Category: Art Blog

Walter Ufer

Part 1. The Beginning – America and Germany

Self portrait by Walter Ufer (1920)

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

French Peasant Woman by Walter Ufer

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

Academic figure drawing by Walter Ufer (1913)

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

Old Munich by Walter Ufer

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

Woman from Dachau by Walter Ufer (1912)

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

Portrait of a Man by Walter Ufer (1912)

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

One October Evening by Walter Ufer (1913)

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

Portrait of Mary (1913)

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

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

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

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

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

Taos Peak by Walter Ufer (1914)

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

………to be continued.

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

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

NICEART GALLERY

Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin.

Henri Martin in 1882

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

Self portrait by Henri Martin (1910)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paolo Malatesta et Francesca da Rimini aux enfers by Henri Martin

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

Berenice by Henri Martin (1889)

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

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

Mystic Scene by Henri Martin (1895)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Banks of the Garonne by Henri Martin

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

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

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

The Capitole of Toulouse

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

Salle Henri Martin, Capitole de Toulouse.

Salle Henri Martin, Capitole de Toulouse.

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

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

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

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

The Church at Labastide by Henri Martin (1920)

Labastide du vert village by Henri Martin

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

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

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

France info

Le Monde

Outre Journal

Arthive

ArtFund

NICEARTGALLERY

Marie de Roode Heijermans and her “infamous” painting.

Marie de Roode Heijermans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The elderly “client”.

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

Top hat and the “payment” for services rendered.

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

The Three Graces by Rubens (1638)

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

Olympia by Édouard Manet (1863)

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

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

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

Justus Johannes de Roode

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

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

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

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

Women’n Art

Hein Klaver Kunsthandel

Huygens Institute

JStor

Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat. Part 2

The Portrait Artist

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

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

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

Italian Woman with Child by Léon Bonnat

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

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

Roman Girl at a Fountain by Léon Bonnat (1875)

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

L’Assomption de Marie by Léon Bonnat (1869)

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

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

The Martyrdom of Saint Denis by Léon Bonnat (1880)

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

Basilica of St Denis, Paris

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

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

View of Jerusalem by Léon Bonnat

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

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

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

An Arab Sheik by Léon Bonnart (c.1870)

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

Christ on the Cross by Léon Bonnat(1674)

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

Victor Hugo by Léon Bonnat (1879)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Musée Bonnat-Helleu in Bayonne, France

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

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

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

Self portrait by Léon Bonnat (1916)

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

Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat.

Part 1. The formulative years

Self portrait by Léon Bonnat (1855)

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

Madame Bonnat, mère de l’artiste by Léon Bonnat

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

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

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

The Artist’s Sister by Léon Bonnat

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

Job by Léon Bonnat (1880)

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

The Good Samaritan by Léon Bonnat

Adam and Eve Finding the Body of Abel by Léon Bonnat

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

Villa Medici, Rome.

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

The Resurrection of Lazarus by Léon Bonnat (1857)

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

Lazarus Raised from the Dead by Charles Sellier

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

Portrait of Léon Bonnat by Edgar Degas

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

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

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

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

…….to be continued.

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

NiceArtGallery

Rehs Gallery

Léon Bonnat by Guy Saigne

Vincent and the Galley Slaves

Mark (Max) Gertler. Part 2.

Mark Gertler

Gertler had now settled into life at the Slade art academy.  One of his fellow students, C.R.W Nevinson  summed up life at the Slade when he and Gertler were students there saying it was full with a crowd of men such as I have never seen before or since..  As far as his thoughts on Gertler, he once wrote that Max was the genius of the place… and the most serious, single-minded artist he had ever come across.   Gertler was considered the best draughtsman to study at the Slade since Augustus John. Another student, Paul Nash, said that Gertler riding high “upon the crest of the wave”.

Still life with a Bottle of Benedictine by Mark Gertler

In 1910 a new seventeen-year-old student arrived at the Slade Academy of Art who was to add a little “spice” to the lives of Gertler and some of the other students.   Dora de Houghton Carrington, who after joing the Slade, became known simply by her surname, Carrington, as she considered Dora to be vulgar and sentimental. Gertler and C.R.W. Nevinson both became closely attached to Carrington and according to Michael J. K. Walsh 2002 biography, C. R. W. Nevinson: The Cult of Violence, he wrote about that impossible situation:

“…What he (Nevinson) was not aware of was that Carrington was also conversing, writing and meeting with Gertler in a similar fashion, and the latter was beginning to want to rid himself of competition for her affections. For Gertler the friendship would be complicated by sexual frustration while Carrington had no particular desire to become romantically involved with either man…”

This was unfortunate as Gertler and Nevinson had become great friends.  Gertler wrote to his sponsor, William Rothenstein saying:

“…My chief friend and pal is young Nevinson, a very, very nice chap. I am awfully fond of him. I am so happy when I am out with him. He invites me down to dinners and then we go on Hampstead Heath talking of the future…”

In Michael J. K. Walsh’s biography of Nevinson, Hanging a Rebel: The Life of C.R.W. Nevinson, he wrote:

“…Together they studied at the British Museum, met in the Café Royal, dined at the Nevinson household, went on short holidays and discussed art at length. Independently of each other too, they wrote of the value of their friendship and of the mutual respect they held for each other as artists…”

C.R.W. Nevinson, himself, wrote of his friendship with Gertler in his 1937 autobiography, Paint and Prejudice:

 “…I am proud and glad to say that both my parents were extremely fond of him.” Henry Nevinson recalled: “Gertler came to supper, very successful, with admirable naive stories of his behaviour in rich houses and at a dinner given him by a portrait club, how he asked to begin because he was hungry…”

Gertler pursued Carrington for a number of years, and they had a brief sexual relationship during the years of the First World War.

Portrait of a Girl ( Gertler’s Sister, Sophie) by Mark Gertler (1908-1911)

As is the case for many young aspiring portrait artists, Gertler, before he painted commissioned works, began by painting portraits of family members. One of his most frequent depictions was of his mother.

The Artist’s Mother by Mark Gertler (1913)

In this painting of his mother Golda Gertler has depicted her as a peasant with huge, working hands. He called the portrait ‘barbaric and symbolic’, explaining that it was meant to show ‘suffering and a life that has known hardship’.

The Artist’s Mother by Mark Gertler (1911)

Gertler once wrote rather disparagingly about his sitter:

“… “I am painting a portrait of my mother. She sits bent on a chair, deep in thought. Her large hands are lying heavily and wearily in her lap. The whole suggests suffering and a life that has known hardship. It is barbaric and symbolic. Where is the prettiness! Where! Where! …”

Portrait of the Artist’s Mother by Max Gertler (1924)

This was the final portrait Gertler’s mother.  In this work there is no hint of sentimentality or the personality which came to the fore in his earlier portraits of her.  It is a depiction of dominance and authority.  The art critics of the time highly praised it.  Gertler loved the finished portrait and whether he was concerned that it would be bought and taken from him, it made him put a price of £200 on it in the hope that this would put off buyers.  It didn’t work as it was bought for the full asking price, which was the highest price any of his works fetched during his lifetime !

Portrait of the Artist’s Family, a Playful Scene by Mark Gertler (1911)

Gertler completed many more paintings of his family.  One such was his Portrait of the Artist’s Family, a Playful Scene which he completed in 1911. It depicts a room in the  family’s Spital Square house with his two brothers Harry and Jack watching their sister tickling their mother who has fallen asleep in her chair.

Still Life with Bowl, Spoon and Apples by Mark Gertler (1913)

Mark Gertler, like many young artists, was interested in new art trends, some of which he may be able to experiment with.   In November 1910 an influential exhibition opened at London’s Grafton Rooms entitled Manet and the Post-Impressionists curated by Roger Fry, which introduced the work of artists such as Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Picasso, to English art lovers.  Despite some derogative remarks from well-known critics, Gertler found the exhibition amazing and began to experiment with brighter colours and flatter styles.  In 1913 Gertler completed his painting, Still Life with Bowl, Spoon and Apples which displayed the influence of Cezanne

The Pond by Mark Gertler (1917)

The influence of Cézanne on his work, can also be seen in his 1917 work The Pond.  In this depiction we see the branch of a tree extends like an arm pointing to the silvery pond which can be seen in the mid-distance, created from a patchwork of overlaid paint strokes. Gertler uses an abstract arrangement of colours to capture the lush greenness of this quiet spot, emulating the dappled effect of light and colour reflecting on the still surface of the pond.  He has created a sense of depth in the way he has built up his painting with blocks of colour, which creates the impression of standing beneath the tree, overlooking the scene. 

Garsington Manor and Gardens

The painting was completed by Gertler whilst he was staying at Garsington Manor, the Oxfordshire residence of renowned literary and artistic patron Lady Ottoline Morrell.   It is believed that the painting, The Pond, was based on the fish pond at Garsington. At the outbreak of the First World War, Gertler was one of many artists and writers associated with the Bloomsbury Circle invited to Garsington Manor. Many were conscientious objectors who worked on the estate.

The Jewish Family by Mark Gertler (1913)

In 1912 Mark Gertler moved from the family home into the top-floor attic studio of 32 Elder Street, Spitalfields, which he shared with his brother Harry and Harry’s wife, and was just around the corner from the family home. Gertler remained deeply attached to home, family and the vital Jewish culture of his native Spitalfields/Whitechapel area of London’s East End, and this can be seen in his 1913 painting The Jewish Family.  It was a depiction of a family of four of differing generations and could well be based on his own family members. The painting was bought by Edward Marsh, a scholar and influential art collector, who became a patron of Gertler.  Sir Edward Marsh through the Contemporary Art Society bequeathed the painting to the Tate, London in 1954.

Around this time Mark Gertler became good friends with the writer Gilbert Cannan who based the title character of his 1916 novel Mendel, A Story of Youth, directly on intimate conversations he had with Gertler who talked about his early life and his relationship with C. R. W. Nevinson and Carrington.   “Mendel” being the Yiddish given name of Gertler.

Gilbert Cannan at his Mill by Mark Gertler (1916)

Mark Gertler’s friendship with Gilbert Cannan flourished and in 1914 he went to stay with the writer and his wife, Mary, in their Hertfordshire home, a converted windmill, at Cholesbury.  Cannan had been employed as a secretary by J. M. Barrie, the Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered as the creator of Peter Pan. A relationship developed in 1909 between Cannan and Barrie’s wife Mary Ansell, a former actress, who felt ignored by her husband.  Although attempts were made by her husband to save their marriage they were divorced and she and Cannan were married in 1910.  Mark became a regular visitor at Cannan and Mary’s windmill house and it is thought that he began making preliminary sketches during his early visits and completed his painting Gilbert Cannan at his Mill in 1916.  It depicts Cannan with his dogs, Luath and Sammy.  Cannan’s wife Mary owned Luath, and he had been the model for Nana, the Newfoundland dog in Peter Pan. Sadly the relationship of Cannan and Gertler declined after 1916, mainly because of Cannan’s increasingly unstable behaviour.

Merry-go-Round by Mark Gertler (1916)

 At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 there was a call to arms and Max applied for military service but was rejected on the grounds of his ‘Austrian’ parentage.  In 1918 he again applied but was  then later, after being called up in 1918, excused active service on the grounds of ill health which fortunately for Max avoided being forced to publicly declare his pacifist convictions, which were instead pictorially articulated in his 1916 anti-war painting entitled Merry-Go-Round.. Is this simply a painting of a carousel and people enjoying themselves or is there something more we should get from the depiction.  The Painting is part of the Tate Britain’s collection and was begun in May 1916 when Gertler wrote to Lytton Strachey about it:

“… ‘I am working very hard on a large and very unsaleable picture of “Merry-Go-Round…”‘

Max completed it the following autumn. Merry-Go-Round depicts men in uniform with their girlfriends close by their side.  Maybe it was the last time they had to enjoy life before they were sent to Europe to fight for King and Country.  But all is not well as the facial expression on the men is not one of joyfulness that such rides would inspire.  The faces are fixed in what looks like a cry for help.  Like the ride itself, which is unstoppable, probably too is their fate on the fields of war. When it was exhibited, it was looked upon by many critics as one of the most important war painting.  The writer, D. H. Lawrence, wrote to Gertler:

“…I have just seen your terrible and dreadful picture Merry-go-round. This is the first picture you have painted: it is the best modern picture I have seen: I think it is great and true. But it is horrible and terrifying. If they tell you it is obscene, they will say truly. You have made a real and ultimate revelation. I think this picture is your arrival…”

In an interview in 2021, Jeannette Gertler, Mark’s niece talked about the Merry-go-Round painting and she told the interviewer:

“…It was very controversial, not popular. People were annoyed about it and it was slated so much because it was making fun of the war. Making fun of the soldiers going around and around, achieving nothing. They thought it was very naughty of him to do that. Dispiriting. But he was opening their eyes. Really he was…”

On being asked what the Gertler’s family made of the painting Jeannette said:

“…They didn’t mind, Mark was their golden boy, their star, but other people were very annoyed about him making fun of the war. The boys were all pacifists you see. The family, they’d had enough trauma, as Jewish émigrés you know…”

Queen of Sheba by Mark Gertler (1922)

In 1920, Gertler was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was forced to enter a sanatorium.  He would have to attend these medical facilities on a number of occasions during the 1920s and 1930s. These health issues created an unsettling period for Gertler but he decided to go to Paris and returned home full of ideas.

Mandolinist by Mark Gertler (1934)

He was inspired by the great French painter Renoir, who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style.  Gertler especially liked Renoir’s figurative paintings and on returning to London he began to focus on female portraits and nudes, and would sometimes combine figures with elaborate, colourful still lifes.  The 1920’s was to become his commercially most successful decade.

The Violist by Mark Gertler (1912)

Two of Gertler’s preliminary Studies for The Violinist (1912)

Continuing with musical depictions I come to Gertler’s famous 1912 figurative painting entitled The Violinist but, referred to in a letter by Gertler, as The Musical Girl, which he started whilst attending the Slade Art School. He created preliminary pencil head sketches before he completed two oil on panel versions of The Violinist.  The completed painting shown above is the second version.   We do not know the name of the sitter but we do know she was a music student and a friend of Gertler’s family.  Gertler was obviously taken by her distinctive looks with her striking, crop-haired, grey-eyed female who obviously captured his imagination.  His sitter wears a loose, open-necked, vivid purple blouse.  The vibrant colours of her clothing and background are perfectly balanced against the luminous skin tones. It is not the clothes we focus on but her face and her downward-looking eyes with their delicate lids relating closely to the earlier pencil study for the work.  The painting was sold for GBP 542,000, the most paid for a Gertler painting. The top preliminary study sold for GDP 62,500.

Talmadic Discussion by Mark Gertler

It was around 1925 that Mark Gertler met Marjorie Greatorex Hodgkinson who had begun studying at the Slade under Henry Tonks in 1921. That same year Gertler was admitted to Mundesley Sanatorium in Norfolk, and Marjorie’s visits to him and her caring nature seemed to boost his health.  He and Marjorie married in 1930 and their son Luke was born two years later.

Sales of Gertler’s paintings declined during the 1930s but despite their poverty, the Gertlers maintained a busy social life while Mark’s work continued with the still lifes, portraits and monumental nudes such as the Mandolinist.  Sadly, Gertler suffered from long bouts of depression, and other forms of ill-health.  Max’s marriage to Marjorie suffered because of his poor physical and mental health and by the mid-1930s, despite his efforts to improve matters, the marriage had deteriorated and Gertler’s mental health worsened and he became suicidal.

The Basket of Fruit by Mark Gertler

His mental decline was also part caused by the death of his close friends; the writers Katherine Mansfield in 1923 and D. H. Lawrence to tuberculosis in 1930.  Mark’s friend, and once a fellow student of his at the Slade, Dora Carrington, committed suicide in 1932, two months after her close friend, Lyllton Strachey’s death.  That same year Mark Gertler’s mother died.  Gertler went on painting trips to Europe to help his moods but this didn’t work and to make things worse many art critics began to slate his work.

Self portrait with Fishing Cap by Mark Gertler

Gertler’s final exhibition, held at the Lefévre Gallery in May 1939, failed to attract visitors and he sold only three works. Not long after, on June 23rd 1939, Mark Gertler gassed himself in his Highgate studio. He was buried four days later in Willesden United Synagogue Cemetery.

Once again information for this blog came from ma ny Wikipedia sites but also from these excellent websites:

Ben Uri Research Unit

Art UK

A Crisis of Brilliance

Spartacus Educational

Fine Art Society

New English Art Club

Glyn Vivian Gallery

Christies

Théophile “Théo” van Rysselberghe Part 1.

The artist I am looking at today is Théophile “Théo” van Rysselberghe a Belgian neo-impressionist painter, who was a major protagonist in the European art scene at the turn of the twentieth century.

Self-portrait in a Green Waistcoat (1924)

Théo was born in Ghent on November 23rd 1862, the youngest child of Jean-Baptiste and Melanie van Rysselberghe and had five bothers and a sister. He was brought up in a French-speaking middle-class home. His first art training occurred when he attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent studying under the Belgian painter, Theo Canneel.

Oriental Beauty by Jean-François Portaels

In 1879 he enrolled at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels under the directorship of Jean-François Portaels, a Belgian painter of genre scenes, biblical stories, landscapes, portraits and orientalist subjects. Portaels is regarded as the founder of the Belgian Orientalist school and his North African paintings had started an orientalist fashion in Belgium. This aspect of Portaels’ work had a great influence on the young Théo van Rysselberghe, so much so that he made three extended painting trips to Morocco between 1882 and 1888.

Self-portrait with Pipe by Théophile “Théo” van Rysselberghe (1880)

In 1880, when Theo was eighteen years of age he submitted and had accepted two portraits to the Salon of Ghent and that year completed a self-portrait entitled Self Portrait with Pipe. In 1881, he exhibited for the first time at the Salon in Brussels.

Portrait of a Young Spanish Woman by Théophile “Théo” van Rysselberghe

Spanish Woman by Théophile “Théo” van Rysselberghe (1880)

In 1881 Theo made his first trip to Spain and Morocco, along with his friend Frantz Charlet, a Belgian painter, etcher, and lithographer and the Asturian painter Darío de Regoyos. It was Theo’s intention to follow in the footsteps of his mentor, Jean-François Portaels.

Descent from the Cross by Pedro Campaña (1547)

Whilst in Madrid he visited the Museo del Prado and later the trio visited Seville where Théo met Constantin Meunier, who had been commissioned by the Belgian government to copy Pedro Campaña’s Descent from the Cross which was mounted on the back wal of the Sacristia Mayor of Seville Cathedral.

Dario de Regoyos playing the guitar by Théo Van Rysselberghe (1882)

During Théo’s stay in Spain he made time to complete a portrait of his fellow traveller, Darío de Regoyos, playing his guitar.

Arabian Street Cobbler by Théo Van Rysselberghe

Moroccan Market by Théo Van Rysselberghe (1883)

Théo arrived in Tangier at the end of October 1882 and suddenly he realised that he had entered a “new” world, so different from the Europe he had come from. He stayed in the town for four months continually sketching and painting street scenes, the kasbah and the souk.

The Oyster Eater by James Ensor (1883)

In April 1883 he exhibited these scenes of everyday Mediterranean life at the Salon L’Essor, in Brussels. L’Essor was an association of visual artists in Brussels, which was active from 1876 to 1891. Its original aim was to rebel against the conservative tendencies of the art institutions and art circles in Brussels. However in 1883 some of the artists of this group were dissatisfied with the ruling body of the group with regards its admission policy, lack of direction and their controversial decision to reject Belgian Expressionist painter James Ensor’s The Oyster Eater in the 1883 L’Essor Salon. However, it has to be remembered that the previous year the Antwerp Salon jurists had rejected the same painting. It is thought that the rejection was because of the sexual overtones suggested by a single young woman eating oysters, which at the time was considered to be an aphrodisiac.

Portraits of or work by the 11 original founders of Les XX. Upper register, left to right: Darío de Regoyos y Valdés, Guillaume van Strydonck, Théo van Rysselberghe, Fernand Khnopff and a portrait of Willy Finch by Magnus Enckell. Bottom, left to right: La donna morta by Willy Schlobach, Rodolphe Wytsman, Le viatique qui passa (1884) by Charles Goethals, a medal made by Paul Du Bois, and a painting by Frantz Charlet. Right, larger image: James Ensor.

Portrait of Octave Maus by Théo Van Rysselberghe

Portrait of Octave Maus by Théo Van Rysselberghe (1885)

Van Rysselberghe and James Ensor were two of the eleven artists who left L’Essor and became founding members of the breakaway group, Les XX. Les XX became a group of twenty Belgian painters, designers and sculptors, formed by the Brussels lawyer, publisher, and entrepreneur Octave Maus, who, with his wife, featured in a number of van Rysselberghe’s portraits between 1883 and 1890, Each year twenty other international artists were also invited to participate in the Les XX exhibitions. Among the most notable members were James Ensor, Willy Finch, Fernand Khnopff, Félicien Rops, and later Auguste Rodin and Paul Signac.

Emile Verhaeren by Théo Van Rysselberghe

Emile Verhaeren by Théo Van Rysselberghe ((1892)

Rysselberghe completed many portraits and it was around 1882 that he struck up a close friendship with the poet and art critic Emile Verhaeren who featured in many of Théo’s portrait works. The lower work was viewed as a masterpiece of Neo-Impressionist drawing and aroused the passions of true connoisseurs. The sketch sold for 150,000 euros in 2006, it was offered at the same auction house, Christie’s Paris, on 21 October 2023 with an astonishing estimate of 60-80,000 euros. After a fierce bidding war, it sold for €240,000. This works out at €302,000, with the buyer paying the substantial sales costs.

Portrait of Marguerite van Mons by Théo Van Rysselberghe (1886)

Another of Rysselberge’s portraits featured the daughters of his friend Emile van Mons, a lawyer and well-known art lover. The June 1886 Portrait of Marguerite van Mons features ten-year-old Marguerite shortly after the death of her mother. She stands facing us wearing a simple black dress in front of a pastel blue door on which are a number of gilded ornaments. Her right hand holds the doorknob as if she had just entered or was about to leave the room. There is an air of mystery and melancholia about the depiction as the pale-faced girl stares absently out at us

Portrait of Camille van Mons by Théo Van Rysselberghe (1886)

Months earlier van Rysselberghe had completed a portrait of Marguerite’s elder sister, Camille.

……. to be continued

.

Most of this information for this blog came from various Wikipedia sites.

New Hope Artists. Part 3.

Part 3. Daniel Garber

The third artist who was involved in the early days of the New Hope Artists Colony was Daniel Garber.  He has been looked upon as being one of the three most important painters of that group

Daniel Garber

Daniel Garber was born on April 11th, 1880, in North Manchester, Indiana. He was the son of Daniel Garber and Elizabeth Garber (née Blickenstaff). Daniel always had a love of art and the belief he could some day become a professional artist.  In 1897, when he was sixteen years old he enrolled at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.  In that same year he moved to Philadelphia and in 1899 he became a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts on a six year course.  His instructors at the Academy included Thomas Anshutz, William Merritt Chase, and Cecilia Beaux.  During the summers of 1899 and 1900 he also registered to take summer school classes in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, at the Darby School of Painting, where he studied under Hugh Breckenridge, an artist and educator who championed the artistic movements from impressionism to modernism and Thomas Anshutz, an artist known for his portraiture and genre scenes, and who, along with Breckenridge, was a co-founder of The Darby School. This summer art school flourished first in Darby, PA, and then in Fort Washington, PA, between 1898 and 1918.  Anshutz and Breckenridge brought a lot of new ideas about painting back to Philadelphia after their European stays, and introduced those ideas to a public that was initially not very responsive to Impressionism, 

Lambertville Beach by Daniel Garber

During his time as a student at the Pennsylvania Academy, Daniel Garber met fellow artist Mary Ethel Franklin while she was posing as a model for the portrait class of Hugh Breckenridge. Peviously, she had been a student of Howard Pyle when he taught at the Drexel Institute. Following on from a two-year courtship, Garber and Mary were married on June 21st, 1901.

Battersea Bridge by Daniel Garber (1905)

Whilst still studying at the Academy, Daniel opened a studio in Philadelphia in 1901 and set to work as a portraitist and commercial artist. In May 1905, he won a Pennsylvania Academy award, The William Emlen Cresson Traveling Scholarship, which financed him to go to Italy, England and France for two years of independent studies. During his two-year sojourn in Europe he was continually creating paintings which depicted different rural villages and farm scenes and built up a collection of Impressionist landscapes some of which were exhibited at the Paris Salon. One such work was entitled Battersa Bridge.

Painting of Daniel Garber’s home, Cuttalossa, by J.C.Turner

Upon his return to America in 1907, Garber began teaching life and antique drawing classes at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. That summer, Garber, his wife and baby Tanis settled in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, a small town just north of New Hope. Their new summer home came to be known as Cuttalossa, named after the creek which occupied part of the land. The family spent part of their time in Lumberville and part in Philadelphia at their Green Street townhouse which he used as a base when he was teaching.

Rural Landscape by Daniel Garber

Up the River, Winter by Daniel Garber (1917)

Daniel submitted many of his Pennsylvania landscapes at various exhibitions and received numerous prestigious awards for these works.

Garber teaching at Chester Springs, c. 1935. Image courtesy of the Garber family.

In Autumn 1909, Garber was offered a position at the Pennsylvania Academy as an assistant to Thomas Anshutz. Garber accepted and became an notable instructor of art at the Academy where he taught for the next 41 years. As a lecturer in art, Garber aroused in his students an anxious silence as he passed among them, correcting the mistakes in their work. The brusque severity of his remarks often had his students, especially the women, in tears. He commented to one female student whilst critiquing her artwork:

“…Can you cook?……You sure can’t draw, so you’d better learn how to cook…”

Garber’s students, albeit often fearing his harsh critiques, respected his honest comments, realising the value of his observations and understanding the high expectations and dedicated concern underlying them.

The Valley – Tohickon by Daniel Garber (1914)

Daniel Garber painted consummate landscapes depicting the Pennsylvania and New Jersey countryside which surrounded New Hope. In contrast to fellow New Hope artist, Edward Redfield, Garber delicately painted using a thin paint application technique. His paintings exude both beautiful colour and light, which generate a sensation of endless depth. Garber like Redfield painted large exhibition size works with the intention of submitting them to exhibitions and winning prizes which they were both extremely successful doing so.

Garden Window, an etching and drypoint on paper by Daniel Garber (1946).

Although, he completed many small delicate paintings he was a fine draftsman, and completed many works on paper, mostly in charcoal but also a few works in pastel. Daniel Garber was also a talented etcher completing a series of about fifty different scenes, most of which run in editions of fifty or fewer etchings per plate.

Stockton Church etching by Daniel Garber (1941)

Daniel Garber loved to sketch. In fact the first jobs he held during his teenage years honed his skills as a draftsman. After working at the Franklin Engraving Company, Daniel Garber illustrated books and magazines, one of which was the collected works of Theodore Roosevelt. In 1917, he went back to his first love, drawing, this time as a printmaker. There was financial sense for Garber in making prints as by doing so he widened his exposure as an artist, exhibiting his work at print venues as well as the usual gallery outlets. He held many one-man exhibitions of his drawings, etchings, and prints and this meant an expansion to his market.

Tanis Garber by Daniel Garber (1914)

Daniel and Mary Garber’s first child Tanis had been born in Paris on December 16th 1906 and when she was seven years old her father completed her portrait. The portrait is part of the National Gallery, Washington’s collection.

Tanis by Daniel Garber (1915) From the Warner Collection of the Westervelt Warner Company, displayed in the Westervelt Warner Museum of American Art, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

In this depiction (above) of his daughter Tanis he portrays her as if standing in a doorway of his studio at their home, Cuttalossa. In this work Garber began to explore the passage of light through air and objects. Although this might look like an Impressionist-style work, it is not about capturing fleeting light effects or impressions. In fact, Garber said that the painting was worked on over all of the summer months of 1915, with himt apparently returning to the work when his general light effects could be recreated. What Garber had in mind was his desire to simply achieve a Golden Age depiction of childhood; an eternal idealized image, rather than a momentary real one.

The Boys by Daniel Garber (1915) Depicting three of Garber’s students at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, this oil was created in his studio at Cuttalossa

Garber’s second child, John Franklin Garber was born in Pennsylvania on September 25th 1910, three years after his parents had returned to America from France. He grew up on the Garber property Cuttalossa, near Lumberville and he, like his sister Tanis and his mother, posed for many of Garber’s figurative paintings. He attended Penn Charter School and graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from Lehigh University in 1933. John Garber became a keen sponsor and advocate of his father’s work, assisting and corresponding with museums, private collectors, dealers and writers

Geddes Run by Daniel Garber (1930)

Daniel Garber’s works were exhibited nationwide and many earned awards, including a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915 in San Francisco, California. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Design in 1913.

Buds and Blossoms by Daniel Garber (1916)

Daniel Garber died, aged 78, on July 5th, 1958, after falling from a ladder at his studio.

He continued to paint until nearly the end of his life and produced over 2,500 objects which were shown at over 750 exhibitions during the course of his lifetime. It had always been his desire to create and to share his art with the public. This interest in art and educating was also apparent by his forty-one years at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he taught from 1909 until 1950, where he offered up his knowledge of art and was able to influence succeeding generations of artists. Garber’s paintings today are considered by collectors and art historians to be among the finest works produced from the New Hope art colony. His paintings can be seen in many major museums including the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, the Art Institute of Chicago and Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Was he the greatest of the New Hope painters ? I will let you decide.

Information for this blogs was obtained from a number of sources including:

Incollect

New Hope Colony Foundation of the Arts

Michener Art Museum

Jims at Lambertville

Maria Elisabeth Georgina “Lizzie” Ansingh

Lizzie Ansingh

My featured artist today is a Dutch lady who became a great portrait painter but may be best remembered for another type of art which I will tell you about later.

Portrait of Lizzie Ansingh by Thérèse Schwartze (1895)

Maria Elisabeth Georgina Ansingh, better known as simply Lizzie Ansingh, was born on March 13th 1875 in the Dutch town of Utrecht. She was the eldest of three daughters of the pharmacist and amateur painter, Edzard Willem Ansingh and Clara Theresia Schwartze.

Johann Georg Schwartze self portrait (1869)

Her maternal grandfather was Johann Georg Schwartze a painter from Northern Netherlands who grew up in America and her aunt who was the portrait painter Thérèse Schwartze, and it was she who gave Lizzie her first drawing lessons. For many years during her childhood, due to her mother’s poor health, Lizzy lived with her aunt Thérèse and it was this aunt who encouraged her to paint and as French impressionism was the rage around that time, Thérèse introduced Lizzy to all sorts of impressionist painters of the time. Both of them also visited many museums and art exhibitions together, which further helped Lizzy gain a perspective on art.

Theresia Ansingh by Thérèse Schwartze

Lizzie’s youngest sister Theresia Ansingh was also a painter but did not take up art, using the non-de-plume Sorella, (meaning “sister”), until she was approaching the age of 50.

Housemates by Thérèse Schwartze (c.1919)

Around 1915, Thérèse Schwartze completed a group portrait of those living together in the Ansingh/Schwartze household. The setting is a room in their house in which a table is the only furniture on show. There are five people around the table. Sitting, with her hands on her lap, is Thérèse Schwartze’s sister the sculptor, Georgine Elisabeth Schwartze. Standing at the back, dressed in black with her hands crossed, is Lizzie Ansingh’s mother, Clara Theresia Ansingh-Schwartze. In the centre, seated at the table with an open book resting on two other books is Anton Gillis Cornelis van Duyl, the journalist and editor-in-chief of the Algemeen Handelsblad, the husband of Thérèse Schwartze. On the right of the group is Lizzie’s sister Thérèse Ansingh and on the far right, standing, leaning against her sister, Maria Elisabeth Georgina (‘Lizzy’) Ansingh.

Kunstenaars or Amsterdamse Joffers: Ritsema, Surie, Osieck, Ansingh, Van den Berg, Van Regteren-Altena en Bodenheim.

In 1894, when Lizzie was nineteen years old she enrolled at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (State Academy of Fine Arts) and studied Fine Art in a separate class for female students and this helped her to further develop her artistic skills. At the Academy, she also learned about human anatomy by studying Greek and Roman statues. Whilst studying at the Academy she and a number of fellow students, Marie van Regteren Altena, Suze Bisschop-Robertson, Coba Ritsema, Ans van den Berg, Jacoba Surie, Nelly Bodenheim, Betsy Westendorp-Osieck and Jo Bauer-Stumpff, formed a group in Amsterdam called Amsterdamse Joffers. This was a group of like-minded young Dutch female painters who would meet up regularly and share their artwork and more importantly support each other on their artistic journey. Many came from wealthy and artistic families and did not depend on painting for their livelihoods. Thérèse Schwartze would often act as a mentor/facilitator at their meetings. It became a major movement in Amsterdam and opened ways for many female painters to pursue art as a full-time profession. Lizzy Ansingh joined many other art associations such as Arti et Amicitiae, kunstvereniging Sint Lucas and Pulchri Studio. Lizzy Ansingh graduated from the art academy in 1897 and by this time Thérèse Schwartze had persuaded Lizzie to make painting a full-time career. This is what she actually did.

The Source of Life by Lizzie Ansingh

As I alluded to at the start of this blog, although Lizzy Ansingh, like her aunt, painted portraits, she will be remembered for being a painter of dolls. Thérèse Schwartze, her aunt encouraged this unusual interest. Lizzy purchased an antique dollhouse from 1740s and would spend hours arranging her dolls looking for inspiration for her paintings and would often buy pieces for furnishing the dollhouse.

Flora by Lizzy Ansingh

Sadly, on the night of April 17th 1943, Lizzy’s Amsterdam studio, along with the doll-house, was severely damaged when a British bomber was shot down, destroying the Carlton Hotel and much of the Reguliersdwarsstraat alongside her studio. The fire which followed was the most devastating in Amsterdam since 1659. Fortunately Lizzie restored the dollhouse and is now part of the Museum Arnhem collection.

Child on a Carp by Lizzie Ansingh

A Doll wearing a Mantilla by Lizzie Ansingh

Lizzie wrote two children’s books, A Little Fruit Basket in 1927 and Aunt Tor has Her Birthday in 1950. She also collaborated with illustrator, Nelly Bodenhein, and published a booklet of illustrations with lines of verse. Her poetry was published in the literary magazine Maatstaf from 1956 to 1957.

Lizzy Ansingh on the occasion of her 80th birthday (13 March 1955) in her Amsterdam studio on Prinsengracht. Photo Ben van Meerendonk / AHF, IISH Collection, Amsterdam

Lizzie Ansingh never married. She died in Amsterdam on December 14th 1959 aged 84.

Information for this blog came from a number of sources including:

Art Now and Then

The Famous People

Arnhem aan Zee – The Doll World of Lizzie Ansing

Jacob Ochtervelt and his Voorhuis Paintings

For many of my blogs recently, I have concentrated on nineteenth century artists as this is one of my favourite artistic era but I have always been fascinated by the artists who flourished during the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history which lasted from 1588, when the Dutch Republic was established until 1672, when the Rampjaar occurred. The Rampjaar, or Disaster Year, was the year of the outbreak of the Franco-Dutch War, when France invaded and nearly overran the Dutch Republic. It was the time of its peripheral conflict, the Third Anglo-Dutch War, and at the same time, it faced the threat of an English naval blockade in support of the French.

Portrait of a Family by Jacob Ochtervelt (1663)

The seventeenth century was a torrid time for the people of the Netherlands who had had to endure war with the old Spanish monarchist with their Catholic cultural traditions. It meant that Dutch art had to reinvent itself almost entirely, a task in which it was very largely successful. The painting of religious subjects of earlier days declined and a large prosperous new market for all kinds of secular subjects evolved. It was an era that saw genre paintings dominated by the likes of Vermeer, Gabriel Metsu, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael and Jan Steen to mention but a few.

A Singing Violinist set within a niche (thought to be a self-portrait) by Jacob Ochtervelt (c.1670)

Today, my featured artist was a contemporary of these great Dutch painters who was also active during this period but was less well known. He is Jacob Ochtervelt, a Dutch Golden Age painter who was born in Rotterdam in late January 1634. He was the son and third child of of Lucas Hendricksz, who was employed as a bridgeman of the Roode Brugge, and Trintje Jans. He studied painting and lived in Haarlem from 1646 to 1655 apprenticed to the landscape painter Nicolaes Berchem along with fellow apprentice Pieter de Hooch, who became famous for his genre works of quiet domestic scenes and known for his kamergezichten or “room-views” with ladies and gentlemen in conversation. Ochtervelt moved back to Rotterdam in 1655 where he was a pupil of Ludolf de Jongh, who also taught Pieter de Hooch.

The Music Lesson by Jacob Ochtervelt (1670)

Jacob Ochtervelt married Dirkje Meesters in the Reformed Church of Rotterdam on December 14th 1655. Due to the lack of baptismal records of the church, it is thought that the couple apparently had no children. On January 7th 1657 the following year, however, on January 7, 1666, Ochtervelt was appointed one of two guardians of the orphaned children of his brother Jan. It was thought that Jan may have been a sailor; and according to records, he had died on a return voyage from the East Indies.

Singing Violinist by Jacob Ochtervelt (c.1666)

Ochtervelt depicted scenes which centred on the pleasures of the aristocratic life and leisure—men and women were portrayed reading and writing letters, eating and drinking, making music, and playing games. However, he also depicted the “them and us” perspective with his paintings focusing on the interactions between the upper and lower classes, and the setting for these works was often the threshold of an elegant townhouse. These were known as Voorhuis painting. Voorhuis, which translated means entrance hall or foyer and these paintings were a popular Dutch painting genre of the 17th century, which depicted a view from inside a wealthy house with affluent residents standing in the entrance hall and their interaction with the callers to the house. The foyer is lit up from the light emanating through the open front door bathing the area in light and colour. Ochtervelt was a master of this genre and compassionately depicted the people from the differing social classes.

A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foye by Jacob Ochtervelt (1663)

An example of Ochtervelt’s Voorhuis paintings was his 1663 work entitled A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyer, which is in the National Gallery of London collection. It is a depiction of a young boy presumed to be about three years old. He wears his hair in long curls and is dressed in a freshly ironed white dress. It was common for boys until the age of around seven before they started wearing breeches. The young boys hand is outstretched offering money to a family of beggars who have called at his home. The housemaid gently holds her charge’s hand while in the background we see the child’s parents looking on through the open doorway. They beam with pride at their son’s generosity, something they have instilled in him, a virtue taught in the home and of great importance to the Dutch. Outside we see a beggar boy as he sets his foot gingerly on the hall floor as he waits to receive a coin. His mother holds a nursing infant to her breast as she covertly observes her son receiving the money. Ochtervelt skilfully contrasts the two classes of people, the privileged world of the aristocratic family with the insecurities of the life of the poor. He has achieved that by differentiating the dark, ragged clothing of the beggars with the grand marble hallway and the radiant attire of those who live in the impressive townhouse.

Street Musicians at the Door by Jacob Ochtervelt (1665)

A similar depiction can be seen in Ochtervelt’s 1665 painting entitled Street Musicians at the Door which can be seen at the St Louis Art Museum. The setting is similar to the previous painting – the foyer of an upper-class Dutch home. In the mid-ground we see the lady of the house and to the right, the housemaid wearing her pinafore holding the hand of a very young, very excited child dressed in a blue gown as she opens the front door of the house. On the outside we see two dishevelled street musicians who are going from house to house trying to elicit money and who would play some music once they had been paid. There is a moral to this depiction. It is about the child’s mother teaching her child to give coins to the hard working musicians. There is an obvious contrast between the wealthy occupants of the house who are dressed in bright reds and blues, and the musicians, standing outside, begging for money, dressed in shades of murky brown. Through the open doorway we get a perspective view of city buildings culminating in a church.

Bettelmusikanten (Begging Musicians) by Jacob Ochtervelt (c.1665)

A very similar scenario can be seen in Ochtervelt’s painting entitled Bettelmusikanten, which translated means “Begging Musicians”. The setting is once again the entrance area or foyer of a wealthy home. To the left stands a young woman and through the open front door we look into the nighttime darkness and see two musicians who have been going from house to house begging for money as recompense for playing a tune. They are about to enter the voorhuis with its marble-tiled hallway. The woman is holding on to a toddler with both hands who in turn is unaware of the musicians at the door but is concentrating all his efforts on attracting the dog’s attention by waving the yellow ribbons of his dress. Another child on the right bedecked in red satin dress with an expensive lace collar looks mesmerised by the sight of the musicians in the doorway and is already proffering money to recompense the musicians for their tunes.

The Regents of the Leper House, by Jacob Ochtervelt (1674)

The last record of Ochtervelt living in Rotterdam was in 1672, the Ramplaar year. He and his wife were recorded on July 10th 1672 as being a witness at the baptism of the daughter of Jan Meesters and Marya de Jong in a Rotterdam church. There is clear evidence that Ochtervelt and his wife moved to Amsterdam where he was to spend the remainder of his life. It is generally thought that the reason for the move was that Ochtervelt believed that he would find more patrons and receive more lucrative commissions in Amsterdam. Soon he was proved right when in that year he received his largest commission: a group portrait of the Regents of the Amsterdam Leper House. The painting which is now on loan to the Rijksmuseum from the City of Amsterdam. The painting depicts the four regents of the Leprozenhuis, Anthonie de Haes, Gilles Hens, dr. Bonavendura van Dortmont and Isaac Hudde.

Lazarus and the Dog

It is thought that the original painting was slightly larger than this version judged by the way the depiction of the dog in the foreground is almost cut off. On the wall in the background is painted Apollo, and to the right above the door is the Poor Lazarus, just like the lepers “full of ulcers”, whose wounds are licked by a dog as told in the Bible (Luke 16: 19-21):

“…There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores…”

An Interior with a Lady giving Alms to Beggars by Jacob Ochtervelt

Documents from the Burial Register of the Nieuwezijds Chapel in Amsterdam show that Jacob Ochtervelt died in April 1682, aged 58 and his name was entered in the Burial Register of the Nieuwezijds Chapel in Amsterdam on May 1, 1682 which stated that at the time of his death he had been living at the Schapenmarkt near the Amsterdam Mint.
His wife Dirkje was not left a wealthy widow and following her husband’s death she moved back to Rotterdam and died in February 1710 and was buried at the Dutch Reformed Church of Rotterdam.

Information for this blog came mainly from the following websites:

The Ochtervelt Documents by Susan Donahue Kuretsky In the Oud Holland, Journal

Johnny van Haeften website

The Leiden Collection