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Art

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Le déje­uner des can­otiers (Lun­cheon of the Boat­ing Par­ty) wowed the crit­ics at the Sev­enth Impres­sion­ist Exhi­bi­tion in 1882 and remains one of the greats of Impres­sion­ism. It depicts a con­vivial bunch of din­ers enjoy­ing a sum­mer­time meal alfres­co at the Mai­son Four­naise, over­look­ing the Seine on the Île de Cha­tou, just west of Paris. This is the heart of Impres­sion­ist leisure land, and to this day the restau­rant exists, on what is now dubbed L’île des Impres­sion­nistes.

The din­ers are all friends or col­leagues of Renoir. In the fore­ground, seat­ed low­er-right, is his fel­low artist Gus­tave Caille­botte, who is gaz­ing at Renoir’s future wife, seam­stress Aline Charig­ot, sit­ting oppo­site and coo­ing at her dog. Next to Caille­botte is actress Angèle Legault and, stand­ing above her, Ital­ian jour­nal­ist Adrien Mag­gi­o­lo. At the back, wear­ing a top hat, art his­to­ri­an and col­lec­tor Charles Ephrus­si speaks with poet and crit­ic, Jules Laforgue.

Lean­ing against the rail­ing are Louise-Alphon­sine Four­naise, the daugh­ter of the restaurant’s pro­pri­etor, and her broth­er, Alphonse Four­naise Jr, who han­dled the boat rentals. Row­ing was the main attrac­tion at Cha­tou, and Renoir’s din­ers wear the straw hats and blue dress­es that were the fash­ion­able boat­ing attire of mid­dle-class Parisian daytrip­pers.

Renoir spent months mak­ing numer­ous changes to his can­vas, paint­ing the indi­vid­ual fig­ures when his mod­els were avail­able (there is cor­re­spon­dence from Renoir moan­ing about mod­els fail­ing to turn up). Nonethe­less, Renoir cap­tures the fresh­ness of his vision splen­did­ly, and we can allow our­selves to be fooled that he has spon­ta­neous­ly cap­tured a moment in time. It is a vibrant work of art cel­e­brat­ing good com­pa­ny and good din­ing, and it cer­tain­ly gives us the impres­sion of a very pleas­ant and care­free after­noon.

Details of the par­ty-goers

 

Art

J M W Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire (1839)

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J M W Turn­er is famed for his mas­tery of light and colour. For him, as for Mon­et, light was a mirac­u­lous phe­nom­e­non — it pro­duced colour, it sculpt­ed form and mood and it revealed the beau­ty of nature. He was also remark­ably pro­lif­ic, leav­ing some 550 oil paint­ings and 2,000 water­colours (as well as about 30,000 sketch­es), so you don’t have to go out of your way in this coun­try to find a Turn­er. He was a keen trav­eller, and I love the fact that he came to York­shire and paint­ed such famil­iar land­marks (to us) as Hardraw Force, Mal­ham Cove, and Hare­wood House. Indeed, the Tate holds six full sketch­books from Turner’s tour of York­shire in 1816.

How­ev­er, the sub­ject of this blog is set not in York­shire but on the Thames riv­er. This paint­ing by Turn­er, The Fight­ing Temeraire, on dis­play in the Nation­al Gallery, depicts the last jour­ney of the HMS Temeraire. The Temeraire had been a cel­e­brat­ed gun­ship that had fought valiant­ly in Lord Nel­son’s fleet at the bat­tle of Trafal­gar in 1805. Indeed, pri­or to that bat­tle, she had been mere­ly the Temeraire; it was after­wards she was hon­oured with the “Fight­ing” sobri­quet. Thir­ty three years lat­er, how­ev­er, decay­ing and well past her glo­ry days, she was towed up the Thames from Sheer­ness to be bro­ken up in a Rother­hithe ship­yard.

Turn­er’s paint­ing pays trib­ute to the Temeraire’s hero­ic past. The glo­ri­ous sun­set is a fan­fare of colour in her hon­our. Paint is laid on thick­ly to ren­der the sun’s rays strik­ing the clouds, whilst by con­trast, the ship’s rig­ging is metic­u­lous­ly paint­ed. It can be seen as a sym­bol of the end of an era, even the decline of Britain’s naval pow­er, with the sun set­ting on the days of ele­gant, tall-mast­ed war­ships. The Temeraire is already phan­tas­mal, behind the more sol­id form of the squat lit­tle steam tug that pulls her along to her fate.

Turn­er was in his six­ties when he paint­ed The Fight­ing Temeraire; per­haps this was behind his think­ing in terms of the end of an era. In any event, the paint­ing is an arrest­ing piece of work and, dis­tinct from Turn­er’s many strict­ly-land­scape paint­ings, it tells a sto­ry. I love it.

 

Art

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Census at Bethlehem (1566)

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Last Sun­day, my fam­i­ly and I attend­ed a Christ­mas car­ol ser­vice at our local church, resplen­dent, as every year, with can­dle­light and sea­son­al good­will. As well as the age-old car­ols that we all know and love (or at least tol­er­ate fond­ly, after the decades of rep­e­ti­tion), there were of course sev­er­al appo­site read­ings, and it is the one below, from Luke 2:1–5, that inspired the sub­ject of today’s blog.

And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Cae­sar Augus­tus that all the world should be reg­is­tered… So all went to be reg­is­tered, every­one to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Beth­le­hem, because he was of the house and lin­eage of David, to be reg­is­tered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child.

This of course refers to the cen­sus at Beth­le­hem, and the scene was depict­ed won­der­ful­ly well (albeit set anachro­nis­ti­cal­ly and anatopis­ti­cal­ly in 16th cen­tu­ry Flan­ders) in this 1566 oil paint­ing by one of my favourite artists, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. As is usu­al with works by this Nether­lan­dish Renais­sance mas­ter, much plea­sure is derived from view­ing the piece up close and dis­cov­er­ing the mul­ti­tude of details.

We are look­ing down on a snow-cov­ered vil­lage (and indeed this is one of the first exam­ples of snowy land­scape in West­ern art, the pre­vi­ous win­ter of 1565 hav­ing been, not unco­in­ci­den­tal­ly, one of the harsh­est on record). Peo­ple are going about their dai­ly busi­ness: clear­ing the snow, cross­ing the frozen pond, warm­ing them­selves around a fire. The chil­dren are throw­ing snow­balls, skat­ing, sledg­ing, spin­ning tops. In the right hand fore­ground, we see a man with a large car­pen­ter’s saw, lead­ing an ox and an ass, on which rides a woman wrapped up tight­ly against the cold. These are of course none oth­er than Joseph and Mary, who have come to Beth­le­hem to be enrolled in the uni­ver­sal cen­sus ordered by Emper­or Augus­tus.

With a few deft brush­strokes Bruegel bril­liant­ly cap­tures vil­lage life, whilst sub­tly depict­ing the scene just pri­or to the nativ­i­ty (since after reg­is­ter­ing, there was, of course, no room at the inn). I could spend ages glimps­ing new details revealed in Bruegel’s works, and indeed have done on sev­er­al occa­sions in var­i­ous gal­leries of Europe, where I have usu­al­ly been left to it, meet­ing my long-suf­fer­ing fam­i­ly lat­er in the gift shop! Fun­ni­ly enough, this piece I have yet to actu­al­ly see (it’s in Brus­sels’ Musée des Beaux Arts, which is still only “on the list”).

 

Art

Antonio Canova’s Sculpture of the Three Graces (1817)

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Back in May, my fam­i­ly and I vis­it­ed the Vic­to­ria & Albert Muse­um in Lon­don, and enjoyed, amongst oth­er things, its impres­sive col­lec­tion of sculp­tures, includ­ing this beau­ti­ful piece from the great Ital­ian neo­clas­si­cal sculp­tor, Anto­nio Cano­va. The Three Graces were daugh­ters of Zeus and com­pan­ions to the Mus­es, and were a cel­e­brat­ed sub­ject in clas­si­cal lit­er­a­ture and art. They are Thalia (youth and beau­ty), Euphrosyne (mirth), and Agla­ia (ele­gance), and the god­dess­es are depict­ed hud­dled togeth­er, nude, hair braid­ed and held atop their heads in a knot, the three slen­der fig­ures meld­ing into one in their embrace.

The sculp­ture is carved from a sin­gle slab of white mar­ble. Canova’s assis­tants would have rough­ly hewn out the mar­ble, leav­ing Cano­va to per­form the final carv­ing and shap­ing of the stone to high­light the Graces’ soft flesh. It was com­mis­sioned by John Rus­sel, 6th Duke of Bed­ford, who vis­it­ed Cano­va at his stu­dio in Rome in 1814. Bed­ford was cap­ti­vat­ed by the group of the Three Graces which Cano­va had carved for the Empress Josephine, the estranged wife of Napoleon Bona­parte (“I frankly declare”, he is report­ed to have said, “that I have seen noth­ing in ancient or mod­ern sculp­ture that has giv­en me more plea­sure than this piece of work”). Josephine had died in May of that year, and the Duke offered to buy the sculp­ture from Cano­va, but Josephine’s son claimed it (and that ver­sion is now in the Her­mitage, St Peters­burg) so Bed­ford com­mis­sioned a new one.

The com­plet­ed stat­ue was installed at the Duke’s home, Woburn Abbey. An 1822 cat­a­logue of the sculp­ture at Woburn summed up the appeal of the work: “in the con­strained flex­i­bil­i­ty with which their arms are entwined round each oth­er; in the per­fect sym­me­try of their limbs, in the del­i­ca­cy of detail, and exquis­ite­ness of fin­ish, in the feet and hands; in that look of liv­ing soft­ness giv­en to the sur­face of the mar­ble, which looks as if it would yield to the touch…this great sculp­tor has shown the utmost del­i­ca­cy and judge­ment”.

It is indeed remark­able to get “up close and per­son­al” with a great sculp­ture like this and mar­vel at the skill and del­i­ca­cy required to achieve such an exquis­ite fin­ish from a block of stone. Canova’s oth­er mas­ter­piece, Cupid and Psy­che in the Lou­vre, elic­its the same admi­ra­tion.

  

Anto­nio Cano­va
Art

Claude Monet exhibits Impression, Sunrise (1874)

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In 1872, Claude Mon­et vis­it­ed his home­town of Le Havre in the north west of France and pro­ceed­ed to paint six can­vas­es depict­ing the port “dur­ing dawn, day, dusk, and dark and from vary­ing view­points, some from the water itself and oth­ers from a hotel room look­ing down over the port”. One paint­ing from this series was to become very famous.

Impres­sion, soleil lev­ant (Impres­sion, Sun­rise) was debuted in April 1874 in Paris at an inde­pen­dent exhi­bi­tion launched as an alter­na­tive to the offi­cial Salon de Paris exhi­bi­tions of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The exhi­bi­tion, by a group call­ing itself the “Société Anonyme des Artistes, Pein­tres, Sculp­teurs, Graveurs etc” was led by Mon­et, along with oth­er such future lumi­nar­ies as Edgar Degas, Camille Pis­sar­ro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sis­ley. Two hun­dred works were shown and about 4,000 peo­ple attend­ed, includ­ing, of course, some rather unsym­pa­thet­ic crit­ics.

Mon­et described how he came up with a title for the paint­ing: “They asked me for a title for the catalogue…it could­n’t real­ly be tak­en for a view of Le Havre, so I said: ‘Put Impres­sion’ “. While this title was appar­ent­ly cho­sen in haste for the cat­a­logue, the term “Impres­sion­ism” was not new. It had been used for some time to describe the effect of some of the nat­u­ral­is­tic paint­ings ema­nat­ing from the so-called Bar­bi­zon school of painters. How­ev­er, it was in crit­ic Louis Leroy’s review of the 1874 exhi­bi­tion, “The Exhi­bi­tion of the Impres­sion­ists”, for the news­pa­per Le Chari­vari, that he used “Impres­sion­ism” to describe this new style of work dis­played, and he said it was typ­i­fied by Monet’s paint­ing.

This term, then, ini­tial­ly used to both describe and dep­re­cate a move­ment, was tak­en up by all par­ties to describe the style, and Monet’s Impres­sion, Sun­rise was thus con­sid­ered to have encap­su­lat­ed the start of the move­ment. The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.

 

 

Claude Mon­et
Art

The Book of Kells (c.800)

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The Book of Kells, held in Dublin’s Trin­i­ty Col­lege Library, is an illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script Gospel book in Latin, con­tain­ing the four Gospels of the New Tes­ta­ment. It was cre­at­ed in a Colum­ban monastery in Ire­land around 800 AD, and it’s a mas­ter­work of West­ern cal­lig­ra­phy. It rep­re­sents the pin­na­cle of insu­lar illu­mi­na­tion (“insu­lar” deriv­ing from insu­la, the Latin for “island” and refer­ring to post-Roman art of Britain and Ire­land). It is also wide­ly regard­ed as Ire­land’s finest nation­al trea­sure, and although I haven’t yet made it past the pubs of Dublin to view it, it’s def­i­nite­ly on the list.

The illus­tra­tions and orna­men­ta­tion of the Book of Kells are exquis­ite. The dec­o­ra­tion com­bines tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian iconog­ra­phy with ornate, swirling motifs. There are fig­ures of humans, ani­mals, myth­i­cal beasts, along with Celtic knots and inter­lac­ing pat­terns in vibrant colours, all scribed onto leaves of high-qual­i­ty calf vel­lum with iron gall ink (the stan­dard ink used in Europe, made from iron salts and tan­nic acid extract­ed from oak galls) and colours derived from a wide range of sub­stances import­ed from dis­tant lands.

The man­u­script takes its name from the Abbey of Kells, in Coun­ty Meath, which was its home for cen­turies. Its exact place of ori­gin is uncer­tain, although it is wide­ly thought to have been start­ed at Iona and then lat­er com­plet­ed in the scrip­to­ri­um at Kells itself. Regard­less, it’s true to say that the Colum­ban monks respon­si­ble for its cre­ation had skills in cal­lig­ra­phy honed to a remark­able degree.

Art

John Thornton’s Great East Window at York Minster (1408)

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The last time my fam­i­ly and I vis­it­ed York, we wan­dered out­side York Min­ster but our indige­nous fru­gal­i­ty (being our­selves of York­shire soil) baulked at the then-recent­ly intro­duced admis­sion fee of £10 to go inside. If you too vis­it York and find your­self in sim­i­lar fru­gal mode, let me advise you to take a hold of your­self, with an option­al shake, and remind your­self nev­er to put filthy lucre ahead of artis­tic splen­dour. For York Min­ster, as well as in itself being one of the great goth­ic cathe­drals of north­ern Europe, and thus replete with the resplen­dent archi­tec­tur­al beau­ty for which such cathe­drals are known, con­tains also the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in the world, includ­ing the sub­ject of today’s blog, the Great East Win­dow.

Some call it England’s Sis­tine Chapel, and indeed, had it been done in paint, instead of in glass, it might well be con­sid­ered a rival to Michelangelo’s mas­ter­piece in Rome. How­ev­er, stained glass has always fall­en on the wrong side of that divid­ing line between fine and applied art, and thus it is seen pri­mar­i­ly as a craft. Let’s not fall for that one. The great east win­dow in York Min­ster is one of the tri­umphant achieve­ments of the Mid­dle Ages: 1,690sqft of art­ful­ly exe­cut­ed stained glass, recount­ing the sto­ry of the world from Cre­ation to Apoc­a­lypse.

It was in 1405 that John Thorn­ton of Coven­try was com­mis­sioned to glaze the east end of the Lady Chapel. A copy of Thornton’s con­tract for the win­dow sur­vives, spec­i­fy­ing that he was to draw all the car­toons, and paint a large num­ber of the indi­vid­ual pan­els. For all this Thorn­ton was paid a total of £56, and con­tract­ed to com­plete the job inside three years. For doing so, Thorn­ton received a £10 bonus, and proud­ly put the date of com­ple­tion – 1408 – at the very apex of the win­dow.

Doubt­less Thorn­ton had behind him a team of glaziers, hired local­ly or brought with him from Coven­try, but the paint­ing on the glass would pri­mar­i­ly have been his. It was Thornton’s task too to turn the commissioner’s high­ly the­o­log­i­cal and pre­cise con­cept into a work of art. And this he self-evi­dent­ly did.

While much medieval glass is dom­i­nat­ed by reds and blues, John Thorn­ton had a pen­chant for yel­low as his base colour. In addi­tion, the paint­ing in Thornton’s faces had greater real­ism (and metic­u­lous­ly drawn hair) than his rivals. The typ­i­cal Thorn­ton face is sen­si­tive, with eyes down-turned, a small mouth and a some­what promi­nent nose. What Thorn­ton was pio­neer­ing in his glass­work was the Euro­pean style – new to Eng­land – known as Inter­na­tion­al Goth­ic. It is ele­gant­ly stylised work; for sure, the York com­mis­sion­ers were buy­ing cut­ting edge art, and, of course, good glass can’t be made with­out a cut­ting edge.

Art

William Harnett’s The Old Violin (1886)

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William Har­nett (1848–1892) was an Irish-Amer­i­can painter of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, whose fame may not have with­stood the pas­sage of time very well but who nonethe­less was respon­si­ble for some excel­lent work in the trompe l’œil still life genre. Trompe l’œil, mean­ing “deceive the eye” in French, is a style of paint­ing that seeks to cre­ate a high­ly real­is­tic, three-dimen­sion­al depic­tion of objects, using per­spec­ti­val illu­sion­ism.

The Old Vio­lin is one of Har­net­t’s most famous paint­ings and a superb exam­ple of paint­ed real­ism. The sub­ject is decep­tive­ly sim­ple; a vio­lin, ren­dered in actu­al size, a sheet of music, a small news­pa­per clip­ping, and a blue enve­lope are shown against a back­ground formed by a green and rusty-hinged wood­en door. It cre­at­ed a sen­sa­tion when first exhib­it­ed at the Cincin­nati Indus­tri­al Expo­si­tion in 1886, where view­ers were enthralled by the tech­ni­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty of the pic­ture. A local news­pa­per report­ed that “a police­man stands by it con­stant­ly, lest peo­ple reach over and attempt to see if the news­pa­per clip­ping is gen­uine by tear­ing it off”.

Along with oth­er Har­nett pic­tures that con­vinc­ing­ly tricked view­ers’ per­cep­tions, The Old Vio­lin aroused con­sid­er­able con­tem­po­rary debate about the aes­thet­ics of imi­ta­tive art­work. The genre is hard­ly unprece­dent­ed, how­ev­er – there’s a great lit­tle sto­ry in Greek myth about the 5th cen­tu­ry BC con­test between painters Zeux­is and Par­rha­sius. The con­test was to deter­mine which of the two was the most real­is­tic painter. When Zeux­is unveiled his paint­ing of grapes, they appeared so real that birds flew down to peck at them. But when Par­rha­sius, whose paint­ing was con­cealed behind a cur­tain, asked Zeux­is to pull aside that cur­tain, the cur­tain itself turned out to be a paint­ed illu­sion, and Par­rha­sius won the con­test.

Back to The Old Vio­lin…note how every ele­ment of grain and worn area of the vio­lin is repro­duced in impec­ca­ble detail. The age of the vio­lin is clear­ly key; as Har­nett him­self said: “As a rule, new things do not paint well; I want my mod­els to have the mel­low­ing effect of age”. Well said!

The paint­ing is cur­rent­ly held in the Nation­al Gallery of Art, Wash­ing­ton DC, and, although there is no longer a need for it to be guard­ed from touch by a less cred­u­lous audi­ence of mod­ern times, I for one will pay my regards to this charm­ing still life should I ever be pass­ing through Wash­ing­ton.

 

 

Art

Sir James Guthrie’s A Hind’s Daughter (1883)

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Dur­ing a work vis­it to Scot­land some years ago, I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it Edinburgh’s Nation­al Gallery of Scot­land. It has some excel­lent art­works and is well worth an afternoon’s tar­ri­ance. It hous­es the sub­ject of today’s blog, Sir James Guthrie’s A Hind’s Daugh­ter.

The Glas­gow School was a cir­cle of influ­en­tial artists and design­ers that began to coa­lesce in Glas­gow in the 1870s, and flour­ished from the 1890s to around 1910. Dubbed the Glas­gow Boys, these men had a pas­sion for real­ism and nat­u­ral­ism, as well as a dis­taste for the Edin­burgh ori­ent­ed Scot­tish art estab­lish­ment, which they viewed as oppres­sive (cf. the Impres­sion­ists). Dri­ven and moti­vat­ed by nat­u­ral­is­tic ideals, they embraced change, cre­at­ed mas­ter­pieces, and became Scot­tish icons in the process.

James, lat­er Sir James, Guthrie was one of the lead­ing lights of the Glas­gow Boys. He focused on the life and land­scape of rur­al Scot­land for his oeu­vre; the land and its inhab­i­tants pro­vid­ed a rich resource for Guthrie and none typ­i­fies his art­works of this peri­od more than A Hind’s Daugh­ter (a hind being a skilled farm labour­er). The small girl has just straight­ened up after cut­ting a cab­bage and looks direct­ly and arrest­ing­ly at the view­er, as if she has just spot­ted you. It’s a quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Scot­tish scene, with girl and land­scape inex­tri­ca­bly merged.

Guthrie paint­ed the pic­ture in the Berwick­shire vil­lage of Cock­burnspath. The warm earth colours and dis­tinc­tive square brush strokes demon­strate the influ­ence of French real­ist painters such as Jules Bastien-Lep­age, who sim­i­lar­ly sought inspi­ra­tion from the peas­ant farm­ers of rur­al France. I love it.

 

 

Sir James Guthrie
Art

Niccolò dell’Arca’s Lamentation of Christ (between 1463 and 1490)

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Nic­colò dell’Arca (c. 1435–1440 – 1494) was an Ital­ian Ear­ly Renais­sance sculp­tor, about which lit­tle is known except for his pos­ses­sion of a sub­lime skill in the art of sculp­ture.

His Com­pianto sul Cristo mor­to (the Mourn­ing, or Lamen­ta­tion, of Christ) is a life-size group of six sep­a­rate ter­ra­cot­ta fig­ures lament­ing in a semi­cir­cle around the dead Christ, in the Sanc­tu­ary of San­ta Maria del­la Vita in Bologna. Lamen­ta­tions were com­mon­ly depict­ed in Renais­sance Europe, it being the thir­teenth of the Sta­tions of the Cross. Here, the pain of Jesus’s friends, as he is tak­en down from the cross, could not have been expressed with more intense pathos. Sor­row digs into their faces, for­ev­er frozen in anguish.

More than 600 years after they were made, these frag­ile, now colour­less ter­ra­cot­ta stat­ues con­tin­ue to move and sur­prise vis­i­tors to the church who often don’t know about the church’s prized but untrum­pet­ed pos­ses­sion. It’s a uni­ver­sal and time­less grief the fig­ures express. The only peace­ful fig­ure of course is that of Christ who looks serene­ly asleep on a dec­o­ra­tive scal­loped cov­er­let. Each of the oth­er fig­ures’ dra­mat­ic pathos is inten­si­fied by the real­ism of the facial details.

It’s uncom­fort­able view­ing, of course, due to the nature of the scene, but you know these Renais­sance artists; they had a remark­able capac­i­ty for depict­ing pain and suf­fer­ing, all part and par­cel of the con­cepts embod­ied in the Chris­t­ian reli­gion. The anguish is stark, but the cause of the anguish becomes the focus for the Renais­sance view­er: the dead Christ and the impli­ca­tions of that death for mankind. Check out the image details to ful­ly appre­ci­ate Del­l’Ar­ca’s arti­san­ship.