Mark (Max) Gertler. Part 2.

Mark Gertler

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

Still life with a Bottle of Benedictine by Mark Gertler

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Artist’s Mother by Mark Gertler (1913)

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

The Artist’s Mother by Mark Gertler (1911)

Gertler once wrote rather disparagingly about his sitter:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pond by Mark Gertler (1917)

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

Garsington Manor and Gardens

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

The Jewish Family by Mark Gertler (1913)

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

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

Gilbert Cannan at his Mill by Mark Gertler (1916)

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

Merry-go-Round by Mark Gertler (1916)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Queen of Sheba by Mark Gertler (1922)

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

Mandolinist by Mark Gertler (1934)

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

The Violist by Mark Gertler (1912)

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

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

Talmadic Discussion by Mark Gertler

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

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

The Basket of Fruit by Mark Gertler

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

Self portrait with Fishing Cap by Mark Gertler

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

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

Ben Uri Research Unit

Art UK

A Crisis of Brilliance

Spartacus Educational

Fine Art Society

New English Art Club

Glyn Vivian Gallery

Christies

Mark (Max) Gertler. Part 1.

Max Gertler by Lady Ottoline Morrell vintage snapshot print, 1917. © National Portrait Gallery, London

My featured artist today is Markz Gertler. He was one of the most prominent artists of his generation and an early member of the New English Art Club, elected in 1912. He was a painter of figures, portraits and still-life.  Markz was born on December 9th 1891 at 16 Gun Street, Spitalfields, London.   He was the youngest of five children born to Austrian-Jewish immigrants from Poland, Louis Gentler and Kate (Golda) Berenbaum.  Markz had to elder brothers, Harry and Jacob, known as Jack and two elder sisters, Deborah and Sophie. 

Dorset Street, Spitalfields (c.1910)

By the 19th century, most of the area’s around Spitalfields had traditional industries, including silk weaving, but they had moved elsewhere, although the area still produced some textiles.  This decline of the local industry destroyed Spitalfields and it became a poverty-stricken, overpopulated area with little work. The grand houses which had been built by the Huguenots were turned into slums, and the area became unsafe. By the late 19th century, many people considered the place the most criminal in London.

The Rabbi and his Grandchild by Mark Gertler (1913)

The following year after Markz was born, 1892, because of the terrible economic downturn in the area, the family moved back to Markz’s mother’s native city of Przemyśl in Galicia, which at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but now is situated in south-eastern Poland close to the Ukraine border. Life for the family was little better here as Max’s father worked as an innkeeper but this failed and now the family were financially desperate.  It could have been that his father felt guilty about not being able to support his family but one night in 1893, Gertler’s father Louis, without telling anyone, left his family destitute and on the brink of starvation, and went off to America to search for work.  Much later he contacted his wife to say that once he got established in America, he would send for them and all would be well.  It never happened as all his hopes of making a fortune in America ended in failure. 

Whitechapel High Street (1905)

Following yet another business failure Louis Gertler left America and returned to England and the London borough of Whitechapel, the heart of London’s Jewish quarter.  He set himself up as a furrier and in 1896 he arranged for his family to join him.  Once in England, his son’s first name was changed from the Polish Markz to Mark.

Portrait of Mark Gertler by John Currie (1913)

Gertler spent his early formative years in Whitechapel, London, a poor Jewish community, and attended nearby schools in Settles Street and Deal Street between 1897 and 1906.  He displayed a gifted artistic talent even as a young child and was said to have been motivated by pavement artists, advertising posters, and it was the autobiography of the great English painter William Powell Frith, which made Max determined to become a professional artist. In 1906, at the age of fifteen, on leaving school so as to earn some money for his family Mark (known as Max) became an apprentice at the stained-glass company Clayton and Ball.  He hated working there and rarely spoke of  the experience in later years.  During this time, he would attend evening classes at the Regent Street Polytechnic but in 1907 he had to drop out of college due to his family’s perilous finances.  In 1908, Max was placed third in a national art competition and then realised that he could become a great artist.  In 1908 Gerter met the artist, William Rothenstein. After seeing Max’s work Rothenstein wrote to Max’s father:

“…It is never easy to prophesy regarding the future of an artist but I do sincerely believe that your son has gifts of a high order, and that if he will cultivate them with love and care, that you will one day have reason to be proud of him. I believe that a good artist is a very noble man, and it is worth while giving up many things which men consider very important, for others which we think still more so. From the little I could see of the character of your son, I have faith in him and I hope and believe he will make the best possible use of the opportunities I gather you are going to be generous enough to give him…”

However, knowing the cost of studying art and that the family would be ununable to pay his tuition fees he became downhearted.

Portrait of a Girl by Mark Gertler (1912)

Having the money to pay for tuition fees, he needed a sponsor to put him forward to the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art.  This he received with a recommendation from William Rothenstein, an English painter, printmaker, draughtsman, lecturer, and writer on art who lived in the affluent London borough of Hampstead and who held a number of soirées which often included many well-known artists and some young and up and coming ones, such as Mark.  Mark Gertler entered the Slade in 1908   and studied there for three years.  He was the first and youngest Jewish working-class student of his generation to do so.

In her 1989 biography A Life of Dora Carrington: 1893-1932 Gretchen Gerzina, wrote about Max Gertler’s arrival at the Slade, writing:

“…At the Slade, Mark was at first something of a misfit. He had started school late in life and had left it at the age of fourteen. His hair was short and his clothes were different. Most of all, however, the other students found him too serious and too intense. He was extremely handsome, with huge dark eyes, pale skin, and a thin body, and he was both solemn and passionate about his art. Only at the polytechnic had he finally been introduced to museums and systematic schooling in the history of art, including the old masters. When he first arrived at the Slade at seventeen, he had the fervour of a convert who has surmounted great obstacles for his religion. In contrast, his fellow students seemed privileged and rather frivolous. Yet his early opinions of them were not untouched by envy…”

Still Life by Mark Gertler

After a little time at the Slade, Max made friends with a group of very talented students all of whom would become famous artists, such as C.R.W. Nevinson, an English figure and landscape painter, etcher and lithographer, who was one of the most famous war artists of the First World War, Stanley Spencer, John S. Currie, Maxwell Gordon Lightfoot, Edward Wadsworth, Adrian Allinson and painter and draughtsman Rudolph Ihlee. This group became known as the Coster Gang because as writer David Boyd Haycock put it, they mostly wore black jerseys, scarlet mufflers and black caps or hats like the costermongers who sold fruit and vegetables from carts in the street.

Vanessa Bell’s Friday Club exhibition at the Alpine Club Gallery

In 1910, whilst he was still an art student at the Slade, Max began exhibiting some of his paintings at Vanessa Bell’s Friday Club.  Vanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf.  The idea for the Friday Club was inspired by her earlier involvements of café life in Paris. It was her wish to create a similar atmosphere, and the Friday Club held its first meeting in the summer of 1905 and that November the Club held its first exhibition.   From 1910 until 1918, the Friday Club was based at the Alpine Club.

………to be continued.

Once again much of the information was gleaned from various Wikipedia sites but also these excellent websites:

Ben Uri Research Unit

Art UK

A Crisis of Brilliance

Spartacus Educational

Famous Views of the Sixty odd Provinces by Utagawa Hiroshige. Part 2.

Title Page for the series Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces of Japan by Hiroshige

Hiroshige was born in Edo (now Tokyo) in 1797 and grew up in a minor samurai family. His father was part of the firefighting force assigned to Edo Castle. It was here that Hiroshige was given his first exposure to art.   In 1811, young Hiroshige entered an apprenticeship with the celebrated Toyohiro Utagawa. After only a year, he was bestowed with the artist’s name Utagawa. He soon gave up in his role in the fire department to focus entirely on painting and print design. Hiroshige’s artistic genius went largely unnoticed until 1832.  In Hiroshige Utagawa’s groundbreaking series of Japanese woodblock prints.  The 53 Stations of the Tokaido which he produced between 1832 and 1833, he captured the journey along the Tokaido road, the highway connecting Edo to Kyoto, the imperial capital. With the Tokugawa Shogunate relaxing centuries of age-old restrictions on travel, urban populations embraced travel art and Hiroshige Utagawa became one of the most prominent and successful ukiyo-e artists.

Chikugo Province, The Currents Around the Weir by Hiroshige. Print from Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series.

Chikugo River

The Chikugo Province can be found in southern Japan in Fukuoka Prefecture. In this print by Hiroshige, the Chikugo River can be seen flowing through the foreground, as it separates Chikugo Province on the left from Chikuzen Province to the seen in the bottom right. The village of Haki appears within the trees of the far bank, as the mountains rise above the pink clouds of sunset. The river is a much-loved spot for fishing and the choice of fish is the Ayu.  The Ayu often referred to as the is one of Japan’s best summer foods, known for its delicate flavour is found in Japan’s rivers.  It is a small, slender fish that thrives in spotless and clear water. This characteristic has earned it the elegant nickname “the queen of clear rivers” in Japan.

Satsuma Province, Bo Bay, The Two-sword Rocks by Hiroshige Print from Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series

In the print entitled Satsuma Province, Bo Bay, The Two-sword Rocks we are treated to a remarkable view of the “Two-sword Rocks” in Bo Bay, which are two rock pillars extend skywards from the water, as viewed from Mount Use. Two boats are depicted in the print, one a ferry which transports a couple of passengers across the river passing close to the strange rock formations.  Many other smaller rocks forming small islands can be seen in the distance as well as white-sail boats on the rosy coloured horizon.   This was another example of Hiroshige using a vertical print.

Bitchu Province, Gokei by Hiroshige Print from Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series

The small waterfalls in the Makadani River

The Bitchū Province was a province of Japan situated on the Inland Sea side of western Honshū, in what is today western Okayama Prefecture.  This is another of Hiroshige’s beautiful landscape prints which depicts the Gokei Valley with the Makidani River rushing through, crashing over many waterfalls on its relentless journey.  Like the previous print we see the rock formations reaching vertically towards the sky. On the left of the river, we see tiny citizens walking along the riverbank. Hiroshige forgoes the fiery shades of fall but concentrates on emphasizing the monumentality of the landscape through the scale of the travellers and trees. The minute size of the pedestrians, who walk along the riverbank, gives us a sense of how big the valley sides are and how it emphasizes the enormous granite peaks along the valley.

Izumo Province, Taisha, Depiction of Hotohoto by Hiroshige Print from Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series

Izumo Taisha Shrine (Izumo Grand Shrine)

Beneath a canopy of cedar, three women pass through the grounds of the Izumo Grand Shrine. The great Shrine of Izumo Taisha is one of the most important ancient shrine in Japan. It was said to be the oldest, known to have existed at least the 7th Century, according to Japan’s oldest chronicles. The main building was built on 1744 and apparently has undergone 25 reconstructions.  It was dedicated to the kami Okuninushi, the deity of earth and the harmony of nature, agriculture, and medicine. He was also believed to bring happiness and harmony to human relationships, that is why it magnetizes lots of young women who wish to be married.  In the print we see that fog has reduced most of the scene to silhouette, the women carry trays laden with auspicious symbols of the New Year. Hotohoto is a New Year’s celebration local to the region. The festival takes its name from the onomatopoeia of knocking on a door. There are different traditions associated with this festival, including leaving rice cakes (mochi) on the doorstep for a god’s messenger to replace with a straw craft, or children going door-to-door to receive mochi and small gifts. Today, the former Izumo Province belongs to modern Shimane Prefecture.

Tanba Province, Kanegasaka by Hiroshige. Print from Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series

Tanba Province was one of the old provinces of Japan, located in San’indo. It covered the middle part of the present Kyoto prefecture, At the bottom of Hiroshige’s print we can see a narrow path which rises sharply along the mountainside before it disappears beyond the horizon. The area is located on a connecting road to northern Kyoto.  As one can see, it is a difficult and dangerous upward climb which was ultimately thought too steep for travel.

Meiji-period tunnel

To solve the problem the Meiji-period tunnel built in its place still stands today. In the top right of the print one can see that Hiroshige has depicted the arch between two rock formations as a stone beam.  It is thought that he came to know about this structure through travel guides (meishoki) or other paintings of Kanegasaka. Today, the former Tanba Province belongs to central Kyoto Prefecture and east-central Hyogo Prefecture.

Sado Province, The Goldmines by Hiroshige Print from Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series.

In Hiroshige’s print of the Sado goldmines we see a lush green forest which gives way to the rocky entrance to the mine. Miners dot the foreground as the mountainside opens into three mining shafts, each internally reinforced with wood. While the island had been known for its gold since the 12th century, the gold from Sado became an important source of wealth for the Tokugawa shogunate during the Edo period. Though the local economy prospered from the mines in the 17th century, by Hiroshige’s time the veins were running dry and the working conditions had significantly declined. The mines finally closed in 1989. Today, the former Sado Province corresponds to Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture

Doyu no Warito goldmine on Sado Island

Doyu no Warito is a relic of opencast mining from the Edo Period (1603-1867), which is said to be a pit in the early stages of the development of Sado’s gold and silver mines. As the digging went deeper and deeper to extract more gold ore, the mountaintop was split into a V-shape. The crack on the summit reaches approximately thirty metres in width and seventy-four metres in depth. The mountain with the crack holds a mother lode of gold, stretching about ten metres wide, called the Doyu Vein, and after the Meiji Period (1868-1912), large-scale development was carried out under the Warito. Today, the former mining area is a tourist attraction and has been nominated as a World Heritage Site.

I will conclude this blog with a quote from Charles Holmes’:

“…Hiroshige can be of service to us in another way. He is perhaps the artist through whom the great Japanese masters may best be approached by Europeans. The originality and force of his design, the brilliancy of his colour, his fairly successful realism, and more than all, his evident seriousness, his open sympathy with what has seemed admirable to our romantic tastes, render him attractive at once. His great predecessors are more reticent, more abstract, more remote from us. It is hardly surprising, then, that the painter who, in our own times, has assimilated most perfectly the spirit of Japan should have received this inspiration in the main from Hiroshige. To have a share with Velasquez in the making of Mr. Whistler’s style is no slight honour, and among the artists of modern Japan – the Japan of the last fifty years – there is no other who deserves it so well...”

Apart from various Wikipedia sites the information for this blog came from:

ISSUU – Hiroshige: Famous Places in the 60-odd Provinces -Ronin Gallery

Fuji Arts

Viewing Japanese Prints

The Woodblock Prints of Utagawa Hiroshige – Appreciation by Charles Holmes

Famous Views of the Sixty odd Provinces by Utagawa Hiroshige. Part 1.

Memorial Portrait of Utagawa Hiroshige by Utagawa Kunisada (c.1858) This portrait of the artist Hiroshige shows him as he looked just before his death, with the robes and shaven head of a Buddhist priest. At the age of sixty, two years before his death of an undetermined long illness, he took monks vows.

Utagawa Hiroshige or Andō Hiroshige, born Andō Tokutarō in 1797 was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, considered the last great master of that tradition.

In March 2023 I began a three-blog series looking at his woodcut prints of Hiroshige entitled The Tokaido Road Trip. The Tōkaidō Road,  which literally means the Eastern Sea Road, and was once the main road of feudal Japan. It ran for about five hundred kilometres between the old imperial capital of Kyoto, the home of the Japanese  Emperor  and the country’s de facto capital since 1603, Edo, now known as Tokyo, where the Shogun lived.

Today I want to start a two-blog series looking at one of Hiroshige’s great print collection series entitled Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces (Rokujuyoshu meisho zue) and whisk you away on a pictorial journey around Japan courtesy of the great Japanese master ukiyo-e print artist, Utagawa Hiroshige.   Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; flora and fauna; and erotica.

Yamashiro Province, The Togetsu Bridge in Arashiyama by Hiroshige. Print from Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series.

Togetsu Bridge

The first print I am offering depicts the Togetsu Bridge which straddles the Katsura River.  The 150-metre-long structure has been a landmark in Western Kyoto’s Arashiyama District for over four hundred years. It is known for its natural beauty. Changing colour throughout the year with blushing pink in the spring and ablaze in reds, oranges, and yellows each autumn. The bridge has often been used in historical films.  It is also the site of an important initiation for local children. Young boys and girls (the latter clad in kimono) first receive a blessing from a local temple and then make their way across the bridge under orders to do so without looking back. If one ignores this instruction, it is said to bring bad luck as a result, so the stakes are high.

Kawachi Province: Mount Otoko in Hirakata  by Hiroshige. Print from Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series.

The series represents a further development of Hiroshige’s landscape print design, including some of his most modern compositions. The striking new use of a vertical format allowed Hiroshige to experiment with the foreground and background contrasts typical of his work, drawing the viewer in while at the same time implying a sense of great distance.  In the depiction we see the Yodo River curving below, the rugged peak of Mount Otoko breaks through the clouds. Mount Otoko was home to the Iwashimizu Hachimangu Shrine, one of Japan’s most important Shinto sites and a popular pilgrimage destination. The use of bokashi (color gradation) infuses the scene with a rich atmosphere. Bokashi is the Japanese term which describes a technique used in Japanese woodblock printmaking. It achieves a variation in lightness and darkness (value) of a single colour or multiple colours by hand applying a gradation of ink to a moistened wooden printing block, rather than inking the block uniformly. This hand-application had to be repeated for each sheet of paper that was printed.  The best-known examples of bokashi are often seen in 19th-century ukiyo-e works of Hokusai and Hiroshige, in which the fading of Prussian blue dyes in skies and water create an illusion of depth.   In later works by Hiroshige, an example of which is the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, most prints originally featured bokashi such as red-to-yellow-to-blue colour sunrises.

Izumi Province, Takashi Beach by Hiroshige. Print from Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series.

Takashi Shrine

The high vantage point of this design allows for a sweeping panorama and an expansive view of the beautiful coastline.  In the foreground of this print, nestled amongst the pine trees on the side of a lush green hill, is the Tagashi Shrine, which  is nestled among the pine trees and pilgrims follow the track to the holy place.  Looking further down the pine-covered slope we can see Osaka Bay which reaches out to the horizon in the background whilst waves can be seen crashing onto Takashi Beach.  Hiroshige used the technique known as kimetsubushi to enhance the colours.  Kimetsubushi  was a technique used to enhance the expressive application of colours in woodblock printing and involved the intentional use of woodgrain (visible in traditional printing blocks, which were cut parallel to the grain of the tree). Called kimetsubushi (“uniform grain printing”), the process involved working the surface of the wood with stiff brushes or rubbing with pads to roughen the surface and thereby impress the paper with the grain pattern in areas of relatively uniform or “flat” colour.

Owari Province, Tsushima, Tenno Festival by Hiroshige. Print from Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series.

Festival Owari Tsushima Tenno

Festival Owari Tsushima Tenno

The setting of this print is the Tenno River and we see from above, as night begins to fall over the mountains and hills, the river is illuminated by the hundreds of lanterns decorating the boats which are part of the Tenno Festival.  The festival, which has existed for more than five hundred years, is held on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the sixth month on the lunar calendar and the highlight of the celebration is the sailing of the illuminated boats. It is one of the three major river festivals in Japan and nationally renowned. To cater for the crowds visiting the festival, temporary teahouses have sprung up on the riverbank.

Sagami Province, Enoshima, The Entrance to the Caves by Hiroshige Print from Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series.

On the left edge of the print we can just see the side of Mount Fuji.  In the foreground waves can be seen crashing against the rugged cliffs of Enoshima, a small offshore island, about 4 km in circumference, Below the lush green of the cliffs above, the cave entrance in the lower right temps the viewer into the darkness of the cave. Hewn by the waves over time, this cave system housed a shrine to Benzaiten, a goddess associated with fortune and artistic success.  The caves attracted many pilgrims, and the entire island was considered a sacred site. In addition to the usual travellers, this small island attracted many celebrities and ambitious individuals.

Pilgrimage to the Cave Shrine of Benzaiten by Hiroshige (c. 1850)

Three year before Hiroshige embarked on his Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series he completed another woodcut print of Cave Shrine of Benzaiten at Enoshima.

Hida Province, Basket Ferry by Hiroshige Print from Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series.

Detai; of Hida Province Basket Ferry

The Basket Ferry (detail) by Hiroshige

The Hida Province, Basket Ferry is illustrated in one of Hiroshige’s woodcut prints.  Travellers are ferried above a swift flowing river using an ingenious rope and basket system which is fixed between two sheer cliffs.  In the depiction we see the jagged cliffs rise up all around as the sun sets behind the mountain range beyond. It is a beautifully coloured print which once again is detailed with fine bokashi shading.  It is not thought that Hiroshige ever tried this “ferry” but it is more likely that he found these details in the designs of others, perhaps an illustration by his teacher Utagawa Toyohiro in his 1809 novel The Legend of the Floating Peony.

Shinano Province, The Moon Reflected in the Sarashina Paddy-fields, Mount Kyodai by Hiroshige. Print from Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces series

As clouds encircle the base of Mount Kyodai reflections of the full moon seem to leap through the paddy-fields, each watery surface reflecting its likeness in this atmospheric composition. The Just above the fields, Choraku Temple sits in the shadow of “Granny Rock.”  This place is also significant in that it was the location of the signing of the Treaty of Shimoda in 1855, which officially established diplomatic relations between Bakumatsu Japan, the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended, and the Russian Empire.

………to be continued.

Apart from various Wikipedia sites the information for this blog came from:

ISSUU – Hiroshige: Famous Places in the 60-odd Provinces -Ronin Gallery

Fuji Arts

Viewing Japanese Prints

Maxamilian Kurzweil

Self Portrait by Max Kurzweil

The artist I am looking at today is the Austrian painter and printmaker, Maximilian Franz Viktor Zdenko Marie Kurzweil who was born on October 12th 1867 in Bzenec, a small town in the South Moravian Region, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and now part of the Czech Republic,  He was the son of Kurt and Maria Kurzweil and he had a brother, Karl and two sisters, Marie and Berthe.   In 1879, at the age of twelve, Max and his family moved to the outskirt of the Austrian city of Vienna. Vienna was a major cultural center at the time. It likely exposed the young Max Kurzweil to art and music. This early move to Vienna shaped his future artistic path.

The Cushion by Max Kurzweil (1903)

Max Kurzweil studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Christian Griepenkerl, a German painter and professor, who was best known for rejecting Adolf Hitler’s application to train at the Academy and Leopold Carl Müller, an Austrian genre painter noted for his Orientalist works. It was here that Max was encouraged to develop a solid foundation in classical  painting techniques.  Max Kurzweil’s artistic voyage of discovery was a continuous search for new forms of expression and his profound attention to the avant-garde movements of his time. One of his great interests was the Symbolist movement, which emphasized the emotional and mystical aspects of art, focusing on themes of love, fear, death with a highly stylized and decorative approach.  In painting, Symbolism was looked upon as a restoration of some mystical trends in the Romantic tradition.

The Fisherman by Max Kurzweil (1910)

After leaving the Vienna Academy, Max travelled to Paris and attended the Académie Julian in Paris from 1892.  It was whilst he was living in the French capital that he exhibited his first painting at the Paris Salon in 1894.  Whilst living in France he visited the Breton harbour town of Concarneau and fell in love with the area, its vivid sunrises and sunsets, its people and the busy port with its sailing ships and fishing fleet.  In 1894 he returned to Vienna and the Academy and studied the art of portraiture.  He began to be influenced by French art especially Impressionism and plein-air painting which showed him the way to use lighter – much brighter colours than those he used before.

The artists wife Martha Kurzweil on the shore in Pont-Aven, France (c1900)

In 1895 Max married Maria-Josephine Marthe Guyot a woman from Brittany and they used to spend their summers in Brittany and their winters in Vienna.  In 1896, at the age of twenty nine he became a member of the Künstlerhaus in Vienna.

Members of the Vienna Secession at the group’s 14th (“Beethoven”) Exhibition (1902). Left to right: Anton Stark, Gustav Klimt (in the chair), Koloman Moser (before Klimt with hat) Adolf Böhm, Maximilian Lenz (lying), Ernst Stöhr (with hat), Wilhelm List, Emil Orlik (seated), Maximilian Kurzweil (with cap), Leopold Stolba, Carl Moll (horizontal), Rudolf Bacher

A year later in 1897 he was one of the founders of the Vienna Secession, along with Josef Hoffman, Koloman Moser, Otto Wagner and Gustav Klimt. The Vienna Secession was formed as a counter-response to the conservatism of the artistic institutions in the Austrian capital The objectives laid down at the founding of the Movement encompassed the establishing contact and an exchange of ideas with artists from outside Austria, and thus condemning artistic nationalism, renewing the decorative arts; creating a “total art”, that unified painting, architecture, and the decorative arts; and, in particular, opposing the domination of the official Vienna Academy of the Arts, the Vienna Künstlerhaus, and official art salons, with its traditional orientation toward Historicism, which comprises artistic styles that draw their inspiration from recreating historic styles or imitating the work of historic artists and artisans. 

The Vienna Secession Building, Vienna

The Vienna Secession Movement consisted of a number of artists who decided to break away from the association that ran the city’s own venue for contemporary art to form their own, progressive group and built a venue to display their work.  The Secession’s building created the first dedicated, permanent exhibition space for contemporary art of all types in the West.

Cover of First Issue of Ver Sacrum

Max Kurzweil was also editor and illustrator of the influential Secessionist magazine Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring).  The magazine, founded by Gustav Klimt and Max Kurzweil was the official journal of the Vienna Secession. It was published from 1898 to 1903 and featured drawings and designs in the Secession style along with literary contributions from distinguished writers from across Europe. Max was also professor at the Frauenkunstschule, an academy in Vienna for female artists.  

Woman in a Yellow Dress by Max Kuzweil (1899)

Kurzweil’s completed one of his best-known paintings entitled Woman in a Yellow Dress in 1899.  It is a truly stunning painting of his beautiful wife Martha.  Her arms are draped over the back of a chaise longue, which is upholstered in a green patterned fabric, as she gazes out at us in a languid and relaxed pose.  There is a supreme look of contentment in her expression.  The yellow dress with its many tones is in total harmony with the sofa and compliments her pale limbs.

Martha Kurzweil before an Easel by Max Kurzweil l(1902)

Kurzweil won the prestigious Villa Romana Prize in 1905. This award allowed him to spend time in Florence, Italy, furthering his artistic development. His time there influenced his later works. Max Kurzweil’s portraiture was outstanding and a good example of this is his portraits of two young girls Mira and Bettina Bauer.  Max had been a close friend of Eugen and Lily Bauer and their two daughters and he had  taught the mother of the Bauer sisters painting and was a frequent guest at the Bauer household.  In 1907 they asked him to complete two separate portraits of the girls and he was invited to their summer residence located on the corner of Largo San Grisogono and the Palatucci Gardens, known at the time as Villa Bauer.

Mira Bauer by Max Kurzweil (1908)

In his half-length painting of Mira Bauer, which Kurzweil completed in 1908, we see a very young girl portrayed standing next to a dark wooden piece of furniture on which is a vase of colourful flowers ranging from white to orange and purple.  Mira has long dark brown hair. She carefully stares towards Kurzweil who is portraying her. Her gaze appears serious, serene and yet at the same time imparts a lot of sweetness towards the observer.

Bettina Bauer by Max Kurzwill (1907)

Bettina Bauer, who at the time of the portrait was four years old, became a well-known painter and illustrator of numerous children’s books, many of which she also wrote. On November 27th 1930 she married the sculptor Georg Ehrlich. Georg Ehrlich frequently depicted children and young people in his sculptures, often as symbols of hope. This cast of ‘Two Sisters‘ was completed in 1944. The inscription suggests that it was originally cast as a private memorial to his wife Bettina’s sister, Mira Marie Bauer, later Mira von Gutman, who died in 1944. The figure on the right is Ehrlich’s wife Bettina and the figure on the left is Mira, his sister-in-law Mira.

Two Sisters. Sculpture by Georg Ehrlich

Georg Ehrlich was born in Vienna but because of the post-War economic depression in Austria he moved to Munich and then to Berlin.  He returned to Vienna in 1924, and his interest turned almost exclusively to sculpture.  On November 27th 1930 he married the artist Bettina Bauer, who like him, was Jewish. After the Nazi Anschluss in March 1938, it was too dangerous for them to be living in Austria. He decided to stay in London, where he was at the time and his wife joined him there in July 1938, bringing many of his works.  Mira Bauer was already living in London and organised the paperwork needed to bring Georg and Bettina to join her in London. Mira died in 1944. In June 1940 Ehrlich was interned as a so-called ‘enemy alien’ in Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man.  He became a British citizen in 1947 and was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1962.

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt (1907)

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II by Gustav Klimt (1912)

Mira and Bettina’s aunt was Adele Bloch Bauer.  She was a Viennese socialite, salon hostess, and patron of the arts from Austria-Hungary, who was married to sugar industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. She is most well known for being the subject of two of artist Gustav Klimt’s paintings. She has been called “the Austrian Mona Lisa”.

Ein Lieber Besuch (A dear visit) by Max Kurtzweil (1894)

My last work by Max Kurzweil I am showing is my favourite.  He completed Ein Lieber Besuch in 1894.   We are looking  through the open door which leads to a winter snowy barracks courtyard, and see a horse led by a soldier entering a sickroom.  The patient is propped up in bed by another soldier. The sick person’s eyes are closed, but his hand is raised in a loving greeting. Max Kurzweil beautifully depicts this poignant and heart-rending scene in a narrative way. The condition of the patient seems serious and it could be that the ‘dear visit’ mentioned in the title is also a farewell forever. Kurzweil’s depiction of the soldier’s life aligns with a realistic conception of art.

A Walk in the Garden by Max Kurzweil (1896)

Kurzweil was highly thought of by his contemporaries for his contributions to the Vienna Secession. Along with Gustav Klimt, he remains to the most significant representatives of the Viennese Secessionist movement.  Over the years his work continued to change and develop.

Despair by Max Kurzweil

Sadly, all was not well with him financially or with his personal life and as a consequence of these problems which worsened his inborn sense of melancholy, he committed suicide, at the age of 48, on May 9th 1916, together with his student and lover, Helene Heger.

Information for this blog came from Wikipedia and three excellent websites:

The Art Bog

The Art Story – Vienna Secession

Catherine la Rose – The Poet of Painting

Mary Evelyn Wrinch

Mary Evelyn Wrinch

“…I have always been a person with one idea.  I had no other ambition than to become an artist.  It was the only thing I ever wanted to do...”

Mary E. Wrinch A.R.C.A.

Mary Evelyn Wrinch, an English-born Canadian, was born in 1877 in the Northeast Essex village of Kirby-le-Soken.  Her parents were Leonard and Elizabeth Cooper Wrinch.  When Mary was eight years old her father died and she and her mother emigrated to Bronte, Ontario, and after a return trip  to England, in 1889, they relocated permanently to Canada and went to live in Toronto.

Blossom Time by Mary E Wrinch

Whilst living in Toronto, Mary attended Bishop Strachan School, a private school in the Forest Hill area and Canada’s oldest independent day and boarding school.  In 1889, Mary Wrinch enrolled at the Central Ontario School of Art where she studied with George Agnew Reid along with Impressionist painter, Laura Adeline Muntz and naturalist painter, Robert Holmes.  It was a four-year course during which she studied both printmaking and painting.

Wakefield Garden by Mary E Wrinch (1917)

After achieving a number of awards, she began graduate studies at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London and remained there until 1899 under the direction of Walter Donne. After this, Mary Wrinch returned to Toronto where she again studied at the Ontario College of Art & Design with Lyall, Holmes and Reid.  She later enrolled for two private art classes, one in London, England with Alyn Williams, a Welsh artist born in Wrexham,  who later became president of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters.  The other private classes she attended was in New York, run by Alice Beckington, an American artist who was a founder member of the American Society of Miniature Painters, an organization she served as president for a number of years, from 1905 to 1916.  She also taught miniature painting at the Art Students League.

Poppies by Mary E Wrinch (1917)

When Mary was in her early twenties she opened her own studio in the Arcade Building on Toronto’s Yonge Street.  Her former tutors, George Agnew Reid and Laura Muntz also had studios in the building. Around this time Mary began to concentrate her art with specialized miniature portraits.  In 1906, she travelled to France and was strongly influenced by the works of Monet, Pissarro and Sisley and when she returned to Canada, she brought back a large number of small, beautifully crafted Impressionist sketches.  Her time in France also converted her to plein air landscape painting and she recalled that time saying:

“… It was such a revelation being in France at that time.   Coming into contact with Impressionism was like being let loose with a box of coloured candy…”

Falling Leaves by Mary E Winch

In 1912 she returned to Europe for a second time and travelled around France and Italy, continuously sketching and painting.  Although pleased with her work there were many detractors in the press who claimed her northern Ontario landscape paintings were too modernist.  She was undeterred and carried on painting until 1928 when she stopped and concentrated on colour woodcuts.

Class at Bishop Strachan School, Toronto (1915)

Mary Wrinch, apart from dedicating her life to her art, was still a single woman and had also to support herself financially and so taught art at the Bishop Strachan School, Toronto, her alma mater, and Canada’s oldest independent day and boarding school for girls.  She worked there from 1901 until 1936 as Art Director. 

Abitibi Canyon, Ontario by Mary E Winch

Mary owned a summer residence in a two-storey cottage at Kingwood, Lake of Bays, a township municipality within the District Municipality of Muskoka, Ontario, Canada, situated 193 kilometres (120 miies) north of Toronto.  Mary spent hours sketching and painting and for relaxation and exercise would canoe on the lake. It was, whilst living in the beautiful Ontario landscape, that she changed her method of painting.  She now painted directly from nature on canvases over a metre high and wide.

Sawmill, Muskoka by Mary Wrinch (1907)

In 1907 she exhibited her large (84 x 86cms) painting entitled Sawmill, Muskoka at the Ontario Society of Artists.  It was subsequently purchased by the Government of Ontario.  Six years later she was interviewed about this work and its size and she justified it saying:

“…Somehow our Canadian landscapes call for a big canvas and for direct, out of door painting. When you do it small, you lose much of its very essence…”

Funchal Madeira by Mary E Winch

Although spending summers at Lake of Bays, during the Winter months she stayed and worked in her studio in Wychwood Park,  an arts and crafts community, founded in the late nineteenth century, as a private project by painter Marmaduke Matthews and businessman Alexander Jardine. Between 1900 and 1922 she worked closely with and studied under George Agnew Reid, a well known Toronto painter and former tutor.

Mortgaging the Homestead by G A Reid

After briefly apprenticing with an architect, Reid was trained at the Ontario School of Art, Toronto in 1879, where he studied with Robert Harris.  From there, he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1882 to 1885 where he was a protégé of Thomas Eakins who appointed him a demonstrator in anatomy classes.  He also studied at the Académie Julian, with Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, and the Prado in Madrid.   George Agnew Reid, who signed his name as G. A. Reid, was a Canadian artist, painter, influential educator and administrator.  He is best known for his genre paintings, but his work also included historical, portrait and landscape subjects.

Portrait of George Agnew Reid by Mary Hiester Reid, (1895)

Reid met his first wife artist Mary Hiester Reid at the Pennsylvania Academy, and the couple married in 1885.  Mary, also a talented artist, became financially successful and received significant reviews in the Toronto press. In 1893, she was elected an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, one of the first women elected.  He and his wife also made a number of study trips to Europe later, during which they visited France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. George Agnew Reid remained with his wife until her death in 1921.

Ponte Vecchio Florence by Mary E Wrinch (1914)

Mary Wrinch had known Reid since being his student and also was part of Reid and his wife’s circle of artistic friends in Wychwood Park.  The Park was an ideal painting site for its beauty which was then still a rural region on the edge of the city.  The park which was named by Marmaduke Matthews after Wychwood forest in Oxfordshire, England.  Reid had built himself and his wife an Elizabethan-styled grand manor house with a walled garden and a pool known as Upland Cottage.   In 1910 Reid built Mary Wrinch an independent home-studio on Alcina Avenue which was just one block away from where he and his wife Mary lived.

Cineraria by Mary E Winch (1924)

A year later in 1922, following the death of his wife, Reid married forty-five-year-old Mary Evelyn Wrinch his former student at the Central Ontario School of Art in Toronto. Once married, Mary moved into Upland Cottage and was delighted to take charge of the large garden. Later the couple went off exploring and painting the beauty of Northern Canada, visiting Northern Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia. Despite marrying Reid, Mary Winch persisted in using her maiden name, Mary E. Winch when signing her paintings. For her it was important to maintain her professional identity.

Scarboro’ Linocut by May E Wrinch (c.1938)

In 1928, when Mary Wrinch was fifty-one, she decided on a complete change of artistic style.  She then embraced the art of lino-cut printing and copied her original landscape paintings to achieve intricate highly colourful prints with strong outlines.  She also completed floral prints using flowers from her own garden. Mary was influenced by the Japanese woodcut masters such as Hokusai, Hiroshige and Utamaro and from their works she developed techniques in block printmaking. By 1944 Mary Wrinch had completely given up painting to concentrate on her printmaking.

After 25 years of marriage to Wrinch, her husband, George Agnew Reid died at the age of 87 in 1947.  Mary Wrinch died in Toronto in 1969 at age 90.

Apart from Wikipedia, most of the information for this blog came from these excellent websites:

Moynahan Studio: FemArt Friday: Mary Evelyn Wrinch

Art Windsor Essex

Female self-Representation and the Public Trust

Jean-Pierre Valentin Gallery

Rookleys

Emma Fordyce MacRea

Detail from Emma Fordyce MacRea by Ivan Gregorewitch Olinsky (1930)

Emma Dean Fordyce was born on April 27th 1887 in Vienna.  She was the first-born child of Alice Dean Fordyce (née Smith) a woman of inherited wealth and Dr. John Addison Forsyth.  Her father was a professor of dermatology who was born in Guernsey County, Ohio and graduated in medicine from Northwestern University Medical College in 1881 and after a number of posts in America, travelled to Europe and spent the major part of this time in Vienna.   He returned to America in 1888, a year after his daughter was born and took up posts as a professor at New York University and later Columbia University.

Oriental Backgroumd by Emma Fordyce MacRea (1928)

Emma was brought up in a wealthy household and became interested in the arts through the family’s regular trips to Europe for her father’s work.  Her primary education was at Miss Chapin’s School, an all-girls independent day school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side neighbourhood in New York City.  From there she attended the Brearley School, an American all-girls private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. 

October Winds by Emma Fordyce MacRea (1914)

In 1910, twenty-three-year-old Emma married Thomas MacRea an intern at her father’s practice.  The marriage was a disaster and lasted less than twelve months.  In 1921 the marriage was annulled and a year later Emma married Homer Swift.  With her first marriage over in 1911 she decided to carry on with studying art and enrolled at the Art Students League under Frank Vincent du Mond, Luis Mora and Kenneth Hayes Miller.  She also took classes at the New York School of Art. In 1914 one of Emma’s paintings entitled October Winds was shown at the Anderson Galleries in New York.  It was a work in the Impressionist style .  Few of her earlier had a richer palette and a hint of form  and few of her very early works exist.  In the 2008 Cape Ann Museum Exhibition catalogue it stated that Emma had already laid down the subjects she favoured for her art.  They were landscapes, floral still life and female figurative compositions. She worked in a flat, linear, primarily two-dimensional style with references to Old Masters and Japanese prints.  MacRae was known for her unique painting style where she used paint sparingly and often scrapped away sections of paint to reveal a textured, chalky canvas. These techniques gave her paintings an antiqued look, while also feeling modern.

The Clam House, an etching by Arthur Wesley Dow (c.1892)

In the early 1920s Emma’s painting style changed.  Despite great reviews of her work exhibited in New York and Boston galleries she decided to move away from Impressionism and create her own artistic style.  We cannot be certain as to why she changed her painting style but it could be due to her second round of coursework at the Art Students League.  It could also have been the change in her personal life or what she had read in Arthur Wesley Dow’s influential book, Composition A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers.  Dow was an American painter, printmaker, photographer, and educator known for his teachings based on Japanese principles of art and for his significant artistic and intellectual contributions to the Arts and Crafts movement.  Dow taught that rather than copying nature, individuals should create art through elements of the composition, such as line, mass, and colour.

Easter Lily by Emma Fordyce MacRea

An example of this change in Emma’s style could be seen in her painting entitled Easter Lily.

It is interesting to note that in many of her female figurative paintings she had focused not just on the sitter but various background items.

Left: Leonore in White by Emma Fordyce MacRea. Right: Ruth by Emma Fordyce MacRea.

In Emma’s painting, Leonore in White, the female figure is holding her book on her lap whilst in the background we have an oval mirror and on a table in the background there is a flower-filled vase. In the other painting, Ruth, we see another female reading with her book on the table and has a background of a painting and a blue upholstered chair.

Left: Distant Mountains by Emma Fordyce MacRea Right: 5 O’Clock by Emma Fordyce MacRea

In the subdued palette used in her painting, Distant Mountains the female wears her green dress which echoes the colour of the ground in the landscape that we see in the valley. In her painting, 5 O’Clock, the vibrant orange dress worn by the model is picked up in the deeper tones of the reddish-orange in the wallpaper. Also in the background there is a landscape painting and a large square clock showing the time as 5 O’Clock.

Fishermen’s Huts by Emma Fordyce MacRea

Lobstermen’s Huts by Emma Fordyce MacRea

With just a few exceptions Emma’s landscape paintings could not be classified as pure landscapes as she always populated the depictions with figures, buildings and boats. In her painting Fishermen’s Huts she has depicted the harbour wall and the coastline slicing diagonally through the depiction and by so doing separates the moored boats from the angular houses seen above the harbour.

The Lily by Emma Fordyce MacRae

Emma loved to paint floral still life depictions and would often use hardboiard Masonite as her painting surface and instead of using the front smooth side would instead paint on the gesso-ground rough rear side which in some ways mirrored a canvas surface.  One example of this was her painting entitled The Lily. First she would sketch in the composition with black chalk or a soft pencil and often she would leave some of this under-drawing visible as outlines in the final painting.

Pigeon Cove by Emma Fordyce MacRea (c.1930)

Emma MacRae’s paintings were exhibited at several important museums and galleries throughout the country, such as The National Academy of Design, Pennsylvania Academy, Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, Chicago Art Institute, John Herron Art Institute of Indianapolis (now the Herron School of Art and Design), the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington D.C., Currier Museum of Art, and Boston Art Club. She also exhibited paintings between 1937 and 1945 as part of The Philadelphia Ten Painters, also known as The Ten, which was a group of female artists from the United States who exhibited together from 1917 to 1945. Emma joined several other artist groups, including the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, Allied Artists of America, North Shore Art Association, National Association of Mural Painters, Boston Art Club, and the New York Society of Painters. In 1951, she received full membership in the National Academy of Design.

Foxgloves in Cloisonné Pot by Emma Fordyce MacRea (1934)

Emma Fordyce MacRae, who married twice had one child, Alice MacRae, from her first marriage.   Emma kept her first married name throughout her professional painting career but for personal matters, after her second marriage to Dr. Homer Swift, went by the name “Swift” .

Rockport Beach, Cape Ann, Massachusetts by Emma Fordyce MacRea (1935)

In 1916, Emma’s father purchased some prime real estate land in the hills overlooking  Stage Fort Park, at Stage Head just west of Gloucester MA ,and on it he had a house built. 

Stage Fort across Gloucester Harbor by Fitz Henry Lane, (1862)

When her father died in 1925 the house became hers.  She would spend the summers there and soon built up a large portfolio of paintings depicting surrounding areas.  The house was called Atlantic Heights and in it she had her own studio.

Gloucester Garden by Emma Fordyce MacRea

It had a large garden which was looked after by her husband Homer Swift. It was often a mass of colours and many of the flowers featured in her floral Still Life works as well as in her painting entitled Gloucester Garden.

Emma Fordyce MacRea died on August 6th 1974 aged 87.

Most of the information regarding the life and works of Emma Fordyce MacRea came from two excellent websites:

Cape Ann Museum Archives

and

Cape Ann Museum Catalogue

Théophile “Théo” van Rysselberghe Part 2.

Van Rysselberghe went to Haarlem in September 1883 to study the light in the works of Frans Hals. He was fascinated by the way the artist had rendered the light and this facet of painting would remain with him for the rest of his life. It was also in the Netherlands that he first met the American painter William Merritt Chase.

Fantasia Araba, by Théo Van Rysselberghe (1884)

Having returned from the Netherlands he remained at home for a short while before setting off on his second painting trip to the Moroccan town of Tangier in November 1883 along with Franz Charlet who had accompanied him on his previous trip. He remained in Morocco for twelve months and managed to put together a large number of paintings and sketches. The highlight of which was his large painting (300 x 170cms) entitled Fantasia Araba, which he completed in 1884. It can be seen at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.

Even though he was in North Africa Théo remained in close contact with Octave Maus discussing the running of Les XX. Les XX was a group of twenty Belgian painters, designers and sculptors, formed in 1883 by the Brussels lawyer, publisher, and entrepreneur Octave Maus.

Les XX poster for their sixth exhibition in 1889

For ten years, Les XX held an annual exhibition of their art; each year twenty other international artists were also invited to participate in their exhibition. Théo would suggest names of artists to Maus who he believed should be invited to their first exhibition in 1884. In the first year’s show the foreign invitees included Auguste Rodin, John Singer Sargent, Max Liebermann, Whistler and William Merritt Chase

Abraham Sicsu (Consul de Belgique a Tanger) by Théo Van Rysselberghe (1884)

His long stay in North Africa ended in October 1884 when he ran out of money and had to return home to Belgium. Once again he had many completed paintings to exhibit, including Fantasia Araba, at the second Les XX exhibition in 1885. Another of van Rysselberghe’s paintings exhibited was his portrait of Abraham Sicsu who had entered the service of the Belgian legation in Tangier in 1864 as an interpreter. Many famous painters and members of the Belgian royal family had visited him. He was appointed Belgian consul and officer of the Order of Leopold on 8 April 1889 and finally obtained Belgian naturalisation.

Madame Edmond Picard in Her Box at Theatre de la Monnaie by Theo Rysselberghe (1886)

In the 1886 Les XX exhibition van Rysselberghe saw the works of the Impressionist, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir. He was so enthralled by what he saw that he decided to experiment with this artistic technique. An example of this is his 1886 painting entitled Madame Edmond Picard in Her Box at Theatre de la Monnaie.

Madame Oscar Ghysbrecht by Théo van Ryssdalberghe (1886)

… and his Portrait of Madame Oscar Ghysbrecht in which he used a palette of bright colours.

Les Dunes du Zwin, Knokke, by Théo van Rysselberghe (1887)

…and the impressionist style of van Rysselberghe carried on through many of his landscape and seascape painting including his 1887 work entitled Les Dunes du Zwin, Knokke, a municipality of of West Flanders in  Belgium.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat (1886)

Van Rysselberghe had cultivated close ties with the Parisian art scene, so much so that Octave Maus asked Rysselberghe to go to Paris and search out up-and-coming new talent who would be able to take part in future exhibitions of Les XX. Whilst in Paris van Rysselberghe became aware of Pointilism, a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of colour are applied in patterns to form an image. It was a hallmark of Neo-Impressionist painters. Théo first saw it when he visited the eighth impressionism exhibition in 1886 and Georges Seurat’s painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Théo and some other Belgian artists brought the pointillism art form back to Belgium but not every art critic was impressed by this new technique. Seurat was invited to exhibit at the 1887 salon of Les XX in Brussels but it received a very unfavourable reception with many art critics labelling it as “incomprehensible gibberish applied to the noble art of painting”.

Anna Boch by Théo van Rysselberghe (c. 1889)

Not to be deterred by the art critics’ vitriolic comments Théo decided to change his painting style abandoning realism and became proficient at pointillism. In the summer of 1887, he spent a few weeks in Batignolles, near Paris with Eugène Boch, a brother of Anna Boch, a Belgian painter, art collector, and the only female member of the artistic group, Les XX. His 1889 painting of Anna Boch is a good example of Théo’s pointillism style. It was while with Eugène Bloc that he met several painters from the Parisian art scene such as Sisley, Signac, Degas and especially Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He took the opportunity to invite several of them, including Signac, Forain, and Toulouse-Lautrec to the next exhibition of Les XX.

View of Meknès by Théo van Rysselberghe (1888)

In December 1887 Théo was invited, together with Edmond Picard, to accompany a Belgian economic delegation to Meknès, one of the four Imperial cities of Morocco, located in northern central Morocco and the sixth largest city by population in the kingdom.

Encampment near a Moroccan Village by Théo van Rysselberghe (1888)

Encampment near a Moroccan Village by Théo van Rysselberghe (1888)

His third stay in Morocco lasted three months during which time he completed many coloured pencil sketches, made copious notes and took many photos all of which he used to complete paintings. When he had finished these paintings, he stopped completely with this “Moroccan period” in his life. He now turned to portraiture, resulting in a series of remarkable neo-impressionist portraits.

Portrait of Alice Sèthe by Théo van Rysselberghe (1888)

The portrait of Alice Sèthe was an early one of van Rysselberghe’s divisionist (or pointillist) works which juxtaposes small touches of pure tones on the canvas. Alice stands before us in a beautiful blue and white dress. Behind her are the accoutrements of a luxurious setting. Van Rysselberghe’s mixing of colours no longer takes place on his palette but in the eye of the observer. Théo Van Rysselberghe remains one of the few artists who have put this technique in his portraits. This blue and gold portrait, completed in 1888, would become a turning point in his artistic life.

Portrait of Irma Sèthe by Théo van Rysselberghe (1894)

Gérard Sèthe was a wealthy textile merchant from Brussels who belonged to Van Rysselberghe’s circle of friends. Van Rysselberghe portrayed the Sèthe daughters, Irma, Maria and Alice on several occasions. The portrait of Irma Sèthe depicts her playing the violin. The Sèthe family were very musical with Maria playing the harmonium and Irma was apprenticed to the “King of Violin” Eugène Ysaÿe, a violinist and teacher at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. The Portrait of Irma Sèthe epitomises Van Rysselberghe’s pointillism. The satin of Irma’s dress lights up in full pink, comprised of thousands of dots of unmixed colours. The changing light and colour effects create a strong plastic effect over the folds on Irma’s sleeves and skirt. In Irma’s portrait we see her completely engrossed in playing her violin. Our eyes are fixed on her and yet, maybe unnoticed at first, we see that she is not alone as sitting in the room next to her is another woman sitting in a chair with one hand laid on her blue dress. Why was this other woman included in the portrait? Is Irma aware of her presence? Only van Rysselberghe knows the answers. The portrait was exhibited in 1895 at the Paris Salon des Indépendants, in 1898 at the salon of La Libre Esthétique, and in 1899 at the thirteenth exhibition of the Vienna Secession.

Marie Monnom by Fernand Khnopff  (1887)

Fernand Khnopff completed this Portrait of Marie Monnom in 1887. Her father, a publisher of L’Art moderne in Brussels, had commissioned the work. We see her in Khnopff’s studio sitting in an armchair and seen from the side. It shares a number of elements with several portraits of women painted by Khnopff such as the golden circle on the wall on the upper left, the gloves that Marie is wearing, the framing which slices off the subject’s feet. She does not hold our gaze and her face, although bathed in light, is expressionless. Nothing of her personality shows through.

Sunset at Ambleteuse by Théo van Rysselberghe (1899)

Cap Griz Nez by Théo van Rysselberghe (1900)

On September 16th 1889, Théo van Rysselberghe, a close friend of Khnopff’s, married Marie Monnom and they went on their honeymoon to the south of England and then to Brittany where he made many sketches that he would later turn into finished paintings. In October 1890 their daughter Élisabeth was born.

Élisabeth by Théo van Rysselberghe, (1916)

Madame Theo van Rysselberghe and Her Daughter by Théo van Rysselberghe (1899)

Élisabeth in Straw Hat by Théo van Rysselberghe (1901)

Van Rysselberghe’s wife and daughter featured in many of his portraits.

Olive Trees near Nice by Théo van Rysselberghe (1905)

As the years passed van Rysselberghe used his pointillist technique less frequently and by 1910, he had completely put aside pointillism. His brushstrokes became longer and he used more often vivid colours and more intense contrasts, or softened hues. He had mastered the application of light and heat in his paintings.

Female Bathers Under the Pines at Cavaliere by Théo van Rysselberghe (1905) 

He completed his painting entitled Olive Trees near Nice in 1905 and the technique he used for this work is similar to one used by Vincent van Gogh with its longer brushstrokes in red and mauve becoming prominent in his 1905 painting, Bathing ladies under the Pine Trees at Cavalière.

The Vines in Saint Clair by Théo van Rysselberghe (1912)

Van Rysselberghe was travelling along the Mediterranean coast with his friend, the French Neo-Impressionist painter, Henri-Edmond Cross, looking for a suitable place to live. Cross lived in Saint-Clair and van Rysselberghe immediately fell in love with this coastal location. Théo’s brother Octave, who lived nearby, was an architect and, in 1911, he built a house for his brother. Théo now living on the Côte d’Azur slowly extricated himself from the Brussels art scene.

Bathers by Théo van Rysselberghe (1920)

The Model’s Siesta by Théo van Rysselberghe (1920)

Nude from behind Fixing her Hair by Théo van Rysselberghe (1920)

Now living on the Mediterranean coast many of Théo’s painting featured nearby landscape and coastal scenes. He continu

ed with his portraiture mainly focusing on his family. However in the first two decades of the twentieth century he produced many works featuring female nudity.

Théophile van Rysselberghe died on December 14th 1926 aged 64 and was buried in the cemetery of Lavandou, next to his friend and painter Henri-Edmond Cross.

Once again most of the information for this blog came from various Wikipedia and associated sites.

Théophile “Théo” van Rysselberghe Part 1.

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

Self-portrait in a Green Waistcoat (1924)

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

Oriental Beauty by Jean-François Portaels

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

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

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

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

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

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

Descent from the Cross by Pedro Campaña (1547)

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

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

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

Arabian Street Cobbler by Théo Van Rysselberghe

Moroccan Market by Théo Van Rysselberghe (1883)

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

The Oyster Eater by James Ensor (1883)

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

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

Portrait of Octave Maus by Théo Van Rysselberghe

Portrait of Octave Maus by Théo Van Rysselberghe (1885)

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

Emile Verhaeren by Théo Van Rysselberghe

Emile Verhaeren by Théo Van Rysselberghe ((1892)

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

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

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

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

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

……. to be continued

.

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

Hannah Harrison Cohoon and the Shakers.

My short blog today is about n artist and a religion. It looks at the life and works of Hannah Cohoon, a person you may not have heard of before. Her art is both unusual and simplistic and is connected to a millenarian restorationist Christian sect known as The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, but more commonly referred to as the Shakers. The group grew out of a branch of Quakerism around  1747 in Northwest England and later, the visionary Ann Lee (Mother Ann) brought Shakerism to America in the 1780s.

Shaker workshop service showing worshippers on benches and marching in a spiral.

The Shakers were so-called because of their practices of shaking, dancing, whirling, and speaking, shouting, and singing in tongues.

Hancock Shaker Village

Round Stone Barn and Fields

Hannah Harrison Cohoon was an American painter born in Williamstown, Massachusetts on February 1st 1788 and later became a member of Hancock Shaker Village. Although there are only sketchy details of Hannah’s education it is thought that she would have been instructed in watercolour painting and probably would have learned needlework skills from her elders as it was a skill, like painting that was considered an essential ability that every young woman should possess Hannah, now married, and known as Hannah Cohoon was twenty-nine-years-old and the mother of two young children. Her son Harrison was born in 1812 and her daughter Mariah was born in 1814. It was on March 15th 1817 that the twenty-nine-year-old Hannah entered the Hancock Shaker Village community situated just outside  Hancock and Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In the main, the Hancock Shakers supported themselves through farming. The grew and cultivated flowers and plants and from them sold garden seeds. Over time they purchased more land and by the 1830s the Hancock Shakers owned about 3,000 acres (12 km2).

Tree of Light or Blazing Tree by Hannah Cohoon (1845)

The leading artists at the time who worked at Hancock were Joseph Wicker, Hannah Cohoon, and Polly Collins and all chose to depict images which were derived from nature, especially trees. For the Shakers, the Tree of Life was an immediately identifiable symbol, celebrated in sermons, gift songs, and in their early history as a representation of the unity of the Shaker Church.

Tree of Life by Hannah Cohoon (1854).   Ink and tempera on paper. Courtesy of Andrews Collection, Hancock Shaker Village.

When we look at Cohoon’s wonderful single-image paintings of trees we realise that her expertise in embroidery, the ornamental needlework of appliqué, and her knowledge of quilting techniques were all present in her mind when she painted. It was during a summer day in 1854, that Hannah Cohoon, who had been a member of the Shaker community in Hancock for thirty-seven years, had a vision of a singular and curious tree. She saw plainly the branches, leaves and fruit, and she sketched and painted them on a sheet of white paper. One of the Shaker elders saw what she had done and told her that the name of the tree was the Tree of Life. Cohoon described how the vision came to her to create the Tree of Life drawing:

“…I received a draft of a beautiful Tree pencil’d on large sheet of plain white paper bearing ripe fruit. I saw it plainly, it looked very singular and curious to me. I have since learned that this Tree grows in the Spirit Land. Afterwards the Spirit showed me plainly the branches, leaves and fruit, painted or drawn upon paper. The leaves were check’d or cross’d and the same colours you see here. I entreated Mother Ann to tell me the name of this tree which she did on Oct. 1st 4th hour P.M. by moving the hand of a medium to write twice over Your Tree is the Tree of Life…”

A Bower of Mulberry Tree by Hannah Cohoon. (1854). Ink and tempera on paper. Courtesy of Andrews Collection, Hancock Shaker Village.

A Bower of Mulberry Trees by Hannah Cohoon (1854)

The main feature of Hannah’s painting entitled A Bower of Mulberry Trees is dominated by the curving branches of trees that form an arch over a long Shaker table which is set out for a feast. It came from her vision of Shaker elders feasting on cakes under mulberry trees which were held at biennial meetings,. The doves represent the bounties that the believer would experience in heaven, and the table depicts holy feasts which were held biennially.

A Little Basket Full of Beautiful Apples by Hannah Cohoon (1856) Art Work by Hannah Cohoon / Courtesy the Hancock Shaker Village Collection / American Folk Art Museum.

Hannah also completed A Little Basket Full of Beautiful Apples in 1856. In his article for the New Yorker journal, Adam Gopnik, a long-time staff writer for the paper, wrote:

“...Shining Tree of Life is among the key drawings in American art, with a tonic sense of abundance—all the apples just alike, each with its rub-on of rouge, like blush applied by an adolescent girl—allied to obsessive order…”

Hannah Harrison Cohoon died in Hancock, Massachusetts, on January 7th, 1864, aged 75 and is buried in the family cemetery of the Church.


An image of Cohoon’s Tree of Life appeared in a December 1945 Antiques magazine article by Edward Deming Andrews. Andrews used the image for the covers of his books, Visions of Heavenly Sphere and Fruits of the Shaker Tree of Life in 1969 and 1975.
The Hancock Shaker Village became a museum in 1960, and sometime after that the Andrews sold Cohoon’s drawings and other gift drawings to the museum. Andrews also organized an exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1935.
Her Tree of Life drawing was used in 1974 for a UNICEF Christmas postcard to raise funds for the organization. In 1980, the Whitney Museum of Art held another exhibition, “American Folk Painters of Three Centuries, which featured four of Cohoon’s drawings.