, a French stage actress.

Bonnat’s methodology when it came to creating portraits was known to be both thorough and painstaking. He demanded of his sitter numerous meetings so that he could carefully observe them in order to capture subtle gradations of expression and posture and because of this, he was able to achieve prolonged observations which allowed him to realise a high degree of naturalism along with psychological depth.  However, Bonnat’s long processes to achieve a finished portrait did not always please the sitters.  Although he was minded as to what the sitter wanted in the finished portrait, Bonnat refused to flatter his subject and simply strived for an unvarnished truth, but still conveying the dignity appropriate to the subject’s station in life. His commitment to authenticity along with his undoubted technical mastery in delivering form and texture, achieved the finished product being solid, present, and intensely real.

Portrait of Jules Grévy by Léon Bonnat (1880). Jules Grévy was  a French lawyer and politician who served as President of France from 1879 to 1887.

Léon Bonnat who had benefited, following the intervention of the mayor of Bayonne, Jules Labat, when he was granted a municipal scholarship from the city to study the Fine Arts in Madrid and then later in Paris, announced his intention to give his native city the gigantic art collection he had built up.  Léon Bonnat’s dedication to art extended well beyond his lifetime through this act of extraordinary generosity. Léon had no direct heirs, and decided to bequeath his extensive personal art collection, along with many of his own works, to his hometown of Bayonne.

Musée Bonnat-Helleu in Bayonne, France

It was during the latter part of the nineteenth century that Bonnat had achieved financial stability and was able to indulge his passion for collecting art, especially drawings. He acquired sketches, drawings and prints by Rembrandt, Poussin, and Watteau as well as many others.  Eventually, his collection included drawings and paintings from the best of his students and colleagues as well. Like many collectors, Bonnat not only loved the art he had acquired, but he also hoped to share it with a larger public and so he proposed the idea of building a museum in his native Bayonne that would ultimately house his own collection. With his deep roots in the region, continuing family ties to Bayonne, and undoubtedly a sense of gratitude for the support he’d received as a fledgling painter, Bonnat worked tirelessly at developing the new museum. 

Léon Bonnat, installing his collection at the Musée Bonnat, Bayonne.

In 1902, he personally installed a large portion of his own unparalleled collection in the new Musée Bonnat.  The collection was later enriched by the donation of the collection of Paul Helleu and his wife Alice, leading to its current name, the Musée Bonnat-Helleu.  The chosen location of the museum was located at the corner of the two streets, Jacques-Laffitte and Frédéric-Bastiat, in the city centre, near the church of Saint-André where Léon Bonnat’s painting, Assumption of the Virgin can be seen. In 1896, the first stone of the future museum was laid by the Bayonne mayor Léo Pouzac and the classical-style building, in limestone, was completed eighteen months later. Inaugurated in 1901.  When the Bonnat Museum opened, the artist and collector came to set up his collection himself, while writing a will by which he bequeathed almost all of his works to the National Museums with the obligation to deposit them in Bayonne.

Self portrait by Léon Bonnat (1916)

Léon Bonnat died in Monchy-Saint-Éloi,  a commune in the Oise department in northern France, on September 8th 1922, aged 89.   Léon had never married and lived most of his life with his mother and sister. 

Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat.

Part 1. The formulative years

Self portrait by Léon Bonnat (1855)

The artist I am looking at today was one of the leading French painters of the nineteenth century.  He was a colossal figure in 19th-century French art, a painter whose career managed to tie together the past academic traditions with the proliferating trends of modernism. Let me introduce you to Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat.

Madame Bonnat, mère de l’artiste by Léon Bonnat

Bonnat was born in Bayonne, in the French Basque Country in the far southwestern corner of France, close to the Spanish border, on June 20th1833.  He is remembered for his forceful, expressive and emotional portraits and yet he also made his name as talented history and religious painter, and an influential educator, who also built up a great personal art collection.

Portrait of Madame Melida, sister of Léon Bonnat by Léon Bonnat

In 1846. his family moved from France to Spain and went to live in the city of Madrid where his father took over the running of a bookshop. For thirteen years old Léon, who had developed a love of art this move was opportune. In the Spanish capital, Bonnat received his foundational art education, studying under the tutelage of José de Madrazo y Agudo one of the primary exponents of the Neoclassical style in Spain. He was also the patriarch of a family of artists that included his sons Federico and Luis; and his grandsons, Raimundo and Ricardo.  Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz, and his father were leading figures in Spanish academic art, and Federico was a renowned portraitist.

The Artist’s Sister by Léon Bonnat

Bonnat began his artistic education at the Academia Real de las Bellas Artes de San Fernando, in the studio of Federico Madrazo. Studying under Federico de Madrazo, he was plunged into the rich artistic heritage of Spain and he spent numerous hours in the Prado Museum, copying the works of Spanish Golden Age masters such as Diego Velázquez, Jusepe de Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Francisco Goya. These painters and their artworks had a great influence on Bonnat through their profound realism, dramatic use of chiaroscuro and the dignified way they depicted their subjects and their styles left an indelible mark on Bonnat’s developing style. Their portraits often used sombre palettes and this textural richness of Spanish art resonated deeply with him, and this style provided a contrast to the often more refined idealized French academic tradition that he would come across in his later years.

Job by Léon Bonnat (1880)

Léon’s father died in 1853 and Léon and his family moved back to France and their hometown of Bayonne.  Now back “home” Léon continued his art studies at the Ecole de Dessin de Bayonne, where one of his tutors was Bernard-Romain Julien, a French printmaker, lithographer, painter and draughtsman.  In 1854, with a stipend of 1500 francs from the city of Bayonne, Bonnat left Bayonne and travelled north to the French capital. His move to the French capital and the tuition costs were partly funded by the City of Bayonne. Having attained a strong foundation from his training in Madrid, Bonnat was able to enter the well-respected Ecole des Beaux-Arts. There, where he studied in the atelier of Léon Cogniet, a much admired historical and portrait painter. Cogniet’s studio was known for its demanding academic training, with great emphasis on students’ ability, emphasizing their drawing, and composition skills.  The students would also spend time studying the works of the old Masters. For a time whilst in Paris Bonnat briefly studied with Paul Delaroche, another prominent academic painter.

The Good Samaritan by Léon Bonnat

Adam and Eve Finding the Body of Abel by Léon Bonnat

Now in Paris, Bonnat began to create his reputation as an up-and-coming artist. In 1857, for the first time, he submitted paintings to the Paris Salon with works such as The Good Samaritan and Adam and Eve Finding the Body of Abel which demonstrated his skill in depicting religious and historical subjects, which confirmed the influence of his Spanish and Italian studies.

Villa Medici, Rome.

In 1857, whilst studying at the École des Beaux-Arts, Bonnat competed for the prestigious Prix de Rome in Painting, The Prix de Rome in Painting was one of the most prestigious awards in the field of fine arts. It was created in 1663, and this annual competition was organized by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) in Paris. Each year the winners of the Prix de Rome were sent to the Villa Medici in Rome to perfect their artistic training for a number of years.  The prize awarded to the winner was a scholarship that allowed promising artists to study cost-free in Rome. It was the goal of every early-career artist to win the award.   By rewarding talented young artists with a scholarship and a chance to stay at the Villa Medici in Rome, it was also seen as a way in which it helped to promote academic art and encourage artists to hone their skills. Bonnat, after two failures in 1854 and 1855 had made another attempt to win the prize in 1857.

The Resurrection of Lazarus by Léon Bonnat (1857)

Each year, entrants were given a subject to focus on and then present their submission in front of a demanding jury. This fierce competition encouraged artists to push their limits and express all their creativity.  The year, 1857, Bonnat attempted to win the award the subject matter chosen by the organisers was Lazarus. Léon Bonnat submitted his work entitled The Resurrection of Lazarus and he was awarded the second prize, which unfortunately did not include the full French state scholarship.

Lazarus Raised from the Dead by Charles Sellier

The winner of that year’s prize was the French painter who specialized in mythological and historical subjects, Charles Sellier with his painting, Lazarus Raised from the Dead.

Portrait of Léon Bonnat by Edgar Degas

Bonnat was pleased to receive the second-place award but disappointed that his prize did not allow him a three-year all expenses paid stay at the Villa Medici which was only awarded to the winner of the competition.  However, thanks to the financial assistance of a further 1500 francs granted to him by the city of Bayonne, as well as  money raised by some of the town’s wealthy citizens including the Personnaz family,  a wealthy Jewish family of fabric exporters,  he was able to spend the next three years in Rome, where he was able to study the works of the great Italian Masters, particularly the works of Raphael, Titian, and Michelangelo, as well as the powerful naturalism of Caravaggio.  During his stay in Rome, he also became friends with Edgar Degas, Gustave Moreau, Jean-Jacques Henner, and the sculptor Henri Chapu.

St Vincent de Paul Taking the Place of a Galley Slave by Léon Bonnat (1865)

Bonnat remained in the Italian capital from 1858 until 1861.   Bonnat’s early paintings, such as his 1865 St Vincent de Paul Taking the Place of a Galley Slave were renowned for their dramatic intensity and his religious works of that time strengthened his reputation in this genre.  This painting was based on a part of Vincent;s life. Vincent de Paul was an Occitan French Catholic priest who dedicated himself to serving the poor and became Chaplain-General of the Galleys in 1619, while working for the General of the Galleys of France, Philippe-Emmanuel de Gondi. This position took him to the port of Marseilles in 1622.   When not at sea, the galley slaves, or galères, would spend their time in a squalid prison in the fortified port’s prison. Vincent was horrified at the state of the prisoners and their environs and complained to his patron M. Gondi that such a situation could not continue if France was truly a Christian kingdom. Vincent began ministering to the galley slaves, providing aid to the Catholic prisoners, as well as to the enslaved Muslims and Protestants. At the same time, he instituted important reforms in relation to how these men were treated, regardless of their faith, and set about building a hospital in Marseilles to treat the galley slaves. Due to a lack of steady funding, the General Hospital of Galley Slaves, as it would eventually be called, was not finished until 1646.

Because of Léon’s artistic prowess and being looked upon as a leading academic artist, he was often asked to act as a juror for the annual Salon exhibitions, and in 1867, he was his nominated to the Legion of Honor.

…….to be continued.

Most of the information for these blogs about Léon Bonnat came from Wikpedia and these blogs:

NiceArtGallery

Rehs Gallery

Léon Bonnat by Guy Saigne

Vincent and the Galley Slaves