Tag: Portraiture

Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat. Part 2

The Portrait Artist

Léon Bonnat painting a portrait of artist, Alfred Roll (1918)

Léon Bonnat was born in Bayonne, France and lived there until he was thirteen years old.  Léon’s family then moved to Madrid where his father took on a book shop.  Léon’s love of art began to materialise after he went to live in the Spanish capital and, to encourage him, his father would take his son to the Prado.  He remembered those museum visits, saying:

“…I was brought up in the cult of Velasquez. I was very young, in Madrid; my father, on bright days such as one only sees in Spain, sometimes took me to the Prado Museum, where we did long stops in Spanish cinemas. I always left them with a feeling of deep admiration for Vélasquez… “.

Italian Woman with Child by Léon Bonnat

In 1853, when Léon was twenty, his father died and the family returned to their French hometown of Bayonne.  After studying at the Ecole de Dessin de Bayonne, he went to live in Paris and study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.  In Paris, he was able to view paintings by the great Masters of French and Dutch art and particularly remembers seeing the works of Rembrandt and the influence his works had on him, commenting:

“…What is striking about Rembrandt is the power, the strength and the brilliance. He represents life in all its intensity. We see his characters, we talk with them, he resuscitates and revives an entire era. a marvellous and unique gift of interpretation, he joins the sensitivity, the goodness of a heart which vibrates to all the miseries, to all the joys, to all the emotions of humanity. He does not belong to any school. He has opened the new path which closed behind him…”

Roman Girl at a Fountain by Léon Bonnat (1875)

In 1857 he came second in the Prix de Rome competition and left Paris and spent three years at the Villa Medici.  The Villa Medici, now the property of the French State was founded by Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and has housed the French Academy in Rome and welcomed winners of the Rome Prize since 1803, so as to promote and represent artistic creation in all its fields.

L’Assomption de Marie by Léon Bonnat (1869)

L’Assomption de Marie in situ in the Church Saint-André à Bayonne (Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France)

In 1869 Bonnat was awarded the Medal of Honor of the Salon for his painting L’Assomption.

The Martyrdom of Saint Denis by Léon Bonnat (1880)

One of Bonnat’s last religious paintings was his 1880 painting entitled The Martyrdom of Saint Denis.  St Denis was a 3rd-century Christian martyr and saint.  Denis was Bishop of Paris and through his speeches, made many conversions but he was looked upon by the local Roman priest as a danger and had Denis together with his faithful companions, the priest Rusticus and deacon Eleutherius, executed.  The place of the execution, by beheading, was on the highest hill in Paris, which is now known a Montmartre.   Denis was said to be against the beheading taking place at this spot and “folklore” has it that after Denis was beheaded, the corpse is said to have picked up his severed head and walked ten kilometres from the top of the hill, and during that entire walk he preached a sermon. 

Basilica of St Denis, Paris

Detail of the north portal sculpture; the martyrdom of Saint Denis, Eleuthere and Rustique 

Denis finally collapsed at the place where he wanted to be buried, the spot where now stands the Basilica of St Denis and which is also the burial place of the Kings of France.  Saint Denis is the patron saint of both France and Paris.

View of Jerusalem by Léon Bonnat

Although, as we will see later, Bonnat was best known for his portraiture and his early historical and religious subjects, but his landscapes and Orientalist depictions are looked upon as among his most intensely personal and beautifully crafted works.  Léon Bonnat travelled to the Middle East in 1868 together with a party that included the French painter, Jean-Léon Gérôme, his pupil Paul-Marie Lenoir,  the Dutch artist Willem de Farmas de Testas and Gérôme’s brother-in-law Albert Goupil.  The journey began in January 1868 at the Egyptian port of Alexandria and by the third of April, the group had arrived at the gates of Jerusalem.   Willem de Famars Testas recalled their first glimpse of the walled city:

“…The first glimpse of Jerusalem was gripping, the sun-illuminated city was silhouetted against a violet thundery light, while the outlying land lay under the shadow of clouds…”

Léon Bonnat recorded the impressions and the specifics of their arrival at the gates of Jerusalem in April of that year in one of his may oil on canvas sketches entitled View of Jerusalem.

An Arab Sheik by Léon Bonnart (c.1870)

One of Léon’s works from this period was entitled An Arab Sheik which he completed once back in Paris.  It is thought that Bonnat’s depiction emerged from combining multiple resources such as the French model who posed for the seated figure; the saddle we see which Bonnat brought back from his travels and a multitude of sketched notations which he made during his travels in the Middle East.  Combining all this data Léon managed to create a painting that appears authentic, and yet, it is stereotypical of what Europeans believed about the Arabic world and its people such as the way the sheik holds his sword depicting his strength and fierceness and enhances how Europeans believed that that cultures in the Middle East and elsewhere were ruled by violence, in contrast to the supposedly more “civilized” societies of Europe and North America.

Christ on the Cross by Léon Bonnat(1674)

Bonnat’s haunting work entitled Christ on the Cross was commissioned in 1873 for the courtroom of the Cour d’Assises of the Palais de Justice in Paris.  The reasoning behind the commission was that it would embody divine justice in the eyes of the accused and by reminding them of the sufferings of Christ to save the fishermen. The painting was submitted  at the 1874 Salon.  The painting measures 1.59 meters in width and 2.27 meters in height. Bonnat’s depiction fundamentally renews the traditional representation of Christ on the cross. Christ is shown with a crown of thorns, his body is muscular and pale, and he wears a simple white loincloth. Blood is visible from the nails piercing his hands and feet. The background is dark and sombre. The crucified Christ is characterised in an extremely realistic way, accentuating Christ’s suffering due to the torture he received. Christ on the Cross is one of the best known and best loved crucifixion paintings of the western world. The painting can be viewed at the Petit Palais, Museum of Fine Arts of the City of Paris.

Victor Hugo by Léon Bonnat (1879)

For an artist to survive financially he or she must sell their work.  Once back in France, after his three-year stay at Villa Medici in Rome, Léon realised that the sale of his historical and religious paintings had fallen off and he had to look for another painting genre which would attract more buyers.  While Bonnat created many religious and historical works, his long-lasting fame rested on his exceptional career as a portrait painter. In an era before photography became the norm, painted portraits were central for chronicling the likenesses of important individuals, and Bonnat became one of the most sought-after portraitists of the French Third Republic and beyond. His sitters included presidents, politicians, writers, scientists, artists, and members of high society.

Jules Ferry by Léon Bonnat (1888) Jules François Camille Ferry was a French statesman and republican philosopher. He was one of the leaders of the Moderate Republicans and served as Prime Minister of France from 1880 to 1881 and 1883 to 1885.

Bonnat artistic brilliance as a portrait artist was his extraordinary skill in capturing not just a physical likeness but also the sitter’s charm, personality and social standing. His portraits are typified by their unruffled gravity, psychological perception, and scrupulous attention to every detail, whether it be the texture of fabrics to the detailed features of the face and hands. Bonnat often used dark, neutral backgrounds, which allowed viewers to focus entirely onto the subject, which were often illuminated by a carefully controlled light source, a technique evocative of the Spanish painter, Velázquez.

Portrait of Marthe and Therese Galoppe by Léon Bonnat (1889)

Marthe and Therese Galoppe were prominent figures in 19th-century France, known for their social standing and involvement in Parisian society. The painting captures their youthful beauty and grace, reflecting the evolving role of women in society during that time. Bonnat’s portrayal of the Galoppe sisters is significant as it showcases women not just as muses but as individuals with their own identities, challenging traditional views of women in art.

Armand Fallières by Léon Bonnat (1907) French statesman who was President of France from 1906 to 1913.

Among his most famous sitters were famous figures were the statesman Adolphe Thiers, the revered author Victor Hugo, the pioneering scientist Louis Pasteur, fellow painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, and French Presidents like Jules Ferry and Armand Fallières. Bonnat’s portraits served not only as personal records but also as official images that helped shape the public perception of these influential individuals. His success in this genre brought him considerable wealth and prestige.

Portrait of Léon Gambetta by Léon Bonnat (1888) Gambetta was a French lawyer and republican politician who proclaimed the French Third Republic in 1870 and played a prominent role in its early government.

Madame Pasca by Léon Bonnat (1874) Alice Marie Angèle Pasquier was better known by her stage name Madame Pasca, a French stage actress.

Bonnat’s methodology when it came to creating portraits was known to be both thorough and painstaking. He demanded of his sitter numerous meetings so that he could carefully observe them in order to capture subtle gradations of expression and posture and because of this, he was able to achieve prolonged observations which allowed him to realise a high degree of naturalism along with psychological depth.  However, Bonnat’s long processes to achieve a finished portrait did not always please the sitters.  Although he was minded as to what the sitter wanted in the finished portrait, Bonnat refused to flatter his subject and simply strived for an unvarnished truth, but still conveying the dignity appropriate to the subject’s station in life. His commitment to authenticity along with his undoubted technical mastery in delivering form and texture, achieved the finished product being solid, present, and intensely real.

Portrait of Jules Grévy by Léon Bonnat (1880). Jules Grévy was  a French lawyer and politician who served as President of France from 1879 to 1887.

Léon Bonnat who had benefited, following the intervention of the mayor of Bayonne, Jules Labat, when he was granted a municipal scholarship from the city to study the Fine Arts in Madrid and then later in Paris, announced his intention to give his native city the gigantic art collection he had built up.  Léon Bonnat’s dedication to art extended well beyond his lifetime through this act of extraordinary generosity. Léon had no direct heirs, and decided to bequeath his extensive personal art collection, along with many of his own works, to his hometown of Bayonne.

Musée Bonnat-Helleu in Bayonne, France

It was during the latter part of the nineteenth century that Bonnat had achieved financial stability and was able to indulge his passion for collecting art, especially drawings. He acquired sketches, drawings and prints by Rembrandt, Poussin, and Watteau as well as many others.  Eventually, his collection included drawings and paintings from the best of his students and colleagues as well. Like many collectors, Bonnat not only loved the art he had acquired, but he also hoped to share it with a larger public and so he proposed the idea of building a museum in his native Bayonne that would ultimately house his own collection. With his deep roots in the region, continuing family ties to Bayonne, and undoubtedly a sense of gratitude for the support he’d received as a fledgling painter, Bonnat worked tirelessly at developing the new museum. 

Léon Bonnat, installing his collection at the Musée Bonnat, Bayonne.

In 1902, he personally installed a large portion of his own unparalleled collection in the new Musée Bonnat.  The collection was later enriched by the donation of the collection of Paul Helleu and his wife Alice, leading to its current name, the Musée Bonnat-Helleu.  The chosen location of the museum was located at the corner of the two streets, Jacques-Laffitte and Frédéric-Bastiat, in the city centre, near the church of Saint-André where Léon Bonnat’s painting, Assumption of the Virgin can be seen. In 1896, the first stone of the future museum was laid by the Bayonne mayor Léo Pouzac and the classical-style building, in limestone, was completed eighteen months later. Inaugurated in 1901.  When the Bonnat Museum opened, the artist and collector came to set up his collection himself, while writing a will by which he bequeathed almost all of his works to the National Museums with the obligation to deposit them in Bayonne.

Self portrait by Léon Bonnat (1916)

Léon Bonnat died in Monchy-Saint-Éloi,  a commune in the Oise department in northern France, on September 8th 1922, aged 89.   Léon had never married and lived most of his life with his mother and sister. 

Fredrik Kruseman

During a period of very low temperatures and snowy conditions, it might seem appropriate to focus on art depicting sunshine, blue skies, and warm azure-coloured seas. However, today’s blog will start with featuring beautiful depictions of snow and ice and explore how people who experienced these conditions seemed to find enjoyment in them. Many such depictions are conjured up by nineteenth century Dutch artists and today’s blog is all about Fredrik Marinus Kruseman the Dutch painter who specialized in Romantic-style landscapes, and winter scenes, which made up about two thirds of his oeuvre.

Fredrik Kruseman was born in the Netherlands city of Haarlem on July 12th, 1816. He was the fourth son of Jacoba Mooij and her husband Benjamin Philip Kruseman, a Lutheran hat-maker. Fredrik had two older brothers, Hendrik and Jakob and a younger brother Benjamin. He also had two cousins who became famous painters. Cornelis Kruseman a painter of historical and biblical subjects who later became Director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Amsterdam and Jan Adam Kruseman, a historical painter and portraitist.

A Winter’s Scene with Skaters on a Frozen Waterway by Fredrik Kruser (1858)

Fredrik was tutored by many of the great Dutch landscape artists of the nineteenth century school. In 1833, aged seventeen, he was apprenticed to Jan Reekers who taught him the skills required to draw from nature and the intricacies of perspective. Between 1832 and 1833 he also attended classes at the Vocational City Drawing School in Haarlem and studied painting with Nicholas Roosenboom, who had a studio near where Fredrik lived. It was in September 1833 that Fredrik Kruseman first exhibited his landscape work. It was at the Exhibition for Living Masters in The Hague. In 1835, Fredrik moved to the Gooi, an area around Hilversum, in the centre of the Netherlands. Here he took advanced studies with Jan van Ravenswaay. He also studied briefly with the landscape painter, Barend Cornelis Koekkoek.

During his twenties and thirties, Kruseman travelled widely throughout Northern Europe before finally setting up home in Brussels in 1841. He returned to the Netherlands and lived, between 1852 and 1856, on the outskirts of Haarlem. After that four-year sojourn he returned to the Belgian capital where he remained for the rest of his life.

Winter Landscape with Skaters and Wood Gatherers at a Ruin by Fredrik Kruseman

Kruseman’s 1845 painting entitled Winter Landscape with Skaters and Wood Gatherers at a Ruin depicts a frozen canal with skaters, walkers on a path along the shore, a picturesque castle and strange bare trees. Men scavenge for wood for their home fires. Life is hard at this time of year.

A Winter Landscape with Skaters on a Frozen River by Fredrik Kruseman (1862)

Kruseman’s painting entitled A Winter Landscape with Skaters on a Frozen River is a beautiful depiction and is a Romantic observance and veneration of nature. The sky dominates the paintingfxf. Before us we have a frozen waterway on which are a number of skaters bordered by snow-covered banks. On the right bank there is a refreshment table. We can also pick out a fallen skater in the left of the foreground and a young couple with their dog crossing the centre of the frozen river close to a wide crack in the ice. In the left middle-ground we can just make out a sailing boat frozen to the riverbank. The colours Kruseman has used are cool blue-grey tonality over the black mirror-like surface of the ice.

Wintry River Landscape with Windmill by Fredrik Kruseman (1844)

Although Kruseman is best known for his Romantic wintry landscape paintings he completed many other landscape works.

Monk Meditating near a Ruin by Moonlight by Fredrik Kruseman (1862)

One notable romantic piece is his 1862 painting titled Monk Meditating near a Ruin by Moonlight. The ruin of the title is the abbey in Villers-la-Ville near Brussels, which used to be one of the most significant Cistercian abbeys in Europe and close to where the painter lived for a while. In the right foreground of this nocturnal scene, we see a monk meditating near the overgrown ruin. The abbey was founded in 1146 and was a former Cistercian Abbey located in the very heart of Walloon Brabant.

Village Street on a Sunny Day by Fredrik Kruseman (ca. 1835)

Landscape with two Farmers by Fredrik Kruseman

In the foreground of this atmospheric work, we see two peasants talking to each other. One holds on to his ox, while the other is accompanied by his dog. The background consists of a wide landscape with a few hills. Once again the sky plays a dominant part of the painting.

Tranquil Landscape with Women Washing by a Stream with Cattle and Sheep by Fredrik Kruseman

 A River Landscape with Cows and Sheep by Fredrik Kruseman

In his winter scenes of frozen rivers, Fredrik Kruseman cleverly produced jet-black mirror surface of the ice and the marks left by skaters. Some of his most famous depictions were set in the fading light of early evening and combined the wintry scene with a background glow of a setting sun or a bright light emanating from the interior of a cottage or house.

Fredrik Marinus Kruseman worked well into the late 1870s and died in St Gilles, a suburb of Brussels, on May 25th 1882.

Jean-Jacques Henner

In my previous blog regarding the Dutch painter Thérèse Schwartze I mentioned that one of her early art tutors was Jean-Jacques Henner, the French painter famed for his portraiture.  Today I am going to focus on his life and his many artworks.

Jean-Jacques Henner

Henner was born on March 5th 1829 at the Alsatian town of Bernwiller.  Henner came from a family of Alsatian farmers who had settled in Bernwiller in the Haut-Rhin. He was the youngest of six siblings of George Guillaume Polycarpe Henner and Madeleine Henner (née Wadel).  He had two older sisters, Maria Anne and Madeleine and three older brothers, Séraphin, Grégoire and Ignace. He grew up in this farming community, but despite their modest financial situation, his parents sent him to the College of Altkirch where he studied drawing. His teacher was Charles Goutzwiller who noticed his rapid progress and encouraged him to move to Strasbourg and study at the studio of Gabriel-Christophe Guérin. His artistic studies continued when he enroled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris as a pupil of Michel-Martin Drolling,  a neoclassic French painter noted especially as a history painter and portraitist. In 1851 he was tutored by another French artist, François-Édouard Picot, famed for his mythological, religious and historical paintings.   

Adam and Eve find the Body of Abel by Jean-Jacques Henner (1858)

In 1848, he entered the École des Beaux Arts in Paris and in 1858 after two failed attempts he won the coveted Grand Prix de Rome award, which was a French scholarship for arts students.  His submission was his painting entitled Adam and Eve find the Body of Abel.  The prize for the winner was a bursary that allowed them to stay at the Villa Medici in Rome, for three to five years at the expense of the state. The painting can be seen at the Musée d’Orsay.

Mountains on the Outskirts of Rome by Jean-Jacques Henner (c.1861)

During his five-year stay in Rome, he was guided by Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, a French Neoclassical painter.  Like many artists, Henner was captivated by Italy and spent many hours in museums reproducing the works of the painters that he respected. He also had plenty of time during his five-year stay to travel around the country, visiting Florence, Venice and Naples in which time he completed a number of small landscape paintings.  His works at that time showed his appreciation of past masters and it was Titian and Correggio who influenced him the most. In 1864 Henner returned to Paris and brought back copies of works by masters and a number of luminous landscapes.

Rome from the terrace of the Villa Medici by Jean-Jacques Henner (1860)

During those five years in Rome Henner painted this work at the Villa Medici where he stayed between 1859 and 1864. This is not simply a view of the Eternal City as observed from the villa. Once he had painted the garden, Henner then populated the terrace with groups of what he believed were “typical” characters, which he had often seen in real life and are simply identifiable by their clothes, monks, peasants, and elegant ladies. All are depicted in front of the classical panorama of the city, in which one can see the silhouette of Saint Peter’s Basilica in the background.

Masure dans la campagne de Rome (Dilapiated House in the Countryside of Rome) by Jean-Jacques Henner (c.1863)

La Chaste Suzanne by Jean-Jacques Henner (1864)

Henner had his painting Bather Asleep exhibited at the Salon in 1863 and at the following year’s Salon his painting La Chaste Suzanne was exhibited. The Biblical episode depicting Suzanne bathing was a popular one for painters and it was above all an opportunity for various artists to paint a beautiful nude. Jean-Jacques Henner sent back his version to the French Academy which he completed whilst in his last year of his residence at the Villa Medici in Rome. For Henner, this was a compulsory exercise, supposed to demonstrate the student’s progress and their skill in execution, and for the Academy to see if their prize winner was advancing artistically.

Sacred Love and Profane Love by Titian (1514)

Henner almost certainly took his inspiration from respected examples left by the great masters’ depiction of nudes which he had seen whilst in the Italian capital. It is thought that Henner was influenced Titian’s 1514 painting entitled Sacred Love and Profane Love which was at the Galleria Borghese in Rome. Henner’s work was not well-received and was harshly criticised for the heaviness and lack of graciousness in the model’s body. It was also criticised for the artificiality of the subject which although being put forward as a history/biblical painting offered little more than a depiction of a bather. However the propensity of ridding any narrative self-justification in painting the nude, and so giving it as a subject in itself, was becoming more common in the work of many contemporary artists, such as Courbet.

Séraphin Henner (brother) by Jean-Jacques Henner (c.1881)

Grégoir Henner (brother) by Jean-Jacques Henner (1889)

While a student in Paris Henner was particularly interested in portraiture, and during his frequent visits home to Alsace he would complete many portraits of his family as well as local dignitaries and scenes of Alsatian peasant life.

Eugénie and Jules Henner by Jean-Jacques Henner (c.1865)

Eugénie and Jules were two of the three children of his brother, Séraphin and his wife, Madeleine. Henner was very close to his nephew and niece and he paid for violin lessons for Jules and piano lessons for Eugenie when they were little. Henner had no children of his own, and on his death, he bequeathed them all that he possessed. Here, Eugénie and Jules are depicted together in their childhood.

Paul Henner by Jean-Jacques Henner (before 1867)

A rather sad portrait. Paul Henner was the third child of Séraphin and Madeleine Henner. He was born in 1860, but sadly died seven years later.

Byblis by Jean-Jacques Henner (c.1870)

In 1864 Henner returned to France and exhibited with great success at the Paris Salon between 1865 and 1903. During his early days back in France his works were of quasi-mythological subjects, such as his 1867 work entitled Byblis, which was exhibited at the 1867 Salon.

Jean-Jacques Henner in his Paris studio at 11 place Pigalle

Jean-Jacques Henner lived in rue La Bruyère and his studio was at 11 place Pigalle, where he lived from 1867.

L’Alsace. Elle Attend (Alsace, She Waits) by Jean-Jacques Henner (1871)

Jean-Jacques Henner’s birthplace was the region of Alsace and this north-east area of France borders Germany. With the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, Alsace and northern Lorraine were annexed to the new German Empire. At the conclusion of the First World War, the defeat of Germany, and the Treaty of Versailles, Alsace once again came under French control. In 1940, during the Second World War Alsace–Lorraine was occupied by Germany during the Second World War. Although it was never formally annexed, Alsace–Lorraine was incorporated into the Greater German Reich. With the defeat of Germany in 1945 Alsace returned to French rule. Henner’s 1871 painting entitled L’Alsace. Elle Attend had political overtones. It depicts a young Alsatian woman in mourning and is a political comment on the German annexation of the province after the Franco-Prussian War. The patriotic image was very popular and achieved a wide circulation when it was engraved by Léopold Flameng.
L’Alsace. Elle Attend meaning Alsace, she awaits, was commissioned on the initiative of Eugénie Kestner, a member of the Thann industrial family from Alsace. On completion it was given Léon Gambetta, a French lawyer and republican politician, who was one of the fiercest opponents of the relinquishment of the Alsace-Lorraine region to the new German Empire following the war of 1870. Following the defeat of France by the Prussian armies a sense of fervent and heightened patriotism followed. Henner’s painting quickly became looked upon as a symbol of Alsace’s suffering, a pain shared by the painter who was very attached to the region of his birth. The painting depicts a young Alsatian woman in mourning, unassuming but gracious.

Donna sul divano nero (Woman on Black Divan) by Jean-Jacques Henner (1869)

At that time, Henner had assumed a naturalistic style which can be seen in his painting entitled Woman on a Black Divan, which was exhibited at the Salon of 1869 and now is housed at the Mulhouse, Musée des Beaux-Arts. A smaller version of this painting also included a rosette in the red, white and blue colours of France, pinned onto the traditional black Alsatian bow, gives the painting its patriotic significance without being pompous or anecdotal.

Magdalene in the Desert by Jean-Jacques Henner (1874)

After 1870 Henner’s entire work became a deliberation on the theme of death in various appearances. There were the depictions of Mary Magdalene in what became known as the Magdalene Series, such as Magdalene in the Desert, which was exhibited at the 1874 Salon, and Magdalene Weeping, which he completed in 1885.

Die Magadalena by Jean-Jacques Henner (Exhibited at the 1878 Salon)

La Magdaleine by Jean-Jacques Henner

Henner complted many more Magdalene paintings.

The Dead Christ by Jean-Jacques Henner (c.1884)

Jesus at the Tomb by Jean-Jacques Henner (c.1879)

There was also a number of works in Henner’s Dead Christ series with paintings such as Jesus at the Tomb, which was exhibited at the 1879 Salon and is now part of the Musée d’Orsay collection and the painting entitled Dead Christ which was exhibited at the 1884 Salon and now hangs at the Musée Beaux-Arts in Lille.

Portrait of Madame Laura Leroux by Jean-Jacques Henner

Jean-Jacques Henner will best be remembered for his portraiture which would provide him with financial stability. During his lifetime he completed many portraits of his family and famous people like his Portrait of Madame Laura Leroux. Laura Leroux-Revault was a French artist and painter. Her first teacher was her father, the painter Louis Hector Leroux and she later trained at the Académie Julian art school in Paris. She also trained under Jules Lefebvre and in Jean-Jacques Henner’s studio. The two artists were friends of her father.

Portrait of Jean-Gaspard-Félix Laché Ravaisson-Mollien by Jean-Jacques Henner (1889)

Another famous person to be immortalised by Henner was Jean-Gaspard-Félix Laché Ravaisson-Mollien, a French philosopher, said to be France’s most influential philosopher in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The Reader by Jean-Jacques Henner

La comtesse Kessler by Jean-Jacques Henner (c.1886)

Henner’s love of portraying nudes in historical or mythological settings was not his only love. He had a passion for the colour red and of portraying women with red hair !

Woman in Red by Jean-Jacques Henner

Les Naïades by Jean-Jacques Henner (1861). Painted for the Soyers’ dining room, 43 rue de Fauborg Saint-Honoré. Paris.

Alsatian Girl by Jean-Jacques Henner

L’Ecoliere by Jean-Jacques Henner

Over the years Henner tutored many aspiring painters. Between 1874 and 1889 he taught at what was termed “the studio of the ladies”, which he organized with Carolus-Duran, during the time when women were not allowed entry to the École des Beaux-Arts. Some of these students also served as his models such as Dorothy Tennant, Suzanne Valadon and Laura Leroux-Revault, daughter of his close friend Hector Leroux; Henner’s full-length portrait of Laura Leroux (shown earlier) is now at the Musée d’Orsay having been shown at the Paris Salon of 1898 and purchased by the French State.

Jean-Jacques Henner (Photograph by Nadar c.1900)

Jean-Jacques Henner died in Paris on July 23rd 1905 aged 76.

John White Alexander

During the nineteenth century, Paris was considered the art capital of the world.  Once the American Civil War had ended, aspiring American artists, who had the necessary funds, made their way across the Atlantic to the French capital and enrolled in one of the many ateliers there, to learn from the foremost painters of the time.  Many enrolled in the prestigious government-sponsored École des Beaux-Arts and in thriving private academies and studios.  They also had the chance to visit the Louvre and study the works of the Masters of byegone days and be impressed by the modern works on display at the Paris Salons, World’s Fairs, and other exhibitions, including the eight shows staged by the Impressionists.  These young Americans also submitted their own works to the various exhibitions.  Today I am looking at the life of one such American, John White Alexander.

The American photographer and art critic, John Nilson Laurvik, wrote about my featured artist in the December 1909 edition of the Metropolitan Magazine:

“…In the whole history of art one looks in vain for anything approaching his inimitable skill in the arrangement and play of his figures. . . .[He is] pre-eminent as a delineator of feminine beauty and charm…”

John White Alexander

John White Alexander was an illustrator, landscape and still life painter, printmaker, muralist, society portraitist,  and production designer of posters, costumes, scenes, lighting, and tableaux vivants.  Alexander was born on October 7th, 1856, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, which is now a part of the city of Pittsburgh.  He was orphaned at the age of five and was subsequently raised by his grandparents. When Alexander was 12 years old, he quit school and became a telegraph boy. One of his employers, Colonel Edward Jay Allen, the secretary/treasurer of the Pacific & Atlantic Telegraph Co., noticed Alexander’s aptitude for drawing and began working with him to help him develop that talent. So impressed with Alexander that he assumed guardianship of the young boy and persuaded him to return to the local High School for eighteen months.

Six years later, in December 1874, Alexander and a friend took a trip down the Ohio River,  earning money for food by sketching farmhouses and selling them to the locals.  It is said that Mark Twain read about their trip and a number of incidents on their voyage of exploration were used in his 1884 novel,  Huckleberry Finn.  Soon after his adventure, Alexander relocated to New York and spent three months seeking a job in New York City, visiting a number of publishers, showing his sketchbook.  He was finally employed as an office boy at Harper’s Weekly magazine where he was later promoted to illustrator and political cartoonist in 1875. He remained working for the magazine for three years. 

Alexander then travelled to Paris but found it very expensive and moved on to Germany and the city of Munich where he received his first formal artistic training at the Royal Academy, winning a bronze medal for drawing.    It was in Munich that Alexander first met Kentucky-born German painter, Frank Duveneck.  In 1878, Duveneck had opened a painting school in Munich.

Portrait of John White Alexander by Frank Davenek (1879)

However, like Paris, the cost of living in the city of Munich proved too onerous for Alexander and so he and Duveneck moved to the Bavarian town of Polling, a small town fifty miles east of Munich, where Duvenek set up another painting school and Alexander taught a private watercolour class in Duveneck’s school.  His students were known as the Duveneck Boys and included such aspiring painters as John Twachtman, Otto Henry Bacher, and Julius Rolshoven.  In 1879 Duvenek completed a portrait of John White Alexander.

Venice Canal Scene by John White Alexander (1880)

From 1879 to 1881, Alexander travelled and studied with Frank Duveneck in Italy. The pair spent the summer of 1880 in Venice.    One day, Alexander met Whistler by chance as he was painting next to a canal. Alexander returned to America in 1881 and was able to pick up illustrative commissions from various magazines.  One such commission saw him travelling 2,100 miles along the Ohio River in the Spring of 1881 resulting in sixteen sketches of the local coal industry.

Oliver Wendell Holmes by John White Alexander

On his return to America besides returning to his work as an illustrator, he became a very successful portrait artist. Many well-known individuals sat for Alexander such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, an American physician, poet, and humourist notable for his medical research and teaching, and as the author of the “Breakfast-Table” series of essays.

…..also Thomas Worthington Whittredge, an American artist of the Hudson River School.

Walt Whitman by John White Alexander (1889)

….and Walter Whitman Jr. who was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American history.

Mary Emma Woolley by John White Alexander

In 1909, Alexander completed the portrait of Mary Emma Woolley, an American educator, peace activist and women’s suffrage supporter. She was the first female student to attend Brown University and served as the 10th President of Mount Holyoke College from 1900 to 1937.  It is a beautiful portrait of the woman, exuding elegance and his brushstrokes along with the delicate shadows depict her as a dignified woman of great importance.  The sitter lightly thumbs a book with one hand while the other is clenched into a fist which was possibly referencing her knowledge and passion.  It is said that the way Alexander portrays Woolley validates a tendency among male artists of this era, who often painted women as domestic, inwardly emotional beings with exquisite exterior refinement.

Owing to the fact that they both had the same surname, John White Alexander was introduced to and later married, Elizabeth Alexander.  She was the daughter of James Waddell Alexander, president of the Equitable Life Assurance Society.   John and Elizabeth had one child, the mathematician James Waddell Alexander II.  In 1881 John White Alexander completed a black and white sketch of Elizabeth.

Portrait of Mrs John White Alexander (1902) by John White Alexander

……….and in 1902 he completed a full-length portrait of his wife.

Azalea (Portrait of Helen Abbe Howson) by John White Alexander (1885)

A turning point in Alexander’s artistic career came when, during a summer European holiday in 1884, he wrote to his early mentor, Colonel Allen, telling him of his desire to complete a “subject picture”. The result was his 1885 painting entitled Azalea (Portrait of Helen Abbe Howson). In Alexander’s painting, we see Howson adorned in a white dress seated on a sofa on the left of the horizontally elongated painting.  To counteract that, on the right is a white-flowering azalea branch in a large celadon vase and on the back wall one can see the bottom of a framed image.  The main title of the painting refers to the flowers Helen Howson stares pensively across the room at.  This pose of Howson is one of contemplation and in many of his figurative works Alexander depicts women who avoid the gaze of the viewer.  Some believe that Alexander’s depiction of self-conscious subdued women may be his way of counteracting the growing activism of women in their battle for suffrage and other forms of equality that was manifesting around this time.

Whistler’s Mother by James Mcneil Whistler

Historians believe the depiction was influenced by Whistler’s portrait of his mother which had been exhibited in New York in 1882.  The poses are similar. The “cut-off” picture frame is depicted in both paintings.

Six years later in 1897 Alexander completed another memorable work featuring a single woman.  It was entitled Isabella and the Pot of Basil and is based on a poem written by the English poet John Keats entitled Isabella, or the Pot of Basil. Keats had actually “borrowed” his tale from the Italian Renaissance poet Giovanni Boccaccio.  The story goes that Isabella was a Florentine merchant’s beautiful daughter whose ambitious brothers disapproved of her romance with the handsome but humbly born Lorenzo, their father’s business manager. The brothers murdered Lorenzo and told their sister that he had travelled abroad. The distraught Isabella began to decline, wasting away from grief and sadness. She saw the crime in a dream and then went to find her lover’s body in the forest. Taking Lorenzo’s head, she bathed it with her tears and finally hid it in a pot in which she planted sweet basil, a plant which is now associated with lovers. 

This scene was made famous by William Holman Hunt’s 1868 version…

 …….and the 1907 one by John Waterhouse,

However Alexander’s pictorial rendition of the scene is so different to the other two.  His depiction has used theatrical effects to depict this gruesome scene.  He has isolated Isabella in a shallow recess and illuminated her from below, almost as if she were an actor on a stage who has been illuminated solely by the footlights.

There is an eeriness about the way Alexander has utilised a cold monochromatic palette, and if we allow are eyes to follow the sensuous curves of Isabella’s gown, they are finally drawn to the loving attention Isabella gives the pot, as she gently caresses it. Isabella seems to be in a world of her own totally oblivious to us, the viewers.  It is a tragic depiction of lost love.

Panel for Music Room, by John White Alexander (1894)

There has always been a connection between fine art paintings and music.  So many famous works of art have depicted people playing musical instruments.  It is the conjoining of two great arts.  Many such paintings depict young ladies playing a musical instrument or intently listening to a musical recital.  Take a look at this beautiful work by John White Alexander as he depicts two young women laying back languorously on a long and plush sofa. 

Look carefully at their facial expressions.  The woman on the left who is playing the guitar is lost in concentration and in some ways seems mesmerised by the sounds coming from her instrument.  The woman on the right lies towards her resting on an ornate cushion.  She seems to be in a dream-like state lost in thought.  It is a frieze-like horizontally elongated depiction which measures 94 x 198cms (33 x 78 inches) portraying a dream-like atmosphere.

Memories by John White Alexander (1903)

Another of Alexander’s paintings featuring the interaction between two women is his 1903 work entitled Memories.

Repose by John White Alexander (1895)

One of Alexander’s most famous works is his 1895 painting entitled Repose. Once again it is a depiction of a woman lying languourously across a large cushion on a long sofa. The curves of her body can be seen despite the voluminous white dress she wears. Her head rests on her hand and she looks out at the viewer. 

The facial expression of the woman, whose lips are slightly parted, gives an added touch of sensuousness to the depiction. This provocative facial expression along with the sinuous curves are a reflection of the then current French taste for sensual images of women as well as the undulant linear rhythms of Art Nouveau.

Murals by John White Alexander on the Grand Staircase of the Art Museum of the Carnegie

Alexander held his first exhibition in the Paris Salon in 1893 and it was held to be a brilliant success.  Immediately following the exhibition, he was elected to the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts.  In 1901 he was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and in 1902 he became a member of the National Academy of Design. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1900 at the Paris Exhibition he was awarded a gold medal.  Another gold medal was awarded to him in 1904 at the World’s Fair at St. Louis. His works are in museums in both America and Europe.

Grand staircase, Art Museum of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh

In addition, in the entrance hall to the Art Museum of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, a series of Alexander’s murals entitled Apotheosis of Pittsburgh covers the walls of the three-storey atrium area.

View overlooking Grand Staircase of the murals by John White Alexander

At the top of the Grand Staircase of the Carnegie Art Museum in Pittsburgh, a cultural haven sponsored by industrialist Andrew Carnegie, there is a sweeping mural completed by John White Alexander in 1907.  This total number of murals cover almost 4,000 square feet of wall space of the interior.  The Apotheosis of Pittsburgh is a series of forty-eight murals, all painted by Alexander between 1905 and 1915.  The murals reflect turn of the century Western ideals of progress across three floors of the Grand Staircase. Alexander was given creative freedom for the project, and the resulting murals tell a story of Pittsburgh through the lens of Andrew Carnegie’s vision of the steel industry and the wealth gained through Industrial Capitalism that fuelled his philanthropy. Alexander completed the first elements of the mural in 1907 and the remainder in 1908.

Jonathan Scorch’s blog has a full description of the murals.

John White Alexander died May 31st 1915, aged 58, before finishing the mural panels for the third floor.

Laura Wheeler Waring. Part 2.

Houses at Semur by Laura Wheeler Waring (1925)

Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port by Laura Wheeler Waring (1925)

After her short stay in the south of France, Waring returned to Paris in the Spring of 1925 and continued her studies at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére whilst staying in the Villa de Villiers in Neuilly-sur-Seine.  That year Laura completed her paintings, Houses at Semur, France and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Critics believed this was a turning point in her artistic style as we see her use of vivid colours in order to express vivid, brilliant atmospheric conditions. Both works enhanced her growing reputation.  The following year, she had works shown at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Brooklyn Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And her standing in the art world was such that she was asked to curate the Negro Art section at the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia.  

On June 23rd, 1927, Laura Wheeler was married to the Philadelphian, Walter Waring, a public-school teacher, who was ten years her junior and who was then working as a professor at the all-Black Lincoln University. The couple had no children. That same year, Laura won a gold medal in the annual Harmon Foundation Salon in New York. Laura Waring was actively painting during the Harlem Renaissance.  The Harlem Renaissance was an influential movement in African American literary, artistic, and cultural history from 1918 to the mid-to-late 1930s. The movement was originally referred to as the New Negro Movement, which referred to Alain LeRoy Locke’s 1925 book, The New Negro, which was an anthology that sought to motivate an African-American culture based in pride and self-dependence.

She was also involved with the Harmon Foundation.  It was established in 1921 by wealthy real-estate developer and philanthropist William E. Harmon who was a native of the Midwest, and whose father was an officer in the 10th Cavalry Regiment.  The Foundation originally supported a number of good causes but is best known for having served as a large-scale patron of African-American art and by so doing, helped gain recognition for African-American artists who otherwise would have remained largely unknown.

In 1944 the Harmon Foundation, which was under the direction of Mary Beattie Brady, organized an exhibition Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin.  The idea behind the exhibition was to try and counteract racial intolerance, ignorance and bigotry by illustrating the accomplishments of contemporary African Americans. The exhibition featured forty-two oil paintings of leaders in the fields of civil rights, law, education, medicine, the arts, and the military. Betsy Graves Reyneau, Laura Wheeler Waring, and Robert Savon Pious painted the portraits that became known as the Harmon Collection. US Vice President Henry A. Wallace presented the first portrait, which featured scientist George Washington Carver, to the Smithsonian in 1944. The Harmon Foundation donated most of this collection to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in 1967.

Anna Washington Derry by Laura Wheeler Waring (1927)

Laura Wheeler Waring will always be remembered for her portraiture and her most acclaimed work was not of the prosperous and famous African Americans which I have highlighted below but of a poor laundress, Anna Washington Derry.  She was one of five children who had moved with her family from Maryland to the eastern Pennsylvanian town of Strodsburgh, a borough in Monroe County.  Monroe was home to a small free Black community who had arrived via the Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses used by enslaved African Americans to escape into free states.

The beautiful realistic depiction of the old lady beautifully conveys the lady’s dignity and inner determination through her use of simple, brown-beige tones of her dress, her expressive face, her folded arms and hands.  In the town where she lived Derry was looked upon as that of a community matriarch who was fondly addressed locally as “Annie”. The portrait was unveiled in 1926 at an elite exhibition for Black Philadelphian professionals some of whom may not have identified with Waring’s “ordinary” subject. The art historian Amanda Lampel commented:

“…Although Derry’s portrait did not sell that day, the Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest continuously published African American newspaper in the United States, called it remarkable……… Compared to fellow contemporaries like Aaron Douglas, Waring was much more conservative in her painting style and subject matter. This was in keeping with the types of artists who won the prestigious Harmon Foundation award, which sought to spotlight the up-and-coming Black artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Most of the award winners painted more like Waring and less like Douglas…”

In 1927 Laura exhibited the portrait of Anna Washington Derry at New York’s Harmon Foundation where it received the First Award in Fine Art – Harmon Awards for Distinguished Achievement Among Negroes. From there it was exhibited at Les Galeries du Luxembourg in Paris and across America.  The depiction was often reproduced in magazines and journals. The exhibition had its premiere at the Smithsonian Institution on May 2nd, 1944.  For the next ten years, Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin, exhibition, travelled to museums, historical societies, municipal auditoriums, and community centres around the United States.  The public response was overwhelmingly positive in every venue.

James Weldon Johnson by Laura Wheeler Waring

Laura Wheeler Waring will be most remembered for her portraits of successful, upper class Negroes and whites including James Weldon Johnson, the successful Broadway lyricist, poet, novelist, diplomat, and a key figure in the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.  In 1900, he collaborated with his brother to produce “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a song that later acquired the subtitle of “The Negro National Anthem.”

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois by Laura Wheeler Waring

Another sitter for Laura was William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (W.E.B. DuBois), who was the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University  He then became a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University, and  co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), and founder and editor of the NAACP’s magazine The Crisis. Laura Waring had worked for Du Bois, creating several illustrations for The Crisis. Laura depicts Du Bois seated at a wooden desk or table, looking to the right. The spectacles he holds in his right hand, and the small paper he holds in his left, confirm his status as an intellectual and academic.

Marian Anderson by Laura Wheeler Waing (1947)

Many women were sitters for Laura’s portraits including Mary White Ovington, an American suffragist, journalist, and co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP).  Another of her most famous female portraits was of  the opera singer, Marian Anderson.  This contralto singer, like many African American artists of the time, first achieved success in Europe. She was persuaded to return to America in 1935 and that year had a triumphant concert which secured her standing in the opera world.  In 1939 she became embroiled in a historic event when the Daughters of the American Revolution banned her appearance at its Constitution Hall because she was black. President Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, stepped into this controversial banning and arranged for her to take top billing at the Easter Sunday outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial, an event which drew in 75,000 opera fans as well as having the event broadcast to a radio audience of millions.

Jessie Redmon Fauset by Laura Wheeler Waring (1945)

Another female to have her portrait painted by Laura Wheeler Waring was Jessie Redmon Fauset, the first African American woman to be accepted into the chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Cornell University, where she graduated with honours in 1905. Fauset then taught high school at M Street High School (now Dunbar High School) in Washington, D.C., until 1919  She then moved to New York City to serve as the literary editor of the NAACP’s official magazine, The Crisis. In that role, she worked alongside W. E. B. Du Bois to help usher in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson by Laura Wheeler Waring (1927)

In the 1890s women formed national women’s club federations, most of which were dominated by upper-middle-class, educated, northern women. Few of these organizations were bi-racial, a legacy of the sometimes uneasy mid-nineteenth-century relationship between socially active African Americans and white women. Rising American prejudice led many white female activists to ban inclusion of their African American sisters. The black women’s club movement rose in answer in the late nineteenth century. The segregation of black women into distinct clubs produced vibrant organizations that promised racial uplift and civil rights for all blacks, as well as equal rights for women. Soon there followed another, more powerful group known as the National Association of Coloured Women in 1896. Women, including Laura Wheeler Waring and Alice Dunbar-Nelson, came together from a variety of backgrounds to combat negative stereotypes and fight for basic rights. Alice Dunbar-Nelson became the subject of Laura Wheeler Waring’s 1927 portrait. By the time the portrait was completed, Dunbar-Nelson was a prominent political activist and journalist and was much in demand as a public speaker. The depiction of her radiates her self-confidence and both artist and sitter were talented, intellectual women whose friendship helped advance the rights of both women and African Americans.

Waring died on February 3rd, 1948, aged 60, in her Philadelphia home after a long illness.  She was buried at Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Pennsylvania. In 1949, Howard University Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. held an exhibition of art in her honour.  Her paintings were also included in the 2015 exhibition We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s at Philadelphia’s Woodmere Art Museum.

Laura Wheeler Waring (1887-1948)

There is no doubt that although Laura spent most of her life in America she always treasured her three stays in France which played an important role in her artistic progress. During those three periods on French soil she was able to engage in its culture, and associated with famous French, African, and African American intellectuals. Her scholarship, her study at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, and her solo exhibition in Paris gave her recognition in the United States in the form of awards, supervisory and teaching positions, and additional exhibitions.  Like many of her colleagues, Waring cherished the freedom she found abroad, declaring in her diary:

“…In my very busy seasons here to come I shall want to relive some of these moments of atmosphere. I record them so that I can never say “I wish I had enjoyed that more” or “I didn’t apprecate all that then but now—[.]” I can never say the above truthfully because am grateful every minute and even the least of things gives me a thrill. . . . The very feeling of freedom is a pleasure and the ride on the bus down will be a joy…”

Much of the information for this blog and many of my other blogs in the past has come from an excellent website entitled The Art Story.

Other sources were:

A CONSTANT STIMULUS AND INSPIRATION”: LAURA WHEELER WARING IN PARIS IN THE 1910s and 1920s by Theresa Lieninger-Miller

BLACKPAST

SPEEDWELL

Clara Klinghoffer. Part 3.

Marriage and travels.

Lucien Pissarro by Clara Klinghoffer (1928)

Clara continued to paint and produce beautiful works of art.  She worked constantly at her easel from daybreak till sunset.  She was awarded a bursary by the Slade allowing her to attend classes three days a week for a year and receive tuition from the Slade Professors of Art, Frederick Brown, and Henry Tonks.  However, Clara only continued with this tuition for a few weeks, preferring to paint on her own at home.  In 1921, the excessive workload she had given herself and her innate perfectionism finally took a toll on her health and she suffered a breakdown and suddenly the desire to paint had left her.  She was suffering badly both mentally and physically, losing weight and becoming gaunt.  She talked to nobody about her struggle and her parents could not understand why she spent little time painting.  Clara recognised that she was ill and tried self-help but with little success.  It was almost a year later when something strange happened to arrest this decline.  At the rear of their large house, beyond their garden, there was a low border wall, on the other side of which was a set of newly constructed tennis courts.  Clara and her sisters were fascinated and loved to watch the tennis players in action.  The courts were owned by a good-looking young man in his early twenties, Julius Abrahams. A close friendship developed and Julius had strong feelings for Clara.  Clara painted a full sized portrait of him but as Julius was engaged to another woman, Clara decided that a friendship was all she could offer Julius. 

Upon Reflection by Clara Klinghoffer (1919)

Clara continued to build up a portfolio of her work and a number of her drawings were due to be exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in Central London in June 1923.  Her drawings caught the attention of a certain Mr Smith who had contacted her and asked to see more of her work.  Clara was requested to visit his house in Gordon Square in Central London’s Bloomsbury.  Despite disliking trudging across London in wintry weather to visit a possible patron, she needed to sell work to fund her artistic materials and so on January 10th 1924, a Sunday afternoon, she headed towards Gordon Square and to her meeting with Mr Smith – a meeting which would change the course of her life.

Rose with a Mortar and Pestle by Clara Klinghoffer (1919)

Unbeknown to Clara her meeting with Mr Smith was not a one-to-one meeting but she was heading to his house where he was hosting one of his artistic soiree.  One of the regulars to these “parties” was an Italian journalist who lived in Hampstead with his fellow lodger, a Dutch freelance journalist, Joseph (Joop) Stoppleman.  Joop was invited by his flatmate to come along to the party and reluctantly agreed, on the pretext that the experience might even make good copy for an article.  On entering the drawing room of the opulent house the two journalists were greeted by raucous singing led by their host, Mr Smith.  Midway through the party the doors to the Salon opened and Stoopleman in his biography, Clara Klinghoffer, The Life and Career of a Traditional Artist described what happened next:

“…the Study door was opened and a small girl with beautiful auburn hair, entered, carrying a portfolio much too large for her to hold with any comfort…”

The revellers were bemused by the sight of this small girl.  Mr Smith, who was halfway through giving his rousing speech to his guests, stopped and rushed towards Clara, taking her portfolio from her and raising it in the air, whilst acclaiming:

“…”Now my young friends you will have the privilege to see art that is on a par with the work of the great Masters. And who has created it?  This little girl–Clara Klinghoffer. Mark that name well, for one day it will be famous…”

The portfolio of Clara’s work was then placed on the large table at the centre of the Salon and Clara showed each of her paintings and drawings to the guests.  They were all amazed by what she had created.  When the party came to an end Joop Stoopleman offered to carry the heavy portfolio for Clara until she reached the trolleybus which would take her home.  He wanted to see her again and was both surprised and delighted when Clara asked if he wanted to visit her at home and see more of her work.  He avidly agreed and they exchanged telephone numbers and a date was set for the next meeting.  This was the start of a long friendship which resulted in a love affair and which would eventually result in marriage. Joop was well received by the family but as a freelance journalist he knew he could not boast a regular steady income.  As for Clara, she relied on the sale of her work so that their combined income was somewhat irregular.

Harriet Cohen by Clara Klinghoffer (1925)

The new year, 1925, was a very busy time for both Clara and Joop.  Clara worked steadily on her drawings and paintings. One of her sitters was Harriet Cohen, the celebrated British concert pianist. At the same time, she was organising her work for a large-scale exhibition in the Redfern Gallery, in Old Bond Street, which was to begin in March of 1926. Clara had collected together twenty new paintings and some thirty new drawings. By the time she had put together sufficient work for the exhibition she was both exhausted and deflated.  Her spirits were lifted when she was invited to accompany her friend Mabel Greenberg on a month-long holiday in the Pyrenees.  Clara, on her return home at the end of April, was refreshed and was filled with ideas that could be used as depictions for her future paintings.  In parallel to Clara’s busy schedule, Joop had to go on a trip to Holland visiting chief editors, to see if he could find new outlets for his writing.

Portrait of a Girl in a Fur Hat by Clara Klinghoffer

During the New year celebrations of 1926, Joop and Clara decided that they would marry once the Redfern Gallery exhibition had run its course.  The exhibition which opened on March 9th was a great success and her paintings received much praise from the art critics.  The art critic of The Times wrote:

“…It is perhaps being wise after the event to say that “work has feminine characteristics when an artist is known to be a woman. But this is certainly the case with Clara Klinghoffer’ s exhibition of paintings and dnawings at the Redfern Gallery. That is to say she has the power to imitate with great skill the manner of another painter and yet of toning it down and adapting it to her own less emphatic means of expression, as Berthe Morisot did with Manet. Her drawings and small pictures, rather than her larger oils, show that she has real talent. Her drawings are by far her best work and please at once, though, while they are reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci, they leave out his emphasis and thus their correctness becomes apparent only after close examination. As is the modern custom, they are intended to be works of art in themselves, not studies of works of art, and they do not show the curiosity of an artist who draws to find something out, not to produce a finished effect. They are sensitive, but not profoundly sensitive.  Mims Klinghoffer’s paintings are more under the influence of Renoir than of Leonardo, and in her biggest pictures she has tried to be more forcible than is in keeping with the character shown in her drawings…”

Portrait of the Artist’s Husband, aged 25 by Clara Klinghoffer

Once the Redfern Gallery Exhibition had completed, Clara felt utterly drained and Joop persuaded her to take a rest from painting and visit his homeland, Holland.  She agreed to the change of scene despite Joop not being able to accompany her from the start as he was committed to leading a tour party to Europe.  Joop arranged for her to stay with a family in the village of Voorthuizen and when, after six weeks,  Joop finally arrived,  the pair travelled north to his home town, Groningen and there she met Joop’s family.  Clara and Joop finally returned to London in June 1926 and their marriage took place on July 29th at the Duke Street Great Synagogue of London.  At the time of the wedding Clara’s youngest sister, Hilda had been very unwell.  Joop and Clara decided that as they were going to the warm weather of Southern France for their honeymoon, Hilda should accompany them so as to help restore her health.  All was agreed with the family and the three of them took the ferry to Calais and then the train south to Avignon for a short stay before arriving at their ultimate destination, the Côte d’Azur seaside town of Menton.

The Old Troubador by Clara Klinghoffer (1926)

The Menton pension they stayed in was very comfortable but quite expensive.  In fact, it was too expensive for them as they planned to stay in Menton for six or seven weeks.  Clara approached the pension owner and because they intended to stay a long time in Menton, he agreed to lease them a large house, Villa Aggridito, situated on the Boulevard de Garavan, on the outskirts of the town, and only charged them just four hundred francs a month.  They took him up on his generous offer.  One day whilst out walking they came across a man carrying a guitar.  In Joops biography of his wife he recalls the moment:

“…we saw a little man with grey hair standing in the middle of the right-hand lane. He was neatly dressed in black linen trousers and jacket and carried a large guitar on a leather strap across his shoulders. He had a long egg-shaped face, burnt a red brown by the summer sun. His straight nose had wide, sensitive nostrils; his large eyes were of a melancholy brown.   His forehead, wide and furrowed, blended into his high bald dome; and above both ears were thick tufts of snow-white hair.  On his open shirt collar a neat dress tie had somehow found a foothold. All in all, he made the impression of a musician on the way to an appointment, transporting his instrument in a somewhat unorthodox way.  As we approached, he quickly placed the guitar in position, and began to play. First a gay melody, then the popular ‘Valencia’ tune, of which he sang the words in a small, tremulous voice. We stopped and listened. There was nothing about him of the street singer. Rather, he seemed to be amusing himself and, accidentally, allowing us to share his enjoyment…”

The musician was Torquato Simoncelli and he came to their villa the next day and sat for Clara. It took half a dozen sittings for Clara to complete the portrait. On February 16th 1958, Clara wrote about that visit:

“…My husband and I spent the summer and autumn of 1926 in Menton-Garavan, close to the Italian border. It was there, at the border, that we met old Torquato Simoncelli, singing and playing on his guitar. This gentle and lovable old man came to sit for me on the terrace of our Villa, after his day’s work as a Troubadour was over (generally in the late afternoon). He sang, reminisced and played while I painted…. I did paint a second picture of him in another pose (this picture I still have)…”

………to be continued.

The information I used for this blog came from a variety of sources but the two main ones which would be of interest to you if you want a more in-depth look at Clara’s life are:

Clara Klinghoffer- 20th century English artist

and

Clara Klinghoffer: the girl who drew like Raphael and Leonardo

John Downton

Self portrait by John Downton (c.1928)

My featured artist today is the lesser-known British painter John Downton who was born on March 27th, 1906 in the Kent town of Erith, some twenty kilometres south-east of London.  He was the youngest of three children of Albert Victor and Flora Edith Downton (née Mitchell).  John had two older sisters, Hilda and Mary both of whom had intended to study medicine but their plans were thwarted by family circumstances and health reasons.

At the age of four John attended the Erith Convent where he was a pupil for the next four years.  In 1914 he transferred to the Erith Grammar School.  It was around this time that John developed a love for music.  His father played the flute and the piano and was a prominent member of the local church choir.  John’s uncle, Hedley, gave John a violin and during the following years John became an important member of the school orchestra.  The other great love of the teenager was his desire to read, particularly books by ancient philosophers and other “serious” works of English literature.

Portrait of a Young Woman by John Downton (1929)

Apart from his music and books, John had an overriding passion for art and even built a summer house/studio in the family garden where he did his painting.  When he was seventeen the school entered his pencil sketch, Biplanes: A Study, into the Royal Drawing Society at the Guildhall, London and he was awarded a Silver Medal.  As a teenager he was fascinated by all things military and penned many sketches of war machines and yet, later in life he became a pacifist.

Woman at the Window by John Downton (1934)

In 1922, when he was sixteen years old, his mother noticed an advert in The Times which stated that a Professor Gaugot, who was a lecturer at the Sorbonne, was willing to teach an English boy to speak French and so young John Downton headed to Paris where he stayed with the Gaugot family.

Child with Roses by John Downton (1936)

A year later in 1923 John accompanied his two sisters to Italy where they visited Venice and the Northern Italian Lakes as well as the Swiss towns of Lucerne and Lugano.  This was the start of John’s love affair with travel.  His favourite destinations were Northern Italy and Switzerland.

Having completed his schooling John was accepted into Queen’s College, Cambridge.  Initially he took Part 1 of the English Tripos and in 1927 was placed into the Second Class but the following year he decided to abandon English and instead enrolled in the History of Art course and once completed, he received a First Class degree.  During his three years at the university John immersed himself in their musical activities.

Hilda Downton by John Downton (1929)

In the Autumn of 1928, having completed his three-year degree course, John Downton enrolled at the Slade School of Art which at the time was presided over by Henry Tonks, a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist who was Slade Professor of Fine Art from 1918 to 1930.  John, like many of the Old Masters of the past, preferred the medium of tempera but the Slade tutors wanted him to change his favoured painting medium and embrace a more modern style of painting.  There was to be no common ground and so on May 21st 1929, John resigned.  In a forward to John Downton’s 1937 book, The Death of Art, an art critic and author wrote about Downton’s falling out of love with the Slade and the Academy’s thoughts on art.  He wrote:

“…A certain kind of rather drably coloured, sober urban realism was the style in favour.  Not for Downton though: he had pretty certainly made up his mind what he wanted to do and what sort of painter he wanted to be well before he arrived at the Slade and it has much more to do with the legacy of Piero della Francesca than that of Sickert and Cezanne…”

Downton’s art was a return to the art of the early Renaissance.

In 1930 John Downton and his sister set off on an European trip.  They based themselves in the Côte d’Azur town of Menton and from there they took day trips out to the Italian Riviera towns of Ventimiglia and Genoa.  Much longer trips were taken by the pair when they visited Milan and Lugano as well as his beloved Italian Lakes.

Portrait of a Young Lady by John Downton (1929)

Around 1930, John bought Park Cottage in the Kent village of Sundridge, some twenty miles, south-east of London.  He spent much of his time renovating the property and buying antique furniture at auction to furnish the rooms.  After two years living there, he realised it was too small for him and his artwork and so he moved out and rented the cottage to a fellow artist, Vincent New.

In April 1932 John Downton was awarded his M.A. and, as if to celebrate the successful completion of his studies, he took a trip to Tunis and returned via Naples, where he remained for a few months.  On arriving back to England John searched for a new home and eventually purchased a property with a north-facing conservatory in which he could paint.  The property was in Observatory Gardens, in the London borough of Kensington.

Frances Witts by John Downton (1935)

Around 1935, John Downton completed a poignant in memoriam portrait of his cousin Frances Witts.  She had died of pneumonia aged just twenty-six.  He used a family photograph for this work.

Portrait of a Lady in Yellow by Alesso Baldovinetti (1465)

Downton was influenced by profile portraits executed by Florentine painters such as Baldovinetti’s 1465 work entitled Portrait of a Lady in Yellow but art historians believe this portrait of his cousin was influenced by the Milanese painter, Ambrogio’ de Predis and his c.1490 work, Beatrice d’Este, which was once attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. 

Portrait of a Lady (Beatrice d’Este) by Ambrogio’ de Predis

Downton’s memorial portrait has a dark and rich tonal quality and he has based it on a conservative portrait of the past and has accomplished an image that is both solemn and inspiring.  The woman in Downton’s portrait, like the Italian females in the portraits mentioned earlier, includes a necklace with diminishing size of beads whilst her hair is similarly geometric but in Frances Witts’ case it is gathered at the sides rather than at the back of the head.

Nora Russell by John Downton (1936)

Between 1936 and 1940 John Downton exhibited work at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.  His two submissions in 1936, which were considered to be his masterpieces, were The Battle and and Nora Russell.  The latter painting was executed in egg tempera and, despite it being a simple depiction of a young schoolgirl, it is evocative in the way it reminds us of the spirit of Quattrocento female portraiture, that is to say, female portraiture in fifteenth-century Italy, which portrayed womanly perfection as established in Catholic doctrine, illustrating the special social roles that upper-class women fulfilled at the time.

The Battle by John Downton (1935)

The title, The Battle, the second of his submitted painting to the 1936 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, is to do with conflict but not a battlefield scene, as you may have expected.  It is all about the battle between modern industrialisation and the ideal of Renaissance humanism, which was a revival in the study of classical antiquity, at first in Italy and then spreading across Western Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, a cultural legacy, literary legacy, and moral philosophy of classical antiquity.

Erasmus of Rotterdam by Hans Holbein the Younger (1523)

The figure and its stance in the painting is based upon Holbein’s 1523 work, Erasmus of Rotterdam.  Erasmus was the leading humanist at the time.  Both works accentuate the hands of the sitter.  In the Louvre collection there are studies of hands made by Holbein as preliminaries for his painting.  In Downton’s painting we see through the window an abstract depiction of a modern factory.

Joan Harris by John Downton (1937)

John Downton was always on the move and made many more house relocations and in August 1937 he took up residence in Cambridge.  That year he submitted his work entitled Joan Harris to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition where it was subsequently chosen to be shown in The Prominent Living Artists Exhibition which was staged at the Russell-Cotes Museum in Bournemouth.  Joan Harris was the daughter of John Downton’s Cambridge neighbour.  From a letter she wrote him during the sittings for the portrait we can gather that Downton completed more than just this one portrait of her.  She wrote:

“…I hope you will finish the picture soon; but if you ever want me to come and sit for you again, just let me know and I will come any time that I am able.

When you have finished the picture I hope I will be able to see it and if you get the first picture back in Cambridge I would like to see it, and I know Mummy and Daddy would love to see it as they never saw it when it was completed…”

Portrait of a Girl by John Downton (1938)

Downton’s 1938 submission to the RA Summer Show was Portrait of a Girl which unusually for Downton depicted the model against a landscape background giving the impression that it was a plein air portrait.  There is a definite resemblance to the style of one of my favourite portrait artists, Gerald Brockhurst.

Portrait of a Woman by John Downton (1955)

A strange looking portrait going under the title Portrait of a Woman was completed by John Downton in 1955. 

Edith Sitwell by Pavel Tchelitchew (1935)

It is thought that the depiction was loosely based on the Polish painter, Pavel Tchelitchew’s portrait of his good friend Edith Sitwell in 1935.

Girl Conducting by John Downton (1940)

In 1938, now living in Cambridge, Downton was having to cope with the rejection by Faber & Faber of his manuscript, The Death of Art, but which was published years later. In 1940 Downton submitted three paintings to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Eve, A Girl Conducting, and A Child. His painting entitled Girl Conducting is all about his depiction of the girl’s hands and it is such a facet in many of his works. The finished product did not come easily for Downton, who made numerous sketches of hands until he had perfected them. Many of the depictions were influenced by Renaissance paintings. The three paintings Downton submitted to the RA that year were to be the last of his offerings to that establishment.

Woman in Flemish Head Dress by John Downton

So why did Downton stop exhibiting his work at the RA ? In the foreword to Downton’s book The Death of Art, which his sister, Hilda, finally had published in 1995, the writer and critic John Russell Taylor explained:

“…He seems to have felt himself marginalised in a world increasingly unsympathetic to everything he stood for. In 1939 he moved to Florence in an attempt to escape the materialist twentieth century, but then almost immediately had to return to Britain at the outbreak of war. The war itself was even more of an alienating factor, a total outrage to his dearly held pacifist principles. And a general feeling that the mainstream of British Art was moving further and further away from his own ideals, first into luxuriant Romanticism and then into freeform abstraction, caused him to withdraw altogether from exhibiting his own art after 1940…”

Bearded Profit by John Downton (1975)

Now back home in England with the war waging in Europe, John Downton received his conscript papers.  Downton had always been a pacifist and went before the Review Board to argue his case for not fighting.  The Board accepted that he was a genuine conscientious objector and so, in September 1940, he was put to work on a farm near Ludlow.  That same year his two sisters moved north to Pitlochry in Scotland and later Downton moved north to be with them and work on the land of the local farmer.

Portrait of a Woman by John Downton (1940)

When the war ended Downton moved south and took up residence in the Kent town of Sevenoaks.  He remained there for two years but then returned to Cambridge where he stayed until 1964 but when his lease ran out on the property he was renting in 1971 he moved back to Sevenoaks and rented a large ground floor flat with a cellar, close to where his sisters, Hilda and Mary were then living.  Mary became very ill with asthma in 1986 and died.   In December 1990 a water pipe burst in the cellar and caused a flood which partly destroyed some of his books and manuscripts he had stored in the room.  He struggled to save and move the heavy boxes of books and this exertion damaged his heart.  He was confined to hospital for two weeks and on discharge went to live with his sister, Hilda, who looked after him during his final days.  John Downton died on July 31st 1991, aged 85.

John never married but was in no way a recluse as his time was taken up with his painting and his love of music.  He had many friends who valued his company.  His sister, Hilda died in 2006, aged 104.

Susan Catherine Moore Waters

Today I am delving into the life of the nineteenth century American painter Susan Waters.  It is difficult to compartmentalise her artwork, some, however, have labelled her a folk portraitist.  It is a mixture of portraiture which could be best described as quirky and animal paintings.  Her art, especially her early portraiture, is certainly easily recognisable as you will see.  I like its simplicity and although she will never be regarded as one of the American great artists, her depictions ooze a naiveté which is so endearing.

Susan Catherine Moore was born on May 18th 1823 in Binghamton, a small town in the Southern Tier of New York state on the border with Pennsylvania.  She was one of two children, both daughters, of a cooper, Lark Moore, and his wife, Sally, who were Hicksite Quakers.  As a young child Susan showed a talent for art.

Two Children in an Interior Setting, One Child Holding a Grey Cat, the Other Holding a Piece of Melon by Susan Waters

Susan and her sister, Amelia, attended the fee-paying Boarding School for Females run by Quakers at the small Pennsylvania border town of Friendsville.  The town had been founded in 1819 and the majority of early settlers were Quakers.  At the age of fifteen, in order to afford to pay the fees for the school for her and her sister, Susan would paint copies for the Natural History course run by the school.  Although the school had basic art education lessons, Susan is considered to be a self-taught painter.

The Downs Children of Cannonsville, New York. by Susan Waters (1843)

On 27 June 1841, aged just eighteen, she married William C. Waters, a Friendsville Quaker and amateur artist, and he would encourage his young wife to develop her talent as a painter. She took up portraiture about 1843, when her husband became ill and was unable to support the family. She would travel around the outlying areas painting and selling portraits of the people and their children.  One of Susan’s earliest recorded signed paintings is her 1843 work entitled The Downs Children of Cannonsville, New York. It depicts two children with a dog and a toy wagon in a landscape setting which includes a white house in the background. The boy on the left holds a riding crop.

Helen M Kingman by Susan Waters (1845)

In 1845, Susan completed a set of three paintings featuring the Kingman family.  This signed and dated portrait of fifteen-year-old Helen M Kingman is one of the three works.  The young girl is depicted seated in a stencilled chair, wearing a salmon pink dress, against a grey-walled backdrop.  Note the potted plant on the windowsill, an accoutrement often seen in portraits of children.

Lyman Kingman by Sarah Waters (1845)

Another in the series is a portrait of Lyman Kingman dressed in a black suit, holding sheets of paper. Behind him are shelves of books at right and drapery at upper left.

The Lincoln Children by Susan Waters (1845)

In the 1840s Susan specialized in portraits of children, and this 1845 painting, The Lincoln Children, is a depiction of three of the twelve children of Otis Lincoln, an innkeeper who was plying his trade in the small rural town of Binghamton in New York State. The three small girls are Laura Eugenie, aged nine, Sara, aged three, and Augusta, aged seven and they have been positioned in a pyramid. They are all wearing decorative dresses, adorned with eyelet and lace. One of the girls holds a peach, another a small branch in one hand and a pencil in the other while the third has a book open upon her knee.  These trappings were added to the portrait to publicise the girls’ sweetness and their attentiveness whilst attending school. The fine-looking furnishings including an expensive floral-patterned carpet, the pretty plants on a stand in the right background, and the addition of the appealing puppy with its well-arranged stance coalesce and create a lovely image of domestic stability and cosiness and yet their intense expressions as they look out at us gives the painting a disconcerting openness.

Herding Sheep before the Storm by Susan Waters

The Waters’ life was complicated, flitting from one temporary home to another. They continued to reside in Friendsville for several years, but by May of 1852 they had moved to Bordentown, New Jersey. They built themselves a cottage in the Quaker community of Bordentown and although they did not settle there permanently at that time, they would return to their house in 1866.

Chicken and Raspberries by Susan Waters

The couple sold their Bordentown cottage and journeyed to Mount Pleasant, Iowa, in 1855, returned to Friendsville four years later, and in 1866 finally resettled in Bordentown buying back their former home on Mary Street and it was here that they spent the rest of their lives. This was a base from which she taught art and produced over fifty of her later works, many of which were painting of animals in their natural settings, especially her favourite animals, sheep, and pastoral scenes. She was also an early photographer and produced many ambrotypes and daguerreotypes, which were early forms of photography. This made a lot of practical sense, as commissioned portraits were giving way to the more exciting medium of photography. 

Barnyard Animals by Susan Waters.

Many of the animals depicted were kept in Susan’s own yard.

Rooster with two Chickens in the Yard by Susan Waters.

Whilst residing in Bordentown Susan Waters painted animal and still life pictures in a style which was more mature and academic than her earlier efforts at portraiture.  There was a greater sophistication with her depictions.

A Cache of Raspberries by Susan Waters

Susan also produced a number of excellent still-life paintings

Still life with Grapes by Susan Waters

and sometimes a combined still-life and animal depiction as in her work entitled The Marauders.

The Marauder by Susan Waters

The artwork she produced and sold whilst living in Bordentown earned her recognition in her own lifetime.  It was not just from within her local community but from outside and in 1876, Waters was honoured with an invitation to exhibit some of her paintings at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. It was the first official World’s Fair to be held in the United States. She submitted two of her animal paintings.

Lighthouse on the Coast by Susan Waters

Susan Waters also became active in State politics when she became a member of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association, which was founded in 1867.  It was in this year that Lucy Stone delivered a speech on “Women Suffrage in New Jersey” before the state legislature.  This would have been a thrilling time to be involved with the movement, and Susan was elected recording secretary for the Association in 1871. She was also an Animal Rights activist.

Pasture scene with cows and distant mountains by Susan Waters

After exhibiting successfully at the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, Susan discovered that her work was much sought after and it remained so for the rest of her life.  Her husband died in 1893 and from then on Susan dedicated herself to her art.  In 1899 she had to sell her home and go to a nursing home in Trenton New Jersey.  On July 10th 1900 Susan Catherine Moore Waters passed away at the age of seventy-seven.  Three days later she was buried alongside her beloved husband, William in the beautiful Bordentown cemetery.  Of her character, her obituary noted:

“…as beautiful as her paintings … her talent she could not bequeath…”

The folks of Bordentown will remember Susan Waters as a lady of refinement, modest and unassuming.  She was a lady of extraordinary ability, not just as a painter but as a writer and a speaker in the Society of Friends.

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts. Part Two. Portraiture.

I am starting this second part of my blog talking about my favourite paintings in the Barber Institute collection by focusing on beauty in a work of portraiture.  I suppose I have three portraits in mind when I think of extreme female beauty. 

Jeunesse Dorée by Gerald Brockhurst. Lady Lever Art Gallery.

I fell in love with the woman featured in Gerald Brockhurst painting Jeunesse Dorée which is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Wirral, which I have seen many times. 

Virgin Annunciate, 1474 - 1475 - Antonello da Messina
Virgin Annunciate by Antonello da Messina. Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo

My second true love is the portrait I saw when I was visited the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, Sicily.  It was of the Virgin Mary and entitled Virgin Annunciate and the artist was Antonello da Messina.

Portrait of Countess Golovina by Vigée-Lebrun

My third beautiful portrait is in the collection of the Barber Institute and is entitled Portrait of Countess Golovina painted by the French painter Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun.  Lebrun was born in 1755 during pre-revolutionary France.  In 1789, aged thirty-four, she had to escape the Revolution and in 1795 she had settled in St Petersburg.  It was whilst in Russia that she painted the beautifully crafted portrait of Varvara Nikolayevna Golovina who was the wife of Count Nikolai Golovin.  Countess Golovina was an artist and memoirist who came from Russian nobility and was a close confidant of Empress Elizabeth.  She was appointed a maid of honour at the court of Catherine the Great.  In Vigée-Lebrun’s portrait the countess is dressed in a red shawl which is decorated with a gold border.  She wears a deep gold headband.  Her hair flows down her shoulders.  She gazes directly towards us with a look of amazing openness.  What is quite captivating about her pose is the way she has laid her arm across her body as her hand clasps her shawl to her body in a gesture that suggests she has been caught off-guard by the artist.  It is a very intimate depiction of a beautiful woman.

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Portrait of a Boy by Govert Flinck (1640)

Govert Flinck, the son of a cloth merchant, was born in Cleves in the Lower Rhine region.  When he was fourteen he began to draw and paint and began his apprenticeship as a painter in Leewarden with the painter and Mennonite preacher Lambert Jacobsz.  Whilst there he met the painter Jacob Adrianesz. Backer and the two artists travelled together to Amsterdam to continue their studies in Rembrandt’s studio where Flinck spent around three years and it was there that he collaborated with him for some years. During this time, he lived in the house of the art dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh. In 1636 he opened his own studio.  Rembrandt had never taken a commission to paint a portrait of a child but many of his pupils were pleased to fill the gap in the market for such a genre.  One of the best was Govert Flinck who had gained in popularity in the mid 1630’s and at one time it was thought that he was more popular than his master.  Flink, like Rembrandt, used a dark palette of browns and greys for this work.   The identity of the boy is somewhat of a mystery but recently Flick’s eight-year-old nephew, David Leeuw, has been suggested as the sitter.  He was the son of a wealthy businessman and avid art collector.  The depiction has a low horizon line which gives prominence to the boy’s figure and theatrically silhouettes his head and body against the menacing sky.

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Young Woman Seated by Renoir (c.1877)

Of all the Impressionist painters I think my favourite is Renoir.   Renoir differed from his Impressionist colleagues as his works often featured figures whereas his contemporaries preferred to depict Impressionistic landscapes.  In this painting entitled Young Woman Seated we see one of his favourite professional models posing for the work, so we are aware that this not a commissioned portrait.  Renoir started this painting around the time of the Second Impressionist Exhibition in April 1876 and completed it in 1877, the year of the Third Impressionist Exhibition.  Renoir was a major exhibitor at both these Paris exhibitions.  In the work we see the model tilting her head and partially turns to face us but her eyes fail to meet ours.  Renoir has depicted his model with her hand raised to her face which draws our eyes towards her mouth and cheeks which he has highlighted with subtle shades of pink and peach.  Her clothing is a mass of superficial fabrics and depicted with delicate frothy curls which create a sense of femininity and sensuality.. Although the title of the work is a very general one the art market at the time gave it the title of La Pensée (Thought).  On hearing this, Renoir cuttingly stated “my models have no thoughts”.

The Blue Bower by Dante Rossetti (1865)

I have always loved the works of the Pre-Raphaelite painters and was pleased to see one of Dante Rossetti’s works at the Barber Institute.  It was his 1865 painting entitled The Blue Bower.  Twelve years earlier, around 1853 Dante Rossetti and his colleagues, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, had gone their separate ways.  Rossetti began to concentrate on depictions of medieval fantasy and focused on themes from the life and works of Dante Alighieri and from Malory’s legends of King Arthur, and his depictions were exclusively in watercolour.  Around 1859 Rossetti’s artwork changed and he went back to oil painting and produced a series of idealized portraits of beautiful women often depicted at close range in glamorous settings.  These women were depicted as being dominant and strong-willed females and often had a back story of the ruining of men. The woman who sat for Rossetti’s painting was Fanny Cornforth, who was born Sarah Cox.  Cornforth met Rossetti in 1856 and became his model and mistress.  Rossetti has enhanced her natural beauty.  She has thick wavy hair and wears a loose luxurious gown, and her eyes are not cast down modestly as a geisha’s might be, but watchful. From every point of view, composition, colour and character, it is a fascinating and very beautiful work. The background has a blue cornflower pattern and actual cut cornflowers lie on the table in front of her.  Also on the table is a small Japanese koto, a half-tube zither instrument, that she is playing albeit without showing any interest in what she is doing.   The arrangement of the portrait offers the proposition that her role in his life was that of courtesan, mistress, the entertaining geisha, although her eyes are not cast down in a geisha-like modesty. At this point in time artists were captivated by all things Japanese, their culture, and the fashion for blue-and-white china, and Japanese ornaments.

Men of the Docks by George Bellows (1912). National Gallery London.

In April 2011 I was in London and went to see the George Bellow’s exhibition at the National Gallery entitled An American Experiment: George Bellows and the Ashcan Painters.  This small twelve painting exhibition, seven by Bellows, featured his work as a painter of urban scenes. . My favourite was his 1912 painting which the National Gallery actually owned, Men of the Docks.

Miss Bentham, by American realist George Bellows
Nude, Miss Bentham by George Bellows (1906)

So I was surprised to see a nude painting at the Barber Institute attributed to the American painter. It is only the second work by the artist to enter a British collection.  Bellows is regarded as one of the greatest early 20th-century American painters who was much better known for his gritty urban and brutally realistic boxing scenes than for naked ladies.  It is entitled Nude, Miss Bentham.  Bellows painted this attractive nude in 1906 after completing his studies at the New York School of Art and when he had set up his own studio.   Bellows was the outstanding American talent of his generation and a member of the group which was later known as the ‘Ashcan School’, a reference to their commitment to finding subject matter in the people and scenes offered up by the bustling modern city.  It is a full-length work of a standing nude woman as viewed from behind.  It was Bellow’s first attempt at depicting a nude and he never sold it.  It was also the first nude painting to grace the walls of the Barber Institute.  When he died in January 1925 it was found in his studio.  The work was sold by his widow in 1985, to Andy Warhol. After Warhol died in 1987, it was sold to an anonymous private collector who in turn sold it in 2015, through the dealer Collisart, to the Barber Institute.

The Barber Institute director, Ms Kalinsky said of the purchase:

“…This is a thrilling departure for the Barber Institute and our first major purchase for some years. It fits in extremely well with the strengths of our gallery as a historical collection, but it takes us into new areas too. The painting is very American and very much of its time, strengthening and expanding our representation of early 20th-century art…”

Bellows painted it in a realistic but highly dramatic style against a dark background.  The full-length oil depicts a model named by Bellows as Miss Bentham, painted in a realistic but highly dramatic style against a dark background.   Notice how there is a reddish abrasion seen around the woman’s knees and feet, a sure sign that she has experienced hard physical work.

…………..to be continued.

Joseph Edward Southall

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Joseph Edward Southall

The Arts and Crafts Movement was a design movement which emerged from the Pre-Raphaelite circle with the founding of the design firm Morris and Co. in 1861 by William Morris.  It was a design movement which aspired to enhance the quality of design and make it available to the widest possible audience.  The term was not coined until 1887 and the Arts and Crafts Movement officially started when Morris and fellow artist, Edward Burne-Jones established a group that they called the Birmingham Set or Birmingham Group.   They were an informal collective of painters and craftsmen who worked in Birmingham, England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. My featured artist today, Joseph Edward Southall, was one of the leaders of this group.  He was probably the most important, if not the most celebrated artist of that group and was looked upon as among the most dedicated.

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Self portrait by Joseph Southall (1925)

Joseph Edward Southall was born in Nottingham on August 23rd 1861, the son of a grocer, Joseph Sturge Southall, and his wife Elizabeth Maria Baker, both offsprings of distinguished Quaker families. Just a year after the birth of Joseph Southall his father died aged twenty-seven and Joseph and his mother had to go and live with his maternal grandmother in Edgbaston, a suburb of Birmingham

Joseph Southall’s education was to attend Quaker schools.  He attended the Friends’ School at Ackworth and in 1872, at the age of eleven, transferred to the Friends’ School at Bootham, York, where he received his first tuition in art when he was taught watercolour painting by the English artist and educator, Edwin Moore. From the school at Bootham he went to a school in Scarborough while still carrying on with private lessons with Moore.   On September 1st 1878, following on a few days after his seventeenth birthday, Joseph Southall completed his schooling and began an apprenticeship at the offices of the renowned Birmingham architectural partnership of Martin and Chamberlain.  He remained with the firm for four years but continued his art studies at evening classes at the Birmingham School of Art.  Both the architectural company and the School of Art were steeped in the spirit of John Ruskin and the Arts and Crafts movement.  The architect John Henry Chamberlain was a founder and trustee of the Guild of St George, while the Principal of the School of Art, Edward R. Taylor, was a pioneer of Arts and Crafts education and a friend of William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.  It was also around this time that Joseph took to reading books written by Ruskin and William Morris, and what he gained from this would remain with him for the rest of his life.

Portrait of the Artist’s Mother by Joseph Southall (1902)

Southall however felt unfulfilled with his architectural training.  Southall left the architectural practice to pursue his studies in painting and carving.   For him, architecture should embrace and craft disciplines such as painting and carving and with that in mind and having been inspired by his reading of Ruskin and Morris he decided to go on trips to Europe to broaden his artistic education.  In 1882 he visited Bayeux, Rouen and Amiens in Northern France where he was enthralled by the ancient cities with their Gothic cathedrals.   In 1883, now a free agent, he, accompanied by his mother,  journeyed to Italy and spent thirteen weeks visiting Pisa, Florence, Siena, Orvieto, Rome, Bologna, Padua, Venice and Milan.  It was during his stay in Italy that he fell in love with the works of the painters of the Italian Renaissance and the frescoes of the fifteenth century painter, Benozzo Gozzoli

Southall returned home with an overwhelming appreciation of the Italian Primitives and set his mind to study and practise the art of painting in tempera, a painting medium he had witnessed whilst in Italy.  In an essay by Peyton Skipwith in the book of paintings, Joseph Southall: 1861-1944. Sixty works by Joseph Southall, 1861-1944, from the Fortunoff Collection, he quotes Southall’s recollection of his time in Italy:

“…the thrill of joy which I experienced when, without any knowledge of what I was about to see, I stepped inside the enchanting cloisters of the great Campo Santo of Pisa. There I found myself at 21 years of age face to face with a vast series of frescoes, so quiet and yet so gay, so reticent in manner and so lively in essence that words must ever fail to convey even the faintest expression of what I felt…”

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Beauty Seeing the Image of her Home in the Fountain.by Joseph Southall (1898)

After returning to England Southall began to experiment with the tempera medium whilst at the Birmingham School of Art.  It was at the Birmingham School of Art that he met Arthur Gaskin, who became his closest friend.  The School of Art was run by the enigmatic head, Edward R. Taylor who had made the Birmingham school one of the leading schools of art in Britain, and the foremost for the study of the crafts. One of Southall’s great work using tempera was his 1898 painting entitled Beauty Seeing the Image of her Home in the Fountain.

Sailing Ships
Sailing Ships by Joseph Southall (1910)

On his return to Birmingham Joseph Southall settled in the house of his uncle, George Baker, at 13 Charlotte Road, in the city suburb of Edgbaston and it would be here that he would remain for the rest of his life.  George Baker was a charismatic man and a friend of John Ruskin.  He was a staunch Quaker and a life-long admirer of John Ruskin’s Utopian ideals.  Baker became a prominent member of Ruskin’s Guild of St George and succeeded him to become the second master of the Guild on Ruskin’s death in 1900.  He also showed Ruskin some of his nephew’s 1883 Italian drawings.  Ruskin was so taken by Southall’s architectural knowledge that in 1885 he gave Southall his first major commission.  Ruskin wanted Joseph Southall to design a museum for the Guild of St George and have it built on Joseph’s uncle’s land near Bewdley, Worcestershire. To gather ideas for this project, Southall made a second trip to Italy in 1886, again visiting Pisa, Florence, Siena and Assisi, so as to do research into Ruskin’s commission.  Unfortunately for Southall, the project was abandoned by Ruskin who reverted to his original plans to build a museum in Sheffield. Southall was very disappointed at the turn of events saying that his chance of becoming an architect vanished and he was destined to spend years of obscurity, followed by a little bitterness of soul. The years that followed this disappointment and his love of tempera began to wane. He was generally frustrated with the medium and eventually abandoned it leading him to favour painting with oils.

Fisherman Carrying a Sail
Fisherman Carrying a Sail by Joseph Southall (c.1907)

After a third visit to Italy in 1890, he once again became interested with the works by the Italian Primitives and slowly and once again experimented with the painting medium of tempera. His great influence now that he had returned to Birmingham, was his fellow Brummie artist, Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 

Beauty Seeing the Image of Her Home in the Fountain
Beauty Seeing the Image of Her Home in the Fountain by Joseph Southall (1898)

It was he who congratulated Southall on his 1898 tempera painting Beauty Seeing the Image of her Home in the Fountain.  It was also Burne-Jones who in 1897 sent Southall’s tempera self-portrait, Man with a Sable Brush, to the New Gallery, along with his own work.   These paintings and others like them, confirmed Southall as one of the foremost British tempera painters and as such led to his participation in the exhibitions of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society and the exhibition of Modern Paintings in Tempera at Leighton House.  The latter immediately preceded the foundation of the Tempera Society, of which Southall became one of the foremost members.

Portrait of Anne Elizabeth Baker by Joseph Southall (1887)

For a number of years Joseph Southall had been very close companions with his cousin Anna Elizabeth Baker, known as Bessie, who was two years older than Joseph.  He completed a number of portraits of her including his 1887 portrait of her when she was twenty years of age.

Coral Necklace by Joseph Southall (1895)

Another early portrait of Anna was John Southall’s 1895 painting entitled Coral Necklace.

Hortus Inclusus by Joseph Southall

She also appeared in his 1898 painting Hortus Inclusus which means private garden.  The setting is just such a garden with tall yew hedges in the background.  It is a portrait of Southall’s wife-to-be although the wedding would not take place for another five years. It is an idyllic scene with Anna sitting on a bench in the garden with her cat by her side.

The Agate (Portrait of the Artist and his Wife) by Joseph Southall (1911)

In June 1903 Joseph Southall and his long-time fiancé, Anna Elizabeth Baker were married.  He was forty-two and she was forty-four.  Their relationship started when they were both youths.  Over time their relationship became more intimate and they eventually became engaged to be married.  However, as they were cousins, this close kinship made the couple deliberately put off marriage until Anna was past child-bearing age.  Probably my favourite portrait by Southall is the one which depicts he an Anna, eight years after they married. The setting is a beach, more than likely Southwold on the Suffolk coast, which is where they spent their honeymoon and returned their many times more.  The title of the painting, The Agate, derives from Bessie seen in the depiction handing her husband an agate, a gemstone which can be found on the seashore in this area. This handing of the agate to her husband can be seen as a symbol of the couple’s collaboration, as we know that the agate gemstone is used by craftspeople to burnish the gilding on picture frames and Southall’s wife Anna, who was  a talented craftswoman, would make the picture frames ready for her husband’s paintings.

The Sleeping Beauty
The Sleeping Beauty by Joseph Southall (1903)

Joseph Southall’s popularity and recognition as a great painter grew.  He was at the height of his career during the latter years of the 1890’s until the start of World War I.  His work was shown at numerous exhibitions, not just in Britain but in Europe and America and he was elected a member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, the Art Workers Guild and the Union Internationale des Beaux-Arts et des Lettres. His major exhibition in England was held in 1907 at the Fine Art Society in London and three years later a major one-man exhibition was held at the Galeries Georges Petit in Paris.  At the Paris exhibition Southall’s work was snapped up and following the event he received a number of lucrative commissions. 

Contentment by Joseph Southall (1928)

With the onset of war in 1014 Southall’s output as an artist waned.  Southall being brought up a Quaker and followed their beliefs all his life had him take an anti-War stance at the onset of hostilities.    Southall’s output as a painter declined considerably with the outbreak of World War I, as the pacifism inherent in his Quaker faith led him to devote his energies to anti-war campaigning. He abandoned his commitment to the Liberal Party and joined the Independent Labour Party, becoming Chairman of the Birmingham City Branch; the Party was the one left-wing body that always upheld its opposition to the war.  Southall also chaired the Birmingham Auxiliary of the Peace Society and was a joint Vice-president of the Birmingham and District Passive Resistance League.  His main artistic output during this period were anti-war cartoons printed in pamphlets and magazines, and art historians reckon they number among his most powerful works.

See the source image
The anti-war pamphlet Ghosts of the Slain by Joseph Southall

In the above cartoon we see depicted ‘all those who sit in the high places and cast the people into the pit’. A diplomat and a businessman push a blindfolded officer towards a precipice, whilst a fashionable society woman looks on and a cleric of the Established Church appears as the priest who ‘blessed our banners and bade speed to our swords’. Apart from Death, who gleefully accompanies this performance on his drum, only the diplomat sees what is happening; the others all have their eyes covered.

‘The Obliterator’ appeared in his anti-war pamphlet Fables and Illustrations opposite a mock sales promotion advertising the Obliterator’s record of leaving ‘nothing standing and nothing breathing’ while making ‘a clean sweep of civilisation’. Southall’s woodcuts and satirical fables were published when most of his wartime energies were consumed by pacifist activism in Birmingham and print caricature provided him a convenient alternative artistic output. The essence of his moral standpoint is an unshakable absolute conviction of conscience, clearly articulated in his fable ‘Inscription from Babylon’: although citizens ‘ought to be law-abiding’, in the final analysis, pacifism is justified by faith that ‘Divine law stood above human laws’ in the form of the the sixth Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not kill’

The Castle of Angers, France
The Castle at Angers by Joseph Southall (1933)

During the two decades of peace between the two world wars, Southall and his wife made regular trips to Europe, visiting France and Italy in the Spring and Autumn.  Their European holidays were combined with their shorter summer holidays to their beloved Southwold on the Suffolk coast and Cornish breaks on the Fowey estuary, all of which gave Southall opportunities to paint the various places.  At this time Southall’s favoured painting medium was watercolours.  Many of these paintings were exhibited at the Alpine or Leicester Galleries in London and the Ruskin Galleries in Birmingham, as well as at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, the Royal Academy, and the Paris Salon. 

Portrait of Sir Whitworth Wallace by Joseph Southall (1927)

Between holidays Southall spent time on lucrative commissions, painting portraits for wealthy patrons, who would often be from the Quaker community. One such work was his portrait of Sir Whitworth Wallace  the first director of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery which opened in 1885.

The Return
The Return by Joseph Southall (1930)

At the 1930 Winter Exhibition at the Royal Academy, Southall exhibited his painting The Return. The painting depicts two women high up on the banks of a river, possibly the River Fowey, one seated on the grass in grey dress, with mustard coloured shoes and a blue hat with green bands. There is a red book on a rock beside her. The other woman stands. She wears a red hat, a salmon-coloured dress with white collar and cuffs. She waves a handkerchief and her white scarf also waves in the wind. On the still water below are sailing ships, casting long reflections on the water. On a small boat lower right, two figures appear to return the woman’s wave.

The Tower of San Vitale :: Joseph Edward Southall - Italy ôîòî
The Tower of San Vitale by Joseph Southall (1933)

Many of the works at this exhibition focused on Southall’s Italian paintings, many done using tempera.  So popular were paintings in that medium that the following Summer Exhibition 1n 1931 allotted one room for works using tempera. This was indeed a change of heart by the Academy Hanging Committee jurists who had scorned that painting medium and could not decide whether such works fell into a watercolour or oil classification.

San Giorgio, Venice
San Giorgio, Venice by Joseph Southall (1927)

Joseph and Bessie Southall made many trips to Italy and one of their favourite haunts was Venice which he depicted in a number of his works.

The Right Honourable F. W. Jowett by Joseph Southall (1944)

The couple made their last trip to Venice in the Spring of 1937 but later that year Southall was taken ill and had to undergo major surgery from which he never fully recovered. Doctors struggled to make a proper diagnosis of what was ailing Southall and he had to return to hospital on a number of occasions.  Notwithstanding his poor health he still determinedly carried on painting.  One of his last paintings was his memorial portrait in tempera of the Bradford MP, Frederick William Jowett who was a founder member of the Independent Labour Party. In the depiction we see a copy of the Independent Labour Party newspaper with a headline

“…IS THIS WHAT YOUR MEN FIGHT FOR?…”

Jowett had died in February 1944 and Southall had not quite finished it when he died nine months later.  The work was then completed by Maxwell Armfield, before being presented to the City of Bradford.

Joseph Edward Southall died of heart failure at his home in Edgbaston in 1944, aged 83.