Art Blog – Page 41 – my daily art display

Jean-Marc Nattier

The career you decide on as a teenager is often a logical follow-on from what one or both your parents did or what they were interested in. There are cases when parents are disappointed that their children don’t follow their career footsteps, no matter how much they try to cajole them. Musicians beget musicians, lawyers, beget lawyers and of course artists beget artists. The father, mother and godfather of the painter featured in my blog today were all artists and so one should not be surprised to find that their sons became interested in all things artistic. Of course to be interested in art and be good at art are two completely different things but my featured painter today was one of France’s most talented 18^th century historical painter and portraitist. He was Jean-Marc Nattier.

Nattier was born in Paris in March 1685. He was the second son of Marc Nattier a portrait painter and Marie Nattier (née Courtois) who was a miniaturist. His father and his godfather were his first art tutors. His godfather was Jean Jouvenet, a history painter, who specialised in religious scenes. When he was fifteen years of age his father arranged for him to enrol in the drawing classes at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture of Paris and soon the establishment recognised the artistic talent of Jean-Marc for in 1700 he was awarded the Premier Prix de Dessin.

The Wedding by Proxy of Marie de' Medici to King Henry IV by Rubens (1622-1625) Part of the Marie de' Medici cycle — The Wedding by Proxy of Marie de’ Medici to King Henry IV by Rubens (1622-1625)
Part of the Marie de’ Medici cycle

Nattier’s father had a royal licence to reproduce Rubens’s famous cycle of paintings known as the History of Marie de’ Medici, which was, at that time, housed in the Le Galerie du Palais du Luxembourg, Paris. It is now housed in the Louvre. Before he died, he arranged for the licence to be taken over by Jean-Marc and his brother, another artist, Jean-Baptiste Nattier. Nattier and his brother spent much time making drawings of this cycle of paintings. The cycle consisted of twenty four monumental allegorical paintings of the French dowager Queen by the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens who began painting them in 1622 and which took him two years to complete. It was a set of narrative paintings, commissioned by Maria de’ Medici, the widow of Henry IV of France, who, on her husband’s death, took control of the country until their thirteen year old son Louis XIII reached the age of thirteen. Twenty-one of these works tell the story of her life, her struggles and triumphs as a widow, mother and ruler. The other three paintings were portraits of her and her parents, Francesco I de’ Medici the Grand Duke of Tuscany and Joanna, Archduchess of Austria. It was presumably in her mind that such a set of paintings about her would immortalize her in French history. Jean-MarcNattier, over time, made a series of drawings of this cycle of paintings which were turned into engravings by the leading engravers of the time. The drawings appeared in 1710 under the title La Galerie du Palais du Luxembourg and proved extremely popular. Jean-Marc Nattier’s artistic ability was now recognised.

Portrait of Tsar Peter by Jean-Marc Nattier (1717)

Through the good auspices of his uncle, Jean Jouvenet, Jean-Marc Nattier was offered the chance to visit Rome and study at the prestigious Académie de France à Rome. Unlike his elder brother, John-Baptiste, however, he declined the offer and instead of heading to Italy, remained in Paris to further his career.

Catherine I of Russia by Jean-Marc Nattier (1717)

In 1717, Nattier, at the age of thirty-two, travelled to Amsterdam where he was commissioned to paint portraits of the visiting Russian Tsar, Peter the Great and his second wife, the Tsarina, Catherine. Both portraits are housed at the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

Battle of Poltava by Jean-Marc Nattier (1717)

The Tsar, obviously pleased with the portraits then commissioned Nattier to produce two historical paintings depicting the 1709 Battle of Poltava and the 1708 Battle of Lesnaya, two of the major conflicts between Russia and Sweden in the Great Northern War which he completed in 1717.

The Tsar was delighted with the history paintings and invited him to come to Russia and work at the Russian court but the Frenchman declined the offer and returned to the French capital. Nattier remained in Paris for the rest of his life .

Perseus Petrifies Phineas and his Companions with the head of Medusa by Jean-Marc Nattier (1718)

Nattier’s work between 1715 and 1720 focused on historical paintings such as his Great Northern War paintings (above) and he was received into the Académie Royale as a history painter on the strength of these works and in particular one he completed in 1718 entitled Perseus Petrifies Phineas and his Companions with the head of Medusa. The painting is based on Book V of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which tells the tale of Andromeda, who was betrothed to her uncle, Phineas, until Perseus rescued her from the sea monster, Cetus, and in return for saving her life she agreed to marry him instead. At their wedding celebrations Phineas and his followers burst in and attacked Perseus and the wedding guests. Andromeda came to his aid but he was heavily outnumbered. Perseus then unveils his ultimate weapon, the severed head of the gorgon, Medusa, that petrifies all those who look at it. Perseus thus transforms all his attackers into statues and utters the words to Phineas:

“…You shall not suffer by the sword. Rather I will cause you to be an enduring monument through the ages and you will always be seen in my father-in-laws palace, so that my wife may find solace in the statue of her intended…”

Phineas tried to avert his eyes but it was too late. His neck hardened, the tears on his cheek were turned to stone and he was turned into marble. In Nattier’s painting we see the intruders on the left already turned to stone whilst those in the right foreground try to avert their eyes from the Medusa’s severed head which is being held aloft by Perseus. Throughout the painting we see the bright flashes of highly polished armour. There are also the gleaming silver salvers and decorative pitchers which lie on the floor in the foreground that were being used for the wedding feast. These random reflections catch our eye and have our gaze dart around the painting. This attention-dispersing effect is known as the papillotage.

Nattier’s was forced to move from historical paintings to the more lucrative genre of portraiture around 1720 when he, and numerous French citizens, lost most of their money they had invested in the government’s Mississippi Company, set up by Louis XIV’s financial adviser, the Scotsman, John Law. The collapse of the company became known as the Mississippi Bubble. Nattier was in a state of financial ruin and urgently needed to recoup his lost money and the most lucrative art genre was portraiture, although this form of art came low down in the academic hierarchy of genres. Artists of the time who made money from their portraiture were frowned upon by the art establishment who considered that the portraitists had lost all artistic credibility. Nattier was loathed to give up on his favoured genre of history painting, which he knew the art academies of 17th century Europe considered the highest intellectual achievement for an artist. He was extremely unhappy that he was about to sell his soul for the financial gain of portraiture but “needs must”. However to retain some artistic credibility he decided that his portraiture would revive the genre of allegorical portraiture and by depicting his sitters as characters from Greek and Roman mythology, history or biblical tales then he was not completely abandoning history painting. Initially his portraiture clientele came from the Parisian bourgeoise but later in the 1730’s he began to work on portraits of the ladies of the Royal court and in the 1740’s he was commissioned to paint portraits of the Royal family of Louis XV.

Henriette of France as Flora by Jean-Marc Nattier (1742)

Females liked this type of portraiture as artists could then depict them in roles outside their normally constrained and often boring professions, and elevate their status to that of Goddesses. Nattier realised that with a little help from props and artificial settings the finished painting moved a tad closer to the much vaunted and more credible history painting genre. His finished works pleased the female courtiers as besides elevating them to the status of Goddesses he would cleverly beautify his sitters without losing their true likeness. Examples of this allegorical portraiture can be seen in his 1742 painting entitled Henriette of France as Flora. The painting had been commissioned by Henriette’s mother, Maria Leczinska, the wife of Louis XV. Nattier had transposed the princess into the mythological figure of the Roman goddess of flowers and the season of spring, Flora.

Marie Adelaide of France by Jean-Marc Nattier (1745)

Three years later in 1745 he completed another allegorical portrait for Maria Leczinska. This time it was a portrait of another of her daughters, Marie Adelaide, which was entitled Marie Adelaide of France as Diana. Diana was the Roman goddess of hunting and in the painting we see Marie Adelaide sitting on the ground, one hand wrapped around her bow whilst the other hand withdraws an arrow from its quiver. Both the paintings of Louis XV’s daughters can now be seen at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Portrait of Queen Marie Leszczyńska by Jean-Marc Nattier (1748)

In 1748 Nattier received a commission to paint Louis XV’s wife, Maria Leszczynska, who was the daughter of the former King of Poland. Louis and Maria’s marriage was an arranged one and fifteen year old Louis and twenty-one year old Maria met for the first time on the eve of their wedding. It started off as a very happy marriage and the couple went on to have ten children. There were complications with the birth of the last child, Princess Louise, in 1737 and from that time on the couples sex life was at an end and they slept in separate rooms. It was around this juncture in their married life that Louis began to have a series of love affairs including his famous one with Madame de Pompadour. The portrait by Nattier of the Queen was a change of portraiture style. This was not the usual allegorical portrait that he had been carrying out over the last twenty years, but a simple depiction of a forty-five year old married woman. Marie had asked that she be depicted in habit de ville (day dress). She wanted simplicity and that is exactly what Nattier gave her. We see her seated with her left hand on top of an open bible which makes us aware of her strong religious beliefs. She looks relaxed and at ease with herself. She was a homely-type of person and Nattier has depicted her just so. There is a natural quality about this work which must have pleased the queen.

Jean-Marc Nattier had married Marie-Madeleine de la Roche in 1724 and the couple went on to have four children, one of whom, Marie, married Louis Tocqué in 1747. Tocqué who was only ten years younger than his father-in-law and had at one time been a student of his and they were colleagues at the Académie Royale. Louis Tocqué and Jean-Marc Nattier were two of the most celebrated portraitists of the 18th century.

Self-Portrait with his Family, by Jean-Marc Nattier

Nattier completed a family portrait of himself, his wife and their four children which depicts them well dressed and quite affluent looking. The painting would have been from the 1730’s when Nattier had started to recover from his financial losses a decade before.

Jean-Marc Nattier’s health deteriorated in 1762 and he was forced to stop painting. The popularity of his work had started to wane in the last decade of his life and he died a poor man.

Jean-Marc Nattier died in Paris in November 1766, aged 81.

The Three Portraits of Ria Munk by Gustav Klimt

I suppose the most challenging and distressing period of one’s life is when somebody close to us, somebody we love, dies. It is both a traumatic and painful time when suddenly we feel the loss of someone we loved. Later, we want to cling to memories of the dead person. We want to remember them forever. We do not want to ever forget that person who had so touched our lives. How do we do that? Within days of our loved one dying, we are offered the chance to see the deceased one last time as they lay in rest in the funeral parlour. I have done that on a number of occasions and regretted it. I probably did it more out of duty than out of a desire to see the body of the dead person. The face of the deceased I looked down upon was not the way I wanted to remember them. It makes no difference how well the mortician has waved his or her magic wand over the deceased, the face of the person is pallid and lifeless and only our mental capacity and power of imagination can change that image. Ultimately, our fondest recollection of the deceased person is almost always through photographs, which sadly, like our recollections, fade over time. Even after photography became the medium of remembrance, a painting of a person acted as an aide-mémoire and in today’s blog I want to look at how one family wanted to remember their deceased daughter.

Ria Munck on her Deathbed by Gustave Klimt (1912) — Ria Munk on her Deathbed by Gustav Klimt (1912)

My blog today is about a mother’s love for her dead daughter and her desire to hold on to her memories of her beautiful girl through a posthumous painting. The mother in question was Aranka Pulitzer Munk. She was the niece of Joseph Pulitzer, the man who, through the provisions in his will, set up the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism. Aranka married Alexander Munk, a wealthy Polish industrialist in 1882 and the couple went on to have three daughters, Lili, Maria (Ria) and Lola. The daughter that is featured in today’s blog is the second-born girl, Ria, who was born in November 1887. Ria was an extremely beautiful young woman and in 1911, when she was twenty-four years old, she had become the lover of the forty-year old German poet and writer Hanns Heinz Ewers. This was never going to be a good match for Ewers reputation as a libertine was well known and wherever he went, scandals followed. However maybe it was this that drew Ria to the latter-day “bad boy” character. They eventually became betrothed and despite Ria entering this arrangement with a sizeable dowry, Ewers called it off. According to the book Gustave Klimt by Jane Rogoyska and Patrick Bade, Ewers wrote Ria a letter that December, in which he described her as “a hopeless romantic and out of touch with reality”. As one can imagine, Ria was devastated and could not come to terms with the break-up and at noon on December 28^th she took a gun and shot herself through the heart.

Whereas now, the tabloid papers would be full of the scandalous story of the suicide of the daughter of a wealthy family, the suicide of Ria Munk was of little import in the local press. On the contrary, Viennese society looked upon suicide following a broken relationship as almost the norm. There was even a sense of romanticism about it, similar to cases of death at the end of a duel which was fought over someone’s honour. The Viennese society seemed to be in awe of the pomp and ceremony of grand funeral processions which followed on from such deaths. The famous Austrian writer and journalist, Stefan Zweig summed it up in his 1943 autobiography, The World of Yesterday, when he wrote:

“…‘In Vienna, even funerals found enthusiastic audiences and it was the ambition of every true Viennese to have a lovely corpse, with a majestic procession and many followers; even his death converted the genuine Viennese into a spectacle for others. In this receptivity for all that was colourful festive and resounding, in this pleasure in the theatrical, whether it was on the stage or in reality, both as theatre and as a mirror of life, the whole city was at one…”

That may in the case but one can only imagine the devastation and heartbreak felt by her parents. Her mother, Aranka, decided that she wanted a posthumous portrait painted of her daughter. Aranka’s sister was Serena Lederer (neé Pulitzer) and she was one of Gustav Klimt’s main patrons and he had painted her portrait in 1899 and a portrait of her daughter, Portrait of Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt in 1916. Serena Lederer and her husband August had built up the largest collection of the Austrian artist’s works and so it was logical for Aranka to ask her sister to speak to Klimt about the portrait commission, Klimt was, at that time, the most sought after portraitist in Vienna. It was also around this time in Viennese society that the death-mask portrait and the death-bed portrait had grown to become in vogue with city’s privileged classes, and so following the tragedy of her daughter’s suicide, Aranka Munk decided that she would commission a death-bed portrait of her beloved Ria and arranged, through her sister, to have Klimt paint it.

Presumably with the help of photographs, Klimt completed the death-bed portrait of Ria Munk in 1912 and it was entitled Ria Munk am Totenbett (Ria Munk I), Ria Munk on her Deathbed (Ria Munk I). The background of the work is dark blue and is in stark contrast to the red carnations which form part of the garland of flowers, which frame Ria’s beautiful face. Looking at the work we see Ria lying peacefully with her head on a white pillow. Surrounding the pillow there are some white carnations. There is no indication that Ria has died a violent death. This painting is all about Ria’s beauty. Her chest is covered in orange, red and purple fabric, which hide from us the bullet wound. She is at peace. Klimt has painted her with pink cheeks. As yet her facial features have not begun to sink into her skull. Her mouth is partly open which make us think that she is just asleep. She is surrounded by flowers and many people draw a similarity to Klimt’s depiction of her and the depiction of the tragic heroine in John Everett Millais’ 1852 painting, Ophelia. It is a lovely portrait which exudes an aura of peace and serenity but there was also something about it that made her parents to reject it. Aranka Munk decided the work, although beautiful, was too death-like and too distressful to behold. Aranka then belatedly decided that she wanted the aide-mémoire of her daughter to be a painting of how she remembered her when she was alive. She wanted to evoke memories of her daughter’s vivaciousness and exuberance, rather than the peaceful but solemn one of Ria, depicted by Klimt as she lay on her death bed and so, according to Erich Lederer, Serena Lederer’s son, Klimt was again commissioned to paint a second portrait of Ria. In 1913, Aranka gave Klimt some more photographs of her daughter and asked him for another portrait, one that would encapsulate her beauty and her joie de vivre.

Die Tänzerin (Ria Munk II) by Gustave Klimt (1916) — Die Tänzerin (Ria Munk II) by Gustav Klimt (1916)

There are some questions about this second portrait that remain unanswered. The one fact we do know was whatever the artist gave Aranka, she rejected it. Why did she reject it? Was the painting above the one Klimt handed over to Aranka Munk? If we look at the painting which bears the title Ria Munk II, then it is not difficult to see why a mother would be horrified and subsequently reject such a semi-naked portrait of her late daughter. However we are not sure that the portrait we see before us was the painting Klimt gave her, in fact we can almost be certain that it was not. Would Klimt really believe that a grieving mother would welcome such a semi-nude depiction of her daughter? Although we have no way of knowing what Klimt’s second portrait of Ria Munk, which he gave to Aranka looked like, what we do know is that it was rejected by her. Another fact we know about this second commission from Ria’s mother was that Klimt struggled with it. We know this from a postcard he sent to his life-long friend, the Viennese fashion designer Emilie Flöge, in 1913. He wrote of his problem with the commission:

“…the Munk portrait… wouldn’t come together! Can’t make it a likeness!…”

Following Aranka’s rejection of the painting, Klimt took it back to his studio, and altered it. The altered and finished version is more erotic and depicts a bare-breasted portrait of a dancer. It is now beleived that the dancer could have been Johanna Jusl, who was not only a dancer with the Vienna Hofoper but was also one of Klimt’s models. His amended version, which we see above, depicts a lady, bare-breasted and exuding an overt sensuality, which one presumes would not have been present in the painting he offered Aranka Munk. She stands in a full-frontal pose but her head is coyly turned away. Her cheeks have a faint rose tinge to them. The elongated horizontal shape of her eyes gives her an oriental look. There is a delicate tinge of light blue on her face and neck which confers upon her a ghost-like appearance. Next to her is a table upon which there is a vase of poppies. Behind her, to the right, there is a vast floral display whilst in the left of the work we see oriental figures portrayed on a green background. Her highly colourful and garish patterned dress, which is open to her waist exposing her breasts, seems to become one with the background. Below the hem of the dress we catch sight of lace-edged black pantaloons below which we see her shapely white-stocking legs and high-heeled shoes with their decorative bows. There is a definite oriental-feel to this work and we know Klimt was fascinated by orientalism. In Frank Whitford’s 1990 book, Klimt, he tells the story of a young aspiring artist, Egon Schiele, visiting Klimt’s studio in the Vienna district of Heitzing and how Schiele describes the studio as being dominated by Far Eastern Art and artefacts as well as Japanese woodblock prints. Klimt had also a large collection of kimonos, a large red Japanese suit of armour and a number of exquisite Chinese costumes. So was Klimt’s love of orientalism unusual? In 1923, Anton Faistauer, a Viennese painter wrote a book entitled ‘Neue Malerei in Osterreich’ and in it he discussed Klimt and orientalism, he wrote:

“…for Europeans Klimt is an outsider… (and) it would be better not to compare him at all to western ways. He is incomprehensible to the West, to the French and Germans, and his art, for now, is rejected there… He is conceivable only in Vienna, better still in Budapest or Constantinople. His spirit is entirely oriental. Eroticism plays a dominant role in his art, and his taste for women is rather Turkish… He is inspired by the decorations of Persian vases and oriental carpets, and especially delights in the gold and silver of his canvases…”

The work, with the title Die Tänzerin (Ria Munk II) – The Dancer (Ria Munk II), the title originating from Erich Lederer, remained in Klimt’s studio and he never sold it. It is now part of the collection of the Neue Galerie in New York.

Frauenbildnis (Ria Munk III) by Gustave Klimt (1918) — Frauenbildnis (Ria Munk III) by Gustav Klimt (1918)

The third portrait of Ria Munk, entitled Frauenbildnis ( Ria Munk III), which Klimt began around 1917, was one of the largest and greatest full-length female portraits by him. It was, like a number of Klimt’s later works found in his studio, unfinished, when he died in February 1918. The woman in the painting, with her pink cheeks and dark eyes is standing sideways on but is turning to face us, the viewer. Unlike the previous portrait, there is demureness in the way she holds her robe closed. She seems totally at ease. There is an aura of self-confidence about the young lady. She proffers us a dreamy smile. There is no hint of seductiveness about her expression that we saw in the earlier portrait. As was the case in many of his earlier full length female portraits of women from Vienna’s high society such as Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer II (1912), Portrait of Eugenia (Mäda) Primavesi (c.1914) and Friedericke Maria Beer (1916), he once again morphs his subject into a highly colourful and decorative background. The background of this work consists of a multitude of flowers such as roses and tulips, floral patterns and oriental-looking designs. The painting is incomplete, especially with regards the dress and the foreground, which we see are just traces of the charcoal preliminary sketch.

Shortly after Klimt’s death, and because her daughter’s portrait had been commissioned by Aranka Munk, it was given to her. Aranka, who had divorced her husband in 1913, was now living in the summer at her lakeside villa at Bad Aussee in the Austrian state of Styria and it was here that she kept this third portrait of her daughter Ria. It remained there until 1941. Aranka, being Jewish, was then forced to sell part of the property to neighbours in 1941. The Gestapo later seized her remaining property, and her apartment in Vienna, in 1942. Aranka was deported to Lodz in German-occupied Poland in October 1941 and was put to death on November 26^th, a day before her 79^th birthday. Her daughter, Lola, was also sent to a concentration camp, at Chelmno, Poland, where she died in September 1942.

The year the villa and its contents were seized by the National Socialists, the Frauenbildnis ( Ria Munk III), portrait passed into the hands of the art collector and dealer William Gurlitt. In 1953 the Frauenbildnis painting was among a number of important paintings that Gurlitt sold to the Neue Galerie der Stadt Linz, which in 2003 became known as the Lentos Museum. The painting subsequently remained in the Lentos Museum, Linz until June 2009. It was then, after years of legal challenges that Linz city council finally voted to return the Klimt painting to its rightful owners and it was thus given up by the Lentos Museum to Aranka Munk’s descendents, who were living in Europe and America. The following year, June 2010, the descendents put the work in Christie’s London auction where it sold for £18.8 million.

Whilst I was working on this blog news broke out about a $1 billion art hoard discovery at a Munich apartment of an 80-year-old recluse, Cornelius Gurlitt.

Does the surname ring a bell ??????

Frederick McCubbin. Part 3 – The later years and The Pioneer

The Pioneer by Frederick McCubbin (1904)

In my last two blogs I have looked at the life of the Australian painter, Frederick McCubbin. I looked at how he started painting and how, in his twenties, he became an accomplished artist who had begun to exhibit some of his work. I talked about the influence some of his tutors had on his art, such as Eugène von Guérard, Thomas Clark and George Folingsby and how he had been influenced by his contemporary artistic friends, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Charles Conder. However in this third and final blog about McCubbin I want to introduce you to another person who was to have such a great sway on his life and inspire him to even greater things. The person in question was Annie Lucy Moriarty who he had met in 1884 at an artist’s picnic which was being held in Blackburn, an eastern suburb of Melbourne.

Annie Lucy Moriarty was ten years younger than McCubbin. She was born in August 1865 in Melbourne but came from an Irish family who had immigrated to Australia from County Clare. She was described as a striking young lady with long dark brown hair and soft smiling brown eyes. However it was not just her exquisite looks that attracted McCubbin. It was her intelligence, her vivaciousness and her “full of life” attitude which appealed to Frederick. She was always very supportive of Frederick. She was frugal and had a great organisational skill, all of which would be qualities needed to support her artist husband and their large family. Frederick and Annie courted for four years and at the end of their courtship, on March 5^th 1889, they were married in the Jesuit church of St Ignatius, Richmond, an inner suburb of Melbourne. McCubbin’s friend and fellow artist Tom Roberts was the couple’s best man. At the time of the wedding Frederick was thirty-four years old and Annie was twenty-four. The happy couple would, during the next seventeen years, go on to have seven children, four boys, Louis Frederick, Alexander, Hugh Montgomery and John (Sydney) and three girls, Mary, Nora Sheila and Kathleen. Mary sadly died a week before her third birthday when she fell out of her push chair and hit her head on the cobbled street. The first-born child, Louis, named after his father’s friend and fellow artist, Louis Abrahams, was born in March 1890 and became an artist in his own right and would later become Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia and their last-born child was Kathleen who arrived in November 1906 when her father had reached the grand-old age of 50. One can just imagine what a spirited household it was and an insight into the McCubbin happy family life was given by Frederick’s youngest daughter’s 1988 book Autumn Memories: A McCubbin Family Album, by Kathleen Mangan (née McCubbin). In it she wrote:

“…The McCubbins were a lively and ebullient family, each one of them with their own distinct characters. Louis, the eldest, was ‘conscientious and good natured’, ‘the most responsible member of the family’. Alexander was ‘emotional and creative’, with dark complexion and hair. Hugh was ‘practical and serious’, while Sydney was ‘an inventor, with a head full of crazy ideas, who liked to laugh a lot’ and was called ‘Ginger’ because of his hair. Sheila was ‘sensitive, creative and kind hearted, an artist who did not always defend herself against the harshness of the world…”

Frederick and Annie were extremely happy and this was commented on by his friend Arthur Stretton in a letter, dated December 1896, to Tom Roberts in which he recalls a visit he made to the McCubbin’s New Street house in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton:

“…I walked over to the Proff McCubbin’s yesterday & had tea with him in his garden—Mrs Proff in a harmonious yellow gown—all the little Proffs buzzing round—the garden of fruit trees & the haystack—The Prof[f] is a married man very happily & securely married…”

“The Proff” was the nickname Frederick McCubbin had been given by his friends during his student days at the School of Design, National Gallery of Victoria, because of his frequent bouts of philosophising, while Tom Roberts was nicknamed ‘Bulldog’.

On the Wallaby Track by Frederick McCubbin (1896)

Around this time McCubbin focused a lot of his work on people’s struggle for survival. His paintings were both narrative and social realism works, which told of the struggle new immigrants, had in order to gain a foothold in society.

Mother and Son - detail from On the Wallaby Track painting by McCubbin — Mother and Son – detail from On the Wallaby Track painting by McCubbin

One such painting was entitled On the Wallaby Track, which he completed in 1896. Around this period in the history of Melbourne there was the only too familiar story of “boom and bust”. By 1880 the population of the city was two hundred and eighty thousand. Because of the vastness of the wilderness around the city, it was continually expanding outwards which meant that the area of the city made it one of the largest in the world. Trains and trams criss-crossed the city. Everybody wanted to live in this prosperous area and within ten years the population had almost doubled. Speculators made their fortune on land deals and the banks were lending money out willy-nilly, some would say irresponsibly as if there was no tomorrow and as we have recently found to our own cost, the good life doesn’t last forever. The Melbourne “boom” had to end and indeed it did in 1891 when a dramatic financial crash hit the economy. Thousands of people who had invested unwisely lost their savings, businesses collapsed and throughout the 1890’s it was thought that the Melbourne unemployment was around 20%.

The title of the painting derives from the term “on the wallaby” or “on the wallaby track” which fifty years earlier, referred to routes migrant workers took through outlying areas in search of seasonal work. These were the underclass of society, who sought casual work on farms, travelling about on foot, carrying their swag, their bundle of personal belongings, on his back. These were the swagmen. When the financial crash hit Melbourne more and more people had lost their jobs and were searching for employment and it was not unusual to see the swagman “on the wallaby”. In this painting we see a swagman brewing some tea in a billy can over an open fire. His wife, with their baby, lies on the ground, propped up against a large tree. She is exhausted after the long journey during which she had the added burden of having to carry their baby.

The setting for the painting was the forest area close to the Melbourne suburb of Brighton where McCubbin and his family lived. Of all the artists McCubbin studied, his favoured landscape painter and the one who influenced him the most was the French artist, John-Baptiste Corot and it is believed that there are traces of the Frenchman’s style in this painting. Frederick’s wife, Annie, posed for the painting and the baby, who lies asleep across her legs, was Frederic’s son, John who had been born the same year as the painting was completed. The swagman was modelled by Frederick’s brother-in-law, Michael Moriarty.

Down on his luck by Frederick McCubbin (1889)

Another of McCubbin’s works I really like is one entitled Down on His Luck, which he completed in 1899. The setting for the work was their Box Hill Artist’s camp and in the work we see a very despondent, down-on-his-luck gold prospector sitting by his camp fire. McCubbin’s friend and fellow artist Louis Abrahams posed for the painting. The prospector sits on a fallen tree and stares into the fire. His search for gold had proved fruitless and he is ready to “throw in the towel”.

In Jane Clark and Bridget Whitelaw’s 1985 book Golden Summers: Heidelberg and Beyond they quote an 1889 review of this work in which the art critic had written about the character we see before us:

“…The face tells of hardships, keen and blighting in their influence, but there is a nonchalant and slightly cynical expression, which proclaims the absence of all self-pity…”

The National Gallery of Victoria in its description of the painting believed that the work was of great cultural importance and they wrote:

“… For city workers, living and working in crowded, dirty conditions, McCubbin’s image of the prospector offered an alternative to the oppressive poverty experienced in the slums of Melbourne. Although the bushman is ‘down on his luck’, he has a certain nobility. He is his own man, independent of the demands of a ‘boss’, he breathes the fresh air of the bush and is free to make his own decisions…”

The McCubbin family had moved about around the Melbourne suburbs. They started married life in a rented property in Hawthorn. As the family expanded there was a need to move to a larger house and so, at the end of 1893, with Annie pregnant for the fourth time, they moved to a larger rented place in Blackburn. Shortly after the tragic death of their daughter Mary, the family moved to an even larger property in Brighton. Annie McCubbin was taken ill with bronchitis in 1900 and this quickly deteriorated into pneumonia and it was on her doctor’s advice that Frederick, that summer, during the Christmas holiday break, took his wife and family away from the polluted atmosphere of Melbourne city life to a small town of Woodened, forty miles north west of Melbourne, where they rented a cottage for a few weeks. Here his wife was able to reap the benefit of the clearer, cleaner air of the Mount Macedon area.

One day, whilst the couple relaxed and explored the area near to the summit of Mount Macedon, they came across an idyllic old-fashioned cottage with its red gabled roof and attic windows, which at the time was known as “Dillon’s Summer Residence”. They fell in love with it and its four acres of land and before the end of 1901 they had bought it for five hundred pounds. For them, this was a dream come true and, from that day on, they lovingly referred to their first owned home as Fontainebleau. The one problem they had with this purchase was that it was too far for Frederick to commute by train on a daily basis to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, where he was Master of the School of Design, and so he spent weekends and holidays at Fontainebleau but during the week he went to live at The Rose of Australia hotel which was being managed by his mother and his two sisters Wilhelmina and Helen.

Above Fontainebleau in the bush land of Mount Macedon, there was the estate of Ard Choille, (Gaelic words meaning high wood), which was also the war cry of the 16^th century Clan McGregor. It was here that his neighbour William Peter McGregor had built his Ard Choille estate, which was laid out like one of the great estates of Scotland, with its man-made lakes trout amd salmon hatcheries. McGregor had raised deer, pigs and goats as well as importing the finest highland bulls from Scotland and to look after all this he had a number of cottages built for his workers. Frederick McCubbin loved the setting of his new home and the surrounding area and it was here in 1904, on the bush lands of Mount Macedon, just a little above his home that he produced one of his greatest works, The Pioneer. McCubbin painted the work en plein air. The setting for the work is a view of land, Ard Choille thatwas once owned by William Peter McGregor, who died in 1899.

Left-hand panel of The Pioneer by McCubbin

The man in the left hand panel of the work, presumably the husband of the lady in the foreground, is making some tea on the open fire. Behind him we see the covered wagon that the couple have travelled in during their search for their piece of land. The decision has now been made. This is their land. In the foreground, the wife sits on the ground. She is lost in thought. I wonder if she is contemplating their move. Has she some reservations about moving to this unconquered God-forsaken territory? Is she worried about the isolation? Frederick’s wife Annie, who was thirty-nine at the time, was the model for the wife in the painting and Patrick Watson, a local gardener was the model for the husband. The baby in the painting was Frederick and Annie’s fifth child John (Sydney) who had been born in June 1896, the year that the painting was completed.

In the middle panel of the triptych, the setting is still the forest area of the bush but instead of the covered wagon in the background we now have a small whitewash cottage with smoke emanating from the chimney. The scene is a step forward in time for the two intrepid colonists. They have staked their claim on the land and built themselves a cottage. The cottage in the painting was one which was actually on McCubbin’s neighbour’s property. It was the cottage which belonged to McGregor’s manager, who looked after the estate’s prize bulls. Although we have jumped ahead in time, the three characters we see in this middle panel are the same ones who featured in the left hand panel – the free selector, his wife and son. The free selectorin this painting was modelled by James Edward, a professional commercial artist, who was known to McCubbin. He is sitting on a tree, which he has just felled, and the area seems more open, highlighting the clearance work the free selector had accomplished. Annie McCubbin once again modelled for the free selector’s wife and as a sign of the passage of time, the baby we saw in the left hand panel has now grown to a young boy which we see her holding. The boy was modelled by Jimmy Watson, the nephew of Patrick Watson who posed for the husband in the left-hand panel. The wife in this middle section seems more relaxed and maybe all her worries she had when we saw her in the left–hand panel have now proved to be unfounded. There is a very relaxed and contented aura about the depiction seen in this middle panel. The couple had come to the bush, seen it and conquered it.

Right-hand panel of The Pioneer by McCubbin

The right hand panel of the triptych is more of a mystery. Time once gain has passed since the depiction in the middle panel. In this painting there is just a solitary figure kneeling before a wooden cross in the ground. Patrick Watson once again modelled for this figure. It seems as if he is touching it lovingly. McCubbin would never explain the meaning of this last panel so it is up to us to form our own ideas. Could it be the son we saw being cradled by his mother in the first two panels returning to his mother’s or father’s grave or it could it be earlier in time and it is the free selector we saw in the other panels come to pay his respects to his late wife. All we do know is that a lot of time has passed since the depiction in the middle panel for where there was once a solitary cottage in the background, there is now a vista of a city to be seen through the trees. The minute cityscape had not been in the original work when it was exhibited in his one-man show in 1904. The painting did not sell and McCubbin’s friend, Walter Withers suggested to McCubbin that if he painted a view of Melbourne in the background of the right-hand panel then it may find a buyer.

Melbourne - detail from McCubbin's painting The Pioneer — Melbourne – detail from McCubbin’s painting The Pioneer

McCubbin added the view of Melbourne and, sure enough, the painting sold. The buyer was the National Gallery of Victoria. The fascinating fact for me about this work is that to paint it outdoors, McCubbin had to dig a trench in his garden, into which he lowered the huge canvas.

In May 1907, a year after his last child, Kathleen, was born, McCubbin set off on a trip to England where it gave him a chance to be reunited with his brother James. James, who was a ship’s purser, was killed eight years later in May 1915 whilst serving on the passenger liner, S.S.Lusitania, when it was torpedoed by German U-Boats. Frederick also met up with his artist friend Tom Roberts who was based in London and the two of them toured the city’s art galleries. McCubbin was impressed with what he saw, especially the works of Turner which would influence his later works. He returned home in November. A month after returning to Melbourne, whilst still retaining their family home of Fontainebleau, he rented Carlesberg, a colonial-style house in South Yarra which had a vast garden which culminated at the banks of the Yarra River.

The lime tree (Yarra River from Kensington Road, South Yarra) by Frederick McCubbin (1917)

McCubbin continued to paint either at his home in South Yarra or at Fontainebleau as well as retaining his position as Drawing Master at Melbourne’s National Gallery. However at the end of 1916 his health began to fail, due to frequent asthmatic attacks and he had to take a six month leave of absence from the Gallery. This bout of ill health did not stop him painting and his last paintings which he completed in 1917 was The Lime Tree (Yarra River from Kensington Road, South Yarra). Kathleen McCubbin wrote about the painting and the setting for the work. She wrote:

“…I always remember the name of this work as The Lime Tree and it really has a lot of sentimental value for me because it was painted from the side verandah of our house in South Yarra, overlooking the quarry. That has all disappeared now. In those times there were quarries beside the Yarra and an old stone crusher in Richmond, opposite our place. This particular painting is also of very great sentimental value for me because it was the last painting my father ever painted and it was not long after its completion that he died...”

In Andrew Mackenzie’s 1990 biography of McCubbin, entitled Frederick McCubbin 1855-1917: ‘The Proff’ and his art, he quotes Kathleen Mangan (née McCubbin) reminiscences:

“…I remember coming home from school and I used to walk up Rockley Road with school friends and take the short cut across to our place, across the paddocks. I would see my father sitting on the verandah in his dressing-gown and black velvet beret, which he always put on when he went outside at that stage of his life, and he would be painting this picture of The Lime Tree. He was really in very poor health at that time, but he persisted and he kept on painting it until it was finished. This was the last painting he ever painted, and it was sold. I remember it being sold to Thomas Lothian, the publisher, but then he sold it and I lost track of it…”

Frederick McCubbin died on December 20^th 1917 of a heart attack, thought to have been brought on by his frequent asthmatic attacks and pneumonia. He was just 62 years of age. Frederick’s wife of twenty-eight years, Annie, was devastated at her loss and their daughter Kathleen remembered her mother during that sad time and wrote:

“…She was pale and listless and sat around for a good part of the day, just staring into space. She was truly lost without him…”

I hope you have enjoyed my last three blogs charting the life of this great Australian artist and that I have somehow enticed you to visit the Australia exhibition at London’s Royal Academy where you will be able to stand before the amazing painting, The Pioneer.

I have used many sources to put these blogs together but the two main ones which give you a much fuller look at McCubbin’s life were:

Artist’s Footsteps:

http://www.artistsfootsteps.com/html/McCubbin_biography.htm

and

Happy beyond Life by Anne Gray:

http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/MCCUBBIN/pdf/MCCUBBIN_ESSAY.pdf

Frederick McCubbin. Part 2 – The Box Hill Artists’ Camp and the 9 by 5 Art Exhibition

When I left off Frederick McCubbin’s life story in my last blog the year was 1884 and he was twenty-nine years of age and attending the National Gallery of Victoria School of Art. His original tutor at this establishment had been Eugène von Guérard, but on his retirement at the end of 1881, the Master of the School of Art was George Folingsby. Folingsby had been born in Wicklow, Ireland and had studied art in New York and Munich and had won many medals for his works in America and Europe. He was eventually persuaded to come to Australia by the trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria by offering him a lucrative painting commission and the post as examiner of art teachers. Later, in June 1882 he accepted the post of ‘Master in the School of Painting’ at the National Gallery School and that September, Folingsby became director of the National Gallery. Folingsby would go on to have a great influence on McCubbin’s art.

One of Frederick McCubbin’s closest friends at the time was fellow artist Tom Roberts whom he had met whilst studying at the School of Design, National Gallery of Victoria in 1874. Roberts was also to influence McCubbin’s art for he had been brought up close to Studley Park in the Kew suburb of Melbourne and he and McCubbin would often go exploring the area and would paint en plein air in this beautiful and wild part of the country. However painting plein air was not everybody’s favoured style. McCubbin’s tutor Folingsby had been strictly a studio painter and saw no merit in plein air painting. He never stopped his students working in the open air but was adamantly against such a practice and in James MacDonald’s book, The art of Frederick McCubbin, he quotes Folingsby’s as saying:

“…the man who paints landscape in the open air is a fool…”

McCubbin and Roberts were apart for four years between 1881 and 1885 when the latter went to London and enrolled on a three-year course at the Royal Academy Schools in July 1881. Whilst away from Australia, Roberts had also taken the chance to travel around Europe visiting Spain and Venice. On Tom Roberts’ return to Melbourne in April 1885 the two friends resumed their friendship. It was also a time when the two artists decided to continue with their great artistic love of outdoor painting and between them they hatched a plan to set up an artist’s camp in the wilderness where the surroundings would become their artistic inspiration and so, in the summer of 1885/6, their plan came to fruition.

Obstruction, Box Hill by Jane Sutherland (1887)

The site they chose for their camp was Box Hill some nine miles east of Melbourne and there in the paddock of land owned by David Houston at Damper Creek they pitched their tents. Although their camp was in the “bush”, less than a mile away there was a nearby railway station, which had opened three years earlier, and it made the journey from Melbourne easy and soon a number of other young artists joined Roberts and McCubbin’s weekend and summer camps. One such visitor was Jane Sutherland, the New York-born Australian landscape painter and pioneer of the plein air painting movement in Australia. She was to become a vociferous champion of female artists and fought hard to have them accepted and for them to have equal professional standing with their male colleagues. Whilst at the Box Hill Artists’ camp Roberts and McCubbin produced numerous works although Roberts was by far the most prolific. So, what was it like at this artists’ camp? There is a letter in the archives of the National Gallery of Victoria from a Mme. Nancy Elmhurst Goode, a visitor to the camp, who describes what she saw:

“…In the vicinity of the Homestead belonging to the Houstons was a patch of wild bush, tall young saplings with the sun glistening on their leaves and streamers of bark swaying, groups of tea–tree, dogwood and tall dry grasses. A fire was lighted and we were invited to share an alfresco lunch, The Don (Abrahams) earnestly frying eggs on a piece of tin, the Prof (McCubbin) busy with billy tea, and the Bulldog (Roberts) joyously cutting bread and butter and taking full command…”

The Artists' Camp by Tom Roberts (1886) — The Artists’ Camp by Tom Roberts (1886)

Tom Roberts captured life at the camp in his painting entitled The Artists’ Camp, which he completed in 1886 and can now be found in the National Gallery of Victoria. In the work we see Frederick McCubbin seated by their tent drinking his billy tea while Louis Abrahams is bending over the camp fire grilling chops. There is a relaxed and intimate atmosphere about the scene and we cannot doubt the happy camaraderie that was felt between the artists.

One notable work produced by McCubbin during this time was entitled Lost, sometimes referred to as The Lost Child. The painting by McCubbin is based on a true event of a twelve-year old girl, Clara Crosbie, being lost in the bush. The Argus newspaper reported the incident in May 1885:

“…In the almost trackless wilds of the Lilydale district, intersected by reedy ferns, like an Indian swamp, Clara Crosbie, a girl of 12, was lost nearly a month ago … A town-bred girl of warm affections and quick impulses, she pined in the unaccustomed solitudes of the bush, and she resolved to find her way, though she did not know her way home…”

Clara Crosbie was found alive after being lost in the bush for three weeks.

The young girl we see in the painting, although she has lost her way home, seems fixated by the mistletoe she has collected and which is now held in her apron. There is no sense of fear about her demeanour. Maybe she has yet to realise that she is lost and is still fascinated by the wilderness all around her. I particularly like the way McCubbin has depicted the peeling bark on the trees. There is a light and airiness about the depicted location which gives one no sense of foreboding about the possibility of having got oneself lost. The girl in McCubbin’s painting was his younger sister, Mary Anne, affectionately known as “Dolly”. This is a beautiful work of art which brings out the ingenuousness and vulnerability of the young girl who finds herself alone in the wilderness. People who viewed the work were reminded of the dangers of straying into the bush and becoming disorientated and in some ways reinforced the belief of people, who had left their home back in Britain, that life in colonial Australia was a challenge.

Moyes Bay, Beaumaris by Frederick McCubbin (1887)

All the time the two were together McCubbin was learning from Roberts especially when it came down to the effect the changing light had on the landscape, à la Impressionism. The following summer (1886/7) McCubbin, Roberts along with two other young artists, Louis Abrahams and Arthur Streeton, rented a cottage near Mentone, a small town which lay about fifteen miles south-east of Melbourne. This was a small picturesque coastal town, which had derived its name from the French Riviera seaside resort of Menton. It was here in 1887 that McCubbin completed his beautiful work Moyes Bay, Beaumaris, sometimes known as The Shore, which is now housed in the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth. The site of the painting was often referred to as Moysey’s Bay after James Bickford Moysey and his wife Susannah, who, in 1845, were the first European settlers at Beaumaris, (named after the North Wales coastal town, close to where I live). When the painting was exhibited the art review of the October 7^th 1887 edition of the Melbourne newspaper, The Argus, commented:

“…There is a breezy out-of-door feeling about Mr McCubbin’s ‘The Shore’, the tone of the picture strikes us as not warm enough for the season indicated by the attire of the figures. Although the work is impressionist in its general character, the execution of the broken rock, shingle, herbage, and pools of water in the foreground betokens attention to detail…”

Despite the “Impressionist” tag it was given the reviewer is quick to draw our attention to the detail McCubbin has incorporated into his painting. It is full of features, such as the rock pools and the various sea grasses, which we see in the foreground, as well as the well-crafted reflection of the two main characters depicted in the painting, the woman and the boy.

In 1889 this band of artistic friends decided to hold an exhibition of their work. Many put their names down as willing to exhibit but as the date of the exhibition neared, many potential contributors dropped out. This then put pressure on the main protagonists, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, and Charles Conder who between them exhibited almost 150 pieces. Frederick McCubbin, was a minor contributor putting forward five of his works for the exhibition. The majority of the works were plein air landscapes but there were also a few cityscapes, still-lifes, portraits and genre pieces. The month before the exhibition opened was chaotic with Roberts, Streeton and Conder having to hurriedly complete more works to fill the gaps caused by the withdrawal of some of the other artists. The problem of course was that July in Victoria was a wet period of the year and so many of the exhibited works had a “rainy” feel about them, such as Charles Conder’s aptly named work, Windy and Wet.

The 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition catalogue cover

The location of the exhibition was the Buxton Rooms gallery in Swanston Street, Melbourne and the title given to the exhibition, which opened on August 17^th, was the 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition. There were 182 paintings in all on display. The title of the exhibition derived from the size of the works (9 inches x 5 inches), which were exhibited, most of which had been painted on cedar cigar-box lids. On the title page of the catalogue was a quotation from the French painter, Jean-Léon Gérôme:

“…When you draw, form is the important thing; but in painting, the first thing to look for is the general impression of colour…”

In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, the cover of which was designed by Charles Conder, there was an explanation of the style of the work on show:

“…An effect is only momentary … Two half-hours are never alike … it has been the object of the artists to render faithfully, and thus obtain the first record of effects widely differing, and often of very fleeting character…”

All the oil sketches on display had been swiftly painted en plein air. What the artists had been aspiring to was a ‘truth to nature’ feel about their works. They had initially made quick sketches and then added the oil paints and this they believed would encapsulate instantaneous impressions of what they observed. In some cases they had an unfinished appearance about them but the artists involved maintained they were simply impressions but were completed works. The public loved what they saw but the press critics were divided. The art critic of the The Evening Standard was enthused by what she saw and urged people to attend, saying:

“…These daring young Impressionists, who are making an effort to engage amateur art-lovers by presenting, for the first time in Australia, a series of their ‘impressions’, aim at conveying in their pictures a broad effect of tone and colour without the eye being attracted by detail. Some of the ‘impressions’ were caught and painted in a quarter of an hour…Persons interested in art should not fail to visit it. If they have no other satisfaction it will be again to have ocular demonstration of what an artist’s ‘impression’ means…”

However more critical of what he saw was James Smith, the leading art critic of the time and the art critic of The Argus newspaper. Not only that but he was also a trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria. His vehement and vociferous condemnation of the works on show was brought about because of his belief that they were unfinished works and he was affronted by the artists involved for trying to pass them of as the finished product. Of them and the artists, he wrote:

“… The modern impressionist asks you to see pictures in splashes of colours, in slap-dash brushwork, and in sleight-of-hand methods of execution leading to the proposition of pictorial conundrums, which would baffle solution if there were no label or catalogue. In an exhibition of paintings you naturally look for pictures, instead of which the impressionist presents you with a varied assortment of palettes. Of the 180 exhibits catalogued on the present occasion, something like four-fifths are a pain the eye. Some of them look like faded pictures seen through several mediums of thick gauze; others suggest that a paint-pot has been accidentally upset over a panel of nine inches by five; others resemble the first essays of a small boy, who has just been apprenticed to a house-painter…”

There is the old saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity and the artists decided to use James Smith’s statement to their own advantage and even had it posted at the entrance to the exhibition. It worked just as they had hoped as people poured in to see these so-called “slap-dash” works that had been so heavily criticised. Furthermore the artists wrote an open letter to the editor of The Argus defending themselves and their exhibition work, in which they ended up by saying:

“…It is better to give our own idea than to get a merely superficial effect, which is apt to be a repetition of what others have done before us, and may shelter us in a safe mediocrity, which, while it will not attract condemnation, could never help towards the development of what we believe will be a great school of painting in Australia…”

The 9 by 5 exhibition which caused such controversy and so many diverse views is now looked upon as one of the most famous exhibitions in the history of Australian art. It was also around this time that McCubbin decided to focus his attention on the Australian bush and the struggle that pioneer settlers had in establishing a home on this virgin territory. In my third and final blog about Frederick McCubbin I will conclude his life story and look at some of his works featuring the pioneering spirit including his most famous painting, the triptych, simply entitled The Pioneer.

…………………….to be continued.

Frederick McCubbin. Part 1 – The early years

Self portrait by Frederick McCubbin (1886)

A couple of years ago I was in Northern Queensland, Australia on holiday and I had hoped to get an insight into Australian art. Unfortunately, because we were in the far north of the country, most of the art on display was indigenous art and I have since been told that to get an insight into Australian art of the nineteenth and twentieth century one would have had to be in the major cities of the south such as Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. The other week however, whilst in London, I took the opportunity to attend an exhibition of Australian art which is currently running at the Royal Academy and finally I came face to face with the art I had been searching for. The Royal Academy exhibition could be divided into three parts – the indigenous art, the more modern art and the 19^th century art, the latter being what I was most interested in. In my next few blogs I want to introduce you to one of the greats of 19^th century Australian art, Frederick McCubbin.

Frederick McCubbin was born in Melbourne on February 25^th 1855. He was the third of eight children of Alexander McCubbin, a master baker who, along with his English wife of four years, Anne, née McWilliams, had immigrated in April 1852 to Australia from the Ayrshire coastal town of Girvan, Scotland. He had two older brothers, William John and James Alexander and one younger brother, Robert. He also had four younger sisters, Mary-Anne, Harriet, Wilhelmina and Helen. Frederick McCubbin went to the William Willmott’s West Melbourne Common School and later to St Paul’s School in Swanston Street. So what kind of child was Frederick McCubbin? In a book written by a family friend, Recollections of Elizabeth Colquhoun, the author wrote:

“…He had a gentle presence, and the air of a poet and dreamer. He was kindly, sincere and single-minded in his outlook. He was energetic, fun, warm and gregarious—and would gesticulate freely with his arms and hands. He was a thinking man, and he liked to make others think and laugh; an extensive and discriminating reader, particularly of biography and high fiction, he enjoyed talking on a wide range of topics. It was his habit to memorise what he read and to deliver it to the first receptive friend he came across—whether at the opening of an exhibition or at a chance meeting on a tram…”

Although Frederick McCubbin’s early life was a happy one he was constantly aware of the hardships endured by his parents in this new land as they would often talk about the better life they had had back “home”. There is a manuscript held by the Australian Manuscript Collection entitled Autobiographical reminiscences of Frederick McCubbin and in it is his recollection of those early days at home:

“…Everybody who was grown up spoke of Home, the old Country—Memories of strings of immigrants—coming up from the wharves—talks of ships and the sea—boarding houses … innumerable boxes—with titles such as not wanted on the voyage—sailors—and the maid servants—who told us stories of old Ireland and sometimes Scotland, then people from Home staying with us each bringing their quota of romantic stories of the Old World. …people said this was a dreadful country and why did they ever come to such a dreary land—and then—the awful Hot Winds that blew in summer—and the fearful dust storms—and the dreary monotonous bush—all the same—no variety, so sad—and sombre—They were a Home sick people…”

McCubbin remembered these times well and the struggle people had to make to survive in this new land. These thoughts were to remain in his mind when he first started painting some years later. Frederick never remembered with fondness those early years at school and he left school in 1868, at the age of thirteen, when his father got him a job as a clerk working in Wither’s solicitor’s Melbourne office. His father had some hope that his son would take an interest in the workings of a solicitor’s office which would then lead him on to training to become a solicitor. However this employment did not last long as young Frederick found the work boring and uninteresting and spent his time idly sketching instead of working, which eventually caused him to lose his job. Although his time during the day had been taken up working at the solicitor’s office, his mother was determined to nurture her son’s interest in art, and so in 1869, she arranged for his enrolment at the evening classes at the Artisans School of Design in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton. It was here that he was tutored in figure drawing and landscape work. Those who taught him included the school’s drawing master, Thomas Clark, the London-born artist and art teacher who had immigrated to Australia in 1852 and Abram-Louis Buvelot, a Swiss-born émigré landscape painter. This was Frederick’s first formal artistic training.

Following his dismissal from the solicitor’s office, he returned home and went to work for his father, driving the baker’s horse and cart around town and the surrounding countryside delivering bread. Although there may not have been anything edifying about making daily deliveries of bread, young McCubbin was amazed by the countryside scenery around the Yarra River area he saw whilst making deliveries and knew that one day he would put all his memories down in paint on canvas.

Falls Bridge, Melbourne by Frederic McCubbin (1882) — Falls Bridge, Melbourne by Frederick McCubbin (1882)

Frederick McCubbin may have been contented gaining artistic inspiration during his bread delivery round but his father was neither happy with the way his son’s future was panning out nor was he comfortable with his son’s lack of ambition so he decided to take control of the situation. In 1871, when Frederick was sixteen years of age, and unbeknown to him, his father signed his son up for a five year apprenticeship with Stevenson and Elliot, a firm of coach painters and wheelwrights. Frederick’s father felt no guilt about his underhand action as he had convinced himself that he had merely aided Frederick’s artistic ambitions. Alas, Frederick did not appreciate the gesture and found the work monotonous albeit he did marvel at the craftsmanship and skill shown by his fellow workers.

In 1872, at the age of seventeen, McCubbin, whilst still working at the firm of coach painters, enrolled for twice-weekly evening classes at the School of Design at the National Gallery of Victoria, which had been formed five years earlier. It was here that he was tutored in draughtsmanship, figure drawing and plein air sketching. One of his tutors, the school’s drawing master, was once again Thomas Clark, who had moved to this new establishment in 1870. When Clark retired from teaching in 1876, McCubbin studied under Oswald Rose Campbell, who, like Clark, his predecessor, had only arrived in Australia in 1852, having been born on the Channel Island of Jersey and who had received his artistic training in London. The Australian artist Tom Roberts enrolled at the school in 1874 and he and Frederick became firm friends.

In 1877 McCubbin and Roberts attended the National Gallery of Victoria’s School of Painting which had been formed in 1867. However Frederick’s artistic studies were suddenly put on hold in May 1877 with the sudden death of his father, Alexander. The cause of death was given as severe apoplexy which had been triggered when he fell down a flight of stairs. The McCubbin household was in shock and the future of the bakery business was suddenly in jeopardy. Frederick’s older brother William was fully occupied as a miller and the next eldest brother was not at home having joined the navy. It thus fell to Frederick to return home and concentrate all his time on helping his mother run the family bakery. After a short while the bakery business was once again on a firm footing and Frederick withdrew his help and returned to the National Gallery’s School of Painting. The McCubbin family was to suffer a further family tragedy four years later, in 1881, when the eldest son William was killed in an industrial accident at the family flour mill.

View near Fisherman's end by Frederick McCubbin (c.1880) — View near Fisherman’s end by Frederick McCubbin (c.1880)

From 1880 to 1882, McCubbin was taught by the great Eugène von Guérard, an Austrian-born artist and then by his successor, the Irish-born and Munich-trained, George Frederic Folingsby and it was he who, in 1883, organised an annual student’s exhibition. McCubbin exhibited some of his works and won the first prize of £30 at the inaugural event and followed this up in 1884 by winning second prize and £20 the following year. McCubbin, who was always searching for artistic inspiration, also attended the Victorian Academy of Arts which was formed by a group of like-minded professional and amateur artists in 1870. McCubbin attended classes here, and exhibited in their annual exhibitions from 1876. He sold his first painting, View near Fisherman’s Bend at the Academy’s 1880 exhibition.

During his days as an art student between the late 1870’s and the early 1880’s, Frederic McCubbin earned much-needed money by submitting black and white illustrations for inclusion in two popular Melbourne periodicals, the Australasian Sketcher and the Illustrated Australian News. These black and white sketches, which featured depictions of public and social life of the both Australia and New Zealand, were the forerunners to photgraphy. The periodicals were well read by the local middle-classes who wanted to keep up to date with the never-ending progress of the fledgling colony and who wanted to see the latest “new-builds” such as buildings, bridges and the thriving port and railway system. But it was not just modernity which was depicted in these journals as articles often focused on settlers moving ever-further inland into the new frontier lands as well as the inhabitants who already lived on this new land, the Aboriginal people.

An Old Politician by Frederick McCubbin (1879)

In 1879 McCubbin, whilst at the National Gallery’s School of Painting, completed a narrative work entitled An Old Politician. The work depicts George Elliot who had part owned the firm of coach builders which Frederick had earlier worked for. In the painting McCubbin has bestowed an aura of wisdom upon his sitter and although he was never a politician, McCubbin is pictorially informing us that George Elliot was a wise and well read man who had all the qualities which would have made him an excellent politician.

In 1884 Frederick McCubbin produced a wonderful painting which featured one of his younger sisters, Harriet, who was always known by her nickname “Polly”. The painting which is housed at the Art Gallery of Ballarat is entitled The Letter. The setting, which is thought to be on the up-stream banks of the Yarra River could well have been painted en plein air by McCubbin who then added the figure of his sister later. Harriet, who was six years younger than her brother Frederick, also studied art and she would often model for him.

A Summer Morning Tiff by Tom Roberts (1886)

She also modelled for Frederick’s friend, Tom Roberts. In one of Roberts’ most endearing paintings entitled A Summer Morning Tiff, which he completed in 1886 we see her as the female involved in the aftermath of a lover’s quarrel. It is a hot sunny day and tempers have flared. In the background we can just make out a man with his horse heading into the woods. He and the girl have had a falling-out and he has stormed off, leaving her to follow him. When the painting was first exhibited at the Australian Artists’ Association in 1886 it was accompanied by a label, on which was written this poem:

Only a word at the splitter’s track
A thoughtless blunder.
She is fair and haughty and answers bade,
So they part asunder.
With a jerk he loosens the fastening rein –
And she turns her back with a fine disdain
Ah me! sigh the saplings in sad refrain
As she passes under.

In my next blog I will continue with Frederick McCubbin’s life story and look at some of his art which featured the struggle people faced to survive in this new frontier land.

……………….to be continued

Louis Anquetin and cloisonnism

Girl reading a Newspaper by Louis Anquetin (1890)

Today I have a new artist for you and a new –ism ! My featured painter today is the nineteenth century French artist Louis Anquetin, who was one of the founders of the expressionist style of painting that was referred to as cloisonnism. This artistic term comes from the French word cloison meaning partition and the French verb to partition off – cloisonner. Cloisonné was originally a method used in decorating metalwork objects and later was used in the decorating of vitreous enamel. Wires known as cloisons were soldered to the body of the piece, filled with powdered glass and then fired. There is also a similarity between cloisonné and old Gothic stained glass windows in which various pieces of coloured glass are often built up to form an image and are separated by black lead strips. So why is the term attributable to an art form? In art, the term cloisonnism refers to paintings that have areas of pure flat, colour enclosed by dark black outlines. These areas, of often-unnatural colours, are entirely free of shading or anything that would give them a 3-D effect and so there is an overriding two-dimensional appearance. In a lot of examples of cloisonnism there was an overwhelming simplicity to the forms seen in this artwork. In some ways the emergence of cloisonnism was a way of counteracting works by the Impressionist painters who were fixated by depiction of light. By resorting to cloisonnism, artists were able to bring together their artistic ideas with their chosen subject matter and by so doing, produce a more formidable form of modern art. The French painters Émile Bernard and today’s featured painter, Louis Anquetin, around 1887, pioneered this new form of art. Both painters had taken a great interest the Japanese Ukijo-e woodblock prints, which on Japan opening up its markets to the Western World in the late 1860’s, had a decade later become a major source of inspiration to the Post Impressionist artists of France. Louis Anquetin and Bernard had both studied under Fernand Cormon at his Atelier Cormon in the late 1880’s along with Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec and the featured artist in my last blog, John Peter Russell.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec by Louis Anquetin (1886)

And so to my featured artist, Louis Anquetin. Louis Anquetin was born in January 1861 in Étrépagny, a commune in the Eure department in the Haute-Normandie region of northern France. He was an only child. His father, George Anquetin, was a butcher by trade and his mother was Rose-Felicite Chauvet. His father’s business was very successful and Louis was brought up in a prosperous household and being an only child, led a very pampered lifestyle. When he was eleven years old his parents got him to take an interest in drawing and soon he needed little persuasion to while away the hours sketching. With his love of drawing successfully nurtured, his parents arranged for him to attend the art school in the nearby city of Rouen, the Lycée Pierre Corneille, named after the 17^th century French dramatist. One of his fellow pupils at the time, who became his lifelong friend, was Edouard Dujardin, a man who would later become a much-respected writer and poet and be first to coin the term cloisonnism.

Émile Bernard by Louis Anquetin (c.1887)

After leaving school Louis went into the military and served in the 6^th Cavalry Regiment of Dragoons. Once he had completed his military service in 1882, Louis, now aged twenty-two, persuaded his parents to let him try to become a professional artist. As had been the case for most of his early life, they were reluctant to deny their son anything and so acquiesced to his wish. Louis travelled to Paris and took up lodgings in the city and went to study at the atelier of the painter, Léon Bonnat. Whilst at Bonnat’s studio Louis became friends with another of Bonnat’s students, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec. Louis only remained there a short time as Bonnat gave up his studio when he was appointed professor at the École des Beaux Arts. In 1884, both Louis and Lautrec then moved on to work at the Atelier Cormon, which was run by the painter, Fernand Cormon. Among the students there around this time were the Australian painter John Paul Russell, fellow Frenchman Émile Bernard and the Dutch painter, Vincent van Gogh.

As we saw in the blog of John Peter Russell the aspiring painters at Fernand Cormon in an effort to improve their portraiture would ask their colleagues to sit for them and Louis Anquetin at this time completed portraits of both Toulouse Lautrec and Emile Bernard. Louis Anquetin eventually left the Atelier Cormon but remained friends with Lautrec, Bernard and van Gogh and often the painters would jointly hold informal exhibitions. One such “exhibition” was held in July 1887 at the Café du Tambourin, and was hosted by a friend of Van Gogh, the restaurant’s proprietor, Agostina Segatori. Segatori, an Italian by birth, had been an artist’s model and with the money she had earned, opened up her own Paris restaurant on the Boulevard de Clichy, just round the corner from Theo van Gogh’s apartment, which he shared with Vincent. She had become a good friend of Van Gogh and the two had a good working arrangement – he supplied the artwork for the restaurant’s walls and she fed him! This informal exhibition was a red-letter day for Anquetin for it was at this exhibition that he sold his first paintings.

It was around 1886 that Louis Anquetin was introduced to Georges Seurat and to his new artistic style, which became known as Divisionism or Pointillism (see My Daily Art Display, Oct 21^st 2011). Anquetin and his friend Émile Bernard tried their hand at this new form of art but soon tired of it and adopted a new artistic style of their own, which was christened cloisonnism by Anquetin’s former school friend and now writer, Edouard Dujardin, when he reviewed their work for the symbolist journal, Revue Independent. He had gone to see their paintings which were on show at the 1888 Salon des Independents exhibition in Paris and the 15^th Annual Exposition of Les XX in Brussels. Two of the best-known cloisonnism paintings by Louis Anquetin are the Avenue de Clichy: Five O’ clock and Le Faucher.

Avenue de Clichy - Five O'Clock in the Evening by Louis Anquetin (1887) — Avenue de Clichy – Five O’Clock in the Evening by Louis Anquetin (1887)

The work, Avenue de Clichy: Five o’clock in the Evening was painted in a Cloisonnist style with its graceful black outlines as well as the flat treatment of the subjects in the composition and there is a definite influence of Japanese woodcuts in the work. The subject of the painting gives us an insight of Parisian life in the opulent times of the Third French Republic in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and which lasted until the outbreak of the First World War. These were good time. Times of war were over and there was a general sense of optimism and it was a time when the arts flourished and theatre-going and visits to the various Parisian music halls were de rigeur. This period in French history later became known as the Belle Epoque. The setting for the painting is the late afternoon on the Avenue de Clichy, which was in Montmartre, near to Anquetin’s home and he would have, on numerous occasions, viewed the hustle and bustle of the throngs of people moving along the Avenue. It is still raining and people huddle under the awnings looking into the butcher’s shop which is bathed in light, whilst others with umbrellas raised brave the open street. This work by Louis Anquetin is often looked upon as being one of his finest works. In his book, Anquetin: La Passion d’être Peintre, the author Frederic Destremau wrote about this painting:

“…the iron and glass awning, an aspect of industrial design, above the butchers shop has a ethereal quality which suggests the roof of a pagoda, the legs strung up in a garland recall Japanese lanterns, the elegant woman seen from behind, raising her skirts, creates a gathering of folds that is drawn in a very Japoniste style, but […] more than any of these details, it is the use of dark outlines and flat colours that brings to mind Japanese prints…”

It is also interesting to note the inclusion of la boucherie (butcher’s shop) in the left foreground of the painting. Could this be Anquetin’s way of honouring his father who we know had his own butcher’s shop? This new style of Anquetin and Bernard was very popular with the public and critics alike. Louis had his works on display at the Fourth Paris International Exposition of 1889, which marked the centenary of the French Revolution. The sale of his works brought him not only fame but also a healthy bank balance and in keeping with his new status he moved his studio from Montmartre to the more fashionable Rue de Rome.

A Woman on the Champs-Elysées, at Night by Louis Anquetin (c. 1891)

In 1891 he exhibited ten of his works at the Salon des Independents and the one that caught everybody’s eye and singled out as a gem was Woman on the Champs-Elysees by Night. The painting depicts a finely attired woman who is walking alone along one of Paris’ main boulevards. This somewhat enigmatic figure is illuminated from above by the glow of the streetlights. Although not easy to see, but to the right of the woman, there is a man with a moustache who is paying close attention to her and one wonders whether he was there to find a companion for the night! The painting is now housed in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and in a way is a reminder of the lifestyle van Gogh would have experienced whilst staying in the French capital with his brother Theo. Louis Anquetin’s new style of painting was to influence other artists of the time, such as Picasso, Gaugin and Toulouse Lautrec.

However almost as quick as Anquetin had embraced this cloisonnism style of painting, he abandoned it. Anquetin often changed his artistic style, always searching for something different. The next change of style by Anquetin followed on from a trip he took to Belgium and Holland accompanied Toulouse Lautrec. It was during this visit that Anquetin saw and was influenced by paintings of the great Flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens and the Dutch Golden Age painters, Rembrandt van Rijn and Frans Hals. He was extremely impressed by the brilliant colours used in their works and the fluidity of their brushstrokes and from then on Anquetin realised that he had to change his style yet again and moved to a more classical style.

He also decided that to retain a classical style he must work in oil, which was a decision contrary to a number of his contemporaries who had abandoned oil in favour of pastels. He had at this juncture in his artistic career decided to abandon modern art and concentrate on classical art. Unfortunately this change of painting style meant that his erstwhile artistic friends, who did not share his artistic views, abandoned him. Toulouse Lautrec and Émile Bernard were the exceptions. Another aspect of classical painting that Anquetin wanted to emulate was the classical painters’ knowledge of the human anatomy which was so well depicted in many of their works. For that reason Anquetin decided that he too should carefully study anatomy and for two years attended the laboratory of the anatomist, Professor Arroux, in the Paris suburb of Clamart.

In 1901 his former mentor and tutor, Fernand Cormon had received a commission to paint murals at the Hôtel de Ville in Tours and he asked Anquetin for his help. Cormon commissioned his former student to complete four mural panels for the interior of the building each of which would represent four greats of French history – the writer, Honoré de Balzac, the philosopher, René Descartes, the humanist and writer, François Rabelais and the poet and playwright, Alfred de Vigny. In 1906, when Louis was forty-five years old he married an affluent widow, Berthe Coquinot, whose late husband had been an army officer. The couple moved into a house in the well-to-do rue des Vignes in Paris’16^th arondissement. In their home Louis had a studio for his painting as well as a place to teach his students. Louis Anquetin had always been interested in the theoretical side of art and would often give lectures on painting techniques and styles. Anquetin wrote a book about his favourite painter Peter Paul Rubens and it was published in 1924. Louis Anquetin died in Paris in August 1932, aged 71.

John Peter Russell. Part 2 – Belle Île, Monet and Matisse

In the first part of my blog about the Australian painter, John Peter Russell, I told you about his early life in Australia and how his father and brothers had started a foundry and engineering works in Sydney. He then went to England and was apprenticed at a Lincoln engineering company, qualified as an engineer but on the death of his father and the inheritance he subsequently received, gave up his engineering career to become an artist. He studied at the Slade School in London and the Atelier Cormon in Paris.

Les Aiguilles, Belle-Île by John Peter Russell ((1890)

Russell had previously made painting trips to the Breton isle of Belle Île in 1883 and 1886 and fell in love with the island scenery and the light which offered up the myriad of colours of the island’s nature and the surrounding seas. For Russell, his aim was to capture in his paintings the unadulterated purity of nature’s colour that the light highlighted at different times of the day. To do this Russell realised that making quick preliminary sketches, later to be finished in his studio, would lose the purity of the colour and so he decided that the work had to be completed en plein air if he was to capture the true colour that the light had offered him. He was not alone with this idea as many of the French Impressionists came to the region in search of the rugged beauty offered up by the island. For these artists the island of Belle Île offered them a remote and secluded painting haven with its spectacular cliff configurations and outlying rock structures which had been shaped and whittled away by the unrelenting ferocity of the sea.

Russell summed up his love for Mother Nature and capturing in his works the changing light he experienced on the island when he said:

“…I am a painter of nature, of nature’s moods, of sunlight and the changing temper of the sea”

His good friend the sculptor Auguste Rodin wrote to him about this love of colour, light and his desire to capture every facet of nature’s moods, saying:

“…I am very happy, dear friend, for you that you cling so enthusiastically to nature. I am sure that your art is now full of sincerity and movement…”

The Rocks at Belle-Ile, The Wild Coast by Monet (1886)

One of the most famous Impressionist artists who spent time on Belle Île was Claude Monet. He lived on the island from September to the end of November of 1886, in the tiny village Kervilahouenne. The story goes that Russell met Monet one day, in the late summer of 1886, when Monet was perched high up on a windswept cliff top painting a seascape. Russell approached him and looked over his shoulder at his painting. On recognising Monet’s painting style Russell asked him:

“Ne seriez vous Claude Monet, le prince des impressionists?”

(aren’t you Claude Monet, prince of the impressionists?).

Monet was both amused and somewhat flattered by the question and this led him to allow Russell to sit awhile and paint with him and so an artistic friendship was formed. There can be no doubt that Monet’s work influenced Russell. Although the Australian artist believed in the Impressionist philosophy that the painting should be about light, Russell thought that form should not be disregarded. Monet was fascinated and in love with the island’s wild coastal scenery. He was in awe of the stark wilderness of the island’s landscape and, at first, quite unsettled by the frequent variations in the weather conditions. He knew that the best depictions would be the views of the sea and the rugged cliffs and often had to battle, with an obstinate determination, taking his life into his own hands, to try and gain the best painting position on the cliff edge, notwithstanding the state of the weather at the time. Monet wrote to his friend and fellow Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte of his joy at being on Belle Île and the artistic challenges it offered:

“…I am in a wonderfully wild region, with terrifying rocks and a sea of unbelievable colours; I am truly thrilled, even though it is difficult, because I had got used to painting the Channel, and I knew how to go about it, but the Atlantic Ocean is quite different…”

The Pyramides at Port-Coton by Monet (1886)

Monet completed a set of works in 1886, featuring the coastal scenery of Belle Île but when he presented them to his Paris art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, the latter was taken aback by the change in Monet’s work as seen in these new canvases. These were very different from the artist’s Normandy paintings of a decade earlier. Gone were the paintings bathed in sunlight for these Belle Île works were much more sombre and dark and Durand-Ruel was concerned as to whether they would sell. In one such work, The Pyramides at Port-Coton, which Monet completed in 1886, he has magnificently captured the dark craggy rock formations which have been formed by the slow but persistent erosion by the sea and which now stand out like ancient pyramids. The dark colour of these rock formations contrast with the superbly coloured waves which we see buffeting them. Durand-Ruel quizzed Monet about the wisdom of the change in style but the artist was adamant about having variety in his works, saying:

“… I’m inspired by this sinister landscape, precisely because it is unlike what I am used to doing; I have to make a great effort and find it very difficult to render this sombre and terrible sight…”

The art world, like Durand-Ruel were astounded in 1887 when Monet’s Belle Île paintings were first exhibited.

Les rochers de Belle-Ile, la Côte sauvage by Monet (1886)

Another of Monet’s Belle Île paintings completed around the same time is entitled Les rochers de Belle-Ile, la Côte sauvage [The Rocks at Belle-Ile, The Wild Coast] which can be found at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. This painting is one of five Monet completed featuring Belle Île. It is in landscape format, unlike the other four, and in it Monet has depicted the never-ending clash between the forces of nature, the sea, and the rocks which try valiantly to withstand its ferocity. Monet has used blues, greens and violets for the sea with white for the tops of the waves to give the stormy sensation.

La Pointe de Morestil par mer calme by John Peter Russell (1901)

In Paris Russell had become great friends with Auguste Rodin and through that friendship had met, in 1885, the sculptor’s favourite model, Marianna Mattiocco, whom the sculptor once described as “the most beautiful lady in Paris”. Russell and Marianne married in 1888 and it was now time for Russell to fulfil his much discussed desire – to move away from hustle and bustle of city life in Paris and move permanently to his beloved Belle Île. The year before he had written to his friend and fellow Australian artist, Tom Roberts and told him of his dream:

‘…I am about to build a small house on Belle-Ile, off Brittany. The finest coast I’ve ever seen…”

Russell and his wife moved from Paris to set up home on Belle Île in 1888. He was the first non-native to settle on the island and when he had built his new home, a large manor house, the islanders referred to it as Le Chateau de l’Anglais. The completion of their large and spacious new home, with Russell’s studio facing the Atlantic Ocean, was not just a place for the family to live it was to be the hub of Russell’s summer artist’s colony. Russell set to work on his own paintings of the shores of Belle Île and he would often depict the same type of scenes that Monet had done in 1886. Russell had the same ideas as Monet. He wanted to depict the coastline at different times of the day in different weather conditions always seeking the nuances of changing light. Monet once said that Russell’s Belle Île paintings were better than his own !

Ten years after settling down on Belle Île, Russell played host to another up-and-coming artist, Henri Matisse, during the three summers of 1895 to 1897. Russell spent many hours with Matisse and it is said that he introduced Impressionism to him. They spent hours discussing the importance of light and how light and colour could be captured at different times of the day and under different weather conditions. He also introduced Matisse to the work of his friend from Atelier Cormon, Vincent Van Gogh, who at this time was still to be recognised as a great artist. Matisse always recognised the debt he owed John Peter Russell and in later life said:

“…Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained colour theory to me…”

In 1908 Russell’s wife Marianna died. Russell was devastated by his loss. It is believed that such was his grief that he destroyed four hundred of his works of art. He buried Marianne next to Le Chateau de l’Anglais and decided his time at Belle Île was at an end and so returned to Paris. Later, along with his daughter Jeanne, (Madame Jeanne Jouve), a Paris singer, they travelled extensively through southern France and the Ligurian coast of Italy and for a time he set up home in the Italian coastal village of Portofino. Russell returned to live in Paris and in 1912, married his daughter’s friend, the American singer Caroline de Witt Merrill, whose stage name was Felize Medori. Russell and Caroline set up home in Italy and later Switzerland before moving to England where his sons were serving in the Allied forces. Six years later, in 1921, Russell returned to Australia, and the following year he travelled to New Zealand where he helped one of his sons to set up a business on a citrus farm. In 1923 Russell returned to Australia and bought himself a fisherman’s cottage at Watson’s Bay on Sydney Harbour. John Peter Russell died in April 1930, aged 71. The cause of death was a heart attack which struck him down whilst moving some heavy rocks outside his home. He was survived by his second wife Caroline, their son and six children from his first marriage to Marianna.

Russell was not one to have his paintings exhibited like his fellow artists of the time, such as Monet and van Gogh and so he is less well known but for those that knew him and his painting there was never any doubt about his ability as an artist. Rodin, in one of his last letters to Russell, acknowledged his reputation and his legacy. He wrote:

“…Your works will live, I am certain. One day you will be placed on the same level with our friends Monet, Renior, and Van Gogh…”

John Peter Russell. Part 1. Van Gogh and portraiture

Last week I watched a documentary on television about the death of Vincent van Gogh. You have probably seen something similar or read a book on his somewhat mysterious death. Did he commit suicide? Was it an accident? Was he murdered? Why was the gun never found? What, if anything, did Doctor Gachet have to do with his death? Why did both Doctor Gachet and Vincent’s brother Theo allow Vincent to lie in agony for three days at his lodgings with the bullet still in his body rather than rush him to hospital to have it removed? However the subject of my blog today is not about Van Gogh’s death. During the documentary it showed a portrait of the great artist and said that it was Van Gogh’s favourite depiction of himself. What really stimulated my curiosity was to hear that the portrait was completed by a friend of his, an Australian painter by the name of John Peter Russell. I had never heard of this artist and I could not comprehend how an Australian artist could feature in the Dutchman’s life and so I decided to find out more about him. In this first of my two part blog on Russell I want to look at his early life and a couple of his portraits including the one of van Gogh. So come with me on a voyage of discovery and learn about how a former foundry worker in Australia came to paint a portrait of the great Dutch Master.

The story begins at the beginning of the 19^th century in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. It was here that John Peter Russell’s grandfather, Robert Russell, had his foundry and engineering works. Robert and his wife Janet Russell (née Nicol) had eleven children, one of whom, John, was our featured artist’s father. In 1830 Robert’s business hit financial problems due to a downturn in demand and he decided to immigrate to Canada. His intended destination changed on the advice of a friend and instead of heading west to Canada he and his family took the steamer Anne Jamieson and sailed to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) and arrived in the port of Hobart in June 1832. Robert Russell along with his sons, Robert, Peter and John started up an engineering works in Tasmania which proved very successful. In 1838 in order to expand the business the family moved to Sydney and established the firm, Russell Brothers with an engineering works and a foundry on the banks of the Tank Stream, a tributary of Sydney Cove.

John Russell married and English girl, Charlotte Elizabeth Nichol, and they went on to have four children of which John Peter Russell, the subject of today’s blog, was the eldest. He was born in June 1858 in the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst. John Peter was educated at the Goulburn School in Garrooriagang, a private boarding school for the “sons of gentlemen”. After completing his education in 1876, the eighteen year old travelled to England and was apprenticed at the engineering company, Robey & Co. of Lincoln and eventually became a qualified engineer. It was also around this time that he began to take an interest in sketching and painting. In 1879 John Peter Russell’s father died and left his children a sizeable inheritance.

In 1881, John Peter Russell who thanks to his inheritance was financially sound and did not need to continue as an engineer. He decided to pursue his love of art and enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Arts at the University College of London. Whilst at the Slade he studied under the Dijon-born French painter and sculptor, Alphonse Legros. Legros would delight his students by showing them his quick preliminary oil sketches (known as ébauches) of the head portraits he had done and it was this type of painting which grabbed Russell’s interest.

In August 1883, after completing his art course at the Slade, Russell decided to set off on his travels. His fellow travellers were his brother Percy, an architect, Tom Roberts, a fellow aspiring artist who would later become a leading figure of the Australian Heidelberg School of Impressionism and who, like Russell, had emigrated with his family from the UK to Australia when he was fourteen years of age. Tom Roberts had returned to his birthplace, London, to study art at the Royal Academy Schools. Another person in the travel party was the physician and friend William Maloney who would later become a Labour MP. Their first port of call was Spain where they encountered two Spanish art students Laureano Barrau, who would become a leading Spanish Impressionist painter and the Catalan painter Ramon Casas who would later be known for his paintings depicting crowd scenes.

In 1885 Russell went to live in Paris and for the next eighteen months studied at the Atelier Cormon, which was run by the French painter, Fernand Cormon. It was an “academic” studio in which Cormon endeavoured to instil in his students the necessary artistic “rules” which would ensure that their paintings found favour with the Paris Salon jurists. Many great painters, such as Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin, and Toulouse Lautrec studied under Cormon during Russell’s tenure. Russell who had studied portraiture at the Slade School of Art was still interested in portraiture and would often paint portraits of his friends and fellow students. In March 1886 whilst Russell was attending the Atelier Cormon another student enrolled – Vincent van Gogh. Vincent had moved to Paris and went to live with his brother Theo in his apartment in rue Laval on Montmartre in order to study at Cormon’s studio. A great and long-lasting friendship developed between Van Gogh and Russell. In October 1886, Russell finally persuaded Van Gogh to sit for him. The resulting work was the beautiful crafted portrait of the Dutchman which I spoke about at the beginning of the blog.

Vincent van Gogh by John Peter Russell, 1886

Although Russell had painted portraits of his friends it is believed that he wanted to paint Van Gogh’s portrait as the depiction of the Dutchman’s face would be a challenge with its craggy and somewhat haggard appearance. Russell had seen some of Van Gogh’s own head and shoulder portraits and self portraits and liked the way the Dutchman had used an academic style in his portraiture, incorporating darkened background as a contrast to the lighter skin tones and so decided to use this same technique on his own depiction of van Gogh. He has given Van Gogh such a penetrating gaze as he stares out at us which in some ways makes us feel slightly uncomfortable. It is almost a censorious gaze as if he is questioning our presence. What I think adds to the beauty of this portrait is how Russell has got van Gogh to look over his shoulder for the pose and of course to remind every one of the sitter’s profession he had the Dutchman hold a paintbrush. Vincent van Gogh was delighted with Russell’s finished portrait. On September 6^th 1889, ten months before his death, Vincent wrote to Theo and in it he mentioned the Russell portrait:

“……….Afterwards, what are we beginning to glimpse timidly at the moment that is original and lasting – the portrait. That’s something old, one might say – but it’s also brand new. We’ll talk more about this – but let’s still continue to seek out portraits, above all of artists, like the Guillaumin and Guillaumin’s portrait of a young girl, and take good care of my portrait by Russell, which means a lot to me.….”

The painting, which is at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, has itself darkened over the years as on a recent microscopic examination it was discovered that, above the head of van Gogh, there had been inscribed in red the words:

VINCENT

AMITIÉ

J.P.RUSSELL PINTOR

Paris 1886

Also according to the Museum curators, a friend of John Peter Russell and van Gogh, the British artist Archibald Standish Hartrick, had seen the original portrait soon after it had been completed and he said that Vincent was depicted in the portrait wearing a striped blue suit ! According to the museum curators there is a hint of blue near the mid base of the work.

Russell and Van Gogh were great friends for the short time they were together and after they went their separate ways they continued to correspond. One of the last letters Vincent wrote to Russell on February 1^st 1890 just five months before his death and when he was in the mental hospital in St Rémy.

My dear friend Russell

Today I’m sending you a little roll of photographs after Millet which perhaps you may not know. In any event, it’s to recall us, my brother and myself, to your good memory. Do you know that my brother has since married and that any day now he’s expecting his first-born? May it go well – he has a very nice Dutch wife. How it pleases me to write to you after a long silence. Do you remember the time when, almost simultaneously, you I think first and I afterwards, met our friend Gaugin? He’s still struggling on – and alone, or almost alone, like the good fellow he is. Am sure, though, that you don’t forget him. He and I are still friends, I can assure you, but perhaps you’re not unaware that I myself am ill, and have more than once had serious nervous crises and delirium. This was why, having had to go into an asylum for the insane, he and I separated. But prior to that, how many times we talked about you together! Gaugin is currently still with one of my fellow-countrymen called De Haan, and De Haan praises him a great deal and doesn’t find it at all bad to be with him. You will find article on canvases of mine at the Vingtistes. I assure you that I myself owe a lot to things that Gaugin told me as regards drawing, and hold his way of loving nature in high, very high esteem. For in my opinion he’s worth even more as a man than as an artist. Are things going well with you? And are you still working a lot? Although being ill isn’t a cause for joy, I nevertheless have no right to complain about it, for it seems to me that nature sees to it that illness is a means of getting us back on our feet, of healing us, rather than an absolute evil. If you ever come to Paris, take one of my canvases from my brother’s place if you wish, if you still have the idea of making a collection for your native country one day. You’ll remember that I’ve already spoken to you about it, that it was my great desire to give you one for this purpose. How is our friend MacKnight? If he’s still with you, or if there are others with you whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, give them my warm regards. Above all, please remember me to Mrs Russell and believe me, with a handshake in thought,

Yours truly,

Vincent van Gogh

c/o Doctor Peyron

St-Rémy en Provence.

Head of Mrs. John Peter Russell (Marianna Mattiocco della Torre) by Auguste Rodin

Whilst living in Paris, Russell had become very friendly with two Parisian sculptors, Auguste Rodin and Emmanuel Frémiet and it was whilst visiting their studios that he encountered one of Rodin and Frémiet’s’ favourite models, Marianna Mattiocco della Torre. Rodin had, in 1888, encapsulated her beauty in a bronze bust entitled Head of Mrs. John Peter Russell (Marianna Mattiocco della Torre) and Frémiet had used Marianna as the model for his bronze life-sized Jeanne d’Arc statue which is at the Place des Pyramides in Paris.

Equestrian statue of Joan of Arc by Emmanuel Frémiet (1899)

Marianne who was born in Cassino, Italy was in her early twenties when she met Russell in 1885 and three years later, on a cold Parisian day in February 1888, John Peter Russell and Marianna Mattiocco became husband and wife. By the end of the year the happy couple had left Paris and set up home at Belle Isle, the largest of the Breton islands, off the west coast of Brittany. It was here that Russell had their home built and because he was the first non-Frenchman to settle on the island his house was known as Le Chateau Anglais.

The second portrait by John Peter Russell I want to show you is entitled Dadone and was completed around 1900. The question is who or what is Dadone? The word “dadone” I believe, but I am by no means certain, is an old fashioned Italian slang for “ancestor” or literally “old one” and therefore indicates that the subject has some sort of family relationship with Russell.

Les deux Mattiocco by John Peter Russell (1902)

The answer to the question can be found in a double portrait which was painted by Russell a few years later, entitled Les deux Mattiocco which has, at the top of the work, the inscription ‘Maria Peppa-Y-Pascal Mattiocco’. The painting, which depicts an elderly couple, is of Russell’s father and mother-in-law, Pasquale and Maria Mattiocco.

The date of the Dadone painting is thought to be 1900 as there is a preliminary sketch for the work in existence, inscribed, ‘JPR 00’ dating it at 1900 and it is thought that the final painting was completed shortly afterwards.

In the painting, Dadone, we see an inscription in the top right corner of the work:

Dadone

J R

Fecit

The inscription indicates the title of the work, the initials of the artist and the word “fecit” meaning he or she made it and the word is used formerly on works of art next to the artist’s name.

This beautifully crafted portrait by Russell is an affectionate and personal depiction of his wife’s father. The main colours used by Russell in this work are white, blue and greys profile. The bony structure of his head is framed by the imperious greying hair and beard, which along with dark bushy eyebrows give his father-in-law such a distinguished appearance. His eyes are dark and there is a hint of tiredness about them, which has been brought on by age.

In my next blog, the second part of my look at the life and work of John Peter Russell, I will examine his newly found interest in seascapes and landscapes once he had moved out of Paris and went to live on the Breton island of Belle-Ile where he met with many artists such as Monet and Matisse.

For further information regarding Russell’s friendship with Vincent van Gogh there is a book you may like to read. As yet I haven’t read it but I am sure it would be fascinating. It is:

A Remarkable Friendship: Vincent van Gogh and John Peter Russell by Anne Galbally

There is also an interesting short video on YouTube about the Van Gogh portrait and the inscriptions that were originally on it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6z46c93SXQ

Amedeo Modigliani. Part 4 – His lovers and the tragic end.

Modigliani - the woman's — Modigliani – the woman’s man

Today’s blog is the final one of four about the life of Amedeo Modigliani, the Livorno-born artist, who at the age of twenty-two moved to Paris where he lived out the last fourteen years of his life. As an artist he employed a number of models for his works of art and like many artists of the time the relationship between artist and model became much more than just a working relationship. Mothers were horrified if their daughters agreed to model for the artists, as an artist’s model was looked upon as just being one step from being his lover and thus the artist model was accused of almost prostituting herself in the name of art. It is almost certain that Modigliani had very close and intimate relationships with his models as he believed, in the case of his female nude portrayals, to achieve a great painting he had first to make love to the model ! I wonder if that is how he sold that argument to the model !!! However one must remember that Modigliani for all his faults and transgressions was an extremely handsome man. Although the models, who sat for his nude collection, are unknown we do know that he had intimate and serious relationships with three named women and it is those ladies, who featured in many of his works of art that I would like to highlight in today’s blog.

Anna Akhmatova.by Modigliani (c. 1911) — Anna Akhmatova by Modigliani (c. 1911)

In 1910, whilst living in Paris, Modigliani met Anna Akmahtova. Anna was born Anna Gorenko, in Odessa in 1889, and was five years younger than Modigliani. She came from a well-to-do family and from an early age was fascinated by poetry. Her love of poetry was denounced by her parents as being foolish, self-indulgent and something which would they feared would have a corrupt influence on their daughter. However she persisted and started writing poetry when she was just eleven years of age and had her first works published when she was seventeen. She would become one of Russia’s greatest twentieth century poets.

Anna Akhmatova as ‘Acrobat’ by Modigliani

The one person who constantly encouraged Anna to write her poetry was the young Russian poet, Nikolay Gumilev. However, to placate her parents all her writings were published under her pseudonym, Akhmatova, which was the surname of her maternal grandmother. After a prolonged “chase” Nikolay finally persuaded Anna to marry him but in a letter to her friend she outlined how she was unsure that she had made the right decision. She wrote about her feelings for her future husband:

“…He has loved me for three years now, and I believe that it is my fate to be his wife. Whether or not I love him, I do not know, but it seems to me that I do…”

The couple were married in Kiev in April 1910. Her family were totally against the marriage and refused to attend the service. The young couple left Russia and travelled to Paris for their short honeymoon and it was then that she met and became a friend of Amedeo Modigliani, who like her, had a love of poetry. Modigliani was undoubtedly attracted by her beauty as well as her poetry. She was slim and elegant and everywhere she went in Paris, men’s heads would turn to admire her good looks. Her husband was unimpressed by this attention and especially with the attention Modigliani gave his wife. Anna returned to Russia with her husband but she and Modigliani continued to correspond for the next twelve months. He was obsessed with her. His letters to Anna became ever more intense and passionate and Anna recalled her short time with him during her honeymoon and their correspondence. In a letter to a friend, she wrote:

“…In 1910, I saw him very rarely, just a few times. But he wrote to me during the whole winter. I remember some sentences from his letters. One was: Vous êtes en moi comme une hantise (You are obsessively part of me). He did not tell me that he was writing poems…”

In 1911 she returned alone to Paris and met up with Modigliani and this was the start of a short but passionate love affair. Their affair had to remain a secret. She dared not be seen in public with Modigliani in the guise of his lover in case word of it got back to her husband in Russia. The affair lasted just two months and Anna returned to St Petersburg and her husband and never saw Modigliani again.

The second lady with whom Modigliani had an affair was Beatrice Hastings. Beatrice was born in London in 1879, and was five years older than Modigliani. She was the fifth of seven children. Her real name was actually Emily Alice Haigh, but she used Hastings as her pen name. Her father was John Walker Haigh, a Yorkshire wool trader. He and his family immigrated to South Africa in the 1880’s. Beatrix was a writer, poet and literary critic, and wrote extensively for the weekly British political and literary magazine, New Age. During her life, she had a number of lovers, both men and women. She was a fiery and self-willed character and in her youth caused her parents innumerable problems. She was briefly married to Alexander Hasting, whom she said was a boxer. Although a headstrong person she was also very able and was a talented singer and a gifted pianist. She moved to Paris in April 1914 as a correspondent for the New Age journal, just before the onset of the First World War. She contributed a regular column until 1916, entitled Impressions de Paris, which went down well with the English public who wanted to know about the bohemian lifestyle of the Parisian literati and the bohemian lifestyle of the Montmartre artists.

Beatrice first set eyes on Modigliani in July 1914 when she was in the Café Rosalie in Paris. Later she was introduced to him by a mutual friend, the sculptor, Ossip Zadkine, at La Rotonde café, which was situated in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris. It was a famous café, opened in 1911 by Victor Libion, and was a favourite haunt of the aspiring writers and artists of the time, such as Picasso and Diego Rivera. In her memoirs, Beatrix recalled those first meetings with Modigliani. She wrote:

“…A complex character. A swine and a pearl. I sat opposite him. Hashish and brandy. Not at all impressed. Didn’t know who he was. He looked ugly, ferocious, greedy. Met him again at the Café Rotonde. He was shaved and charming. Raised his cap with a pretty gesture, blushed to his eyes and asked me to come and see his work And I went. He always had a book in his pocket. Lautremont’s Maldoror. The first painting was of Kisling. He had no respect for anyone except Picasso and Max Jacob. Detested Cocteau. Never completed anything good under the influence of hashish…”

Modigliani was thirty and she was thirty-five when they first met. He was down on his luck, almost penniless despite his mother still sending a monthly allowance but which was frittered away on alcohol and drugs. The sale of his paintings had almost dried up and what he did sell went for a few francs. His former patron Paul Alexandre, an avid buyer of his work, had gone to fight at the Front and at this time, he had nobody to promote or sell his art.

Portrait of Beatrice Hastings before a door bny Modigliani (1915)

Beatrice and Modigliani had a stormy love affair, which was to last until 1916. In 1915 Modigliani moved in to Beatrix’s flat in the Rue Norvain which was on the Butte Montmartre. In those two years they were together, Beatrice became Modigliani’s favourite model and he immortalised her in many of his paintings.

Modigliani’s final love affair was with Jeanne Hébuterne. Jeanne was born in Paris in April 1898 and was fourteen years younger than Modigliani. Her elder brother André was an aspiring artist and he introduced Jeanne to many of the artists who lived around Montparnasse, some of whom she modelled for. Following her own desire to become an artist she enrolled in 1917 at the Académie Colarossi and it was whilst studying at this establishment that she was introduced to Modigliani. If nothing else, Modigliani was a woman’s man who had a certain magnetism and charisma which charmed the females he encountered. She was nineteen and he was thirty-three. She was a very beautiful young woman with the most amazing almond-shaped eyes. She was slim, pale-skinned and had long light-brown braids. Jeanne soon fell under his magical charm and before long, the pair became lovers. They were very much in love and after a short while, she moved in to his lodgings on Rue de la Grande Chaumière. Her parents, who were staunch Catholics, were horrified with this turn of events – their daughter had taken up with a penniless artist, shared his bed and to make things worse he was Jewish.

Jeanne Hebuterne with Hat and Necklace by Modigliani (1917)

Jeanne was all Modigliani could ask for. Besides her beauty which he admired, she seemed to be his soul mate. For her it was a case of “unconditional love”. She asked for very little in return from Amedeo and she put up with his excessive drinking. In 1918, despite the terror of the First World War, Jeanne became pregnant. If the horrors of war and being pregnant were not enough of a burden, Modigliani’s health was in decline. It was fortuitous that two years earlier Modigliani had struck up a friendship with a Polish émigré and small-time art dealer Léopold Zborowski. The art dealer had initiated a deal with Modigliani, that in return for his paintings, he would provide him with comfortable lodgings and studio space. Now in 1918, Zborowski once again came to Modigliani’s rescue by arranging for him and Hébuterne to leave Paris and go to the warmer climes of Provence in Southern France and it was here on November 29^th 1918, in the town of Nice that Jeanne gave birth to Modigliani’s daughter, Jeanne.

Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne by Modigliani (1919)

Modigliani, Jeanne and their daughter returned to Paris in the Spring of 1919 and that summer Jeanne became pregnant once again. In August of that year Modigliani was supposed to have gone to London to be present at an exhibition of some of his work but by then he was much too ill to travel. Although he continued to paint, it was becoming increasingly more difficult as he would frequently have to stop to lie down and rest. Eventually by the end of 1919 he was bed-ridden. On January 22^nd 1920 he was found unconscious in the apartment and was rushed to the pauper’s Hôpital de la Charité. Two days later he died. The medical report stated that he choked on his own blood. The official cause of death was tubercular meningitis. Reputedly his last words harked back to his love for the country where he was born. His dying words being:

“…Italia, Cara, Italia…”

Amedeo Modigliani 1919. The year before his death — Amedeo Modigliani 1919.
The year before his death

His girlfriend, Jeanne Hébuterne,whom he had promised to marry, and who was eight months pregnant with Modigliani’s second child was inconsolable. She had been staying at her parents’ apartment whilst Modigliani was in hospital and her loss was so great that at 3am the day after her lover had died, she threw herself out of her parents’ fifth floor apartment window, killing herself and her unborn child. Her parents had her buried in a grave in the Paris suburb of Bagneux with little ceremony, mortified and embarrassed at the life she had led with Modigliani and the way in which she had decided to end her own life. Modigliani’s mother was unhappy that her son and the mother of his child were not at rest together and fought hard for this to be achieved. Modigliani’s mother was also adamant that Jeanne’s daughter should be recognised as her son’s child.

Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne's grave at Piere Lachaise Cemetry Paris — Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne’s grave at Piere Lachaise Cemetry Paris

After three years of arguing with Jeanne’s parents, the body of Jeanne Hébuternes was exhumed and laid to rest in Modigliani’s grave at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and their daughter, Jeanne Hébuternes, who by this time was three and a half years old was recognised as Modigliani’s daughter, took his surname and inherited her share (one-fifth) of the proceeds from the sale of his paintings. The dealers retained four-fifths!

Having read so much about Modigliani I have tried hard not to be too judgemental. It would be easy to say that he brought about his own downfall with his extensive use of drugs and bouts of heavy drinking but I think we need to look more carefully at his physical state before we pass judgement. From his pre-teens days we know he had been unwell with pleurisy and later tuberculosis. Tuberculosis at the time was a killer disease which was highly infectious and one train of thought is that Modigliani’s use of drugs and alcohol was not only to ease his suffering but was to mask his illness. Unfortunately we are only too well aware how one can become drug and alcohol dependent and that, as was the case of Maurice Utrillo who had suffered a similar addiction due to mental issues, happened to Modigliani who had become totally reliant on alcohol and drugs.

I have enjoyed looking at all Modigliani’s paintings and despite some who believe his drug and alcohol abuse added to his artistic talent I believe that had he been a well man, drug and alcohol-free, and lived longer, then who knows what masterpiece.

For those of you who would like to read more about Modigliani, try looking at these websites:

http://www.geni.com/people/Olimpia-Lumbroso-Modigliani/6000000014620610421

http://chez-edmea.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/jeanne-hebuterne.html#.UjAUzn80QWf

http://artinthestudio.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/modigliani-part-two.html

http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/11174/lot/53/

http://secretmodigliani.com/bio2.html

http://ineedartandcoffee.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/cubisms-birthplace-bateau-lavoir.html

http://www.abcgallery.com/M/modigliani/modigliani10.html

http://www.modigliani-drawings.com/paul_alexandre.htm

http://www.modigliani-drawings.com/Introduction.htm

http://www.artandantiquesmag.com/2011/02/modigliani-finds-a-dealer/

Amedeo Modigliani. Part 3. The female nude paintings

I have changed my intended blog for today. At the end of my last blog, I said that in the next one I would conclude Modigliani’s life story and look at some of the women in his life. However, after careful consideration, I decided that it would not be right to end Modigliani’s life story without looking at his favourite artistic genre, the painting of female nudes. In all between 1916 and 1919 he completed no fewer than twenty-six paintings of female nudes, some of whom are seated whilst others are seen lying back languorously.

We know that Amedeo’s love of painting females nude started back in Livorno where, at the age of fourteen, he attended the Villa Baiocchi workshop of the artist Guglielmo Micheli. Later in 1902, when his mother took him away from their home in Livorno to aid his failing health, they visited Florence and in May 1902, just before his eighteenth birthday, he enrolled at the Scuola Libera di Nudo of the city’s Accademia di Belle Arti which was the beginning of his serious study of life drawing and which cultivated his love of painting female nudes. In 1903 when he was in Venice he enrolled at the life drawing classes at the Accademia di Belle Arti and three years later, when he arrived in Paris at the end of 1906, he attended the Académie Colarossi where he attended life drawing classes. The Académie Colarossi was a private institution, founded at the end of the nineteenth century, which offered its students an alternative to the very formalised state Academies. It was very progressive and it is certain that Modigliani received some alternative approaches on how to depict the female nude. In the Académie Colarossi life-drawing classes the students were encouraged to decide themselves on how the model should pose. This was totally contrary to the strict rules and formalisation imposed by the likes of the state Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Without doubt, Modigliani’s most powerful compositions are his female nude paintings. There is something simplistic and yet graceful about them but such simplicity does not decrease the erotic and sensuous nature of the works. In many cases one feels that he has drawn upon earlier female nude paintings by other great artists for the resultant poses of his sitters. The Italian art critic Giovanni Scheiwiller, who wrote a biography of Modigliani, wrote of the artist’s nude paintings and the artist’s relationship with his sitters, saying:

“…[it was] a completely spiritual unity between the artist and the creature he has chosen as his model…”

This bond between Modigliani and his models of course led to many racy stories of his penchant for the fairer sex and his belief that to completely capture the inner beauty of his female sitter he must first make love to them! It is maybe this kind of legend that contributes to our desire to see his work.

Nude on a Blue Cushion by Modigliani (1917) National Gallery of Art, Washington DC — Nude on a Blue Cushion by Modigliani (1917)
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Let us first look at Amedeo Modigliani’s oil on linen work entitled Nude on a Blue Cushion, which he completed in 1917. It is part of the Chester Dale Collection at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The naked female lies back against a blue cushion and looks out at us with a challenging stare. There is no hint of her being shy or introverted. The look she gives us is one that almost suggests that she is tempting us with her body, which she is very proud of.

If one looks at the famous 1863 painting, Olympia, by Edouard Manet (see My Daily Art Display Oct 12^th 2011) we see in the sitter’s posture the same brazen look as she awaits her next client.

Sleeping Nude with Arms Open (Red Nude) by Modigliani (1917) Gianni Mattioli Collection, Milan — Sleeping Nude with Arms Open (Red Nude) by Modigliani (1917)
Gianni Mattioli Collection, Milan

In his 1917 work entitled Sleeping Nude with Arms Open (Red Nude) Modigliani has depicted the female laying back on a red blanket. Her right arm lies at the side of her head whilst her left hand is placed beneath her head. She is unashamedly offering her body to us.

This pose is very like Goya’s female nude painting entitled, La Maja Desnuda (My Daily Art Display Sept 9^th 2012), which he painted around 1800. She too lies naked before us albeit her upper torso is propped up by cushions but she, like Modigliani’s female has her hands behind her head. Despite her very revealing pose, there is a certain vulnerability about Modigliani’s female in this work. Her eyes are closed and we have therefore no idea of what she is thinking. Our eyes are drawn to her red lips which are full and slightly pouted. In a way it is as if she is giving herself to us. She is offering us her ultimate gift – her body.

Nude with Coral Neclace by Modigliani (1917) Allen Memorial Art Museum Oberlin College, Ohio — Nude with Coral Neclace by Modigliani (1917)
Allen Memorial Art Museum Oberlin College, Ohio

In another female nude painting which Modigliani completed in 1917 entitled Nude with a Coral Necklace and which is housed in the Allen Memorial College at Oberlin, Ohio, we can see a similarity between the pose of the Modigliani’s female sitter with the poses of the females in two of the greatest nude paintings of all times, Giorgione’s 1508 painting entitled, Sleeping Venus

and Titian’s 1558 work entitled, Venus of Urbino (My Daily Art Display Feb 15^th 2011).

In all three cases the models left hand is placed between her thighs in an effort to retain a modicum of modesty. In the Modigliani’s work our eyes are drawn to her breasts because of his use of red to depict the areolas. Unlike the other nude works the face of the women in this painting shows a hardness which I believe counteracts any sensuality. Her facial expression differs from the other female nudes. Her almond shaped eyes and tight-lipped mouth warn us off. There is no hint of a “come-hither” look about this woman.

Red-haired Young Woman in Chemise by Modigliani (1918)

His nude painting Red-haired Young Woman in Chemise was completed by Modigliani in 1918 in some ways reminds one of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.

Although in this work she is seated, she, like Botticelli’s nude, inclines her head slightly to one side and her right hand lies across her body, over her heart and touches her breast. There is a definite sensuality about Modigliani’s painting in the way he has depicted the woman with her head at an angle. She clutches her white chemise in an attempt to cover herself but she has failed. The strap of the chemise has slid down her left shoulder. Her right breast is fully exposed whilst her right hand hides her left breast from our view. The way Modigliani has depicted her mouth with reddened lips, which are slightly parted, adds to the eroticism of this work. Her facial expression is one of inquisitiveness as if she is questioning our presence.

Of all his female nude paintings, my favourite is the one which hangs in the Courtaulds Gallery in London. It is simply entitled Female Nude and was completed by Modigliani in 1916. The female in this work is seated, which is unlike most of his other female nude works. Her head rests on her shoulder. Her eyes are closed. Her full lips touch the delicate skin of her chest. Her long black hair cascades down her back, but a few strands lie delicately across her right breast. The unknown female sitter holds a demure expression. Hers is an hour-glass figure. The shading and the skin tone Modigliani has used reveals a slight swelling of her stomach. She is a veritable beauty. Once again the figure has an elongated face, a trademark of Modigliani. Her cheeks are flushed with a rose-coloured tint. Is this a sign of her embarrassment at posing for Modigliani or is she just being coy? The painting was completed a year before he set about painting his large series of female nudes and was at a time when he was engaged in painting portraits of his friends and lovers.

Vénus (Nu debout, nu médicis) by Modigliani (1917)

Modigliani’s works command very high prices. The Modigliani Venus which he completed in 1917 when it last came up for sale had an estimated price of between $6 and $9 million but it sold for $14,200,000 and his work Nu assis au collier (Seated Nude with Necklace) had, in 1995, sold for $12.5 million.

Seated Nude on Divan by Modigliani (1917) — Seated Nude on Divan
Nu assis sur un divan (La Belle Romaine)
by Modigliani (1917)

However the highest price paid for a Modigliani nude came in November 2010 when his painting Nu assis sur un divan (La Belle Romaine), came up at Sotheby’s New York auction. Its estimated price was $40 million but with five bidders competing for the work its sale price reached $68.9 million, four times the price it realised when it was sold at Sotheby’s in 1999.

Price Evolution in Modigliani's paintings — Price Evolution in Modigliani’s paintings

I came across an interesting graph (above) on the website (http://secretmodigliani.com/auctions.html) which showed how Modigliani’s paintings have consistently risen in value. Who says art is a bad investment?

Poster for Berthe Weill's 1917 exhibition of Modigliani's works — Poster for Berthe Weill’s 1917 exhibition of Modigliani’s works

I could not end this blog about Modigliani’s nude paintings without recounting the well known tale of Modigliani’s first and only, one-man show which his patron and friend, Leopold Zborovski had managed to cajole the art dealer Berthe Weill to hold at her Paris gallery, Galerie B. Weill. Weill had first opened her gallery in 1901 and in 1917 moved to a more spacious one at 50 rue Taitbout in Paris’ 9^th arrondissement, close to the Paris Opera. Weill was dedicated to the cause of giving young up-and-coming artists, like Modigliani a chance to become recognised. Over almost forty years, until the gallery closed in 1939, works by all the modern greats such as Raoul Dufy, Kees van Dongen, André Derain, Georges Braque,Vlaminck, Diego Rivera and mother and son Suzanne Valadon and Maurice Utrillo had their works exhibited at her gallery.

Modigliani’s one man show was set for December 3^rd 1917 and being exhibited at it were thirty drawings and paintings including a number of his female nude paintings, one of which was in the window of the gallery and attracted a lot of public attention. Unfortunately for Weill and Modigliani, across from the gallery was a police station and the police, to their horror, soon noticed the crowds gathering to look through the window of the gallery at the nude figures. The police commissioner ordered Weill to close the exhibition describing the paintings as being “filth”. So why this strange decision and this prudish statement? Female nudes had been painted for many years and life classes were part of the artistic syllabus at the formal Academies? However that was the nub of the matter as the Academies taught that the female nude should be depicted only in certain poses and Modigliani’s nudes did not conform to that dictate but even more horrifying to the police commissioner was that Modigliani had depicted his female nudes as having pubic hair…shocking!!!!! Modigliani had gone back to the pre-Academy days when strict rules regarding the posture of female nudes did not exist. Goodness knows what the police commissioner would have made of the works of Egon Schiele !!!!! Despite Weill’s argument that it was art, the commissioner of police would not change his mind and the exhibition closed before it began !

My final look at the life of Modigliani in my next blog will take in his final years and look at some of the women with whom he developed a close relationship.

……to be continued.