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Balthus – Part 2 – Young girls and controversy

In my second part of my look at the life and works of Balthus I am going concentrate on his depiction of pubescent girls which were to shock both the public and critics alike when they first exhibited in 1934 at the Galerie Pierre in Paris. I have in some earlier blogs discussed what is, to some, termed as beautiful erotic art whilst others look upon the depictions as unacceptable and pornographic. Those paintings by the likes of Egon Schiele and Lucien Freud were depictions of adult female models but in the case of Balthus’ paintings the models he was using were pre-pubescent girls. I leave it to each person to decide whether the depiction of these young girls was simply the work of an artist and therefore as art, was acceptable or whether there was something very offensive and disturbing about the paintings. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion.

I need to remind you that the depiction of young girls naked or semi-naked in paintings is not just something that interested Balthus. Many other well known artists used young girls as models and portrayed them in their works of art.

There was Otto Dix, the German painter, and often talked about as the most important painter of the Neue Sachlichkeit, which was an artistic style in Germany in the 1920 which set out to confront Expressionism. It was looked on as being a return to unsentimental reality and one which concentrated on the objective world, unlike Expressionism which was more abstract, romantic, and idealistic. His 1922 painting Little Girl in front of Curtain, which can now be seen at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, was judged to have flown in the face of morality. This painting of a young naked girl is portrayed in a realistic style, maybe too realistic as it details the blue veins of her body. She looks emaciated and she stares past us with a haunted expression. Her childhood is probably a thing of the past as, sadly, is her innocence. A pink flower clings to the curtain behind her, and in her hair we see a bright red bow. The artist himself once said:

“…I will either become notorious or famous…”

This painting probably allowed Otto Dix to achieve his first goal.

The great Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch, who is best known for his paintings entitled Scream, also produced a painting in 1894 featuring a pre-teen naked girl. The painting which was entitled Puberty depicts a young pubescent girl, nude, sitting with her legs together. There is an air of shyness about her and this could be that at her age she is starting to become aware of the changes to her body.

Standing nude young girl 2 by Egon Schiele (c.1911)

The celebrated Austrian Expressionist artist Egon Schiele who, at the time, was living with his lover, Valerie Neuzil, in the small country town of Neulengbach, close to Vienna. This was a quiet suburban setting full of retired officers and snooping neighbours. Schiele was arrested in April 1912 on suspicion of showing erotic drawings to young children who posed for him, of touching the children while he drew them and of kidnapping one of the young girls who frequented his studio. Some of the charges were dropped and he spent three days in jail. A year earlier he produced the work entitled Standing Nude Young Girl 2.

The reason that I featured these three paintings was not that I considered them any sort of justification for Bathus’ portrayal of young girls but simply to point out that many artists have painted scantily-clad or naked young girls.

Balthus had been earning money with his portraiture, mainly of older society women, and he was very discontented with this. He actually hated this type of work calling his finished portraits, “his monsters”. In October 1935 Balthus moves to a new and larger studio at 3 cour de Rohan. Just three blocks away was the rue de Seine and it was at No. 34 that the Blanchard family lived, mother, father who worked as a waiter in a nearby bistro, daughter Thérèse and son Hubert who was two years older than his sister. When Balthus first caught sight of Thérèse she was just eleven years of age and having approached the family Thérèse agreed to model for him. She was not a beautiful girl but she appealed to Balthus.

The first painting Balthus completed of Thérèse Blanchard was in 1936 and was simply entitled Thérèse. Balthus would go on to use her as a model more than any other person. In this work, Balthus has captured her moody and serious look and it was that aspect of her that attracted Balthus to his young model. Her dark dress seems to go hand in hand with her mood and it is just the bright red piping on the collar of the dress which manages to liven up the portrait

In that same year Balthus completed a painting of Thérèse and Hubert entitled Brother and Sister. Once again Balthus has portrayed Thérèse’s expression as moody and sullen in contrast to the smiling happy face of her brother. Thérèse’s arms are wrapped round the waist of her brother, not as a sign of sibling affection, but as she was trying to make him stand still for Balthus. Their clothes are very plain. Hubert seems to be wearing the attire of a schoolboy whilst his sister is wearing a simple plaid skirt and a red sweater with a green collar.

The Blanchard children by Balthus (1937)

In 1937 the two Blanchard siblings appear in a painting by Balthus entitled The Blanchard Children. Thérèse is now twelve years old and her brother is fourteen years of age. The setting is Balthus’ studio and one notices there are no childlike accoutrements such as toys, pens or books. It is a very stark depiction. This was not an oversight by Balthus but his belief that the starkness would intensify the dramatic effect of the picture. If we look under the table, we can see a bag of coal sat in the corner. Why would Balthus add this? The answer maybe that Balthus, whilst living in Germany, remembered what happened on the eve of the Feast of St Nicholas on December 5^th when children put their shoes out in the hopes of some sweets in the morning. The story goes that, St. Nicholas does not travel on his own but with his companion, Black Peter, who places coal in the shoes of the children who had been naughty !

Wuthering Heights illustration by Balthus

The strange posture of the two children is probably based on an illustration Balthus produced for Emily Bronte’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. The illustration relates to Heathcliffe, partly kneeling on the chair, turning towards Cathy who is on her hands and knees partly under the table, writing her diary. The painting was given to Balthus’ friend Picasso.

The first controversial painting Balthus did with Thérèse as his model was completed in 1937 and entitled Thérèse with Cat. It was a small work measuring 88 x 77cms (34 x 31 in). Here once again we see the un-smiling Thérèse seeming to look at something behind us. She looks slightly dishevelled with one sock down to her ankle and one sleeve pushed up her arm. The red and the turquoise colour of her clothes stand out against the dark background. Her left leg is raised and her foot rests on a stool and this pose means that her white underpants are visible to the viewer. She has been asked to pose in a certain way and by the look of her expression she is well aware of how the artist looks at her. A large cat lies on the floor next to Thérèse. It appears to be the same cat that appeared with Balthus in the painting King of the Cats (see previous blog). The painting is now housed in The Art Institute of Chicago.

The Victim by Balthus (1939 - 1946) — The Victim by Balthus (1939 – 1946)

One of his best known works is one he started just before the onset of World War II but was not completed until March 1946. It was entitled The Victim. It was one of his largest paintings measuring 132 x 218 cms (52 x 86in) and it was because of that size of it that he had to leave it in his Paris studio when he and his wife, Antoinette, at the onset of war, moved to Champrovent in Savoie which had not been occupied by the Germans. They later moved to Switzerland to live with Antoinette’s parents and did not return to his Paris studio until March 1946. We see a life-sized ashen body of a naked woman lying on a white sheet which covers a low bedstead. Is she merely asleep or is she dead? Does the title answer the question? The title comes from a novella written by Balthus’ friend, the writer Pierre Jean Jouve. His 1935 book La Scène capitale contained two novellas, La Victime and Dans les années profondes.

Below the bedstead and in the right foreground of the painting we can just make out a knife lying on the dark floor, the blade of which points directly to her heart. Although, through the painting’s title we gather that the girl is dead, there is no sign of a wound on her body and neither blood on her body nor on the knife. Was she strangled? So it is up to us to decide whether the girl is dead or simply in a trance but we must remember that Balthus started to paint this before war broke out and only concluded it a year after the end of the war and the atrocities of war would be fresh in the artist’s mind. Another question is, who sat for this painting and the answer is in some doubt. The shape of the girls face and the cut of her hair leads many to believe it is Thérèse Blanchard, the only doubt being that she had never before posed nude for Balthus

A year later (1938) Balthus completed Thérèse Dreaming, another but similar painting to to Thérèse and the Cat, again featuring the now thirteen year old Thérèse. The setting is once again his studio and we see her sitting before us in a similar pose. This is a much bigger painting, measuring 150 x 130cms (59 x 51 in). This time he added a striped wallpaper (which did not exist in his studio) as a background and this time we can see the additional still life of a vase and a canister on a table. The cat is once again part of the picture and we see it at the side of Thérèse lapping up some of its milk. In the previous painting Thérèse was looking almost towards us but in this painting but in this work she has looked away, with her eyes closed, as if enjoying a daydream. Thérèse’s clothes are unadorned and unfussy. As Sabine Rewald wrote in her book Balthus Cats and Girls :

“…she appears the epitome of dormant sexuality. Her white lace-trimmed slip surrounds her legs like a paper cornucopia wrapped around a bunch of flowers. The cat lapping milk from a saucer serves as another tongue in cheek erotic metaphor…”

Since 1998 the painting has been housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as part of the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection.

By far the most controversial and notorious painting by Balthus was one he completed in 1934 entitled The Guitar Lesson. It is a merging of sex and violence which shocked those who saw it. It is an encounter between a dominating and tyrannical women, who is the music teacher, in her early twenties, and a young girl, her student, thought to be about twelve years old. The music lesson has been halted. A guitar lies on the floor and the woman has thrown the girl across her lap and pulled her black dress up over her waist. The fingers of the teacher’s left hand dig into the upper part of the girl’s inner thigh. It is as if the teacher is strumming a human guitar. The girl lies there, naked from her navel to her knees. The lower parts of her legs are covered by white socks. The music teacher has grabbed a chunk of the young girl’s long hair and is yanking her head downwards. To save herself from falling and in an attempt to alleviate the pain caused by her hair being pulled, the girl has grabbed the collar of the music teacher’s grey dress which uncovers the woman’s full right breast. Her nipple juts out which indicates to us that the teacher is sexually aroused by what she is doing.

Pietà of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon by Enguerrand Quarton (c.1860)

The positioning of the girl lying across the thighs of the teacher has often been likened to the 1455 painting Balthus must have seen in the Louvre, Pietà of Villeneuve-les-Avignon by Enguerrand Quarton.

Portrait der Schwester des Künstlers (Baladine Klossowski) by Eugen Spiro (1902)

The girl who posed for The Guitar Lesson was Laurence Bataille, the daughter of a concierge. She would come to Balthus’ studio with her mother who acted as her chaperone. The striped wallpaper background and the grey dress of the music teacher were the same as we see in Baladine Klossowski 1902 portrait by her older brother Eugen Spiro. It was first shown at Balthus’ one man exhibition in April 1934 at the Galerie Pierre in Paris. The gallery owner, Pierre Loeb, and Balthus decided that the painting should be placed in the back room of the gallery, but covered up, so that it, in fact, became a “peep show” for a select “priveleged” number of visitors. The provenance of the painting is quite interesting. It was bought by James Thrall Soby, an American author, critic and patron of the arts, in 1938. He had intended to exhibit along with his other paintings at the Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut but because of the controversial nature of the painting it remained unseen in the museum vaults. Soby realised that there was no point in owning a painting that could never be exhibited and so, in 1945, he exchanged it with the Chilean surrealist artist, Roberto Matta Echaurren, for one of his paintings. Roberto Matta Echaurren’ wife Patricia left him and married Pierre Matisse but one of the things she took with her was this painting. Pierre Matisse, the youngest child of Henri Matisse owned a gallery in New York and the painting remained hidden away in the vaults. In 1977, it appeared for a month at Pierre Matisse’s 57th Street gallery in New York. It was a sensation and the press reviews referred to the painting and the art critics of the various newspapers and magazines wrote about it but said that they could not show the painting as it would shock the readers. After the one month long show it was never exhibited again.

When the 1977 exhibition closed the gallery offered it to New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It was accepted by the museum but it was not put on show instead it was kept hidden away for five years in the basement. In 1982 the Chairman of the Board of the MOMA, Blanchette Rockefeller, the wife of John D Rockefeller III, saw it at a small presentation of the works of art given to the MOMA by Pierre Matisse. She was horrified by Balthus’ depiction terming it sacrilegious and obscene and demanded that it was returned to the Pierre Matisse Gallery immediately. The Pierre Matisse gallery took it back and then sold it in 1984 to the film director, Mike Nichols. In the late 1980’s he sold it to the Thomas Ammann Gallery in Zurich. They sold it on to an unknown wealthy private collector who I saw in one newspaper report, was the late Stavros Niarchos. On his death in 1996 the painting became the property of his heirs.

In my next blog I will take a last look at the life of Balthus and share with you some more of his artworkwork.

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Besides information about the life of Balthus and his art gleaned from the internet I have relied heavily on two books which I can highly recommend.

Firstly, there is an excellent book entitled Balthus Cats and Girls by the foremost expert on Balthus, Sabine Rewald.

Secondly, a very thick tome by Nicholas Fox Weber entitled Balthus, A Biography.

Balthus. Part 1. Mitsou and the King of the Cats

In my next few blogs, I am looking at the life and art of the French born painter Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, more simply known as Balthus. Some of his artwork shocked the world and I have to warn you that some of his paintings you may find disturbing, and have often been termed offensive and disgusting. These will appear in Part 2.

So what do we know about Balthus’ life? The answer is “very little” and that is exactly how the artist wanted it to be. As far as his life story was concerned, he wanted to preserve his anonymity, so much so, when negotiating with the Tate Modern, which was about to launch a retrospective of his work in 1968, he sent the curator of the exhibition a telegram which read:

“..NO BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS. BEGIN: BALTHUS IS A PAINTER OF WHOM NOTHING IS KNOWN. NOW LET US LOOK AT THE PICTURES. REGARDS. B…”

Balthus was born in Paris at the end of February 1908. His father Erich Klossowski was a noted German historian and painter, who had come from a family which belonged to Polish nobility, and whose coat of arms was known as the Rola, which was used by a number of szlachta families. The szlachta was a legally institutional privileged noble class and Balthus added the title “de Rola” to his name. Balthus’ mother was Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro, but as a painter, used the name Baladine Klossowska. She gave birth to two sons, Pierre in 1905 and Balthus in 1908. Pierre went on to become a much heralded writer and philosopher. Balthus and his family lived in rue Boissonade in Paris’ 14^th arrondissement. He and his brother had a privileged upbringing as his parents were part of the cultural elite in Paris and would entertain many of the cultural icons of the time such as the French writer and playwright, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, the Nobel prizewinning writer, and the French painter, Pierre Bonnard. The family, who held German citizenship, along with Balthus’ uncle, the painter, Eugen Spiro, had to move out of Paris at the onset of World War I and they travelled to Berlin where Balthus’ father worked at the Lessing theatre as a stage and costume designer.

In 1917, Balthus’ mother and father separated and she took her sons, Pierre and Balthus, away from Berlin and set up home in Berne. Later she and her two sons move to Conches, a small town just south of Geneva, and stayed with friends before renting a two-room apartment in rue Pré-Jerôme in 1920. Balthus, as a child loved to draw and it was in 1919, whilst living in Conches, that, at the age of eleven, he produced a book of forty graphite and ink drawings. The drawings were based on the experiences he had, when he fell in love with a stray cat which he called Mitsou and through his drawings he tells of his happiness derived from his feline friend and the sadness of losing his new friend. It was in 1919 when Balthus’ mother Elisabeth first met Rainer Maria Rilke in Geneva. He was a writer and poet. They quickly became lovers, a relationship which lasted until he died of leukaemia in December 1926. It was an unusual relationship as Rilke said he needed his own space when he worked and so the couple did not live together on a permanent basis.

On one of Rilke’s visits to the Klossowski home to see Elizabeth he saw the Mitsou drawings done by her son, Balthus, and was he was so impressed by them that he offered to write the preface for the book and arranged for it to be printed in 1921 under the title Mitsou, Quarante images (Mitsou, Forty Images). The set of forty drawings were an animated tale of how he found a cat on a park bench.

In the opening drawing of the set we see the boy tentatively leaning towards the cat making sure he doesn’t scare it off. Look how Balthus has given the boy an air of astonishment as he looks at the cat, by shaping the mouth, raising the thick eyebrows and the angling the chin. In complete contrast, the cat looks out at us in a statuesque sphinx-like way, totally unfazed by the boy’s approach. Although the story is about him and the cat, Balthus has added other elements to the drawing. The setting is a courtyard which is separated from a house by a wall and a gate. He has also included vines climbing up the wall as a backdrop.

From this time on, Balthus love of cats was shown by the number of times he depicted felines in his artwork. Drawing number 40 of Mitsou, the last one of the set, depicts Balthus crying when he realises the cat has run off and his feline friend has gone forever.

In the summer of 1919 the family spend time in the picturesque Swiss village of Beatenberg which lies between the Bernese Alps and the still blue waters of Lake Thun. It is whilst here that Balthus works as an assistant to the painter, Margrit Bey. For next four summers Balthus and his family would return to Beatenberg and work alongside Margrit. Between 1919 and 1921, during their stay in Conches both Balthus and his brother study at the College Calvin in Geneva. For Balthus, the years between 1919 and 1921 were some of the best times he ever had and he was always pleased to recall those days

Rilke and Elisabeth Klossowska at Chateau Muzot (1923)

His mother was in love with Rilke and he was devoted to her. Balthus also bonded with Rilke and he received nothing but compliments for his artwork from the writer. To Balthus, Rilke was almost a surrogate father.

In April 1921 Baladine and her two sons move back to Berlin and go to live with her brother Eugen and later stay with her sister, Gina Trebicky. Elisabeth had some of her paintings accepted for an exhibition of female artists at Galerie Fleckhtheim in Berlin and it is at this time that she is persuaded to change her name as an artist to Baladine.

In 1934, Balthus produced his first large scale painting entitled The Street. It measured 195 x 240cm (77 x 94 ins). He had already painted another version of this five years earlier, just before he journeyed to Morocco but some of the characters had changed. The setting in both works is the rue Bourbon-le Château.

In this earlier version, seen above in black and white, we see a grandfather figure in top hat and topcoat holding firmly onto two young children as they cross the road. The boy, in shorts, wears a hat with a pom-pom whilst the young girl dressed in a skirt and flowered hat. In the later version this trio has been replaced by two other characters, which caused the outrage!

The 1934 version was one of a number of his works of the time which shocked the audience at Balthus’ first solo exhibition which was held in the Galerie Pierre in Paris. The people in the street seemed to have stopped and are frozen in mid-flow, almost trance-like. For this work Balthus retained the baker, the workman crossing the road with a plank of wood on his shoulder along with the woman carrying a young child, albeit now looking like a little man. In this version we also have a young girl, racquet in hand, chasing a ball across the street. Again although possessing the height of a child she seems to be more like a small woman. Balthus was questioned about that but he simply refused to elaborate more than saying “she is simply a little girl”. The same boy, as seen in the first version, is still strolling haughtily towards us but is set back slightly in comparison to the first version. However the major change is the inclusion of the two figures in the left foreground. These two replace the elderly gentleman and the two young children. The man tries to grope the girl as she passes him by and she raises her arm maybe in shock or maybe to strike her assailant.

Pierre Loeb the owner of Galerie Pierre said that having looked at the painting described it as a scene of anguished phantoms sleepwalking in a strange dreamlike state. Balthus believed Loeb’s comments were nonsensical and although Loeb exhibited Balthus’ art in his gallery bringing him to the notice of the public, Balthus loathed him and termed him a “typical outsider who lacked true vision of what really mattered to painters”.

The painting was bought from Galerie Pierre in 1937 by James Thrall Soby, an American author, critic and patron of the arts. However the painting was so controversial and so many of his friends disliked the sexual connotation that Soby wrote to Balthus in 1955 and asked him to retouch the gesture of the figures on the left. Soby was surprised when Balthus agreed and wrote:

“…I used to like shocking people, but now it bores me…”

When Soby died in 1979 this painting was bequeathed to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

I am concluding this first part of my look at the life and art of Balthazar Klossowski by showing you the painting, the title of which the artist gave himself. This is just one of three self portraits completed by Balthus. The title of the 1935 painting was King of the Cats. Balthus was twenty-seven years of age when he painted this work. It was painted in his Paris studio in rue Furstenberg. The studio, which he bought in May 1933 was a fifth floor attic room It was also the first property he ever purchased and he remained here until October 1935.

Balthus had always had a love of cats and in this work we see him standing in a somewhat arrogant and aloof pose, with his beloved cat lovingly rubbing itself against his leg. Because the view of the artist is seen from below it elongates him and adds to his imperious stance. He is dressed in saffron pants, white shirt and red tie and a black jacket. On his feet is a pair of pointed black shoes. On the floor, to his left, is a stone slab leaning against a high stool with the inscription:

A PORTRAIT OF

H.M.

THE KING OF THE CATS

Painted by

HIMSELF

MCMXXXV

Balthus has added a little humour to the painting by placing a lion tamer’s whip on top of the stool !

It was in that year that Balthus started to sign his letters “King of the Cats”, the first being a letter, written in January 1935, to his soon to be wife, Antoinette de Watteville.

There is an air of self confidence about the figure and this has been put down to 1935 being a good year for him after the turbulent times of 1934 when his first one-man exhibition at the Galerie Pierre, featuring many depictions of pre-teen girls in erotic poses, scandalised the critics and public alike. The fall out over these paintings made Balthus give up painting for almost a year.

In the second part of my look at Balthus I will focus on the paintings which caused such a furore when exhibited in Galerie Pierre in Paris.

Besides information about Balthus and his art gleaned from the internet I have relied heavily on two excellent books which I can highly recommend.

Sabine Rewald, Curator for Modern Art, Dept. Of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. — Sabine Rewald, Curator for Modern Art, Dept. Of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art standing next to Balthus painting entitled Thérèse

First there is the book Balthus Cats and Girls by the foremost expert on Balthus, Sabine Rewald.

Secondly, a very thick tome by Nicholas Fox Weber entitled Balthus, A Biography.

Arnold Böcklin. Part 3 – The latter years. Portraiture and Symbolism

In my final part of the Arnold Böcklin story I want to look at his portraiture and some of his more evocative Symbolist works. He completed many self portraits, two of which I have shown you at the start of the last couple of blogs. His portraits also included ones of his second wife, Angela Rosa Lorenza Pasucci and their daughter Clara.

Portrait of Angela Böcklin as muse by Arnold Böcklin (1863)

In the first blog about Arnold Böcklin I mentioned his two wives. He married Louise Schmidt in 1850 but she died a year later and then in June 1853, Böcklin married his second wife, a seventeen year old Italian girl, the daughter of a papal guard, Angela Rosa Lorenza Pasucci and she featured in a number of his works of art. One such portrait was entitled Portrait of Angela Böcklin as a Muse which he completed in 1863.

Mrs Böcklin with Black Veil by Arnold Böcklin (1863)

Böcklin completed another portrait of his wife that year entitled Mrs Böcklin with Black Veil. This was a more sombre depiction of his wife. It was painted when she was twenty-seven years of age. It is only a small oil on canvas work within the stretcher frame just measuring 19 x 14 cms. This was a painting he completed for himself. There is a certain intimacy about the work. The artists depicts his wife with a black veil on her head and this veil serves the purpose of being a frame for his wife’s face, the colour of which is in contrast to the simple olive green background. Angela Böcklin seems to be very thoughtful, even slightly sad. Maybe she is in mourning for we know she and Arnold had fourteen children but only eight of them survived him. We take it for granted that we will die before our children but in the nineteenth century that was not always the case, in fact the opposite was often true, and although it was a common occurrence for children to die young we should never underestimate its tragic consequences.

Portrait of Clara Böcklin by Arnold Böcklin (1872)

In 1872 he completed one of a number of portraits of his daughter Clara.

Portrait of Clara Böcklin by Arnold Böcklin (1876)

In 1876, when she was twenty-one years of age, Böcklin painted another portrait of her. It was also in this year that Clara married the sculptor, Peter Bruckmann.

Böcklin became somewhat fixated by death and this is borne out with his evocative painting Die Toteninsel, which I talked about in the previous blog. This preoccupation, which could have been because of the loss of his children, was clearly seen in yet another of his self portraits, which he completed in 1872, shortly after the death of his young daughter, and was entitled Self Portrait with Death as a Fiddler. It was completed whilst Böcklin was in Munich having just travelled back from Italy. It was in Italy that Böcklin began to add symbols into his paintings in order to suggest ideas. The interesting thing about Symbolism in art is that we can each come to our own conclusions about what we see in a painting and unless the artist has spoken about the painting then we have as much right to postulate about an artist’s reasoning behind their work as the next person. So having looked at the work, what do you make of it? Let me make a few suggestions about what I think may have been in Böcklin’s mind when he put brush to canvas.

Self portrait with Death as the Fiddler by Arnold Böcklin (1872)

We can see that Arnold has portrayed himself with painting brush in one hand whilst the thumb of his other hand is hooked through the hole in the palette securing a piece of cloth. However what is more interesting is the inclusion of the skeleton playing the fiddle in the background. The question I pose is – what was Böcklin thinking about when he decided to include the skeleton? We know that most paintings, which include a skull or skeleton, are Vanitas paintings. A vanitas painting contains an object or a collection of objects which symbolise the inevitability of death and the transience of life. Such paintings urge the viewer to consider mortality and to repent ! So, Böcklin’s inclusion of a skeleton is a reminder to him that he cannot take life for granted and that there is a very fine line between life and death.

Look at the juxtaposition of the artist and the skeleton. Look how the skeleton appears to be whispering something in Böcklin’s ear and the artist in the painting turns his head slightly and leans back to listen. He is staring out of the painting, but not at us. He is staring out but his full attention is on what the skeleton is saying. Maybe the skeleton is telling the artist something about his future? Look also at the fiddle that the skeleton is playing. It has only one string left. Why paint the fiddle with just one string? Is this something to do with the length of time Böcklin has on this earth? Is it that at birth the violin had all four strings but, as time progressed, string after string broke and so, at the time of death, there are no strings?

The painting can now be seen at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

Naiads at Play by Arnold Böcklin (c.1862)

Other subjects that appeared in Böcklin’s paintings during his last period of creativity were the Naiads and Nereids or sea and water nymphs often referred to as female spirits of sea waters. The next painting I am showcasing is entitled Naiads at Play which Böcklin completed around 1862 and now hangs in the Kunstmuseum Basel. Böcklin’s biographer, Henri Mendelssohn described the painting, writing:

“…It fairly bubbles over with fun and merriment. The scene represents a rock in the ocean, over which the waves dash in foam, tossing white spray high into the air. Clinging fast to the wet rock face are the gleaming forms of naiads, their tails shining like jewels in the seething waters, as the waves dash, one on top of another, so do the creatures of the sea chase each other in their frolic, darting here and diving there, and tumbling heels over head from the rock into the ocean beneath, whose roar almost drowns their shrill laughter. All is life and movement. The sputtering triton and the luckless baby, holding in his convulsive clasp the prize he has captured, a little fish, rank among the inimitable creations of Böcklin’s art…”

Marie Joseph Robert Anatole, Comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac, a French Symbolist poet and art collector of the time, described Böcklin’s work, writing:

“…”This is the most astonishing of all Böcklin’s representations of the sea. The water gleams with hues as violent as those reflected by the Faraglioni, the red rocks which, seen from Capri, mirror their purple shadows in the blue waves. One of the naiads, with her back turned to us, seems to set the water on fire with the brilliancy of her orange-coloured hair, while all the naiads’ tails, wet and glistening, glow with the gorgeous hues of butterflies’ wings or the petals of brilliant flowers…”

Looking at the work one can understand the comments. It is as if you were there, feeling the energy and almost feeling the spray on your face. From this mythical subject, Böcklin has almost turned it into reality, such was his skill.

Another painting by the Swiss symbolist Böcklin which illustrates his fascination with nightmares, the plague and death was one he completed in 1898 entitled Plague. It is a tempera on wood painting, which is now hanging in the Kunstmuseum Basel. In the painting the setting is the street of a medieval town and we see the grim-faced Death, scythe in hand, riding a winged creature, which spews out miasma. The colours Böcklin used in this painting are black and dull browns for the clothes of many of the inhabitants who desperately throw themselves out of the path of Death and shades of pale green which is often associated with death and putrefaction. The one detail which is devoid of drab colours is that of the clothes worn by the woman in the foreground who lies across the body of the woman who has suffered at the hands of Death. Her gold-embroidered red cloak signifies that she comes from a wealthy household and the painting reinforces the fact that Death takes both rich and poor. The plague had ravished Europe throughout the 14th to 17th centuries. It knew no boundaries of class or wealth.

Ruggiero and Angelica by Arnold Böcklin (c.1874)

Around 1874 Böcklin completed a painting entitled Roger and Angelica. It can now be seen in the Nationalgalerie in Berlin. The scene, Roger rescuing of Angelica, is based on the 1532 epic romantic poem, Orlando Furioso by Ludivico Ariosto, which is all about the conflict between the Christians and the Saracens. The painting depicts the main character, Ruggerio (Roger), a Saracen warrior, coming to the rescue of Angelica, the daughter of a king of Cathay. She is chained to a rock on the shoreline and is about to be killed by the sea monster, the giant turquoise orc, which has wrapped itself around the helpless Angelica. In the background we see Roger arriving astride his horse. The battle with the orc is ended when Roger dazzles the sea monster with his shield allowing him the chance to place a magic ring on the finger of Angelica which protects her whilst he undoes the bonds which were tying her to the tree.

Arnold Böcklin moved around Europe, living in Munich, Florence and the small Swiss town of Hottingen which was close to Zurich but from 1892 onwards he settled down near Florence in the town of San Domenico. To mark his seventieth birthday a retrospective of his work was held in Basel, Berlin and Hamburg. Böcklin died of tuberculosis, aged 73, in Fiesole, a small town northeast of Florence, in January 1902 and is buried in the Cimitero Evangelico degli Allori in southern Florence.

In my next blog I will be looking at the work of an artist who was known as the king of the cats as many of his paintings had an obligatory cat in the depiction. However he was probably more remembered by his erotic paintings which featured pre pubescent girls in all manner of provocative poses. In this day and age many of his works would struggle to be exhibited because of the age of his models.

Arnold Böcklin. Part 2 – Die Toteninsel

As I said in my previous blog there was a distinct change in the subject and style of Böcklin’s art in the middle of the nineteenth century. Gone were the realist and naturalist landscape works which concentrated on the beauty of nature; depictions which included very few things, such as people or animals, which he believed would detract from nature’s magnificence. Around 1854 Böcklin’s paintings began to become idealised with mythological connotations. My original intention had been to look at the life and works of Böcklin in two parts. Firstly, his early landscape paintings and secondly, his later symbolist paintings. However I decided that his most famous painting, Die Toteninsel, should have a blog of its own.

Arnold Böcklin left Italy in 1857 and returned to Basel and the following year he accepted a commission to paint the dining hall of the merchant and Royal Hanoverian Consul, Karl Wedekind in Hannover. Wedekind also went on to purchase some of Böcklin’s paintings. Financial and health issues began to blight Böcklin’s life around this time. However his financial problems were to change when he and his family moved to Munich where he exhibited a number of his paintings at the Munich Kusnstverein. It proved to be a tremendous success. Fourteen of his paintings were purchased by Friedrich Graf von Schack, the Munich art collector, who also offered him the position of Professor of Landscape Painting at the newly founded Kunstschule in Weimar. After completing four years of teaching art, Böcklin had managed to save some money, enough to return to his beloved Italy in 1862.

Isle of the Dead (Basel version) by Arnold Brocklin (1880) — Isle of the Dead (Kunstmuseum Basel, First version) by Arnold Brocklin (1880)

I now come to the painting by Böcklin which is his most famous and most talked about work of art, Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead). According to Franz Zelger in his 1991 book, Arnold Böcklin: Die Toteninsel, Selbstheroisierung und Abgesang der abendländischen Kultur, the subject for this haunting composition came about in 1880 when Böcklin received a commission to paint a “picture for dreaming”.

The commission came from Marie Berna, an American-born widow of a German diplomat, Georg von Berna, who had died of diphtheria in 1865. She was to later marry Count Waldermar von Oriola in 1880 and became Countess of Oriola.

It all came about when she visited Böcklin’s studio in Florence. Whilst at his studio she saw an unfinished first version of this evocative painting which is now housed in the Kunstmuseum Basel. This first version is an oil on canvas painting measuring 110 x 156cms, which was commissioned by Alexander Günther. The title of the painting seems to have changed over time but Böcklin, on completion of the first version sent a letter to Gunther and wrote:

“…Endlich ist die Toteninsel soweit fertig, dass ich glaube, sie werde einigermaßen den Eindruck machen…”

(finally with the Toteninsel finished I think it will make quite the impression).

Isle of the Dead (Metropolitan Musum New York, Second version) by Arnold Böcklin (1880) — Isle of the Dead (Metropolitan Museum New York. Second version) by Arnold Böcklin (1880)

Marie Berna was fascinated by what she termed a dream image and immediately commissioned Böcklin to paint a version of this work. Marie told Böcklin that it would be a painting in memory of her late husband and also be a “a picture for dreaming”. She even made a special request that Böcklin should include in the work, besides the solitary figure who is rowing the boat, a draped coffin and a shrouded female figure standing up in the boat. Böcklin must have been persuaded that the additions Marie Berna had asked for would enhance the painting because he also added the shrouded female and draped coffin to the first version. Although, to receive a commission was good news, Böcklin’s health, both physical and mental, was deteriorating. His inability to have full use of his painting arm had lessened and that in itself caused him to have bouts of deep depression.

So what caused Böcklin to paint such a sombre picture, such as the Isle of the Dead? Maybe the answer lies in a 1909 book his son, Carlo, co-wrote with Ferdinand Runkel, entitled Neben meiner Kunst. Flugstudien, Briefe und Persönliches von und über Arnold Böcklin. His son wrote about his father’s physical and mental health at the time and the effort needed for him to carry on painting:

“…In the summer of 1880, the master’s painful afflictions precipitated a serious nervous depression. His lack of interest in working had been joined by fatigue and such a deep melancholy that those around him were seriously concerned about him. All manner of means were vainly sought to alleviate his bodily torments. …….. His heart and nerves had been adversely affected by an ample dose of salicylic acid that had become necessary. …..… As the last resort, his worried spouse hit upon the idea of a change of air, and Böcklin, who had always been a wanderer and derived his best artistic inspiration from the countryside, took up this idea with rapidly reviving spirits. In the company of (his pupil) Friedrich Albert Schmidt, he travelled to Ischia, the delightful island off the coast of Naples, in July, and sought the assuagement of his pains under the gleaming sun of the most beautiful summer sky and in the blue waves of the gulf. However, he was still with little hope on his departure, a downtrodden victim of his sufferings, and his final gloomy words to his wife were: “You will see me again in Florence either healthy or not at all.” …… Böcklin’s depressive mood at the time (was) so strong that, in his endless hours of agony, he seems often to have toyed with and considered the idea of taking his own life. The pain alone would not have disheartened this powerful man, but the rheumatic inflammation of his joints had also stricken his right shoulder, and, with his creative hand, with whose dexterity a new world had been created, Böcklin was only able to guide the brush in great pain and with great effort…”

Böcklin sent a letter to Marie Berna on June 29^th 1880, in which he wrote:

“…The picture Die Gräberinsel (The Isle of Tombs) was dispatched to you last Wednesday. You will be able to dream yourself into the realm of the Shades until you believe you feel the soft, warm breeze that wrinkles the sea. Until you will shy from breaking the solemn silence with a spoken word….”

In this second version of the painting, which was given to Marie Berna, we see the figure of the widow dressed in white accompanying her husband’s draped coffin. The boat heads towards a rocky isle with its high cliffs, into which are carved tomb chambers. This second version, given to Marie Berna, was an oil on wood painting and slightly smaller than the first version, measuring 29 x 48in (74 x 122cms). It was bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1926

Isle of the Dead (Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Third version) by Arnold Böcklin (1883)

Because of the success of the first two versions, Böcklin’s art dealer Fritz Gurlitt managed to persuade him to paint three more versions of Die Toteninsel but this time the suggestion was made that the sky should be much lighter.

Initials A B on the Isle of the Dead (Third version) by Arnold Böcklin (1883)

If you look closely at the outer edge of the high rock on the right of the third version of the painting, you will see Böcklin’s initials, “A B”, over the lintel of the burial chamber. It is interesting to note that the provenance of this painting shows Gurlitt sold the painting in 1933 to one of Böcklin’s admirers – Adolph Hitler. He had the painting hung at the Berghof in Obersalzburg and later moved it to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. This version is now housed at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

Black and white photograph of the fourth version of Die Toteninsel (1844)

Böcklin painted the fourth version in 1884. This work of art was bought by the entrepreneur and avid art collector Baron Heinrich Thyssen, the second son of the German industrialist August Thyssen, and it was kept in one of his banks. Unfortunately it was destroyed during a World War II bombing raid and all that can be seen of this fourth version is a black-and-white photograph.

Die Toteninsel (Fifth version, Leipzig) by Arnold Bôcklin (1886) — Die Toteninsel (Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig. Fifth version) by Arnold Bôcklin (1886)

The fifth version of Böcklin’s painting, completed in 1886 resides at the Museum der Bildenden Künste in Leipzig.

In my third and final blog about Arnold Böcklin I will look at some of his portraiture as well as his Symbollst paintings. Symbolism was a late 19th-century movement and thrived throughout Europe between 1886 and 1900 in almost every area of the arts. It began with literature, poetry and the theatre and later flourished in music and visual art. There was a definite connection between Symbolism in art and Pre-Raphaelite and Romanticism and in some ways it was viewed as an antidote to realism and naturalism in which the artist sought to capture exactly what was before them, warts and all. Symbolists, on the other hand try to find a profound reality from within their imagination, their dreams, and even their unconscious. From being compartmentalised as being a realist landscape painter, Böcklin, because of his later works of art, was looked upon as a Symbolist. In my final blog about Arnold Böcklin I will look at some of these works.

Arnold Böcklin. Part 1 – early years and landscape painting

Paintings can elicit all kinds of feelings from the observer. Some of the realist and critical realist paintings elicit a feeling of sadness and guilt. Some paintings extract from us a sense of fear, whilst others bring forth a feeling of wonderment when we look upon a beautiful landscape or the portrait of a beautiful woman. The artist I am featuring in my next two blogs produced a painting, which, to me, was one of the most haunting and evocative paintings I had ever seen. The artist is the Swiss-born painter, Arnold Böcklin and the painting was entitled Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead). He completed five versions of the work between 1880 and 1886. I will look at this work in the second part of this blog.

Another reason for looking at some of the works by Böcklin is because I just returned from a three-day trip to Munich and instead of visiting the city’s major galleries such as the Pinakothek der Moderne and the Alte Pinakothek, I headed for the Schack Gallery which houses a notable collection illustrating the development of German painting in the 19th century. The history of the gallery is that its founder, Count Adolf Friedrich von Schack, was a generous patron of the arts, purchasing and commissioning numerous works by many leading 19th-century German painters including Moritz von Schwind, Carl Spitzweg, Franz von Lenbach, and the Swiss born artist, Arnold Böcklin. Von Schack’s collection now forms part of the Bavarian State Collection. This small gallery is a little gem and has an amazing collection of copies of works by the likes of Titian by German painters.

Arnold Böcklin was born in October 1827 in Basel. In 1841, aged 14, Böcklin went to art school at the Zeichenschule Basel, which was run by the painter, Ludwig Adam Kelterborn. A Zeichenschule was a drawing school where pupils were given the technical and artistic training of Craft Trade Association. His father was Christian Frederick Böcklin, who worked in the silk trade and his mother was Ursula Lippe. In 1845, Böcklin, aged 18, studied art for two years at the Düsseldorf Academy under Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, the German historical landscape painter. Böcklin initially painted landscapes and one of his early works was entitled Ruined Castle which he painted in 1847 and which is now housed in the Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

Another atmospheric landscape work Böcklin completed in 1846 was one entitled Das Hünengrab (Megalithic Grave).

Böcklin excelled in his studies during his time at the Düsseldorf Academy and he was sent off on painting trips to Belgium with his friend and fellow student Rudolph Koller, where he was tasked with copying paintings by the Flemish and Dutch masters which were housed in museums in Antwerp and Brussels. One of his favourite painters was said to be Peter Paul Rubens. He returned home to Basel and then went to Geneva where he worked alongside the Swiss painter Alexandre Calame, a landscape artist, who specialised in Alpine scenes.

From Basel he set off on another painting trip, this time to Paris, where he remained for several months, sharing an apartment with his friend and fellow artist, Rudolf Koller. Whilst here, he busied himself copying works of the Old Masters and some of his contemporaries, which were held in the Louvre. He was influenced by the works of Thomas Couture and the landscapes of Jean-Baptiste-Camille-Corot. However the year was 1848 and Paris was not the safest place to be because of the February and June revolutions and so Böcklin left the French capital.

After a short spell of military service Böcklin got married. His bride was Luise Schmidt but sadly she died before their first wedding anniversary. In February 1850, heartbroken following the death of his wife, Böcklin travelled to Rome. It was here that he was befriended by the Dresden-born artist Heinrich Franz-Dreber who introduced him to a group of German artists living in Rome, who called themselves the Tugenbund (the League of Virtue). He also became friends with Oswald Achenbach, who at the time was looked upon as one of the leading European landscape painters and Anselm Feuerbach, the German Neoclassical painter.

Landscape from the Alban Hills by Arnold Böcklin (1851)

During his stay in Italy, Böcklin would spend the summers with some of his fellow artists in the Alban Hills, some forty-five kilometres east of the Italian capital, and it was there that they set up home in the village of Olevano. One of Böcklin’s first painting he completed in Italy was Landscape from the Allban Hills which he completed in 1851. This work of art is now housed in the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe.

Roman Landscape (Römische Landschaft) by Arnold Böcklin (1852)

The following year, 1852, Böcklin produced another landscape painting featuring the Roman Campagna. It was entitled Römische Landschaft (Roman Landscape), which can now be seen at the Brooklyn Museum. Unlike some of his contemporary landscape artists, who had sketched and painted views of the Roman countryside, Böcklin overcame the urge to add famous landmarks. He believed that such an addition detracted from flora and fauna and it was his intention to enhance the view of nature. This painting was a simple landscape work with a small figure of a woman, seen in the middle ground, undressing prior to going for a swim in the pool. She is just a mere white dot in the painting which gives viewers an idea of the enormity of nature with its huge old trees and cloud-filled sky. He wanted his painting to be all about details of the foliage and rock formations. It is believed that earlier studies for this painting included more than one bather and a satyr but Böcklin decided that these extra figures detracted from the “message” and so he painted over them. Böcklin wanted viewers to understand the immenseness of nature and how light and shade can alter tonal qualities .

In 1853, three years after arriving in Rome, Böcklin married for the second time. His second wife was a young Italian woman, Angela Rosa Lorenza Pasucci, the daughter of a papal guard. The couple went on to have fourteen children.

Böcklin changed his style of painting in the mid 1850’s when he began to include themes from Classical mythology and whereas his painting before concentrated on what he had seen they began to be about what he imagined. Some believe that there was another reason for this change of style – money, or lack of money. Böcklin needed to sell more of his paintings to survive and so he had to focus on what travellers passing through Rome wanted to see in his works. These travellers wanted to buy paintings featuring Classical Roman sites.

Pan in the Reeds by Arnold Böcklin (1858)

In 1859 Böcklin was in Munich and exhibiting some of his works at the Munich Kunstverein. It proved to be a great success for Böcklin as one of the works which he had completed the previous year, his second version of Pan im Schilf (Pan in the Reeds), was bought by King Maximillian II, the ruler of Bavaria. Fourteen of his other paintings were purchased by Friedrich Graf von Schack, the Munich art collector. Furthermore, in 1860, through the auspices of von Schack, Böcklin was offered the post of Professor of Landscape Painting at the newly founded Kunstschule in Weimar

In my next blog about Arnold Böcklin I will look at the paintings he completed later in his life which designated him as a Symbolist painter. Symbolism is defined as an art genre characterised by a rejection of direct, literal representation in favour of evocation and suggestion. Symbolism produced imaginary dream worlds populated with mystifying figures from biblical stories and Greek mythology as well as unbelievable, often monstrous, creatures.

Vasily Perov. Part 2 – portraiture and humour

In my last blog I looked at Perov’s early life and his artwork which is often categorised as critical realism because of the way his paintings focused on the peasants and how they had been let down by the Church, its clergy and the State. For one of these works he was awarded the Gold Medal by the St Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts and also a scholarship for him to travel to Europe and study European art. He went to Paris where he spent a considerable amount of time but once again his art focused on poverty, this time, poverty in France. Perov was now moving away from his anti-clerical depictions, and his barbed narrative works which poured scorn on the Church. He now wanted to concentrate on the poor themselves and left the observer to decide on the reason for the poverty.

One of his most famous paintings, which he completed whilst in France, was one entitled Savoyard which he finished in 1863. In Perov’s painting we see a young boy sat slumped on some stone steps. The absence of any movement allows us to focus on the child without any distractions. The child is asleep. His feet stick out in front of him and this allows us to see the tattered hems of his trousers and because of the way is feet rest on the pavement we are given a view of the soles of his shoes, which are holed. The painting itself is made up of dark sombre tones of smoky blue, green and grey.

It is thought that Perov’s painting was influenced by the work of Paul Gavarni, a French engraver, who had his illustrations published in a collection of London sketches, featuring life in London at the time. The sketches and accompanying illustrations were first published as a magazine series in 1848 and later they were collected in one volume, edited by essayist and journalist Albert Smith, which was first published in Paris, in 1862, a year before Perov’s arrival in the French capital. It was entitled Londres et les Anglais. One of the sketches was the Street Beggar and its thought that Perov had this in mind when he worked on the Savoyard.

Perov’s arrival in Paris in 1863 coincided with a great upheaval in French art. The Hanging jury at that year’s Salon had been ruthless in their choice of paintings which could be admitted. Those which were cast aside were ones deemed to have not been of the quality or type they wanted. That year, the jury had been more ruthless than they had been in the past, rejecting two-thirds of paintings. This resulted in vociferous protests from the artists who had had their works rejected. It was so bad that Napoleon III stepped into the argument and placated the disgruntled artists by offering them a separate exhibition for their rejected works. It became known as the Salon de Refusés (Exhibition of rejects) and that year this exhibition exhibited works by Pissarro, Fantin-Latour, Cezanne and included Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe and Whistler’s Symphony in White,no. 1.

The Arrival of the Governess at a Merchant's House by Vasily Perov (1866) — The Arrival of the Governess at a Merchant’s House by Vasily Perov (1866)

Perov returned home early from his European tour in 1865 and in 1866 produced a wonderful painting entitled The Arrival of the Governess at a Merchant’s House. This was a move away from his focus on poverty and more to do with the fate of women. In the painting we see a governess standing before the master of the house, a merchant who is to be her new employer. This painting depicts the awkward encounter between the governess, who has probably graduated from a school for governesses, where they are taught to act like nobility, and the merchant who has no noble blood and is the face of the nouveau riche. She presents herself well. She clutches a letter of introduction in her hands. She oozes an air of timidity and subservience, which is a trait that would be required if she was to become a member of the household. However her demure stance with head bent down is befitting that of a lady. She stands before, not only the master of the house, a bloated man, but behind him stands his family. The children of the family are to be her pupils and by the looks of them she was going to be in for a difficult time. The master of the house and his three children are dressed elegantly and the furnishings we see are fine and elegant and are part of merchant’s plan that they be elevated in status from mere merchants to something approaching nobility. Perov has changed the subject of his biting satire from the clergy of the Church to the oppressive merchant classes and the poor treatment they bestow on their employees.

The painting was purchased by thirty-four year old Pavel Tretyakov, a Russian businessman, patron of art, avid art collector, and philanthropist who gave his name to the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. This work along with his Troika painting earned Perov the title of Academician.

In the late 1860’s Perov began to concentrate on portraiture, initially of peasants and the title Wanderer was given to three of his works which featured peasants, all different and yet all emotive in their own way, one of which is shown above. As Perov travelled around he came across a variety of fascinating characters and he was able present them on canvas and highlight their individualism and their way of life.

Portrait of the Author Feodor Dostoyevsky by Vasily Perov (1872)

In the early 1870’s Perov’s portraiture focused on cultural greats of Russia but it is interesting to note in these next two paintings they were totally devoid of any background accoutrements which would have added a sense of vanity in the sitter. In 1872 he completed the Portrait of Dostoyevsky, a the Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. It was Dostoyevsky’s literary works which influenced Perov in the way they explored human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere in Russia during the 19th-century.

Portrait of the Playwright Alexander Ostrovsky by Vasily Perov (1871)

And in 1871 he finished his Portrait of Alexander Ostrovsky, a Russian playwright who was generally thought to have been the greatest writer of the Russian realistic period, which existed against the background social and political problems. It started in the 1840’s under the rule of Nicholas I and lasted through to the end of the nineteenth century. The painting is now housed in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Old Parents Visiting the Grave of Their Son by Vasily Perov (1874)

In all his genre works he always managed to tug at your heart strings with his moving depictions. Another of his heart-rending scenes was completed in 1874 and was entitled Old Parents Visiting the Grave of their Son. It is said that nobody should suffer the agony of burying their children and in this work we feel the loss of the mother and father as they stand, heads bowed, at the side of the son’s grave. This painting, like many of his other works, are to be found at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

Having received his academician’s degree in 1867, Perov went on in 1871 to gain the position of professor at Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. It was through Perov’s teaching at Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture that he managed to influence and nurture the young aspiring artists in his charge. Many of the great Russian artists had been taught by him or were influenced by his style of painting

As always I have the dilemma of which paintings to show you and which ones to leave out. I just hope the blog will get you to search the internet for more of his works. My final offering is one that features Perov’s sense of humour. It is in complete contrast to his works which looked at poverty and the impoverished existence of the peasant classes. It is a painting entitled Amateur which he completed in 1862. It is both humorous and fascinating. Before us we see a man slouched in a chair, chewing on the end of his maulstick, eyes narrowed as he looks at his work. His wife stands beside him holding a baby. She too is closely examining the canvas. From the way the man is dressed along with the background details of the room we gather that this is an upper-middle class couple. Another give away to the man’s social status is the way Perov has depicted him. Well dressed, highly polished shoes and overweight. Perov’s depiction of this man is similar to the master of the household, the merchant, whom he depicted in The Arrival of the Governess at a Merchant’s House- overweight, through all the food he had been able to buy and eat, whereas in most cases Perov portrayed the poor peasants as thin undernourished people.

Vasily Grigorevich Perov died of tuberculosis in Kuzminki Village which is now part of Moscow and was laid to rest at Donskoe Cemetery. He was fifty-eight years old.

Vasily Perov, Part 1 – the critical realist

Portrait of Vasily Perov by Igor Kramskov (1881)

For my blog today, I am returning to Russia and featuring one of its greatest nineteenth century artists, Vasily Grigoryevich Perov. He is known as one of the great critical realism artists of his time.

Perov was born in 1834 in the town of Tobolisk, a Siberian town, which lies east of the Urals. Perov was the illegitimate child of Baron G K Kridiner, the provincial prosecutor for the region of Arzamas. Perov, who was born prior to his mother and father’s marriage, was given the surname of his godfather, Vasilyev and yet, Perov himself disliked the name and had it changed to Perov, which was his nickname as a child as he was an excellent hand writer and a talented calligrapher. Pero in Russian means pen.

Sermon in a Village by Vasily Perov (1861)

In 1846, Vasily Perov received his first painting lessons, at the age of twelve, at the Alexander Stupin Art School in Arzamas. Stupin was a painter of the classicism genre, whose school was the first of its type in provincial Russia. From there, in 1851, Perov moved to Moscow and entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, which was one of the largest educational institutions in Russia. It was here that he studied under Sergey Zaryanko, a Russian painter of Belarusian birth. Whilst at the academy, he won a number of awards for his work from the St Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts and his major award was when he won the Grand Gold medal for his diploma work in 1861. The work was a set of preliminary sketches and the finished painting, Sermon in a Village. He was also awarded a scholarship to travel abroad to enhance his knowledge of European art.

The Sermon in a Village is not simply a depiction of the congregation listening to a sermon. In the centre foreground we see a nobleman asleep, head slumped forward on his chest. He has no interest in the sermon. He is just present to be seen. Sitting next to him is his dutiful wife, prayer book in hand, who plays coy as an admirer standing behind her flirts with her. Look at the woman who stands behind the sleeping nobeleman. She pulls her veil away from her ear and leans forward to try and hear the sermon. Next to her one of the nobleman’s footmen tries to prevent her getting to close to his master. Earlier paintings depicting Russian clergy depicted them with veneration and the utmost respect so this mocking depiction of the church clergy by a young up and coming artist was frowned upon by the Establishment but it was accepted as an exhibit and won the artist, Perov, a European trip.

The Village Religious Procession at Easter by Vasily Perov (1861)

The preliminary sketches and painting, which won him the Gold Medal, were not his initial submission. His original submissions were preliminary sketches for another of his works, The Village Religious Procession at Easter. However the Academy rejected these because of their overt criticism of the Church and the clergy. One needs to understand that Perov wanted to not only highlight the plight of the poor and the deprived, he wanted to condemn the role of the Church and its leaders who led a comfortable life and, in his mind, offered little comfort to the poor. Despite the St Petersburg Academy’s rejection of his preliminary sketches for the The Village Religious Procession at Easter, he completed the work in 1861.

This oil on canvas work was his way of recording his belief that the clergy had forgotten their duty to parishioners. It was blatantly an anti-clerical depiction. The setting is a dull landscape. The discordant movement of the participants in the procession together with the gloomy sunset accentuates the unattractiveness of the whole scene. Before us, we see a drunken mix of clergy and their congregation embarking on a parade of icons through the village. Some of the people in the parade are carrying icons and gonfalons (a type of heraldic flag or banner, often pointed, swallow-tailed, or with several streamers, and suspended from a crossbar). In the foreground of the painting, the peasants stagger past us towards a precipice with half-closed eyes. It is as if they are all blind. We can make out a woman with an icon that has lost its face. A little further on, we observe the figure of a poor man carrying an icon upside down, albeit, we can still make out the “all-seeing” eye on the gonfalon and maybe Perov left it in to remind people that nobody can escape the Supreme Judgment. The leader of this group is a drunken priest who we can see on the right, standing on the steps of the wooden building, hanging onto the upright structure to stop him falling. We can also see, despite the desperate efforts of one of his helpers, that he has stepped on and crushed the Easter egg. He has abandoned his “flock”.

Religious Procession in Kursk Province by Ilya Repin (1883)

The painting was exhibited at the Society for the Encouragement of Artists in St Petersburg but the curators were told to remove it on grounds that it was an “immoral” work, which criticised the Church and its clergy. Even the press were banned from reproducing it in their newspapers; such was the power of the Church at the time. Twenty years later Ilya Repin completed his famous work, Religious Procession in the Province of Kursk (See My Daily Art Display Aug 29^th 2011), which again compared the lot of the downtrodden peasant class and the wealth of the clergy.

In 1862, Perov chose to go to France and also visited some German cities. He returned home in 1864, even though his scholarship would have funded a longer stay in Europe. Maybe he missed his homeland.

Perov lived through the 1860’s in Russia and was well aware of the social problems in his beloved country and he began to highlight the plight of the poor and downtrodden as well as contrast that to the wealth of the Russian church and its hierarchy. Perov’s paintings carried strong social implication and thus his realistic depictions became an important landmark in the history of Russian painting.

Marriage à la Mode by William Hogarth (c.1743)

Perov, at this time, had become influenced by the work of Pavel Fedotov, who is now looked upon as the founder of critical realism in Russian art. Perov was also aware of the genre scenes by the Old Dutch masters, often depicting poverty. Another painter who influenced him was the English painter William Hogarth, the eighteenth century pictorial satirist and social critic whose work ranged from realistic portraiture to what is referred to as Sequential Art, which uses images arranged in sequence for graphic storytelling or to communicate information, a kind of narrative art. One example of this is Hogarth’s almost comic strip series which questioned the morals of the privileged (see – Marriage a la Mode – My Daily Art Display May 4^th – 9^th 2011).

On his return to Moscow he became one of the founder members of a group, known as the Peredvizhniki, often referred to as The Wanderers or The Itinerants. This group of artists were influenced by the liberal ideas of the philosopher and critic, Nikolay Chernyshevsky and the philosopher, Vissarion Belinski. They established the first Free Society of Artists in Russia. In a way it was a group, which felt it their duty to portray, through their art, the necessity of denouncing the social order in Tsarist Russia. Other great Russian artists which were part of this group and have featured in My Daily Art Display were, Ilya Repin, Alexei Savrasov, Isaac Levitan and the landscape painter, Ivan Shishkin. This group of young artists, who in protest at Academic restrictions formed themselves into a co-operative. Perov’s influence on the art of the time, developing realism in art during the last five decades of the nineteenth century, cannot be underestimated.

The Drowned Woman by Vasily Perov (1867)

The height of Perov’s success as a realist and genre painter came around the latter part of the 1860’s. In 1867 Perov produced the highly emotive work entitled The Drowned Woman. In Perov’s painting we see a policeman, who has just dragged the body from the river. He is sitting, smoking his pipe, and looking down on the dead woman. The artist wants us, like the policeman, to think what might have been the circumstances of the young woman’s death. Had life been just too hard to bear? The casualness of the policeman’s demeanour gives us the idea that the dragging of a lifeless body from the river was a common occurrence. It should be remembered that what we see in Perov’s depictions of social inequality was mirrored in the literature of the time by the likes of Fyodor Dostoyevsky whose writing explored human psychology at a time of the difficult political and social mood of 19th-century Russia.

Found Drowned by George Frederic Watts (c.1850)

The subject of this work by Perov harks back to a work by the English realist painter, George Frederic Watts, and his 1855 work Found Drowned, a portrayal of a fallen woman, who drowned and whose body was discovered on the shores of the Thames. (See My Daily Art Display July 4^th 2011).

In 1865 Perov produced another heart wrenching oil on canvas work entitled The Last Journey, which can now be seen in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. It is a depiction of both sorrow and condemnation. There is an overwhelming sense of bereavement as we see a horse-drawn sleigh driven by an old woman. We just see the back of her, hunched over, driving the horse. She is taking the wooden coffin, which contains her recently deceased husband and breadwinner, to his final resting place. Also on the sleigh are two children who, like the woman, face an uncertain future. Their pet dog follows on. The painting is gloomy matching the atmosphere of the story behind the depiction. Dark clouds are seen above the funeral cortege. It is thought that Perov got the idea for this painting when he read the book, The Red Nose Frost, published in 1863 by Nikolai Nekrasov. It is in two parts, the first part tells about a funeral of a young peasant and in the second part of the widow fight for survival in the forest. Nekrasov was a Russian poet, writer, critic and publisher. His intensely empathetic poems about peasant life made him the hero of the freethinking and revolutionary circles of Russian intelligentsia.

I am completing this first part of my blog about Vasily Perov by featuring one of his greatest and certainly his largest genre painting (123 x 168 cms). It has the simple title, Troika, which is the Russian word for “group of three”, and was completed in 1866 and now resides in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. It is a pictorial social commentary, which in this case, focuses on child labour. We see children pulling a sled piled high with heavy barrels. They face us. Look at the way Perov has depicted their faces. There is of course a child-like quality about them but one cannot fail to notice the pain and suffering their task is causing. The air of gloom is added to by Perov’s background – The backdrop, the gloomy walls of the monastery create a mood of hopeless melancholy. The children are being used and humiliated by this onerous task.

In my next blog I will showcase more of Perov’s paintings and look at the final years of his life.

Albert Joseph Moore. Part 3 – the conclusion.

The Aesthetic art movement thrived in Britain and America during the 1860s to the 1880s. The movement started in a small way in the studios and houses of a radical group of artists and designers, including William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In works of art the leading British exponents of this aesthetic movement were J.M.Whistler, Frederic, Lord Leighton and Albert Joseph Moore. This style of art was also known as Art for Art’s Sake. The Oxford Dictionary defines Aestheticism as:

“… the term applied to exaggerated expression of the doctrine that art is self-sufficient and needs serve no ulterior purpose, whether moral, political or religious…”

It was influenced by Japanese art and culture. It was not universally loved and the art critic Walter Hamilton wrote a book in 1862, The Aesthetic Movement in England, in which he mounted a famous defence of the Aesthetic Movement and wrote about the key figures associated with the movement and provided descriptions of contemporary responses to it.

Albert Moore was one of the principal originators of the Aesthetic Art Movement, and was considered by Whistler as one of the most original artists of his generation. His decorative paintings, which were true to the Aesthetic movement, championed pure beauty in their depiction but lacked messages whether overt or subtle, and this type of art became very popular with collectors. His depiction of women, in what is termed a Hellenic style, draped in their diaphanous clothing, was one which will always be linked with Moore. Following the success he had with his work entitled The Marble Seat, he followed it up with a series of purely decorative paintings. In all of these, the allure of the works was Moore’s depiction of the female form and the harmonious use of colour.

One of Albert Moore’s patrons, around this time, was James Leathart, a Newcastle lead manufacturer. He had visited Moore at his studio in 1865 and whilst there saw an unfinished work by the artist entitled A Musician. The work combines aspects of ancient Roman wall paintings, Greek sculpture and Japanese prints. The figures in the painting are separated. On the left side we have an active male musician playing the lyre and on the right we see his audience of two passive females. This separation by gender was also present in his painting, The Marble Seat (see previous blog).

Leathart bought this work from Moore and It can now be seen at the Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven. In 1867 he purchased from Moore his work Elijah’s Sacrifice.

Leathart was so pleased with his acquisitions that he commissioned Moore to produce a pair of classically draped figures, each bearing a shuttlecock and racket. The two commissioned paintings were to feature two ancient games played by both men and women. It was the precursor to jeu de volant, which was itself the precursor to badminton. The simple titles to his paintings were Battledore and Shuttlecock.

In a letter to Leathart in November 1868, Moore wrote:

“…now fairly at work on your two pictures and propose to go on with them continuously until they are finished…”

Leathart went to Moore’s studios to see what progress Moore had made and viewed the preparatory sketch. However Moore had a change of heart with regards the colours and tones he would use and in February 1869 he again wrote to Leathart to tell him that he had:

“…hit upon combinations of colour darker in character than the little sketch you saw some time ago…”

Now, Moore had a dilemma. He wanted to press ahead with the final paintings but had to be sure that Leathart agreed to his proposed changes to the colours and in his letter to Leathart, he gave his reasons for the change but to avoid problems with his patron hinted that Leathart had the final say. Moore wrote:

“… I think it is best to learn your views on the subject. That is to say, if you have any particular desire that the pictures should be kept light in character – as for instance, for the sake of their effect in your room – I shall of course be ready to recur to something like the original scheme: at the same time I have reason to believe that the latter combination would succeed – having tried them in small sketches and I may say I should not hesitate to carry them out, were I the only person concerned…”

Leathart agreed to the changes.

Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours by M.E.Chevreul — Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours
by M.E.Chevreul

Moore was fascinated by colour combinations and how some worked better than others. Whilst studying at the School of Design in York he had studied this very issue and was inspired by Michel Eugène Chevreul who had published a book in 1855 entitled The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colour. Chevreul based his ideas on the study of the coloured threads in the Gobelin tapestries.

Shuttlecock by Albert Joseph Moore (1870)

In his work, Shuttlecock , Moore brought together the colours of orange and blue which Chevreul had written were “harmonies of contrasts”. Although chromatically opposites, orange and blue combined to produce grey. Look at the colour combinations on the mat which the female stands upon. When the two paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1871 Moore was praised for his depiction of the figures but those who detected Moore’s scientific approach to colour combinations were less happy. Other critics were unhappy with the fact that there was no message within the painting, no historical or biblical connotation to the depiction

Along with Battledore and Shuttlecock Moore had a third painting accepted for the 1871 Royal Academy Exhibition. The title of this third work was Sea-gulls. This painting eventually came to fruition but not without some controversy. Moore’s friend James Whistler got to hear of, and later saw the preliminary sketches for this painting through their mutual friend and patron Frederic Leyland and Whistler was concerned that they were very similar to preliminary sketches he had made for his own painting. After lots of discussions between the two artists and an intermediary, William Nesfield, an architect and amateur painter, and a friend of both Whistler and Moore, it was amicably decided that Moore exhibiting his Sea-gulls painting would not have an adverse effect on Whistler’s works. The painting was exhibited at the RA even though, according to Moore, it was unfinished. On receiving the work back from the exhibition, Moore completed the work and it was sold to his patron, Frederic Leyland.

A Summer Night by Albert Moore (1864-90)

There are so many beautiful paintings done by Albert Moore that it is difficult to select a only a few for the blog. However, the next painting by Albert Moore which I am featuring took almost six years to complete and it is a veritable beauty. Moore started this large work (132 x 229 cms) in 1884 but did not complete it until 1890. It was entitled A Summer Night.

The backdrop for this work was not Moore’s usual wall but a fascinating and beautiful display of floral garlands, all intertwined together. In the far background, across the sea, we see the twinkling of shore lights of an island which has been lit up by moonlight. Pale clouds can be seen in the dark sky. In the upper left foreground, we can see orange-coloured ranunculus blooms weaved into the upper part of the silver filigree which is part of the open trellis-work. The painting received a rapturous reception from the public when it was exhibited at the 1890 Royal Academy exhibition, despite the RA’s Hanging team banishing the work, high up on a wall in the fifth room, close by a door.

The fact that Moore’s work was often looked down upon by the art institution for his constant scientific manipulation of colours and for producing paintings without any hidden meanings was not lost on the forward-thinking art critic of the time, Claude Phillips, who had, for a long time been a great supporter of Moore. In an article in the Academy in May 1890, he wrote:

“…no artist of purely British origins has the same mastery over the keyboard of tints and tones as this master of decoration and that such a painter should persistently be excluded from the ranks of the Academicians while that august body contains so many crude, perfunctory and unspeakably tiresome practitioners, is a riddle the solution of which had, perhaps, better not be attempted…”

The art critic George Moore (no relation to Albert Moore) castigated the Royal Academy for not electing to the Academy, either Albert Moore or his friend James Whistler. In 1893, he caustically wrote:

“… Many Academicians will freely acknowledge that his [Albert Moore] non-election is a very grave scandal; they will tell you that they have done everything to get him elected and have given up the task in despair……………..the two greatest artists living in England, will never be elected Academicians; and artistic England is asked to acquiesce in this grave scandal…”

The Loves of the Winds and the Seasons by Albert Moore (1893)

The last painting I am showing you was the last painting Albert Moore completed. It was entitled The Loves of the Winds and the Seasons, which he completed in 1893. Moore’s financial situation at the start of the 1890’s was dire and to make things worse is health was starting to decline. In August 1892 Moore had been taken seriously ill and despite a number of operations he was made to suffer from a painful and incurable illness. Moore would not let his pain or his advancing death stop him from painting and this last painting which he started in 1890, was completed nine days before his death. The painting depicts the courtship of the four male winds with the four female seasons. The female figure on the left is Summer and she watches the courtship of the South Wind and Autumn. In the right background of the painting we see the North and East Winds quarrelling over Winter whilst they are all stood in a patch of snow.

Albert Joseph Moore died at 3am in his London studio in Spenser Street, Westminster on September 25^th 1893, three weeks after his fifty-second birthday. The cause of death was given as a sarcoma of the thigh and a recurrent sarcoma of the abdomen. He made his brother Henry sole heir to his estate which amounted to just £1,184. He was buried in the family grave in Highgate Cemetery, which was already occupied by his mother and his brother, John Collingwood Moore.

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Most of the information I have used in this and the next blog have come from two books, biographies of Albert Joseoph Moore. They are:

Albert Moore, his life and works, by Alfred Lys Baldry (1894)

Albert Moore by Robin Asleson (published by Phaidon)

Albert Joseph Moore. Part 2 – his portrayal of women.

At the end of my last blog I had reached the point in Albert Moore’s life with him travelling to Rome with his brother John Collingham Moore just after his twenty-first birthday. Whilst travelling around the Roman Campagna he was able to observe the effects of colour which were presented to him under local conditions of light and atmosphere. He travelled to Naples and Pompeii and throughout his stay he would copy classical statuary and Renaissance paintings. His stay in Italy was cut short after five months when he received news about his mother’s death on the twenty-eighth of January 1863. Albert returned to London in the Spring and set up home in a studio at 12 Newman Street in West London and immersed himself in the many commissions he received.

Elijah's Sacrifice by Albert Moore (1863) — Elijah’s Sacrifice by Albert Moore (1863)

It was also here that he held a one-man show featuring some of his works of art, including the newly completed Elijah’s Sacrifice (see previous blog). One visitor to this show was Frederick George Stephens, an art critic, and one of the two ‘non-artistic’ members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He gave his approval to Albert’s paintings and expressed the joy of discovering new young artists. He wrote in the February 1864 issue of the London literary magazine, Athenaeum, in his regular review of the Arts, Fine-Art Gossip:

“…a critic’s pleasantest office is to call attention to works, from their nature, do not catch the eye of everyone…”

The small exhibition in his studio proved a great success. It was unusual for an artist to show works in their own studio but Albert needed the money and needed to market himself and attract buyers but it was also a declaration of his own independence. Albert Moore knew that he could not solely rely on the Royal Academy to show his work as he was only too well aware of the vagaries of the RA Selection Committee, who had a penchant of choosing works by its own Academicians rather than featuring young artists who were not RA members. Albert had first-hand experience of this when, in 1864, the Selection Committee had rejected his work Elijah’s Sacrifice.

Whether Albert altered the painting is not known but in 1865 it was accepted by the RA Selection Committee! Along with that work he also had accepted into that year’s Academy exhibition his painting entitled The Marble Seat. It was a turning point in Moore’s career as the critics loved his two works. The Marble Seat tells no story and does not illustrate any incident in history. It is merely a composition of four figures, one male and three females, all of whom are grouped around a flat stone seat. The background comprises of flowers including red tulips, trees and through the trees we are able to see a flat hinterland which leads to a range of blue hills. The nude male stands to the right of the picture and we see him pouring wine into a cup. The three girls, all dressed in almost transparent white draperies, over which are thicker orange, green and scarlet wraps, sit or lean against the marble seat. The seat is positioned on green lawn which seems to twinkle with small white daisies.

Leading magazines raved about the works of this up and coming young artist. According to the critics Moore and some other young painters were breaking new ground in modern British painting by treating the human figure on a monumental scale unlike other older and well established artists who preferred to stick to small-scale homely themes.

However not to be deterred by the vagaries of the R.A., Albert Moore joined a group of artists, which included his brother Henry Moore, the Jewish pre-Raphaelite painter, Simeon Solomon, John Everett Millais and the historical painter, Edward Poynter. Ironically, both Millais and Poynter would later become presidents of the Royal Academy. This group chose the Dudley Gallery in London as the venue for exhibiting their paintings.

Dancing Girl Resting by Albert Moore (1864)

In 1864 Moore’s one-man show included his painting entitled Dancing Girl Resting. It was noted that since returning from Rome, Albert Moore’s painting style and subject choice had changed. The “new” Albert Moore can well be seen in this beautifully crafted 1864 painting. Before us we see a tall girl, with a red scarf twisted around her head and shoulders, dressed in a full-length diaphanous shift standing on a leopard-skin rug which kept her feet away from the cold tiles. She is leaning against a warm grey marble wall on which hangs a lyre and an ornamental woven mat. The combination of the rug, the marble tiles and woven textiles adds an air of decadence. The art critic, Frederick Stevens, in his Fine-Art Gossip column in the February 1864 edition of the Athenaeum described the girl’s somewhat erotic stance:

“…panting through parted lips, with heaving bust, her arms akimbo, and hands upon her hips…”

There is sensuousness and something erotic about this work. Although she is not naked, we can see the contours of her naked body through the gossamer-like shift. Look at the beautiful way Moore has executed the many folds of the shift which gives it a feeling of movement even though the dancer is at rest. Although the title talks about the dancer resting, it is the small figure of the dark-skinned girl, who besides a strand of beads is naked. She can be seen slumped limply on the floor besides the dancer who looks more at rest.

Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene by Simeon Solomon (1864)

It is thought that Albert Moore was starting to be influenced by his friend Simeon Solomon whose paintings around this time showed a certain sensuousness such as in his 1864 painting, Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene. In that painting we see Sappho embracing her fellow poet Erinna in a garden at Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. According to legend, Sappho was born at Lesbos in about 612BC. After having been exiled to Sicily she returned to the island and was at the centre of a community of young women devoted to Aphrodite and the Muses.

Philip Henry Rathbone was a Liverpool insurance underwriter and Liberal Council member. He came from a very wealthy family of merchants. He was also an avid art collector and one time was a member of the Hanging Committee of the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition. Amongst his friends was James McNeil Whistler. Rathbone bought both The Marble Seat and my next featured work of Albert Moore, The Shulamite. A Shulamite is a female name in Hebrew and means peaceful. The name corresponds to Solomon as Julia does to Julius. It is the figurative name of the bride in Solomon’s Song and the bridegroom is represented by Solomon which also means peaceful. The large oil painting, measuring 210 x 96cms is now housed in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. The painting appeared at the Royal Academy in 1866 but although it had been passed by the conservative Hanging Committee it, along with some other “audacious” paintings, were given an adverse hanging placement. This and the other works, although placed in the prestigious North Room, were placed so high on the wall they were almost invisible to visitors. Some would say a revengeful act by the Hanging Committee! The May 22^nd issue of the Times carried an article by the art correspondent, who reported on the exhibition and noted the poor positioning of Albert Moore’s work, writing:

“……..suffers more from its elevation, for its merits are of a more delicate and subtle kind……its exquisite draperies, clothing exquisite form [are] wholly out of sight…”

The Last Supper Wall painting by Albert Moore (1865-66)

In 1865, Albert Moore received a commission to carry out some wall paintings for the Church of St Alban in Rochdale. The commission had come his way through good auspices of his friend, the architect William Eden Nesfield, whom he had travelled with to Northern France, five years earlier. These wall painings were painted in oils directly on to the plaster surface of the walls. The commission took most of 1865 and 1866 to complete and to complete the commission, Moore had to move a large quantity of his materials from London to Rochdale by train. His biographer, Alfred Lys Baldry, tells the amusing anecdote of the start of this journey from Albert’s studio to Euston Station:

“…so heavily did he load the cab which was conveying him from his studio in Russell Place to Euston Station, that in mid-journey the bottom came out, and he and his brother Henry, who was going to see him off, had to run along inside for some distance, until the attention of the driver could be called to the mishap….”

The wall paintings in St Alban’s Church occupy the whole of the upper chancel and consist of several separate subjects, two being The Last Supper and The Feeding of the Five Thousand.

In the final part of my look at the life and works of Albert Joseph Moore I will showcase more works of art dedicated to female beauty.

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Again, most of the information I have used in this and the previous blog have come from two books, biographies of Albert Joseph Moore. They are:

Albert Moore, his life and works, by Alfred Lys Baldry (1894)

Albert Moore by Robin Asleson (published by Phaidon)

Albert Joseph Moore. Part 1 – his early life and his talented family

The nineteenth century Swiss painter, Paul Klee, once said of a woman’s beauty:

“…Beauty is as relative as light and dark. Thus, there exists no beautiful woman, none at all, because you are never certain that a still far more beautiful woman will not appear and completely shame the supposed beauty of the first…”

Maybe he, like today’s featured artist, was also always searching for the ultimate feminine beauty. Let me introduce you to the Victorian painter Albert Joseph Moore. In the first part of this blog I will look at Moore’s early life and his talented artistic family and in the next blog will look at his unique portrayal of beautiful women.

Unknown Man and his Dog by William Moore snr.

Albert Moore was born in York in September 1841. He came from an extremely large family. His father was originally employed by a firm in Birmingham to design japanned goods. He gave up his commercial work to concentrate on portraiture which was very popular with London dealers. The subjects of his portraiture featured people living in the northern counties. His landscape works featured scenes from the northern districts and as such were very popular with the locals. William Moore married Martha Jackson in 1812 and the couple had eight sons and a daughter. Later, in 1828, after his first wife’s death, William re-married. His second wife was Sarah Collingham, an amateur draughtswoman, who had a number of relatives involved in art. Sarah gave William a further six sons

So, between William’ Moore’s two wives, he fathered fourteen children, thirteen sons and one daughter. Albert Moore was the youngest of William and Sarah’s six sons. Many of Albert Moore’s brothers were artists.

A highland lake landscape, with figures by a cottage before, and fishermen in a boat, by Edwin Moore

Albert’s oldest step brother, was Edwin, who was a watercolourist and was interested in landscape work. He was twenty-nine years of age when Albert was born. He was employed as an art teacher and taught drawing, perspective and painting at the Quaker School in York . He also supplemented his income by offering private drawing classes at his home. In 1840 Edwin published a book, The Elementary Drawing Book which covered rules of perspective and was illustrated with sketches and geometrical diagrams.

As I Saw It by William Moore Jnr. (1891)

Edwin’s brother William Moore jnr., who was born in 1817, was also a landscape painter and an art teacher. He, like Edwin, was taught art by his father and later in life assisted his father and tutored the younger siblings in drawing and painting

Stephen Langton Massingbird and his sister Mary Langton Massingbird by John Collingham Moore

John Collingham Moore was the eldest son of William Moore by his second wife, Sarah, and was born at Gainsborough in March 1829. He initially received artistic training from his father and at the age of twenty-two studied in the schools of the Royal Academy. He was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy from 1853 to the year of his death in 1880.

Emily Massingberd by John Collingham Moore

His claim to fame as an artist was through his exquisite portraits of children and his watercolour paintings featuring landscape scenes of the Roman Campagna, the low-lying area surrounding Rome in the Lazio region of central Italy. He also favoured scenes around the area of Florence.

Outward Bound by Henry Moore — Outward Bound
by Henry Moore

Henry Moore, born in 1831, was the third of the six sons of Sarah Collingham and William Moore and he was a talented marine and landscape artist and etcher.

Albert as a child was surrounded by artists and it was not surprising that from a very early age he took delight in drawing and painting. It is said that before he was able to write he had achieved a highly regarded expertise in drawing. He was surrounded by critics, his brothers, who were always willing to advise him how to improve his drawings. Even at an early age Albert Moore was self critical of his art and was somewhat of a perfectionist. He would never settle for second best and would often question his brothers’ views on art. To many he seemed to be inquisitive always willing to state his point of view on matters concerning his art. Many found this trait to be bordering on precociousness.

Albert went to Archbishop Holgate’s School in York and later St Peter’s School in the same city, which was under the direction of the Dean and Chapter of York Minster. But apart from this standard education he received regular art lessons from his father. In October 1851, when Albert was nine years old, his father died. His art tutoring continued, now with the help of his elder brother, John Collingham Moore. His mother, Albert, along with three of his brothers remained living in York until 1855, at which time they moved to London and took up residence in Phillimore Place, Kensington. On arrival in London Albert was enrolled at the Kensington Grammar School where he remained for just over two years. It was whilst attending this school that he had two of his watercolour drawings, A Goldfinch and A Woodcock, exhibited at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy. Quite an achievement for one so young! In May 1858, aged sixteen, he was accepted into the Royal Academy schools.

Study of an Ash Trunk by Albert Moore (1857)

Albert Moore developed a deep love of nature and would often go into the countryside to paint. In 1857 he completed a wonderful painting, watercolour and gouache with gum Arabic, entitled Study of Ash Trunk, which is housed at Oxford’s Ashmoleon Museum.

Waterfall in the Lake District by Albert Moore (c.1858)

He went on a painting exhibition to the Lake District in 1858 and from that journey he produced a landscape scene entitled Waterfall in the Lake District.

Albert completed his art course at the Royal Academy schools and started to look for a way of making money other than from the sale of his art work. He was offered a job as chief designer at a well known firm of stain glass makers but refused the offer on the grounds that it would take him away from his beloved art. He even turned down the chance in 1876 of becoming headmaster of the Birmingham School of Art as it would mean leaving London and again would take up too much of his time.

The Mother of Sisera looked out a Window by Albert Moore (1861)

In 1861 Moore completed a painting with a biblical connotation. It was entitled The Mother of Sisera Looked out at a Window . This strange title of the painting comes from a passage from the Old Testament Book of Judges (5:28) and which was part of the Song of Deborah (Judges 5:2-31):

“…Out of the window she peered, the mother of Sisera wailed through the lattice: ‘Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the hoofbeats of his chariots?…”

Although we do not know the woman’s name, we know she is the mother of Sisera who was a Canaanite general and commander of the Canaanite army and was defeated by the forces of the Israelite tribes led by Barak and Deborah. According to legend, Sisera, whose army had been routed, fled alone arriving at the settlement of the Kenites, He was invited by a Kenite woman, named Jael, into her tent. Sisera accepted the invitation. He was given milk to drink and fell asleep. When Sisera had fallen asleep, Jael took a hammer and drove a “nail,” or tent-pin, into his temple. The story about Sisera’s mother appears to be based on the thoughts of Deborah who imagined how the mother of Sisera must have felt when her son had not arrived back home.

At the end of 1862 he went to Rome with his brother John Collingham Moore where he stayed for five months, and it was whilst staying in the Italian capital that he completed another biblical painting which is entitled Elijah’s Sacrifice This work is housed in the Bury Art Gallery & Museum. It was bought from Whitworth Wallis, a leading provincial curator in 1908 for £105. The sum was raised from bequests and council grants. The painting is based on the passage in the bible, 1 Kings 18 36:39:

“…At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: “Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again....then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The Lord—he is God! The Lord—he is God!…”

The passage described the miraculous fire, called forth by the prophet Elijah on Mount Carmel. The prophets of Baal had earlier been challenged by Elijah for their god to conjure up fire to light the sacrificial pyre but nothing had happened. We see Elijah with his red turban and patterned robe. There is a symmetry about the figures who are placed at the rear of the fire pit. There is a clear differentiation between the praying Elijah on his knees and those in the centre and to the left. On the left of the group there is a naked priest of Baal shrinking back violently from the leaping flames which is in total contrast to the reverential posture of Elijah. Note the counterbalance of the followers of Elijah, to his right, who quietly kneel, hands clasped in prayer, to the followers and prophets of their god, Baal, on the left, who has let them down by not being able to bring fire to their sacrifice. In between the two groups are bowed figures who cannot believe what they have just witnessed.

In his 1894 biography of Moore, Albert Moore, his life and works, Alfred Lys Baldry, a contemporary and a pupil of Moore, said that the landscape background of the work was based on a desolate spot between Rome and Tivoli that Moore had sketched. This area was a favourite of landscape artists. Although the background is somewhat desolate, look at how much detail Moore has put into the vegetation in the foreground.

In the second part of this blog about Albert Moore I will give more details about his life and I will look at his portrayal of women for which he is best known.

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Most of the information I have used in this and the next blog have come from two books, biographies of Albert Joseoph Moore. They are:

Albert Moore, his life and works, by Alfred Lys Baldry (1894)

Albert Moore by Robin Asleson (published by Phaidon)

Study for ‘Elijah’s Sacrifice’ by Albert Moore (c.1864)

There are two crayon and watercolour studies Albert Moore made for this painting which are now held at the Tate Museum in London. The first is a full length sketch of the kneeling Elijah

and the second comprises of two facial sketches of the prophet.

I started this blog talking about the beauty of women and in the next part of this blog I will look at Albert Moore’s portrayal of such beauty.