my daily art display

The Boer War by John Byam Liston Shaw

John_Liston_Byam_Shaw_Boer_War — The Boer War by John Byam Liston Shaw (1900-01)

Once again, I am featuring an English artist. My Daily Art Display’s featured artist was one of England’s most prolific painters of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, John Byam Liston Shaw. He was actually born in Madras, India in 1872, where his father was the registrar of the High Court. He and his family lived in India until he was six years old at which time they came back to Londond and settled down in Kensington. Byam Shaw showed early promise as an artist and when he was fifteen years old some of his paintings and drawings were shown to the Pre-Raphaelite painter, Sir John Everett Millais who was very impressed by the artistic standards achieved by the boy. It was on Millais’ advice that Shaw entered the St John’s Wood Art School. Also at the school at the time were the portraitist George Spencer Watson, the animal painter Roland Wheelwright and the landscape artist Rex Vicat Cole. However probably the most important art student he met there was Evelyn Pyke-Nott, whom he was to marry in 1899.

In 1890, aged 18 years old, Byam Shaw attended the Royal Academy Schools at which in 1892 he won the prestigious Armitage Prize for his painting The Judgement of Solomon. In 1893 he and fellow art student the portraitist and miniaturist, Gerald Metcalf who like Byam Shaw was born in India, moved into a studio together that at one time had been owned by Whistler. Byam Shaw’s early works showed the influence on him of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He had been a great admirer of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Millais and one of his earliest works, and the first one he exhibited at the Royal Academy entitled Rose Mary, was based on a poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Looking at Byam Shaw’s works, it is easy to see the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites had on his work, not just in the subject matter but in his use of colour.

In 1899 Byam Shaw married Evelyn Pike Nott and they went on to have five children, four daughters and a son. Besides his painting Byam Shaw spent a great deal of time on illustrations and drawings for books and in 1904 he was commissioned to produce thirty-four illustrations for the book, Historic Record of the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. It was around this time that Byam Shaw also became interested in theatrical costume design. In 1904, aged thirty-two, he and his fellow artist friend, Rex Vicat Cole, became part-time teachers at the Women’s Department of King’s College at which ladies were allowed to attend lectures on various subjects but had to have chaperones in attendance ! The two friends resigned from their posts at King’s College and set up their own school of art in Kensington, which still exists as Byam Shaw’s School of Art and which is an integral part of the world-renowned Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design. Shaw’s wife Evelyn also had a major role in the school.

During the First World War, Shaw produced many war cartoons for the newspapers of the day. Shortly after the war in January 1919 he collapsed and died aged 46.

My featured painting today is John Byam Shaw’s work entitled The Boer War which he started in 1900 and completed in 1901. When Shaw first exhibited this painting he added two lines to the title which came from A Bird Song, a poem by the English poet Christina Rossetti:

Last Summer greener things were greener

Brambles fewer, the blue sky bluer

This verse was a reflection of the mood of the young lady dressed in black. She is heartbroken at hearing the news of the death of a loved one, killed in the Boer War. She stands on the bank of the river and tries to remember happier days but she finds even that difficult. In her eyes, the once beloved beauty of Mother Nature seems to have deserted her. She struggles to come to terms with the death. She is inconsolable. However she is the archetypal English heroine who manages to bear her sorrows with a degree of stoicism as she deliberates on the death of a loved one who has given up his life for his country.

The model Byam Shaw used for this painting was his sister Margaret Glencair who at the time was in mourning for her cousin who had been killed in the fighting in South Africa. Byam Shaw drew on his knowledge of the banks of the River Thames near Dorchester to construct this beautiful picture. Although Byam Shaw was influenced by the bright colours of the Pre-Raphaelites, the colours of the fauna in this painting are more subdued as if in the shadow of a dark cloud. This muted colouring of the overgrown plants which kiss the water could well be part and parcel of the mood of the subject. Look at the water in the right foreground and you can see a single feather of a swan. It is more than likely that this symbolises loss as we are all aware that swans mate for life and if one dies, the other pines for it. Could this then be drawing a parallel to the suffering of the woman who has lost her partner on the field of battle? Another piece of symbolism in the painting is the way the artists has painted ravens in flight over the trees which is a sign of ill omen and thus amplifies the ominous atmosphere of the painting.

This is a truly beautiful painting, the subject of which is heartbreaking.

The Blind Girl by John Everett Millais

Millais-Blind_Girl — The Blind Girl by Millais (1854-56)

Another day, another painting, another offering from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. My Daily Art Display for today is one of John Everett Millais’ finest works of art, entitled The Blind Girl which he painted in 1856. In it we have a fusion of the elements of figure and landscape painting depicting, in the foreground, two girls sitting near a roadside against the backdrop of an expanse of wide, open fields with a distant view of a town.

The elder of the two girls, with her eyes closed, is blind. She is homeless and forced to beg for sustenance by playing her concertina, which we see on her lap. Her wretched plight is emphasized even more by the sheet of paper hanging around her neck with the words “PITY THE BLIND”. Millais has chosen as his subject for this painting the social evil of the day – vagrancy among children and the disabled. Millais hoped that his painting would elicit sympathy from its viewers for the plight of this blind girl and those like her. There is a stillness and tranquility about the girl and this is borne out by the fact that we see a tortoiseshell butterfly resting on her shawl.

The younger girl, who is partly perched on the lap of the blind girl, and whom we believe maybe her sister, does not look out at us but is looking back at the double rainbow and the enchanting landscape below this phenomenon. Some art historians have interpreted Millais’ depiction of the double rainbow as a Christian symbol of hope and one must remember that at the time Millais was still influenced by his former patron John Ruskin and it was Ruskin’s belief that there was a connection between the beauty of nature and the divine handiwork of God. It is an enchanting scene we see before us and has luminosity brought on by the aftermath of what has probably been a heavy downpour of rain. The rain has made the grass looks so green and its fresh appearance tempts us to sniff the air so as to take in the delights of the countryside.

Look at the way the two girls are depicted by Millais. See how the younger girl snuggles within the shawl of the blind girl. I wonder whether Millais meant us to look at their positioning and think of the Madonna and Child. Whereas we would expect the sighted girl to look after the blind girl there appears to be a role reversal in this painting. Maybe the blind girl is comforting her young companion who may have been frightened by the storm which has just passed. Maybe the young girl is peeking around the blind girl’s shawl at a point in the distance where there had once been flashes of lightning and the rumble of thunder. Take a moment to study the blind girl. See how she seems to be trying to compensate her loss of sight through her other senses – the sense of touch. See how, with one hand, she grips the hand of her young companion and with the other she fingers a blade of grass. It is interesting to note how meticulous Millais has painted each individual blade of grass near to the hand of this blind girl. She is also doing what so many of us do when the sun is shining – we close our eyes and face the sun and absorb the warmth of its rays. The girl is taking pleasure in her surroundings, the warmth of the sunlight, the sounds of the birds and the smells emanating from the countryside all around her.

The background of this picture is a view of Winchelsea, a small village in East Sussex, located about two miles south-west of the coastal town of Rye. The village stands on the site of a medieval town, founded in 1288, to replace an earlier town of the same name, sometimes known as Old Winchelsea, which was lost to the sea. It is known that Millais, along with his fellow artists, Holman Hunt and Edward Lear visited the town in 1852. It is recorded that Millais completed the middle ground of the painting whilst in Perth, Scotland where he had taken his new bride, Effie, the former Mrs Ruskin, in the summer of 1855. The history of the painting chronicles that the last thing to be painted was the amber-coloured skirt, which the blind girl is wearing and which Effie cajoled an old woman into lending it to her. Effie recorded the incident, writing:

“…She swore an oath and said what could Mrs Millais want with her old Coat, it was so dirty, but I was welcome. I kept it two days and sent it back with a shilling and she was quite pleased…”

For his models for this painting, Millais used Matilda Proudfoot as the blind girl and Isabella Nichol as her younger sister. Originally Millais had used his wife Effie as the model for the blind girl but later he decided to use Matilda.

The Liverpool Academy awarded this painting its annual prize in 1857. It was well received and is now looked upon as one of Millais’ finest works of art. His Pre-Raphaelite colleague, Dante Rossetti declared it to be:

“…One of the most touching and perfect things I know….”

John Ruskin his former mentor and patron described The Blind Girl:

“…’The common is a fairly spacious bit of ragged pasture, and at the side of the public road passing over it the blind girl has sat down to rest awhile. She is a simple beggar, not a poetical or vicious one, a girl of eighteen or twenty, extremely plain-featured, but healthy, and just now resting, not because she is much tired but because the sun has but this moment come out after a shower and the smell of grass is pleasant….”

One interesting technical aspect of the painting is Millais’ depiction of the double rainbow. When he showed the painting for the first time, somebody made him aware of his technical error as he had painted the two rainbows with their colours in the same order but he was advised that with double rainbows the inner rainbow of the two inverts the order of the colours. Later Millais, in order to satisfy scientific accuracy, re-painted the inner rainbow.

The Stages of Life by Caspar David Friedrich

775px-Caspar_David_Friedrich_013 — The Stages of Life by Caspar David Friedrich (1835)

I read the other day that life expectancy for men in the UK is somewhere between 75 and 80 years of age which is some ten years higher than it was in the 1970’s and of course what were once killer diseases are now more often or not, treatable. So why worry about dying if you are still young?

Well of course, as far as longevity is concerned, the life expectancy back in the nineteenth century was much less, due to such diseases as cholera and typhus and probably for a man living in Europe to reach the age of 45 in the nineteenth century was somewhat of an achievement. All this leads me nicely on to my featured artist of the day, the German painter Casper David Friedrich, who was continually concerned with, and depressed by, the thought of his own mortality. To be fair to him, he probably had good reason to be concerned and depressed by death for Friedrich had early acquaintances with death: his mother, Sophie Dorothea Bechly, died in 1781 when Caspar David was just seven. At the age of thirteen, Caspar David was present when his brother, Johann Christoffer, fell through the ice of a frozen lake and drowned. It was even reported that Johann Christoffer died while trying to rescue Caspar David, who was also in danger on the ice. His sister Elisabeth died in 1782, while another sister, Maria, died of typhus in 1791.

Friedrich’s contemporaries said that the melancholy in his art could be attributed to these tragic childhood events. However I am not so sure that he was a manic depressive as there are many reports that stated he at times had a great sense of humour. This was borne out by the famous German doctor, natural scientist and writer Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, who knew the artist and in his autobiography, wrote of Friedrich:

“…..He was indeed a strange mixture of temperament, his moods ranging from the gravest seriousness to the gayest humour … But anyone who knew only this side of Friedrich’s personality, namely his deep melancholic seriousness, only knew half the man. I have met few people who have such a gift for telling jokes and such a sense of fun as he did, providing that he was in the company of people he liked…..”

So these mood swings of Friedrich could have been more symptomatic of a bi-polar disorder.

The painting featured today in My Daily Art Display is an allegorical painting by this German Romantic landscape painter Caspar Friedrich David, one of the greatest of all the landscape painters. He completed this work of art five years before his death in 1840 aged 66. So despite his concerns about his own mortality, he lived much longer than the then life expectancy of a German man.

The work of art is entitled The Stages of Life. Art historians do not believe that this would have been the title that Friedrich gave to his painting as the artist believed that titles of paintings should not be blatantly descriptive as he wanted his paintings to speak for themselves and he did not want viewers to be swayed by descriptive titles. It is quite possible that this title was added much later, after Friedrich’s death, and when the public’s interest in his work returned in the latter years of the nineteenth century.

So what do we have before us in Friedrich’s allegorical painting about mortality and the transient nature of life? The setting for the painting is dusk on the peninsular headland at Utkiek, overlooking the entrance to the northeastern German Hanseatic seaport of Griefswald, which is bathed by the light from the gold and lavender evening sky. Griefswald was the birthplace of Caspar David. In the foreground we see an elderly man wearing a long brown coat and black hat standing with his back to us looking out to sea. He walks with the aid of a stick towards a group of people. In front of him is a younger man with a top hat. He has turned towards the elderly man beckoning him on and pointing something out to him. Seated on the ground at the feet of the young man is a woman and between the young couple and the sea we can see two children. These in fact were family members of Caspar David. The elderly man is the artist himself. The young man with the top hat was Caspar David’s nephew Johann Heinrich and the young woman, his daughter Emma.

551px-Lebesstufen_detail — The Swedish Pennant held aloft

The two children holding the Swedish pennant are his son Gustav Adolf, who the artist named after the Swedish king, King Gustav Adolf IV, and his daughter Agnes Adelheid. The Swedish flag was probably added by the artist as he believed himself to be half-Swedish as from 1630 Griefswald was part of Swedish Pomerania and under Swedish control, before it was taken by Prussia in 1815 and formed part of the Prussian Province of Pomerania. This of course throws up the question as to the date of the painting which is given as 1835, some twenty years after control of this area changed from being Swedish to coming under Prussian jurisdiction. So does the Swedish pennant held by the children mean that the town was still under Swedish control and thus the painting is pre-1815 or is it just a sentimental addition by the artist to those glorious days under Swedish control?

Art historians believe that this group of people represents the various stages of life. The artist representing old age, the gentleman with the top hat representing maturity, the young woman seated on the ground representing youth and finally the children representing childhood. Out at sea, and corresponding to the number of people depicted, we can see five sailing ships of various sizes and designs and differing distances from the shoreline. The five ships, and their distance from shore, in a way symbolises the transience of life in the way that they are at different distances from the harbour and the end of their voyages symbolising man’s journey through life and his ultimate destination, death. The largest of these sailing ships which we look at, head-on, has a mast and crosstree which form the shape of a cross which some believe symbolizes Friedrich’s deep religious faith. However, to me, I must doubt that symbolism as it just appears to me as a simple sailing ship design. There are many interpretations of the what the ships and people represent but I like the one given by Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner in their book Caspar David Friedrich and the Language of Landscape in which they postulate that the two ships in the distance represent the mother and father sailing off into the distance to discover life and by so doing, gaining experience and wisdom through parenthood. The largest ship close to shore, on the other hand, represents the old man, a person who has built up experience over time and who has lived life to the full and who now is finally putting into the harbour to end life.

Whether we agree with or argue against the interpretaion and symbolism of the painting I am sure we all agree that it is a wonderful work of art.

The Third of May 1808 by Goya

My Daily Art Display featured painting for today is the second of a set of two works by Goya entitled The Third of May 1808. If you have just come to this website I suggest you read yesterday’s blog first as it is a prequel to this painting.

Yesterday we looked at Goya’s painting entitled The Second of May 1808 which was a depiction of an uprising of the people of Madrid against the Napoleonic forces including some of Napoleon’s fiercest fighter from the French Imperial Guard, the Egyptian Mamalukes. The rebellion was put down after several hours of fierce fighting with loss of lives on both sides. The French commander, Murat, was in no doubt as to the fate of the captured rebels unequivocally stating:

”…The population of Madrid, led astray, has given itself to revolt and murder. French blood has flowed. It demands vengeance. All those arrested in the uprising, arms in hand, will be shot…”

Today’s painting is a depiction by Goya of the promised French reprisals. Hundreds of Spaniards were rounded up on the night of May 2^nd and the next day and taken to various locations and executed by firing squads. The painting is based on the executions which took place at one of these sites, the hill of Principe Pio on the outskirts of Madrid.

The scene is set at night. The menacing sky is pitch-black and there is not a star in sight. This alone adds menace to the painting. Nearly a third of the canvas is black. This blackened background darkens the painting but we can just make out the silhouette of the town and another group of people which may be inquisitive on-lookers or may even be the next batch of rebels destined for the firing squad. The scene is only lit up by the light from the lantern which lies on the ground between the two sets of men. See how the rays of light from the lantern and the shadows form a dividing line on the ground between the killers and those to be killed. The condemned are lit up by the lantern’s light. The lantern as a source of illumination in art was extensively used by Baroque artists, and later perfected by the Master of chiaroscuro, Caravaggio.

Before us, we see two groups of men, on the left hand side of the painting we see the rebels and, across a narrow gap, on the right hand side of the painting we see a line of French soldiers, with their shako headgear, engulfed in shadow, rigidly poised with their guns with fixed bayonets pointing at the condemned. The soldiers, almost like robots, are solidly lined with immaculate military precision whereas the condemned are crumbling before their very eyes. We are seeing the soldiers almost from behind and the faces of these executioners are hidden from view. Goya has probably painted them like this to emphasise that these men are simply dehumanized perpetrators of brutality and tyranny.

Goya has carefully painted the condemned as individuals each showing different reactions to their fate. One stares out defiantly at his executioners and another, a monk, we see with his hands clasped before him, praying for his soul. The central figure within the bunch of rebels, with his white shirt and yellow trousers is lit up by the lantern and is the main focus of the painting. His face is racked with terror and we see him kneeling amidst the bloodied corpses of his executed colleagues. His plain white shirt contrasts against his sun-burnt face, which gives the impression that he had been used to working outdoors in the fields as a simple labourer. Look at his stance.

His arms are flung wide in what must be presumed as an act of defiance or maybe it is terror. Note how Goya has depicted this. His arms are spread as if he has been crucified and on close inspection of the palm of his right hand we see the marks of the stigmata, the bodily marks, in locations corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ. This was Goya’s way of portraying that this man and his comrades were martyrs, innocents battling against the persecution of a foreign power. This condemned man was the very man we saw in yesterday’s painting, holding his dagger aloft about to thrust it into a Mamaluke soldier which he is dragging from his horse.

On the ground in front of the line of condemned men lie the blood-soaked bodies of those already executed. Face down in a pool of his own blood is the rebel we witnessed in yesterday’s painting, who had just run his dagger into the shoulders of the white horse. To the right of the white-shirted man we see a group of cowering rebels awaiting their fate. They have been marched up the hill and have now come face to face with their fate. They can hardly bear to look at the scene before them.

By the time of the painting’s conception, the public imagination had made the rioters symbols of heroism and patriotism. The two paintings by Goya were not glorious scenes of a great victorious battle but simple acts of anonymous heroism in the face of defeat. Although I have highlighted the two paintings of the series it is thought that at one time the set may have comprised of four works – the two I have featured and one depicting the revolt at the royal palace, the other being a painting depicting the defence of the artillery barracks. The fact that these latter two paintings have disappeared points to the possibility that they were destroyed by Spanish officials who were unhappy with the depiction of the popular uprising.

The painting received a mixed reception when first exhibited a good many years later, with critics pointing out its technical flaws with its perspective and the lack of realism. Critics pointed out that the distance between executioners and victims was far too small and the fact that the power of the shot hitting its victim would probably propel the rebel backwards and not forwards as shown in the painting. The other lack of realism lies in the fact that in reality the executions were carried out in the day time and not at night but I am sure Goya chose night as the time of day for his painting to make the painting more spectacular. Other critics come to Goya’s defence pointing out that the painting was not supposed to be technically accurate but the way the artist had depicted the scene and his use of chiaroscuro added to overall effectiveness of the painting.

The Second of May 1808 by Goya

776px-El_dos_de_mayo_de_1808_en_Madrid — The Second of May 1808 by Goya (1814)

My Daily Art Display featured paintings for today and tomorrow are both by Francisco Goya and they depict events which happened in Madrid on two consecutive days in 1808. I am guessing that most of you will have seen one or both of the paintings but may not have realised the connection between the two. Today I am going to look at the painting entitled The Second of May 1808 which Goya completed in 1814, just a couple of months before he finished the companion work entitled The Third of May 1808. So what happened on these two days that made the Spanish Romantic painter, Goya want to pictorially record the events.

I need to go back a little from 1808 and go over the run-up to the terrible events of May 1808. The main protagonists in this story were France and Spain. In 1799, in France, Napoleon Bonaparte had declared himself First Consul of the French Republic and five years later he was crowned Emperor of France. Meanwhile in Spain King Charles IV had reigned supreme since 1788. He had proved a weak and ineffectual leader who left the governing of the country to his wife, Maria Luisa of Parma and his Prime Minister, Manuel de Godoy, a wealthy nobleman who had taken office in 1792.

Napoleon seeing an opportunity of gaining more territory suggested to Charles that they join forces, attack Spain’s neighbour, Portugal and divide up the conquered land between themselves, one third to France, one third to Spain and one third to the Spanish prime minister Godoy, who would be given the title of Prince of Algarve. Godoy was seduced by such an idea and persuaded the king to agree to Napoleon’s plan. Unfortunately Napoleon had an ulterior motive and a different scheme in mind when, in November 1807, 23,000 French troops marched into Spain unopposed under the guise of supporting the Spanish army prior to the joint attack on Portugal. Napoleon had hatched a plan with Charles’ eldest son Ferdinand that France would, with his help, overthrow the Spanish monarchy, which of course was his father, and the Spanish government of Godoy and Ferdinand would become King of Spain.

It was not until February 1808 that it became apparent to the Spanish what Napoleon’s true plans had been but even so the French army met with little resistance. Charles IV and Ferdinand his son were, at the insistence of Napoleon, in the French city of Bayonne for discussions on the terms of the abdication. At the beginning of May 1808, the French commander and Napoleon’s, brother-in-law, Joaquim Murat, tried to forcibly move the daughter and the youngest son of Charles, the Infante Francisco de Paulato from Madrid to Bayonne and this was the catalyst for the rebellion of the local Spanish population and the fierce street fighting in Madrid on May 2^nd.

On that day, a crowd gathered in front of the Royal Palace in Madrid. Those gathered entered the palace grounds in an attempt to prevent the removal of the Infanta. Marshal Murat sent a battalion of grenadiers from the Imperial Guard to the palace along with artillery detachments. The latter opened fire on the assembled crowd, and this sparked the start of the rebellion which soon spread to other parts of the city.

What followed was street fighting in different areas of Madrid as the poorly armed population confronted the French troops. Murat had quickly moved the majority of his troops into the city and there was heavy fighting around the Puerta del Sol and the Puerta de Toledo. Martial Law in the city was then imposed by Murat and the French commander assumed full control of the administration. Slowly but surely, the French took back control of the city, and many hundreds of people died in the fighting. There were Spanish troops in the city at the time but they were confined to their barracks and with the exception of one brigade did as they were commanded. The bloody rebellion lasted several hours before the French troops recovered control of the city.

My featured painting today, The Second of May 1808, sometimes known as The Charge of the Mamelukes, depicts the street fighting that took place at the Calle de Alcala near the Puerta del Sol in the heart of Madrid. The Mamelukes, which were a fierce band of Muslim fighters in Napoleon’s French Imperial Guard, charged the crowd and the ensuing savagery was captured by Goya in his painting. Goya did not actually paint the picture until 1814 at which time the French army had been expelled from Spain. He applied to the ruling council of Spain for financial aid to paint the picture as he put it:

‘…to perpetuate with the brush the most notable and heroic actions or scenes of our glorious insurrection against the tyrant of Europe…”

There is differing opinions as to whether Goya actually witnessed the scenes of the rebellion at first hand. This massive painting measuring 265cms x 345cms (almost 9ft by 11ft) depicts the bloody skirmish. Goya chose to depict the people of Madrid armed just with knives and rough weapons as unknown heroes attacking the might of the Mamelukes and a French cavalry officer. The whole painting depicts a scene of chaos which in some ways stirs up a feeling of realism and authenticity. The two figures you need to focus on are the man who is plunging the knife into the thigh of the white horse and the man who is at the rear of the horse and who is just about to plunge his knife into a Mameluke warrior who he has dragged from the horse. Why? In tomorrow’s painting The Third of May 2008 we will again see these two men and what happened to them as a result of their deeds.

Art historians have been somewhat critical of Goya’s handling of the painting stating that the horses appear static and the figures in the painting seem posed. Of the two paintings, the Third of May 1808 is considered the better and more memorable

As a footnote, during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s, when Madrid was bombed by Nationalist troops, the Republican government decided to evacuate the paintings from the Prado. A truck carrying Goya’s paintings had an accident, and The Second of May was badly damaged: there were tears and even pieces missing. When the painting was later repaired, some damage was left unrepaired at its left border to remind viewers of the events of the civil war.

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket by James Whistler

James_Abbot_McNeill_Whistler_012 — Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket by Whistler (1874-7)

My featured painting today has the unusual title of Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket. This oil on canvas painting was by the American-born artist, James Abbott McNeill Whistler in the 1870’s and now hangs in the Detroit Institute of Arts. The artist believed strongly that there was a parallel between painting and music, and many of the titles of his paintings include the words “arrangements”, “harmonies” and “nocturnes” in their titles, highlighting the dominance of tonal harmony. Another reason for these titles with a musical connotation was that one of Whistler’s patrons at the time was Fredrick Leyland, a wealthy Liverpool ship-owner and amateur musician, who loved the music of Chopin, and Whistler credited him, for his musically inspired titles.

This painting may not be his most famous painting but was one which was to become very controversial and has an interesting story attached to it – and you know how I like paintings with a story!

James Whistler was born in 1834 in Lowell, Massachusetts. He was brought up by his mother, Anna Matilda McNeill and his father, George Washington Whistler who was an important railroad engineer. Reports of Whistler’s childhood often concentrated on his unruly and disruptive nature and that his parents only way of calming him down was to allow him time to draw which seemed to soothe the young boy. When he was almost eight years of age his father was contracted to work on a railroad in Russia and a year later, the rest of the family moved to St Petersburg. When he was eleven years old Whistler was enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg and it was there that his artistic talent flourished. When he was thirteen Whistler and his mother visited London and stayed with relatives. Whistler had by the age of fifteen decided that he wanted to become an artist and he wrote with some trepidation to his father telling him of his desire, saying:

“…I hope, dear father, you will not object to my choice….”

Sadly, his father died that year of cholera whilst still working on the Russian railroad and his wife had to return to America, to her hometown of Pomfret, Connecticut, with her sons. His mother had wanted Whistler to become a minister in the church but she soon realised that this was not going to happen. He eventually was admitted to the West Point Military Academy not because of academic qualifications nor because of his physical prowess but because of his name as his father had taught there and also some of his relatives had been former students. However his lack of academic ability, his bucking of authority and his ill discipline forced his departure after just three years.

After a short time as a military draughtsman he decided to continue with his dream of becoming an artist. He moved to Baltimore and with the help of a wealthy friend, Tom Winans, set himself up in a studio and started selling some of his paintings. He made enough money to go to Paris to study art, and got himself a small studio in the Latin Quarter. He was never to return to America. Whistler remained in France until 1859 at which time he decided to move to London where he remained for the rest of his life. Whistler died in London in 1903, aged 69.

So to today’s featured painting. In 1874, whilst in London, Whistler started his painting entitled Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket, which depicted a firework display in the night sky of London. This was the last of his series of London Nocturnes. Whistler inspiration for this painting was his love of Japanese prints. The painting was to prove controversial when it was completed in 1877 and was exhibited at the newly-opened Grosvenor Gallery in London founded by Sir Coutts Lindsay. At this time one of the foremost art critics was the English art critic and social thinker, John Ruskin. Ruskin was a wealthy and powerful man within the art world, who had come to prominence with his support for the works of Turner and later his backing for the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. On seeing Whistler’s painting, Ruskin was horrified and, according to Ronald Anderson a co-author with Anne Koval of the Whistler biography James McNeill Whistler: Beyond the Myth, Ruskin wrote in his journal, Fors Clavigera in July 1877:

“…For Mr. Whistler’s own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture. I have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now; but never expected a coxcomb to ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face…”

Whistler when he heard of these comments was outraged and sued Ruskin accusing of libel and demanded £1000 plus legal costs in reparations. This, to Whistler, was a matter of artistic pride. This legal battle was a great risk for Whistler whose wealth had declined rapidly and was facing financial hardship but he believed he had been wronged by Ruskin and was determined to right the wrong. Whistler believed that he and other artists must assert the primacy of artistic vision in other words Whistler believed that an artist should be allowed to create unfettered by the bonds of the critics. This was a battle between “brush and pen”, the artist and the critic. Whistler with ever-deteriorating finances hoped for a quick trial and a successful outcome but his hopes were dashed as the trial kept being postponed due to Ruskin’s bouts of mental illness. The trial was eventually held, a year later in November 1878. Reports of the trial commented on Whistler’s well-rehearsed answers to his counsel’s questions and he used the trial as a way to convey his artistic views. At one point, Whistler was cross-examined about the time it took to complete the painting and the justification of the 200 guineas price tag. Commenting on the two days it took him to complete the work he justified it by saying that the money was not for the actual two days of physical painting but it was payment for his lifetime of artistic knowledge. Whistler had trouble in getting fellow artists to take his side publicly at the trial as they feared they would be besmirched by the sordid affair. Ruskin’s counsel performed well and his arguments seemed to find favour with the jurors. Ruskin himself was not in court due to his on-going illness but the Pre-Raphelite painter Edward Burne-Jones proved a very impressive witness for the Ruskin side.

The jury found in favour of Whistler but awarded him just one farthing in nominal damages and the court costs were split. This financially ruined Whistler who had to sell his house, his works of art and the art he had collected. A month after the trial Whistler wrote his account of the trial in a pamphlet entitled Whistler v Ruskin: Art and Art Critics which was sold at six pence per copy. This proved highly successful and went through six editions.

After the trial Whistler’s hopes that there was no such thing as publicity and that the trial would enhance his standing as an artist proved fanciful as patrons steered clear of him for many years to come. He did eventually get a commission to Venice from one of his supporters. This helped him to start on the road of financial recovery and in fact led to, some would say, his best paintings, the “moonlights” such as Nocturne in Blue and Silver: The Lagoon, Venice. For Ruskin, the trial brought him no glory and in many ways tarnished his image as a critic and almost certainly caused deterioration in his mental health.

So who really won this legal battle? In some ways they both won and they both lost!

The Raft of Medusa by Théodore Géricault

My Daily Art Display today features one of the most moving paintings I have come across and what makes it even more remarkable is that it is based on a true story. The massive oil on canvas painting is entitled The Raft of Medusa and was painted by the French Romantic painter, Théodore Géricault in 1819. Before I look at the painting let me go through the actual events which this painting is based upon.

The story begins on June 17, 1816 with the new Bourbon government of France dispatching the frigates Medusa, Loire and Echo and the brig Argus to officially receive the British handover of the port of Saint-Louis in Senegal to France. The British who having helped to re-establish the French monarchy, wanted to demonstrate their support for Louis XVIII, and decided to hand over to him this strategic trading port on the West African coast. The French naval frigate, Medusa was to carry 365 crew and passengers, including the Senegal’s governor-designate, Colonel Julien-Désire Schmaltz, from Port de Rochefort on the island of Aix on France’s west coast, to Senegal via Tenerife.

The captain of the Medusa was Vicomte Hugues Duroy de Chaumereys, who at the age of 53 had spent most of his career behind a desk at customs offices and had never been in command of a ship, in fact had hardly sailed on a ship for twenty years. However, the old adage “it’s who you know and not what you know” was applicable in his being put in command of the fleet as he had many Royalist connections. The governor-designate Schmaltz wanted to reach St Louis as soon as possible and persuaded the captain to set a course close to the shore line in order to save time. Things went badly almost from the start of the voyage when a young cabin boy was lost over the side. Captain Chaumereys also had problems with both his passengers and crew alike, spending long periods arguing with them

The Medusa was a fast vessel and in fact much faster than the other vessels in the group and soon pulled ahead of them which was to be a contributing factor in the forthcoming disaster and terrible loss of life. On July 2^nd, for some reason, whether due to poor navigation skills or lack of attention the Medusa, was many miles off course and ran aground on the Arguin Banks, which lie off the west coast of Mauritania, despite perfect weather conditions and calm seas. The grounding ripped a hole in the hull of the Medusa and after surveying the damage it was deemed un-repairable and terminal. Couple this factor along with deteriorating weather conditions and the crew had no choice but to abandon the vessel. The Medusa had some lifeboats but they would hold only 150 people and so it was decided to construct a raft to house the rest

The crew then set to work making a raft from parts of the Medusa’s decking and masts. When completed the raft measured 65 feet by 23 feet and was towed behind two of the ship’s lifeboats. In all, one hundred and fifty people, including one woman, boarded the raft. However with such weight the raft became almost submerged and it was decided to jettison some of the food. After doing this the deck of the raft settled in the water with what they believed to be a suitable clearance above the sea surface. The lifeboats towing their raft set off from the crippled Medusa but the weight of the raft was becoming problematic. The only propulsion of this raft was from the rowing power of the men in the lifeboats which was towing it,as the raft had no oars, no sails and no navigational aids.

For some unknown reason, whether it be that the people on the raft decided that their lives would be safer if they disengaged from the lifeboats or whether those in the lifeboat believed that the raft was jeopardising their safety, the towing line was severed and the raft was set free, some four miles off the coast of Mauretania. By the second day, three of the passengers had committed suicide and that following night the store of rum aboard the raft was broached and in a drunken insurrection by the soldiers against their officers, mayhem ensued. By daylight the next day the number of people alive on the raft had more than halved to sixty. Food had run out and the survivors resorted to eating the corpses.

On July 1th 1816, after 13 days adrift, the raft by pure chance was rescued by the Argus, as no specific search effort was made by the French for the raft. At this time only 15 men were still alive; the others had been killed or thrown overboard by their comrades, Some had died of starvation, and some had thrown themselves into the sea in despair.

The whole episode was a disaster, not only to those who sailed on the Medusa but for the French government and when the ship’s surgeon Savigny submitted a report on the incident, it was leaked to an anti-government newspaper, the Journal des débats, which caused outrage. The French government had tried hard to suppress the details. The French nation was horrified. The event became an international scandal, partly because of the human disaster and partly because the disaster was generally attributed to the incompetence of the French captain, whom people believed was acting under the authority of the recently restored French monarchy. However in reality, King Louis XVIII had no say in the captain’s appointment, since, then as now, monarchs were not directly involved in appointments made to vessels like a naval frigate. Captain de Chamereys was found to blame for the incident and was court-martialed.

This painting by Géricault was his first major work of art and is now housed in the Louvre in Paris. What strikes you first when you stand in front of this painting is its enormous size, measuring 16 feet by 24 feet. We, the viewers, are dwarfed by its enormity, which gives the painting more power. Strangely enough nobody commissioned the work but the artist believed that the incident he was portraying would generate great interest from the public and in so doing he believed his career would take off. Géricault spent much time in preparing for this painting doing numerous sketches. He interviewed the ship’s doctor, Henri Savigny and the ship’s geographer, Alexander Corréard and he even constructed a detailed scale model of the raft. He would have models pose on his constructed raft . His friend, the artist Delacroix, modelled for the figure in the foreground, with face turned downward and one arm outstretched. His young assistant Louis-Alexis Jamar modelled nude for the dead man in the foreground, who is about to slip into the sea. In his desire to depict accurately the bodies of the survivors and the dead he made many visits to morgues and hospitals noting details with regards the texture and colouring of flesh on live bodies and corpses. Géricault had been correct in his assessment that the painting would prove popular if somewhat controversial. It appeared in the 1819 Paris Salon and for the artist it launched his career and, although it was partly a history painting, it was looked upon as the beginning of the Romantic Movement in French painting.

The painting portrays the moment in time when the survivors on board the raft spot the approaching ship, Argus, which can just be seen on the whitened horizon. It is at this very point in time that the survivors realise that they are about to be rescued. An African crewman, said to be Jean Charles, can be seen standing on a cask waiving his shirt to attract the crew of the Argus. This portrayal of a negro at the pinnacle of the painting was probably down to Géricault’s abolitionist’s sympathies. The majority of the figures depicted in this enormous painting are life-size and the bodies of the men in the foreground are almost twice life-size. Their closeness to the edge of the canvas makes us almost believe we are just a step away from the raft itself. The raft has suffered from the battering it endured in the rough seas and is barely afloat. The painting is dark and sombre which Géricault chose to suggest the torment and agony of the survivors.

In some ways it is an idealised painting as in actuality, there are more people shown on the raft than were found by the Argus and at the time of the rescue of the castaways, the sea was recorded as being calm and the weather settled. However to add feeling to the painting he has allowed the seas to be whipped up high in a frenzy of surf under blackened storm clouds. One must also query the fact that some of the men seem so “muscled” and somewhat healthy despite having starved for such a length of time and barely kept alive. It is a combination of history painting, recording the story of the men’s plight and a painting of the Romanticism genre.

There is a moody darkness about the painting. There is a strong diagonal surge from the bottom left of the painting to the top right. Our eyes move along the diagonal from viewing the despondent man with his head in hand in the bottom left to the man arm waving his shirt in the upper right. As we stare in disbelief at the scene in front of us, we sympathise with the plight of these men.

Géricault must have been fully aware when he submitted the work to the Paris Salon that it would prove controversial as the demise of the Medusa and terrible loss of life was blamed on the Bourbon government and so whether the painting was acclaimed or condemned depended a a great deal on whether the viewer was pro or anti Bourbon.

Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy by David Hockney

Mr and Mrs Clark by David Hockney (1970-1971)

I am, as you probably know by now, fascinated by interpretation and symbolism of paintings. It fascinates me to read what art experts say about the meaning of certain aspects of a painting and of course in the majority of works the artist has died many years if not centuries ago. This of course gives the experts and critics alike, free rein to interpret what the artist was thinking as he or she put brush to canvas without fear of the artist publicly announcing that their views are nonsense. I guess in some small, and on isolated occasions, I have dipped my toe into the waters of interpretation and pontificated on what I believed the artist was thinking and meaning by his painting, knowing full well that the artist wouldn’t add a comment to my blog telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about! Today I need to tread carefully with my discussion of My Daily Art Display featured painting as the artist is still alive and although I doubt very much he will be reading this, I don’t want to be belittled by adverse comments from the great man.

My featured painting today is entitled Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy by David Hockney. Hockney painted this between 1970 and 1971 and it is of the English fashion designer, Ossie Clark, and the textile designer and his then wife Celia Birtwell. It was painted just after the couple’s wedding at which Hockney, a long term friend of the groom, was the best man. It was a time when we had just emerged from the Swinging Sixties. She also worked from home designing textiles for Ossie Clark, who would use his skill in cutting and understanding of form, and so together with her knowledge of fabrics and textures they produced haute couture for the emerging ‘sixties culture. Celia Birtwell acted as Hockney’s muse and model for some time after this painting.

Here before us we have a double-portrait which harks back to a couple of double-portraits I have featured earlier in My Daily Art Display, such as The Arnolfini Portrait by van Eyck (Nov 27^th 2010) and Mr and Mrs Andrews by Gainsborough (May 2^nd 2011). However, unlike those paintings, today double-portrait is not awash with symbolism but we still have a chance to interpret what we see. Ossie Clark, who looks out at us with a somewhat anxious and questioning glance, is seated, slightly slumped in a tubular chair in a very relaxed posture and standing across from him his Celia Birtwell. The mere fact that she stands and he is seated could allude to her dominance in the partnership. They are set apart by the vertical separation of the room’s full length casement window through which we can see a small balustraded balcony. I wonder if the fact that they are set so much apart was a reference to their independent careers and lives.

The setting itself, although not devoid of accoutrements, is quite minimalistic and informal, which is the complete opposite to the way nineteenth century family rooms were depicted in family portraits of that time. Then it was important that the artist made the viewer aware of the wealth of the people depicted and who often had commissioned the work. Ornate furniture with rich tapestries and sumptuous clothing were the standard trappings of such works of art and we were left in no doubt with regards the class and wealth of the people depicted. In this painting, despite its lack of ostentatious wealth, we are aware that this is not a room of the poor. The room, through its muted and plain colouring, gives it a cool feeling but amidst the cooler shades we do have the red in her dress and the blue of his jumper which stand out. The book with the yellow cover makes an admirable contrast to the pale blue of the table. On the floor sits a white plastic 60’s telephone.

On the lap of Ossie Clark is the white cat which according to the painting’s title is called Percy. Actually, although the couple had a cat called Percy, this was their other cat, called Blanche. So why switch the name of the cat? One reason could possibly be that the cat, because it is sittings upright on the man’s crotch, should have the slang term for a penis, Percy!!! Cats were also symbols of infidelity and envy and if we are to believe rumours of the time Clarke was bisexual and had many affairs which eventually lead to the break-up of their marriage three years later in 1974.

On the table we see a vase of white lilies and these flowers symbolise female purity and are often symbolic editions in paintings of the Annunciation. So was this just a coincidence? Probably not because at the time of the painting Celia Birtwell was pregnant

The painting is outstanding and featured in the final 10 of the Greatest Paintings in Britain Vote in 2005 and it was the only work by a living artist to do so.

L’Absinthe by Edgar Degas

My Daily Art Display the other day featured one of the great American Realist artist Edward Hopper’s 1927 painting Automat and we looked at thetheme of loneliness and isolation in an urban environment. Today I am featuring a painting, which may
have influenced Hopper. It has had many titles but finally in 1893 the painting was simply called L’Absinthe. It was painted in 1876 by the French painter and sculptor and one of the founders of Impressionism, Edgar Degas.

Degas was born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas. Born in Paris in 1834, he was one of five
children of Augustine and Célestine De Gas. His father was a banker and Edgar was brought up in a moderately wealthy family environment. After the death of his mother when he was five years old, he was brought up jointly by his father and grandfather. He began school life at the age of eleven and at about this time dropped the use of the ostentatious spelling of the family name for the surname he is known by now, Degas. He finished his schooling at the age of nineteen and attained a baccalaureate in literature. When he left school he registered as a copyist in the Louvre. However his father had planned for his son to study law and enrolled him in the Faculty of Law at the
University of Paris. Edgar was very half-hearted about his father’s career choice and failed with his studies. He had been always interested in art and in his teenage years wanted to eventually become a famous history painter and paint pictures depicting great moments in history. This art genre had achieved immense popularity in France in the
nineteenth century. In 1855 he met the great French Neoclassical painter Ingres, who was his idol, and who offered Degas advice, which he was never to forget:

“..Draw lines, young man, and still more lines,
both from life and from memory, and you will become a good artist…”

He enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts and a year later journeyed to Italy where he stayed for three years, part of this time was spent living with his aunt in Naples.
It was during this time that he studied the works of the great Italian Renaissance painters, such as Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. He returned to France in 1859 and moved into
a Paris studio. His painting genre slowly changed from that of a history painter to one of a painter of contemporary subjects. He was still copying paintings at the Louvre and it was said that in 1864, whilst working on a copy of Velazquez’s portrait that he met another artist engaged in the same work. The artist was Édouard Manet, who was a key figure in the change-over from Realism to Impressionism and somebody who was to
influence Degas.

His painting career was temporarily halted for two years with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Degas enlisted in the National Guard and his military duties gave him little time for painting. With the conclusion of the war midway through 1871, his military life came to an end and the next year he went New Orleans where his brother, René, and other relatives lived. He returned to Paris the following year but sadly in 1874 his father died. A careful scrutiny of his father’s estate revealed that his brother René had amassed enormous business debts and Degas, wanting to preserve the good name of the family, had little choice but to sell his house and a large quantity of his art work to service the debt. Having always lived a relatively wealthy existence in which his art was mainly a hobby and for his own pleasure, Degas suddenly found himself having to paint pictures to sell and by so doing, put food on his table. Art historians believe it was during this time that Degas produced some of his greatest works.

It was also in this period of his life that Degas came together with a group of like-minded artists and together they put on independent exhibitions of their art works. The first of their exhibitions was held in 1874 and it was dubbed an Impressionist Exhibition. However, Degas did not like the label “Impressionists”, which the media had attached to his group of painters. Degas was a leading-light within this group and proved to be a great organiser.

His financial situation had improved by this time through the sale of his art and he developed a love for collecting works of art of the old Masters such as El Greco as well as works by his contemporaries, Manet, Pissarro and Cézanne. Alas, with age came his dissatisfaction with life in general. He became frustrated and disgruntled with life and became very argumentative and his friends began to desert him. Of Degas’ confrontational behaviour and loss of his friends, Renoir once commented:

“…What a creature he was, that Degas! All his friends had to leave him; I was one
of the last to go, but even I couldn’t stay till the end…”

Degas never married nor had any children. In many ways all he had was
his art and he lost that in the last few years of his life when his eyesight
started to fail. He died in Paris in 1917 aged 83.

And so to the painting, L’Absinthe. We see two figures, one a man, the other a
woman sitting at a table outside a café. They are positioned to the right of centre of the painting which was a style often favoured by Degas. The man wearing a hat looks scruffy, almost tramp-like. His gaze is away from the woman and is fixed on something off the canvas, to the right of the picture. The woman is also wearing a hat and is dressed more formally than the man. She stares ahead with a blank expression, her arms hanging limply down by her side. On the table before her we see a glass filled with a green coloured liquid – absinthe. It is this drink which lends its name to the painting. This drink became very popular in France around 1850 and became commonly known as the queen of poisons or la fée verte (the green fairy). It is anise-based drink made from the wormwood herb and which is highly toxic and extremely addictive. It can have an alcohol content as much as 80 per cent by volume, twice that of spirits we buy today. It was a latter day drug. One critic condemned it saying:

“……Absinthe makes you crazy and criminal, provokes epilepsy and tuberculosis, and has killed thousands of French people. It makes a ferocious beast of man, a martyr of woman, and a degenerate of the infant, it disorganizes and ruins the family and menaces the future of the country….”

In some ways although this painting depicts two people sitting at the same table, the theme is loneliness and social isolation and the consequences. There is an air of desolation about the man and woman as they stare into space. Degas invites us to join these regulars at this café. Look how they sit side by side but there is no contact between them. There is no animated conversation between them. Degas is showing us that you can be together but still be alone. Maybe they can gain some comfort from their individual loneliness.

She sits with her absinthe before her. He is with his black coffee, probably trying to counteract the effects of too much absinthe. In my mind, there is a feeling of isolation
permeating from this work. In this case the isolation may be due to the fact that this pair are heavy drinkers and for that reason they are shunned by society. Although this is a café scene, the painting could be classed as a portrait as both the man and the woman were known to the artist. The woman, dressed up as a prostitute, was the famous French actress Ellen Andrée, who modelled for many of the Impressionist artists and the man was Marcellin Desboutin, a painter and engraver who favoured the Bohemian lifestyle. Degas wanted his two models to pose as absinthe addicts in front of his favourite café, the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes, which was situated in the Place Pigalle in Paris. It was a popular meeting place for Degas and Impressionist painter friends such as Manet, and van Gogh and this quaint meeting place existed up until 2004.

The painting which now hangs in the Musée d’Orsay was first exhibited in 1876 but was not well received by the critics. For them it was “ugly and disgusting”. In 1892 when it came up for auction at Christie’s the lot was greeted with “boos and hisses” ! For
many critics the painting was looked upon as a blow to morality. The English viewed French art with grave suspicion as to its morality and preferred paintings which were morally uplifting and incorporated a moral lesson. George Moore the Irish writer and art critic of the time described the woman in the painting:

“…What a whore…”

and of the painting itself critically uttered:

“….the tale is not a pleasant one, but it is a lesson….”

Ellen Andre — Ellen Andrée, the actress.

Amusingly once the painting had been exhibited Ellen Andrée became a larger than life figure and a succès de scandale, which only goes to confirm that there is no such thing as bad publicity. The French government, at the time, took a much dimmer view of the painting and the furore that had risen from it. They tried to dampen down to the controversy by saying the green drink on the café table was simply green tea!!!

Automat by Edward Hopper

“All the lonely people, where do they all belong? “

I am sure the words from the Beatles song Eleanor Rigby are known by most people. Loneliness can be a terrible burden to have to bear and its often associated with the impersonality of a large city, which although teeming with people, they seem to remain as strangers, whereas within small village communities there is a sense of camaraderie and friendliness which ensures that with a minimum of effort your loneliness can be banished.

My Daily Art Display featured painting for today is entitled Automat by the American artist Edward Hopper, which he completed in 1927. His theme of loneliness and the loneliness of city life was a constant theme in a number of his paintings. Look back to My Daily Art Display of January 23^rd when I featured his famous work entitled Nighthawks.

In today’s painting we see a woman, with her cloche hat pulled low down over her forehead, staring into her coffee cup as she sits by herself, in what Hopper terms as an Automat. I have to admit I had never heard of this term before but I believe they were what we would now call fast food outlets, which served simple food or drinks, and which were served by coin-operated and bill-operated vending machines but I guess the machines have been removed an there is waitress service nowadays. There is a starkness about the setting, almost but not quite minimalist. Like the scene in Nighthawks there are just windows but no doors on view, giving a slight sense of entrapment. Her look of preoccupation would suggest she may be, for some reason unknown to us, mentally entrapped.

The woman we see before us is pensive, her eyes are downcast and to my mind she seems a little sad. She is well dressed with her warm winter coat with its fur collar and cuffs. She wears makeup so maybe she is on her way for an evening out or looking how dark it is outside, maybe she is on her way back home. Of course we are not really sure whether she is on her own or whether the empty chair at her table is for somebody else. Maybe she is awaiting her companion or is her despondency due to the companion’s non-arrival.

Another strange thing about the woman is that she has only one glove on. Could it be that this café is not only a lonely place but also a cold one and the one glove is all she wanted to remove so that she could hold the cup and yet still retain some warmth? The dark window takes up a lot of space in the painting and its darkness adds to the atmosphere of the painting. It is pitch-black outside and, along with the way the woman is dressed, gives us the feeling that this scene takes place on a cold autumn or winter night. There is no sign of life outside, no people, no lights from other buildings and no headlights from cars. This lack of outside lights works well and allows just the penetration of the blackness by the reflection of the café lights to be more effective and in so doing adds to the feeling of isolation. Does Hopper want to liken the woman’s mood and her life to this view of the window – dark with little going on in it? She is in the middle of a deserted town which adds to the sense of her isolation and solitude. Note how Hopper has painted the woman’s legs. The brightness of his colouring of them draws our eyes to them even though they are under the table. It adds a little bit of overt sensuality to the painting and makes us wonder how such a woman could feel sad and lonely. We are now concerned about her vulnerability. Is her pensiveness also due to her feeling vulnerable as she sits alone in this café?

Time Magazine August 1995 — Time Magazine, August 1995

Hopper’s painting and ones of a similar theme are linked with the perception of urban alienation, which by definition is the state of being withdrawn or isolated from the urban world, as through indifference or disaffection. It is interesting to note that in August 1995 Time magazine used this painting on its front cover with its lead article dedicated to stress, anxiety and depression.

Loneliness is often the central subject matter in Hopper’s art. The people he depicts look as though they are far from the comfort and reassurance of home. We see clues as to their isolation in the way they stand reading a letter beside a hotel bed or drinking in a bar. They stare out of the window of a moving train or read a book in a hotel lobby. Their faces often have the look of vulnerability and introspection. They look like they may have just been jilted or have just broken up with someone. They often seem to be mentally searching for something or someone and have been cast adrift in transient settings. His paintings are often set at night, as this adds to the mood and evocatively all we see through the window is darkness.

Yet despite this bleakness we witness in Hopper’s paintings, they are not themselves bleak to look at – perhaps because they allow us, the viewer, to witness some of the artist’s grief and disappointments, and from that we feel less personally persecuted and beset by them. It is as if we suddenly realise we are not the only person to feel sad or depressed, for isn’t it true that sometimes a sad book consoles us more when we feel sad. Maybe we just need to realise we are not alone in our sufferings.

In some ways Hopper has challenged us to make up our own mind about the story behind the painting. There is no action going on to give us any clues. Maybe the story we come up with will depend on our own state of mind. If we are happy, we may well believe that the woman is thinking about the coming to the café of her beloved. If we ourselves are feeling lonely and slightly depressed then maybe we empathize with the woman and share her isolation and vulnerability. So what is to be? What is your take on the scene in the painting? Maybe it is at times like this, when we look at the painting and we perceive the loneliness and unhappiness of the woman that we should take time to be grateful for what we have. Maybe we should not always desire something else. Maybe we should want what we have.