Art Blog – Page 76 – my daily art display

Springtime in Eskdale by James McIntosh Patrick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeunesse Dorée by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst

jeunesse doree by Brockhurst — Jeunesse Dorée by Gerald Brockhurst

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

Gerald Brockhurst SelfPortrait — Gerald Brockhurst (Self Portrait)

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

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

Anais Brockhurst first wife of the artist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Appearance of Christ to the People by Alexander Ivanov

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ford Madox Brown wrote in his diary:

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

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

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

I will let you be the judge.

The Mirror of Venus by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

Mirror of Venus by Edward Burne-Jones (1898)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On painting in general, Burnes-Jones said:

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

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

The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak by Albert Bierstadt

My Daily Art Display today features two Americans and a mountain. The two Americans are the landscape artist Albert Bierstadt and the US Army brigadier general and explorer Frederick West Lander. The mountain in question is Lander’s Peak, named after the explorer.

Albert Bierstadt was a German-American painter and his main contribution to American art was his landscapes of the newly discovered American West. He was born in Solingen, Germany in 1830 and three years later he and his family emigrated to America establishing their first American home in New Bedford Massachusetts. As a teenager he acquired a love for art. In his early twenties he returned to his homeland and studied art at the Düsseldorf School in Düsseldorf. On his return to America in 1857 he turned his artistic attention to the landscape of New England and upstate New York and became part of the Hudson River School of painters. This group of 19^th century artists was influenced by the Romanticism movement and their landscape paintings concentrated on the lands around the Hudson River Valley which included the Catskill, Adirondack and White mountains. It was from within this group that another painting genre evolved. It was called luminism, which was an American landscape painting style of the 1850’s – 1870’s which was characterised by effects of light in landscapes. The use of aerial perspective and a hiding of visible brushstrokes were also characters of this style of painting. These luminist landscapes accentuated an aura of tranquillity and often depicted stretches of calm water above which were soft hazy skies.

It was two years later in 1859 that Bierstadt met up with Frederick West Lander who at the time was working for the US government as a land surveyor. Lander, who was ten years older than Bierstadt, was a military man, who after having studied in various military academies became a civil engineer and an army officer. The American government employed him to survey the land out to the west so as to find a suitable route for the Pacific railroad. This was a hazardous occupation for he and his team of surveyors had not only to contend with the often inhospitable climate but they had to deal with the Native Indians, who fought against the incursion into their homeland.

Bierstadt accompanied Lander on one of these transcontinental surveys which was to forge a passage west and which would become known as Lander Road. This became a popular route for future wagon trains crossing Wyoming and Oregon. It was during this journey of discovery that Bierstadt made many sketches of the landscapes he encountered and on his return home he would convert his rough sketches into many majestic landscape paintings. These were very popular with collectors in the American East who were willing to pay high prices for his works of art as there was a great desire to learn more about their newly-discovered lands to the West.

My Daily Art Display today is one Bierstadt completed in 1863 shortly before he returned back to the West on another journey of discovery. The oil on canvas painting is entitled The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak. It was a very large painting, measuring 187cms x 307cms (approximately 6ft by 10ft). Bierstadt’s works were often of this size and some of his contemporaries believed this was solely due to his egotistical manner. It was probably more to do with their jealousy and the fact that his large works dwarfed their smaller offerings.

The setting for this landscape painting is of the Wind River Range of the Rocky Mountains of west Wyoming. The mountain, seen in the central background of the painting, was given the name Lander’s Peak by Bierstadt in honour of Lander, who had died on the Civil War battlefield the previous year. This major work of Bierstadt received great acclaim. This wonderful painting manages to capture the vastness of the American landscape and the nature of the undeveloped lands that he and Lander’s survey party encountered. Bierstadt in this painting, by the careful use of brushstrokes, manages to convey to us a sense of awe of the untainted landscape as it was at that time. Like many of his fellow Hudson River Valley artists, Bierstadt believed that through art, moral and spiritual change could be achieved.

The beauty of this painting is breath-taking with its high snow-covered peaks soaring upwards into the sky. In the middle-ground we see a waterfall gushing water into the mirror-smooth lake. I love how the sunlight streams through the clouds to light up this cascading torrent. It is the effective use of luminism which gives this painting the “wow factor”. It adds a mood of tranquillity, peace and calmness to the work. The vegetation around the lake is lush and green and the location was an ideal stop-over place. In the foreground we see a Shoshone Indian encampment with its warriors and their horses.

The painting was sold to a private collector James McHenry in 1865 for $25,000, which was an enormous sum of money in those days. The artist later bought back the work of art and gave it to his brother Edward. Bierstadt was a prolific painter completing over five hundred works. Sadly a large number of them were lost when his Irvington studio was destroyed by fire. Bierstadt died in New York in 1902 aged 72.

Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks

Sometimes artists paint a number of versions of a work of art and I often wonder the reason for this. Are they dissatisfied with their original work or are they just fascinated with the subject of the painting and they wish to add some symbolic aspect so as to give a meaning, whether obvious or hidden that they had not considered when painting the original?

The artist featured in My Daily Art Display today painted over sixty versions of a picture. I wonder why he dedicated almost thirty years of his life on this one theme, continually churning out revised versions. The featured artist today is the American Folk painter, Edward Hicks. Hicks was born in Attelboro, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1780. He was brought up in his grandfather’s mansion. His father, Isaac was a Loyalist, an American Colonist, who sided with the British during the American Revolutionary War, which lasted from 1775 to 1783. Edward Hicks’ mother died when he was only a year and a half old and he was brought up by Elizabeth Twining, a friend of his late mother. She was a Quaker and brought up Edward in that faith and it was to have a great effect on him for the rest of his life.

When he was thirteen years of age Hicks was apprenticed to coach maker William and Henry Tomlinson with whom he learnt the art of coach painting. When he was twenty he set himself up in his own business as a house and coach painter. At that time he had not fully taken on board the Quaker religion or their ways and was just a happy-go-lucky young man. Later in life he was to look back on those days with some self-reproof, writing:

“…in my own estimation a weak, wayward young man … exceedingly fond of singing, dancing, vain amusements, and the company of young people, and too often profanely swearing”…”

Hicks decided to renew his interest in the Quaker faith and in 1803, the twenty-three year old, became a member of the Society of Friends. It was in that same year that he met and married a Quaker woman, Sarah Worstall. In 1812 he became a Quaker minister and the following year travelled around the state preaching the Quaker faith. At the same time as his preaching tours, he had to keep money flowing into his household so he carried on his painting career, concentrating on farm and household items as well as tavern signs. His business was quite profitable but it was that very fact that to some of his fellow Quakers, fell foul of the Quaker principles. For a time he gave up his painting and tried to follow the Quaker traditions of farming but he lacked experience and was soon losing money. His commissions for house and equipment painting was also starting to dry up and financial disaster stared Hicks in the face. He was also now a father of five young children who had to be fed.

A life-line was thrown to him when somebody suggested that he should become a Quaker artist and by his works of art, spread the “word”. It was at this time, in 1820, that Edward Hicks made the first of his paintings entitled The Peaceful Kingdom which he revised many times. Today’s painting for My Daily Art Display’s features the 1833 version of the painting which is hanging in the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts. This painting was not looked upon as a religious painting but in some ways illustrates the Quaker principles. The subject of the painting was taken from the Old Testament, Book of Isaiah 11: 6-8

The wolf will live with the lamb,
   the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
   and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
   their young will lie down together,
   and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
   the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

There is a peaceful interaction between the domestic and wild animals, which in real life would be the “predator and prey”. We see the lion happily eating straw with the bull. We see a black bear sharing its food with an ox. We see a lamb and a wolf lying contentedly, side by side. We observe humans and animals interfacing peacefully which in some ways suggests an impression of unity. A child has her arm wrapped round the neck of a tiger, whilst another strokes the nose of a leopard. In the background, to the left, we see a group of people. In this later version of the painting we see a ravine dividing these characters in the middle ground from the animals in the foreground.

In the middle ground these are settlers symbolizing the founders of American Quaker movement, led by William Penn, and native Indians who are signing a treaty, which would allow both groups to live in peace and harmony. Theirs would be a Peaceable Kingdom. Harmonious living was tantamount in the teaching of the Quakers. They believed that barriers should be removed that prevented people working and living together in peace. It is all about living peacefully together and by doing so having a happy and fruitful life.

There is warmth to this picture in the way Hicks uses his colours. The scene is lit up by the sunlight streaming down the valley. There is a great depth to the painting with the animals in the foreground the people in the middle ground and the sunlit river running through the deep-sided valley in the background.

Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch by Edward Hicks (c.1826)

In the1826 version (above) entitled Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch the words of Isaiah were lettered on the false frame of the picture which surrounds the painting.

In later versions Hicks’ technique became more adept. The figures depicted were spread more and lessened in number. The animals seemed to become more restless and showed a greater ferocity and there were signs of a split between the predators and their prey. They looked older with greying whiskers and sunken eyes. It could well have come about as a result of Hicks’ uneasiness with Quakerism.

Marriage à la Mode: The Lady’s Death by William Hogarth

We have finally arrived at the final chapter of this set of six satirical paintings by the English artist, William Hogarth, entitled Marriage à la Mode. This final canvas in this moral drama is entitled The Lady’s Death and this of course gives away the final twist in the pictorial story. When I gave you the first of the six paintings on May 4^th I had intended it has a “one-off” in case you got bored if I had gone through all six of the paintings. However, I became so fascinated by them I thought that my fascination would be transferred to you and so for the last six days we have followed the life of the Earl and Countess of Squander through the eyes of Hogarth. Sit back and enjoy the dénouement. For those of you who have not seen the earlier paintings in my blogs I suggest you head back to My Daily Art Display of May 4^th where the story starts.

Yesterday in My Daily Art Display we witnessed the scene at the bagnio, the death of the Earl at the hands of his wife’s lover, Silvertongue, the family lawyer. Now we are transported to the home of the Countess’ father the rich merchant who had arranged his daughter’s marriage to the Earl, paid a sizeable sum of money to the groom’s father and in return, achieved entry in to the world of nobility. The decor of the room is not like anything we saw earlier in the house of the young noble couple. This has a bareness and frugality to it. There is no sign of aristocratic profligacy we had seen in the earlier paintings. The floors are bare. This is not because of the owner’s lack of wealth but more to do with his business-like bourgeois miserliness. Unlike his daughter and his son-in-law, he was careful with his money.

So let us look carefully at this final scene. In a chair we see the tragic figure of the dying countess. She has been informed that her lover, Silvertongue, the family lawyer, has been hanged at Tyburn for killing her husband. She is wracked with guilt and inconsolable and has taken an overdose of poison. Hogarth has piled on more tragedy by showing the nursemaid bringing the Countess’ child to the dying woman for one last cuddle. The nursemaid is wracked with grief, tears streaming down her cheeks. Sadly, it should be noted that this maid’s expression of grief is the only one we can see on the faces of the people in the room. The small child puts her lips to her mother’s face to give her one final kiss. Once again Hogarth has signified, by painting a black spot on the child’s cheek that the child is suffering from syphilis, almost certainly passed on by the father who we knew was suffering from that sexually-transmitted disease. It probably also means that the future health of the child looks extremely bleak. If that was not bad enough, we can see the poor young thing has legs strapped in callipers, possibly caused by rickets…

We see the father of the countess standing next to the chair his daughter in which she is lying slumped. He has hold of her right hand. Is this a touch of tenderness from the heart-broken father? I fancy not as we can see his sole intention seems to be to remove the gold wedding ring from his daughter’s finger before rigor mortis sets in. He is aware that this sordid episode will prove financially disastrous to him as in cases of suicide the property and possessions of his daughter will revert to the State, which of course means he will lose the considerable dowry he put up as part of the marriage contract. His best-laid plans have fallen asunder. Do I hear a cheer of delight from my readers?

To the right of the dying woman we see the apothecary reproaching the foolish servant for allowing this all to happen, for it was the servant, who had been persuaded by his mistress to go out and procure some laudanum from the apothecary. Now the apothecary will be blamed and his rage at the servant is probably to deflect such onus of blame from himself for allowing the poison to enter the household. The empty bottle lies on the floor by the feet of the countess with the label “Laudanum” still attached. Next to the empty vial we see a handbill reporting the notice of execution at Tyburn of Silvertongue and recording the dying words of the convicted murderer. It is probably these tragic last words of her lover that tipped the countess into a suicidal depression.

Let us now look at some of the minor details of the painting that Hogarth has tantalised us with. Through the open door from which the doctor is leaving we see a row of leathern buckets hanging on the wall. These were the normal accoutrements of a merchant’s house and were, before a fire engines came into being, in case of fire. Once again we see an overturned chair, this time by the table. Hogarth used this to symbolise disagreement and conflict. On the table, we see a pig’s head, which presumably was to be part of a meal, being dragged off by an emaciated-looking dog. This sort of unappetising meal woulds probably cost little and is a direct reference to the frugality of life in the miserly merchant’s abode.

The paintings on the wall are Dutch genre showing satirically the life of the common people. In one, we can just make out a woman lighting her pipe using the heat from a drunken man’s nose. In another, a still-life, we see a pile of dirty dishes lying untouched in a sink and in another we are presented with a drunken man urinating against a wall.

The window to the right of the painting bears the St George’s Cross, the City of London coat of arms. In the upper right quadrant we see an upturned sword which is indicates that this house is situated north of the Thames. Looking out of the open window we can see the old London Bridge with all its old dilapidated houses built along its entire length. Art historians tell us that this view was one Hogarth would have witnessed from a window in his uncle’s house.

So that is finally the end of Hogarth’s satirical story depicted in his six paintings. I hope you liked them. When they were first shown to the public around 1743 they received poor reviews, much to the artist’s disappointment considering the amount of time he had put into them. His peers denigrated his efforts saying that they were merely caricatures. Hogarth had started preliminary work on what was to be another set of paintings entitled The Happy Marriage but probably, after the poor reception he received for Marriage à la Mode, he decided to shelve the project and now only a few unfinished sketches exist. In my opinion they were much more than just caricatures. The paintings give us a very human story and although we may take pleasure in the downfall of the Earl, his wife and the lawyer, I believe Hogarth wanted to draw from us a condemnation of the two fathers who, for financial gain, forced the two young people into an arranged marriage.

Hogarth sold his paintings for a mere twenty guineas and after changing hands a few more times became the property of the British Government and are part of the collection of the National Gallery in London and where they reside today in Room 35. I will certainly be heading there the next time I visit this great gallery.

Marriage à la Mode: The Bagnio by William Hogarth

My Daily Art Display for today will look at the fifth painting in a set of six by William Hogarth, entitled Marriage à la Mode. Today’s painting is subtitled, The Bagnio. For anybody who has just come to this page, I suggest you flick to My Daily Art Display of May 4^th as that looks at the first painting of the set and as the six paintings are telling a story in chronological order that is where you should start this pictorial soap opera about the Earl of Squander and his young bride. The title of the Hogarth painting today is The Bagnio. In England, bagnios were originally used to name coffee houses which offered Turkish baths, but by 1740, which was around the time Hogarth painted these pictures, they signified places where rooms could be hired “with no questions asked”, later they became houses of prostitution.

Yesterday we looked at the fourth painting in the series, subtitled The Toilette and we learnt for the first time that the relationship between the Countess of Squander and her lawyer, Silvertongue was not as pure and business-like as we first believed. They were arranging to go to a masquerade together and we learnt that the anonymity that these soirées provided guests, allowed them to behave as flirtatiously as they liked without fear of their identity being known.

The scene of the painting today is set in a dimly lit room in the Turks’ Head Bagnio, which actually existed in London at the time of Hogarth, in Bow Street, Covent Gardens. Hogarth identifies the establishment by showing a bill on the floor next to the upturned table in the far left foreground of the painting. Silvertongue and the Countess did go to the masquerade but instead of her returning home she has decided to accompany her lawyer to the bagnio to consummate their sexual desires. We know they attended the masquerade as their masks lie discarded on the floor. The floor is also strewn with discarded clothes, the two masques and their bags and it is obvious the two lovers were in great haste to make love. However for the lovers the night of passion turned out to be an unmitigated disaster as somehow the Earl of Squander, her husband, had found out about their secret assignation and had burst in on them whilst they were carrying out their dastardly deed. It makes you wonder whether the Earl himself had been using the bagnio for his own forbidden pleasures and the landlord had said something like “I see your wife and her lawyer are here tonight”. Ok, that is stretching the imagination too far, but somehow he found out about this tryst.

An ensuing sword-fight broke out between Silvertongue and the Earl. Unfortunately for the Earl, whose life had been spent gambling, drinking and fornicating, fencing had not been his forte and the result of the short-lived duel ended with him receiving a fatal wound to the heart. Silvertongue now fearing the consequences of his action drops his bloodied sword, which we see on the floor, and decides to vacate the room through the window without stopping to get dressed. The Countess racked with guilt, falls to her knees at the feet of her dying husband begging forgiveness. The sound of the commotion has alerted the landlord of the establishment who bursts through the door with the Night Watch to investigate. This is the scene we now see before us.

As ever, I get great pleasure in looking at the detail in paintings rather than just standing back and having a cursory glance at a work. I think we owe that to the artist, who has spent so much time on the details and shouldn’t we try and get into the head of the painter and try and rationalise the details he has meticulously added to his masterpiece?

We are given a rear-view of Silvertongue in the left background, disappearing out of the window in his night shirt. There is something quite comical and ludicrous about his pose and maybe it was Hogarth’s intention to cast him as a fool.

On the rear wall hangs a tapestry. It is a woven depiction of the Judgement of Solomon, which if you remember tells the story from the bible which was about his judgement on the parenthood of a baby between two women claiming the infant as theirs. His judgement was that the baby should be split asunder, giving half to each mother. Hogarth probably added this as a backdrop to this painting as a reference to the destructive split of the marriage between the Earl and the Countess due to their self-centred life choices they had made which resulted in the ruin of both their lives.

Hogarth must have had a sense of humour for look on the back wall at the framed three-quarter length picture of a prostitute, which has been placed on the tapestry in such a way that the legs from part of the tapestry scene look to be those of the prostitute! The bedclothes lie ruffled on the bed which leads us to believe that the Earl had entered the room and caught the lovers in flagrante delicto.

From what Hogarth depicted in this painting, we can have no doubt that the final painting, which we will look at tomorrow, is not going to have a happy ending.