May 2011 – Page 2 – my daily art display

The Farmer’s Wife and the Raven by George Stubbs

George Stubbs, the English artist who is best loved for his painting of horses, was born in Liverpool in 1724. He would become the finest painter of horses that ever lived. His father was a prosperous currier – a specialist in the leather processing industry. Stubbs helped his father in that trade until his father died when George was seventeen years of age. He then went on to serve a short term apprenticeship as a painter and engraver but didn’t like the work he was asked to perform. He carried on with his love for art and took a keen interest in anatomy which was to be one of the driving passions of his life. He was able to study this at close hand at the York County Hospital.

When he was thirty years of age he travelled to Italy. The purpose of this European journey, he told his friend and fellow artist, Oziah Humphrey, was “to convince himself that nature was and always is superior to art whether Greek or Roman and having renewed this conviction he immediately resolved upon returning home”. He did return to England and settled down in a rented farmhouse in a remote part of Lincolnshire with his common-law wife Mary Spencer and with her assistance set about dissecting dead horses to learn more about their anatomy. In 1766 he published a paper entitled The Anatomy of the Horse and the original drawings and etchings he made for this are now kept in the Royal Academy collection.

George Stubbs was recognised as a “Master” of horse painters and he received many commissions from several dukes and lords. His masterly depictions of hunters and racehorses commanded high prices. Stubbs soon became quite rich from the sale of his horse paintings and with the proceeds bought a house in Marylebone, an extremely fashionable part of London, where he lived until his death in 1806, a few weeks short of his eighty-second birthday.

My Daily Art Display today is not one of his many fine horse paintings but one of comparatively few subject pictures by the artist. The painting is entitled The Farmer’s Wife and the Raven, which he painted in 1782, and is based on a tale from John Gay’s Book of Fables. In the painting we see a farmer’s wife astride her old white horse on her way to the market. In the pannier baskets are her eggs which she intends to sell. Her poor old horse, Blind Ball, is startled by the squawking of a raven, which sits high up on the branch of a nearby tree, causing it to stumble and fall. The eggs fall out of the basket and lie broken, their yellow yokes can be seen clearly on the ground. This painting is a tale of greed. The large farmer’s wife did not care for the welfare of her old horse, her mind being set on the profits she was going to make from the sale of her eggs. English people loved horses and a painting illustrating the come-uppance of someone who did not treat their animal well was a very popular subject for artists of the time.

The way in which Stubbs has painted the stumbling horse is testament to his great ability as an artist and his knowledge of a horse’s anatomy. It is a perfect anatomical depiction which manages to capture the anguish of the horse in pain and its movement as it staggers to the ground. Look how he has captured the woman who is desperately trying to avoid being thrown over the head of the stumbling horse. Our eyes follow the story the artist has depicted. First our eyes are drawn to the fallen white horse which stands out vividly against a dark background. Our gaze moves up the horse’s withers to the unfortunate woman whose right arm is flung high like a rodeo rider on a bucking bronco. We see her look of horror as she fixes her eyes on the “over-sized” raven sitting on the branch of the nearby oak tree. The bird’s mouth is still open after letting out the squawk which has set the disaster in motion.

The painting has an inscription (in bold type below) taken from this fable:

Betwixt her swagging panniers’ load
A farmer’s wife to market rode,
And, jogging on, with thoughtful care
Summed up the profits of her ware;
When, starting from her silver dream,
Thus far and wide was heard her scream:
‘That raven on yon left-hand oak
(Curse on his ill-betiding croak)
Bodes me no good.’ No more she said,
When poor blind Ball, with stumbling tread,

Fell prone; o’erturned the pannier lay,
And her mashed eggs bestrewed the way.
She, sprawling in the yellow road,
Railed, swore and cursed: ‘Thou croaking toad,
A murrain take thy whoreson throat!
I knew misfortune in the note.’
‘Dame,’ quoth the raven, ‘spare your oaths,
Unclench your fist, and wipe your clothes.
But why on me those curses thrown?
Goody, the fault was all your own;

For had you laid this brittle ware,
On Dun, the old sure-footed mare,
Though all the ravens of the hundred,
With croaking had your tongue out-thundered,
Sure-footed Dun had kept his legs,
And you, good woman, saved your eggs.’

A Dream of the Past – Sir Isumbras at the Ford by John Everett Millais

A Dream of the Past – Sir Isumbras at the Ford by Millais (1857)

My Daily Art Display painting of the day is one by John Everett Millais, entitled A Dream of the Past – Sir Isumbras at the Ford, which he completed in 1857. It depicts an ancient knight on horseback carrying two children of a poor woodcutter across a river. The character of Sir Isumbras comes from the 14^th century medieval romance written in Middle English. The actual scene we see before our eyes was not part of the original tale but more than likely came from a romance written in fake medieval verse based on the original and penned by Millais friend, the art critic Tom Taylor.

The original poem tells the story of the humbling of the once arrogant knight. The scene is set by the art critic and member of the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood, Frederic Stephens. Stephens was not an artist but in today’s terminology, he would be described as the Pre-Rapaelite’s public relations man. It was his job to communicate the aims of the Brotherhood to the public. Of this painting, he wrote:

“….Sir Isumbras at the Ford was the subject of the picture Millais made his leading work in the year 1857. It represented an ancient knight, all clad in golden armour, who had gone through the glories of this life — war honour, victory and reward, wealth and pride. Though he is aged and worn with war, his eye is still bright with the glory of human life, and yet he has stooped his magnificent pride so far as to help, true knight as he was, two little children, and carries them over a river ford upon the saddle of his grand war-horse, woodcutter’s children as they were. The face of this warrior was one of those pictorial victories which can derive their success from nothing less than inspiration. The sun was setting beyond the forest that gathered about the river’s margin, and, in its glorious decadence, symbolised the nearly spent life of the warrior…”.

This painting is a classic example of the Pre-Raphaelites’ interest in topics about medieval chivalry. The old knight in his gleaming golden armour has helped the two children cross the stream. The girls stares into the face of the knight with a worried expression whilst the young lad, with the wood strapped to his back, looks out at us, as he desperately clings on to the knight. The bright and vivid colours of the children’s clothes is typical of the colours used in Pre-Raphaelite paintings

When Millais exhibited the painting it received hostile reviews and was condemned by many art critics of the time. The leading art critic of the day, and former patron of Millais, John Ruskin, savagedly criticised the artist and the painting declaring it to be a “catastrophe”. Millais was criticised for painting the “ugly” horse out of proportion to the figures on its back and by doing so had given the illusion that the three figures are almost floating above the animal’s back. He also criticised Millais for how he had painted the foreground lighter than the exposed hills in the background, saying that the artist had “made errors in pictorial grammar”. I suppose it has to be remembered that Millais, two years earlier, had married Ruskin’s wife Effie, after she had been granted an annulment of her marriage to Ruskin on the grounds that it had never been consummated. This whole affair was splashed across the London press and had caused a scandal. Ruskin never forgave his former protogé Millais. Millais must have listened to the torrent of criticism as he repainted parts of it before exhibiting it in an exhibition in Liverpool. For all its criticism and the large number of detractors, this painting inspired many other artists to depict gallant knights rescuing beautiful maidens.

A Nightmare by Frederick Sandys (c.1857)

Finally let me finish with another Pre-Raphaelite painter, Frederic Sandys who satirised Millais’ painting with his print entitled A Nightmare, in which he caricatured Millais as the knight and his fellow artists Gabriel Dante Rossetti and Holman Hunt as the children and Sandys adds more scorn on the trio by turning the horse into a donkey which has been branded on its flank with the letters “J R” – the initials of Ruskin !

An Al-Fresco Toilette by Samuel Luke Fildes

An Al-Fresco Toilette by Fildes — An Al-Fresco Toilette by Samuel Luke Fildes (1889)

For the third day running I am featuring a British artist. The reason being is that the small art gallery I visited last week, although it had some wonderful pictures, ninety per cent were by British artists and whilst the paintings were fresh in my mind and I could still decipher my notes I thought I would dwell on what I saw.

My featured artist today is Samuel Luke Fildes who was born in Liverpool in 1844. At the age of 17 and after he had completed his basic schooling he moved to the nearby Warrington School of Art before moving south to London and becoming a student at the South Kensington Art School and later the Royal Academy. It was here that he was influenced by Frederick Walker, the English Social Realist painter who John Everett Millais described as “the greatest artist of the century”. The Social Realism, sometimes termed Socio-Realism, was an art movement whose members depicted social and racial injustice and economic hardship and in their works of art. The subjects of their paintings were often members of the “working class” pictured struggling to survive the hardships of life. Social Realism genre of painting was also very popular in America during the Great Depression and one famous example of an American Social Realism painting was one by Grant Wood, entitled American Gothic which I featured on January 7^th.

In 1869 when he was 24, Fildes joined the staff of the The Graphic, a new illustrated weekly newspaper, which was founded by the artist and social reformer William Luson Thomas. Thomas believed strongly in the power of visual images and that they could change public opinion and it was his hope that this may lead to the eradication of social injustice and poverty. Luke Fildes submitted an illustration, which was to run side by side with an article on the 1864 Houseless Poor Act and his poignant offering showing a line of homeless people queueing up to get a ticket which would give them access to overnight accommodation. This engraving entitled Houseless and Hungry caught the attention of a fellow artist who also worked for The Graphic, the Pre-Raphaelite painter, John Everett Millais, who showed it to the author Charles Dickens. The author having recently just lost his book illustrator through ill-health, immediately commissioned Fildes to illustrate his new novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Fame soon followed and in 1870, Fildes left the newspaper to concentrate on his artistic work.

I am leaving the story of Fildes life at this point as I want to conclude it tomorrow with another of his paintings, which is extremely poignant and sad and is connected to an incident later in his life. However for today, I want to look at a painting which he completed in 1889 entitled An Al-Fresco Toilette and which can now be found in the Lady Lever Art Gallery on Merseyside. This painting was a move away from his social realist work which was the main focus of his early artistic life. Fildes, who began this painting in Venice, had originally decided to call this painting The Morning of the Fiesta. It is set in a Venetian courtyard of a very old building with its vine-covered trellis work over the main entrance. The building belonged to the artist Henry Wood. Fildes and Wood were, at that time, looked upon as leaders of the Neo-Venetian art movement and many of their works depicted scenes of happy groups of girls passing the time away along the sides of the canals or posing on their balconies. This type of painting was extremely popular in exhibitions and as illustrations in magazines and most importantly with art collectors.

In this painting, we see some women and children preparing themselves for that day’s Fiesta. It is a vibrant painting full of charm and the sun has lit up the courtyard and the three women as they discuss the forthcoming event. It is not known with any amount of certainty but it is believed that this is not an en plein air painting of a real life scene but was probably based on various individual preliminary sketches Fildes made and which were then used to build up the finished composition when he returned to his studio. This type of happy, sunny painting was popular with art buyers. Lord Leverhulme, the Northern Industrialist, philanthropist, and soap-manufacturer bought the painting in 1913 and considered it appropriate for his soap advertisements.

However not everybody was happy with Fildes new art genre. Art critics and the Art Establishment never forgave Fildes for abandoning the Social Realism genre of his early career, which had highlighted the terrible circumstances some of the poorest people in Britain had to suffer. The Art Establishment still fervently believed that art still had an important moralistic role to play but unfortunately the taste of the buying public was starting to change. They were moving away from these downbeat works, with all their distressing scenes, and look towards happier and sunnier scenes and Fildes realised that this was the route to financial stability.

The Doctor by Samuel Luke Fildes

Yesterday I was telling you about the life of Samuel Luke Fildes and featured one of his paintings An Al-Fresco Toilette, which he completed in 1889. I ended by saying I would return to his life later as it had a connection with another of his paintings, entitled The Doctor which he completed in 1891.

Yesterday I told you how he had given up his work on the Socialist magazine The Graphic and also changed his painting style from the Socialist Realism genre to become, along with his artist friend and brother-in-law, Henry Wood, leaders of the Neo-Venetian school of painting, which had become very popular. His popularity was in the ascendancy and he had become one of the best British painters of his time. Besides his Venetian-style paintings he completed a number of portraits including those of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. He was elected as an associate of the Royal Academy in 1879 and eight years later an academician. He was knighted in 1906.

Fildes’ eldest son, Philip tragically died of tuberculosis in 1877. Fildes was devastated at this sad event and this terrible ordeal was captured in his painting The Doctor, which shows the medical man at the side of an ailing child. In 1949 this painting was used by the American Medical Association in its campaign against a proposal put forward by the President of America, Harry Truman to nationalise health care. Sixty-five thousand posters incorporating Fildes’ painting with words “Keep Politics Out of this Picture” were displayed around the country with the intention of raising public awareness of what the government was trying to do and by doing so, raising public scepticism for this new-fangled idea of nationalised health care.

Luke Fildes R.A., Painting his Picture "The Doctor" by Reginald Cleaver (c.1891)

The Doctor is probably the most famous painting by Luke Fildes. He made numerous sketches before he sat down to paint the picture. Fildes had travelled all over the Scottish highlands sketching the interiors of small cottages which he could maybe use in his painting. He even had an exact replica of the sick room made in his studio right down to the table cloth and lampshade tilted towards the sick child, as shown in the drawing by the artist Reginald Cleaver. This was actually published in the illustrated newspaper, The Graphic, which twenty-two years earlier had been the place of employment for the young aspiring artist.

In the painting we see the early morning light streaming in through the window on the left hand side. In some ways it is a time of jubilation as the child has survived through the night. It is a new dawn and maybe hope comes with it. In the background we see the mother, who is both relieved and exhausted from a sleepless night, laying her head on her hands on the table. Her husband places a comforting hand on her shoulder. In the foreground we have the doctor and the child both illuminated by sunlight. Look at the child. He is not lying on a comfortable bed but stretched across two wooden chairs which are maybe all the family could afford.

It is a poignant picture, the subject of which obviously brought memories flooding back to Fildes regarding the death of his son. It is also, in a way, a return to the Social Realism genre of painting which Fildes did in his early twenties, in the way it shows the poverty some people had to endure.

Springtime in Eskdale by James McIntosh Patrick

My Daily Art Display for today features another painting by a twentieth century British artist. Today’s painting entitled Springtime in Eskdale was painted by the Scottish landscape artist and etcher James McIntosh Patrick in 1934.

James McIntosh Patrick was born in Dundee in 1907. His father, an architect, encouraged his son’s interest in art and when he was 17 had him enrol as a second-year student at the Glasgow School of Art. Later in 1926, he and one of his teachers, Maurice Grieffenhagen, had a three month summer vacation in the South of France working on paintings of the local landscape. After he completed his studies he started off his working life as an etcher but in the 1930’s the demand for this type of work dwindled and Patrick began to concentrate on watercolour and oil painting. The art genre he loved was that of landscape painting. At the beginning, he would go out into the countryside make many sketches and bring them back to his studio and use them to complete his oil or watercolour painting. It was not until later on that he perfected his style and technique in en plein air painting. He believed this to be the best way to paint landscapes saying that it encouraged people to appreciate nature itself as they sat and painted. He was once quoted as saying:

“…I don’t suppose there is much sentimentality about my paintings, but I have a deep feeling that Nature is immensely dignified when you are out of doors. I am struck by the dignity of everything…”

“…..As I got to know the countryside better and better, I came to realise that rhythmic ideas are inside you and so you go around looking for landscapes where the countryside fits a preconceived idea that you have inside you and which you recognise when you see it. In other words, a twisted bit of wood, a wall or a gate, immediately causes you to say; ah, that’s the bit I am looking for… It is much easier to make up a picture than to paint nature as it appears before us…”

He had many of his paintings shown at the Royal Academy. The outbreak of the Second World War and his call-up into the Army Camouflage Corps curtailed his painting career for five years but when it ended he returned with his wife and family to his house in Dundee, which he had purchased before the start of war. Their house overlooked the River Tay and it was at this time that he started experimenting with outdoor landscape painting. His paintings were of the traditional variety in as much as “what you got is what you see” as he had no time for the “contemporary” interpretations of landscapes. He taught art up until his eighties and continued painting up until his last few years when his eyesight began to fail. His love for his native county of Angus was well documented in all his paintings of that area. His depiction of the scenic countryside was shown in all types of weather conditions and at different times of the year.

Art historians rank James McIntosh Patrick as one of the greatest painters Scotland produced in the twentieth century and his artistic brilliance was a match for most of Europe’s best landscape painters of the twentieth century. He died in Dundee, the town where he was born, in 1998, aged 91.

Today’s featured painting, Springtime in Eskdale, is a detailed landscape painting of The Crooks in Eskdalemuir, Dumfriesshire which was the birthplace of the famous civil engineer and architect Thomas Telford. This painting by Patrick was completed in 1934 and was to mark the centenary of Telford’s death. In the middle ground we can see people visiting a cottage whilst further back we can just make out a farmer ploughing his land. Further back we see a small river at the foot of a line of hills, which rise into the background. The artist’s view of the scene is from a somewhat elevated position looking down at the farmland.

I love the stone wall divisions we see in the painting. Although I am not familiar with the location of the painting, it does remind me so much of the countryside landscape of Yorkshire with its multi coloured patchwork-quilt fields separated by dry-stone walls. We are not looking solely at the element of Nature but we are seeing the man-made design element of stone walls, a cottage with its out-buildings and the ploughed field and how the two elements blend so perfectly. The choice of season for the setting of this painting could well have come from the print publisher, Harold Dickens, who had seen the success of Patrick’s earlier work entitled Winter in Angus, which was in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1935 and Autumn Kinnorby and Midsummer in East Fife.

The inclusion of a road in the foreground encourages us to follow it with our eyes and thus explore the middle and background. One of the most well-defined aspects of the painting is the way he has painted the trees. He was a great believer that they were one of nature’s greatest gifts to mankind and he would put a lot of effort into their depiction in order for us to be more appreciative of what Mother Nature has bestowed upon us. This painting was a result of many sketches he had made of the area and in some ways was a “slightly idealised” view of the landscape produced partly from his sketches and partly from what he could remember about the area.

Jeunesse Dorée by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst

jeunesse doree by Brockhurst — Jeunesse Dorée by Gerald Brockhurst

Yesterday I visited the Lady Lever Art Gallery on the Wirral peninsular in order to stand face to face with Holman Hunt’s painting The Scapegoat as this was going to be my featured painting. Of course, whilst I was there I went around the gallery, half of which is taken up by fine art paintings, mainly from British artists, and the other half was set aside for tapestries, sculptures, furniture and porcelain. It was an interesting gallery and I can thoroughly recommend you visit it if you are in the vicinity. The reason I mention all this is that I was mesmerised by one of the paintings on display. I kept having to return to it and try and work out in my own mind what was the magnetic attraction of the work. It still haunts me even now as I put my thoughts on paper. Unfortunately the gallery shop could not offer met a print of it or even a postcard which was very disappointing. My Daily Art Display today is this exquisite painting entitled Jeunesse Dorée by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst, who was one of the outstanding English artists of the twentieth century and a renowned portrait painter.

Gerald Brockhurst SelfPortrait — Gerald Brockhurst (Self Portrait)

Brockhurst was born in Edgbaston, a suburb of Birmingham, in 1890. His father, a coal merchant, deserted the family and went to America. He attended a number of local schools but found it hard to settle down to school life. This was exacerbated by recurring ear infections he frequently suffered from and which often left him bedridden. The young lad had an aunt who lived in India and he would frequently send her illustrated letters and it was this that got him interested in art and he was determined to become a painter. His artistic talent was recognised at the early age of twelve and he won a place at the Birmingham School of Art where he remained for five years. It was here he began to fall in love with portraiture. He won many awards at the Birmingham School of Art and later the Royal Academy Schools, the oldest art school in the country, which was founded through a personal act of King George III in 1768.

In 1912 Brockhurst was awarded the prestigious Gold Medal and Travelling Scholarship. Two years later he used this scholarship to travel with his new wife Anais to Paris and Italy. During his travels he studied the works of the “Old Masters” of the 15^th and 16^th centuries and these were to have a lasting impact on his art.

Anais Brockhurst first wife of the artist

Brockhurst and his wife Anais Folin went to live in Ireland and remained there for five years. It was during those years that he created many etched and painted portraits of his wife. From them, we can see that he was truly in love with her and was mesmerised by her beauty. It was during this period of his life that he first met the portraitist, Augustus John who introduced Brockhurst to his circle of friends. In fact, it was Augustus John who persuaded him to stage two major exhibitions of his works at the Chenil Gallery, London in 1916 and again in 1919. These launched his career and Brockhurst, who had moved back to London in 1920, started to enter some of his etchings and drawings to the Royal Academy. It was in the 1920’s that he established himself as an outstanding and flourishing portrait painter, and also strengthened his reputation as one of the exceptional printmakers of his generation

Teaching in the Royal Academy Schools was undertaken by a system of lectures delivered by Professors and Royal Academician ‘Visitors‘, and in 1928, when Brockhurst was thirty-eight years old, he was appointed a Visitor to the Royal Academy Schools. During this time he met the sixteen year-old artist’s model Kathleen Woodward. Brockhurst was immediately besotted by her youthful beauty and she was to become his lifelong model. He renamed her Dorette. Their relationship led to the break-up of Brockhurst’s marriage to Anais and a protracted and bitter divorce case, much sensationalised in the press. The adverse publicity from this divorce together with the onset of World War II led to his decision to leave England with Kathleen ‘Dorette’ Woodward in 1940 and emigrate to America. Brockhurst and Kathleen eventually married in 1947.

In New York Brockhurst became both famous and wealthy and lived out his life supported by a number of loyal patrons who loved his portraiture. During his career, he carried out over six hundred portraits including portraits of the rich and famous such as the Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson, J Paul Getty and Marlene Dietrich. He died in New Jersey in 1978 at the age of 88. Kathleen Dorette Woodward died in 1996.

And so to the painting which captivated me yesterday. Jeunesse Dorée, meaning “gilded youth” in French, is a term applied to wealthy and fashionable society people. It was painted by Brockhurst in 1934 and exhibited at that year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It was purchased for £1000 by Lord Leverhume, for his Lady Lever Gallery on the very first day of the show. The buyer’s determination to have the painting stemmed from his disappointment the year before when he tried to buy Brockhurst’s etching Dorette, but his Gallery Trustees dithered on funding the proposed acquisition and it was bought by the Harris Museum and Art Gallery of Preston.

Like myself yesterday, many people have been captivated by this wonderful painting. The Daily Mail of the day reported on the painting and its admirers stating:

“…again I saw people yesterday standing before the picture trying to fathom the secret of those curiously haunting deep-blue eyes…”

Let us look at the painting in more detail. It is a half-length portrait with an almost two-dimensional stark and rocky idealised landscape along with an immense sky as the background. There is a lack of depth to the background of this painting, which in a way projects the young girl towards us. This setting was consistent with his many portraits of the 1930’s and 1940’s but which was in contrast to the works of other portraitist who preferred to use realistic three-dimensional settings. He has used sombre colours. The girl stares straight at us almost daring us to blink. As you look at her you wonder what is going through her mind. Her eyes are penetrating as if she is looking into your very soul. There is no hint of a smile on her full-red lips. Hers is an inscrutable expression as she fixes her gaze on us. Having said all that, in my mind, there can be no doubting her beauty and her alluring sensuality. Her plain-coloured cardigan, echoing the shades of the background, clings tightly to her body. Her full breasts strain against the material and the buttons of the cardigan which hold them captive. It is no wonder that Brockhurst was seduced by her beauty and fell in love with her. I think I too was lost in her enigmatic loveliness.

The Appearance of Christ to the People by Alexander Ivanov

The Appearance of Christ before the People by Alexander Ivanov (1837-57)

How would you feel if you had spent almost half of your life on one painting and then after all that effort it was not well received? This is what happened to Alexander Ivanov and his monumental painting The Appearance of Christ to the People. This oil on canvas work measures 540cms x 750cms (18ft x 24ft 6ins). Ivanov started on the painting in 1837 and did not complete and exhibit it in St Petersburg until 1858. This is My Daily Art Display featured painting for today.

Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov was born in St. Petersburg in 1806. He studied art at the St Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts under his father, the painter Andrei Ivanov. At the age of twenty-five he went to live in Rome where he studied the arts of the classical world. Coincidentally Ivanov was a contemporary of the Scottish painter William Dyce whom I featured yesterday and like Dyce when Ivanov was in Rome he became friends with Friedrich Overbeck, a German painter and leading member of the Nazarenes. The Nazarenes were a group of young and idealistic German painters of the early nineteenth century who believed that art should serve a religious or moral purpose. The name Nazarenes was given to them facetiously because of their devout way of life and the propensity to wear their hair in biblical hairstyles. It was because of this friendship and exchange of views with the Nazarenes that Ivanov concentrated on religious paintings.

Ivanov’s fame is inseparable from this great masterpiece of his, which I am featuring today. The finished painting is based on hundreds of preparatory studies he made over twenty years, many of which are gems in themselves and are considered by art historians as masterpieces in their own right. This painting and about 300 preparatory sketches are housed in Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery. Art critics believe that the preparatory sketches reveal greater expressiveness and psychological depth than the finished painting itself.

Ivanov believed the Gospels to be historical rather than religious and therefore considered that the subject of this painting to be more historical than religious. The scene is set on the banks of the River Jordan and is based on the Gospel of Matthew 3:13-16:

“…Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness.’ Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’…”

In the middle ground we see the solitary figure of Christ on a rocky mound approaching the gathering. Behind him in the background is a wide plain and the distant mountains. His figure is small in comparison to the others but nevertheless stands out because of it being a lone figure. In the foreground of the picture there are a number of male figures of varying ages, some of whom are already undressed waiting to be baptised. The main figure with his wavy black hair, dressed in his animal skin under a long cloak is John the Baptist, with a crosier in his left hand. He raises his hands aloft and gestures towards the approaching solitary figure of Christ.

To the left there are a group of disciples who will soon move on and spread the word of the Lord. To the right we have the Pharisees and scribes who unbendingly reject the Truth. In the centre of the group the artist has painted a haggard old man struggling to his feet buoyed by the words of John the Baptist.

This is a beautiful painting, full of colour and meticulous detail. In 1858, Alexander Ivanov went with his beloved painting to St Petersburg where it was exhibited. Its lukewarm reception must have been heartbreaking for Ivanov. He died a few months later of cholera aged 52 not knowing that some years after his death his work of art would be hailed, by the likes of Ilya Repin, the most celebrated Russian painter of his day, as “the greatest work in the whole world, by a genius born in Russia”.

Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5th 1858 by William Dyce

Pegwell Bay A Recollection of October 5th 1858 by William Dyce — Pegwell Bay, A Recollection of October 5th 1858 by William Dyce

My Daily Art Display for today is entitled Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5^th 1858, by the distinguished Scottish artist, William Dyce. This painting, which he completed four years before his death, is often considered to be his greatest work of art. The title of the painting itself is unusual but the specific date must have stuck in the mind of the artist, probably for astronomical reasons which I will talk about later. This is a lovely painting and for me it brings back many happy childhood memories of my early years when my mother would whisk me away to the seaside for a week each summer and I would be content (or as content as a pre-teenage child can be) to simply potter about the rock pools with my bucket, spade and net.

William Dyce was born in Aberdeen in 1806. He trained as a doctor before reading for the church. However at the age of nineteen he decided to become an artist and studied at the Royal Academy in London. In his twenties, he travelled to Rome. Here he studied the works of the “Masters” such as Titian, Rembrandt and Poussin and became interested in the Nazarene Movement when he met one of the movements leading artists, Friedrich Overbeck. The Nazarene Movement was a group of early 19th century German Romantic painters who aimed to revive honesty and spirituality in Christian art. The name Nazarene came from a term of derision used against them for their affectation of a biblical manner of clothing and hair style.

After his travels in Europe he returned home and was put in charge of the School of Design in Edinburgh. At this time he was considered to be the city’s finest portraitist. Later in 1838, he moved to London where he headed up the Government School of Design which in 1896 became known as the Royal College of Art. Dyce left the school in 1843 to give himself time to concentrate on his own painting

The intricate painting today is a beautifully detailed seaside landscape of Pegwell Bay in Kent. It resulted from a trip he and his family made in late 1858 to the well-liked holiday resort, which is close to the small Kent seaport of Ramsgate. For a seaside painting it is interesting to note the lack of people on the beach but as this was in October, the cold weather probably kept people, other than these hardy folk, away from the shingle beach and cold sea breezes. In the picture we see the artist himself in the extreme right middle-ground staring up at the cliffs. Near to him we can just make out a man with his group of donkeys which were used to give children rides along the shore. One of Dyce’s interests was geology and we presume he was taking great interest in the flint-encrusted strata and eroded faces of the chalk cliffs. See how Dyce has meticulously recorded the detail of the rock formation of the cliffs.

Seemingly uninterested in geology, his wife, her two sisters and his son, wrapped up against the elements in the late autumn afternoon, amuse themselves searching for fossils in the foreground of the painting. Pegwell Bay was famous for fossil hunting. The sun was beginning to disappear and the temperature was dropping.

Another of Dyce’s interest was astronomy and in this painting, albeit hard to detect in the late afternoon sky, there is the barely visible trail of Donati’s Comet streaking across the sky. This comet was nearest the Earth around the time of this painting.

In some aspects this is not a seaside holiday painting of fun and happiness with people enjoying the sunshine and blue sea. There is poignancy to this painting. I need to know why everybody looks somewhat miserable as they hunt for their fossils. Maybe it was the cold, as we can see them all well wrapped up in warm clothes. It is as if they have been told “off you go, enjoy yourselves” and yet things were conspiring against them. This is a somewhat downbeat painting. The artist has used subdued colours in the depiction of the landscape which in a way makes the colour of the clothing worn by his family stand out more.

The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt

Normally I try and publish my daily blog in the morning but today I am late, but for a very good reason. I think we all agree that to stand in front of the actual painting is vastly more satisfying than looking at it on the internet or in a book, so although I had made notes for today’s blog I decided that I would go and see the actual painting before publishing my thoughts.

My featured artist today is William Holman Hunt, the English Pre-Raphaelite painter. In 1854 he had just completed The Light of the World, which to this day, remains one of the best known religious paintings of the 19^th century. Hunt wanted to carry on painting religious subjects but decided that any future paintings involving biblical subjects should be painted in the very places where they happened. So in 1854 Hunt decided to journey to the Holy Lands. This was typical of Hunt’s thoroughness, and also typical of the rational, scientific spirit of the age. Another reason for the journey was that it was also at this point in his life when he was suffering a crisis of religious faith and he believed that such a visit to the Holy Lands may bring him a better understanding of his faith. However, his move away from his friends, Millais and Rossetti effectively marked the beginning of the end of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which they had founded six years earlier.

The subject of today’s featured painting in My Daily Art Display is entitled The Scapegoat and the subject is derived from the Talmudic tradition of driving a sacrificial white goat out into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). A strip of red wool was bound to the goat’s horns, in the belief that it would turn white if the appeasement was accepted. This also harked back to the Book of Isaiah 1:18:

“Come now, let’s settle this,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.

Hunt regarded the Old Testament scapegoat as a forerunner of the New Testament Christ whose suffering and death similarly expunged man’s sins.

Hunt travelled first to Jerusalem in June 1854 and then in the October on to Oosdoom, a place on the southern edge of the salt-encrusted shallows of the Dead Sea. In his diary Hunt described this setting as:

‘“…never was so extraordinary a scene of beautifully arranged horrible wilderness. It is black, full of asphalte scum and in the hand slimy, and smarting as a sting — No one can stand and say that it is not accursed of God…”

Hunt saw the Dead Sea as a ‘horrible figure of sin’, believing as did many at this time, that it was the original site of the city of Sodom. Here he remained painting the landscape, the mountains of Edom, and the lake which would become the background of the painting. He also made preliminary sketches of the goat. However the goat proved to be a “fidgety model” refusing to stand still. Bad weather forced Hunt to head back to Jerusalem. He had not completed the picture of the goat so brought it, some Dead Sea mud and stones back to his studio in Jerusalem so as to complete the work. However, on the journey back the goat died. Hunt bought another goat and proceeded to have it stand in a tray of salty Dead Sea mud and stones which he had brought back to his studio and continued with the painting. To complete the details of the painting he bought a skeleton of a camel and the skull of an ibex both of which he incorporated into the painting.

The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt (Manchester Art Gallery) 1854

He made two copies of the painting, one (above) of which is a smaller version with a black goat and a rainbow symbolising hope and forgiveness of sins and this can be found in the Manchester Art Gallery, and the other (at the top of the page) hangs in the Lady Lever Gallery, Port Sunlight.

The Lady Lever Art Gallery painting has an inscription engraved onto its frame, which was designed by Hunt himself. It was intended to compliment the painting. The seven stars at the top may have come from the apocalyptic text mentioning the seven stars that fell on the day of wrath or it may indicate the Book of Revelation’s “ancient” Christ who held seven stars in his right hand. On the top of the frame, as wel,l is the inscribed a scriptural text from Isaiah 53:4:

” Surely he hath borne our Griefs, and carried our Sorrows:

yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of GOD, and afflicted. “

and on the bottom part of the frame are the words from the Book of Leviticus 16:22:

“And the Goat shall bear upon him all their Iniquities unto a Land not inhabited.”

Hunt submitted the painting to the Royal Academy exhibition of 1856 where it was greeted with puzzlement and derogatory remarks. The landscape colour was described as “lurid”. Hunt was not put off by that comment and the purple colour of his mountains subsequently became the hallmark of much of his landscape painting.

John Ruskin, the foremost art critic of the time, commented:

‘…This picture, regarded merely as a landscape, or as a composition, is a total failure. Mr Hunt …in his earnest desire to paint the Scapegoat has forgotten to ask himself first, whether he could paint a goat at all…’

His Pre-Raphaelite Brethren commented differently. Dante Gabriel Rossetti said of the painting:

“…a grand thing, but not for the public…”

Ford Madox Brown wrote in his diary:

“….Hunt’s Scapegoat requires to be seen to be believed in. Only then can it be understood how, by the might of genius, out of an old goat, and some saline encrustations, can be made one of the most tragic and impressive works in the annals of art….”.

You must make up your own mind about this work of art. I side with Ford Madox Brown. I stood in front of the painting this afternoon and was moved by the tragic and heart-rending depiction of the goat as it stumbles alone along the salt-encrusted shoreline, to what we know will inevitably culminate in its lonely death.

I love the way in which Hunt’s use of colour to depict the Jordanian mountains in the background. This was certainly one of the most original painting by Holman Hunt. Maybe one should say it was one of his most peculiar works of art. People are divided in their views. Whilst some admire the painting for its exceptional and powerful image in such an unusual setting, others dislike it and wonder why the artist spent so much time and effort on such a gloomy subject.

I will let you be the judge.

The Mirror of Venus by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

Mirror of Venus by Edward Burne-Jones (1898)

The featured artist in My Daily Art Display today is the English painter Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones. He had close connections with the later phase of the Pre-Raphelite movement and had close links with the textile designer and artist William Morris. Burne-Jones was born in Birmingham. His father, Edward, was Welsh and worked as a frame-maker. His mother, Elizabeth sadly died just six days after giving birth to Edward, who from then on was brought up by his father and the family housekeeper.

From the age of eleven Burne-Jones attended the King Edward VI Grammer school in Birmingham and at the age of fifteen transferred to the Birmingham School of Art. In 1852, aged 19, he attended Exeter College, Oxford where he studied theology and it was here that through his love of poetry he first met William Morris, a similar devotee to the written word. These two poetry-lovers along with some of their friends formed a close and intimate society which they called The Brotherhood. In 1856 Burne-Jones founded the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. It was at that time that Morris and Burne-Jones decided to seek outside contributions to their magazine and approached the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The ensuing meetings between Burne-Jones and Rossetti was to change the former’s life forever, for he had set his heart on becoming a church minister but Rossetti persuaded him, and William Morris, to become artists. Soon afterwards Burne-Jones put university life behind him and began a new life as an artist. It was not just that Rossetti had inspired the two university students, but both Morris and Burne-Jones had made an impact on Rossetti himself, for some time after their first meeting Rossetti told his friend the poet and artist, William Bell Scott, about the encounter, writing:

“…Two young men, projectors of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, have recently come up to town from Oxford, and are now very intimate friends of mine. Their names are Morris and Jones. They have turned artists instead of taking up any other career to which the university generally leads, and both are men of real genius. Jones’s designs are marvels of finish and imaginative detail, unequalled by anything unless perhaps Albrecht Dürer’s finest works…”

In his early days as an artist Burne-Jones was heavily influenced by the works of Rossetti and it was not until he travelled to Italy with John Ruskin that his style changed and he became his own man. In 1877 he was persuaded by a group of his friends to submit some of his oil paintings at the opening show of the Grosvenor Gallery, a newly established venue which was a rival to the well-established Royal Accademy. Over the early years the gallery, founded by Sir Coutts Lindsay, was to become vital to the Aesthetic Movement for it gave them an opportunity to showcase their works, the like of which was often scorned and rejected by the conservative Royal Academy. One of those paintings put forward by Burne-Jones is my featured painting of the day, entitled The Mirror of Venus. The exhibition was highly acclaimed and his career as an artist took off.

There followed an honorary degree from Oxford in 1881 and the following year he was made an Honorary Fellow. In 1893 Prime Minister Gladstone was instrumental in him being created a baronet. On his death five years later, the Prince of Wales intervened and insisted that the death of Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones should be honoured with a memorial service at Westminster Abbey. This was an outstanding honour as he was the first artist to be recognised in such a way.

This painting is a mix of the traditions of Pre-Raphaelitism and Italian Renaissance culminating in a new aesthetic style. We see in front of us ten women peering at their own reflections in a small pool of water. The landscape is quite barren almost like that of a lunar landscape. Burne-Jones often used this type of background and of course his reasoning may have been that it does not detract from the scene in the foreground. In fact it is a complete contrast. By the title of the painting we are to believe that the elegant young woman standing is in fact Venus and the other nine females are her handmaidens. The bright colour of their dresses and their dream-like mood is consistent with Pre-Raphaelite paintings but the grace and style of the figures themselves leans towards the Italian Renaissance style and especially that of Sandro Botticelli, whose work had always inspired Burne-Jones.

There is no background story to this painting. This is not part of a tale from Greek or Roman mythology. There is nothing in the painting which needs to be interpreted. There is no hidden symbolism to discover. What you see is what you get, and what you get is a group of beautiful young ladies sumptuously dressed in clothes of varying colours. The women look rather wistful and do not seem particularly happy as they stare down at their own reflections. I wonder what is going through their minds. I wonder what is causing them to be anxious. Maybe my inquisitiveness is just what the artist wants. Maybe he wants me to decide what the painting is all about. The painting, to my mind, has a romantic element to it. There is a definite sense of beauty to the painting , similar to that which we see with most Pre-Raphaelite works.

On painting in general, Burnes-Jones said:

“…. I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never will be – in light better than any light that ever shone – in a land no-one can define, or remember, only desire….”

It is a painting I would love to hang on my wall.