Realism – my daily art display

William James Glackens

To look at the history of the Ashcan School one has to go back a step and look at a group of painters who became known as The Eight. These eight artists, with Robert Henri, acknowledged as the leader of the group, were Arthur B. Davies, William Glackens, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice B. Prendergast, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan.

Ashcan School artists and friends at John French Sloan’s Philadelphia Studio, 1898

Luks, Sloan, Glackens, and Shinn worked as newspaper artist/reporters and illustrator-cartoonists and maybe because of this connection, the many paintings of these artists took on a journalistic quality. All eight artists utilised the crowded life found on the New York streets as the subject of their paintings. Their work depicted un-idealized views of life in a big city and focused on the bars and the clientele, dark grubby-coloured tenements, pool halls, and slums. This was the epitome of urban realism. Realism in art was described by Gustave Courbet in an open letter he wrote on December 25^th 1861, now referred to as his Realist Manifesto. He wrote:

“…To know in order to do, that was my idea. To be in a position to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my time, according to my own estimation; to be not only a painter but a man as well; in short, to create living art – this is my goal…”

At the high point of their popularity these men were seen as confronting Academia which favoured the genteel tradition of “art for art’s sake, and which had dominated the American art establishment for many decades with works from likes of John Singer Sargent and Abbott Handerson Thayer.

However, on February 3rd, 1908, the MacBeth Galleries, New York, opened an exhibition featuring The Eight artists. It caught the attention of the American art world and although the show remained on view in New York for less than a fortnight, it was taken to several cities including Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia. These exhibitions were lauded as watershed exhibitions of 20th-century vanguard art. It was a triumph of “American” art.

The name “Ashcan School” was a derisive criticism of The Eight and their works of art, which appeared in an article in The Masses, an American magazine of socialist politics. The author of the article alleged that there were too many “pictures of ashcans and girls hitching up their skirts on Horatio Street” in their paintings. The group of artists were amused by the article and the group soon became known as the Ashcan School of painters. The Ashcan School of artists had also been known as “The Apostles of Ugliness”.

William Glackens by Robert Henri (1904)

A few blogs back I looked at the life of George Luks who was an American realist painter connected to the Ashcan School. Today I am looking at the life and paintings of one of his contemporaries who was also one of the Ashcan School of painters. He is William James Glackens. William Glackens was born in Philadelphia on March 3^rd 1870. He was the youngest of three children to Samuel Glackens, a cashier for the Pennsylvania Railroad and his wife Elizabeth Glackens. William’s siblings were an older sister, Ada and an older brother Louis who would later become a cartoonist and illustrator and work on early animation films.

East River Park by William Glackens (1902)

William attended the Central High School where one of his fellow students John Sloan, who would later become a member of The Eight. Glackens graduated from the Central High School in 1890. Throughout his school days Glackens loved to draw and paint and became a very accomplished artist and in November 1891, aged twenty-one, he and Sloan enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Glackens also worked as an artist reporter for many newspapers, starting at the Philadelphia Record. His task was to pictorially record news events and had to work to tight deadlines.

Christmas Shoppers by William Glackens (1912)

In October 1894, having completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Art, Glackens started a job as a staff artist/reporter for the Philadelphia Press and worked alongside fellow artists Sloan, Edward Davis, George Luks, and Everett Shinn. Around this time Glackens was introduced to Robert Henri by Sloan. Henri was an artist five years older than the pair. He had returned to study at the Academy for a second stint after spending time in Paris studying at the Académie Julian, under William-Adolphe Bouguereau, where he developed a love for Impressionism and later, he was admitted into the École des Beaux Arts. Besides befriending Glackens and Sloan two more aspiring artists, George Luks and Everitt Shinn joined the informal group which met at Henri’s apartment to discuss art, philosophy, culture and more, their meetings became known as the Charcoal Club because they would spend time using that medium to produce drawings from life. This informal group explored art genres not available at the Academy, such as nude figure drawing. They also became interested in the social philosophical writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Émile Zola, and Henry David Thoreau. Besides meeting to draw. paint and discuss philosophy, the group led a very sociable life during which alcohol played its part !

Figures in the Park, Paris by William Glackens (1895)

In 1895, Glackens, along with several other artists, including Robert Henri travelled to Europe so that they could learn more about European art. The first country they visited was Holland where Glackens scrutinised the work of the Dutch masters. From there he went on to the French capital where he and Henri rented a studio apartment for a year. For Glackens, staying in Paris, exposed him to the work of the great Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. His greatest influence was the work of Manet.

Lena (the artist’s daughter) Painting by William Glackens (1918)

Glackens returned to America in 1896 and moved to New York and spent time at Henri’s many social gatherings. Glackens took up employment at the New York Herald as a reporter and also worked as an illustrator for various magazines. These two lines of work provided him with a good steady income and over the next decade he produced more than a thousand illustrations. Although many were comedic in nature, in April 1898 the Spanish-American War broke out in Cuba and the McClure’s Magazine sent him there to collate the news and produce newsworthy illustrations. It was a difficult assignment and his living conditions were poor. On his return to New York, he was taken ill and it was discovered that he had contracted malaria which would return time and again during his life.

Hammerstein’s Roof Garden by William Glackens (1901)

In 1901 Glackens completed a painting entitled Hammerstein’s Roof Garden. Hammerstein’s Roof Garden was the official name of the fashionable semi-outdoor vaudeville venue that theatre magnate, Oscar Hammerstein I, built atop the Victoria Theatre and the neighbouring Theatre Republic. During summer months theatres were often closed due to the suffocating atmosphere inside the venues and so roof garden venues were very popular. The viewer is placed as if they are part of the audience and in front of us, we see a a colourfully dressed female tightrope walker as she tentatively navigates the rope which is strung across the stage. In the foreground we see the audience, some of which are unaccompanied females which was something that years ago would have been unheard of. The painting is now part of the Whitney Museum of American Art collection in New York.

The Artist’s Wife, Edith Dimock Glackens, in her Wedding Dress by William Glackens (1904)

William Glackens’ single status ended in 1904 when he married Edith Dimock. Edith, who was six years younger than William, came from a wealthy Hartford Connecticut family which made its fortune as silk merchants. Despite her family’s strong objections but she turned away from business as a career and instead set about becoming a professional artist. She left home and moved to New York City when, in her early twenties, she enrolled at the Art Students League where she studied with American Impressionist William Merritt Chase.

Sweat Shop Girls in the Country by Edith Dimock (c.1913)

She soon made a name for herself as a talented watercolourist depicting women and children of working- and middle-class backgrounds. Through his wife’s wealth, Glackens could concentrate on his art, and often Edith and later their daughters, Ira and Lenna became his models. His 1901 portrait of his wife is of a classical formal style. Set against a dark background, Edith is depicted wearing a black coat and hat with a long brown pleated skirt. As with many of his portraits Glackens wanted his subjects to be seen just as they were, warts and all, and refused to idealize his sitters. In this portrait Glackens has made no attempt to either make the depiction more modern or beautify the sitter.

Portrait of Edith Dimock Glackens by Robert Henri (c.1902)

His friend Robert Henri also painted a portrait of Edith around the same time which appears more idealized and certainly adds a touch of beauty to the depiction.

At Mouquin’s by William Glackens (1905)

Artists need to sell their work and to do this their work has to be shown at exhibitions. However it was not always easy for many artists to have their work accepted by exhibition juries and in 1907, Glackens and many of his contemporaries decided to take the matter into their own hands and split from the National Academy of Design who they felt, for some reason, stopped accepting their work The Eight, as they had come to be known, led by Robert Henri decided to host their own exhibition at the Macbeth Galleries in New York City and an opening date for the event was set for February 3^rd 1908.

May Day in Central Park by William Glackens (1905)

Although part of the Ashcan School of Painters, Glackens preferred to use a lighter palette for his work, unlike the darker palette used by the others who liked to depict the darker and grittier side of life in the city. For Glackens depictions of family life whilst shopping or relaxing in the park were his favourite subjects for his paintings. Unlike his colleagues Glackens preferred to focus more on scenes of leisure and entertainment rather than concentrate on the misery of life in the slums of the Lower East Side.

The Green Car by William Glackens (1910)

The consequences of working as an artist/reporter for a number of Philadelphia and New York newspapers taught him to observe the smallest of details of a scene. In New York Glackens had a studio on Washington Square Park and it was from here he captured a scene for his 1910 painting entitled The Green Car. The painting depicts a green trolley car as it rounds the corner at the south side of the park and we see it is heading towards a lady who is standing by the snowy curb, waiting to alight. She is dressed smartly in a long coat, hat, and muff, she signals to the conductor of the trolley car. Our eyes move from the foreground and the green trolley car across the snow-covered grass, through the trees and finally alight on a row of three-storey brick tenement buildings.

Olympia by Manet (1863)

In 1910 Glackens produced what many believe is his homage to Édouard Manet’s Olympia with his painting entitled Nude with Apple.

Nude with Apple by William Glackens (1910)

It depicts a reclining nude holding an apple which she has taken from the nearby bowl on her right. To her left on the sofa there is a large hat and a pile of her discarded clothing including one blue shoe. She wears a black choker around her neck which harks back to the same accoutrement warn by Manet’s reclining nude, Olympia. Whereas Manet’s Olympia covered her pubic region with her hand, Glackens has modestly covered his model’s pubic region with a piece of discarded white lingerie. Glackens’ depiction is another of his typical realist genre. The model is ordinary. She could not be termed beautiful. The depiction alludes to her being simply one of Glackens’ models who has just arrived at his studio wearing a large flowery hat, a gown and blue shoes. She then hurriedly undressed, abandoning her clothes on the sofa. The scene seems to have been unscripted. And yet…..are we to think of the apple in her hand as symbolising Eve?

Breezy Day, Tugboats New York by William Glackens (1910)

Glackens extensive knowledge of European art and artistic trends in Europe led him to be commissioned by Albert Barnes, the American chemist, businessman, art collector, writer, and educator, in January 1912 to travel to Europe and buy paintings for him which would then become the foundation for the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia. Barnes was also a High School classmate of Glackens and gave him twenty thousand dollars to be used for purchasing paintings and Glackens returned with thirty-three works of art. That December Barnes himself travelled to Paris to buy more works of art.

Soda Fountain by William Glackens (1935)

On Feb. 17th, 1913, the International Exhibition of Modern Art opened at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue in New York. The Armory Show, as it came to be known, had a profound effect on American art. William Glackens helped to organize the American section of this ground-breaking exhibition but later reflected on how the American art was somewhat inferior to the European submissions. He voiced his opinion:

“…Everything worthwhile in our art is due to the influence of French art. We have not yet arrived at a national art […] I am afraid that the American section of this exhibition will seem very tame beside the foreign section. But there is a promise of renaissance in American art…”

William Glackens in his studio (c.1915)

Although he liked the modern and much more abstract European works Glackens maintained his love of painting scenes of everyday life and always remained a realist artist. During the inter-war years Glackens made a number of trips to Europe buying European works to enhance the Barnes collection. Glackens died of a cerebral haemorrhage on May 22nd 1938 while spending a weekend visiting fellow artist Charles Prendergast in Westport, Connecticut. He was 68.

Jean-Eugène Buland

Jean-Eugene Buland photo.jpg — *Jean-Eugène Buland*

Jean-Eugène Buland was born in the French capital on October 26^th 1852. He was the son of an engraver, as was his younger brother, Jean-Émile Buland. Jean-Eugène’s artistic career began when he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the studio of Alexandre Cabanel. Cabanal was a renowned French artist who painted historical, classical and religious subjects in the academic style and was also well known as a portrait painter. He had been a professor at the art establishment since 1864 and was highly regarded by Emperor Napoleon III. There can be no doubt that Buland was influenced by Cabanel’s choice of subjects for his paintings and his academic painting style. Success came early on for Buland when he gained the Deuxième Prix de Rome in 1878 and once again in 1879. The Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them to stay at the Villa Medicis in Rome for three to five years funded by the French government.

See the source image — *The Illustrator and His Daughter in the Workshop by Jean Eugène Buland (1891)*

On his return to France Buland soon became aware of the popularity of the French painter, Jules Bastien-Lepage, and his success with his Naturalist paintings depicting realistic themes so much so, he decided to forego his depictions of historical works and concentrate on scenes of everyday life. Bastien-Lepage, like Buland, was also awarded the Deuxième Prix de Rome in 1875 and 1876 but declined the opportunity to study in Rome as the classical training held no interest for him although winning the prize had been a great honour. Buland joined the Naturalist painting movement with Bastien-Lepage and found that by utilising photography it allowed him to paint his models with the most precision.

*Alms of a Beggar* *by Jean-Eugène Buland (1880)*

In 1880 he completed one of his best loved works, Alms of a Beggar, in which we see a young woman beautifully dressed in white sitting outside a church in search of charity. From her left, we see a man, who is a beggar himself, coming towards her with a coin held out in his right hand. His clothes are a mass of patches, and they are pale and dirty. On his feet he wears scruffy old wooden shoes. From his demeanour he would appear sightless. It is a fascinating depiction that raises all manner of questions. Why is the well-dressed woman begging? Is she as poor as the man in the depiction or is Buland telling us that you do not have to be badly dressed to be poor? Is there such a thing as inward poverty – a poverty that has nothing to do with lack of money? Look at the painting and make your own mind up.

Three years later, in 1883, Buland completed a painting entitled Le Tripot which is a French word meaning gambling house or gambling den. This work by Buland is one of his masterpieces. The setting is a sleazy back-street gambling den and depicts five unsentimental-looking gamblers facing us whilst sitting at a gaming table. The air is thick with cigarette and cigar smoke, the walls of the establishment are in need of redecoration.

To the left we see an elderly woman, probably a widow, diminutive in stature, dressed all in black. She pushes some paper money towards the pot. Looking over her shoulder is a middle-aged man. Is he just a merely a passing observer or is there more to his presence?

Next to the old woman is a man showing an air of confidence as to his ability as a gambler and yet the pile of winnings in front of him is small. He is slightly laid back and seems to be worry-free. With cigarette in hand he glances to his right.

By far the most interesting person in this group portrait is one at the centre. An elderly man gazes out at us with an almost blank look as if he is not registering what he is seeing. He is completely lost in his own thoughts. Why did Buland depict him as almost having no part in what is happening around him ?

Is he just another gambler or is he the croupier as we see his wooden rake which is used to collect money from the gaming table at his side and a large pool of money which could be the “bank”.

The remaining gamblers are to the right of the painting. The man with the long hair and ringlets would appear to be of Jewish origin akin to the likes of Fagan and Shylock and in a way this depiction has a sort of anti-Semitic tone to it. Before him, we see that he has accrued a large amount of winnings, which could have been Buland’s thoughts on the reputation of the Jewish people’s love of money. In contrast, next to him, on his left, is a young man who looks totally bemused and is certainly down on his luck. From his bored facial expression we can see he is completely resigned to losing the last of his money. Behind the pair we see a couple ladies of the night who are looking to see who is winning and thus who is worth approaching for their services.

The question as to why has Buland chosen these five main characters, four of whom are definititely gambling is questionable. Is he trying to put across his belief that all types of people fall into the clutches of gambling? The run-down setting maybe his way of not glorifying the “sport” of gambling.

If you wanted to have an artistic depiction of tenderness and young love Buland’s 1903 offering of Bonheur des parents probably could not be topped. The painting’s title translates to Parental Happiness and it depicts a young man and his young wife with their newly born baby. The setting is a small room of a stone-built cottage. It is a new experience for the couple and we can see the woman looking down at her baby as it breast-feeds. You can see the utter tiredness in the eyes of the young mother and the nervousness in the father’s expression. It is all new to them and they are having to survive alone with the nurturing of their child. They have been given a precious gift.

Another depiction of young love was his 1884 painting entitled Mariage innocent. It is an idyllic portrayal of young happiness with its young couple walking arm in arm through fields against a backdrop of a village and blossoming flowers in the foreground.

*La Lecture by Jean-Eugène Buland* *(1901)*

In 1886, Buland left Paris to settle in Charly-sur-Marne, a little village just east of the capital, in the French department of Aisne, near Château-Thierry, shunning the art scene of the French capital. From this quiet village life Buland derived inspiration from simple everyday life, which he painted with the greatest fastidiousness. His works gained popularity and he obtained many commissions including ones from a number of art institutions, such as the Luxembourg Museum in Paris and many other provincial museums. During these early years he submitted many of his works for the Salon des Sciences in the Paris’ City Hall and some were used to decorate the ceiling of the City Hall of Château-Thierry. His painstaking realist depictions were well-received at the Salon, where he won a number of medals. He gained a third-class medal at the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona in 1888. In the following year he was awarded a silver medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris and was also awarded during the International Exhibition in London in 1890. The ultimate honour came in 1894 when he received the Legion of Honour.

*Un Patron or The Lesson of the Apprentice by Jean-Eugène Buland (1888)*

In France during the start of industrialization realist painters were often given official assignments from the state to depict themes from the new and progressive metal industry. In his 1888 painting, entitled Un Patron, sometimes referred to as The Lesson of the Apprentice, Buland used photographs as a basis for the work catching all the details of what was a combination of a smithy and a mechanical workshop. In the painting we see the head mechanic is using a drill while working on a cogwheel. The painting depiction had a political propaganda aspect to it. France had suffered after a heavy and costly defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the country was now striving to recover through its advances in its industry and manufacturing and the depiction of the young apprentice learning a trade in engineering highlighted the country’s determination to become an industrial powerhouse.

bulandtinker — The Tinker by Jean-Eugène Buland (1908)

The term ethnography is the scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences. Eugène Buland was a meticulous painter who never overlooked any details with regards to the figures populating his paintings. He spent a great deal of time depicting their appearance and their costumes and an equal amount of time was spent on the details of the inanimate objects that completed the works. Through his painstaking way in which he used light and shadow on his figures and on the settings, Buland paintings became true works of art. His paintings are like an everyday chronicle of life combining portraiture with genre scenes. One good example of this is his 1908 painting entitled The Tinker. We see the man busy at work, repairing damaged pots, pans, and domestic metal objects. Look at the varying textures of these objects. Look closely at the wall of the room and see how Buland, with touches of white has a glistening effect which highlights the dampness on the stone wall.

bulandpropaganda — Propaganda Campaign by Jean-Eugène Buland (1889)

I like two of Buland’s works which have a political overtone to them. In 1889 he painted Propaganda Campaign in which we see a travelling salesman has arrived at the home of a poor family and he is trying to offload books and coloured prints to the head of the household. However, he was not just a salesman as he combined his sales pitch with his political thoughts. In the salesman’s left hand he holds a poster of General Boulanger, a French general and politician who was an enormously popular public figure during the 1880’s and the buttonhole rosette in the salesman’s jacket lapel identifies him as a canvasser for the General.

bulandmunicipalcouncil — *Municipal Council and Commission of Pierrelaye Organizing a Festival by Jean-Eugène Buland (1891)*

The other political painting by Buland which I like is his provincial municipal depiction of a group of local councilors. The 1891 work is entitled Municipal Council and Commission of Pierrelaye Organizing a Festival. Pierrelaye is a commune in the Val-d’Oise department in Île-de-France in northern France. It is almost certainly a painting commissioned by the very councilors who are depicted in the work. They all exude an aura of importance and solemnity. For those who would look at this group portrait by Buland there would be no doubt that the councilors would be worth every penny of their wages !!!!

*Ouvriers Se Chauffant (Workers Warming Themselves) by Jean-Eugène Buland (1906)*

My final choice of Buland’s paintings is a dark and somewhat brooding study of two workmen sitting on a large log, who are trying to fight off the cold by warming themselves in front of a brazier. Maybe they are woodsmen who have just come inside the hut for a rest having been working outside in the cold. The room is dark and dank and the two figures are just about lit up by a thin beam of daylight penetrating a small window high up in the wall.

Jean-Eugène Buland died on March 18th 1926, aged 73.

Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky. Part 1. School Days

Today I am talking about Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky, who was one of the great nineteenth century Russian painters. The visual expression of the artist’s painting has its roots in realism, the desire to depict the reality of life.

Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov was born on December 6^th, 1868 in the small rural village of Shitiki of the Belsky district of the Smolensk province (today, the Oleninsky district of the Tver region) in the west of Russia, some 360 kilometres west-south-west of Moscow, and 60 kms from the border with Belarus. The second part of his name was attached only in 1905 when the artist received the title of Academician. Bogdanov-Belsky recalled this momentous event:

“...My common name was as though ennobled by the Emperor himself, writing it personally in a diploma with a hyphen – “Belsky…”

Nickolai came from a poor peasant family which in a Russian-language site was described as:

Он, внебрачный сын батрачки,

“He’ the illegitimate son of a batrachka“

A batrachka is defined as an order of amphibians which includes the frogs and toads. So, I guess that means his family was harshly classified as the lowest of the low ! Nikolai was born into a life of abject poverty and his childhood was harsh and unforgiving. He lived with his mother at the house of his uncle, where they were unwanted guests and merely tolerated. According to church records, Bogdanov-Belsky began learning to read and write from a bell ringer. He continued into the 2nd grade of the Shopotovsky primary school where the local priest was also the teacher. The boy’s artistic abilities began to manifest themselves from the age of six and he was noticed by Sergei Alexandrovich Rachinsky, the founder of the folk school in the village of Tatevo, and from the autumn of 1878 to the spring of 1882, Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky attended this school. The boy worked hard and was helped along by Sergei Aleksandrovich Rachinsky and lived in the Rachinsky household. Rachinskyi was a legendary and wealthy man, who was a professor of biology, who lived on a large estate. Racznski had been Professor of Botany at Moscow University but left the scientific department in 1867 and created a school for peasant children on his estate in Tatev. However, to gain entrance to this school one had to pass an exam and in the case of Nicholai, he had to draw one of the school’s teachers in profile which is quite a difficult task for a child but his test piece was good enough for him to be accepted into the Sergei Aleksandrovich Rachinsky People’s School.

An der Schulschwelle von Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov Belsky — *On the Threshold of School by Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky (1897)*

What was it like for Nickolai to face his first day at this new school? The answer probably lies in his 1897 autobiographical painting which he painted, aged twenty-nine. It was entitled On the Threshold of School. In it we see a boy holding his breath as he stood outside his classroom, plucking up the courage to enter.

Writing by Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky (c.1908)

Another schoolroom scene was painted by Nikolai in 1908 simply entitled Writing.

Nikolay Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky. Verbal counting — *Oral Counting by Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky (1895)*

One of Nickolai’s well-known works featuring school life is his 1895 painting entitled Oral Counting which is also referred to as Verbal Counting or Mental Arithmetic. This is also Nikolai’s dedication to Sergei Aleksandrovich Rachinsky, a university professor and hereditary nobleman, who had befriended young Nikolai and set up a school which gave him and other barefoot peasant children from the village a start in life in the form of a decent education. In the painting, we see the figure of a schoolteacher, an intellectual in a bow tie and a black tailcoat seated among ordinary rural boys who have come to learn mathematics. The school room in the depiction is part of the school built with funds from Rachinsky in his ancestral village of Tatevo. It became the first Russian educational institution with full board for children of peasants. Nickolai Bogdanov-Belsky himself was fortunate enough to study there. Throughout his life, Nickolai would return with thoughts of gratitude remembering the warmth of school life and he devoted more and more of his new canvases to the teaching profession, and the process of schooling. There is no doubt that his years spent at the Rachinsky school left an indelible mark on his soul Rachinsky was very definite as to what the peasant classes needed, saying:

“…The first of the practical needs of the Russian people … is communication with the Divine…….The peasant is not drawn to the theatre in search of art, but to the church, not to the newspaper, but to the Divine Book…”

The reasoning behind this was that Rachinsky also believed that Dante and Shakespeare would be available for understanding to those who learnt Church Slavonic writing, while Beethoven and Bach would become closer to a person familiar with church chants.

Nicolai Bodanova-Belsky’s depiction testifies to Rachinsky’s main passion – mathematics, and the emphasis that was placed on it in his teaching. Rachinsky created the textbook entitled 1001 Problems for Oral Counting, and the puzzle seen on the blackboard in the painting is one such problem. Apparently, this example seen on the blackboard can be solved by knowing about the regularities of adding squares of some two-digit numbers named after the famous Russian teacher. So, according to Rachinsky’s sequences, the sum of the squares of the first three numbers on the board will be equal to the sum of the next two. And since in the first and second cases this number is 365, the answer to this already classical problem is extremely simple….. 2, but you knew that !!!!!!!!!

Nikolay Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky. Future monk

Future Monk by Nickolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky (1889)

In 1881, Rachinsky sent thirteen-year-old Nickolai to receive an initial art education at the icon-painting workshop at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, where the boy studied for two years. In 1884, after two years studying at the monastery school Rachinsky enabled Nickolai to enrol at the Moscow School of Painting and Architecture. He thrived at the school and achieved many commendations for his landscape work. He remained there for five years, and at the end of the course he had to produce a diploma painting, so as to receive the title of “class artist”. He was unsure what to paint although his fellow students and teachers presumed it would be a landscape painting. He decided to go back to the village of Tatevo to visit Raczynski and ask for his advice. Together they come up with the idea that the painting should feature monks. The painting he completed was entitled Future Monk. It seems the young teenager in the picture has set his sight on becoming a monk and to go to the monastery. The eyes of the “future monk” stare out at us with grim determination. He is already dreaming of monastic life and spiritual feats that it will bring. The work was approved by the examiners and bought from the exhibition by Kozma Terentievich Soldatenkov, the largest collector of works of art, and then given to by Empress Maria Fedorovna. Immediately the artist was ordered to paint two more versions of the painting. The painting had been an absolute success!

*Sunday Reading by Nickolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky (1895)*

In 1890 Nickolai travelled to Constantinople and Mount Athos, a mountain and peninsula in northeastern Greece which is an important centre of Eastern Orthodox monasticism. On Athos, Bogdanov-Belsky met Filippe Malyavin, who is engaged in icon painting there. He also met sculptor Vladamir Beklemishev, a professor who later became the rector of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Between 1894 and 1895 Nickolai is in St Petersburg where he continues his art studies at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. One of his lecturers was Ilya Repin. In 1895 Nickolai completes one of his best loved paintings, Sunday Reading. The painting is well received and is sold and with the money raised he goes to Paris, where he attends the private studios of Fernand Cormon and Filippo Colarossi.

*Country Boys by Nickolai Bogdanov- Belsky (1916)*

There can be no doubt about the love Nickolai had for painting children of peasant stock. He would travel back and forth between St Petersburg where he rented an apartment and the village of Tatevo where he had his studio. He once wrote:

“…I spent so many years in the village, so close to the village school, so often I watched peasant children, so loved them for their spontaneity, their talent, that they became heroes of my paintings…”

In my final look at Bogdanov-Belsky’s peasant children paintings I want to show you his 1916 work entitled Country Boys. The main characters in this depiction are two bare-footed boys, one of whom is sitting on a rickety wattle-fence which appears to be just strong enough to support him. He wears a peaked cap on his head, which was a typical head gear of the 19th and early 20th centuries and sported by people in towns and rural settings alike. He is wearing a patched shirt and ill-fitting trousers with a hole at the knee. Something has distracted him making him turn to the side but we are unable to elicit what has caught his attention. His friend, standing beside him, is also wearing shabby clothes which could well have been “hand-me-down” ones from an elder brother. This is a Realism painting. The artist is simply depicting how things are for the rural poor. This is not a painting denouncing social inequality. In a way it is a poetic and lyrical depiction in the way Nickolai has given us a setting, a resplendent representation of nature, in which, behind the fence we see a chamomile field, forest and an overcast sky.

………………..to be continued.

Frants Henningsen

Today I am looking at the life and works of the Danish painter and illustrator, Frants Peter Diderik Henningsen. Henningsen was born in Copenhagen on June 26^th 1850. He was the oldest of three children of Frants Christian Henningsen, a wholesaler and his wife Hilda Christine Charlotte Schou. Frants had a younger sister Euphemia and a younger brother Erik. Henningsen attended the Borgerdyd School in the Christianshavn district of Copenhagen and after graduating from there he enrolled at the Christian Vilhelm Nielsen drawing school in preparation for admission to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture which he attended from October 1870 on a five-year course. After completion of the Academy course, he, like many other aspiring painters, decided to further his art education in Paris. In 1877 he enrolled at the atelier of Léon Bonnat, which was attended by other Danish students.

En rygvendt bondekone, der arbejder i solen — Farm woman working in the sun by Frants Henningsen

Frants Henningsen, although in France and in the midst of plein air painting and Impressionism, was more of an Academic painter who created his artwork in a studio. He was very much influenced by the Realism genre of painting and the socially oriented naturalism of Jules Bastien-Lepage, Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton. Henningsen’s paintings often added the human dimension to the depictions of deprivation, human suffering and poverty.

One of his most famous painting is his 1893 work entitled A Funeral. It is a poignant depiction of a funeral and one which Henningsen has cleverly manipulated to add to the sense of sadness. The setting is the Assistens graveyard in the Nørrebro area of Copenhagen, which was originally a burial site for the poor and was laid out to relieve the crowded graveyards inside the walled city, but which at the start of the nineteenth century had become fashionable and many leading luminaries of the Danish Golden Age, such as Hans Christian Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, and Christen Købke were laid to rest here. Henningsten, using dark tones, has depicted the setting as a very gloomy winter’s day. The wall of the cemetery is grey and devoid of any colour. There seems to be only a few people who will be taking part in the funeral service. The main character is the widow, a pregnant woman who takes the arm of an elderly gentleman, whom we presume is her father. She looks down as she is about to enter the cemetery. Her face is drawn and she has a greyish-white facial complexion. In front of her are her two children. In the background we see two men, standing apart from the mourners, gazing at the family. Like them, we are merely spectators witnessing the harrowing event. Henningsen received a great deal of praise for the painting, which was immediately bought by the National Gallery of Denmark.

In the Spring of 1878 Henningsen along with fellow Danish painters, Peder Severin Krøyer, Frans Schwartz and the German artist, Julius Lange travelled to Spain,where they studied the works of the great Spanish painters such as Velazquez and Francisco de Zurbarán.

In November 1880, in Copenhagen, thirty-year-old Frants Henningsen married twenty-one-year-old, Thora Vermehren. She was the daughter of Frederik Vermehren, the genre and portrait painter in the realist style. The couple went on to have five children, four sons and a daughter.

r/museum - Frants Henningsen - A Hero from 1864 (1901) — *A Hero from 1864 by Frants Henningsen (1901)*

The Second Schleswig War was the second military conflict of the nineteenth century over the Schleswig-Holstein Question . The war began on February 1st 1864, when Prussian and Austrian forces crossed the border into Schleswig. The army of Denmark fought the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire and Henningsen depicts a conflict between the two sides in his great 1901 work entitled A Hero from 1864. The setting is a country road in Schleswig. In it we see a lone Danish Hussar facing a large group of the enemy invaders. His heroics are captured in the painting but we know his fate is sealed.

En falden tysk husar — *A Fallen German Hussar by Frants Henningsen (1901)*

Another casualty of the war was depicted in Henningsen’s 1901 painting A Fallen German Hussar. Once again we see the result of battle.

*Summer day on the beach at Hornbæk with children playing by Frants Henningsen*

In the late 18th century, it was common practice for artists from Copenhagen to spend their summers in the countryside and seaside north of the city and a number of artists began lodging in Hornbæk, either in the local inns or privately. Hornbæk is a seaside resort town on the north coast of the Danish island of Sjælland, facing the Øresund which separates Denmark from Sweden.

*From the beach at Hornbæk by Frants Henningsen (1883).*

In 1873, twenty-two-year-old P.S. Krøyer, the celebrated Danish painter, arrived in Hornbæk along with three artist friends Frants Henningsen, Viggo Johansen and Kristian Zahrtmann. Later many other painters would follow in their footsteps. The four young artists settled along the northern coastline of Zealand, fascinated by the sea, the broad beaches, and the blue hills of Kullen on the Swedish mainland on the horizon.

Fisherman with Red Kerchief — *Fisherman with Kercheif by Frants Henningsen (1880)*

They were also fascinated by the weather-beaten faces of the local fishermen and listened intently to their tales of peril on the sea. P.S. Krøyer, reported on his first time in Hornbæk with his friends:

“…I had a splendid summer this year – well, not as far as the weather was concerned, for it was stormy and restless – but rather because I was, for the first time ever, able to spend an entire summer in the countryside out in the open air, far removed from the troubles and drudgeries of the city, and with three other painters whom I count among my very best acquaintances; all this has been to me a tremendous pleasure. We enjoyed some lovely trips (being based in Hornbæk on the north coast of Zealand); we went on a sailing trip to Kullen, on excursions to Gurre, Nakkehoved, to Tisvilde on Midsummer Night and to various places besides. The way of life there was utterly attractive: to venture out into the fresh, clear water en compagnie in the mornings (I learnt to swim there); and the pleasant evenings spent either walking in the woods or the beaches or in conversation back home in our pleasant digs, speaking and smoking our pipes; a splendid, idyllic life…”

One of my favourite paintings by Henningsen is his 1888 Realist work with the strange title, Forladt. Dog ej af venner i nøden, which translates to Abandoned. However, Not By Friends in Need. Many of his paintings depict unfortunate occurrences in the lives of middle-class people living in Copenhagen during difficult times. In this work, it is all about the fate of the single mother. It is interesting to note that Frants Henningsen painted this picture in the same year as the law that allowed single mothers to receive money from absent fathers in the form of child support until the child reached the age of ten. It was not until a law was passed on May 27th 1908, that child support was to be provided until the child reached the age of eighteen. However, even around the turn of the nineteenth century, the single unmarried mother had very little chance of being able to keep her child with her and many of these children therefore went to orphanages.

One of his best loved genre pieces is his painting entitled Hos pantelåneren (At the Pawnbroker) in which he depicts a group of visitors to the emporium, both young and old, examining the goods on offer, all eager to find a bargain.

Industricafeen — A Café in Copenhagen by Frants Henningsen (1906)

It was not just the working classes that featured in Henningsen’s paintings. The upper class lifestyle was on view in his depiction of Copenhagen café life in his 1906 painting Industricafeen (A Café in Copenhagen).

Frants Henningsen died in Copenhagen on March 20th 1908, aged 57.

George Hendrik Breitner – The Amsterdam Impressionist.

The artist I am looking at today is George Hendrik Breitner, the nineteenth century Dutch painter, who was best known for his realistic depiction of Amsterdam street and harbour scenes. He was also of great importance in what was later termed Amsterdam Impressionism.

George Hendrik Breitner was born in Rotterdam on September 12^th, 1857. He and his younger brother, Godfridus, were the children of Johan Wilhelm Heinrich Breitner and Marie Anne Henriette Gortmans. His father worked in the grain business and George, after finishing primary school, joined the Palthe & Haentjes, grain company, as a clerk. At the age of seventeen George went to the Delft Polytechnic School for vocational training. George showed a great talent for drawing and in January 1876, aged eighteen, partly because of the intercession of the artist Charles Rochussen, his father agreed to have him enrolled on a four-year course at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (Royal Academy of Art) in The Hague. He was an exemplary student and won a number of awards including a second prize for composition and two years later took the first prize in a live model competition. In October 1877 he obtained his teaching certificate and during 1878 and 1879 he taught art at the Leiden Art Society (Ars Aemula Naturae), originally the Leiden Guild of St. Luke.

The Dam, Amsterdam by George Breitner (1895)

In 1880 Breitner was expelled from the Art Academy for misconduct, his misdemeanour said to have been that he had destroyed the regulations-board. Around that time, he shared lodgings of the Dutch landscape painter of the Hague School, Willem Marisat, at the Oud Rozenburg house in The Hague. Marisat became Breitner’s friend and tutor. It was through Marisat that Breitner was accepted as a member of the Pulchri Studio, an important artist’s society in that city.

Les Brisants de la Mere du Nord (The Breakers of the North Sea) by William Mesdag

It was here that he met fellow member Hendrik Mesdag, a one-time banker but later an accomplished artist, whose forte was his maritime paintings, one of which, Les Brisants de la Mere du Nord (The Breakers of the North Sea), gained him the gold medal at the 1870 Paris Salon. In 1880, Mesdag had been commissioned by a group of Belgian entrepreneurs to paint a panorama depicting a view over the village of Scheveningen which lay on the North Sea coast close to The Hague. It was such a large project that Mesdag put together a team of artists including his wife Sientje, Theophile de Bock, Barend Blommers and twenty-three-year-old George Hendrik Breitner. The finished work which measured 14 metres high and 120 metres around, was completed in 1881 and I talked about in my My Daly Art Display blog

Bridge with Rain and Wind by George Breitner (1887)

In 1882, Breitner made the acquaintance of another distinguished artist, Vincent van Gogh, and the two would often go on sketching trips around the poorer and seamier side of The Hague. In a letter to his brother Theo in February 1882, Vincent wrote:

“…. At the moment I quite often go to draw with Breitner, a young painter who’s acquainted with Rochussen as I am with Mauve. He draws very skilfully and very differently from me, and we often draw types together in the soup kitchen or the waiting room &c…”

Two Girls with Brown Can by George Breitner (1885)

For Breitner his models were the poorer working-class folk such as labourers and servant girls who plied their trade in the lower working-class areas of the city. Breitner preferred these working-class models such as labourers, servant girls and people from the lower-class districts. Interest in the fate of the common people, which many artists felt in that period, was cultivated by the social conscience of French writers such as Émile Zola and the realism paintings of Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet. Breitner believed that through his paintings he would create history. His desire to become famous for his realistic paintings of the poor can be seen in his letter he sent to his patron, the grain merchant, Adriaan Pieter van Stolk, dated March 28^th 1882. Breitner wrote:

“…Myself, I will paint the people on the street and in the houses, they built, life above all, I’ll try to be Le peintre du peuple or I’ll be better because I want to be. History I wanted to paint and I will too, but history in its most extensive sense. A market, a quay, a river, a gang of soldiers under a glowing sun or in the snow…”.

Distribution of Soup by George Breitner (1882)

In May 1884 Breitner left The Hague and travelled to Paris. His stay in the French capital lasted only six months during which time he attended Atelier Cormon where he liked to depict the toiling workhorses or demolition scenes, using dark tones . He completed a number of paintings featuring the streets of the city with its horse and cart transportation. His desire to paint scenes of everyday life in the French capital was enhanced by his interest in and inspiration from the writings of Zola, Flaubert and especially Edmund and Jules de Goncourts with their book, Manette Salomon, being a favourite of Breitner.

Labourers Pulling a Heavily Laden Cart on Jacob van
Lennepkade, Amsterdam by George Breitner (1900)

In the late 1880’s, Breitner’s new hometown, Amsterdam, was beginning to expand, new industries were shooting up and it was pulsating with life. Breitner was afforded the ideal opportunity to record pictorially the changes. Now living in the city, he took the opportunity to hone his artistic talents by enrolling for a short period at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts under the tutelage of August Allebé, an exponent of realism and impressionism. Breitner’s cityscape paintings of that era, although maybe not topographically accurate, were emotional depictions, full of colour and movement. His depiction of the common people was somewhat different as he used greys and browns to portray the hard and laborious tasks, they had to perform to earn a meagre wage. His paintings were often both emotional and sensitive.

Construction Site in Amsterdam by George Breitner

Breitner’s 1902 painting, Construction Site in Amsterdam, highlights the building boom in Amsterdam. He based the painting on a series of photographs he took of a construction site in the city. Although it may have been thought to be an en plein air work, the painting was in fact carefully created in his Prinseneiland studio. Through the use of his photographs and sketches, he was able to portray an ever-changing city.

A View of the Leidsegracht Amsterdam by Willem Witsen

One of the painters he liked at this time and whose work influenced him was the Dutch painter and photographer associated with the Amsterdam Impressionism movement, Willem Witsen, whose best works include serene views of Amsterdam, such as his depictions of the canal areas Herengracht and Leidsegracht.

In the late 1880’s, beside his cityscape works, Breitner embarked on painting nudes.

The Red Kimono by George Breitner (1893)

In 1893, he completed a series of paintings featuring Japanese girls, a beloved theme of many painters in those days. Japonism, which referred to the French term, japonisme, which denotes the assimilation of iconography or concepts of Japanese art into European art and design. Most of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists painters were influenced by this phenomenon.

Girl in White Kimono by George Breitner (1894)

Breitner was Inspired by Japanese prints he had seen between 1893 and 1896 and completed thirteen paintings featuring a girl in a kimono. In each the young woman assumes different positions and the kimono often are of different colours. In the above 1894 work, Girl in a White Kimono, what stands out the most in the depiction is the exquisitely embroidered, white silk kimono with red-trimmed sleeves and an orange sash. For this painting and many in the series, Breitner utilised the services of seventeen-year-old Geesje Kwak, a seamstress who was also one of his regular models.

*De Gele Ruiters* (The Yellow Riders) by George Breitner (1886)

In his earlier days during his time in The Hague, Breitner had been criticised in the media for his drawings and his attempts at Impressionism and even his patron had pressed him just to paint what the public wanted. Breitner baulked at this advice and his relationship with van Stolk ended. In the late 1880’s, then living in Amsterdam, there was a change in his fortune and with every passing month, he gained more and more recognition as a talented artist. In 1886 Breitner completed one of his great masterpieces, De Gele Ruiters (The Yellow Riders). It was a monumental work measuring 115 x 76 cms and featured the elite mounted artillery corps seen galloping down the sand dunes at breakneck speed. Breitner took full advantage of their black-and-red busbies and the gold braid on their uniforms, which adds to the vitality of the charge.

(Detail) De Gele Ruiters (The Yellow Riders) by George Breitner (1886)

We witness the sand being kicked up by the hooves of the horses at the front which clouds our view of the horsemen who follow and all we can make out of them are the flashes of black, yellow and red of the following troops. In the October 16^th 1886 edition of the Netherlands Spectator, the Dutch poet and art critic, Carel Vosmaer, wrote

“…But what a momentum and storm in the movement, what a feeling for the poetry of such a tingling, dusty, turbulent group!..”

In the same year Breitner was invited by the avant-garde Société des XX (Vingtistes) to show his work in Brussels. More and more was written in the press about him and his work. At the turn of the century, George Breitner was forty-two-years-old and at the high point in his artistic career. So, what was he like as a person ? In his biography of the artist, Breitner, by Arthur van Schendel, he quoted the description of the artist by people who knew him, writing:

“…often fierce and brusque in his performance, sometimes suddenly rigid and closed, living among bouts of passion and despondency and always possessed wholeheartedly for his art…”

The levelled building-site for Maison de la Bourse by George Breitner (1909)

In 1901 an exhibition of his work was held, a highly successful retrospective at Amsterdam’s Arti et Amicitiae, one of the largest clubs for artists and art lovers in the Netherlands. At this time Breitner would use his photographs as a preparation for a painting. He built up a collection of people and cityscapes form a historical document of life in the city of Amsterdam at the end of the 19th century and it was these which helped to document city life at the turn of the century. These photographs and his cityscapes often appeared in historical publications.

On September 18^th, that same year, 1901, George Hendrik Breitner married Maria Catharina Josephina Jordan in Amsterdam. His wife was nine years younger than him. The couple had no children.

Portrait of Marie Breitner, wife of the artist by George Breitner

Breitner painted a portrait of his wife, which, in my eyes, seems less than flattering.

Portrait of Mrs Marie Breitner-Jordan by Willem Witsen

A more flattering portrait was done by Breitner’s friend Willem Witsen.

Witsen also completed a portrait of George Breitner.

In 1903 Breitner decided to move away from Amsterdam and relocate to Aerdenhout, a small town located in the dunes between Haarlem and the seaside town of Zandvoort, some twelve miles west of Amsterdam. His decision to move away from the city was because his friend and fellow artist, Marius Bauer, had moved there and wanted Breitner to join him. However, Breitner missed Amsterdam and in 1906 he returned to the city.

Rokin with the Nieuwezijdskapel, Amsterdam. by George Breitner (1904)

In 1904 Breitner completed his work entitled Rokin with the Nieuwezijdskapel, Amsterdam. The Rokin is a canal and major street in the centre of Amsterdam and is a recurring theme in Breitner’s works. Breitner would spend much time in this area, sketching and photographing people and buildings. The art gallery Van Wisselingh & Co. was found in this area as was his artist’s society Arti et Amicitiae which can be seen in the background. The painting fetched 415,200 euros at Christie’s Amsterdam auction in April 2005.

Although Breitner was successful as an artist and enjoyed a great reputation during his life, he did encounter financial difficulties during his life and this led to the establishment of a support committee for him and his wife. On June 5, 1923, George Hendrik Breitner died of a heart attack, aged 65. George Breitner is seen as one of the most important painters in the Netherlands at the end of the 19th century – but internationally he is less well known as an artist.

Léon Frédéric. Part 1. The Naturalist painter

My chosen subject today is the life and works of a nineteenth century Belgian artist. He has been designated as a Symbolist painter and yet when I look at his work only some of it seems to fall into that category. Other of his paintings tend towards realism. So, in this first of two blogs about the artist, I am going to concentrate on his woks of Realism.

The artist I am looking at today is Léon-Henri-Marie Frédéric. He was one of the most prominent representatives of the Belgian symbolist school. He was born in the Brussels’ municipality of Uccle, on August 26th, 1856. His parents were Eugène Frédéric, a wealthy jeweller, and Felicie Dufour. Léon was brought up in a crowded Roman Catholic household and at the age of seven, his parents sent him to the Institute of Joséphites in Melle, a Jesuit boarding school. In 1871, at the age of fifteen, he began working as an apprentice to the painter, decorator Charles Albert, and at the same time, attended the evening classes of the Brussels Academy of Art, where he became a pupil of Jules Vankeirsblick and Ernest Slingeneyer. He also worked in the studio of Jean Portaels, the Neo-Classicist painter who at the start of 1878 became the director of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles. In 1875, Léon joined other young painters and they rented a studio and set up a collective, pooling their money so as to employ living models.

The Funeral Meal by Léon Frédéric (1886)

One of the greatest of prizes on offer to young aspiring artists was to win the Prix de Rome. The original Prix de Rome was a scholarship for arts students and was created in 1663 in France under the reign of Louis XIV. The prize, organised by Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, was open to their students. The award winner would win a stay at the Palazzo Mancini in Rome at the expense of the King of France. The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp followed suit in 1832 and organised the the Belgian Prix de Rome with a similar prize being given to the winner. Léon entered the competition on three occasions but without any success. He was devastated, so much so, that his father financed a two year-long study trip for his son in 1876. Léon travelled to Italy in the company of Juliaan Dillens, who had won the Prix de Rome for sculpture the previous year. Léon travelled extensively through Italy visiting Naples, Rome, Florence and Venice. He visited museums and observed the work of the great Italian Masters. His favourite artists were said to have been Botticelli and Domenico Ghirlandaio. He was also influenced by the Italian primitives and that of the English Pre-Raphaelites, and Burne-Jones in particular. As a painter, Léon said pain ting gave him an understanding of the overpowering beauty and harmony of nature with mankind. This sense of accord was balanced by his own artistic vision which expressed a truthfulness to nature.

On his return to Belgium in 1878, Léon joins the Brussels-based artist group known as L’Essor. The group was created in 1876, and was formed by a group of art students who had once studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, although in 1879 this artists group severed all links it had with the Academy. The motto of the group was “a unique art, one life“, and concentrated on the relationship which they believed should unite the Art to Life. The founders of the group wanted their art to be a pictorial condemnation of the bourgeois and conservative Literary and Artistic Circles of Brussels.

In this first blog about Frédéric I am going to concentrate on his artwork which is looked upon as Naturalism and Realism. In the early days, Léon Frédéric mainly painted realistic scenes of the lives of the less well-off people such as labourers, the homeless and farm workers. He empathised with their grief and depravation but at the same time he was also very inspired by their never-ending and fervent religious beliefs of the old people who lived in these countryside areas.

Les garçons (The little boys) by Léon Frédéric

He completed a set of five group portraits entitled Les Âges du paysan (The Age of the Peasant) which depict the five different stages in the life of rural peasants. Besides the aging process very little changes with their poor attire and their seemingly acceptance of what life has offered them.

Les fillettes (the young girls) by Léon Frédéric

Les promis (The betrothed) by Léon Frédéric

Les époux (The married couples) by Léon Frédéric

Les vieillards (The elderly) by Léon Frédéric

Around this time Léon was inspired by the art of the French Naturalism painter Jules Bastien Lepage and Léon’s 1882 triptych painting Les marchands de craie (The Chalk Merchants) was inspired by the French painter.

Chalk Sellers by Léon Frédéric (Morning, Noon and Evening) (1882-83),

The three paintings incorporate three distinct times in the day of a family of workers. The triptych was hailed as a veritable masterpiece of Realism / Naturalism and, like some of Bastien-Lepage’s work, is particularly sensitive to the plight of the poor. It was exhibited to great acclaim at the Brussels’s Salon in 1882.

The left-hand panel depicts a poor family of chalk sellers setting out for work. In the background is their small village. It is a harrowing depiction. The mother is wrapped up against the cold and yet her reddened hands are bare. Her face is half hidden by her headscarf but we still meet her penetrating stare, an almost accusing glower. On her back is a heavy basket of chalk which they hope to sell. Behind her is her husband. He has a red beard and wears a wide-brimmed, floppy hat. His eyes look tired and unable to focus. His mouth is partly open as if he is struggling to breathe. He is struggling with life both physically and mentally. He looks resigned to his fate. He carries a basket on his back which contains a very young blonde-haired child. In one hand he holds a wicker basket containing their food. His other hand clasps the hand of his dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked son, a bare-footed child, whose small dirty hand grasps a piece of bread which he is eating. They all look tired and yet the day’s work has yet to begin.

The middle panel depicts the family having a modest noontime meal as they sit in some barren fields with a small town in the background. The family from the previous picture have been joined by a woman nursing her baby and her child sitting besides her. Before them is a pot of boiled potatoes which they are eating with their bread. The two women and the children are all bare-footed. The man has taken off his hat and we see he is bald. The women in the centre once again fixes us with a questioning glower, almost as if she is demanding to know why we should be looking at them

In the right hand panel we see the family returning home after a day’s work. They all have their back to us. Their village is on the left and way in the background a city looms. The wooden basket and the wicker one they carry have been lightened of food and chalk but still it is a wearying trek back to their village. The man staggers with the weight of the young sleeping child he cradles in his arms. The mother looks down at her other child, who walks besides her, hand in hand, to see if he is alright. This was just one of Frédéric’s paintings which shows that he was aware of social inequality in Belgian society.

Two Walloon Farm Children by Léon Frédéric (1888),

Another of Frédéric’s Naturalist paintings which was influenced by Bastien-Lepage was his beautiful 1888 portrayal of two children, entitled Two Walloon Farm Children. Bastien-Lepage, who was renowned in France as the leader of the evolving Naturalist school, had died after a long illness in 1884, aged just 36 and Frédéric took over the Naturalist mantle. The painting is both exquisite and yet troubling. It is a portrait of child poverty. The two sit on chairs, finger tips touching, wearing white-collared grey smocks. The plain clothes seem clean and but for their dull simplicity, do not insinuate poverty. Their hands and fingernails are dirty suggesting a peasant life which is further alluded to by their rosy cheeks brought about by their outdoor life. The two girls who look out at us seem to be displeased with our attention to their life. It is one of the most moving images of the deprivation which went hand in hand with rural life. Frédéric’s naturalist style of painting brings with it a vision of a harsh, grim lifestyle with all the hardships that poverty brings to the table. It was not the fault of the people but the unstoppable march of industrial modernity. If one look at all his paintings featuring the harsh life suffered by the peasants one does not detect or sense rebellion, just a sense of dejection and resignation and that life for them would carry on through their faith in God.

The Legend of Saint Francis by Léon Frédéric (1882)

During Frédéric’s travels around Italy in 1878 it is thought that he may have visited the Umbrian town of Assisi and seen Giotto’s famed cycle of twenty-eight frescoes on the lower part of the walls of the nave and entrance in the town’s upper church of St. Francis at Assisi. In 1882 Frédéric painted a triptych depicting St. Francis, simply entitled The Legend of Saint Francis. In the left-hand panel we see the saint walking down a country path and the centre panel depicts him feeding the hens. The right-hand panel is more interesting as it recounts the tale of the St Anthony as written in the 14th century book, Fioretti di San Francesco (The Little Flowers of St. Francis) a fifty-three chapter book on the life of the Saint, one of which talks about the Wolf of Gubbio, which according to the book terrorized the Umbrian city of Gubbio until it was tamed by St. Francis of Assisi acting on behalf of God.

In 1883, Léon Frédéric left Brussles and went to live in Nafraiture, a small rural village in the Ardennes region of southern Belgium, close to the French border, where he lived for several years. Many of Frédéric’s works after his re-location depict poor people and peasants and the artist’s work focused on the harsh reality of peasant life. One of his paintings, thought to have been completed around 1886, focuses on grief and hardship and were thought to have been completed during his time at Nafraiture. The painting was entitled Burial of a Farmer. Sad burial scenes of country folk were popular ever since Courbet’s 1850 large-scale masterpiece, Burial at Ornans, which had gained Courbet great success at the 1850 Salon. Frédéric’s painting differs in that it depicts a procession of mourners at a village funeral in harsh wintry conditions somewhere in the Ardennes. At the head of the procession is the clergyman with the bible tightly grasped in his hand. Next to him are the close family mourners – the wife, rubbing tears from her eyes, her young son almost hidden behind the black clothes of his grandmother. Behind them are other family members, friends, and a smattering of local people. The black clothes of the mourners against the snow almost makes this a monochromatic depiction but there are just the odd splashes of colour, albeit muted, in the clothes of the three children at the right of the painting. Without doubt it is a very moving scene.

In my next blog about Léon Frédéric I will look at his work which compartmentalises him as a Symbolist painter.

Julien and Thérèse Dupré – father and daughter Ruralist painters.

What do we want from a depiction in a painting? Do we want absolute truth? For example, should a portrait be of hyper-realsitic quality so it almost look like a photograph or should the portrait artist, through their bold brush marks and splashes of colour, produce a portrait which has not achieved photographic accuracy but is how the artist “sees” the model? What do we prefer in a painting Romanticism or Realism? Is it the same as asking about our taste in films, whether we prefer a *rom-com” or a “blood and guts” movie? Do we really want to be reminded of real life or do we want to be lulled by the happiness of how life should be?

Many questions, but it all leads me to the painting genre used by today’s artist. Once again I am looking at an artist who was classified as a painter of Naturalism, not just that, but Rural Naturalism, sometimes termed Ruralism. It was a nineteenth century art genre which was realist in nature and yet allowed artists to pictorially advocate the joys of rural life as an alternative to living amongst the grime of city life. The detractors of Rural Naturalism are quick to condemn the depictions of rural life as unadulterated sentimentality in comparison to the harsher work of the nineteenth century realist painters who depicted the harsh and unforgiving life of peasants as they struggled to work in the fields for their wealthy masters. Rural naturalism was seen in paintings by British artists such as George Clausen, Henry Herbert La Thangue and Edward Stott and in many of the artists of the Newlyn School.

Cows at the Watering Place by Julien Dupré

In France the painters closely associated with Ruralism were Jean-François Millet and Jules-Adolphe Breton. Millet is probably most famous for his works such as The Gleaners, The Sowers and The Angelus which all depict peasant farmworkers in a realistic way and highlight the harshness of peasant life.

The Gleaners by Jules-Adolphe Breton (1854)

The paintings of Jules-Adolphe Breton are also greatly inspired by the French countryside and often depict the traditional farming methods used by peasants but they also imbued the beauty and sublime vision of rural existence. Maybe it was a picture of life which did not really exist but was the preference of many. Think back to my analogy of the rom-com!

Today I am looking at the work of a French father and daughter who were noted for their Rural Naturalism paintings. They are Julien Dupré and his daughter Thérèse Marthe Françoise Dupré. Julien Dupré was born in 1851 some thirty-seven years after Millet and twenty-four years after Breton were born but his works of art were often compared to theirs and yet there were subtle differences. Hollister Sturgess, the American writer and former Museum director, in his 1982 book, Jules Breton and the French Rural Tradition, wrote:

“…Salon critics rightly perceived Julien Dupré as Breton’s closest follower. Through idealization of form, he invested his peasant women with a heroic aura, though unlike his predecessor, his figures are usually engaged in vigorous action. His landscapes, with their cloudy skies and varied motifs, are also much more active. Their high key color and spontaneous brushwork have a vivacity and freshness that distinguishes them from the somber calm of Breton’s scenes…”

Julien Dupré was born in Paris on March 18th, 1851. He was the son of Jean Dupré, a jeweller, and his second wife, Marie-Madeleine Pauline Célinie Bouillé. His parents had a jewellery shop in Paris which they had to abandon during the 1870 siege of the French capital by the Prussian forces. Julien enrolled in evening classes at the École nationale des arts décoratifs which then allowed him entrance to the École des Beaux-Arts, where he trained under Isidore Pils, the French history painter and Henri Lehmann, a German-born French historical painter and portraitist.

In 1875 Dupré went to live in Picardy and became a student of Désiré François Laugée. In his early days as a painter he adhered to the academic tradition he had been taught at the École des Beaux-Arts producing many historical and religious works as well as completing portrait commissions and murals. Later he became interested in plein air painting of landscapes and was fascinated with peasant genre subjects. Laugée and his wife had four children. The eldest was their daughter Marie Eléonore Françoise. Julien Dupré became romantically involved with Marie and eventually on May 17th 1876, in Paris, the couple married. They went on to have three children: Thérèse Dupré, Jacques Dupré and Madeleine Dupré. Thérèse Dupré, like her father, became a painter whilst Jacques became a doctor, draughtsman and illustrator and Madeleine a pianist. The year 1876 was also an auspicious year for Dupré as it was the year that he had his first painting exhibited at the Paris Salon.

Peasant Girl with Sheep by Julien Dupré (1895)

Julien Dupré endeavoured to depict the work of peasants in the fields in their harsh reality and to show the bond between peasant farmers and their farm animals. Julien Dupré’s peasant women seen working in the fields is the most enduring of his characterisation. Often, he depicted strong women positioned theatrically and yet elegantly in the forefront 0f his paintings, carrying out strenuous work as pitching sheaves of hay. His finely modelled figures are testament to his academic training, and the quality of his work is due to the influence of the work of Breton and Bouguereau. Dupré also developed a much freer management of the background areas of his paintings often carried out using a palette knife, which indicates the influence of the Impressionists painters. The characters we see depicted in his paintings are not frozen in artificial and unnatural academic poses but are observed equally well in action, as in rest, and by doing so, showing them as everyday working people. In most of his works, the landscapes depicted are idealised but are nevertheless inspired by the countryside of Picardy especially in the region of Saint-Quentin and Nauroy.

Les Faucheurs De Luzerne (The Reapers of Lucerne) by Julien Dupré (1880)

Dupré returned to Paris and worked in his Parisian workshop at 20 Boulevard Flandrin, which he shared with his brother-in-law Georges Laugée. But he loved outdoor life and painting en plein air. He exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon from 1876 to 1910 and won numerous awards. In 1880 he was awarded a third-class medal for his painting, Le Faucheurs de Luzerne and in 1881 he received a second-class medal for his work, La Recolte des Foins. He was honoured with a gold medal at the Paris Fair of 1889 and in 1892 was awarded the Legion of Honour. His works were very popular and many sold internationally especially in America.

An etching based upon The White Cow by Julien Dupré

Marion Spielmann, the prolific Victorian art critic and scholar, in an article in The Magazine of Art in 1891, entitled The White Cow, described Julien Dupré as:

… one of the most rising artists of the French School. He is individual in his work, accurate as an observer, earnest as a painter, healthy in his instincts and intensely artistic in his impressions and translations of them… he is always one of the attractions at the Salon………..In The White Cow which was amongst the finest works in last year’s Salon, several of M. Dupré’s merits as a painter are exemplified. The cow – taking a patient and intelligent interest in the operation of milking – is superbly drawn, and her expression admirably rendered. The light and shade, the balance of composition, and the rendering and disposition of the figures combine in this picture to produce a canvas which pleases the spectator the more he examines it…”

Julien Dupré gravestone at Père Lachaise cemetery

Throughout his career Julien Dupré championed the life of the peasant and continued painting scenes in the areas of Normandy and Brittany until his death in Paris on April 15th, 1910. He was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery. His tombstone bears a sculpture of a painter’s palette resting on a wreath of flowers.

Thérèse Marthe Françoise Dupré was the eldest child of Julien Dupré and his wife, Marie Eléonore Françoise Laugée. She was born on March 19, 1877 in Paris, a year after her parents married. From an early age, she came into contact with the many artists who attended her father’s and grandfather’s studio including family members, such as her uncle, the painter Georges Paul Laugée, her aunt Jeanne Eulalie Laugée-Fontaine, and her great-uncle Philibert Léon Couturier.

Le Gardeuse d’oie (The Goose Keeper) by Thérèse Marthe Françoise Cotard-Dupre

There is no doubt that her artistic style was very much influenced by both her father and her uncle, the artist, George Paul Laugée. Just like her father her paintings depicted idealised visions of peasant life in rural France. She started to exhibit her work at the Salon in 1899 and later became a member of the Société des Artistes Français, and in 1907 receiving a third-class medal for one of her works. She married the artist Edmond Cotard on June 2nd 1898, with whom she had two children, Henri Edmond Cotard on October 6th 1899 and François Cotard on January 9th 1905, who both became artists.

La Lessive (The Laundry) by Thérèse-Marthe-Françoise Cotard-Dupré

One of her best-known compositions is her painting entitled La Lessive (The Laundry). Like many of her works, they suggest that she was very familiar with the tasks she depicted in her works. The painting when sold at Bonhams of New Bond Street, London in 2015 achieved a record price for one of her paintings of $66,153.

While her father was a prolific artist, his daughter’s artistic output was much more meagre for one has to remember she was a wife and a mother. She was married at the age of twenty-one and became a mother when she was twenty-two and so the output of her work was severely restricted by her responsibilities as a wife and a mother.

The Milkmaid by Thérèse Marthe Françoise Cotard-Dupre

Her depiction of the peasant farmers, both male and female, as healthy and strong and rarely tired who seem to carry out their tasks with smiles on their faces is obviously an idealised view of peasant life. Such happy depictions of peasant life helped to ease the conscience of wealthy landowners whereas gritty Realist depictions of the down beaten peasant may have gnawed at their consciences.

Fermiere et Enfant by Thérèse Marthe Françoise Cotard-Dupre

She lived for a long time in Saint Quentin in Northern France where she copied and studied the pastels of the great Quentin De la Tour. She created many commissioned works, such as portraits, landscapes, peasant scenes. Unfortunately, many were lost during the First World War.

Thérèse-Marthe-Françoise Cotard-Dupré died, aged 43 on April 13th, 1920 in Orly near Paris in the clinic of Dr. Piouffle specializing in the care of alcoholics. She was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in the vault with her mother and father.

The Tretyakov Gallery – My favourites.

The Tretyakov Gallery is one of the world’s richest museums, a veritable treasure house of the finest works of Russian and Soviet art. In all, there are in excess of fifty thousand paintings, sculptures, drawings and engravings in the storerooms and galleries of this great establishment. The magnificent collection of art was founded by Pavel Tretyakov who began to collect art in the mid nineteenth century with a clearly formed conception of founding a museum that would be open to all to see and appreciate. It was to be a gallery for the people whereas entry to the Hermitage in St Petersburg was granted exclusively to visitors in full dress or tailcoats and the titles of all the paintings on show were in the French language. The Hermitage was only for the elite. In my final look at paintings housed in the Tretyakov Gallery I am going to showcase my five favourite works. Although my five previous Tretyakov blogs were solely about portraiture, and I do marvel at the technical ability shown by artists of that genre, the favourite paintings I am showing you today are all quite different, but gems in their own right.

The Appearance of Christ Before the People by Alexander Ivanov (1837-1857)

My first offering is a painting by Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov who was born in St. Petersburg on July 16th 1806. It is entitled The Appearance of Christ Before the People (The Apparition of the Messiah) which he started in 1837 and yet did not complete until 1857. This monumental oil on canvas work measures 540cms x 750cms (18ft x 24ft 6ins) and the depiction is set on the banks of the River Jordan. The painting is based on the first chapter of the Gospel According to John (1: 29–31):

“…The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel…”

Ivanov’s fame is inseparable from his great masterpiece. 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.

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. In his left hand he holds a crosier. He is standing on the banks of the River Jordan and has raised his hands aloft and gestures towards the approaching solitary figure of Christ. To John the Baptist’s left, we see a group of apostles: the young John the Theologian, behind him – Peter, further on – Andrew and behind his back – Nathaniel, the so-called “doubter.” To the right of the approaching Christ and below the two soldiers on horseback, we have the Pharisees and scribes who unbendingly reject the Truth. In the centre of the painting we see a haggard old man struggling to his feet buoyed by the words of John the Baptist.

There are two interesting inclusions in the depiction. Firstly, to the right there is a figure that stands nearest to Jesus and it was he who was depicted as the Repin’s good friend, the writer and dramatist, Nikolai Gogol.

Self portrait

Ivanov also included a self-portrait. Just under the raised right hand of John the Baptist, one can make out a seated man with a red headgear – this is Ivanov himself.

In 1858, Alexander Ivanov went with his beloved painting to St Petersburg where it was exhibited. Its lukewarm reception must have been heart-breaking for Ivanov. Just imagine how you would feel if you had spent almost half of your life on one painting and then after all that effort it was not well received. Ivanov died of cholera in St Petersburg on July 3rd 1858, just a fortnight before his fifty-second birthday, 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”

Barge Haulers on the Volga by Ilya Repin (1873)

My second choice is a painting by Ilya Repin. In an earlier blog regarding the Tretyakov Gallery I looked at some of Repin’s portraiture but my favourite works by him are his Social Realism works of art. His most iconic and most famous work is one he started in 1870 and completed in 1873. It is his painting entitled Barge Haulers on the Volga, which was bought by the Tsar’s second son. After the Russian Revolution the art collection of the grand duke was nationalized and it is now housed in the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg.

Religious Procession in Kursk Province by Ilya Repin (1880-1883)

However, the Tretyakov Gallery houses another great painting by Repin. It is his 1883 work entitled The Religious Procession in the Province of Kursk. Like the Barge Haulers on the Volga it is a monumental painting measuring 175 × 280 cm. It is the annual religious procession in honour of Our Lady of Kursk at which the famous icon, Our Lady of Kursk, is carried twenty-five kilometres from the Korennaya Monastery, south, to the city of Kursk. The setting for the painting is a time of drought and we see a large group of people crossing the parched earth. The hillside to the right appears to have been recently cleared of timber, and we can see fresh tree stumps in the ground. Further back along the procession we can see another platform, holding what appears to be a circular icon, besides which are two large banners. Further back along the procession we can just make out a large processional cross which is being held aloft.

The icon bearers

The leaders of the procession carry aloft a bier on top of which is the icon inside an elaborate neo-classical case. The light from the many candles inside the glass case gleam and this reflects off the gold riza icon-cover. A riza is a metal cover protecting an icon. To the left we see a line of peasants holding hands in an attempt to prevent any of the crowd getting too close to the icon. We see a peasant holding a stick out in front of him to try and prevent the crippled boy breaking through the cordon.

Following behind the icon are the priests and better-dressed people, some of who clutch icons to their chests. Note how Repin has portrayed one of the priests in a dandified manner as he carefully straightens his hair. Repin has also scornfully depicted the large stout woman in a yellow dress and bonnet carrying an icon behind the priest. She clutches an icon case to her chest.

What is interesting about the procession is that there is a great mix of people of various social standing in the community. Look carefully at the painting and observe the various characters Repin has depicted. He, by his portrayal of how the people are dressed, stresses the difference in their social status and highlights life’s inequalities. Some are in rags whilst others are bedecked in rich caftans.

We focus our eyes on the young hunchback as he struggles along with his makeshift crutch totally focused on the icon, which is being held on the shoulders of the monks. To him, the icon may mean salvation. To him, life cannot get any worse and for him this procession will lead him to a better existence. Compare that with the posture of the cavalry officer atop of his horse who oozes a kind of sanctimonious piety, his attitude appears to be of one who only half believes in the power of the icon and who probably, unlike the hunchback, needs little that the icon can possibly offer anyway. This is a “them and us” scene, a “have and have not” scenario, which Repin liked to depict in his social realist paintings. This was part of a slow build up to the revolution which would take another twenty years to arrive with its 1905 initial uprisings leading eventually to the ultimate revolution in 1917 which finally destroyed the Tsarist rule and the inequalities of life. For Repin, the procession we see before us in this painting maybe an allegory for the slow but unyielding forward advance of the working classes towards social change. Of his painting Repin wrote:

“…I am applying all of my insignificant forces to try to give true incarnation to my ideas; life around me disturbs me a great deal and gives me no peace – it begs to be captured on canvas…”

David L Jackson wrote in his book, The Wanderers and Critical Realism in nineteenth-century Russian painting, that one art critic at the time wrote with obvious disapproval with regards Repin’s painting and the people viewing it, saying that they were:

“…undesirables who thronged around it at exhibition, noting a preponderance of liberated women with short haircuts, nihilistic young men, and a strong Jewish element; the chief characters of Imperial xenophobia…”

While the American writer and educator, Richard Brettell, wrote about the painting in very unflattering terms, in his book, Modern art, 1851–1929: capitalism and representation, that the painting depicted:

“…fat, gold-robed priests, stupid peasants, wretched cripples, cruel mouthed officials, and inflated rural dignitaries…”

The painting was bought by the leading collector of the time, Pavel Tretyakov for a record 10,000 roubles and there is an interesting tale connected to this purchase. Tretyakov wanted Repin to replace the maids carrying the empty icon-case with “a beautiful young girl, exuding spiritual rapture”. Repin refused !

The Rooks have Returned by Alexei Savrasov (1871)

My third choice is a landscape work. It is Alexsei Savrasov’s 1871 painting entitled The Rooks have Returned, which is considered to be one of his finest works. Savrasov is looked upon as one of the most important of all the 19th century Russian landscape painters and is regarded as being one of the early architects of the “lyrical landscape”, sometimes referred to as “mood landscape”. In 1870 Savrasov became a member of the Peredvizhniki group of Russian realist artists who had protested about academic restrictions, and, with other disenchanted aspiring artists, formed an artists’ cooperative, which eventually evolved into the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions in 1870, which allowed the artists to break away from government-sponsored academic art. In December 1870, Savrasov and his wife went to Yaroslavl and later, Nizhny Novgorod, which was close to the Volga River. The artist was overwhelmed by the splendour of the beautiful Russian countryside and spent much of his time outdoors painting landscapes en plein air.

The painting, The Rooks have Returned, depicts the start of Spring, evidenced by the return of these birds. Savrasov’s landscape works were influenced by the great English landscape painter, John Constable. This painting is considered by many critics as being the high point in Savrasov’s artistic career. The depiction we see before us is a simple, and depicts the somewhat inconsequential occurrence of birds returning home in spring to an extremely unpretentious landscape, but it was Savrasov’s way of communicating the change of seasons from Winter to Spring. Simple and yet beautiful. Ivan Kramskoy, the Russian painter and art critic who was the intellectual leader of the Russian democratic art movement wrote that the landscape in “The Rooks Have Come Back” was the best he’d ever seen; and despite the fact that there were similar landscapes painted by other renowned Russian artists, only “The Rooks” mirrored the artist’s soul. Another famous Russian painter, the classical landscape painter, Isaac Levitan commented about its simplicity saying that although the painting was very simple, beneath its simplicity there is the tender artist’s soul, who loves nature and values it. The painting enhanced Savrasov’s reputation as a landscape painter and it contributed to the success of the first exhibition organized by the Peredvizhniki.

My final two choices are both historical painting by Vasily Surikov which Pavel Tretyakov bought for his Gallery. Surikov was born in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia on January 24th 1848 and at the age of twenty-one, he moved to Moscow. Many believe that he was the greatest Russian historical painter. The paintings like many others by Surikov have one thing in common – the depiction of crowds. He once wrote:

“…I cannot see individual historical figures acting without the people, without the crowd, I want them all out in the street…”

Boyaryna Morozova by Vasily Surikov (1887)

Both these works of art I have chosen hang in the Tretyakov Gallery. The first one is his monumental 1887 work entitled The Boyarynia Morozova which measures 304 x 588cms. A boyarynia is a woman of high nobility.
Tzar Alexey Mikhailovich Romanov who ruled between 1645 to 1676 was the father of Peter I the Great, and he started the reforms in Russia; one of which was intended to subordinate the church to the tsar. The reforms resulted in the Russian Orthodox Church split into Nikonians (those who followed the new course set down by the tsar, the name comes from the revolutionary patriarch Nikon) and the Old-Believers who were against the radical changes. The changes included the revision of icons and holy books, and there were even changes in the divine service. It was also deemed that making the sign of the cross should be done with three fingers, instead of two. In the picture the Boyarynya and her supporters are shown with two fingers up, which means they are Old-Believers.

The painting depicts the arrest of Feodosia Morozova, one of the most well-known of the Old Believers in 1653. She is being driven, bound in chains, on a simple peasant sledge through a narrow Moscow street. She has been condemned to a terrible death and is now being exposed to shame and abuse. She remains unbending in her beliefs and we witness her as she sweeps her hand upwards with two outstretched fingers – the sign of the schism. She looks pale and emaciated but still her eyes sparkle defiantly. Few of her followers dare to copy her gesture as they are afraid to openly show their support with the woman because of the brutal oppression by the authorities. However, a beggar to the right holds up his two fingers in a gesture of solidarity whilst others bow their heads in grief.

The Morning of the Streltsy Execution by Vasily Surikov (1881)

The second work by Surikov, and my final choice, is his 1881 painting entitled The Morning of the Streltsy Execution. Surikov’s very large historical work (218 x 379cms) depicts an event during the reign of the Russian Tsar Peter the Great, the second Streltsy Uprising of 1698. The Streltsy were infantry units which were formed in the 16th century by the Russian Tsar Ivan IV ‘Ivan the Terrible’. These units were considered elite units. Over time the Streltsy became a power behind the throne and in 1682 they attempted to prevent Peter the Great from coming to the throne in favour of his mentally disabled half-brother, Ivan. Whilst Peter the Great was on a scientific tour in western Europe during 1697 and 1698, the four thousand men from the Streltsy-regiments of Moscow rebelled. The rebellion was crushed, Peter the Great cut short his tour and returned to Moscow to punish the rebels with savage reprisals, including public executions and torture. Surikov’s painting depicts the crushing of the rebels. The setting is Red Square, with the large Saint Basil’s Cathedral in the background. The stone platform on the left is the Lobnoye Mesto, a 13-meter-long stone platform situated on Red Square in Moscow in front of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. On the right, on horseback, we can see Tsar Peter the Great, with his advisors standing next to him. To the left we can the Streltsy rebels on carts, their family and loved ones surround them agonising over their impending fate. Fifty-seven Streltsy were executed in Red Square by hanging, with seventy-four more to follow four days later. Many Streltsy were also whipped, drawn and quartered, and buried alive, with the total number of executions eventually reaching 1,182. Six hundred were sent into exile. The Streltsy-regiments were then disbanded.

Of all the world’s Art Galleries the Tretyakov in Moscow is one to visit.

Balthasar Denner – Portrait artist committed to the truth.

When an artist paints a landscape, seascape or cityscape he has to decide whether what he produces is a topographically accurate depiction of what he is looking at or an idealized version. He may consider adding or removing something or placing some feature in a different place to enhance the finished product. He may decide that such action would create a more agreeable balance. He is the artist and it is his choice. The one caveat of course is that if it is a commissioned piece he may have to discuss what he proposes to change with the person who is paying for the painting.

Portraiture is defined as the art of representing the physical or psychological likeness of a real or imaginary individual. Portraiture is also subject to the vagaries of idealism and verism. Idealistic portraiture often comes in the form of the backdrop and the accessories which surround the sitter and which, in some way, enrich the status of the sitter. Expensive furnishings, expensive tableware, expensive and fashionable clothes and jewellery worn by the sitter gives the viewer the feeling that the subject is prosperous and wealthy. Globes and books on a table near to the sitter can give the impression that they are learned and well-travelled. The figure of the sitter can be adjusted to make them look younger, more handsome or more beautiful.

Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci by Botticelli (c.1476)

One of the most famous idealised portraits was Botticelli’s depiction of Simonetta Vespucci, nicknamed la bella Simonetta. She was an Italian noblewoman from Genoa, the wife of Marco Vespucci of Florence and the cousin-in-law of Amerigo Vespucci. She was famous as the greatest beauty of her age in Northern Italy, and the model for many paintings by Botticelli and other Florentine painters. Speculation has it that the portrait of Simonetta is actually just an idealized version which emerged as the perfect beauty through Botticelli’s mind eye. The Italian Master achieved the flawless complexion of Simonetta by using a special mixture, terre verte – a green, earthy tone – to under paint, and afterward layered the flesh- like tones over it to create diverse shades of pink, yellow, and orange. Botticelli made use of fine lines and shapes to unobtrusively build up contrasts and fashion the depth and texture of the portrait. Apart from Botticelli, she also served other painters as an inspiration. She died young and childless at twenty-three. She presumably did not appear in public quite this perfectly styled. Her coiffure with beads, ribbons, feathers and artificial hairpieces would have been too elaborate and high-flown even by Florentine standards. Her outfit is much more likely to have been a nymph costume in the antique or classical-mythological style. This portrait is looked upon as the ideal of contemporary female beauty. Look at the way the artist has depicted her eyelashes and how she turns her body slightly towards us. It is the perfection of idealised beauty

Portrait of an Old Woman by Balthasar Denner

The opposite to idealism is verism. Verism is a term which dates back to the Roman Empire and is from the Roman Latin word verus meaning true and from Italian term verismo, meaning realism in its sense of gritty subject matter. In modern times the Italian term verismo, gives the sense of stark uncompromising subject matter. In portraiture verism is a form of realism in which a veristic portrait depicts a sitter with warts, wrinkles and all instead of a highly idealised depiction of smooth flawless skin. Veristic portraits do not attempt to idealize or beautify the subject; instead they represent all features of the individual, including wrinkles, imperfect proportions, balding, and blemishes of the skin

In this blog I am looking at the life of a great seventeenth century German portrait artist, who completed a number of veristic portraits. Today’s blog is all about Balthasar Denner, who will be remembered for his half-length and head-and-shoulders portraits of elderly men and women. Denner tended to focus attention on the face and if clothing was to be included in the depiction, he would leave that to other artists, including, in later years, his daughter, Catharina.

Three Children of Alderman Barthold Hinrich Brockes by Balthasar Denner

A good example of this collaboration can be seen in a painting he completed in 1724 entitled Three Children of Alderman Barthold Hinrich Brockes, on the back of which is an inscription stating that he painted the heads of the children, Jacob van Schuppen later in Vienna painted the bodies and costumes, and the background is from Franz de Paula Ferg. The flowers in the hands of the children were painted by Franz Werner Tamm.

Old Man with an Hourglass by Balthasar Denner

Balthasar Denner was born on November 15th 1685 in Altona, now a suburb of Hamburg but, at the time Altona was part of the Danish kingdom and second only to Copenhagen in size. He was one of eight children but was the only son. His mother was Catharina Wiebe. His father was Jacob Denner, a Mennonite minister who was involved with the business of dyeing cloth. At the age of eight Balthasar was involved in an accident which resulted in him walking with a limp for the rest of his life. Following the accident, he was laid up in bed for a long period and to the pass the time he began to draw and started to copy the works of the Dutch painters, Abraham Bloemaert and Nicolaes Berchem whose works were very popular at that time.

Denner received his first artistic training from Frans van Amama, a Dutch painter. In 1696, at the age of eleven, Balthasar and his family left Altona and went to live in Danzig, where his father worked for a while as a Mennonite pastor. When he was thirteen years old Balthazar took up oil painting. The family returned to Altona in 1701 and Balthasar was put to work as a clerk for his uncle who was a prosperous merchant. Denner remained in the Hamburg suburb until 1707 at which time, aged twenty-two, he went to live in Berlin and that year became a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. This state arts academy was established in 1696 in Berlin by prince-elector Frederick III and was the third oldest art academy in Europe. At the start of his artistic career Denner concentrated on painting miniatures which became very sought-after items.

In 1709, Balthasar Denner obtained his first significant commission – to paint the portraits of Christian August, the uncle and guardian of Karl Friedrich, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf, and his sister Marie Elisabeth, the later Abbess of Quedlinburg. On completion of the portrait, Denner’s client was so captivated by the finished result that he invited him to Schloss Gottorf in Schleswig to paint other portraits, and in 1712 Denner completed a memorable group portrait which included twenty-one individuals from the Duke’s court. The group portrait is now housed in Schloss Rastede, near Oldenburg in Germany and it was this painting which greatly enhanced the reputation of Balthasar Denner as an exceptionally talented portrait painter.

Portrait of Frau Denner by Balthasar Denner

During his stay in Berlin, he would frequently return to his home town of Altona. In 1712, in Hamburg, he married Esther de Winter and the couple went on to have six children, five daughters and a son. After the destruction of Altona in 1713, burnt to the ground by Swedish troops, during the Great Nordic War which had begun in 1700 between the forces of Sweden and the might of Russia and its allies, Norway and Denmark, Balthasar moved from Altona to Hamburg.

Denner travelled a great deal in the next ten years following up commissions from wealthy clients. In 1714 he made a trip to Amsterdam and later, in 1720 he visited the court in Wolfenbüttel and Hanover. Whilst in Hanover he became acquainted with many Englishmen who were living in the German city and it was through these friendships that he and his family were invited to come to London. His painting of an Old Woman circa 1720 received great acclaim. On his way to England he met the Dutch painter, Adriaen van der Werff, who the great art historian, Arnold Houbraken, considered was the greatest of the Dutch painters and such acclaim was the prevailing critical opinion throughout the 18th century. Van der Werff, on seeing Denner’s portrait, compared it to the Mona Lisa.

The work also caused great excitement in London and it was sent to Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor. Denner received 5875 guilders and in 1725 and was commissioned to paint an old man as a pendant piece for the same amount of money. Denner stayed in the English capital for seven years but eventually returned to Hamburg complaining that he could no longer endure the smog which beset London

In 1729 he was invited to visit the court in Blankenburg am Harz en Dresden and later travelled to Berlin. The wealthy and the European nobility all wanted to be painted by him and have their portrait hanging in their stately homes. Around 1740 he painted ten copies of the twelve-year-old Peter III (Russia) which were sent to all the European courts and one was sent to the court of Petersburg. In 1742 he the court of St Petersburg offered Denner a position as court painter with an immense salary but he declined the offer
In 1743 he painted Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden. Two years later, around 1745 he returned with his family to lived in his birthplace, Altona and it was here that three of his children died. It was a time of great sadness, and such was his grief that Denner, for a whole year, would never put brush to canvas.

Balthasar Denner died on April 14th 1749 aged 63, in Rostock. At the time of his death there were forty-six unfinished paintings in his Altona studio. Klara Garas the Hungarian art historian, and one-time Director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest described Denner’s portraiture:

“… ‘Denner’s genre figures and character heads depicting wrinkled old women and men were particularly popular and were admired for their detailed execution and meticulous accuracy. They ensured the artist international success and attracted especially high fees: Emperor Charles VI of Austria is believed to have sent 600 ducats from Vienna in payment for a typical head of a woman, an extraordinary sum at that time…”

The Krohg Family – Part 1 – Christian Krohg. The early years and life at Skagen

The art of one of the painters I am looking at today was compartmentalised as being works of a Naturalism genre and also of a Realism genre. So what is Naturalism and how does it differ to Realism when appertaining to art?

The best way to describe Naturalism is to say that it is a type of art that pays attention to very accurate and precise details. It is painting which is true to what we see without any falsification or artistic interpretation. That sounds like Realism !

Naturalism was an artistic movement, which came into being in the mid-nineteenth century and embodied things closer to the way we observed them. Prior to this, depictions of landscapes or human beings tended to be idealised or rendered according to precepts resulting from the traditions of classical art. Naturalism was a denouncement of the fantasy world of Romanticism, which had flourished from the late eighteenth century into the first half of the nineteenth century. Naturalism is also often associated with plein air painting.

But is this not the definition of Realism? The two are close but Realism, especially Social Realism, focuses more on social realities and concentrates on content rather than the methodology of the work. Realism tends to deliberate on who or what is being painted rather than how it was painted and realist depictions often muse over ordinary people, who are often struggling with life. Often Realism paintings have a moralistic story to tell and they then tend to be viewed as a commentary on the social and political life of the day. Naturalism tends to be more about how the work has been painted ensuring that it is true to life.

Christian Krohg was born in Vestre Aker, a district of the city of Oslo on August 13^th 1852, the son of the journalist and publisher, Georg Anton Krohg and Sophie Amalie Holst. His paternal grandfather, Christian Krohg was a lawyer, government minister, and had at various times served as Minister of the Interior and Minister of Finance.

Christian was the second-born of their children and had four sisters, Anna Helene Nicoline, born in June 1850, Stine Marie, born in December 1854, Nanna born in January 1859, and Sophie Amalie Holst born in April 1861. Christian’s mother died on April 28th 1861, seven days after having given birth to Sophie and maybe in memory of her mother she was also named Sophie Amalie Holst. In June 1868 more sadness was to befall Christian’s family when Christian’s younger sister, Nanna, contracted tuberculosis and died, aged nine.

Still life with a D.O.M. Bottle by Christian Krohg (1883)
The D.O.M. stands for Deo Optimo Maximo which means – To God most good, most great.

Following his normal schooling Christian went to the Royal Frederick University (now the University of Oslo) in 1869 to study law, the plan, probably fostered by his father, being that he would become a lawyer, like his grandfather. However for Christian his main interest was art and maybe through an agreement with his father that if he studied for a law degree he would be allowed to also attend art classes at the local drawing schools. He attended both Johan Fredrik Eckersberg’s private art school from 1869 to 1870 and later the drawing class of Julius Middelthun, the Norwegian sculptor, at the Royal School of Art and Design of Christiana (Oslo).

Braiding her Hair by Christian Krohg (1888)

On April 13th 1873, during his university studies, Christian’s father Georg died, aged fifty-six. The following year, at the end of his five year law course, he attained a law degree but instead of practicing law he decided to travel to Germany with his friend and fellow artist, Eilif Peterssen and they both enrolled at the Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe, where two of his professors were Karl Gussow, the German Realist painter, and Hans Gude, the Norwegian Romanticist painter and one of Norway’s foremost landscape painters. Gude spent most of his adult life as a professor of art and was a leading figure in the advancement of Norwegian art. To young, aspiring Norwegian artists of the mid and late nineteenth century, Gude was a god and they would travel to Germany to enrol on courses taught by him at academies in Dusseldorf, Berlin and Karlsruhe.

Georg Brandes – sketch by P S Krøyer (1900)

Christian Krohg remained at the Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe for a year before moving on to the Berlin Academy in 1875, a move that had already been made by his former professor, Karl Gussow. Krohg remained in Berlin for three years. Whilst there he made friends with the German symbolist painter, Max Klinger and the Danish writer and philosopher, Georg Brandes. Brandes writings were centered on the concept of realism and were diametrically opposed to the world of fantasy in literature. He was looked upon as the founder of the Cultural Radicalism movement. According to Aarhus Universitet’s Institut for Kultur og Samfund, Cultural Radicalism can be looked upon as:

“…Cultural radicalism must be understood from its cultural and philosophical origins in the modern breakthrough in the last half of the 19th century, as well as from the actual roots of rationalism of enlightenment. In Denmark, cultural radicalism has rooted in the bourgeois radicalism of the 1870s and in the intellectual environment around the brothers Georg and Edvard Brandes and Viggo Hørup. The bourgeois radical ideas constituted a cultural battle against the authority of the church and the state, and they concerned in particular the right to individual expression, freedom of opinion and tolerance, and criticism of what was considered to be a restricted, oppressive and colorless civil culture…”

Charles Lundh in Conversation with Christian Krohg by Christian Krohg (1883)
Charles Lundh, a Norwegian painter, lived together with Christian Krohg and the Swedish painters Johan Krouthén and Oscar Björck in a house in Skagen in 1883

Krohg was very attentive to the views of Brandes and became more aware of the social and political problems of the time. These views were enhanced by the poor quality of his living standards during his time in Berlin, which almost bordered on out and out poverty More importantly for Krohg it was his friendship with Georg Brandes that led to him being introduced to Emile Zola, the great French writer, playwright and journalist. Zola was interested in the world of art and as a journalist in the late 1860’s and early 1870’s, he produced many newspaper articles defending the art of Cézanne, Manet, and the emerging Impressionists, such as Monet, Renoir and Degas, all of whom were being criticised by the artistic elite. It was also Zola who first coined the term Naturalism, defining it as a literary movement, which gave emphasis to observation and the methodology used in the fictional portrayal of reality.

It was in the following year, 1876, that Krohg exhibited his painting entitled A Farewell. For the time he concentrated on his portraiture and two works of note was his 1876 portrait of Lucy Eyeberg and his depiction of his friend Georg Brandes which he completed in 1879

The year 1879 was of great importance to Christian Krohg as it was during that summer that he first went to Skagen, a Danish fishing community on the north coast of Jutland. Christian and his fellow Norwegian painter and former fellow student in Karlsruhe, Frits Thaulow, travelled to Skagen in Thaulow’s small sailboat and remained there through to the end of autumn. Skagen had become a summer meeting place for artists in the late 1870’s and remained such up until the end of the nineteenth century.

Dining room in Brøndums Hotel (ca. 1891) showing some of the group and the panel of their portraits

It was because of its favourable natural light that it was so popular with the plein-air artists from Scandinavia, such as husband and wife artists, Anna and Michael Ancher, Peder Severin Krøyer and his wife Marie, Karl Madsen and Viggo Johansen, as well as painters from northern Europe. It was this fascination with the changing natural light that had also inspired the Impressionists. Many of the Skagen artists had spent time in Paris and they were influenced by the French Barbizon artists and the world of Realism. This style of painting was contrary to the inflexible conventions set out by academies such as The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, which believed students should adhere to painting in the favoured Academic styles of Historicism and Neoclassicism. Michael Ancher, Karl Madsen and Viggo Johansen had also studied at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen.

The early members of the Skagen artistic community had been befriended by Brøndum family, who were the owners of a local shop/bar and soon it became the meeting place for the Skagen painters and their literary friends. Peder Severin Krøyer became very friendly with the Brøndum’s fifteen-year-old daughter Marie and six years later the pair were married.

Woman cutting bread by Christian Krohg (1879)

Christian Krogh became a regular summer visitor to Skagen during the mid and late 1880’s and it was during those times that he focused on one family, the Gaihede family, for the subject of many of his works. Husband and wife, Niels and Ana Gaihede, along with their son Rasmus and daughter-in-law, Tine and their two children Ane and Sofus. One such painting featured the matriarch of the family Ana Gaihede who modelled for Krohg’s 1879 painting Woman Cutting Bread. Sixty-six year old Ana is seen in three-quarter length profile against a blank background, save for three small pictures, which allows us to focus completely on the subject of the work. It is a fascinating depiction, which gives us an insight into the people and their culture of the time.

In another of Krohg’s works featuring the Gaihede family, The Net Mender, we see both Ana and her husband Niels depicted. In this 1880 work Niels can be seen repairing his fishing net whilst Ana sits stony-faced in the background making balls of fibre, which will be used in the repairing of the net. The walls of their home are a dull grey and the only thing breaking up the monotony of the colour are a few magazine pictures of animals and boats which may have been for the benefit of Sofus their six-year-old grandson. Looking at the interior furnishings of the home and the dress of the two characters one can detect a frugal standard of living, maybe not poverty-stricken but one in which every krone counts.

Christian Krohg won a state stipend in 1881 and travelled to Paris, where he taught at an art school for women. In those days most of the prestigious art establishments denied women access to art tuition and Krohg could see the error of this dictate and wanted to be supportive of the female cause. Maybe Krohg was sympathetic with regards the plight of women in general as it is known that at about this time he was also becoming more and more interested in painting pictures which highlighted people’s struggle with everyday life and especially the great effort women had to make just to survive.

In 1881 he completed a very poignant painting entitled The Sick Girl. It was the depiction of a girl who had been struck down by tuberculosis and was dying. Krohg would be painfully aware that this killer disease had also taken his youngest sister, Nanna, thirteen years earlier. It is a haunting depiction. The girl sits upright in a wooden chair with a cushioned back. A thick woollen blanket covers the lower part of her body. Look at the girl’s tight-lipped facial expression. It is a mixture of sadness and fear. Maybe she is aware that her life is ebbing away. Her hands are tightly clasped together, as if in prayer, as she clutches the stem of a pale pink rose, the leaves and petals of which are starting to fall to the ground. The rose like the girl is dying. One cannot help but be moved by such a depiction.

Babord litt (Port side) by Christian Krohg (1879)

During his time in the French capital he became influenced by the works of Édouard Manet and his modern scenes, which were often controversial. Even now, Manet is looked upon as the father of modernism. During his stay in Paris Krohg had two of his works accepted for the 1882 Salon. One of which was entitled Port Side, which he had started whilst living in Berlin but did not complete until 1879 whilst living in Skagen. It is a depiction of great detail. Look how Krohg has portrayed the clothes worn by the seaman. They have been well worn and impregnated with oil and dirt. They are old and have had to be patched and these details, along with the backdrop of the rough seas, add to the atmospheric mood of the work and we can sense how the bow of the vessel is about to dive headlong into the unforgiving swell.

During his stay in Paris Krohg had been very interested in the works of the leading French Social Realist painters of the time, Jules Breton, who was known for his depictions of peasant themes, Jules Bastien-Lepage, a painter noted for his sentimental naturalistic paintings of rural life and Léon Lhermitte, whose main theme for his paintings was also rural scenes depicting peasants at work.

Sovende mor med barn (Sleeping mother with child) by Christian Krohg (1883)

Krohg’s developing interest was the plight of women and their everyday trials and tribulations, which had to be overcome just to survive. Tiredness is one of the greatest afflictions that beset mothers with small children and Krohg’s 1883 painting Mother and Child highlights this perfectly. The work is housed in the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo.

Again exhaustion features in his 1885 work simply entitled, Tired, which shows a young woman who has fallen asleep during working on her sewing machine.

In the second part of the blog about Christian Krohg and his family I will be looking at his fascination with and his depiction of “fallen women” and how it got himself into trouble with the authorities. I will also look at the life of his wife, Oda, and his unusual and sometimes turbulent marriage.