The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.  ― Auguste Rodin

Joyeux anniversaire, Auguste :)

Rodin walking with his dogs in Meudon, Val-Fleuri

On November 7th, 1598 Francisco de Zurbarán was baptized in Fuente de Cantos, Extremadura, in Spain. He was apprenticed in Seville and was appointed painter to Philip IV in 1630s; supposedly the king called him Painter to the king, king of painters. He did however fall out of fashion and eventually he had to move to Madrid in search of work. 

Called the Spanish Caravaggio for his use of chiaroscuro and tenebrism,  Zurbarán is best known for his religious subject paintings, saints and depictions of monastic life. 

You can be sure that most of the high positions in the country would be empty if one were admitted only after an examination as severe as the one we painters must pass. —  Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin

Birthday to Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, French painter born on this day in Paris, 1699. He was considered master of still life painting, but I do prefer those of genre - especially so the motives of card players and bubble blowers. Known to paint slowely, he produced no more than around four paintings a year. This number was even smaller toward the end of his life when he was also responsible for arranging Salon exhibitions and  worked as its treasurer as well.

As the story goes Chardin as a young painter exhibited his works around  Pont Neuf, hoping to get noticed; this happened in 1720 when Van Loo bought one of these paintings and then decided to assist him. He was admitted to the Academy in 1728 but his popularity and wealth came laterthrough the reproductive engravings of his genre paintings. He was to become a strong influence on later artists feom Manet to Lucian Freud, having been also one of the favourite artists of Henri Matisse.

Self-Portrait with Spectacles, 1771

Yesterday was the birthday of Antonio Canova, the great Italian neoclassical sculptor. However, Canova also painted and this is his self portrait, painted in 1792, when he was 35 :)

Happy Birthday Antonio !

Walt Kuhn - Chico in Top Hat, 1948 
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza

To which I am adding another painting of Chico - Chico in Silk Hat, from the same year and a photo of Kuhn himself. Text by Carmen Bernárdez Sanchís.

Chico in Top Hat is one of the many representations of circus performers constituting a fundamental part of Kuhn’s artistic creation. One of the best examples of this subject is White Clown, painted in 1929, now at the National Gallery of Washington, and his most famous work. In that painting, Kuhn composed a monumental, robust figure in a sitting position, which takes up the entire canvas, and which patently shows the influence of Cézanne’s concept of composition. Chico in Top Hat, on the other hand, clearly reveals a difference in its artistic design and execution. The stylised figure of the young clown wearing a jacket and a black top hat stands out against a grey background with wide vertical folds. His long bony face is covered in thick white makeup with strong black lines outlining the eyebrows, eyes and lips. The painting is executed with a restricted range of colours, which Kuhn uses to give intense effects of light. Chico presents a frontal gaze and is strongly hieratic, with a restrained expression conveying intense melancholy. Clearly, the emphasis is on the huge eyes, a characteristic of the majority of Kuhn’s figures from the 1920s until the end of his life, although this was not the case of White Clown, in which the painter was more interested in the volume and plasticity of the body. Here, the character stares at a point outside the painting, where the spectator stands, but the intensity of his gaze is not really on the viewer or on an object outside the picture; it hides a deep sense of solitude and of interior crisis, which Kuhn’s friends had perceived in the painter himself during the last months of his life, when he held his last exhibition at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in New York. In November 1948 he had a nervous breakdown followed by a gastric perforation, as a consequence of which he died in a hospital in New York.

Kuhn’s relationship with the performing arts was not just an artistic option in line with so many representations of harlequins, clowns, actors and circus performers, starting with Watteau’s Gilles, Degas’ circus scenes, Picasso’s harlequins and Rouault’s characters. Among the American painters, Everett Shinn had depicted theatre and variety shows, while Bellows and Luks had chosen boxing matches. The direct and realistic representation of the figure recalls the circle of realist painters in which Walt Kuhn had moved in his initial years. Although he was not a direct follower of Robert Henri or of the so called Ash Can School, he was in touch with him and his circle during the organisation of the Exhibition of Independent Artists held in 1910, three years before the Armory Show. Kuhn shared with the realist artists a taste for the direct observation of things, and particularly a strong rejection of academic conservatism. He had always been a skilful entrepreneur and organiser. His link with the world of the performing arts went back to his youth when he was responsible for delivering to the theatres the costumes made in the shop where he worked, and he often delayed behind the scenes. Later, he executed some advertising commissions for the circus and in 1928 he collaborated with Libby Holman in the vaudeville show Merry-Go-Round, for which he designed the set and costumes. The characters which fill his paintings of the 1920s, 30s and 40s were generally professional performers and not models, and Kuhn and his wife designed the circus or theatre costumes with which they were portrayed

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.
 ― Pablo Picasso 

Pablo had birthday a few days ago :)

Though the artist must remain master of his craft, the surface, at times raised to the highest pitch of loveliness, should transmit to the beholder the sensation which possessed the artist. — Alfred Sisley 

Birthday to Alfred Sisley, who was British but spent most of his life in France. One of the most famous Impressionists, he never really abandoned it or deviated from it, so he is sometimes referred to as one of most steadfast of the group. Art historian Robert Rosenblum said his work was in fact a textbook idea of a perfect Impressionist painting. Mainly he painted landscapes, always in plein air.

Other than Caravaggio’s today is also the birthday of Tintoretto and that of François Boucher !

Jacopo Comin, whom we know better as Tintoretto, was one of the most important painters of Venetian Renaissance and Mannerism; known also as Jacopo Robusti, because his father defended the city of Padua, and as Il Furioso, because of the very energetic way of painting. His most famous nick name, Tintoretto, comes from his father’s profession - he was a dyer, tintore and his son tintoretto was thus dyer’s boy :) this little dyer was taken to Titian’s studio to learn painting, but was sent home after only 10 days; however, as a young artist he had Il disegno di Michelangelo ed il colorito di Tiziano - Michelangelo’s design and Titian’s colour - inscribed as a credo above his door. He was of good temperament, played the lute and almost never left Venice.

Here are his three self portraits - one from youth (1547) and two from old age (1585 and 1588).

Birthday to one of my most favourite artists in whole of art history, as I am sure he is to many : Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio :-) born on this day in 1571.

No need to write much about him, but I will post some paintings of his that I’ve been lucky enough to see in person; with that two documentaries, first of those being The Power of Art episode about him, by Simon Schama. 

Happy Birthday Michelangelo Merisi !!!

Simon Schama’s Caravaggio_1 of 4
Simon Schama’s Caravaggio_2 of 4
Simon Schama’s Caravaggio_3 of 4
Simon Schama’s Caravaggio_4 of 4

Portrait of Caravaggio by Ottavio Leoni, c 1621

The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees in himself. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting what he sees before him. Otherwise his pictures will be like those folding screens behind which one expects to find only the sick or the dead. — Caspar David Friedrich

Birthday to the painter who, according to the French sculptor David d’Angers discovered the tragedy of landscape - generally very popular and also one of my personal favourites - Caspar David Friedrich. Extremely popular during his younger years Friedrich later fell out of fashion and was almost forgotten; new appreciation for his work came with the German Expressionists, but especially through Surrealists to whom he was a star. he is best known for contemplative, allegorical landscapes set in or around Gothic churches, graveyards, on mountains or in woods.

Portrait of Caspar David Friedrich, Gerhard von Kügelgen c. 1810–20

To give a body and a perfect form to one’s thought, this - and only this - is to be an artist.  — Jacques-Louis David

Interestingly just one day after Ingres’ birthday comes one of his teacherJacques-Louis David, the most influential French artist of his time. David’s name equals with Neoclassicism - he almost personally put an end to rather silly art of Rococo, going back to Classic arts of (then known) Greece and Rome and Vinckelmann’s writings. After visiting Pompeii in 1779, he decided to revolutionize painting. And that he did.

Here are two very famous paintings, both masterpieces - Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his wife  (1788) and The Death of Marat (1793), that have a connection between them other that the fact David painted them. Lavoisier was a chemist that is often regarded as “the father of modern chemistry” - he helped constructing metric system, named oxygen and hydrogen, and even put together the first extensive list of elements. His wife Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze was a pupil of David and the one who ordered this portrait; she was rather young when she married Antoine, but the marriage was extremely happy - taking interest in science of her husband Marie-Anne learned chemistry and participated in experiments, making drawings of lab work and translating scientific literature for her husband. The portrait shows all that - it is usually mentioned as the portrait of unusual intimacy and bonding, in which man and a woman are equal partners. His laboratory was the best in whole Europe and has, amazingly enough, survived to this day :)

Unfortunately this important man and scientist fell victim to the Revolution, which is where the connection to the other painting becomes clearer - Jean-Paul Marat was a French Revolutionary, a friend to the people that was the sole source of misfortune to many that lost their heads in those times, which we call, quite fittingly, Terror. Among them was unfortunate Lavoasier whom Marat personally charged and with more than silly charges too - he, among other things, accused him of not letting enough air flow with his very high walls. Lavoasier was, of course, found guilty and eventually guillotined  at the age of 50. The Republic needs neither scientists nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed. said the judge; mathematician Lagrange however had another opinion : It took them only an instant to cut off his head, he said, but France may not produce another such head in a century.

The Death of Marat was an icon of the revolution, Marat becoming revolutionary martyr - and quite literary so - the painting was paraded through the streets of Paris in a manner not much different to a religious procession. He was killed by one Charlotte Corday sitting in a bathtub - in which he spent most of his time due to some skin disease. Charlotte Corday pretended that she came to denounce some people, was let in and, as she planned, stabbed him. Without even trying to run away she was taken to jail, tried and executed. In later times she was to become a hero called the Angel of Assassination. Soon however the times changed again, Robespierre was killed, David himself not in favour for participating in Terror and so the painting was given back to him, Marat the martyr no longer needed or even welcome. After David’s death his closest pupil  *Antoine Gros* hid it and it is now in  Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, where david lived his last years in exile, after Napoleon’s demise. 

It is interesting also to think why Marat wanted Lavoasier dead so much that he would fabricate such silly accusations; it all sounds almost personal, especially since it was a person more interested in science than politics. The answer is that before becoming a revolutionary Marat very desperately wanted to become - a scientist. He tried very hard to achieve this in many ways, but to no success. As far as I understood it he even came to Lavoasier with some of his ideas, but was almost laughed at. It is possible that Marat really had a personal grudge against the chemist.

David was first backed by the Academy and aristocracy, then by revolutionaries - Robespierre being his personal friend -and then by Napoleon too; his political involvement - spanning from signing capital punishment lists during the revolution but then painting Napoleon’s crowning - was such that at one point even his wife divorced him. Not particularly charming man. However, his importance as a painter cannot be overestimated and his genius is not possible to deny. So - Happy Birthday, Jacques-Louis David

For another depiction of Marat’s death, the one featuring Charlotte - now as hero, see http://goo.gl/w0aBk by Baudry

Drawing is not just reproducing contours, it is not just the line; drawing is also the expression, the inner form, the composition, the modelling. See what is left after that. Drawing is seven eighths of what makes up painting.
— Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Birthday to Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres born on this day in  1780 - who worshiped Raphael and his teacher David, and was in turn worshiped by none other than grumpy Degas, who collected his drawings. All he wanted was to be the painter of histories in grand manner of David and the keeper of Classicism against the Romantic current of Delacroix that he abhorred; instead he was constantly criticized by not only contemporary art critics but by David himself - his painting constantly being called “Gothic” and were, ironically, liked only by the Romantics. Thus he vowed never to return to France or exhibit at Salon again; of course, he eventually did both and spent the last 25 years of his life in France quite successful; but before that he did spend quite long time in Rome, especially during his younger years, depending almost entirely on drawing portraits of tourists that came to Italy. These are the ones I decided to share today :)

There are about 450 of these drawings that Degas admired so much in existence today; tourists - mainly the English on their Grand Tour through Italy - would come to his door asking Is this where the man who draws the little portraits lives? much to Ingres’ dismay; No, the man who lives here is a painter !he would answer, but then would still agree to take their commission because they were his only source of income. Most usually he would go to lunch with them, so they would relax and he could catch a glimpse of their true character. Even after becoming all that he yearned to be as a painter, in his time as well as now, his portraits were regarded as his true masterpieces, painted or drawn. The ones that he did in Rome are particularly interesting because of the chosen background - usually St. Peter’s basilica or some other famous scenery - not unlike the places people choose today when getting photographed. Very similar also to why I mentioned yesterday Goethe took artists with him through his Italian journey - it was the only way then to get some journey memorabilia.  

Ingres never stopped drawing portraits and these I share today are not just those from his years in Rome; my favourites are many but perhaps the two I love the most are the one of Niccolò Paganini, who was his friend and with whom he played Beethoven string quartets; and that of the young Franz Liszt who thought Ingres’ playing was charming and had intended to play Mozart and Beethoven violin sonatas with him :) Ingres did learn to play the violin as a child and played passionately throughout his life; some say that he loved it even more than painting itself. That is why there is an expression violon d’Ingres meaning the second skill of a person. Other than these two I also love the portrait of his first wife Madeleine Chapelle whom he proposed to without ever meeting her :) On his friends’ recommendation Ingres started a correspondence with Madelaine which then soon turned to courtship; he then proposed and she accepted :) It was an unusually happy marriage that lasted until her death in 1840s. Before all this Ingres was in fact engaged to a woman he had seen and which was a painter and musician, but the engagement was broken after he decided never to return to Paris in 1806, just at the beginning of his career, when he was scorned for the first time at The Salon. This woman never married someone else - she said : When one has had the honor of being engaged to M. Ingres, one does not marry. ;)

Happy Birthday, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres !

Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don’t see a different purpose for it now.    ― Dorothea Tanning

She would have celebrated her 102nd birthday today, if she hadn’t passed away this year in January - Dorothea Tanning was until very recently the oldest living surrealist.

She discovered Dada and Surrealism in 1936, after visiting Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism  exhibition in Museum of Modern Art in New York, soon starting with her own surreal paintings. In 1942 Max Ernst visited her studio and the twoplayed chess and fell in love as she said - four years later they were married in a double ceremony with their friend Man Ray and his wife. They moved to France in 1949 where they lived until Max Ernst died  in 1976, when she moved back to USA. Towards the end of her life she focused more on her writing, producing two books of memoirs Birthday (named after one of her most famous paintings) and the expanded version Between Lives: An Artist and Her World. About contemporary art she said wisely - I get the impression that the idea is to shock. So many people laboring to outdo Duchamp’s urinal. It isn’t even shocking anymore, just kind of sad.

See much more about Dorothea here http://www.dorotheatanning.org/index.php

And read aricles 
here http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/feb/06/dorothea-tanning
and here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/art-obituaries/9060213/Dorothea-Tanning.html

Birthday of George Stubbs, an English horse painter, who after visiting Italy in 1754 had decided that the nature is superior to even Greek and Roman art and henceforth dedicated himself to the study and painting of mainly horses. 

Stubbs and his wife Mary rented a farmhouse and spent 18 months dissecting horses, which resulted in the publication of The anatomy of the Horse in 1766. By that time however he was already recognized and loved by the aristocracy as the favourite horse painter in England, that also did portaits with favourite horses and dogs of nobility. Somewhat less known are his paintings of more exotic animals, which he had the chance to observe in private menageries of his aristocratic patrons. Thus there are paintings by Stubbs that depict lions, tigers, giraffes or monkeys too. One of his most famous painting, and a theme that he was quite preoccupied with, was actually these two groups of painting put together in compositions of a horse being attacked by a wild beast, most often a lion.

Birthday to Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot born on this day in 1796 :) Corot was primarily a landscape painter although he dealt with prints as well. 

Parisian born, Jean Baptiste was one of rare painters that never had money troubles : he came from a well to do family. He was not a brilliant student and so his father made him become apprentice to a draper; having finished this apprenticeship Corot famously said : I told my father that business and I were simply incompatible, and that I was getting a divorce. Soon he turned to oil painting, landscapes being from the start his main preoccupation.

From 1825 to 1828 Corot lived in Italy; his parents financed the trip with one request : that he should paint a self portrait for them :) In Italy Corot made friends with other young French painters and spent much time with them either in cafes or in Italian countryside. Nevertheless it was a very productive period for him : he painted around 150 paintings. In these and then later ones too, many critics see the beginning of what would eventually become Impressionism : especially so his practice of painting plain-air at the time that most painters did their work inside a studio. Later Baudelaire would say that Corot was the leader in the modern school of landscape painting. Camille Pissarro, whose birthday we had a few days ago, was later one of his pupils for a while; his pupils called him Father Corot :)

Corot’s fame significantly increased as he grew older, his paintings fetching quite enormous prices. He used his wealth and influence to help other artists, whether they were still young and needed a push, or were old and poor : it is well known how Corot bought a house for old and blind Honoré Daumier who was without any money and homeless, or how he helped with significant sum Millet’s widow after his death. 

He himself died when he was 78; Claude Monet said of him There is only one master here—Corot. We are nothing compared to him, nothing.

Happy Birthday Jean-Baptiste-Camille !