Art Blog – Page 18 – my daily art display

Léon-Augustin Lhermitte.

The artist I am looking at today is the French painter Léon-Augustin Lhermitte. I suppose his work could be categorised by three artistic terms: Naturalism, Realism and Ruralism, as he will probably be remembered for his paintings depicting peasant farmers and their families at work in the fields. However, as you will find out, there were more strings to his bow.

Léon-Augustin Lhermitte was the only son of a local schoolmaster. He was born on July 31, 1844 in Mont-Saint-Père, a commune in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France in north-eastern France, which lies about eighty kilometres north east of the French capital. The village was close to Chateau Thierry, a farming region close to the Champagne region around Rheims. This rural setting was to provide a wealth of ideas, inspiration, and realist subject matter throughout the artist’s life. As a young boy he enjoyed drawing and liked to copy art works he saw in popular illustrated magazines. He liked to look at books which had illustrations by earlier French painters, such as the Realists. Lhermitte’s father encouraged his son’s artistic hobby by encouraging him to sketch. Léon’s talent quickly became apparent to others. His father, proud of his son’s talent, presented his drawings to Count Alexandre Colonna-Walewski, who, at the time, was minister at the École des Beaux-Arts. Walewski was so impressed by the young man’s artistic ability that he offered him a scholarship of 600 francs and arranged for him to enrol in the École Impériale de Dessin in the studio of Horace Lecoq de Boisboudran. It was here Lhermitte was able to learn about his tutor’s unusual drawing method, which emphasised memorization.

Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran was born in Paris. In 1819 he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts and exhibited at the Salon in 1831 and 1840. Later he became a professor at the academy. He taught drawing at l’École spéciale de dessin et de mathématiques, which was better known simply as the Petite École and now known as the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs. He wrote many books regarding drawing techniques including The Training of the Memory in Art and the Education of the Artist, and The Education of The Scenic Memory and The Training of the Artist. He influenced many great artists such as Rodin, Henri Fantin-Latour and Whistler to mention but a few. Lecoq Boisbaudran developed in his pupils a method of training memory. His students were required to copy progressively complex shapes (starting with straight lines and rectangles) and objects before drawing them from memory. The outcomes were then subjected to rigorous comparison with the model and mistakes corrected, over and over again, if necessary. Eventually, the students graduated to making careful analyses of masterpieces in the Louvre and then drawing them from memory when back in the studio. Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudrand theories had a profound effect on Lhermitte. From what Lhermitte learnt from his tutor, he was able to view a scene, notably a landscape scene, and then more fully execute the painting back in his studio. Whilst working at Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran’s studio Lhermitte became friends with fellow artists, Jean Charles Cazin, Alphonse Legros and Fantin-Latour.

La têtée ou La jeune mère by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte (1901)

After attending the École Impériale, Lhermitte moved to Paris and shared an apartment with some of his friends. With the financial help Lhermitte had received from Count Walewski he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts and attended the 1863 Salon des Refusés. Although he was receiving tuition in painting at the École des Beaux-Arts his debut at the Salon was not one of his coloured paintings but a charcoal drawing, Les Bords de la Marne près Alfort (The Banks of the Marne near Alfort), which harked back to his days of draughtsmanship at the École de Dessin. In 1864 his painting, Violets in a Glass, Shells, Screen was shown at the Salon.

The Carpenter’s Workshop by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte (Charcoal on tinted paper)

In 1869 Lhermitte visited London for the first time and whilst there he met Alphonse Legros, a former pupil at the École Impériale de Dessin and he, like Lhermitte, had studied under Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran. Lhermitte returned for a second visit in 1871 and it was then that Legros recommended him as an illustrator for Art in the Collections of England Drawn by E. Lie. More importantly, Legros introduced him to the art dealer Durand-Ruel, who following their meeting, agreed to sell several of his drawings. Later, in 1873 Durand-Ruel arranged for some of Lhermitte’s monochrome pictures to be shown at the Dudley Gallery for the first of the annual Black and White exhibitions and following that, Lhermitte became a regular participant.

Procession near Ploumanach by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte

In 1874 he received his first medal, third-class, at that year’s for three of his works, Le Benedicite (The Benedictine), Le Bateau (The Boat), Une Rue de Saint-Cyr (A Road in Saint-Cyr). It was in the summer of 1874 that Lhermitte decided to spend time in Brittany and soon he became fascinated with Breton culture, their celebrations, and the way the people, especially women, dressed in their Breton clothes. He enjoyed his time in the region, so much so, he returned there on numerous occasions during the next five years. It was a productive time for Lhermitte and he produced numerous depictions of Breton life.

Léon Augustin Lhermitte, An Elderly Peasant Woman, c. 1878

As well as producing colourful scenes of peasants in the fields he never lost his ability to draw with charcoal and one of his best loved is entitled An Elderly Peasant Woman which he completed around 1878 and now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Lhermitte’s technique is quoted as: charcoal with black chalk, with stumping, scraping erasing and wetting, on wove paper. It is a dignified portrait of a humble person. His sitter has experienced a hard and rugged life as can be seen by her weather-beaten face and her crinkled but she has endured all the hardship. By his depiction of the woman, Lhermitte asks us not to feel sorry for her but admire her fortitude.

Market Day At Villenauxe La Grande by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte

In a letter, dated February 4th 1883, to his friend the Dutch painter and draughtsman, Anthon van Rappard, , Vincent van Gogh commented on the talent of Lhermitte. He wrote:

“…Something else — the boss of Black and White may be someone neither you nor I know. In reviews of exhibitions I see mention made of the work of Lhermitte, a Frenchman who does scenes from the life of fishermen in Brittany. It’s said of him that ‘he is the Millet and Jules Breton in Black and White’, and his name crops up again and again. I’d like to be able to see something by him, and have recently written about him to my brother, who has given me very good information several times in the past…”

La Vendange à Mont-Saint-Père by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte (1876)

In 1876, inspired by the wine making traditions of Champagne, Lhermitte completed La Vendange à Mont-Saint-Père which was exhibited at that year’s Paris Salon. It was a large, highly finished works showing amazing detail and observation. Throughout the 1870’s Lhermitte’s reputation continued to blossom as a painter in the realist tradition of Courbet. Such was his reputation that Edgar Degas wrote in his diary that he intended to ask Lhermitte to exhibit at the 4th Impressionist Exhibition in 1879 but it never happened.

Other prizes and honours came to Lhermitte throughout his long career, including the Grand Prix at the Exposition Universelle, 1889, the Diplome d’honneur, Dresden, 1890, and the Legion of Honour. He was also a founding member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.

La Fenaison (Haymaking) by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte (1908)

The subject matter of Lhermitte’s paintings rarely strayed from depictions of the peasants and rural life which he remembered from his youth. Without doubt, the most overwhelming influence upon his work was certainly the French Realist painter, Jean François Millet who, like Lhermitte, was equally skilled with pastel as with oil.

The Gleaners by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte (1887)

During the 1880’s Lhermitte embarked on a series of monumental works of rural life, influenced by two of his contemporaries, Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton. In this series of paintings he created beautiful light-filled works which mirrored Millet’s theme and reinforcing the self-esteem of peasant life and the splendour of the French rural landscape in the face of the invasion of modern technology. Lhermitte added realism and careful detail to his rural depictions and this would serve him well, stretching into the 1920’s.

Harvest by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte (1874) Musee des Beaux-Arts, Carcassonne,

In the 1914 book, Le Livre d’Or des Peintres Exposants (The Golden Book of Exhibiting Painters), there was a passage extoling the virtues of Lhermitte’s work:

“…All of his rustic scenes are full of observation and naturalness, executed in a manner which is less and less rugged, and a technique that gains in suppleness. The artist has now discovered his own easy and definitive way of expressing himself and appears in full possession of a subject, which he treats with ease and without weakness. He is the painter of the field worker and rustic landscapes, the theatre of his work. In this genre, he shows a true vision of personages and of the things that surround them…”

Laveuses au lavoir by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte

And again, Van Gogh wrote about Lhermitte:

“…If every month Le Monde Illustré published one of his compositions…it would be a great pleasure for me to be able to follow it. It is certain that for years I have not seen anything as beautiful as this scene by Lhermitte…I am too preoccupied by Lhermitte this evening to be able to talk of other things…”

A Rest from the Harvest by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte

Lhermitte exhibited his work at the Salon on a regular basis and his paintings became sought-after items. Despite that, Lhermitte was not satisfied with his success and strived for more recognition. He believed he just had to complete a work which would help him attain the level of success he craved for.

The Tavern Interior by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte (1881)

As a regular exhibitor at the Salon, Lhermitte’s paintings had become increasingly sought after, though, in his mind, he had not yet attained the level of success that he desired. He wanted to complete a work that would solidify his success and this came in the form of a series of several large-scale paintings portraying the life and people of his native village of Mont-Saint-Pierre. In 1881 he completed The Tavern Interior. This painting was the first piece in Lhermitte’s grand manner series. Before us, we see a long brown table around which gather a few men watching a woman pouring liquor.

The main figure is the man sitting at the right of the long table who is wearing a white shirt and brown pants, holding a spade in his left hand and in his right hand he holds a glass demanding a refill.. This is the peasant hero created by Lhermitte, known as Le Pére Casimir. It is believed that the painting was in fact based on a real figure, an old peasant named Casimir Dehan. Le Pére Casimir is one of the most important themes in Lhermitte’s grand manner series. Lhermitte depicts the old man with the spade in hand wearing torn and soiled clothing, and thus the artist reveals the status of the working class and the reality of their utter poverty. The weather-beaten face and complexion indicate the long hours spent in the fields with their laborious work, and yet the man’s bulky figure and his upright sitting posture with a spade in hand indicates his heroic temperament.

Paying the Harvesters by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte (1882)

In 1882, his masterpiece La Paye des Moissonneurs (Paying of the Harvesters) was shown at that year’s Salon and it achieved great acclaim from the critics. Thereafter followed numerous commissions. The painting was bought by the French State and housed in the Luxembourg Museum before being transferred to the Hotel de Ville at Chateau-Thierry. It is a classic example of Naturalism in the way Lhermitte accurately depicted the hard-nosed view of life in rural communities.

La Leçon de Claude Bernard by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte (1889)

Lhermitte received a commission in 1886 to paint a large group portrait featuring Claude Bernard, a French physician and physiologist, which would then be hung at the Sorbonne. The painting is entitled La Leçon de Claude Bernard and depicts him in his Laboratory at the Colle de France. He completed the painting in 1889 and was exhibited at that year’s Salon.

Paysannes et Vaches Devant le Village de Mont-Saint-Père, by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte (c.1887) Charcoal on paper.

In 1888 he was approached by Andre Theuriet, the French poet and novelist, who asked him to provide illustrations for his new book, La Vie Rustique. This was a major commission and Lhermitte was able to use the many drawings of peasant life he had already completed. In the introduction the author wrote:
“…We propose to trace the grand acts of the rustic drama: the soaring, the labour, the hay-making, the harvest, and the vintage; we wanted to describe the solitude of the farm, the business of the village life, the pleasures of Sunday, and the preoccupations of the weekdays …”

Andre Theuriat’s words sum up the art of Léon Lhermitte and his position in French art of the late 19th century.

Lhermitte was a founding member of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1890. In 1894 he was made an officer of the Legion d’honneur.
Lhermitte was elected to fill Jacques Henner’s chair in painting at the Institut in 1905. He kept exhibiting his paintings in the first decades of the 20th century, but many critics looked upon him and his works as a relic of a bygone era. However, his style undoubtedly had an influence on Socialist Realism.in later years. In the last twenty years of his life he worked much more in pastel, with his skill as a draughtsman ever in evidence. He went on to produce some sensitive portraits and peasant scenes which were reminiscent of his earlier and more powerful depictions, ones that van Gogh had cited as “an ideal”.

Léon Augustin Lhermitte died in Paris, on July 28th 1925, three days before his eighty-first birthday.

Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon: 19th century gems – Part 2.

This is my last blog relating to Museu Calouste Gulbenkian and the paintings to be found in the Founder’ Collection and I have saved the best till last ! I wanted to take another look at the 19th century collection and choose some of my favourites and explore paintings in other museums which have a connection to those in the Lisbon museum.

The Reading by Henri Fantin-Latour (1870)

Henri Fantin-Latour was a prolific artist and completed many works including a number of portraits. In his 1870 work, The Reading, we have a dual portrait of two women in a domestic setting, both seated and one of them is depicted reading. The theme of reading was the subject of several of his well-known works. The painting is an example of intimism, a French term applied to paintings and drawings of quiet domestic scenes. It is an every-day scene with a sense of sober realism. It also introduces the observer into his favourite themes, poetic and dreamlike domestic environment with vaguely melancholic undertones. The lady on the left is Victoria Dubourg, a fellow painter whom he met at the Louvre whilst she was copying old masters. She became his wife in 1875.

Charlotte Dubourg by Henri Fantin-Latour (1882) Musée d’Orsay

Across from her, on the right of the depiction, is her sister Charlotte Dubourg. Charlotte Dubourg featured in a number of Henri Fantin-Latour’s paintings. This frequent collaboration between artist and muse gave rise to the speculation that Fantin-Latour was fascinated by Charlotte’s mysterious beauty and that there was an unspoken understanding between Fantin-Latour and his sister-in-law, maybe even more!

Two Sisters by Henri Fantin-Latour (1859)

A similar double portrait in an interior setting can be seen at the St Louis Art Museum. This painting was entitled Two Sisters and Fantin-Latour completed the work in 1859 when he was just twenty-two years old. Once again, we have a depiction of two young women in the intimate setting of their home. This double portrait shows the two younger sisters of the painter; Marie reads on the right while Nathalie embroiders on the left. Once again, the interior painting is comprised of subdued grey and brown tones which is counterbalanced by the colourful yarns on the embroidery table. There is also seems to be a disconnect between the two sisters. Had the artist intentionally depicted it in that way ? Natalie, instead of concentrating on her embroidery, has an unsettled expression on her face. Something is troubling her. It could be that her brother, through his depiction of her expression, is hinting about her depressive illness which would soon confine her to a mental institution for the rest of her life.

Boy Blowing Bubbles by Edouard Manet (1867)

The definition of a Vanitas painting is one that contains a single item, but more frequently, collections of symbolic objects, which remind us of the inevitability of death as well as the transience and vanity of earthly achievements and pleasures. For many artists it was a way to encourage the viewer to consider their own mortality and atone for their transgressions. The next painting I am going to talk about is classified as a Vanitas work but does not have the usual skull or fluttering candle which are often associated with the passing of life in such works. What it does have is a large bubble which is being blown by a young boy. It is the fact that as beautiful as the bubble may appear it will soon burst and the beauty will be forgotten. The painting is entitled Boy Blowing Bubble and it was painted by the French artist, Édouard Manet in 1867. It is now in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, which acquired it via André Weil in New York November 1943.

Soap Bubbles by Thomas Couture (1859) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

In 1850, Manet enrolled at the rue Laval studio of Thomas Couture and remained one of his students for six years. It could have been his tutor’s 1859 painting entitled Soap Bubbles which gave Manet the idea for this painting.

Portrait de Léon Leenhoff by Édouard Manet (1868).(Musée national, Stockholm)

The painting by Manet was one of a series which featured his illegitimate son Léon Koelin-Leenhoff. Suzanne Leenhoff, a Dutch-born pianist, had been employed as a music tutor for Édouard and his younger brothers Eugène and Gustave. Léon Koelin-Leenhoff was born on January 29th, 1852, the son of Suzanne Leenhoff. His birth certificate stated Suzanne as his mother and “Koella” as his father. The man named as Koella has never been traced and it is widely believed that Édouard was the boy’s father whilst some even point the finger at Édouard’s father, Auguste, Suzanne’s employer. Léon Koelin-Leenhoff was baptised in 1855 and became known as Suzanne’s younger brother. Édouard’s father, Auguste, died in 1862 and in October 1863 Suzanne and Édouard married. Léon featured in a number of Manet’s paintings.

Boy Carrying a Sword by Édouard Manet (1861) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

In 1861, Manet’s employed Suzanne’s nine year old son, Léon Leenhoff , for his painting Boy Carrying a Sword. He posed in a 17th-century Spanish infant costume, holding a full-sized sword and sword belt. The work can now be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Le déjeuner dans l’atelier (Luncheon in the Studio) by Édouard Manet (1868)

Six years later, in 1868, Léon Leenhoff, now sixteen years of age, appeared in Manet’s painting entitled Le déjeuner dans l’atelier (Luncheon in the Studio). In the summer of 1868 Manet travelled to Boulogne-sur-Mer for his summer vacation, where he worked on this painting. Luncheon in the Studio was staged in the dining room of Manet’s rented house. The title of the painting almost hides the fact that it is a portrait of Léon Koélla Leenhoff. Léon is clearly the main character as he stands “centre stage” in the foreground, leaning against the table. The depiction of Leon is quite interesting. Manet has depicted him as the modern type of dandy, whose self-image plays between arrogance and aloneness. Elegantly dressed in a velvet jacket, confident of his superiority, cool with an air of indifference, he stands with his back to the others. He even avoids eye contact with us and so has an air of aloofness. But is that a fair reading of his character? Maybe his blasé expression hides a hint of sadness. Behind him we see an older man smoking, seated at the table enjoying a coffee and a digestif, and a woman preparing to serve hot drinks. At one time they were thought to have been Manet and his wife Suzanne but this assertion has since been overturned and the figures are now thought to have been servants. The painting is awash with still-life depictions, such as the weapons on the armchair on the left, a colourful pot of plants on the table in the background and the table with a plethora of food and tableware. The still-life accoutrements we see before us, in particular the partially peeled lemon and the placement of the knife over the table edge were reminiscent of Dutch still-life works of two centuries earlier. The painting is part of the Neue Pinakothek in Munich.

The Break-Up of the Ice by Claude Monet (1880)

There were a number of Monet paintings in the Founder’s Collection but one I especially liked was entitled The Break-up of the Ice. France, like most of Europe suffered one of the coldest winters on record in the latter months of 1879. Monet had been living in Vétheuil, a commune on the banks of the Seine, some sixty kilometres from the French capital from 1878 to 1881 along with his wife, Camille Doncieux and their two sons, Jean and Michel. They also shared their house with their friends, the Hoschedé family. During that period Monet completed more than one hundred and fifty paintings of the area. The winter of 1879 was so severe that even Monet found working outdoors almost unbearable. However, in early December, a sudden rise in temperature caused the ice on the Seine to crack. Alice Hoschedé, the wife of Monet’s friends, who along with her children were living in Monet’s house, described the resulting thaw as terrifying, as half the melted snow slid down from the hills onto the village. It was at this time that Monet painted scene after scene as the ice floes broke on the river and one of these works was The Break-up of the Ice, which he completed in 1880. In this grim and dismal landscape we see the thawing of the ice on the River Seine in January 1880.

Vetheuil in Winter by Monet (1879) Frick Collection, New York

It is one of a series of eighteen paintings by Monet at this location depicting the severity of the winter. His works were portrayals of the icy beauty of this wintry landscape. These paintings of ice floes chart Monet’s early fascination with capturing the same motif under differing conditions of light and at different times of day. Some, like the Lisbon painting, focused on the ferociousness of the weather and how it can devastate nature as depicted in the fallen trees, while others focused on the beauty of the winter landscape. Monet must have witnessed first-hand the devastation when the frozen Seine river thawed, dislodging large ice floes that inundated the countryside and damaged bridges The finished painting was almost certainly completed in Monet’s studio after having completed a number of plein-air sketches. Look at the simplicity of the depiction of the ice flows using a series of short brushstrokes.

The Break-up of the Ice (La Débâcle or Les Glaçons) by Claude Monet (1880) University of Michigan Museum of Art.

An example of a more peaceful winter landscape at the same spot was also completed in 1880 and was also entitled The Break-up of the Ice and this painting can be found at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. In this painting a sweeping winter river scene opens up from the foreground and sweeps away towards the left. Ice floes dot the river surface and snowy hills frame trees that stand along the riverbank in the middle distance. The palette of this painting is restricted to mauves, blues, greens, and whites.

Lady and Child asleep in a Punt under the Willows by John Singer Sargent (1887)

John Singer Sargent moved from Paris to London in the summer of 1885 as he was struggling to attract patrons, and so he turned to his friends and family for portrait commissions. Singer Sargent may have been introduced to the cousins Robert and Peter Harrison by Alma Strettell as she was a close friend of Sargent and, in 1877, he had illustrated her book, Spanish and Italian Folk Songs. Robert Harrison, a stockbroker and musical connoisseur had married Helen Smith, a daughter of a wealthy Tyneside businessman and politician and the couple went to live Shiplake Court, in the affluent London district of Henley-on-Thames. The Harrisons, like many of Sargent’s patrons, formed part of the high society of late Victorian Britain. Amongst the Gulbenkian’s Founder’s Collection there was an 1887 painting by John Singer Sargent entitled Lady and Child Asleep in a Punt under the Willows. In the summer of 1887 Sargent was invited by his friends Robert and Helen Harrison to spend the season at Shiplake Court. In the painting we see the sleepy figures of Helen Harrison and her son Cecil lying in a punt, under the shade of a willow tree. They are being gently lulled by the movement of a barge which had just passed by. This work is Impressionist in style. Sargent’s Impressionist period came about in the late 1880’s. The painting falls into the category dolce far niente which means the sweetness of doing nothing, a pleasant relaxation in carefree idleness which describes many of his works between 1887 and 1889.

A Backwater at Henley by John Singer Sargent (1880) Baltimore Museum of Art

Another similar work by Singer Sargent is his 1880 painting entitled A Backwater at Henley which is housed at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Les Bretonnes au Pardon by Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, (1887)

The last painting I am showcasing that hangs in the Founder’s Collection is Les Bretonnes au Pardon (Breton Women at a Pardon). It is a fine example of Naturalism in which subjects were connected with the minutely detailed description of urban and rural life. It was an art form which was very popular in the late 1880’s and this work achieved great success for the artist at the 1889 Salon. When I saw this work, I thought it was by Gaugin but in fact the artist, who painted it in 1887, was the French painter, Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret. It is a beautifully crafted depiction of a rural tradition, but what also fascinated me was, what is or was a Pardon? The depiction is termed ethnographic, meaning it is relating to the scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences.

**The Pardon at Kergoat, portrayed by Jules Breton (1891) Musée des Beaux-Arts Quimper.** The pardon at the Chapel of Kergoat in Quéméneven was one of the most popular pardons because of the virtues of the waters from the nearby fountain. People came from all over Cornouaille, as shown by the presence of people from the Bigouden area. The artist, overawed by the number of beggars and the fervour of the pilgrims, conveys the movement of this procession as it goes around the monumental chapel.

The word “Pardon”, coming from the Latin verb perdonare, to forgive, and is a Breton form of pilgrimage and one of the most traditional expressions of popular Catholicism in Western Brittany. It dates back to the conversion of the country by the Celtic monks, It is a penitential ceremony. A Pardon occurs on the feast of the patron saint of a church or chapel, at which an indulgence is granted. There are five distinct kinds of Pardons in Brittany: St. Yves at Tréguier – the Pardon of the poor; Our Lady of Rumengol – the Pardon of the singers; St. Jean-du-Doigt – the Pardon of fire; St. Ronan – the Pardon of the mountain; and St. Anne de la Palude – the Pardon of the sea and they all occur between Easter and Michaelmas, a period between March and October. Pilgrims arrive at these Breton Pardon ceremonies dressed in their best costumes which is probably why they make ideal subjects for artists. The day is spent in prayer and after a religious service a great procession takes place around the church. The Pardon in Brittany has practically remained unchanged for over two hundred years. The ceremony is not one focused on feasting or revelry but one focused on veneration where young and old connect with God and his saints in prayer. Brittany at the time was a favourite location for artists such as Paul Gaugain,
Léon Augustin Lhermitte, Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton and Émile Bernard who were beguiled by the family rituals of the local peasants.

The Pardon in Brittany by Pascal Dragnan-Bouveret (1886) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

It is known that Dagnan-Bouveret used photographs he had taken at the ceremony in the Finistère town of Rumengol in 1886 as an aid to his finished works. He also used portraits he had made of some of his models.
Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret completed a number of paintings featuring “The Pardon” one of which, The Pardon in Brittany, which is a truly amazing, almost photrealistic depiction of the ceremony. This painting is housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Before us we see penitents wearing traditional regional dress proceeding with an air of solemnity as they joylessly parade around a church. Some of the pilgrims go barefoot or kneel in an expression of remorse. What is quite interesting is that on the reverse of the canvas were drawings of his wife which the artist later used for the young woman in the foreground. When the picture was shown at the 1887 Salon and the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle, it was hailed a great success by art critics saying they were astounded by its meticulous details. This is almost certainly down to the artist’s use of photographs to help him with the work.

That was final look at the paintings of the Founder’s Collection at the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon. If we ever have the travel restrictions lifted and you find yourself in the Portugeuse capital make sure you pay this museum a visit. You will not be disappointed.

Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon. Part 2: 18th century gems.

Peacock and Hunting Trophies by Jan Weenix (1708)

The first 18th-century painting housed in the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian which I want to talk about is a still-life, entitled Peacock and Hunting Trophies, by Jan Weenix. Jan Weenix or Joannis Weenix was thought to have been born in Amsterdam sometime between 1640 and 1649. The exact date is unknown but at the time of his marriage, in 1679, to Pieternella Backers, he gave his age as “around thirty”. The couple went on to have thirteen children. He received his education in art from his father, Jan Baptist Weenix and his cousin, Melchior d’Hondecoeter. The Weenix family lived in a castle outside Utrecht, but his father died young following a series of personal financial disasters that rendered him bankrupt. Jan Weenix was a member of the Utrecht guild of painters in 1664 and 1668. The subjects for his paintings were varied but we remember him best of all for his paintings of dead game and of hunting scenes. In this large oil on canvas painting (200 x 195 cms) we see various hunting trophies and a peacock framed by a landscape in the background. The main depiction in this work is the lifeless arrangement of the swan which imitated the widely used representation for such paintings. Behind the dead swan, we have a large urn decorated with bas-reliefs. Bas-relief being a French term from the Italian basso-relievo (“low relief”), which is a sculpture technique in which figures and/or other design elements are just barely more prominent than the overall flat background. The 3-D trompe l’oeil effect of the dead game “hanging over” steps was often used in this kind of depiction and adds to the beautifully crafted work. The painting dates back to the period 1702 to 1712 when Weenix had been commissioned to paint twelve works featuring hunting motifs for the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm for his castle of Benberg. They were to illustrate the favourite pastime of the elites. It was all about social power for the hunting of certain species was a special privilege granted solely to the nobility.

The Embarkation for Cythera (Louvre version) by Antoine Watteau (1717)

The French term, fête galante, is used to describe a type of painting that first came to the fore with Antoine Watteau. They are representations in art of elegantly dressed groups of people at play in a rural or parklike setting. This painting genre began with Watteau’s famous painting, The Embarkation for the Island of Cythera which he submitted to the Academy as his reception piece in 1717. However, when Watteau applied to join the French academy there was no suitable category for this type of work and so, rather than reject his application which was described as characterising une fête galante, the academy simply created one!

Fête Galante by Nicolas Lancret (c.1780)

In the Founder’s Collection at the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, there was a painting by Nicolas Lancret, entitled Fête Galante which he completed around 1730. Like most Fête Galante works it is small, measuring just 65 x 70 cms. The painting was once part of the Collection of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, an admirer of Watteau and Lancret and who had built up a collection of twenty-six of the latter’s works. The painting was acquired by Gulbenkian in 1930. Lancret had a habit of sketching individual figures and later incorporating them into his final work.

An example of this is the preliminary sketch of the reclining man, dressed in brown, we see at the bottom left of the Fête Galante painting. This sketch can be found at the Ackland Art Museum, which is part of the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill.

Portrait of Tomas Germain and His Wife by Nicolas de Largillièrre (1736)

The 18th century works in the Founder’s Collection feature many portraits. One of my favourites was one by Nicolas de Largillièrre entitled Portrait of Tomas Germain and His Wife which he completed in 1736. Largillière was a French-born and Antwerp-trained artist who spent time in London between 1665 and 1667, and again from 1675 until 1679 when he worked for the English artist Sir Peter Lely. However, in England, at the time, there was widespread anti-Roman Catholic sentiment and he, being a Catholic, decided to return to France and find work in Paris. He did return to England for a 12-month stay in 1688 having received a commission to paint portraits of King James II and his wife, Queen Mary of Modena. The two figures depicted in the painting above are King Louis XV of France’s famous goldsmith Thomas Germain inside his workshop at the Louvre along with Anne-Denise Gauchelet, his wife.

Thomas Germain became known as The Prince of Rocaille. Rocaille was a French style of decoration, with a profusion of curves, counter-curves, undulations, and elements which were modeled on nature, and which played a part in furniture and interior decoration during the early reign of Louis XV of France and was prevalent between 1710 and 1750. It was the start of the French Baroque movement in furniture and design, and also signaled the beginning of the Rococo movement. Germain was appointed sculpteur-orfèvre du Roi (sculptor-goldsmith to the king). Look carefully at the shelf in the right background. On it are several models, which were used as patterns for tableware pieces created by Germain, and later his son, François-Thomas Germain. Such tableware adorned many tables in the European and Russian royal courts. Germain is seen in the painting pointing proudly to the shelf and a very ornate silver candlestick with satyrs on its shaft. This model of a candelabrum would result in a series of identical pieces delivered in Lisbon in 1757 for the court of King Joseph I of Portugal, which was sent by his son François-Thomas Germain.

In my next blog I will look at some of the 19th century paintings which adorn the walls of the Founders Collection of the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian.

Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon. Part 1: 17th century gems.

In my last blog I looked at the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon and talked about its founder Calouste Gulbenkian. In my next couple of blogs, I want to talk about my favourite paintings I saw in the Founders Collection of the museum. I have to admit when I entered the building and followed the path you had to take it was all about ancient pieces of porcelain, furniture and jewellery – all good, but not what I was interested in, and I was starting to wonder if there were any paintings but I finally came across the rooms where they hung.

View from the Coast of Norway or A Stormy Sea Near the Coast by Jacob van Ruisdael

My first painting I want you to see is one by Jacob van Ruisdael. I have always loved the works by this seventeenth century Dutch painter especially his rural landscape paintings. The one on show at this gallery was a seascape entitled View from the Coast of Norway or sometimes referred to as A Stormy Sea Near the Coast, which he completed around 1660. It was a painting that Gulbenkian acquired in 1914. I had not realised that Ruisdael had actually completed forty to fifty seascapes. Once again he has adhered to his successful formula of having two-thirds of the work occupied by the threatening sky and by doing so, he has added a palpable melodramatic energy to the work. In the mid-ground we see boats struggling against the force of nature as they are pounded by ferocious seas and bent over by gale-force winds. Oddly shaped rocks, which have been eroded by past storms, lie in wait and we cannot help but wonder about the fate of the boats. Ruisdael’s inclusion of the rocks further adds to the atmospheric ferocity of the depiction.

Another painting by a seventeenth century Dutch artist which I liked was simply entitled Dutch Landscape, a work by Jan van der Heyden. Van der Heyden, the third of eight children, was born on March 5th 1637 in Gorinchem, a city and municipality in the western Netherlands. His father was by turns an oil mill owner, a grain merchant and a broker. The family moved to Amsterdam in 1646 and van der Heyden’s father acquired local citizenship. Jan van der Heyden himself would never acquire Amsterdam citizenship. Initially his painting genre was still-lifes but later this changed and he became known for his townscapes featuring groups of buildings. . Van der Heyden, although a talented artist, was better known in his own day as an inventor and engineer. One of his most famous accomplishments was that he designed and implemented a complex system of lighting for the streets of Amsterdam, which was utilised from 1669 until 1840 and which was also adopted by other Dutch cities and even used abroad.

Van Heyden would travel extensively in Flanders and Holland as well as the Rhineland towns of Germany close to the Dutch border constantly looking for inspiration for his cityscapes. In his early seventeenth century work, Dutch Landscape, we see depicted the Dutch town of Zuylen which lies on the banks of the River Vecht, close to the city of Utrecht. One can see in this work, like many of his other cityscapes, that his main interest is not one of nature but on architecture and his painstakingly accurate way in which he depicts the facades of buildings, especially when we look at the Gothic church on the left of the painting. There is nothing flash about this depiction. It is not ablaze with colour. It is a simple yet sober interpretation of everyday life. It is thought that another artist executed the figures in the painting.

Portrait of San Andriedr. Hessix by Frans Hals

Among Gulbenkian’s seventeenth century paintings on show at the Founder’s Collection there were a number of portraits. I particularly liked Portrait of San Andriedr. Hessix by Frans Hals. It is an oil on canvas depiction of Sara Andriesdr (daughter of Andries) Hessix who was married to Michael Jansz. Van Middelhoven, a pastor from the city of Voorschoten, near Leiden, and another of Frans Hals’ sitters.

Michiel Jansz van Middelhoven, aged 64 in 1626, by Hals (confiscated during WWII and whereabouts unknown)

Both portraits formed a pair which were completed around 1626 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the couples wedding which took place on 1586. Unfortunately, the portrait of the pastor was confiscated by the Germans during World War II and has never been recovered. Frans Hals methodology regarding the portrait of the woman would be repeated in many of his works.

It is an accurate resemblance of the sixty-year-old woman. She has a serious expression on her face. There has been no attempt by the artist to “beautify” the lady. The way we see her, turned in three-quarters and against a plain dark background, is in the finest Dutch tradition of portraiture.

Portrait of an Old Man by Rembrandt (1645)

Another portrait which caught my eye was one by the Dutch Master, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn. It was his 1645 painting entitled Portrait of an Old Man. The portrait which was once owned by Catherine the Great came into the possession of Gulbenkian in 1930. Nobody knows for certain the identity of the sitter although many theories abound. The man is dressed in expensive clothes but this does not necessarily indicate his wealth, occupation or social status as they could well be props belonging to the artist’s studio and simply used as a decorative effect. Rembrandt is known for his penchant for portraits of people in their old age and has appeared as an old man in a number of his self-portraits. It is a beautifully crafted work. Look at the skin texture of the man’s hands as he holds on to his walking cane. It is both a complex and emotional depiction. Rembrandt has concentrated on a palette of browns with the odd flash of gold and the painting is enhanced by the artist’s use of chiaroscuro. The light homes in on the man’s hands and face and in some way elicits a feeling of tragedy – the tragedy of ageing.

Portrait of a Man by Anthony van Dyck (1621)

My final look at the seventeenth century paintings I saw in the Founders Collection in the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian was another portrait painting, this time one by Anton van Dyck. The title given to this 1621 work was simply, Portrait of a Man and so like the previous painting we are unaware of the identity of the sitter. But maybe we do, as when it was purchased for Gulbenkian in 1923 at Christies, it had the title Portrait of Anton Triest.

He is mentioned in documents as being the Burgomaster of Ghent and is also referred to as Nicolas, but this theory is contested by many art historians. His social status has been set due to the absence of a sword which would suggest that the sitter in question is a member of the bourgeoisie. The man sits on a leather chair with Spanish style nail-work which was often used by van Dyck in his early works.

In the next blog I will showcase some of my favourite 18th century paintings which can be discovered in the Founder’s Collection at Lisbon’s Museu Calouste Gulbenkian.

The Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon.

My eight-week holiday in the sun on the picturesque Algarve coast has come to an end and I have now returned to the gales and rain back home. Whilst away I had no real quiet time to concentrate on writing another blog on art but was full of ideas, which I can now work on.

A few months ago when I was in Moscow I was fortunate to visit the Tretyakov Museum and look at their wonderful collection. I started that series of blogs by talking about the founder of the Museum before looking at some of the works in the collection. Whilst in the Algarve I took a train up to Lisbon and spent three days in the capital. During that time I visited the large Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in the heart of the city. It was an incredible museum in a tranquil and beautiful setting in the heart of the Portugeuse capital. So who is Calouste Gulbenkian?

Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian was a very wealthy businessman, art collector, and philanthropist of Armenian descent, who was born on March 23^rd, 1869 in Üsküdar, or as we know it, Scutari, a large and densely populated district on the Asian side of Istanbul.

He was the eldest of three sons of Sarkis and Dirouhie Gulbenkian. His father was an Armenian oil importer/exporter who was heavily involved in the oil industry. Sarkis’ wealth came from his ownership of several oil fields in the Caucasus around Baku.

Young Carnouste Gulbenkian commenced his education attending the local Aramyan-Uncuyan Armenian school. He then attended the Lycée Saint-Joseph a private high school located in Istanbul. His father believed that his son’s ability to speak French fluently would be important in later life and so, in 1884, when Calouste was fifteen-years-old, his father had him attend the Ecole de Commerce in Marseille where he studied basic business skills, honed his ability to speak French and in the evenings began to learn English. On returning to Istanbul, Calouste continued his studies at the prestigious American Robert College and completed his studies with a diploma in engineering. Following his academic success, his father sent him to London and had him enrolled at the Kings College School to study petroleum engineering. Once again Calouste excelled and in 1887, at the age of eighteen, he earned himself an associateship of the Department of Applied Sciences an honour bestowed upon him for winning the second and third year prizes in physics and the third year prize in practical physics.

In December 1887 Calouste returned home to Istanbul. In September 1888 he travelled to Eastern Europe and the Azerbaijan capital of Baku via Batumi and Tiblisi, to learn about the Russian oil industry. Three years later in 1891, he published a book about his month-long journey of discovery entitled La Transcaucasie et la péninsule d’Apchéron; souvenirs de voyage (“Transcaucasia and the Absheron Peninsular – Memoirs of a Journey”) and parts of it appeared in the Revue des deux Mondes, the French language monthly literary, cultural and political affairs magazine.

Wedding photograph of Calouste Gulbenkian and Nevarte Essayan

Another Armenian oil baron and colleague of Calouste’s father was Ohannes Essayan who had five children, one of whom was a daughter, Nevarte. Calouste and Nevarte became friends. According to Jonathan Conlin’s biography, Mr Five Per Cent: The many lives of Calouste Gulbenkian, the world’s richest man, Calouste fell in love with Nevarte whilst the two were playing dominoes, one summer’s day in 1889, at her parents house in the Turkish town of Bursa. Calouste was twenty and Nevarte was a mere fourteen years old. Because of Nevarte’s young age the couple were continually being watched and chaperoned when they were together. Even the writing to each other was difficult lest the missives fell into the hands of Nevarte’s parents. To give an idea of how difficult things were between the two young people one only has to look at an old love letter to Calouste written by Nevarte. In it, she worries about their love being discovered. She wrote:

“…Forgive me, my friend, for not going to the garden today. Yesterday afternoon, Dad was looking at me in such a strange way that I feared he suspected something. He forbade me to go out with that girl, saying that she is too young to accompany me. So don’t expect to see me in the garden again. See you in B [uyuk] D [ere] – if my friend goes there. I think we’ll see each other at the latest in a month. Oh, my friend, I know it is useless to remind you of your promise, but, for God’s sake, don’t forget your vow not to reveal to anyone anything that happened between us […] Au revoir , your faithful friend . If I seem cold to you, if and when I go to B [uyuk] D [ere], please ignore it, it will be to mitigate any suspicions. Forgive me this doodle and love me. If you have anything to say to me, you can write it on a piece of paper and give it to this girl, she doesn’t know French. Destroy this paper. Cheers…”

Both Calouste and Nevarte’s parents believed Nevarte too young to marry and so the youngsters had to wait a further three years before they married. In 1892 Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian married Nevarte Adèle Essayan in London. She was 17 and her husband 23. The couple went on to have a son, Nubar Sarkis, born in Istanbul in 1896 and their daughter, Rita Sirvate, was born in London in 1900.

1952 family portrait on the terrace.. Seated, Calouste Gulbenkian and his wife Nevarte. Standing, from left to right: Kevork and Rita Essayan (Gulbenkian’s son-in-law and daughter), Robert Gulbenkian (nephew), Mikhael Essayan (only grandson) and Nubar Gulbenkian (son) with his wife (1952)

Calouste Gulbenkian, despite his wealth and prestige was forced to move home due to wars and conflicts. In 1896 he and his family had to hastily flee the Ottoman Empire by steamship, during the Hamidian Massacres, which lasted almost three years, during the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the anti-Armenian sentiment in the country, which led to the persecution and killing of thousands of Armenians. The Gulbenkian family landed in Alexandria, Egypt where they temporarily settled. In later years, Calouste and his family spent time living in London and Paris. However, in April 1942, during the Second World War Gulbenkian who had been living in France, decided to seek refuge in a neutral country. For Calouste, the choice lay between Switzerland and Portugal. Gulbenkian decided on Portugal because of its geographical situation for, if necessary, he could easily escape by sea to the United States. He also favoured Portugal as it had a favourable tax regime, a stable society and he believed he would be able to avoid the prying media in places such as London and Paris. He remained there until his death in 1955. Calouste felt the Portugeuse people were very welcoming he praised the country’s hospitality, which he said he had never felt the like anywhere else.

Gulbenkian had amassed a great fortune from his businesses in the oil industry. With his vast wealth Gulbenkian took pleasure in purchasing works of art whether it be paintings, furniture, porcelain, or jewellery, dating from antiquity to the 20th century, in total over six thousand items. He acquired his first painting in April 1899, an oil painting entitled Versailles by Giovanni Boldini. His wide-ranging collection covers various periods and areas: Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Islamic and Oriental art, old coins and European painting and decorative arts. Although many works of art in Gulbenkian’s collection were once in many museum across the world, after his death, and following long-running discussions with the French Government and the National Gallery in Washington, the entire collection was brought to Portugal in 1960, where it was exhibited at the Palace of the Marquises of Pombal from 1965 to 1969. Then, on July 18th, 1956, a year after his death, the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, part of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, was opened in the Portugeuse capital. It had been specifically built to house his collection. Gulbenkian derived considerable pleasure from his collection, which he referred to as his “children”.

The Gulbenkian Museum is now looked upon as one of the best museums in Portugal. There are two buildings. One houses The Founder’s Collection which has works ranging from Antiquity to the early 20th century, including paintings by the great masters such as Rubens, Rembrandt, Turner, and Degas. The other building houses the Modern Collection which contains more than ten thousand works and is considered to be the most complete collection of modern and contemporary Portuguese art. Tour the museums and see how the Gulbenkian Museum can take you from Ancient Egypt to the present day across its two collections.

The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum is set in one of the most emblematic modern gardens in central Lisbon, which is open all year round and offers visitors a great sense of tranquillity. When I visited there, hundreds of students were relaxing on the grass in the sunshine and being besieged by hungry ducks which had emerged from their large lake looking for tasty food that the young people were lunching upon.

In my next blogs I will look at some of the paintings which I saw when I visited the Gulbenkian Founder’s Collection.

Antonio Villares Pires.

O Templo do Tempo

Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio (1601) London National Gallery.

For many of you who have visited the National Gallery in London, you will be aware of the daily lunchtime lectures. These often come in the form of one of the gallery curators/educators talking about one of the paintings, which is part of the gallery’s permanent collection. In some instances, on the day you will be advised of the painting featuring that day’s talk and where to find it. Chairs are then arranged around the painting and at the prescribed time the talk begins. They are well worth half an hour of one’s time. The reason I mention this is that the painting mentioned in this blog was one that was being talked about when I first attended one of these lunchtime sessions. It was Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s 1601 work, Supper at Emmaus, which is based on a biblical tale quoted in Luke 24:30-31:

^“…When he was at the table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight…”

Caravaggio’s large work (141 x 196cms; 56 x 77 ins.) depicts the moment when the resurrected, but incognito Jesus, reveals himself to two of his disciples as they sat down to eat. Standing to the left of Christ is the innkeeper, who has served up the food. On the left, with his back to us, is Luke in his torn clothes and to the right is Cleopas. Attached to the coat worn by Cleopas is the scallop shell denoting that he is a pilgrim. The setting for the painting is the interior of a village inn, in the small town of Emmaus, which lies close to Jerusalem. In the painting, we see Christ reaching out his hand, in his renowned gesture, to bless the meal and at it is at this point that Luke and Cleopas suddenly realise that they are with the risen Christ and it is at this juncture of time that Caravaggio has strived to capture in his work. With the work being so large, the figures within it are life-sized.

However, the blog is more than just this painting but more about a lucky happening. I had just flown into the Algarve in southern Portugal and picked up a copy of the local newspaper and saw a full-page article about a local painter António Villares Pires who had just completed a full-size copy of the work. I decided to go and see it, which was at his studio in the town of Silves. The name of his workshop/studio is O Templo do Tempo (The Temple of Time). I contacted him and arranged a visit.

António was born in Porto in a neighbourhood which was populated by many artists and it was with him mixing in their company that he fell in love with art. He studied art at university and achieved a degree in Fine Arts. He later taught art and eventually became a professional artist. He moved to the Algarve in 2009 and founded his studio in Silves, which backs on to the Silves railway station. He says that the name he gave the studio, O Templo do Tempo, is his perception of art because he always felt that when something is truly art, it belongs to the past, present, and future – art, he says, is timeless.

His studio is full of his artwork and sculptures he is working on or are completed in the last decade. Despite being busy with many commissions he has dedicated the last six months to his “Caravaggio Project”. António loves and is in awe of Caravaggio’s style of painting and the way in which the Italian painter portrayed human beings in both a physically and emotionally realistic manner, often centered on a melodramatically dark background, which is often lit up by a single source of light.

Antonio studying a book with Caravaggio’s painting. Behind him is his copy.

Antonio says that it was the first time he painted in this style and the experience was a journey he wanted to fulfill in order to get into the mind of Caravaggio. He wanted to get to know the artist. His studio has two levels and it is in the mezzanine that almost all the space is dedicated to his Supper at Emmaus painting.

António Villares Pires at work on his copy of the Caravaggio painting

The painting, which he completed the day before we arrived, has the exact same measurements of the original and is flanked by photographs of the original National Gallery version of the painting as well as a large array of paints. It was on the mezzanine that Antonio spent up to six hours a day for the last six months creating his work. One would think he would tire of this same routine day in, day out, but he says that he loved it more each day. He returned to the National Gallery for the second time last November (his first visit was thirty years ago) and stood in front of the massive painting making notes, becoming aware of subtle changes he may have to make to his version.

Like Caravaggio’s work, Antonio’s copy is created in oils and he has made every effort to make his painting match every last detail of the original. For me, the painting looks identical to the original I saw in London. So why choose to copy this work? Antonio says that for him the Caravaggio work is an extraordinary painting with a lot of soul and humanity. When I talked to him about it his eyes lit up. He was truly in love with the work.

Standing outside workshop with artist and his wife

He says he will return to London to see if and how he can get his work officially certified. Once certified, he will sell it as his own work. I asked if he would be sad to let it go. He said he would but before it left him, he would make a full-sized colour copy that he could keep. He says that he will create more pieces of art in the style of Caravaggio. Antonio has been painting for more than fifty years but says that when he is painting in the style of Caravaggio he feels he is twenty-eight again. For him his studio, O Templo do Tempo, is more than just a large storeroom for his work, it is a creative sanctuary, which he has poured his heart into. This is simply, his life.

The full article about O Templo do Tempo was written by Cameron Cobb and appeared in the January 9^th, 2020 edition of the Algarve Resident and the December/January edition of the Essential Algarve magazine.

Albert Herter. Part 2 – The muralist.

Although Albert Herter was recognized as an “easel painter” who concentrated on portraiture and floral still lifes, he had always loved mural painting, a specialization he began early in his career. Herter’s best-known and most personal mural was his work which is displayed inside the Gare de l’Est. one of the railway stations in Paris. It is entitled Le Départ des poilus, août 1914. It was one of many mural commissions he completed during his lifetime, many of which were for buildings in America, such as the murals prominently displayed in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (Milestones on the Road to Freedom, dedicated in 1942) and in the Connecticut Supreme Court Hearing Room (The Signing of the Fundamental Orders of the Constitution 1638-39, and An Allegory of Education, both installed in 1913).

Le poilu (French infantryman of the First World War.

In 1926, Albert completed his most famous monumental painting which measured 12 x 5 metres depicting the departure of young soldiers to the front. It was entitled Le Départ des poilus, août 1914. Poilu is an informal term for a French World War I infantryman, meaning, literally, “hairy one” and is still widely used as a term of endearment for the French infantry of World War I. The word hints at the infantryman’s typically rustic, agricultural background.

Le Départ des poilus, août 1914. by Albert Herter (1926)

Albert Herter, who painted the work in an empty room of the Palace of Versailles, donated the work to France in memory of his eldest son. In the upper half of the painting we see a depiction of young men in uniform on the train awaiting departure to the Front. The soldier on the far right carries the French tricolour.

Look at the soldier in the centre of the painting with his arms raised aloft. In his right hand he holds up a rifle, the muzzle of which is filled with a bouquet of flowers. This is a portrait of Everit, his younger son, who was to die on the battlefield.

The lower half of the painting is dedicated to the soldiers’ families who have come to say their farewells. Look at the man to the right who carries a bunch of flowers. He is bent over and clutches his chest. This is a self-portrait of the artist, Albert Herter. He has depicted himself as being sad and somewhat fearful of the fate of his son.

Scan across to the left of the painting and look at the woman in white with hands clasped in prayer. This is a portrait of Herter’s wife Adele. She has a haunted look on her face. She too is fearful for her son. The painting was inaugurated on 8 June 8th 1926 in the lobby of the Paris Gare de l’Est Station in the presence of Marshal Joffre. It has hung at many different places in the station. The painting was removed from the Gare de l’Est in 1948, to be cleaned of the dirt deposited by years of smoke from steam trains. It was returned in 1964, but was removed again in 2006 to allow the station to be adapted for the TGV Est.

Mural in situ at Paris Gare de l’Est railway station

After restoration, it was reinstalled in early 2008 hanging seven metres above the floor in the station’s Hall d’Alsace. The Gare de l’Est was chosen as a site for the work as it is a place of remembrance of the First World War as many soldiers passed through it on their way to the front while those returning home from the battlegrounds passed through there on their way to joining their families at home. For many veterans, the painting by Herter was regarded as an invitation to remembrance and recollection.

Another series of Herter’s murals was commissioned for the Wisconsin Supreme Court Hearing Room although these were somewhat controversial. The controversy was written about in the 1995 Wisconsin State Capitol Historic Structure Report which reported:

“…The complicated and protracted story of the Wisconsin Supreme Court murals involved three different artists (one of whom perished on the Titanic), justices who needed to be convinced of the desirability of murals in the hearing room and an architect who was determined to implement his scheme for the space. The justices, accustomed to portraits of former justices on the walls in the hearing room of the previous capitol, wanted to hang the portraits in the new hearing room…”

Wisconsin Supreme Court main Hearing Room with one of Herter’s murals in the background

The Wisconsin Supreme Court Hearing Room is reputed to be the most beautiful of its kind in the country. In addition to the walls and columns of marble from Germany, Italy, France and Maryland, the bronze candelabras, the carved mahogany bench and counsel table, the most striking objects are the four large murals by Albert Herter, each nine feet by 18 feet six inches. Each mural depicts a source of Wisconsin law.

The mural on the north wall, to the left of the Hearing Room shows King John of England sealing and granting Magna Charta (the Great Charter) in June 1215 on the banks of the Thames River at the meadow called Runnymeade. His reluctance to grant the Charter is shown by his posture and sullen countenance. But he had no choice. The barons and churchmen led by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, forced him to recognize principles that have developed into the liberties we enjoy today. King John, out of avarice, greed or revenge, had in the past seized the lands of noblemen, destroyed their castles and imprisoned them without legal cause. As a result, the noblemen united against the king. Most of the articles in Magna Charta dealt with feudal tenures, but many other rights were also included.

Article 39 provided:

No freeman shall be seized or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way destroyed, nor will we condemn him, nor will we commit him to prison, excepting by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

Article 40 promised:

To none will we sell, to none will we deny, to none will we delay right or justice.

Out of these and other provisions came the rights of habeas corpus and trial by jury. Freedom of the church was also guaranteed in the Charter. The barons and churchmen claimed that all of these were ancient rights expressed in earlier charters of Edward the Confessor and Henry I. This mural commemorates our indebtedness to English common law, brought to these shores by the early British colonists. The young boy holding the dog was modelled by Christian Herter, son of the artist. He became governor of Massachusetts and secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The mural on the west wall over the entrance to the Hearing Room depicts an incident in the reign of Caesar Augustus Octavius. The Roman writer Seutonious tells of Scutarious, a Roman legionnaire who was being tried for an offense before the judges seated in the background. The legionnaire called on Caesar to represent him, saying: “I fought for you when you needed me, now I need you.” Caesar responded by agreeing to represent Scutarious. Caesar is shown reclining on his litter borne by his servants. Seutonious does not tell us the outcome of the trial but leaves us to surmise that with such a counsellor he undoubtedly prevailed. The mural represents Roman civil law, which is set forth in codes or statutes, in contrast to English common law, which is based not on a written code but on ancient customs and usages and the judgments and decrees of the courts which follow such customs and usages.

The mural on the south wall portrays the trial of Chief Oshkosh of the Menominees for the slaying of a member of another tribe who had killed a Menominee in a hunting accident. It was shown that under Menominee custom, relatives of a slain member could kill his slayer. Judge James Duane Doty held that in this case territorial law did not apply. He stated:

“…it appears to me that it would be tyrannical and unjust to declare him, by implication, a malicious offender against rules which the same laws presume he could not have previously known…”

Judge Doty acquitted Chief Oshkosh of the charge and they became friends.
In 1848 Wisconsin achieved statehood and this mural shows the state’s indebtedness to territorial law. Article XIV of the Wisconsin Constitution of 1848 says the common law in force in the territory and the laws of the territory are part of the law of Wisconsin except as changed by the Constitution or altered or repeated by the legislature.

The fourth mural, which is actually the first one that is visible on making an entrance to the Supreme Court Room, and is Albert Herter’s rendition of the signing of the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787. George Washington is shown presiding. On the left, Benjamin Franklin is easily recognizable. On the right, James Madison, “Father of the Constitution” is shown with his cloak on his arm. Although he was in France at the time, Thomas Jefferson was painted into the mural because of his great influence on the principles of the Constitution. The painting hangs above the place where the seven member Wisconsin Supreme Court sit to hand down their decisions. The mural’s position above the bench is symbolic that the Supreme Court operates under its aegis and is subject to its constraints. The United States Constitution has served us well for more than 200 years. This mural shows our indebtedness to federal law.
Thus, the four murals show that Roman, English, federal and territorial law are all part of our legal heritage.

Albert Herter is believed to have used studio space at both his business, the textile design firm, Herter Looms in New York City, and at “The Creeks,” his meticulously designed East Hampton, Long Island estate. Herter’s use of certain colours in his murals so that they complemented the colours in the marble panels beneath them was ingenious. The murals arrived in Madison, and work began on installation at the Capitol on May 25, 1915, The Racine (Wisconsin) Journal-News reported on that day.

“…The pictures cost the state $28,000. Francis D. Millett, who was the first engaged to make the paintings for the Supreme court room, lost his life in the sinking of the steamship Titanic before he could begin the pictures…”

Another set of five murals by Albert Herter can be found in the House of Representatives chamber of the Massachusetts State House, the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court, the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The murals known as the Milestones on the Road to Freedom in Massachusetts decorate the upper walls of the chamber. The names above the murals list the fifty-three most important men in Massachusetts history.
The mural on the left was a scene from the court case against a local magistrate, Samuel Sewall. In 1692 a small group of men and women of Salem were arrested for bewitching their neighbours. Samuel Sewall, a local magistrate, was a member of the court that ultimately sentenced nineteen people to be hanged. The tragedy was realised several months later: those still being held were released. In the mural, Sewall is seen standing in Old South Church in Boston with his head bowed as his confession and prayers for pardon are read aloud.
Sewall is said to have fasted one day each year, praying for his soul and the souls of those wrongfully put to death. At the dedication of the murals, this event in particular was singled out as a turning point, for it represented “the beginning of the recognition of the ‘quality of mercy’ in human affairs.”

The mural was a gift of the artist and his son, Governor Christian Herter which was unveiled December 16th, 1942.

Besides these murals at Madison, Wisconsin, Albert Herter’s murals now decorate walls in the State capitols at Hartford, Connecticut, Lincoln Nebraska, the Public Library in Los Angeles, the Academy of Science in Washington DC, the National Park Bank in New York and many other public buildings. It is probably his murals that Albert Herter will be best remembered and one has to remember the story of him as a child when his first drawing was a very large picture featuring numerous people. Maybe his large-scale murals were always going to be his favoured genre.

Information about Albert Herter’s murals at the Wisconsin Supreme Court Hearing Room came from the Wisconsin Court System website:

https://www.wicourts.gov/news/view.jsp?id=687

William Sergeant Kendall

Almost four years ago, when I was looking at the life of the French artist Balthus, I included some of his works of art featuring nude young girls. This was part of his main body of work but some of my readers were offended by their inclusion, so I believe it is necessary to alert readers of this edition of my blog that near the end of it I have reproduced paintings of young girls, in a state of undress, painted by today’s featured artist. Some may find them disturbing but it is art and it was the artist’s decision to have his children model for him in the state of undress.

Nowadays, remembering people and places is done by the media of photography. It is becoming ever simpler and more accessible with the advent of camera phones. For a lot of people taking a photograph of a friend or a “selfie” has become a daily ritual. It may seem trivial but it is an aide mémoire of a time past and, at times, to look back at ones we love is a potent reminder. If, however, we lived in the mid-nineteenth century, recording an event, a place or a loved one was far from easy, almost impossible. So, what could one do? The answer of course, was owning a portrait carried out by an artist. For that to happen, one had to be wealthy or be friends with an artist. For portrait artists, completing portrait commissions was a lucrative business and for many artists whose genre was not portraiture, they would often subsidise their income by carrying out the odd portrait commission. My artist today was a master of portraiture. He is most famous for his paintings of his three young daughters with his wife. Let me introduce you to the nineteenth century American painter William Sergeant Kendall.

Autumn Landscape by William Sergeant Kendall (1896)

William Sergeant Kendall was born on January 20th 1869 in Sputyen Duyvil, which is now a bustling upper middle-class neighbourhood of the Bronx in New York City. However, at the time when Kendall was born, prior to the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad passing through the town, it was a much quieter town. William Sergeant Kendall started painting when he was twelve-years-of age. There is nothing strange about that but what was strange that he signed all his work Sergeant Kendall, omitting his Christian name, William. Sergeant was his mother’s maiden name and had been given to her first-born child.

Woman with a Parrot by William Sergeant Kendall

William’s parents must have seen their son’s love of painting as well as his burgeoning artistic talent, because two years later, in 1883, when he was fourteen years old they enrolled him at the Brooklyn Art Guild. A year later he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. One of his tutors there was the prolific Realist painter, Thomas Eakins. Eakins was a controversial character who fell foul of the Academy board over the use of nude male models in mixed classes and was forced to resign in 1886. Kendall was greatly influenced by Eakins and in a letter to his mother and father in 1885 he wrote about Eakins:

“…Eakins came in today and criticized my work. He said my work ‘was not bad’ which as you know is good praise for him!..”

The End of the Day by William Sergeant Kendall (1900)
(Margaret Kendall and her first child Elisabeth)

In 1886 William Kendall left the Academy in Philadelphia and went back to New York where he enrolled at the Art Student League, an art school which had been created twenty years earlier. Among his tutors were the American painter, Professor James Carroll Beckwith and Harry Siddons Mowbray who taught drawing at the Art Students League. Both of these tutors had come back to America to teach at the Art Student League having spent time in Paris honing their artistic skills. It could well be their tales of life in Paris, which many would say was then the centre of the Art World, which instilled a desire in Kendall to follow in their footsteps.

In 1888 Kendall and a fellow artist and friend, John Lambert, from his days at the Academy in Philadelphia, set off for Paris, where they worked at the atelier of Luc Olivier Merson. Kendall then enrolled at the Academie Julian and remained there for three years eventually passing the entrance exam to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

First Communion by William Sergeant Kendall

The Spanish painter Velazquez had always been one of Kendall’s favourite artists and in 1891 he travelled to Madrid in order to copy some of his works. He returned to Paris and like many other artists, left the bustling city every summer to find peace and beauty in rural Brittany which offered a beautiful countryside ideal for landscape painters and the southern Brittany coastal towns of Concarneau and Le Pouldu, which was favoured by many of the seascape painters. Rural life in Brittany could be hard and realising an income could be quite difficult for the young Breton women and so, for many of them, money could be made by modelling for the various visiting artists. Young girls in striking Breton costumes were one of the favoured genres of the Salon hanging juries at the time.

A wood engraving on paper by Henry Wolf of William Sergeant Kendall’s 1895 painting St. Ives, Priez pour Nous, (Smithsonian American Art Museum)

Kendall sent his painting The Little Water Carrier – Brittany and a Breton landscape to the National Academy of Design in New York City in 1890. However, the turning point for his artistic career came when one of his Breton paintings, St. Yves, Priez Pour Nous, was exhibited at the 1891 Paris Salon and was awarded an “honourable mention”. Saint Yves or Saint Ivo was born on 17th October 1253 at Kermartin, Brittany and was the patron saint of lawyers. St Ives was also hailed as the Advocate of the Poor and is the patron saint of abandoned children. Above is a wood engraving on paper by Henry Wolf of William Sergeant Kendall’s 1891 painting which is held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Désirs by William Sergeant Kendall (1892)

Another painting from Kendall’s time in Brittany was entitled Désirs (Desire) which he completed in 1892. For this painting Kendall used his favourite Breton models. Therese Le Goue and her sister. Kendall arranged for Therese to go to America and act as his parents’ housekeeper. It is said that whilst employed in that role she would wear her Breton costumes. This painting, which hung in Elizabeth Kendall Underwood’s family home, was gifted to the Smithsonian by her before her death. To have one’s work accepted by the Salon jurists was a great feat but to have it win an award was what every aspiring artist strived for. For Kendall, an American, his “honourable mention” resulted in many congratulatory letters from fellow Americans and he even received an offer of a post at the Cooper Union in New York, which had been established in 1859, and was among the nation’s oldest and most distinguished institutions of higher education. Kendall was tempted but on discussing his future with his former tutor, Luc Olivier Merson, he decided to remain in Paris for a further twelve months of studying.

The Artist’s Wife And Daughters by William Sergeant Kendall

Kendall did eventually cross the Atlantic and return to New York and he established himself in a studio in the University Building on Washington Square and took up the role as teacher at the Cooper Union, where he took a women’s class for the next three years. He also spent some of his time teaching at his own Alma Mater, The Art Students League. One of the students attending his classes was Margaret Weston Strickly. Strickly and Kendall became attached amorously and early in 1896 the couple married. Within a year their first child, Elizabeth was born, on Gerrish Island off the coast of Maine, where he and his wife had spent the summer painting. A second daughter, Beatrice, was born in 1902 and their third and last child, another daughter, Alison was born in 1907. William Kendall now had a wife and three beautiful daughters to model for him for many years to come.

An Interlude by William Sergeant Kendall (1907)

In 1907 Kendall completed his painting entitled An Interlude which featured his wife and her daughter Elizabeth. Once again, the depiction of the two females is Kendall’s favoured pose – the child facing directly towards us while the mother’s face is in profile. Look at the child’s expression. It is a wide-eyed, somewhat troubled expression. We cannot see the facial expression of the mother, Margaret, as she has turned away from us. Should we read something into this depiction? The curtain has been drawn across the window and thus we conclude that it is night time. Is this a simple case of a mother reading her daughter a bedtime story? The title of this work is An Interlude which suggests an interval – but what kind of interval. Is it an interval from reading the book or is there more to the meaning of the painting’s title? When the painting was completed Margaret and William Kendall had been married eleven years. Margaret, who was six years younger than William, had been a twenty-year-old student of his at the Art Student League when the two, tutor and student, started a romantic relationship. Now in 1907, William Kendall’s relationship with one of his present Yale students, Christine Herter, was about to destroy his marriage. So maybe the painting’s title The Interlude, referred to the change in his life.

It all started back in the late 1880’s when Kendall and the artist Albert Herter became friends at the Art Students League. Albert came from a wealthy background. He was the son of Christian Herter, who with his half-brother Gustave formed Herter Brothers, a prominent New York interior design and furnishings firm. It was through this friendship that William Kendall received a number of family portrait commissions. During his time with the Herter family, William met Albert Herter’s thirteen-year-old niece, Christine, and because the young girl had shown an interest in painting, the family arranged for her to take private painting lessons with Kendall. A close bond between Kendall and his young pupil followed as besides their love of art they both enjoyed music and soon, despite the twenty-year age difference, a close friendship soon developed with Christine becoming a frequent caller at Kendall’s studio in New York and later to his home studio in Barrytown. When Kendall and his family moved further afield to Newport, Rhode Island, Christine followed and rented her own studio nearby. Their friendship grew and when she spent the summers away from him in Europe the two would correspond regularly.

In 1910 Kendall completed another mother and daughter painting. It is entitled The Critics. The painting is a depiction of his wife Margaret and their youngest child, Alison, who was three years old. Mother and daughter are carefully inspecting and considering the merits of a bust which Kendall had carved of Alison herself. The painting now belongs to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Mother and Child. by William Sergeant Kendall

His pastel painting, Mother and Child, is part of a series that Kendall did of his wife, Margaret, and their youngest daughter, Alison.

Yale professor by William Sergeant Kendall

In 1913 Kendall took on the post as head of the department of Fine Arts at Yale University and the Kendall family moved to New Haven, Connecticut. During this period Kendall completed many pastel portraits of his colleagues.

Portrait of Jean-Julien Le Mordant by William Sergeant Kendall

He also completed a pastel portrait of the Breton artist, architect and French soldier, Jean-Julien Lemordant, who had lost his eyesight during the First World War. He received an award from Yale University for the valour and leadership he displayed in the trench warfare of World War I.

Narcissa by William Sergeant Kendall (1907)

Besides Kendall’s mother and child paintings and ones featuring just his children, Kendall completed a series of nude or semi-nude paintings of his children using his middle child, Beatrice, then five-years-old, as model in 1907 for his painting Narcissa.

Crosslights by William Sergeant Kendall (1913)

His youngest daughter, Alison, was the model for his painting entitled Crosslights in 1913. Kendall said he enjoyed the “mirror” format as it gave him a chance to paint two daughters instead of one.

A Statuette by William Sergeant Kendall (1915)

Alison was again her father’s model for his painting A Statuette which he completed in 1915 when his daughter was eight-years-old.

Kendall also completed a painting of his eldest daughter Elisabeth under the title Psyche in 1909 when she was thirteen years old. At the time, the painting became famous and was reproduced on posters and plastered on the sides of streetcars. However, Elisabeth herself never cared for it.

Christine Herter, who had been studying in Paris, in the summer of 1914, returned home shortly after war was declared in Europe, and enrolled as a student at Yale fine-arts department, whilst continuing to work in Kendall’s studio, and sometimes modelled for him. Christine seemed to have been accepted as part of the family group and would spend part of her summer with them in their summer home in the Vermont town of Brattleboro on the Connecticut River.

L’Allegro by William Sergeant Kendall (Kendall’s eldest daughter is dressed in green)

In the Autumn of 1921 William and Margaret Kendall’s marriage collapsed and they were divorced and the following Spring William resigned from his post at Yale University’s Fine Art department. In June 1922 he sold his home in Newhaven and that summer he married his former pupil and lover, Christine Herter. William was fifty-three and Christine was thirty-two.

Panoramic image of Garth Newel and some of its outbuildings in 2016

Because of the changing artistic taste of New Yorkers, who had now fallen in love with modern art, William Kendall decided to move away from the city and move five hundred miles south-west to Hot Springs, Virginia, a small isolated town close to the Allegheny Mountains. In 1823 the couple set about having a large residence built which they called Garth Newel, a Welsh phrase meaning “new hearth” or “new home. The property consisted of a three-story central block flanked by two, half-story wings. It also had stables in which they raised the Arabian horses they rode year-round. The couple lived there for the remainder of their lives. Their home gave them both a rural and isolated retreat with high-class sophistication.

Cypripedia.by William Sergeant Kendall (1927) One of a series of nudes in the woods that Kendall did in the last phase of his life. The cypripedia is a type of bulbous flower, seen at the bottom left of the painting.

William Kendall’s love of horse riding had its problems. In 1931, aged 62, he suffered serious head injuries after a riding accident and was laid-up for a month. Six years later, in 1937, he had another riding accident. It was a much more serious one and he was bedridden until the January of the following year. William Sergeant Kendall died, aged 69, on February 16th 1938 at his home in Hot Springs, Virginia. His widow Christine survived him for another forty-three years, dying on June 22nd 1981, aged 90. Following her husband’s death, Christine donated much of the property to the Girl Scouts of America to be used as a summer camp. The Girl Scouts found that it was too much to maintain, so she regained possession in 1969 and began to search for another use. Christine arranged for repairs to long-abandoned buildings, including the conversion of the indoor riding ring where the Arabian horses had once trained into a wonderful concert hall. On her death she bequeathed the property and a modest fund to the Garth Newel Music Centre Foundation.

The majority of information I used for this blog came from an excellent website (http://williamsergeantkendall.com/) whose author is Anne Underwood Enslow, William Kendall’s great-granddaughter and daughter of Kendall’s eldest daughter, Elisabeth.

Luigi Loir

The painter of Parisian boulevards.

My featured artist today lived in Paris during the Belle Epoch. The Belle Epoch was that period in time in France, between the end of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 and the start of World War I in 1914. The term Belle Epoch is obviously a retrospective term as it is used to describe a time of optimism, peace and, for some, prosperity. I say “for some” as Paris was then both the richest and poorest city in France. A study of people living Paris in the early 1820’s deduced that just over a quarter of Parisians were upper- or middle-class while three-quarters were termed impoverished. Although this may seem a terrible disenfranchisement of the majority of Parisians, the comparative situation at that time in New York, known as the Gilded Age, showed that the wealthiest two per cent of American households owned more than a third of the nation’s wealth, and the top ten per cent of the population actually owned roughly three quarters of the city’s wealth.

Baron Haussmann and Napoleon III make official the annexation of eleven communes around Paris to the City. Painting by Adolphe Yvon

The artist I am showcasing today is Luigi Loir, or to give him his full name, Luigi Aloys-Francois-Joseph Loir. He was to become famous for his paintings depicting contemporary Paris, a city which had been extensively renovated. The renovation began around 1852 and lasted almost twenty years. Baron Haussmann, who was the Prefect of the Seine, was tasked by Napoleon III to carry out a massive urban renewal program of new boulevards, parks and public works in Paris and was looked upon as Haussmann’s renovation of Paris. The programme of public works Haussmann set about saw him arrange for the chaotic maze of tiny streets with their poor sanitation being bulldozed and replaced by wide, straight, tree-lined avenues, which connected the rail terminals and allowed for rapid and easy movement across the city possible for the first time.

Curinier in his 1899 Dictionnaire National Des Contemporains (National dictionary of present-day people) wrote of Luigi Loir:

“…One can say of this master that he created a genre: the “parisianism”…he is, in effect, the painter of Paris par excellence ; no different aspects of the city, often momentary and fleeting, and none of his successive transformations, is of any secret to him. The vigour of his colours, as well as in the brilliance of his mornings and of his afternoon sun, such as the mists of his twilights, is of a correct observation, that still enhances the conscientious study of the environment…”

Luigi Aloys-Francois-Joseph Loir was born on January 22nd, 1845 in Gorritz, Austria. His parents, of French origin, were Tancrède Loir François and Thérèse Leban. His family lived in Austria as employees of the French royal family, the Bourbons. His father was a valet while his mother was a governess and Luigi’s first two years were spent living at Gorritz Castle. In 1847, Luigi’s family along with the Bourbon family left Gorritz and moved into exile to the Duchy of Parma.

All was well for the Bourbon household in Parma until 1859 when the Bourbons were driven out by a revolution following the French and Sardinian victory in the war against Austria. The following year, the Luigi’s family, including his sister, returned to France but he remained in Parma and began studying painting and enrolled at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts in 1853. His artistic studies at the Academy came abruptly to an end in 1863 when news from Paris reached him of his father’s failing health. He immediately set off for Paris. For this eighteen-year-old it was his first time in the French capital and it was Baron Haussmann’s Paris that would inspire his scenes for the rest of his career. In 1865, he made his debut at the Paris Salon with his first notable work, a view of Villiers-sur-Seine that received very high praise. He continued to exhibit at the Salon, receiving multiple awards there, throughout his life.

Luigi Loir soon came under the influence of the artist Jean-Aimable Amédée Pastelot who became his primary art tutor. Pastelot, was a painter who concentrated on depicting characters from the Comédie delle’art, flowers and genre paintings in watercolour and gouache. He also produced many illustrations for caricature journals which were very popular during this period.

It was whilst working in Pastelot’s studio that Loir began experimenting with his art and trained to become a muralist. One of Loir’s first mural commissions was to paint the wall and ceiling friezes at the Châteaux du Diable (the Devil’s House), a bourgeois mansion in Bordeaux, in 1866. Loir experimented in various media; mainly oils, watercolour and lithographs, and would also try out different art forms ranging from decoration, theatrical costumes, and illustrations for novels and gained a lot of artistic knowledge during his time with Pastelot.

Porte St Martin At Christmas Time In Paris by Luigi Loir (c.1889)

Luigi Loir was not just a painter. He was probably more known for his hundreds of graphic designs for commercial advertisements, book and music illustrations, menus. He also created numerous designs and theatrical decorations. Loir was recognized as being a very talented graphic artist, and received many commissions for his work, such to design the official exhibition cover of the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. It was around this time that print had been recognised as a genuine art form. Luigi Loir transformed the art of the poster.

Le Boulevard sous la Pluie by Luigi Loir (1889)

Luigi Loir’s awards were numerous. In 1898 he was made Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur. He was also a member of the Société de Peintres-Lithographes, member of the Société des Aquarellistes, and a member of the Jury of the Société des Artists Français and of the Société des Arts Décoratifs since 1899. His artwork can be seen in galleries around the world.

Bond of the B.Sirven Co. issued May 14th 1901. Illustration by Luigi Loir

Charles Baudelaire, the Author of Modernism, once said that artists should represent the contemporary environment and there is no doubt that Luigi Loir embraced Baudelaire’s call. Looking at Loir’s style it is easy to note that he was interested in Impressionism and yet his work reflected that of many Naturalist painters. He designed some of the packaging for the famous LU French biscuit company and also illustrated a bond of the company B. Sirven, which was issued 14. May 14th 1901.

Boulevard Haussmann, Paris by Luigi Loir

Loir was entranced by the Parisian street scene which had been transformed by Haussmann’s mission to reshape the Parisian landscape transforming it from a labyrinthine network of dark and dingy narrow medieval streets, into the complex order of grand boulevards.

Loir must have taken from Pastelot an interest in capturing figural qualities, but Loir invested this type of training instead into his own synthesis of figures and landscape to produce the natural replication of the activity along the Parisian streets. This interest in the Parisian street scene was influenced, however, by another transformation that had entirely reshaped the Parisian landscape and how Parisians spent their leisure time. Beginning in the 1850s, Baron Georges Haussmann undertook an enormous project that changed Paris, from a labyrinthine maze of medieval streets, into the complex order of grands boulevards. For Loir, the streets themselves became the centre of activity – whether it be the bohemian centre of Montmartre or the upper-class promenades of the leisure class. Loir spent hours each day walking the streets in search of inspiration, all the time, studying them and the Parisians who populated them.

In one of the volumes of Figures Contemporaines: Tirées De L’album Mariani, illustrated biographies of famous contemporary characters from 1894 to 1925, Luigi Loir’s relationship with Paris as depicted in his art was explained:

“… he understands the sites; he likes the twilights in them; he studies all of their aspects. His canvases give off the reflection of a faithful mirage, of a conscientious study of urban nature. There is a dilettantism of a stroller and the contemplation of a poet in him. One feels that all of his impressions are real and that he only paints them while under a spell. His interest in the urban cityscape is perhaps more complex than a simple depiction of Paris and its inhabitants. Lori’s sincere reflections on the changing effects of both the different times of day and the weather, show the aesthetic reflection put into his paintings…”

Sortant De La Madeleine, Paris by Jean Béraud

Luigi Loir was not alone when it came to depicting life in Paris. A contemporary of his was the Russian-born Frenchman, Jean Béraud. Jean Béraud was known for his depictions of the changing face of Paris and the nightlife during the Belle Époque. He, like Loir, was captivated with modern life in Paris, especially after the major infrastructure project of what was termed, Haussmannisation, named for Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the prefect chosen to lead the urban renewal project. Béraud painted the newly widened boulevards, the new transportation systems and the intermingling of people from a wide array of social spheres. However, the scenes Béraud and Loir produced were different. Loir was more interested in depicting the environment whereas Béraud wanted to depict the people. In C.-E. Curinier, Dictionnaire Nationale des Contemporains, the difference between the two painters was succinctly put:

“…It is Béraud who paints the Parisians of Paris, but Loir who paints the Paris of the Parisians…”

The Quay of the Seine, Paris by Luigi Loir

In Loir’s depiction of Paris scenes his attention is not given to individual details so much as light and atmosphere

In 1870, Loir was commissioned into the military to record the battles of Bourget, part of the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. Loir concentrated exclusively on painting views of Paris. In these works, Loir caught and expressed the many faces of Paris, at all hours of the day and during different seasons. It was because of his work during this campaign of 1870, that Loir was elected to be the official painter of the Boulevards of Paris. This boosted his career and reputation. In 1879 in was awarded the Bronze medal from the Exposant Fidele des Artistes Francais. Loir was also elected into the Legion of Honor in 1898.

Luigi Aloys-François-Joseph Loir died in his beloved Paris on February 9th 1916 aged 70.

Nikolai Ghe and Konstantin Flavitsky

The Tale of Two Deaths

In the early days of this blog I would just write about a single painting, its history, its hidden meaning and just a little about its creator. Later I changed the format and wrote about the artist and included many of his or her works. Today I am reverting back to my former structure.

My blog today features two paintings by two different Russian artists, which I saw at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow that are connected by imprisonment and death in a State institution. Both can be classified as works of Historical Realism. Both are works by a Russian realist painters. One artist was famous for his many works on historical and religious subjects. The other is a painter whose name will always be synonymous for just one of his works of art.

Peter and Paul Fortress on Zavachy Island in St Petersburg

The State institution which connects the two paintings is the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg. The military fortress was established by Peter the Great on May 16th 1703 on the small Zavachy Island by the north bank of the Neva River. Peter the Great commissioned his architect, Domenico Trezzini, to design the fortress as a defence against the Swedish, in case they tried to re-conquer this area. Russia had been involved in the Great Northern War against Sweden, and in 1703 managed to re-conquer the lands along the Neva River. From around 1720, the fortress served as a base for the city garrison and also as a prison for high-ranking or political prisoners and became known as the Russian Bastille. The subjects of both today’s paintings spent the last days of their lives in this prison. There are other connections between the subjects of the two paintings. The perceived threat to the ruling classes can have devastating consequences, even to family members.

Portrait of Nikolai Ghe by Nikolai Aleksandrovich Yaroshenko – 1890

Nikolai Nikolayevich Ghe is looked upon as one of the greatest nineteenth century Russian Realist painters and in this 1871 painting he has depicted a meeting between father and son. The father, sitting at the table, is Pyotr Alekseyevich, better known as Peter the Great who became Tsar of Russia, at the age of ten, in 1682. Peter ruled jointly with his brother Ivan V from 1682, until the death of Ivan in 1696, at which time Peter was officially declared Sovereign of all Russia.

Standing forlornly by the table is his son, Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich. Alexi Petrovich was the son of Peter the Great and his first wife, Eudoxia Lopukhina who were married in 1689. The couple had three children of whom Alexi, born in February 1690 was the eldest. His brothers, Alexander and Pavel died before they reached their first birthday. Peter divorced his wife in 1698 and forced her to join a convent. Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich was just eight years old when is mother had been banished. There can be no doubt that losing his mother at such an early age scarred young Alexei. The father-son relationship broke irrevocably in 1715, when Peter, hoping threatened his son that unless he changed, he would be deprived of the succession on his father’s death. Peter, who had believed such a threat would change the mind of his errant son, was astonished when Alexei volunteered to enter a monastery. However, at the last moment, Alexei had a change of heart, and fled to Vienna, where he was granted asylum.

Portrait of Peter the Great of Russia (1672-1725)

Peter’s main aim was to re-establish his country as a great and powerful nation and to achieve that he had to undertake many reforms which affected great swathes of the population. People are averse to change and so was the case in Russia. He secularized schools, administered greater control over the reactionary Orthodox Church and introduced new administrative and territorial divisions of the country and with all these changes came many enemies who did not like what he was attempting to do. Peter would not tolerate dissent and he ruthlessly implemented his reforms, steamrolling over all opposition. He faced much opposition to these policies at home but brutally suppressed rebellions against his authority, including by the Streltsy, Bashkirs, Astrakhan, and the greatest civil uprising of his reign, the Bulavin Rebellion.

Portrait of Alexei by Johann Gottfried Tannauer, c. 1712–16

Rebellion was even closer to home in the shape of his son, Alexei, who although out of the country, was suspected of being involved in a plot to overthrow his father. Alexei sought to stake out his individuality by contrasting himself with his father. To that end, he became conservative and religious, and attracted admirers from amongst the traditionalists who wanted the return of the “good old days” – the days before Peter’s reforms. At the news of this perceived treachery, Peter sent agents to track down his son. In 1717, they contacted him and handed him a letter in which the Tsar berated Alexei but promised not to punish him if he returned to Russia. Alexi was advised to ignore the promises of his father and returned to Russia in 1718, where he begged forgiveness.

Peter I interrogates Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich at Peterhof, by Nikolai Ghe, (1871)

The 1871 painting at the Tretyakov Gallery by Nikolai Ghe depicts that first meeting of Peter and his son in a room at his father’s residence, the Monplaisir Palace at Peterhof after he returned to St Petersburg. It is entitled Peter the Great Interrogates Tsarevich Alexei. In this psychological painting the drama unfolds purely through the characterisation of father and son. Look at the protagonists. The red-faced father, Peter, angrily sits resolute and stares at his guilty son, who stands before him, meek and guilt-ridden. His head is bent dejectedly. He probably realises that it was a mistake to return home to his father. Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin, a nineteenth century Russian Satirical-Fiction writer, on seeing the painting, wrote:

“…Anyone who has seen these two simple, ingeniously positioned figures must confess that he was a witness to one of those stunning dramas which can never be erased from the memory…”

In Ghe’s painting, the artist has displayed an understanding of the historical struggle between the reactionary and the progressive. It is a depiction of the drama between father and son which overrides the sphere of personal relations. The artist has brought to us a feel for this turbulent and critical age with the image of Peter with the vital idea of his own time and his readiness to sacrifice his son for the sake of the interests of society.
During a public spectacle in which Alexei was disinherited. The Tsar forced him to name those who had aided his flight, which resulted in the torture and execution of dozens of Alexei associates. That done, Peter ordered his son jailed. On June 19th, 1718, Peter had Alexei flogged for days, until he confessed to conspiring to have his father assassinated. He was convicted and sentenced to be executed. The sentence could be carried out only with Peter’s signed authorization, and Alexei died in prison, as Peter hesitated before making the decision. Alexei died, aged 28, on 6 June 1718.

The second painting I am looking at is by the nineteenth-century Russian artist, Konstantin Flavitsky and it depicts a purported event which happened in 1777 although it is thought that the end of the story deviates slightly with the whole truth. The painting is undoubtedly the most famous of Flavitsky’s works and one he will always be remembered by.

Portrait of Catherine II by Fedor Rokotov (1763)

The ruler of Russia at the time of this incident was Catherine II of Russia, known as Catherine the Great. Catherine was the wife of Tsar Peter III, the grandson of Tsar Peter I from my first story. Peter III had become Tsar in January 1762 but only ruled for six months. His downfall came because he had the habit of offending groups of powerful people. He offended the Russian Orthodox Church by trying to force it to adopt Lutheran religious practices and he alienated the imperial guards by making their service requirements more severe and even threatened to dispense with them. If all that was not bad enough, he turned away from his wife, Catherine, and we know that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Catherine suspected that he was planning to divorce her and so, with her lover Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov and the help of other members of the Imperial Guard that Peter had planned to discipline, she managed to have the emperor arrested and forced to abdicate on July 9th 1762. Later, he was transported to Ropsha, a settlement situated about 20 kilometres south of Peterhof and 49 kilometres south-west of central Saint Petersburg. Here, he was allegedly assassinated, although it is unknown how Peter died.

Being a ruler of a great empire, Catherine had to overcome many problems and in 1772 she faced yet another predicament for her to overcome in the shape of a beautiful young and refined woman who laid claim to Catherine’s position as ruler of Russia. It all started in Paris when the woman who had captivated French Society claiming she was illegitimate daughter of Empress Elizabeth, Peter III’s cousin, and thus, she was the legitimate heir to the Russian throne. She called herself, Princess Vladamir. She regaled her story that she was born in St. Petersburg in 1753, and later taken to Persia. There, she grew up in the home of a Persian nobleman. Whilst there she was tutored and one of her tutors made the astounding discovery about her true lineage. According to the tutor’s discovery she was the product of an affair between Elizabeth and her favourite, Count Aleksey G. Razumovsky. Elizabeth had many liaisons as a young woman and Razumovsky was her favourite lover.

Princess Tarakanova, in the Peter and Paul Fortress at the Time of the Flood by Konstantin Flavitsky

Empress Catherine was shocked by the news of this impostor, who claimed to be the late Empress Elizabeth’s daughter and as such would have a greater claim to become Russian ruler than Catherine as before she married Peter III, Catherine was Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst, a German princess, and as such had no direct birthright to the Russian throne. Catherine knew that if her enemies decided to support the “false” princess, the her reign could be at risk and therefore, she knew she had to act fast.

Catherine conjured up a plan to lure this pretender to Russia and once there she would be under Catherine’s absolute authority and her claims to the throne would be immediately quashed. Catherine turned to Count Alexei Orlov, the brother of her companion, Grigory Orlov, for help. Alexei Orlov was a Russian soldier and statesman, who rose to prominence during the reign of Catherine the Great. He had served in the Imperial Russian Army, and through his connections with his brother, became one of the key conspirators in the plot to overthrow Tsar Peter III and replace him on the Russian throne with his wife, Catherine. Alexi Orlov put together a clever plan to seduce the faux princess. He arranged to meet the imposter princess in the Italian port of Livorno. At a meeting he agreed to help overthrow Catherine and she in turn offered Orlov a joint role in governing the country. Orlov took the plan a step further, seducing the princess and proposing marriage which would take place on his ship. On the day of the wedding, the princess, wearing her fine clothes and jewellery, boarded a small skiff and was ferried out to Orlov’s ship. Once on board, she was seized by a squad of soldiers commanded by Orlov himself and was arrested in the name of Catherine II.

The shipset sail for St. Petersburg, where the imposter princess was imprisoned in a dank cell at the Peter and Paul Fortress. She was brutally interrogated, but even under torture, she did not contradict herself, admit to fraud, or deny her royal descent. She died of tuberculosis whilst in a cell at the Peter and Paul Fortress in 1775 and was buried without ceremony in the fortress graveyard. So, this was the true version of the story of the princess, later to be known as Princess Tarakanova but many versions of this story came out in books and films and the magnificent 1864 painting, Princess Tarakanova, in the Peter and Paul Fortress at the Time of the Flood, by the Russian artist Konstantin Flavitsky. His take on the story was a depiction of the death by drowning of the imposter in her cell which was deluged by the flood waters of the great flood. It was a case of artistic licence as the great St Petersburg Flood, with water levels rising over ten feet, occurred in September 1777, two years after the princess’ death. It is a very moving painting and I remember being at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and standing in front of it for a long time taking in all the details. Flavitsky powerfully depicts the tragedy and suffering of this young woman who was facing certain death in a depressingly dark dungeon which is flooding with water coming through her cell window. Look how the rats are desperate to reach the higher ground of her mattress. It is a poignant depiction of her vulnerability and despair. Shafts of light stream through the window of the gaol cell in the Peter and Paul fortress as the water continues to rise. Eventually, the troubled twenty-two-year-old will die. The tragedy is immediate and realistic.

So there you have it. Two paintings connected to two death in the same gaol of two people who had the temerity to threaten the Russian leader of the time.