Art Blog – Page 34 – my daily art display

Frederick Elwell. Part 4 – More of his genre works

Frederick William Elwell (1870 - 1958) — Frederick William Elwell
(1870 – 1958)

In my final look at the life of the twentieth century Yorkshire artist Frederick William Elwell I want to conclude his life story and look at some of his genre paintings.

In the last blog, when looking at his life, I had reached 1914. It was in the August of that year that the Great War began in Europe and it was also in that year, two months later, that Fred Elwell married his close friend and fellow artist, Mary Dawson Holmes. The newlyweds made their home at Bar House, a residence Mary and her late husband George Holmes had bought in 1910. Mary loved the house and its garden and they were depicted in a number of paintings by both Mary and Fred.

In the work entitled At the Mirror by Mary Dawson Elwell we see the interior of one of the bedrooms of their house which overlooked York Road. There are two large double beds each covered with a purple quilt. One of the bedroom’s windows is in the central background and through it we are able to see the neighbouring house, Wyles House. The technique of allowing viewers to catch a glimpse of the outside world, seen through the framing device of a window, had always been popular with artists. To the right of the window a woman stands before a mirror brushing her hair totally oblivious of the outside world that we see through the window. The large full length mirror reveals a reflection of the room. The light which shines through the windows of the room lights it up and the polished brass fender casts its reflection on the dark polished wooden floor.

Bar House Garden, Beverley by Fred Elwell (1914)

Fred Elwell painted a number of depictions of the interior of the house but I particularly like the one he completed in 1914 of the garden at Bar House entitled Bar House Garden, Beverley .

It was also around this time that Fred Elwell developed an idea based on the blissful event for a mother, the birth of her child. This type of painting was not a new idea for artists but the mother/baby scene had been depicted as far back as the Renaissance period. In 1913 Elwell completed an oil on canvas work entitled The First Born. The setting for the work is a farm worker’s cottage in Beverley. The furnishings are simple. The large canopied tester bed with its old-fashioned chintz curtains and turned bed-posts takes up centre stage in the painting. A floral-covered ottoman sits next to the end of the bed. By the bed is a ladder-backed cane chair. In the work we see the young father who is still wearing his gamekeeper clothing. He has rushed home from work to be with his wife and their first baby. The father sits on his wife’s bed, leaning slightly forward to catch a better glimpse of his child. He grasps small bouquet of primroses as a small present for his wife. Primroses are associated with spring which in turn is associated with new beginnings which fits in nicely with the birth of the newborn baby. It must have been a warm spring day as the sliding window is open and the delicate lace curtains gently flutter in the breeze which penetrates the room. The thing which strikes you when you look at this work is how light and airy it is. This was a factor in the work of the French Impressionists and was taken on board by the artists involved with the Newlyn School in Cornwall around the end of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century.

Queen Victoria died in 1901 and this solemn period and the Victorian period prior to her death saw many artists concentrate on human loss and the grief felt when a loved one died. Queen Victoria suffered the loss of her beloved husband, Albert in 1861, and continually wore mourning clothes for ten years after he died. Many paintings compared the happiness of life before the death of a loved one with the inconsolable grief of those left behind. Elwell beautifully captured such a moment with his painting, The Wedding Dress, which he completed in 1911. The setting for Elwell’s painting is the widow’s bedchamber. The lady lies slumped against the ottoman at the end of the bed, the lid of which is open. On the floor next to her is her wedding dress and we can see more wedding clothes in the chest. She is grief-stricken and buries her face in her hands. We cannot see her face. This is a private and very sad moment for her. It could be that although she had her wedding dress, she never had a chance to marry her fiancé or maybe she did marry and is now remembering the day her and her late husband got married and the happy life they once had. It is a pictorial tale of two worlds. The white of the dress and the happiness of marriage in contrast to the black mourning clothes she wears in respect of her late husband or fiancé. It is the contrast between innocence and happiness and the darkness of sadness and loss. One other thing which makes this depiction even more poignant is the fact that the model for this painting was a local girl, Violet Prest, a costumier of Minster Moorgate West, in Beverley, and three years after the painting was completed, her husband was killed in the Great War.

Violet Prest also modelled for Elwell’s soon-to-be-wife Mary for her painting entitled The Wreath which she completed in 1908, three years before Fred Elwell completed The Wedding Dress.

With this being the last part of my blog featuring Frederick Elwell I was in a quandary as which paintings to feature or more to the point which ones could I bear to leave out. My next painting by Elwell was completed in 1921 and is one of my favourites. It is entitled The Last Purchase and is housed in the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull. The painting depicts Fred’s father, James Elwell, sitting at a table in the book-lined study of Fred and Mary Elwell’s house. We see before us a very satisfied and happy man who has just returned from an antiques auction with his purchases. James Elwell was a great lover of ceramics and in the painting we can see him carefully eyeing the vase which was one of his purchases. It is not in perfect condition but this master craftsman considers how best to repair the lip of the vase. The table he sits at is covered with his beloved purchases some of which still retain their auction lot number.

The painting was originally entitled His New Purchase but on James Elwell’s death in 1926, Fred Elwell changed the title of the work to The Last Purchase in memory of his late father. What I like about this work is that it highlights the artistic ability of the artist. It is not just a meticulous and lifelike portrait of his father, it is an example of his ability to paint a still-life work as well as it being a beautifully crafted interior painting

In 1931, Elwell was elected to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and, in 1938, he was elected as a member of the Royal Academy. Elwell felt very honoured to have been elected to full membership of the Royal Academy. The honour came with one drawback, which he wrote about to one of his friends – the writing of acknowledgements to all his well wishers on them hearing of this artistic honour. He humorously wrote:

“…Can you picture me trying to cope……with twenty suitable acknowledgements every evening? No club, no cinemas, no dinners, no theatres until they are finished for such are the Kingdom of God…”

Having accepted the honour of becoming a full member of the Academy, he was asked to serve on the Royal Academy Council and become a member of the selection and hanging committee, which was a group of Academicians, who decided which works of art submitted by the public should be accepted into the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition.

The Royal Academy Selection and Hanging Committee by Fred Elwell (1938)

Having featured the portrait of his father in the previous work set me thinking, what could be more difficult than crafting a single recognisable portrait? I suppose the answer is to craft a work of art which includes fourteen individual recognisable portraits and this is exactly what Fred Elwell achieved in his 1938 painting entitled The Royal Academy Selection & Hanging Committee, 1938, which was his diploma work on being made a Royal Academician and was retained by the Academy as an example of his extraordinary artistic talent.

The setting for this work was the assembly room of Burlington House. This 18^th century room was walled with dark wood panelling and the only light emanates from behind the artist himself as he tries to incorporate all the members of the picture selection and hanging committee who sit around the dining table. Elwell has included himself into the group portrait. He stands to the left with brushes and palette in hand. Look how the light source has not only illuminated the faces of the Academicians but also lit up the tableware and napkins.

Armstrong's Garage by Fred Elwell (1921) — Armstrong’s Garage by Fred Elwell (1921)

The next two paintings I am showcasing show how war changes every facet of daily life. The first work is entitled Armstrong’s Garage which Elwell painted in 1921 and features the interior of the Elizabethan timber-framed building which was a garage and workshop in Beverley, owned by Gordon Armstrong since 1907. It was close to Fred and Mary’s Bar House. Fred Elwell was fascinated by motor engineering and the innovative skill of the owner who designed and built his own car, known as The Gordon. Gordon Armstrong also patented the Armstrong shock absorber which made motoring much more comfortable. In the foreground of the painting we see two mechanics working at a bench and behind them we see the vast empty expanse of the workshop. The timber “A” frames and beams play a prominent role in the depiction and are lit up by the light streaming through the skylights. The work is now part of the permanent collection of the Williamson Art Gallery at Birkenhead.

A Munitions Factory by Fred Elwell (1944)

Fast forward twenty three years and Elwell painted another picture featuring Armstrong’s Garage but it could not be more different. Armstrong’s business boomed and he eventually moved to a larger premises on the other side of town in the late 1930’s. However with the onset of the Second World War, his garage was taken over by the government and turned into a munitions factory. The painting which Elwell completed in 1944 and was entitled A Munitions Factory. In the left foreground of the painting we see a table on which lay tracer bullets and other munitions which had been produced in the factory. This is not just a beautiful work of art but forms a pictorial record of the time. The factory employees will be almost all women who helped the war effort whilst their male partners had gone off to fight the war. This will be a daytime scene as we can see windows in the roof which would have been covered with black-out curtains had this been a night shift. Despite it being the day shift there is a lack of natural light which would have added to the difficulty in working conditions.

Maids with Pigeons by Feed Elwell (1916)

I have reluctantly come to the last painting I am featuring by Elwell. There are so many and yet far too many for me to feature so I will choose another of my favourites. When Fred and Mary married in 1914 they went to live in Mary’s Bar House. Mary, on the death of her husband George Holmes, had been left financially well off. So much so they were able to employ staff to help run the house. In his 1916 painting, Maids with Pigeons, two years after their marriage, Fred Elwell depicted their kitchen maids in the houses’ kitchen. This was just one of many Elwell’s depictions of domestic life at Bar House. The realism of the paintings was well loved by both public and critics alike. This work is a fine example of naturalism. The two maids pay no attention to us but focus on two pigeons who have braved their way through the open window in search of food. One holds out the palm of her hand on which there is some food for the hungry birds. On the sink we see a bowl of water, the wetness of which has been skilfully depicted by Elwell using coloured highlights. On the window sill is a plate and a colander. To the left of the window we can just make out a wooden casing which highlights the water pump.

Married in 1914, Fred and Mary lived a long and happy life. In 1945 Mary suffered a series of strokes which meant that she had to have round the clock nursing. She died in 1952. Fred Elwell continued to paint finding his art very theraputic. He was his own tough taskmaster and even in his eightieth year would rise early to work on his canvases. In 1953, the Ferens Gallery in Kingston upon Hull and the Beverley Art Gallery held a retrospective exhibition featuring ninety of his painting and a small selection of his wife’s work.

Frederick William Elwell died in January 1958, aged eighty-seven.

It has given me great pleasure over the last four blogs to look at the life and work of Fred Elwell. He was a truly talented painter. I will certainly make the effort to visit Beverley and Kingston upon Hull and visit the galleries which house so many of his paintings. In the meantime I will satisfy myself with the excellent book, Fred Elwell RA – A Life in Art by Wendy Loncaster and Malcolm Shields. It is well written and has 141 colour plates of Elwell’s art. It inspired me to write these four blogs and I do recommend you buy it.

Fred Elwell. Part 3 – Landscapes and Mrs Elwell

As far as art was concerned, Fred Elwell was a master of many art genres. In my last blog I looked at his superb portraiture and in this blog I want to feature some of his landscape paintings as well as introducing you to his wife, another landscape painter.

In telling his life story I had reached the year 1896. Fred Elwell had returned from Paris and had tried to forge himself a successful career in London but it had not worked out for the twenty-six year old artist and in this year he had been rescued by his father who brought him back to the family home in the East Yorkshire town of Beverley. Although Elwell had left England and studied in Antwerp and Paris he had always made many trips back home to Beverley. He had returned for good to the beauty of Yorkshire, not as a student painter but now as an accomplished artist and he was pleased to test himself and his artistic skills by setting out to paint the magnificent local landscape and some of the fine local buildings.

Beverley Minster from the Hall Garth by Fred Elwell (1900)

One such painting, which he completed in 1900, was of Beverley Minster and was entitled Beverley Minster from the Hall Garth.

His year in London and his struggle to survive had taken a toll on him so the first thing the family had wanted him to do was to relax and enjoy the tranquillity of the Yorkshire countryside. Elwell also enjoyed the freedom offered by sailing and he would often take a small boat and cruise along Beverley Beck which joined the River Hull. Many like-minded painters would do the same as the clarity of light and the beautiful countryside including the East Riding flatlands surrounding the river was an idyllic setting for landscape artists. On occasion he would tie up the boat alongside a jetty and would welcome visitors to look at his artwork and, by so doing, would often receive commissions. Elwell’s love of landscape painting coincided with the English public’s change of attitude of what they wanted to see in a work of art. Depictions of city life were becoming less popular, displaced by depictions of the tranquillity of the countryside. This was a period when people wanted to “go back to nature”. They worked in cities but hankered for the fresh air of the countryside. They wanted to soak up country life by sailing along inland waterways or get themselves horse-drawn caravans and lose themselves in the peacefulness and serenity of the rural areas.

In 1899, Elwell set himself up in a studio in Wood Lane in the centre of Beverley. It had once been home to the local theatre and later a meeting house for the local Quakers and it was in that year that Elwell launched his first solo exhibition. It was a great success for here was the local boy making good. Locals flocked to see their “own son” and what he had achieved.

One day in 1904 Fred Elwell had a visitor to his studio. The visitor introduced himself as George Alfred Holmes. Holmes, an oil broker, was a well respected member of the Beverley community. He asked Elwell whether he could paint a portrait of his wife, Mary. Mary Dawson Bishop, the daughter of a wealthy shipping merchant, was born in Liverpool in 1874. Her father died when she was very young and the family moved to Manchester. Her late father’s wealth ensured that Mary received the best education that money could buy and she was educated at Ellerslie College, which was described as a ‘fairly exclusive school’, and the college would undoubtedly have provided instruction in painting and drawing. In 1896 she married George Holmes.

A pen and ink sketch of a canoe-yawl by George Holmes

Elwell agreed and made many visits to the home of George and Mary Holmes and soon the three became good friends. Holmes and Elwell had one thing in common, they both loved boats. Holmes was a founder member of the local Humber Yawl Club and Fred Elwell owned his own boat. It was a small twenty-two foot sailing houseboat which had the strange name of Callathumpian. This too was a canoe-yawl but had been adapted with a large deckhouse. George and Mary would often visit Fred on his boat and go for days out sailing the boat along the many tributaries and canals.

Mary Dawson Holmes by Fred Elwell (1904)

Elwell completed the Portrait of Mary Dawson Holmes in 1904 and had it exhibited at the Royal Academy that year. It is an exquisite work of portraiture with the sitter depicted as a lady of gracious sophistication. Her clothes are reminiscent of the French fashion of the time. She wears a tight-fitting dress finished off with a fine white lace collar. Her head is tilted slightly to one side. She holds an upright stance. She has dark almond-shaped eyes. Look at her expression. It gives little away. What do you make of it? Is there an unwillingness, a reticence to pose or is this reserve due to her modesty or shyness?

Detail from Les Parapluies by Renoir (1880-6)

The way she stands and the fact that she is holding a basket is the reason why many people have compared the painting with one of Renoir’s ladies depicted in his painting of 1886, Les Parapluies, which Elwell may have seen.

Mary and Fred Elwell also some had a common interest – art, for she was a talented painter and he encouraged her to submit some of her work to the Royal Academy for inclusion at their annual exhibition. She had two works accepted and Fred also had his portrait of her included at the same exhibition. It is believed that Fred, George and his wife Mary would often travel to Europe, visiting Venice and Switzerland where Fred Elwell and Mary Holmes would take the opportunity to sketch and paint the local landscapes.

In 1910 George and Mary bought their dream home in Beverley. It was known as Bar House. It was a house that afforded the occupants beautiful views of the surrounding areas. It even had its own tower from where one could watch the local racehorses training on the Gallop around Westwood, close to Beverley racecourse. Sadly the joy of moving to their beautiful home was tinged with sadness as shortly after taking up residence her husband George became ill, so much so, he had to retire from his Hull shipping business. As his health deteriorated he had to give up his beloved sailing. Mary and Fred’s became more distressed with George’s health as he became more and more incapacitated. His illness eventually was diagnosed as being terminal. Knowing he was dying George spoke privately to Fred and asked him to look after his wife once he had died. George Holmes died in August 1913, aged just 58.

Fred Elwell and Mary Dawson Holmes married on October 1^st 1914, two months after the start of World War I.

……………………… to be continued

Fred Elwell was a multi-talented painter and in this blog I want to feature some of his landscape works and those of his wife, Mary.

Upper Reaches of the River Hull by Fred Elwell (c.1905)

One of his early landscape works was Upper Reaches of the River Hull which he painted in 1905. The work now hangs in the Beverley Art Gallery. Its original owner was John Brown of Beverley who was a local tailor and provided suits for Elwell and could well have taken the painting in part payment for tailored clothing. It is a beautiful work of art and features Elwell’s favourite area, the flatlands on either side of the River Hull, which he would have seen so many times from his boat. Harvest is over and the stooks of corn sit up proudly in the newly harvested cornfield.

Corsican Landscape by Fred Elwell (1927)

The next painting was completed by Fred in 1927 and entitled, Corsican Landscape. This landscape work, which has a distinct feel of Impressionism, depicts a farm in the centre ground along with grazing cattle and a few figures, all of which are surrounded by a mountain range which, on the left hand side, have been partially lost in shadow. I particularly like the colours Elwell has given to his tall trees ranging from green and golds to the black-shaded ones which have lost the light of the sun.

Mary Elwell completed a painting, around the same time depicting and probably during the same holiday, of the Corsican landscape, entitled Corte, Corsica. It is a depiction of the hillside town of Corte, in northern Corsica. Again, like Elwell’s Corsican landscape, the town is in the centre ground, surrounded by mountains. The buildings are painted white and yellow with red terracotta roofs. In the foreground we see a river cascading down a shallow waterfall. The contrast between the blue of the water and the whiteness of the boulders it flows over adds to the beauty of the work.

Another foreign landscape work by Fred Elwell was completed in 1937, entitled Zermatt. The oil on wood panel painting is a typical Swiss-style landscape dominated by the church and its tower on the right, with the clock showing seven o’clock. On the left we can see some chalets which disappear down the hillside. In the background we have mountains, some in full sunlight others in full shade. Fred and Mary Elwell loved this Swiss Alpine region and spent many happy journeys between 1937 and 1939 in the surrounding region completing a number of works in the region of Zermatt and the Matterhorn. On the outbreak of World War II they had to make a hasty retreat back to England.

One amusing anecdote accompanies this work. Elwell did not sell it to a dealer or art lover for a vast sum of money. He sold it to a neighbouring pig farmer, a Mr Symmons and all Elwell wanted in return was a number of photographs of the Symmons’ pigs !! These he used in another work he completed that year, entitled Pigs in Barn.

Brick Bridge, Swinemoor by Fred Elwell (c.1943)

The next work by Fred Elwell probably brought back fond memories of his childhood. It is entitled Brick Bridge and features a brick-built bridge which straddles the Barmston Drain. In Fred Elwell’s days this was a favourite place for Beverley folks to come and enjoy a swim on a hot summer’s day. The picture was painted in 1943 during the Second World War and was the only place the people from Beverley could go for a swim as troops had commandeered the local swimming pool. Again there is a hint of Elwell’s use of Impressionistic techniques with dabs of various colour representing reflections on rippled water and also the blurring effect of some of the features as if we are looking at the scene through the hazy atmosphere of a summer afternoon.

Bathers at Asnières by Georges Seurat (1884)

The painting by Elwell could well have been influenced by the work of the French artist, Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asnières which like Elwell’s work has people relaxing on the riverbank as well as in the water and in the background is the horizontal structure of a bridge crossing the water which in both paintings creates a horizontal axis. In the case of Elwell’s work the bridge almost hides the horizon from our view whereas in Seurat’s work our eyes leave the bathers in the foreground and follow the river towards the bridge and the industry on the far side of it.

In my next blog I will be complete the life story of Fred Elwell and take a look at some of his genre paintings.

Once again let me recommend an excellent book on the life and works of Fred Elwell. Most of the information for this blog was gleaned from this book which I bought in Harrogate. It is entitled Fred Elwell RA – A Life in Art by Wendy Loncaster & Malcolm Shields.

Fred Elwell. Part 2. Portraiture

In my second look at the life and works of Fred Elwell I want to concentrate on his masterful portraiture.

In the last blog I left Fred Elwell studying in Paris with his friend Claude Rivas. The year was 1892. They had found themselves some rooms and had enrolled at the Académie Julian under the tutorship of William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Bouguereau was far more than just a teacher of art at the Academy, he was a fierce defender of the academic method of teaching art. He was also the chairman of the selection panel of the Paris Salon and thus had, with the other jurists, the power to accept or refuse submitted entries for the annual exhibitions and the jurists’ refusal to accept non-academic art angered many such as Paul Cézanne, Manet and Whistler.

Life at Académie Julian was an exciting time for aspiring artists and many travelled great distances to be part of the Academy’s chosen few. The artists were made to work hard and it also developed their competitive nature by offering a number of annual prizes. Fred Elwell blossomed under this heavy workload and managed to win a number of these prizes during his stay. Friendships were born at this Paris academy and Fred developed long term and special friendships with two other English artists, Richard Jack and the Lincoln-born, William Tom Warrener. Warrener was nine years old than Elwell and had already established himself as a painter. He was also a great social animal and spent much time in the bars of Montmartre and the Moulin Rouge nightclub which had come into being in October 1889, in the Jardin de Paris, at the foot of the Montmartre hill. Warrener had become friends with Toulouse-Lautrec and, like Lautrec, had been commissioned to design a number of advertising posters for the Moulin Rouge.

Elwell would often visit Warrener at his apartment on rue Ravignon and would see the walls of his rooms covered with paintings he had done of the nightlife of the Moulin Rouge. It was during one of those visits that Elwell was introduced to the actress, Léonie, who was one of Warrener’s models and Elwell managed to persuade her to also become his model (see Part 1 of my Fred Elwell blog where I have included Elwell’s painting of her, Léonie’s Toilet).

Elwell’s stay in Paris coincided with La Belle Époque. This period from the late 1870’s to the start of World War I was one of optimism. It was the golden age. For France, this was a period of stability and peace squeezed between the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, quickly followed by the brutality of the Paris Commune and the Great War of 1914. It was a time of peace and prosperity. It was time of joy and many took the opportunity to visit clubs and theatres and Elwell, who worked and studied hard during the day, managed to sample the night life in the evening and late into the night and it was during his stay in Paris that he developed the love of pipe-smoking, a habit which stayed with him for most of his life. Another facet of Paris life which Elwell took to was what we now term as café culture which he continued to follow when he returned to England. However, life in Paris had its downside for Elwell, as with most wannabe artists the burden of financial problems was ever present and Elwell’s financial predicament, despite the odd help from his father, was the same, so much so that he had to give his beloved portrait of Léonie to his landlord in lieu of rent.

Whilst he studied at the Académie Julian, Fred would often go back to Beverley to recharge his batteries and sample the delights of home comforts. Elwell finally left Paris in 1895 deciding to live and work in London, although he still exhibited his works at the city’s Salon des Artistes Français (Paris Salon). Elwell was determined to get some of his paintings excepted by the Royal Academy in London and believed he would be able to fund his London life through commissions. Unfortunately for Elwell many artists had the same thought and the contest for painting commissions was ruthless. Elwell realised that the streets of London were not paved with gold and soon he became very despondent with his lack of success. It is thought his despondency led to a nervous breakdown. His father rushed down to London to support his son and eventually convinced him to return home to Beverley

………..to be continued.

Fred Elwell was a master of many painting genres and the paintings I am featuring today deal with his skilful portraiture. The first portrait, Florence, is one Elwell completed around 1902. It features his twelve year old niece Florence Elwell. Florence had been brought up by Fred’s mother and father after she came to live with them at their Park Villa home, close to the racecourse in Beverley, following the death of her parents. She looks a little moody and frustrated at having to sit for her uncle and pouts with annoyance. There were more joyous things to do for a twelve-year old including mixing with the racing fraternity who would often congregate at her uncle’s home during Beverley horse-racing events. It is believed that Fred Elwell completed the portrait in just one hour.

Portrait of a Small Boy by Fred Elwell (1917)

My next featured work is also of a youngster and is entitled Portrait of a Small Boy which Elwell completed in 1917. Before us we see an immaculately dressed young boy in a white suit holding his hat in his right hand and his beloved yacht in the other. His short white socks show signs of falling down towards his shiny black leather sandals. The portrait must have been a challenging task for Elwell as boys of his age are reluctant to stand still and the crumpled look of his white suit is an indication of much movement. It was so challenging that after he had completed the painting, Elwell swore that he would never paint the portrait of a child again.

Seated Nude in the Studio by Fred Elwell (1935)

As I mentioned in the first part of the Fred Elwell story, the first time he was allowed to paint live nudes was when he moved to Antwerp. One of his best works of a female nude was completed in 1935 and was simply entitled Seated Nude in Studio and can be found at the East Riding of Yorkshire Council Museum. The lady depicted in this work is seated on a stool and is depicted in graceful semi-profile. Her blue dressing gown lies besides her. In the background there is some dark furniture which contrasts with the radiant flesh tints of the lady. It is a quirky set-up as she sits before a painting on an easel as if she is the artist admiring her own work.

Another female portrait by Elwell which I really like is entitled In a Bar which he completed in 1943 and was exhibited at the Royal Academy that year. In the work we see the model sitting at the bar, cigarette in hand with a glass of gin and tonic on the bar beside her. There is an air of casual indifference about the way she poses, a somewhat challenging facial expression which challenges us to query her drinking and smoking habit. This is twenty-eight year old Muriel Fox a favourite model of Fred Elwell and believed to be the lady who posed nude for him in the previous work. Muriel was a cook at the Beverley Westwood Hospital and would often call into the Beverley Arms Hotel on her way home from work. This bar was later known as Elwell’s Bar. She was a well-known regular at this hostelry and this was “her stool”. There is great poise in her expression as she stares out at us. As was the fashion in the 1940’s her cheeks were applied with a liberal amount of rouge and her hairstyle , tightly waved, was the fashion of the day. It was rumoured that she had recently given birth to her daughter and baby and basket had been placed out of sight behind the bar.

My next offering is a male portrait and it is a real gem. The work is entitled A Man with a Pint and was completed by Elwell in 1932 and exhibited at the Royal Academy a year later. The painting depicts and elderly man tightly clasping his pint of beer whilst pointing at something in the newspaper which he had been reading. He has a red face and a bulbous nose. There is something very comical about the portrait. The public loved this portrait and the art journal, The Artist, maintained that Elwell “belonged to the School whose purpose is Life”. This portrait is a wonderful realist depiction. Elwell has chosen his sitter, not for his handsome qualities but for his down-to-earth demeanour. This is a depiction of man, like the many elderly men, who love to spend the time with their pint in a welcoming hostelry.

Portrait of George Monkman, Mace Bearer of Beverley by Fred Elwell (1890)

The next portrait is also of an elderly man but in this instance he is not an unknown character but a member of the local Beverley Council. He is the official mace bearer that the town rolls out on official occasions. His name is George Monkman and the title of the pastel painting is Portrait of George Monkman, Mace Bearer of Beverley. This was painted by the twenty-year old Elwell in July 1890 during the time he was attending the Antwerp Academy and, like many of Elwell’s works, is housed in the East Riding of Yorkshire Council Museum. Before us sits a grey-haired sad-faced man in top hat and dark gold rimmed livery. He sits in a high-backed chair. Look how the light shines on both the man’s face and the gilt mace. It is a great study of character and is a testament to Elwell’s ability in the way he has depicted the demeanour of the man, who looks old and tired but still proud of his position as the mace bearer. The frailty of the man, who was eighty-four years old at the time, is brought home by the way Elwell has got him to hold the large ornamental mace with his left hand grasping on to the weighty implement as he holds it against his body. Elwell remembered the portrait well, stating that to keep the sitter happy he had to ply him with brandy. Sadly a fortnight after the portrait was completed Monkman died. Elwell completed an identical portrait in oils thirty years later in 1921.

Canon Fisher and his Wife by Fred Elwell (1905)

The final work of portraiture by Fred Elwell is entitled Canon Fisher and his Wife which he completed around 1905 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1929. Before us we see an intimate dining room scene featuring the Reverend Robert Fisher and his wife Charlotte. It is thought that painting had been commissioned to mark the retirement of the Canon paid for by his loyal parishioners and was one of Elwell’s first portraiture commissions. The portrayal oozes warmth and there is an aura of affection and kind-heartedness surrounding the couple. Robert Fisher sits at the table writing which probably alludes to the fact that he wrote a number of books on subjects such as plants, flowers and Yorkshire villages. His wife sits by his side and works on her knitting. The Canon retired from his position at St Mary’s Church in Beverley in 1905.

In my next blog I will be continue with Fred Elwell’s life story and look at more of his paintings.

Most of the information for this blog was gleaned from the excellent book I bought in Harrogate, Fred Elwell RA – A Life in Art by Wendy Loncaster & Malcolm Shields. It is a beautiful book and well worth buying.

Frederick William Elwell. Part 1. The early days.

When I look back on the four and half years of doing this blog I see my early entries were quite short but appeared nearly three or four times a week. Nowadays due to other commitments and my being sucked into the life of artists the blogs are longer and often in multiple parts. My last three blogs looked at the life of the American genre painter, William Sidney Mount and today I start a multiple-part blog on a home-grown nineteenth century English painter Frederick William Elwell, who many of you, like me, may have up to now, been unheard of. In a way you have to thank my wife for this look at Frederick Elwell as she persuaded me to go with her to Yorkshire for a big three-day cooking event in Harrogate and I managed to slide out of the culinary arena and visit some small local galleries in this beautiful town, where I came across a book on Frederick William Elwell.

Frederick William Elwell was born at St Mary’s Cottage in the small Yorkshire market town of Beverley in on June 29th 1870. His father, James Edward Elwell, was a well-known and well-established wood carver who played a prominent role in Beverley society. In 1900 he was a member of the town council and mayor of Beverley. And when he held the position of Chairman of the Library Committee, he organised the first exhibition of paintings in 1910. The exhibition featured a selection of art which the town had loaned from local collectors. It also included a large selection of works by his son Fred.

Fred Elwell’s schooling began with his attendance at Beverley Grammar School but in 1878 the education establishment had to close temporarily and Fred’s parents had to decide where their son should next be schooled. The family were already aware that their eight year old son was talented at drawing and his father trained him in draughtsmanship and so his father decided to look for some scholarly opening which would allow Fred to further train in art and maybe later architecture as well as attain an all-round education. The decision was made to send Fred to Lincoln to live with his two aunts, and by doing so, it would allow him to attend Lincoln Grammar School and at the same time afford him the chance to enrol in evening art classes at the nearby Lincoln School of Art on Lindum Hill. Fred’s two aunts were a formidable pair of Victorian ladies. One was the principal of the Lincoln Training College for Women whilst the other acted as its secretary

Still Life with Fish by Fred Elwell (1897)

Elwell proved to be a talented scholar and although his father wanted his son’s career path to head towards architecture Fred was in love with painting. He was so good that he was awarded the Gibney Scholarship, named after Rev. J.S.Gibney the canon of Lincoln Cathedral who with others founded then Lincoln School of Art in 1863, and this allowed him to continue on with a three year course in art. In 1887, aged seventeen, Fred Elwell won the Queen’s bronze medal in the National Art School’s competition for his painting, Still Life with Fish. This painting by the seventeen year old Elwell shows the dawning of a great artist in the way he depicts different textures in the painting, such as the shiny reflective glass bottle in contrast to the dull matt finish of the red lobster. On the wall in the background he has depicted fading Delft tiles. The head of the codfish, with its mouth open, is well illuminated against a dark background. Its body is curved and the head turns to the right whilst its tale disappears into the darkness. The curve of the fish is, in some way, countered by the dried herrings which hang in front of the tiles with their tales curving towards the left, balancing out the body position of the cod. Elwell has used the old artist’s trick of depicting depth by incorporating the edge of the marble shelf in the foreground of the painting. This picture is housed in the East Riding of Yorkshire Council Museum.

The head of the college at the time of Fred Ewell was Alfred George Webster and he was a great admirer of the French Impressionism movement which had come to being in the early 1860s in Paris and it was Webster who taught the Impressionist technique to his students. This introduction of Impressionist techniques to students, including Ewell, was strongly opposed by the Royal Academy.

In 1889, at the age of nineteen, Fred Ewell left the Lincoln Art College and followed the path of many aspiring painters of the time and, financed by his father, Fred travelled to Belgium where he enrolled at the prestigious Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp which had been founded in 1663 by David Teniers the Younger. Fred Elwell and a fellow student Claude Rivaz shared a city studio on the Rue des Aveugles. For many this establishment was considered the most important training academy for those artists who wanted to hone their artistic skills and follow classical Academic training. Many great artists, such as Van Gogh, Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Ford Madox Brown at one time studied at this establishment. It was here that the students would learn more about the great Masters of art and in fact the Academy itself housed many works by the old Masters. Fred Elwell’s tutor at the Academy was the landscape and portrait painter, Piet Van Havermaert. Havermaert pressed his students hard and would not suffer any slackers, once telling his students:

“… Always remember that for the money your father pays to keep you here, he could keep four pigs…”

Havermaert was a hard task master and pushed his students to the limit demanding more and more from them.

The Butler takes a Glass of Port by Fred Elwell (1890)

Elwell flourished under this strict teaching regime and during his final year at the Academy produced a genre piece which harked back to the typical type of art that was so popular in the Low Countries in the seventeenth century. It was entitled The Butler takes a Glass of Port. The title is a play on words, meaning, on one hand, the partaking of a drink but, on the other hand, meaning “stealing” a drink. The scene is set in a dining room and we see the butler, emerging from the shadows. He had just finished serving his master and guests at the dining table and has come to arrange the clearance of the plates. However he has decided to help himself to a small glass of his Master’s port. Look at the miscreant. Look how his face is lit on the side by the candlelight. This use of light was very popular with the Dutch genre painters of the past and Elwell, even at the young age of twenty, managed to master the art of dramatic lighting. Look at the butler’s expression of anticipation as he pours himself a drink. His nose has been given a reddish tinge suggesting that he and alcohol were old friends. It is amusing to note that the painting’s alternative title, another double-entendre, was All Things come to the Man who Waits ! It was at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp that Elwell began to perfect his skill in portraiture and still life through the influence of the work of 17th century Dutch and Flemish artists.

This Academy was also a stopping off place for art students who headed for the artistic academies of Paris, a route that Fred Elwell and his friend Claude Riaz, followed in 1892. The two young artist found themselves some rooms in rue de Campagne Première, on the left-bank, in the city’s 14th arrondissement of Montparnasse. Elwell was fascinated with the French capital and soon built up a large collection of sketches of all that he saw of Paris life. Elwell enrolled at the Académie Julian and was fortunate to be tutored by a giant among artists, William-Adolphe Bouguereau. It was whilst study at the Academy that Fred Elwell started his training in life drawing using living models . He was never given the opportunity to sketch nude men and women whilst studying at Lincoln, probably because of the presence of the cathedral in the city, the Academy thought life classes were somewhat inappropriate. Out of this training came one of Elwell’s finest early paintings entitled Dolls or Léonie’s Toilet.

Leonie's Toilet by Fred Elwell (1894) — Leonie’s Toilet by Fred Elwell (1894)

Léonie’s Toilet was completed by Elwell in 1894. Fred Elwell was introduced to the sitter of this painting, Léonie, by Thomas Warrener who was a friend of his from Lincoln, who, like Elwell, had studied at the Lincoln Art College. Warrener then attended the Slade School of Art before moving to Paris and the Académie Julian where the two friends met up once again. Léonie was also a model for some of Warrener’s paintings. To the left of the painting in the foreground is the washbasin, draped over which is the newspaper famed for its gossip, Gil Blas, which leads us to believe Elwell was interested in the comings and goings in French society. The periodical often serialised French novels as well as being known for its opinionated arts and theatre criticism. Another hint of Parisian life in the 1890’s is the two Japanese dolls hanging from the mirror. Japonisme was sweeping through Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was the term used to describe the influence of Japanese art and fashion on Western culture, and was particularly used to refer to Japanese influence on European Art and Impressionism. This painting’s original title was Dolls, referring to the dolls seen in the work. Sibylle Cole in her 1980 book, FREDERICK W. ELWELL, R.A. 1879-1958. A Monograph with eight selected prints in colour describes the skill of Elwell in the way he has painted the naked back of Léonie. She highlighted the way in which he used a wide range of whites and lovely soft edges where she says “the light leaks into the background”. There is an interesting story behind this work. Elwell, like all struggling artists, had to part with his beloved depiction of Léonie, giving it to his landlord as payment for his rent. Fifty years later the artist James Bateman R.A. was walking down Kings Road in Chelsea when he saw the painting of Léonie in an antiques shop. He bought it and gave it to the seventy year old painter. Elwell was delighted to have Léonie back with him !

Young Woman Powdering Herself by Georges Seurat (1890)

The subject, a girl powdering her face, may have come to Elwell after seeing Georges Seurat’s 1890 work, Young Woman Powdering Herself, a painting depicting Seurat’s secret lover, a working-class woman, Madeleine Knobloch. The painting was exhibited at the Société des Artistes Indépendants in 1892, the year Elwell arrived in the French capital.

My final offering in today’s blog could well have derived from a Cezanne painting Elwell may have seen, one which was painted by Cezanne in 1892 entitled Man with a Pipe, a depiction of a peasant relaxing, staring out at us with his pipe in his mouth.

Old Man with a Pipe by Fred Elwell (1898)

Fred Elwell completed a work in 1898 which was entitled Old Man with a Pipe and depicts a gardener, with pipe in mouth, which projects towards us. It is a somewhat cut-off painting with the man’s right fist which grasps the handle of the rake and his left elbow, almost cut out of the lower part of the composition

In my next blog I will continue with Elwell’s life story and look at some more of his beautiful works of art.

William Sidney Mount. Part 3, More of his genre paintings

Caught Napping- (Boys Caught Napping in a Field) by William S Mount (1848)

This is Part 3 of my blog featuring the nineteenth century American genre painter and portraitist, William Sidney Mount. In my first blog about this great painter I looked at his genre works which featured his great love of music and musicians. My second blog featured some of his early biblical works and his portraiture and in this last offering I am reverting to his love of genre painting and some of his best known works of art. In the first part of this trilogy I talked about the “heyday” of genre style paintings from the Low Countries in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. They often featured taverns and interiors of homes and were often dark and looked at the life of the peasant classes with a degree of sombreness. Mount’s genre paintings on the other hand, were more light and joyful.

William Mount had entered the National Academy of Design in New York in 1829 and during his time there his studies incorporated the study of European paintings and engravings as well as the study of classical statuary. Whilst he was studying at the Academy he was living with his uncle, Micah Hawkins, who was an amateur poet, and owned a tavern and grocery shop in New York. Micah’s greatest love was the theatre and he would produce plays in which he would combine music and storytelling and the finished opus would have political and national connotations. His nephew William was influenced by this and the American life theme and social comment featured in many of his works of art.

William Mount completed his studies in 1829 and returned home to Long Island where he set about building up a portfolio of paintings which included portraits of relatives and some of the workers on the family farmstead. In 1832 he was elected to the Academy and for the next thirty-three years exhibited there regularly. William Mount was very aware of the class structure in his country. He could see the social gap between the urban citizens and those who worked the land. Towns expanded and became cities and those who worked and lived in these cities became wealthier than their poor relations that remained in the countryside to work the land. With financial wealth came cultural wealth and soon the division between the urban dwellers and the country folk became more obvious.

The Sportsman's Last Visit by William S Mount (1835) — The Sportsman’s Last Visit by William S Mount (1835)

The painting by Mount, which best looks at this cultural difference, was one he completed in 1835, entitled The Sportsman’s Last Visit. In the depiction we see Mount has contrasted the genteel elegance of the city gentleman, dressed immaculately in black, who sits next to the lady and engages her in conversation. She demurely, but coquettishly, looks away from him supposedly concentrating on a piece of fabric which she has been working on. There is a slight smile on her lips indicating that she is enjoying the man’s attention. She completely ignores the man whom we see standing on the right hand side. He is scratching his head, perplexed by what he is witnessing. He is a local country boy. He has none of the airs and graces of the city gentleman but he cannot understand why the lady should favour the city gentleman over him. Mount often painted scenes from rural life with loving depictions but in this one he was hinting at things were about to change. If money was to be made, maybe city life was the way to do it. On an artistic note I love how Mount has cleverly used the ceiling beams to demonstrate a feeling of depth in the painting.

California News by William S Mount (1850)

Another of Mount’s painting which recorded changing time, was entitled California News which he completed in 1850., This was in the middle of the chaotic California Gold Rush In the picture we see a local man, with the New York Daily Tribune newspaper in his hands, reading aloud about the gold rush in California. Local people stand around agog with excitement but what is more interesting is the picture above the door which depicts a couple of pigs which is probably a reminder that many who raced across country to make their fortune were simple pig farmers who struggled to eke out a living wage for their family.

In 1834, William Mount met Luman Reed. Luman Reed, who was born in 1784, was a farmer’s son from upstate New York. He made a fortune in the wholesale grocery business in New York City and through his love of paintings, built up one of America’s most important collections of paintings, concentrating on American art of his own time. He became patrons to such American artists as Asher Durand, Thomas Cole and George Flagg, just to name a few. Luman Reed liked the works of William Mount and bought two of his paintings, Bargaining for a Horse and The Truant Gamblers (Undutiful Boys).

Bargaining for a Horse by William Sidney Mount (1835)

The painting, Bargaining for a Horse, which he completed in 1835, is probably one of the best known and best loved of William Mount’s works of Art. The original title for the painting was Farmers Bargaining but when the painting was published as an engraving five years later the title was changed to Bargaining for a Horse. When Luman Reed received the completed painting he was delighted and commented that this was “a new era of the fine arts of the country”. There was a political connotation to this work by Mount as the phrase “horse trading” referred to a promise of material benefit in return for political support. Mount’s original title for the painting did not so much allude to that colloquialism but the changed title in 1840 made it more apparent to all those who viewed the work.

Look at the two men. There is no eye contact between the seller and the buyer. Both concentrate on the whittling of the wood almost as if the sale is of little importance. Maybe the concentration they have given to the wood carving gives them time to think about their next step in the bargaining process. It is a beautifully composed work which has been skilfully painted. It is a painting which combines humour, warmth, and razor sharp observation.

Luman Reed was delighted with his painting and wrote to William Mount in November 1835:

“…This is a new era of fine arts in this Country, we have native talent and it is coming out as rapidly as is necessary. Your picture of the ‘Bargain’ is the wonder and delight of everyone that sees it…”

The Truant Gamblers (Undutiful Boys) by William S Mount (1835.)

A month later Mount wrote to Luman Reed telling him of the other painting he had completed for him. He wrote:

“…You will receive with this letter a picture: ‘Undutiful Boys’. Boys hustling coppers on the barn floor……….My price for the picture ‘Undutiful Boys’ two hundred and twenty dollars. I hope the picture will meet your approbation…”

A week later Luman Reed wrote back to Mount:

“… I yesterday received your much awaited letter of the 4^th Instant with your beautiful Picture of the ‘Undutiful Boys’. To say that this picture is satisfactory is not enough, and the least I can say is that it pleases me exceedingly. It is a beautiful specimen of art. The interior is far superior to any thing of the kind I have seen, it is all good and therefore I need not particularize, the price is perfectly satisfactory and the money is ready for you any day you want it. I pride myself on having now two of your Pictures and what I consider your best productions and hope yet to have more but it is no more than fair that others should be gratified too and I must wait until you execute some other commissions…”

In the painting we see a group of young boys who have decided to abandon their farming chores and, instead, decided to spend some time gambling for pennies. Happy with their decision to forego work, what they do not realise is that the farmer is approaching, pitchfork and switch in his hands and punishment is imminent. This type of genre painting featuring life on the farm was popular in those days as life was changing from an agrarian one to an industrial one and rural life soon became somewhere to relax and enjoy and for people like Luman Reed who was brought up in the Hudson River town of Coxsackie and later moved to the hustle and bustle of New York City, paintings depicting life on the farm may have brought him fond memories of his childhood days. For him this painting was a nostalgic one

In 1837 William Mount left New York City and returned home to Stony Brook and Setauket on Long Island and remained there for the rest of his life with just the odd trips back to New York. He was content to paint rural scenes and the characters who worked on the farmsteads. He maintained his portraiture work as this was a good source of income. Unlike a number of his contemporaries he showed no inclination to travel to Europe to experience artistic life in London, Paris or Rome. Mount fully captivated the rich European artistic legacy that was imported to the United States. It was through engravings, books and copies of European masterpieces, that Mount received a complete schooling in the academic tradition of art and by doing so became America’s first great genre painter. He lived quite a sheltered life and unlike his brothers, he never married.

When we look at his works of art we are struck by the amount of detail in them. Mount loved detail and worked painstakingly slow to ensure no detail was omitted from the finished work and this resulted in a small number of completed works, believed to be no more than two hundred completed in the thirty years that he painted.

The Raffle (Raffling for the Goose) by William S Mount (1837)

My last featured painting is one of my favourites. It is entitled The Raffle (Raffling the Goose) which William Mount completed in 1837 and is now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In this work, like a number of his other paintings Mount liked to highlight the social and political issues of the time. Before us we see six men gathered around a table eagerly awaiting the result of an impromptu lottery to see who had won the plump goose which lies in front of them. If you look carefully at the table you will see signs of blood which indicate the bird had recently been killed and plucked. Such lotteries were common in the rural communities of Long Island around this time. The year 1837 was a year of hardship for Americans. The Panic of 1837, as it was known, was the financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major recession that lasted until the mid-1840’s. Profits, prices and wages went down while unemployment went up. Mount alluded to food shortages during this hard time in this painting and what people had to do to survive and put food on the family table. Mount worked on the painting through the winter of 1836 and completed it early in 1837. Mount exhibited the painting that year at the National Academy of Design Spring Exhibition.

In the first part of this William S Mount trilogy I talked about his inventive nature and how he had invented a violin/fiddle which produced a larger volume of noise. In about 1860 Mount designed a portable studio and home on wheels which was drawn by horses. It afforded him the opportunity to drive himself around the area and paint en plein air. He spent much time during his last years in this unique conveyance, but sadly, due to ill health, his painting days were almost over.

The Grave of William Sidney Mount, Caroline Church of Brookhaven, East Setauket, New York.

William Sidney Mount died on November 19th 1868, at Setauket and is buried in the Presbyterian Church Cemetery.

William Sydney Mount House, Stony Brook, NY

His home and studio, now known as The William Sidney Mount House is one of America’s National Treasures. One of the local elementary schools in The Three Village Central School District, a district in Long Island so named from the older, original “Three Villages” of Setauket, Stony Brook and Old Field, is named after the artist.

There were so many paintings I could have included but these are just a few of my favourites. Besides the usual internet sources I gleaned a lot of my information from an old book I just bought entitled William Sidney Mount by Alfred Frankenstein. The William Sidney Mount House at Stony Brook, Long Island houses numerous works of art by William Sidney Mount and I would be interested to hear from anybody who has visited the museum.

William Sidney Mount. Part 2 – The Portraitist, and some of his early historical works

In my last blog I looked at the early life of William Sidney Mount, hailed as the first American genre artist. I looked at his love for music and how he depicted song and dance in his paintings. Today I want to carry on with his life story and take a look at his early works and his portraiture.

William had been working for his brother, Henry Smith Mount, at his sign writing business in Setauket and enjoyed it. At first he found the work interesting and challenging but later found the painting of signs somewhat restrictive. He gave up working for his brother and moved to New York to live with his uncle Micah Hawkins, who operated a tavern and grocery store in New York City. His uncle was also a composer, playwright, and poet. Micah combined music and storytelling into his theatrical productions which often delved into what was happening in politics and much of these ideas were to influence his nephew and his paintings.

It was also around this time that William Mount visited his first art gallery, the American Academy in New York and in 1826 he enrolled at the newly opened National Academy of Design, an artistic establishment founded by a number of young painters such as Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, and Samuel Morse. In those early years William Mount’s art was all about portraits and historical scenes. William remained at the Academy for a year before returning home.

Saul and the Witch of Endor by William S. Mount (1828)

One of his early works was entitled Saul and the Witch of Endor, which he completed in 1828 and can now be found in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. The painting depicts a passage from the Old Testament book of Samuel which tells of Saul and his battle with the Philistines.

“…The Philistines assembled and came and set up camp at Shunem, while Saul gathered all Israel and set up camp at Gilboa. When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart. He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. Saul then said to his attendants, “Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her.

‘There is one in Endor,’ they said…”

Saul seeks help from the oracle from Endor prior to him going into battle with the Philistines. She summons the spirit of the prophet Samuel so that Saul could ask for his guidance. In the painting we see Saul and his three companions cower in fear as the ghostly apparition approaches them.

Christ Raising the Daughter of Jairus by William S Mount (1828)

In that same year he produced another biblical work based on Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 9:23-26). It was entitled Raising of Jairus’ Daughter. The subject of this biblical work had been depicted many times before by great artists such as Veronese. The bible relates the story:

^“…When Jesus entered the synagogue leader’s house and saw the noisy crowd and people playing pipes,he said, “Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up. News of this spread through all that region…”

William’s brother Henry was so impressed with the finished painting that he persuaded his brother to submit it at the annual National Academy exhibition. It was well praised by the Academy professors. William was now living at his brother’s place on Nassau Street, Lower Manhatten and had a studio in the attic. He enjoyed painting historical and biblical works but the sales of which were not bringing in enough money so he reverted to portraiture which was always a guaranteed way of raising income.

Ruth Hawkins Mount Seabury and Son Charles Edward by William S Mount (1828)

One of his early works of portraiture was a family portrait entitled Ruth Hawkins Mount Seabury and Son Charles Edward, which he completed in 1828. It depicts his nineteen year old sister Ruth Hawkins Mount and her infant son Charles Edward Seabury, the first of her seven children.

Ruth Mount Seabury by William S Mount (1831)

William Mount completed a portrait of his sister, Ruth in 1831.

I suppose if you are looking for people to sit for you for a portrait, you turn firstly to your family and in 1828 he completed a portrait of his eldest brother, and his former employer, Henry Smith Mount.

Portrait of Henry Smith Mount by William S Mount (1831)

Three years later, in 1831, Henry Smith Mount was the subject of another of his younger brother’s portraits. This portrait of his eldest brother (by five years) is a masterful portrait. He has depicted his brother as a man of great self-confidence, a man who comes across as a thoughtful academic and yet, a man who by his facial expression, seems stern and somewhat menacing, as he stares out at us, lost in his own thoughts.

Henry Smith Mount on his deathbed by William S Mount (1841)

Thirteen years on he completed another depiction of his brother, Henry. The circumstances surrounding this watercolour were much sadder as this was completed in January 1841 and the setting was Henry’s deathbed. Henry was just thirty nine years of age.

Shepherd Alonzo Mount by William S Mount (1847)

In 1847 William Mount painted a portrait of his other brother, Shepherd Alonzo Mount.

Portrait of Jedediah Williamson by William S Mount (c. 1837)

The next example of William Mount’s portraiture is one he completed in 1837 and was entitled Portrait of Jedediah Williamson. It is a depiction of a ten year old boy commissioned by his family. It is a full frontal depiction of the young lad and Mount has carefully and with great skill portrayed the boy’s facial features. It is a very peaceful depiction of the boy as he looks out into the distance. The family would have been very pleased to have received the work from Mount and it is recorded that they paid him fifteen dollars for the painting. However there is a sad twist to this portrayal as this is a “mourning painting” or as Mount referred to them, “a painting after death”. The boy had died and this portrait was in honour of him and may have given the family a modicum of comfort during the sadness of their great loss. These “mourning paintings” were very popular at the time and artists found they could achieve a steady income from paintings which, for relatives, served as a reminder of a loved one who had passed away. One should remember that between 1861 and 1865 over 350,000 Americans died during the American Civil War, the families of many just had an artist’s painting to remind them of their lost son or daughter.

Portrait of Reuben Merrill by William S Mount (1832)

Another interesting portrait by William Mount was one entitled Portrait of Reuben Merrill. It was one of Mount’s early works which he completed in 1832. The question, which is yet to be resolved, is who is Reuben? Some believe he was a gardener whilst others say he was a simple field worker on the farm owned by William’s sister, Ruth and her husband, Charles Saltonstall Seabury. The fact that he identity of the sitter used by Mount is somewhat of a mystery is not uncommon as a number of the sitters in Mount’s portraits are unknown. There is warmth about how Mount has depicted this man. His face is weather beaten from all the outside work but he has compassionate eyes, which leads us to believe that although he was just a poor and simple labourer, there was some sort of warm connection between him and the artist which probably testifies to the fact that he was a hard worker and appreciated by his employers.

Portrait of Midshipman Seabury by William S Mount (1868)

My last example of Mount’s portraiture was also thought to have been his last artistic work. It was completed in September 1868, less than two months before Mount’s death, and was a pencil sketch of his nineteen year old nephew Samuel Seabury. Samuel was one of seven children. His mother was Ruth Hawkins Mount Seabury, William Sidney Mount’s younger sister, and his father was Charles Saltonhall Seabury. At the time of the portrait, Samuel Seabury was a midshipman in the navy, and the ship in the left hand background is a reminder of his profession.

In my next blog I will take my final look at William Sidney Mount and his work and I will feature some of his excellent non-musical genre work.

Natalia Goncharova and Rayonism

Natalia Goncharova 1881 - 1962 — Natalia Goncharova
1881 – 1962

In my blog today I want to look at the life of the avant-garde Russian painter, stage designer and printmaker, Natal’ya (Sergeevna) Goncharova. Natalia was born in Russia on her father’s estate in the Tula governate in June 1881. She was the daughter of Sergey Mikhaylovich Goncharov, a renowned architect and mathematician, and her mother was Yekaterina Il’icha Belyayeva. However, in her early infant days she grew up in her grandmother’s home at Ladyzhino, near Kaluga. When she was ten years old, the family moved to Moscow and she attended the Fourth Gymnasium for Girls in Moscow and in 1898, when she was seventeen years old she decided to study sculpture and enrolled at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture as a sculpture student where her tutor was Paolo Troubetskoy. It was at this establishment in 1900 that she met and became friends with fellow student, Mikhail Larionov. He had enrolled at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture at the same time as Goncharova, studying painting under Isaac Levitan and Valentin Serov. Larionov was a student with very contentious and provocative views and was suspended from the academy on three occasions for his deep-seated opinions. He and Goncharova became lifelong friends and he was to have a great influence on her. It was Larionov who persuaded Goncharova to switch from studying sculpture to concentrate on studying painting.

Goncharova’s early work concentrated on the medium of pastels and her first works were showcased at the Diaghilev’s Russian Art Exhibition, which was held in Paris in 1906 at the Salon d’Automne and a year later her first paintings were shown at the Moskovskoye Tovarishchestvo Khudozhnikov (Moscow Association of Artists) of which she was a member. At this time, her friend Larionov’s painting style was that of Impressionism and Natalya, for a time, also became interested in the style which had become so popular in France. In 1908 she took part in the Golden Fleece exhibition and it was during this show that she became more aware of a modern style of art with the works of Bonnard, Matisse, Gaugin and Toulouse-Lautrec. The influence of these painters made Goncharova rethink her artistic style.

In 1909 she completed a work of art, which highlighted her much-loved topic that of Russian peasants hard at work on the land. The painting, which is currently housed at the Tate Liverpool, is entitled Gardening. It is a painting, which is typical of her depictions of peasant life and was made around the time of her stay on a family estate in rural Russia. Of this style of painting and her patriotism, she explained:

‘…If I extol the art of my country, then it is because I think that it … should occupy a more honourable place than it has done hitherto…”

In the painting we immediately sense her love for colour and her depiction of the peasants is a somewhat stylistic portrayal. The display caption at the Tate describes the way she has portrayed the subjects shown in the paintings as:

“…Her statuesque peasants, with their thickset bodies and massive limbs, are imbued with a heroic grandeur…”

Her subsequent works were so colourful that they were likened to the work of the Fauves, which was an avant-garde movement that thrived in France during the first decade of the twentieth century, led by the likes of Matisse and Derain, these artists were the first to split from the Impressionism.

Pillars of Salt by Natalia Goncharova (1908)

In 1910, Goncharova became one of the founder members of the Jack of Diamonds group, sometimes referred to as Knave of Diamonds. This group of painters was deemed to be the first group of Russian avant-garde artists and it was Mikhail Larionov who came up with the group’s name. This collection of painters came from both Moscow and nearby provinces and most of them, including Goncharova, had studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. They were all influenced by the works of Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse. Once again we see a group of artists coming together with the common idea that they would discard the links with traditional art, and discard the knowledge that they were taught at their alma mater. For them, it was all about change and new artistic ideas. Goncharova exhibited a number of her works in the group’s first exhibition in December 1910. Their art was not loved by everybody, in fact it horrified some. The influential Russian artist, art critic, historian criticised the group of young artists for having gone too far in overthrowing accepted artistic ideals. Many other critics and members of the public declared that many of the works of art shown at the exhibition were in bad taste, gauche and lacked artistic elegance and some were even criticised as being too violent.

She exhibited another example of her Primitivist style art at the 1912 Jack of Diamond exhibition. It had been completed a couple of years earlier and was entitled Fishing. Again the style is similar to her painting Gardening and is part of the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection and is housed in the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.

The Evangelists by Natalia Goncharova (1911)

Another one of the paintings which Goncharova exhibited was entitled The Evangelists and this was among her first mature works devoted to a religious subject. In her 1962 book, The Russian Experiment in Art 1863-1922, art historian, Camilla Gray, the daughter-in-law of Sergei Prokoviev, wrote:

“...The depiction is typical of Russian iconic paintings and so is a combination of old and new influences in Russian art. Perhaps one of the most impressive aspects of these four paintings is their effective use of color, line, and composition to create a strong rhythmic whole. Goncharova manipulates these elements with such understanding and perception that when one looks at the four authors of the Gospels there are no distractions and no weak points — only strength and security in a modern interpretation of tradition and native style. Both line and color become here “expressive entities in their own right” and convey the sense of calm spirituality and wisdom treasured by icon painters. However, what the Neo-primitivists of Goncharova’s time might have treasured most was an almost childish “directness and simplicity” characteristic of folk art which they tried to imitate in their works. Today, the four paintings of the Evangelists may be admired for many reasons, and regardless of the basis for the viewer’s appreciation, they definitely are an integral part of the Russian avant-garde movement…”

This religious work by Goncharova was heavily criticised for its primitive depiction and the critics believed no religious work should be associated with a group known as The Donkey’s Tail as it was bordering on blasphemy and so it was removed from the exhibition.

Peacock in Bright Sunlight (Egyptian style) by Natalia Goncharova (1911)

Natalia Gonchorova produced a series of paintings in 1911 that became known as the Peacocks. They were highly colourful and were influenced by Larionov and his new style of work at the time which was termed Rayonism or Luchism (luch being the Russian word for “ray”) which was a type of abstract or semi-abstract painting. The Rayonists sought an art that floated beyond abstraction, outside of time and space, and to break the barriers between the artist and the public. They derived the name from the use of dynamic rays of contrasting colour, representing lines of reflected light — crossing of reflected rays from various objects. .The painting seen above is an example of this and is entitled Peacock in Bright Sunlight (Egyptian style) which can be found in the Tretyakov Museum in Moscow. The museum’s description of the work states:

“…The works in question combine the laws of Ancient Egyptian art and traditions of Russian folk art. The figure of peacock is transformed into an expressive sign. The bird’s chiselled head and elegant neck are shown in profile, whereas the magnificent tail is spread in front, as prescribed by Ancient Egyptian art. Between them is a green oval providing a background for the neck, head and body. The peacock seems to be examining its own tail in surprise, the tail resembling a grand architectural structure. It resembles at the same time the Coliseum, an arched iconostasis, a rainbow and palette. Unlike the artists of Art Nouveau, who associated peacock feathers with elegant luxury, Goncharova interprets this motif as primordial power, expressed in colours. The image of peacock seems to embody the ancient symbol of immortality…”

All was not well within the Jack of Diamond group as a rigorous debate took place between, on one side, David Burliuk, who was a fervent supporter and strongly supportive of Western art, and on the other side, Natalia Goncharova and Larionov, who favoured Russian themes. The two parties could not agree a compromise and so the Russian artists split into two camps. In the one corner was David Burliuk with his supporters, such as Alexi von Jawlensky and Wassily Kandinsky, who favoured the art which was influenced by Western painters. In the other corner was the more traditional camp, including Goncharova and Larionov, who believed that a modern Russian art should address the question of national artistic traditions and therefore they disassociated themselves from the Jack of Diamonds on the grounds that Burliuk was a “decadent Munich follower” while the others, known as Cézanne-ists, were conservative and eclectic..

Sunset Over the Adriatic by the ficticious Genoese painter Joachim Raphale Baronali

A year later in 1911 the more radical artists in the group, including Goncharova and Larionov, broke away and formed a new artist’s group which Larionov launched as Osliny khvost (the Donkey’s Tail), in order to promote avant-garde art inspired exclusively by Russian themes. The name, The Donkey’s Tail, derived from a famous Parisian hoax in which the art critic, Roland Dorgelès and Fréderic Gérard, proprietor of the Montmartre café, Le Lapin Agile, had painted a lurid red and blue seascape by tying a paintbrush to a donkey’s tail. The work was exhibited as Sunset Over the Adriatic under the name of Joachim Raphale Baronali at the Salon des Indépendants of 1910 apparently without comment.

That year, Ilya Repin recounted the incident of the donkey’s tail in his review of Izdebsky’s International Exhibition and used the term as a critical epithet for the modernist work on show. Shortly afterwards, the Russian press satirized the Knave of Diamonds exhibition by publishing a cartoon of a donkey painting with its tail, with the cynical caption:

“…Off home already after looking round just one hall. Don’t be shy. Get your sixty kopeks worth and next year come again. Then we will change the name and under the sign of ‘the Donkey’s Tail’ we will show you the way we paint our pictures...”

In adopting this name for his group, Larionov beat the critics with their own stick. Other artists to join the group were Marc Chagal and Kazimir Malevich. The group, however, was only short-lived, disbanding at the end of 1912 having only managing to stage one exhibition in the March of 1912. Goncharova submitted over fifty works of art to this exhibition.

Goncharova continued with her Rayonist works of art but unlike her friend Larionov her paintings depicted distinguishable objects or people, whereas Larionov’s paintings became more pure abstract. One of her most famous works of that period was one entitled The Cyclist in which her depiction cleverly captures the energy of the man on his bike as he passes by. The blurred background adds to the sense of speed and movement.

Goncharova and Larionov were fervent believers of Rayonism, so much so they issued a joint manifesto in 1913 of what Rayonism meant to them. The manifesto entitled Rayonists and Futurists, The Manifesto, began with:

“…We, rayonists and futurists, do not wish to speak about new or old art, and even less about modern Western art. We leave the old art to die and leave the “new” art to do battle with it; and incidentally, apart from a battle and a very easy one, the “new” art cannot advance anything of its own. It is useful to put manure on barren ground, but this dirty work does not interest us. People shout about enemies closing in on them, but in fact, these enemies are, in any case, their closest friends. Their argument with old art long since departed is nothing but a resurrection of the dead, a boring, decadent love of paltriness and a stupid desire to march at the head of contemporary, philistine interests. We are not declaring any war, for where can we find an opponent our equal? The future is behind us. All the same we will crush in our advance all those who undermine us and all those who stand aside. We don’t need popularization—our art will, in any case, take its full place in life—that’s a matter of time……..”

The American art historian, Camilla Gray, in her book gave her definition of Rayonism as:

“…[as an art style which] encompasses all existing styles and forms of the art of the past, as they, like life, are simply points of departure for a Rayonist perception and construction of a picture…”

Larionov and Goncharova started to believe that light was the indispensable source of our sensory appreciation of the world and believed that for any object to be observed it had to be lit up and the Rayonist style was to incorporate rays of light that then allows us to view a particular scene. Their manifesto explained:

“…In fact, we do not sense the object as such. We perceive a sum of rays proceeding from a source of light; these are reflected from the object and enter our field of vision…”

The Forest by Natalia Goncharova (c.1913)

In March 1913 Goncharova’s friend Larionov organised an exhibition entitled Mishen (Target) to introduce the Donkey’s Tail group of painters to the Moscow art critics and public. One of the paintings Goncharova exhibited at the show was entitled La Forêt (The Forest) which is now part of the National Gallery of Scotland collection. Although this is looked upon as an example of Goncharova’s Rayonist style with its coloured rays shooting out in different directions, it offers up the thought that Goncharova was more influenced by the Cubist style when she painted this work. The shapes she has used in the depiction of trees in this work was replicated in a number of her works around this time. It is a truly fascinating work.

Goncharova went on to design ballet costumes and sets for ballets in Geneva and in 1914 she and Larionov moved to Paris to work alongside the great Russian ballet impresario, Sergei Diaghliev, during which time they designed a number of stage sets for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Goncharova still found time to carry on painting and exhibited works at the Salon d’Automne, Salon des Tuileries and the Salon des Indépendants.

Goncharova was quite a controversial character. She was a woman that did not “toe the line” of convention. It was said that she would sometimes appear topless in public, with symbols painted on her body. In a sense, their use of odd, possibly meaningless symbols united the masses with the past Symbolist aesthetic. In John Bowlt’s 1990 article in the Art Journal entitled Natalia Goncharova and Futurist Theatre, he commented on her bizarre behaviour writing:

“…in private relations and behavior, Goncharova enjoyed a license that only actresses and gypsies were permitted, and perhaps because of this dubious social reputation rather than as the result of any apparent innuendos in her paintings, she was said to traverse the ‘boundary of decency’ and to ‘hurt your eyes…”

According to Mary Charmot who wrote an article in 1955 for the Burlington Magazine entitled The Early Work of Goncharova and Larionov, Diaghliev was full of praise for this unconventional painter who had brought life to his ballets. He talked of her, saying:

“…The most celebrated of these advanced painters is a woman. [. . .] This woman has all Saint Petersburg and all Moscow at her feet. And you will be interested to know that she has imitators not only of her paintings but of her person. She has started a fashion of nightdress-frocks in black and white, blue and orange. But that is nothing. She has painted flowers on her face. And soon the nobility and Bohemia will be driving out in sledges, with horses and houses drawn and painted on their cheeks, foreheads and necks…”

Project poster for the ballet by Manuel de Falla, El amor brujo by Natalia Goncharova (1935)

Goncharova and Larionov had lived together shortly after their first meeting in 1900 as fellow students at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and they stayed together as an unmarried couple for more than fifty years. She and Larionov became French citizens in 1939 and in 1955 the two artists married. The reason for marrying so late in their romantic relationship was believed to be so that their paintings would revert to the surviving partner. In the latter years Larionov and Goncharova suffered financially. Goncharova suffered badly with arthritis in her hands and it is said that to carry on painting she had to tie the paint brushes to her wrist. Goncharova died in Paris, in October 1962 and Larionov died two years later.

So what happened to their works of art? The story goes that when the couple had both died, most of their collections were inherited by another Russian émigré, Alexandra Tomilina, who had met Larionov in the 1930’s when she was his student, and later became his mistress. After Goncharova died in 1962, Larionov married Tomilina in order that she would inherit all the paintings, which by this time was numbered in the thousands, and by doing so the two artists would continue to be remembered and therefore it would safeguard both artists’ legacies. Sadly Tomilina had always viewed Goncharova as a love rival and so hated her, so much so that she gave away, destroyed or disposed of many of Goncharova’s works. Tomalina’s old age became one of a life of poverty and so, desperate to pay off her debts, contacted the Soviet authorities and offered them all the remaining artworks if they would financially support her for the rest of her life. This they agreed to. When Tomilina died in 1987, her ashes were buried in Goncharova and Larionov’s double grave

Picking Apples by Natalia Goncharova (1909)

After her death, Goncharova was almost forgotten as a painter in the West. Why? Maybe it was because she painted in many styles — Cubism, Futurism, Neo-Primitivism, Rayism, and also maybe because she worked in many forms, from oil painting to textile design. This lack of recognition was all to change in 2007 when her work, Picking Apples, which she completed in 1909, was sold at Christie’s Modern and Impressionist sale in London for £4.9 million ($9.8 million), a record for a female artist, only to be bested a year later when her painting, The Flowers, sold for £5.53 million ($10.8 million).

The Flowers by Natalia Goncharova (1912)

Goncharova’s life, like her art, was very colourful. She was unconventional and actually fell foul of the law on a number of occasions. She was tried for pornography after a show of nude paintings in 1910 and as I mentioned earlier, her religious paintings were forcibly removed from several exhibitions and for a time were banned by the Holy Synod.

Marie Bashkirtseff. Part 2 her later life and diaries

Marie Bashkirtseff (1858 - 1884) — Marie Bashkirtseff (1858 – 1884)

In my previous blog I concentrated on the portraiture of Marie Bashkirtseff but she will probably be remembered best for other genres

One painting by Marie Bashkirtseff which came about during her time at the Académie Julian was one commissioned by the founder of the establishment, Rodolphe Julian. He asked her to paint a canvas depicting the artists at work in his academy. The finished canvas was entitled L’Atelier Julian and is now looked upon as one of Bashkirtseff’s finest works. Initially Marie was not impressed by the commission but could see the benefit for herself, writing in her diary:

“…As for the subject, it does not fascinate me, but it may be very amusing, and then Julian is so taken with it, and so convinced… A woman’s studio has never been painted. Besides, as it would be an advertisement for him, he would do all in the world to give me the wonderful notoriety he speaks about…”

Atelier Julian (In the Studio) by Marie Bashkirtseff (1881)

The painting portrays the light and airy studio at the Académie Julian where Bashkirtseff and her fellow students would work. L’atelier Julian is a quite large oil on canvas work measuring 154 x 186cms and is currently housed in the Dnepropetrovsk State Art Museum. It is a fascinating work featuring sixteen students all taking part in a life-drawing session. The studio looks well organised, although small in size, but that maybe due to the number of people crammed into the room. As an observer, we firstly focus on the woman seated at the centre of the work. She wears a bright blue dress. In her hands are a small brush and a maulstick. She is working on a painting of the young nude model, who is holding a staff whilst standing on the raised dais so that he can be seen clearly by all the female students. If we look past this lady we see one of her colleagues staring out at us. Maybe someone is entering the room to join this artistic group. Our eyes now leave the lady in blue and we start to scan the rest of the room. It is a hubbub of activity. Some of the females are concentrating intently on their canvases whilst others partake in chit-chat. The two females in the foreground, one seated, one standing, engage in conversation. The lady standing rests her hand on a wine-coloured velvet drape which has been laid over the back of the chair. Look at the drape. See how Bashkirtsteff has showcased her artistic ability in the way she has depicted the elaborate folds of the material. Many artists in the past and in the present time like to show off their artistic skills in this way. This large and multi-faceted work was exhibited to great acclaim at the 1881 Salon.

Following a visit to Russia in 1882 to visit her relatives she returned to Paris. She had not been feeling well and decided to visit her doctor. In Dormer Creston’s 1937 biography on the artist entitled Fountains of Youth – The Life of Marie Bashkirtseff, he quoted her diary entries:

“…At the doctor’s. For the first time, I had the courage to say: Monsieur, I am becoming deaf. It can be borne, but there will be a veil between me and the rest of the world…”

Later that year her health deteriorated further and she noted in her dairy after visiting the physician that the news was not good:

“…I am consumptive, he told me so to-day…”

Despite her failing health she carried on with her art. She punished herself by working long hours almost as if she realised her time was almost up and none should be wasted. It was in 1882 that she met the French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage. He was ten years older than Marie but he became her confidante and mentor and her greatest inspiration. It has often been mooted that the two became very close romantically. He persuaded her to look beyond her wealthy lifestyle and observe and depict in her paintings those who were less financially fortunate than herself. She listened to Bastien-Lepage and soon the subjects of her work changed. Her works soon depicted the lower classes and street scenes. This was such a turn-around for a young woman who had only known the life of affluence.

The Meeting by Marie Bashkirtseff (1884)

One of her best loved paintings featuring the “real world” is entitled The Meeting which she completed in 1884 and was exhibited at that year’s Salon. It is now housed at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. It was an enormous success, both with the press and public alike. However, much to Bashkirtseff’s annoyance, her painting was not awarded a medal. In her diary she wrote of her frustration and disappointment:

“…I am exceedingly indignant because, after all, works that are really rather poor have received prizes…..There is nothing more to be done. I am a worthless creature, humiliated, finished…”

Marie believed that being awarded a medal by the Salon jurists would help to immortalise her and that, to her, was of the utmost importance as, at this time, she knew her life was coming to an end. She desperately did not want to die before her artistic talent was recognised. She dreaded being forgotten.

In this next work, Marie Bashkirtseff copies the Naturalist style of her friend and mentor, Jules Bastien-Lepage. Lepage’s naturalism focused mainly on the countryside but Bashkirtseff decided to follow his style of naturalism or realism but concentrate on an urban setting. In some ways the work is a genre scene, a depiction of everyday life. Before us are six young boys, who stand in a circle fascinated with what the tallest boy has in his hand, although it is not visible to us. Whatever it is, it has them deep in discussion. Some still wear their school smocks. The shabbiness of their clothes and shoes marks them as coming from poor working-class families and the setting is a run-down working class area. We see, behind the group of boys, the old wooden fence with the graffiti and the torn posters all inferring that the setting is one of poverty.

Bashkirtseff’s choice of depicting working-class schoolchildren in this painting may have come about as it was the subject of schooling which had become a great topic of conversation in the early 1880’s with Jules Ferry, a member of the French government at the time, establishing the law that saw the arrival of free, compulsory, secular education. However other art critics would have us believe that the depiction of the boys was simply a bourgeois stereotype that people like Bashkirtseff would adopt. Again some people wanted to look for a message in the painting, a message that may only be there in their eyes. The feminists pointed to the fact that the group are all males and further suggest that the young girl walking away alone is symbolic of the feminist movement and their desire for better integration in society. In the book, Overcoming All Obstacles: The Women of the Académie Julian by Gabriel Weisberg and Jane Becker, the writers wrote about the painting and its lack of recognition by the Salon jurists:

“…While painters at the Salon designated her for a medal, the jury passed on her submission. The public complained. While Robert-Fleury was encouraging her to include passages of draped figures (to show off her virtuosity in that skill), Marie refused, not finding drapery fitting to her modern street boys. Again the critics noted her sincerity of execution, freshness of facture, and realism in taking up the subject. While the work did not receive a medal, it was bought by the state, and several engravings and lithographs were made after it…”

Although I stated earlier that Bashkirtseff wanted to focus on urban portrayals, my next offering of her work is a beautiful painting entitled Autumn, which moves towards a landscape work. The setting is a rutted tree-lined road which runs parallel to the river. Through the trees we see an arched stone bridge which straddles the waterway. The time must be late summer or maybe early autumn as many of the trees have shed their bronze-tinted leaves while others cling to the branches and retain their summer colour. To the side of the road is a pavement. Look at the details Marie has depicted of the sidewalk. The fallen bench straddles the pavement and the road. The crumbling stonework of the pavement is clearly visible and which is now home for the fallen, windswept leaves and what looks like an abandoned newspaper lies in the gutter close to the fallen bench. Beside the pavement we see a stretch of garden fencing which has seen better days. This is an example of Naturalism in art, a style Marie Bashkirtseff had adopted due to the influence of her close friend, Jules Bastien-Lepage. The painting is devoid of people and this fact alone means we are not distracted from the artist’s detailed depiction of the area. It also avoids the work of art being focused on people and the depiction of them may turn the painting into a work of Social Realism with the landscape being looked upon as merely a background to a story within the work. The colours used by the artist set the scene for a certain time of year and also a certain time of day. One can imagine the lighting of the scene would be different at another time of day and obviously it would be a far different depiction if this had been mid-winter.

In a diary entry for May 1884, she wrote:

“…What is the use of lying or pretending? Yes, it is clear that I have the desire, if not the hope, of staying on this earth by whatever means possible. If I don’t die young, I hope to become a great artist. If I do, I want my journal to be published…”

Marie Bashkirtseff's mausoleum in Cimetière de Passy, Paris — Marie Bashkirtseff’s mausoleum in Cimetière de Passy, Paris

Four months after this entry, on October 31^st 1884, Marie Bashkirtseff died of consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis) in Paris. She was just twenty-five years old and for her, she sadly believed she had achieved little.

Inside of Marie Bashkirtseff's mausoleum — Inside of Marie Bashkirtseff’s mausoleum

She was buried in Cimetière de Passy in a large mausoleum, designed as a full-sized artist’s studio and has now become a French Heritage site. The inside of Marie Bashkirtseff’s mausoleum we see in the central background a copy of Marie’s bust which was sculpted by her friend the sculptor René de Saint Marceaux. Behind the sculpture hanging on the wall is one of Marie Bashkirtseff’s last and unfinished paintings entitled Women Saints. At either side, on pedestals are busts of her parents Sadly almost two hundred of her works were destroyed or looted during the Second World War. However her journal was published by her family in 1887. Sadly it was an abridged version which had been heavily censored by her relatives who thought a lot of the contents about them were unflattering seeing to it that a good deal of material was critical and unflattering to the family and unfit for the reading public. Having said that however, the diary stands as one of the great diaries of its time. It was not until some years later, with the discovery of Marie’s original manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale de France that it was realised that the diaries published by the family had been heavily edited. An unabridged edition of the complete journal, based on the original manuscript, has been published in French in 16 volumes, and excerpts from the years 1873–76 have been translated into English under the title I Am the Most Interesting Book of All.

The diaries were started by a girl of fourteen and they began as a simple coming-of-age journal but later developed into an often sad account of how life conspired against her and her fight to survive.

I will leave you with an entry in her diary when she talks about how people may remember her. She wrote:

“…If I do not die young I hope to live as great artist; but if I die young, I intend to have my journal, which cannot fail to be interesting, published. Similarly: “When I am dead, my life, which appears to me a remarkable one, will be read. (The only thing wanting is that it should have been different)…”

Marie Bashkirtseff. Part 1 The portraitist and feminist

Photograph of twenty year old Marie Bashkirtseff (1878)

I had been researching the life of Jules Bastien-Lepage for a future blog when I came across the fascinating story of a Ukranian lady, a friend of his, who during her very short life excelled as a painter, a sculptor and a diarist. It was her talent as a diarist and her personal diary which led to her notoriety. I have split her lifestory, as short as it was, between two blogs, so come with me and explore the life of Maria Konstantinovna Bashkirtseva who became better known as Marie Bashkirtseff and her portraiture.

Marie Bashkirtseff was born in November 1858 at Gavrontsi, a beautiful country estate close to the provincial town of Poltava in southern Ukraine. Her father was Konstantin Bashkirtseff and her mother Mariia Babanina, who was a lady, fiercely proud of her Tartar heritage. The family were wealthy and were looked upon as being of the petite noblesse social class, which was a termed used to describe the lesser nobility of France, especially rural landowners of noble ancestry. A year later Marie’s brother Paul was born. Marie was a studious and very intelligent child, speaking Russian and French fluently and even when young she exhibited a dynamic personality. Her parents split up in 1859 and her mother took her and her brother back to her parents’ home in Tcherniakovka.

The Umbrella by Marie Bashkirtseff (1883)

In May 1870, when Marie was eleven years old, her grandfather, Stepan Babanin, her brother Paul, and a motley collection of other family members, along with the family physician, Doctor Walitsky, left Tcherniakovka for good and embarked on a voyage of discovery around Russia and Europe. The extensive journey lasted almost two years until the weary travellers settled down in a villa situated in the foothills of the Mediterranean Alps overlooking the coastal resort of Nice. It was at this idyllic setting that fourteen year old Marie started to dabble with her artwork and also started to write her diary. This diary which was eventually published in 1887, three years after her death, was to become a best seller. In it she would write about her life on the Côte d’Azur with her extended family, her teenage infatuations, her dreams for the future and her loves. She had a fixed idea of what her diary would be all about, writing:

“…If I don’t live enough to be illustrious, this diary will be interesting for naturalists; the life of a woman is always curious, day by day, without affectation, as if nobody in the world should ever read it and at the same time with the intention of being read; I’m sure that you will find me pleasant… and I mean everything. Otherwise, what’s the point in writing? Apart from this, you will see that I say everything…”

Portrait of Mme X by Marie Bashkirtseff (c.1884)

Marie Bashkirtseff received a well rounded education. She was home-tutored with the family employing governesses and private tutors and she studied a number of languages including English, German, Italian, Greek and Latin. She was well versed in history, mythology and literature and it was that knowledge that found its way onto the pages of her diary. She also developed a great love of music and singing. She was an accomplished pianist, played the harp and was a talented singer and she hoped that one day she would become a professional mezzo-soprano. This plan for her future was to be dashed after a severe bout of laryngitis which irrevocably affected her vocal chords. She was devastated at this turn of events, once musing in her diary about what could have been:

“…My God! What a beautiful voice I had! It was powerful, dramatic, captivating; it gave chills in the back. And now I have nothing, not even a voice to speak with!…”

With music being a thing of the past, Marie needed another outlet for her exuberance and it came in 1877, when, aged nineteen, she decided to embark on a career as an artist. For this to happen she decided that Nice was not the place to be and insisted that the whole family should move to the European capital of art, Paris, for it was here she believed she would receive the best art tuition and be able to study the paintings of the Masters. The family opposed the move, not because they didn’t want to move to the capital but because of Marie’s fragile health. They believed that the warm climate of Nice was more suitable for Marie than the colder, damper climate of Paris. It was not because of their wish to stay warm and enjoy the sunny climate of the south but it was because Marie had been diagnosed with irreversible tuberculosis and doctors had warned against such a move. However the dominant and forceful character of Marie won the day and that year they left the south of France and moved north.

Portrait of a Woman by Marie Bashkirtseff (1882)

The Parisian establishment, which was in the forefront of art tuition, was the École des Beaux-Arts but this was not an option for Marie as, at that time, women were not allowed to enrol for study at that academy. Marie then chose to enrol at the Académie Julian, which was the only academy at the time which accepted female students, albeit the men and women trained separately. However the training for females was similar, even allowing women to participate in life drawing classes with nude models, which was frowned upon by other art establishments. It was founded by Rodolphe Julian in 1868. It was a private studio school for art students, which, as well as training aspiring male artists to pass the exams to enter the hallowed and prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, it also offered independent training in arts to wannabe female painters. Whilst there Marie received excellent artistic training under the tutelage of the likes of Rodolphe Julian, Tony Robert-Fleury, Gustave Boulanger, and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre. She revelled in this world of art and even the glamour of her social life took a back seat as she commented in her diary:

“…as for me, although feeling pleased of being in the ballroom, I’ve been thinking all the time in a pastel painted this morning with which I wasn’t satisfied…“

Marie was a perfectionist in all that she did and was highly competitive. This latter characteristic manifested itself in her fierce competition with her fellow student, the Swiss-born painter, Louise Catherine Breslau. They both exhibited works at the Paris Salons and Marie’s competitive nature soon turned to jealousy, jealous of the artistic ability of her fellow student. She looked upon Breslau as a competitor in the race to be recognised by the art critics and the public. Breslau was two years older than Bashkirtseff but was to outlive her by more than forty years and so was able to consolidate her reputation within the art world.

Parisienne, Portrait of Irma by Marie Bashkirtseff (1882)

Marie Bashkirtseff, besides her dedication to painting, developed another love whilst living in Paris. She was drawn to the feminist movement . Hubertine Auclert had founded the feminist movement known as Le Droit des Femmes in 1876, the year before Marie had arrived in Paris. It was a movement that supported women’s right to have the vote. Marie, using the pseudonym, Pauline Orell, applied her innate ability as a writer to produce articles in support of feminism. She had some of her writings published in La Citoyenne, a bi-monthly feminist newspaper first published Hubertine Auclert in Paris in 1881. In the March 1881 edition an article by Baskirtseff appeared which linked her artistic career with that of the plight of women. She cynically wrote:

“…I will not surprise anyone by saying that women are excluded from the School of Fine Arts as they are almost everywhere. Yet we admit them to the School of Medicine, why not at the École des Beaux-Arts. Perhaps one fears scandals that would cause the element in this female comedies environment…”

Jeune Femme Lisant la Question du Divorce d'Alexandre Dumas (Portrait of a Young Woman Reading) by Marie Bashkirtseff (1880) — Jeune Femme Lisant la Question du Divorce d’Alexandre Dumas (Portrait of a Young Woman Reading) by Marie Bashkirtseff (1880)

In 1880 , Marie Bashkirtseff submitted a beautiful work of portraiture to the Salon. It was entitled Jeune femme lisant la Question du Divorce d’Alexandre Dumas (Portrait of a young woman reading). It was not simply a portrait of a young woman, it was a work of art with a message. We see before us a portrait of a beautiful and stylish young woman who is totally engrossed in reading her book, The Divorce Question by Alexandre Dumas. The sitter for this portrait is thought to be Marie’s cousin, Dina Babanine, who two years after Marie’s death would marry and become the Countess Toulouse-Lautrec. There is a feminist statement behind this depiction. There is the message that beautiful women have intelligence. The title of the painting tells us the title of the book she is reading. It was the 1880 work by the well-known author, Alexandre Dumas, who was discussing divorce and the French laws appertaining to the subject. It was a controversial book and in some ways a ground-breaking one. The serious and intellectual nature of the book was a statement that women do not, as believed by many, especially men, only read frothy romantic novels. The artist was also making a statement regarding the important position of women in society. In this case, it was about her aspirations for female independence. The right to divorce and break free from an abusive relationship, the same right as men to be trained to become an artist, the women’s right to vote. It was simply her belief regarding the right of women to be equal to men.

Portrait de la Comtesse Dina de Toulouse-Lautrec, by Marie Bashkirtseff (1883)

Dina Babanin featured in another of Bashkirtseff’s works. It was a work in pastels, simply entitled Dina Babanine and was completed in 1883. Dina was Marie’s cousin and also a close life-long friend. Her early upbringing was in total contrast to that of Marie. Dina and her brother had been brought up in a very disruptive household. Her father had his marriage to their mother annulled making his children illegitimate. This beautifully crafted portrait depicts the beauty of Marie’s cousin. She wears a pale blue décolleté peignoir with a wide delicate white collar. Her face, neck and chest have been depicted using delicately blended light tones which enhance the youthful beauty of the sitter. Her full lips are pressed together but it is her eyes that catch our attention. They are dark blue in colour. She does not quite focus upon us. There is a feeling that she has lost her power of concentration and there is a blankness about her stare. Like all inquisitive and discerning observers we search for imperfections of her beauty but they are hard to find. Maybe we comment upon the slight cleft of her chin. Maybe we remark upon the flatness of her nose. However we cannot but acknowledge her overall beauty. Look at the composition. It is all about the female. There is no jewellery, no flowers attached to her simple but revealing dress with its plunging neckline. The artist wanted nothing to divert our attention from her cousin’s beauty and in that she has unquestionably succeeded.

In my next blog I will conclude her life story, look at some of her most famous paintings and reveal more about her diary.

Hendrik Willem Mesdag – his seascapes and Panorama Mesdag

The person I am featuring today was an artist of great talent, an avid art collector and an owner of a museum, which housed many of the works he had collected during his lifetime. I talked briefly about him in my previous blog which was dedicated to his friend Jozef Israels. Let me introduce you to the marine painter, Hendrik Willem Mesdag.

Along the Dutch Coast by Hendrik Mesdag (1882)

Mesdag was born in Groningen in February 1831. His father Klaas was a banker and was also active in politics and his mother was Johanna Wilhelmina van Giffen, who came from a wealthy family of silversmiths. She died when Hendrik was four years old. Hendrik had two brothers, Gilles and Taco and a sister, Ellegonda. As schoolchildren, both he and his older brother showed and early artistic talent and their father, who was also an amateur artists, decided to send them for some artistic training. They both received drawing lessons from Bernardus Buijs who had also taught Jozef Israels and later received drawing tuition from Hinderikus Egenberger. However, for Hendrik, once he left school at the age of nineteen, art became just an enjoyable pastime, and his future, like that of his father, lay in banking. Hendrik Mesdag joined his father’s bank where he remained for the next sixteen years.

Fishing Boats in the Surf by Hendrik Mesdag

In April 1856, when Hendrik was twenty-five years old, he married Sientja van Houten, who would later become an accomplished artist in her own right. She was one of seven children brought up by a wealthy family. Her father owned a large sawmill just outside Groningen. Her cousin was the renowned painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

Hendrik’s love of art during his days as a banker did not diminish, in fact in 1861 he enrolled as a pupil at the Academie Minerva, a Dutch art school based in Groningen. In 1863 Sientje gave birth to their son Nicolaas, who was called Klaas. Hendrik’s love of art and his desire to become a full-time professional artist came to a head in 1866 when he decided to give up his work as a banker and concentrate on his art. To give up a lucrative job took courage but it also required funding and for this he had to thank his wife who had received a sizeable inheritance when her father died and she was able to support him financially.

Pinks in the breakers by Hendrik Mesdag (1880)

Lawrence Alma-Tadema advised Hendrik to go to Brussels to study art and in the autumn of 1866 he goes to the Brussels for three years and studied art under the tutorship of Willem Roelofs, the Dutch painter and watercolourist. Fate played a hand in the artistic life of Mesdag in 1868 when he and his family went to Norderney for a holiday. Norderney is one of the East Frisian islands off the North Sea coast. It is here that Mesdag realises his love of the sea and seascapes and when he returns to Brussels he starts collecting paintings which depict the sea and it is from this time that he decides he wants to be a seascape artist.

Gales in Scheveningen by Hendrik Mesdag (1894)

Once he completes his three year study course in Brussels in 1869, the family move to The Hague where the sea views at the nearby coastal village of Scheveningen, would be plentiful. Hendrik was admitted to The Hague’s Pulchri Studio Painters’ Society. The society was formed in 1847 and was a result of mounting dissatisfaction among the young artists in The Hague who complained about their being little or no opportunities for training in art and developing their artistic skills and so the Pulchri Studio was established. It was also to be an artistic talking-shop where artists could exchange views and ideas.

It was in 1869 that Mesdag worked on his painting Les Brisants de la Mere du Nord (Breakers of the North Sea) which, when it was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1870, was awarded the gold medal. In September 1871, tragedy struck Hendrik and Sentije when their eight year old son Klaas, their only child, died. It was from that time onwards that Sientje took up painting.

Hendrik Mesdag’s collection of paintings had grown so large that it filled his house and in 1878 he decided to build a museum in the garden, next to his house, to accommodate his ever-growing collection. That same year, his father Klaas died aged 85. Although most of the works of art by Hendrik Mesdag were seascapes and paintings depicting bomschuiten (fishing boats) one of his most famous works came about in 1879 when he received a commission from a group of Belgian entrepreneurs to paint a panorama. A panorama or panoramic painting was a massive work of art, which depicts a wide and all-encompassing view of a particular subject. They could be depictions of a battle, historical event or a landscape and were very popular in the nineteenth century, a time before television or the cinema. The commission was simple – the group wanted Mesdag to complete a painting without any borders ! The Belgians gave Mesdag free rein on the subject of the panorama and he was allowed to pick his team of artists to complete the task. The commission intrigued Mesdag and he agreed to it and formed a team of artists which included Théophile de Bock and twenty-three-year-old George Hendrik Breitner, who was still a student at The Hague Academy , the artist, Bernard Blommers , as well as his wife Sientje.

Mesdag decided this was an opportunity to depict his beloved coastal village of Scheveningen.

In March 1881, Mesdag and his team of painters set to work on the panorama. They made numerous sketches of the town and the surrounding coast and slowly over the next four and a half months the panorama often referred to as Panorama Mesdag evolved. The work when completed was 14 metres high with a circumference of 120 metres, a square footage of 1600 square metres. The finished work was housed in a purpose-built museum in The Hague and could be viewed from an observation gallery in the centre of the room. When one stood at this central observation point, it was if one was standing on top of a high sand dune and one could observe the sea, the beaches and the coastal village of Scheveningen. The museum housing the panorama was opened to the public on August 1^st 1881 but after five years it went bankrupt. Mesdag , who was concerned as to the fate of his panoramic painting, bought the museum and kept it open despite it losing money year on year.

Panorama Mesdag as seen from central observation platform

It is still open to the public and it is still one of the The Hague’s greatest tourist attractions. Can you imagine what it would be like to stand on that central observation platform – take a look now at http://panorama-mesdag.nl/ and see this wonderful work, which is the largest circular canvas in Europe.

In his later years Mesdag received many honours. In 1889, he was elected chairman of Pulchri Studio Painters’ Society, the society he joined twenty years earlier, and remained in that post until 1907. He received the royal distinction of Officer in the Order of Oranje-Nassau in 1894. In February 1901 Mesdag is promoted to Commander of the Order of the Dutch Lion.

Hendrik Willem Mesdag and his wife Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, (1906)

In March 1909 his beloved Sientje died, aged 74. Two years later in 1911, Hendrik Mesdag is taken seriously ill and although he recovers, his health slowly deteriorates. Hendrik Willem Mesdag died in The Hague in July 1915, aged 84.

One may compare the seascapes and depictions of fishing boats with the artist, Jozef Israels, whom I looked at in my last blog. Israels’ depictions were often full of angst and doom and gloom whereas Mesdag’s works were simply depictions of what he saw, without any need to have the works populated by people and all had a story behind them. I end with a quote from the author, Frederick W Morton who wrote an artcle in the May 1903 edition of the American art journal, Brush and Pencil . He wrote about Mesdag’s seascapes:

“…Other artists have painted more witchery into their canvases, more tenseness and terror. A Mesdag has not the glint of colour one finds in a Clays or the awful meaning one reads in Homer. On the contrary, many of his canvases are rather heavy in tone and are works calculated to inspire quiet contemplation rather than to excite nervous. But he is a great marine-painter because he thoroughly knows his subject – he has sat by it, brooded over it, studied it in its every phase – and by straightforward methods, without the trick of palette or adventitious accessories, has sought to make and has succeeded in making his canvases convey the same impression to the spectator that the ocean conveyed to him…”

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Much of the information for this article came from the Mesdag Documentation Society and their excellent website Mesdag.com (http://www.mesdag.com/index.html)