Paul (Hippolyte) Delaroche (1797–1856) was a lifelong resident of Paris, who trained under Baron Gros alongside fellow student Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828). One of Delaroche’s students was Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Throughout his career, Delaroche painted portraits and depictions of major events in French and British history, together with a few religious scenes. In contrast to his contemporary Bonington, Delaroche’s paintings were invariably simple compositions showing full detail, and with a flat Salon finish. He never showed any tendency towards the painterly. With historical subjects, this gives them the appearance of great accuracy and authenticity, almost as if he had been present at the event.

Delaroche also lived through a great deal of history himself: he first exhibited in the Salon in 1822, in the early years of the Bourbon Restoration after the downfall of Napoleon. In 1830 the July Revolution led to the July Monarchy, then the Revolution of 1848 brought the Second Republic. In the final years of his life, Delaroche saw the start of Napoleon III’s Second Empire, bringing France full circle.

The Sick Joan of Arc is Interrogated in Prison by the Cardinal of Winchester (1824)

Jeanne d’Arc, or Joan of Arc, (c 1412-1431) was a peasant girl from Domrémy in north-east France who had visions instructing her to support the uncrowned Charles VII of France, in his struggle against occupying English forces. She gained fame when, only nine days after being sent to the siege of Orléans, that siege was lifted. Following this the French had a series of quick victories, and Charles’s coronation took place in Reims.

She was captured by English allies on 23 May 1430, and handed over to the English, who had her interrogated, put on trial, and burned at the stake on 30 May 1431, at the age of about 19. Twenty-five years later she was declared innocent, and a martyr, and in 1803 Napoleon made her a national symbol of France.

Delaroche puts the two central figures of the Cardinal of Winchester, as interrogator, and Joan of Arc, as prisoner, facing the viewer. But the Cardinal’s gaze is directed at Joan, and she looks dreamily up to heaven, her manacled hands clasped in prayer. A figure in the background gloom makes a written record of proceedings for the subsequent trial. Excellent use is made of facial expression and body language.

The Duke of Angoulême at the Capture of Trocadero, 31 August 1823 (1828)

After the downfall of Napoleon, there was a political crisis in Spain. King Ferdinand VII of Spain refused to adopt a liberal constitution, and in 1820 there was a rebellion against the monarchy. The King was held at Cádiz, and other European powers authorised France to intervene and restore the King’s rule. On 17 April 1823, the Duke of Angoulême led French forces through the Pyrenees into Spain.

They reached Cádiz in August, and on 31 August 1823 launched a surprise attack on the fort of Trocadero there. Cádiz finally surrendered on 23 September, and the king was handed back. The battle of Trocadero was one of the events which triggered the US Monroe Doctrine, and the Duke of Angoulême was honoured as the ‘Prince of Trocadero’.

The Duke of Angoulême is shown in a dominating pose, his adjutant behind him, scanning the situation intently to the right. Around them are casualties from the intense battle, and a gun crew in the background. Although the painting says little about the story of the battle, it tells much about the leadership and outcome.

The Death of Elizabeth I, Queen of England (1828)

Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland (but not Scotland) (1558-1603) was one of the most autocratic and successful British monarchs, and remained unmarried despite many rumours of relationships. She never named a successor, and being without any direct heir, there were fears of a power struggle when she died.

The autumn of 1602 saw the deaths of several close friends, and she apparently was plunged into depression as a result; the onset of winter would not have helped. She fell sick in March 1603, and her depression deepened. She died between 0200 and 0300 on the morning of 24 March 1603 at Richmond Palace. Within hours, her successor was proclaimed as James I of England and Ireland, also James VI of Scotland.

The haggard queen is shown slumped on a makeshift bed on the floor, which appears most implausible, but puts her low in the painting. Her maids and other female attendants are in distress – one even covering her face with her hands – behind her, supporting the pillows on which her head rests.

I presume that the male kneeling by the queen and extending his right hand towards her is Robert Cecil, leader of the government at the time, and behind him are other members of the Privy Council of England, who were shortly to install Elizabeth’s successor. In addition to facial expressions and body language, Delaroche makes very good use of directions of gaze to inform us of the complex interactions taking place.

Edward V, Child King of England, and Richard, the Duke of York, his Younger Brother (the Children of Edward) (1830)

King Edward IV of England had two sons: Edward, the older, was destined to succeed him as King Edward V, and his younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. Edward V had the unusual distinction of being born in Westminster Abbey, where his mother had sought sanctuary. These were troubled times for the monarchy in England, and Edward IV’s death on 9 April 1483 only made matters worse.

When Edward V succeeded his father to the throne, he was only 12, so was put under the care of his uncle, the Lord Protector, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who aspired to be king himself. The plot started to take shape soon after the death of Edward IV, with the arrest and eventual execution of the young king’s companions. Then on 19 May 1483, King Edward V took up residence in the Tower of London, a month later being joined by his brother Richard.

A move was made to declare Edward IV’s marriage retrospectively (and post mortem) invalid, making their sons illegitimate. The Lord Protector, Richard Duke of Gloucester, was therefore declared the legitimate king on 25 June, and he acceded to the throne as King Richard III the following day.

The boys Edward and Richard were confined to inner parts of the Tower of London, and eventually disappeared altogether. Although there is still considerable uncertainty about what happened, it must be presumed that King Richard III had the boys murdered, probably by suffocation. In 1674, the bones of two children were discovered in the Tower, and King Charles II ordered that they be presumed to be those of ‘the Princes in the Tower’, and interred in Westminster Abbey.

Delaroche uses another simple composition, supported well by facial expressions. The two boys are seen, huddled together on a bed. Edward is staring wistfully into the distance, his head cocked on one side, knowing too well the fate that awaits them both. His younger brother has an illustrated book open on Edward’s thigh, but is looking anxiously, his brow knitted, to the left, as if he can hear someone approaching and their fate drawing close. At the foot of the bed is a small dog, also looking into the dark beyond.

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833)

England in 1553 was in turmoil. King Edward VI’s reign of six years was marred by economic problems, social unrest which erupted into open rebellion, and war with Scotland; these had culminated with the King’s death at the age of just 15.

As he had no natural heirs, there was dispute over his succession; his plan for a cousin, Lady Jane Grey, to become Queen was put into action, starting her rule on 10 July 1553. When King Edward’s half sister Mary deposed her on 19 July, she was committed to the Tower of London, convicted of high treason in November, and executed on Tower Green by beheading on 12 February 1554 at the age of just 16 (or 17).

Lady Jane Grey and the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Bridges, take the centre of the canvas. She is blindfolded, the rest of her face almost expressionless. As she can no longer see, the Lieutenant is guiding her towards the executioner’s block, in front of her. Her arms are outstretched, hands with fingers spread in their quest for the block. Under the block, straw has been placed to take up her blood.

At the right, the executioner stands high and coldly detached, his left hand holding the haft of the axe which he will shortly use to kill the young woman. Coils of rope hang from his waist, ready to tie his victim down if necessary. At the left, two of Lady Jane Grey’s attendants or family are resigned in their grief.

Lady Jane Grey wears a silver-white gown which dominates the entire painting, forcing everything and everyone else back into sombre mid tones and darker.

Delaroche might appear to have made an accurate depiction of the scene, but in fact he made one major alteration: Lady Jane Grey was actually executed in the small court-like space within the Tower known as Tower Green, not in a dark room.

Although he has little scope to use facial expression, body language is very important, and there are numerous cues to the original narrative. Its simple composition and the radiance of Lady Jane Grey’s gown help charge the painting with atmosphere, and it caused a sensation when first exhibited at the Salon of 1834.

The Assassination of the Duke of Guise in the Château de Blois in 1588 (1834)

The Duke of Guise, Henry I, Prince of Joinville and Count of Eu (1550-1588) was a key figure in the French Wars of Religion, as a strongly anti-Huguenot (anti-Protestant) leader, and founder of the Catholic League. The aim of the League was to keep the new heir, Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot, from succeeding Henry III. Guise made the Treaty of Joinville with Philip II of Spain to make Cardinal de Bourbon heir to the throne. As a result, Henry III sided with the Catholic League.

When Guise organised an uprising in Picardy, Henry III became alarmed and ordered Guise to remain in Champagne. However, Guise ignored this and challenged royal authority by entering Paris. Henry III tried different tactics, and made Guise the Lieutenant-General of France. Still feeling threatened by him, the King sent for Guise when he was staying at the Château de Blois, and had him murdered by the King’s bodyguard as he watched. The following day, Guise’s brother, Louis II, Cardinal of Guise, was also murdered.

These two assassinations resulted in such outrage among the Guise family that Henry III had to flee and take refuge with Henry of Navarre. Henry III himself was assassinated the following year by an agent of the Catholic League.

Delaroche divides his canvas in two. On the right, the Duke of Guise lies, dead, in a melodramatic posture with his arms outstretched, at the foot of a bed. At the left, a group of men are talking with one another, most clutching their swords, but none paying the slightest attention to Guise’s body, as if it was not there. Presumably that group includes Henry III and his bodyguard. There is no opportunity to use facial expression, and only body language and composition are needed to establish the story here.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1850)

Napoleon seized power in France on 9 November 1799. In early 1800 he made military moves to reinforce French troops in Italy, so that they could repossess territory which had been lost to the Austrians in recent years. Napoleon, leading the Reserve Army, crossed the Alps via the Great St Bernard Pass in May, and fought their first battle at Montebello on 9 June.

Jacques-Louis David was initially commissioned by the King of Spain to produce an equestrian portrait of Napoleon crossing the Alps. David painted a highly idealised image, which proved so popular that he made five copies between 1801 and 1805. David had previously been a figure of considerable importance in the French Revolution.

When Arthur George, the third Earl of Onslow, visited the Louvre with Paul Delaroche in 1848, he commented on the impracticality and implausibility of the image painted by David. He therefore commissioned Delaroche to paint a more faithful version.

Delaroche swaps the impressive but completely inappropriate rearing horse used by David, for a mule, the only beast capable of taking Napoleon over the pass in these conditions. This is not in the least demeaning, and does not detract from Napoleon’s image as a leader, of course.

However, Delaroche is still a good way from the truth. Napoleon’s face is bare, his left hand uncovered and resting on the pommel of his saddle, and he is wearing a thin cloak and thin riding breeches. It remains a ‘photographic pose’, even if slightly closer to reality.

The Hemicycle of Fine Art (1836-41, 1853)

This was commissioned in 1837 as a tribute to the greatest artists of history, an apotheosis if you will, to cover the walls of the semi-circular auditorium in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Modelled after Raphael’s School of Athens (1509-11), a famous fresco in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, Delaroche set out to include all the most important figures in the history of painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, and print-making.

Some of those he included now appear odd, and are almost unheard of, and there are some surprising omissions. However, Botticelli, El Greco, and Vermeer – who are absent – were not rediscovered until later in the 1800s.

Being painted in oils and wax on a hemispherical wall, it is very hard to show the complete painting in situ. Delaroche’s student Charles Béranger (1816–1853) was commissioned to make a miniature copy onto canvas, which I show below.

The three throned figures in the centre are Ictinus (architect), Apelles (painter), and Phidias (sculptor). Flanking them on the left are personifications of Greek and Gothic art (left), and Roman and Renaissance art (right). Below is the figure of Fame, who is distributing laurel wreaths to the winners of the Prix de Rome. The figure of Gothic art is said to be a portrait of Delaroche’s wife Louise, daughter of Horace Vernet.

On the left are: [Corregio, not shown], Veronese, da Messina, Murillo, van Eyck, Titian, Terborch, Rembrandt, van der Helst, Rubens, Velazquez, van Dyck, Caravaggio, Bellini, Giorgione, Ruisdael, Paulus Potter, Claude Lorraine, and Gaspard Dughet (all painters); Vischer, Bontemps, della Robbia, da Majano, Pisano, Bandinelli, Donatello, Ghiberti, Palissy, Goujon, Cellini, Pilon, [Puget, and da Bologna, not shown] (all sculptors).

On the right are: Delorme, Peruzzi, von Steinbach, Sansovino, Luzarches, Palladio, Brunelleschi, Inigo Jones, di Cambio, Lescot, Bramante, Mansart, and Vignola (all architects); Fra Angelico, Marcantonio, Edelinck, Holbein, Le Sueur, del Piombo, Orcagna, Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Domenichino, Fra Bartolommeo, Mantegna, Romano, Raphael, Perugino, Michelangelo, Masaccio, del Sarto, Cimabue, [Giotto and Poussin, not shown] (all painters and/or print-makers).

All told this painting is about 4.5 metres high, and 27 metres long. Delaroche completed it in 1841, but in 1855 it was badly damaged by fire. He set about restoring it, but died before that could be completed; the task was finished by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, then a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Conclusions

As an accomplished narrative painter, Delaroche was adept in the use of facial expression and body language, to which he added simple but highly effective composition and use of space, and directions of gaze.

His history may seem grim, and focus on treachery, execution, and murder, rather than human achievements. However, the stories which he uses reveal much about our past, and offer clear guidance for our future. They are far less moralistic than many paintings of the nineteenth century, but uncomfortable reminders of our inhumanity in the past.

No matter how authentic his depictions of history may appear, Delaroche’s decisions were ultimately determined by overall effect, and on several occasions he departed significantly from historical fact. But he gets away with it.

References

Wikipedia

Ruutz Rees J (1880) Vernet and Delaroche, Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists, Scribner and Welford. No ISBN.

I am, of course, feeling a little sheepish today about yesterday’s article, Huw Wystan Jones: the Welsh Impressionist. It was completely and utterly false, a spoof for the First of April.

In case you missed any, here are the clues which I gave:

• Huw Wystan – a play on Wystan Hugh Auden, WH Auden’s name
• the Mouton-Rothschild Collection – does not exist, Château Mouton Rothschild is a famous wine estate, and mouton means sheep;
• today, the first of April – just in case you had forgotten;
• Llareggub – a fictional place invented by Dylan Thomas, which is bugger all backwards;
• Swansea Art School – what is now Swansea College of Art was not founded until 1853;
• Boudin inspired to paint en plein air – that was by Johan Jongkind;
• Introducing Monet to Boudin in 1857 – they met directly;
• encouraging Monet to paint landscapes – that was Boudin;
• origin of the word cardigan for a wool jacket – that was James Brudenell, the seventh Earl of Cardigan, in the Crimean War;
• pointillage – actually means a type of massage using the tips of the fingers;
• father of Neo-Impressionism – that was Georges Seurat, who did live on the Boulevarde de Magenta, and attended the local École Municipale de Sculpture et Dessin;
• What day could be more appropriate to celebrate the newly-discovered influence of the Welsh Impressionist? – indeed.

I would also like to apologise to Constant Troyon (1810–1865), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), and Anton Mauve (1838–1888), whose paintings I deliberately misappropriated and attributed incorrectly. For the record, the following are the correct paintings with the correct attributions. I also blurred some of the signatures to hide them: these images are unadulterated in any way.

One interesting discovery which I made in the course of preparing my little spoof was how uncommon sheep are in nineteenth century paintings. With the exception of the wonderful specialist farm animal paintings by Troyon, and some more obviously recognisable works by the Macchiaioli, few artists seem to have depicted sheep much.

Perhaps today’s generation will flock to do so in the light of the fictional Huw Wystan Jones.

I hope that it brought you a little amusement.

… Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
(William Shakespeare, Macbeth Act 5, scene 5.)

Many artists have been but brief candles, whose light has been extinguished long before it should have: Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) promised to be greater even than JMW Turner, but died, probably of an asthma attack, at the age of just 27. Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) is now recognised as one of the most brilliant post-Impressionists, but died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of only 37.

This occasional series will focus on painters like Girtin who left sufficient for us to appreciate their talent, but whose work has largely been eclipsed by those who lived longer.

The first, subject of this and the next article, is Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828), who did not survive to his 26th birthday, but died very rapidly of pulmonary tuberculosis. Among those who paid tribute to his short life and brilliant work were Delacroix, Isabey, and Huet.

Bonington was born near Nottingham, England. His father had inherited the post of Nottinghamshire jailer in 1789, but before his son was born, father had abandoned that to be a drawing instructor and portrait painter, and had become a reasonably successful provincial artist. The early years of the nineteenth century were financially difficult, and father and mother saw their income falling, so decided to move to France. His father set up a lace factory in Calais in 1817, then moved to Paris the following year to establish a lace shop.

Bonington (the son) was first taught painting by his father, but was rescued from that by Louis Francia, who had recently returned from England. He also copied in the Louvre, and in 1819 enrolled in the atelier of Baron Gros at the Institut de France, the most prestigious in France at that time. Among his fellow students were Paul Delaroche, Robert-Fleury, and Charlet. Bonington and Gros did not get on well at first, but became reconciled over time.

Among his favourite views for watercolours were those of the Hôtel des Invalides, Paris from the Père-Lachaise Cemetery, and this View of the Pont des Arts from the Quai du Louvre (c 1819-20).

With these watercolour views of Paris selling quite well, Bonington toured Normandy in the autumn of 1821, returning via Rouen. During that he started to develop his interest in coastal landscapes, which were to remain central for the rest of his career. He started to exhibit in the Salon from 1822, and to produce illustrations for travel books published by his father and Ostervald, who also dealt in British paintings.

By 1823, Bonington’s watercolours had become very popular, with many being turned into prints, and were generating a healthy income for him and his parents. That year he toured north from Rouen along the coast to Calais and Flanders, then back to Paris via Amiens. Typical of the views which he painted then is this watercolour Near Honfleur (c 1823), although this does not appear to be turned into a print.

In early 1824, Bonington, in company with his colleague Colin, sketched and painted in Dunkerque and along the north coast again; although Colin returned earlier, Bonington did not get back to Paris until the early summer. Among the watercolour views which he painted around this time was Fishing Boats Aground (c 1823-4).

He was then working successfully in oils as well as watercolours, and in the summer of 1824 had two oils and a watercolour accepted for the Salon and sold for 500 francs each in advance. He was also awarded a gold medal at that Salon, alongside Constable and Copley Fielding, and Sir Thomas Lawrence was awarded the Legion of Honour. Bonington returned to Dunkerque and continued to paint.

It has been suggested that Bonington’s A Fishmarket near Boulogne (1824) was one of his paintings exhibited in the Salon in 1824, but Noon points out that this canvas was larger than any of Bonington’s listed for that Salon. It is, without doubt, one of his most significant early paintings, and probably one of the best of his brief career.

This detail view shows how loosely he handled many of the figures and objects, and the exaggerated aerial perspective which gives the work such depth.

Another early and successful oil painting, his Near Quillebeuf (c 1824-5) may have a little influence from Constable in the foreground, but otherwise shows similar style to A Fishmarket near Boulogne.

Fishing Vessels in a Choppy Sea (1825) was probably a watercolour copy of his A Sea Piece (c 1824), which may have been inspired by Turner’s marines. It was probably painted at Cap Blanc Nez off Wissant.

In May 1825, Bonington and Colin visited London, where they met up with Delacroix. There they studied public and private collections, and enjoyed many visits to the theatre.

Bonington’s Beached Vessels and a Wagon near Trouville (c 1825) may have been painted when he visited Trouville with Eugène Isabey after their return from England in the summer of 1825. Some have suggested that the wagon is another influence from Constable, but Noon points out that such vehicles were commonly used around the coast, and appear in other paintings by Bonington.

In the Forest at Fontainebleau (c 1825) was probably painted after his visit to London, and together with a related graphite sketch, is the only evidence for Bonington having visited Fontainebleau. The rocks are shown in a particularly painterly way, suggesting that it may have been started (if not completed) en plein air.

On the Coast of Picardy (c 1825-6) shows the Channel coast, probably just north of Le Havre, an area which was to prove popular later with JMW Turner and later still the Impressionists.

Bonington does not appear to have painted many woodland landscapes, but his A Wooded Lane (c 1825) was probably influenced by Paul Huet, with whom Bonington travelled around Rouen and Mantes in the autumn of 1825, rather than Constable.

Bonington’s finest painting of woodland is undoubtedly his Near Rouen (c 1825) from that same campaign with Huet. Showing Rouen in the distance, it appears to have been a plein air oil sketch, with particular emphasis on development of the trees, which pop out in their detail from the loosely roughed-in sky.

Barges on a River (c 1825-6) was probably painted during that trip too, in the vicinity of Mantes. The windmill seen behind the trees helps make this reminiscent of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting.

The next article will cover the last three years of Bonington’s paintings.

References

Biography by Bruce MacEvoy
Wikipedia short article

Noon P (2008) Richard Parkes Bonington, The Complete Paintings, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 13421 6. Note that numbers given after the year of each painting in the captions refer to Noon’s catalogue.

The first part of this two-article series on the short life of Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828) left him at the end of 1825, having established himself as a successful painter of watercolour landscapes, many of which were turned into prints, and of acclaimed oil paintings.

Early in 1826, Delacroix invited Bonington to share his Paris studio. Although there does not seem to have been a detailed study of Bonington’s influence over Delacroix, perhaps the best summary of Delacroix’s opinion is that of his own words:
I never tired of watching his marvellous grasp of effects and the facility of his execution; not that he was readily satisfied. On the contrary, he frequently redid completely finished passages which had appeared wonderful to us; but his talent was such that he instantly recovered with his brush new effects as charming as the first.
(Delacroix, Correspondence 4:287, letter of 30 November 1862, quoted in Noon p 41.)

Bonington continued to paint coastal views. Noon argues that his Les Salinières near Trouville (1826) was painted from memory in the autumn of 1826, recalling the tour with Huet the previous year, and after Bonington’s return from Italy to his own studio in Paris. The repoussoir trees at the left are delightfully painterly.

The Abbey St-Amand, Rouen (c 1827-8) is a rare late watercolour showing this dilapidated monastery near Rouen Cathedral. Noon suggests that Bonington may have painted it when he passed through Rouen on his way to London in 1827, or later from memory and sketches.

From 1825, Bonington had also started painting figurative works of history painting in earnest. Although it would turn out that he had little time to develop in this genre, he demonstrated that he was as technically competent with figures as he was with nature.

Noon reveals that Portia and Bassanio (c 1826) shows a scene from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (Act 3, scene 2), in which Bassanio has come to Portia’s palace at Belmont, to win her hand in marriage. To do this, he must choose the correct casket out of three containing gold, silver, and lead, of which the last contained the winning portrait of Portia. Here Portia’s maid Nerissa stands aside, and Bassanio, recognising his successful choice, seals the betrothal contract with a kiss.

The sentimental melancholy of The Use of Tears (1827) is tragically appropriate if not prescient. It shows a young woman in her sickbed, if not deathbed, a popular and commonly-experienced scene of the time.

It was Noon who proposed that this painting, Knight and Page (Goetz von Berlichingen) (c 1826), showed Goetz von Berlichingen from Goethe’s Sturm and Drang tragedy of that name. He was a German warlord who struggled irrationally to defend his feudal lifestyle in the face of modern reform. Bonington probably painted this when he was sharing Delacroix’s studio in early 1826, and left it incomplete with Delacroix when he moved out.

In April 1826, Bonington left Paris with Charles Rivet and crossed the Alps via the Simplon Pass to Italy. After a few days rest in Milan, they pressed on to arrive in Venice later that month. Once in Venice, Bonington produced a large number of sketches and studies, some watercolours painted in front of the motif, and a few oil sketches on millboard which were at least started en plein air.

On the Grand Canal (1826) appears to be a brilliant plein air oil sketch painted from a boat, showing the entrance to the Grand Canal. Bonington has removed one of the palazzi, but otherwise appears faithful to the motif.

The Grand Canal Looking Toward the Rialto (1826), also on millboard, may have been started en plein air, but appears to have been completed later in the studio, when back in Paris, which may account for the difference in hues in the sky.

Bonington and Rivet left Venice on 18 May, visited Padua, Florence, and Pisa, and Bonington then returned alone via Switzerland in June. Once back in Paris, Bonington moved to his own studio, while remaining on very good terms with Delacroix, who considered that the visit to Italy had produced changes in Bonington’s style.

In the late Spring and early summer of 1827, Bonington went to London to develop his links with the art trade there. The later months of the year were extremely busy for him, preparing for a much-delayed Salon and other exhibitions. He was again very successful at the Salon which was eventually held in two parts during November 1827 and from February 1828, at which Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus was first shown. Sadly Bonington’s paintings from the second part of the Salon, with a single exception, have either vanished or become badly damaged.

Riva degli Schiavoni, from near S. Biagio (c 1827) shows the San Marco basin from the Arsenal traghetto. Although a small watercolour, Noon considers that it was painted well after Bonington’s return from Italy.

Ducal Palace with a Religious Procession (1827) was apparently painted in late 1827 for James Carpenter, from graphite studies which Bonington made during his visit in 1826. Painted on a white ground, it unfortunately underwent quite severe shrinkage, and was extensively retouched as a result. However, it was generally very well received at the time, despite the liberties taken with its representation of the view.

The Piazzetta, Venice (1827) shows the smaller Piazzetta which passes out from the Piazza San Marco. This too was painted in the studio from graphite sketches which he had made during his 1826 visit, and again takes various liberties with reality.

In February 1828, Bonington visited London again in time to see the two views of Venice above exhibited at the British Institution, then returned to Paris to recuperate from the hectic work of the winter, resuming various printmaking projects. In May he sent three oil paintings for the Royal Academy exhibition, encompassing his coastal views, Venice, and history.

Grand Canal, the Rialto in the Distance – Sunrise (1828) is another of Bonington’s finest oil paintings, made in the studio from graphite and other sketches from 1826. This painting has quite commonly been described as showing sunset, but as the view faces almost due east, must have been set in the early morning.

Bonington’s health was deteriorating during the early summer, and by the beginning of July he was physically incapacitated. He continued to sketch and paint from the back of cabs in Paris, but in September his parents had him moved to London for medical attention. He died there as a result of pulmonary tuberculosis – ‘King Death’ – on 23 September 1828, a month before he would have turned 26.

Although painted on millboard suggesting that it may have at least started as a plein air sketch, his Corso Sant’Anastasia, Verona (1828) contains a lot of very painterly detail which could not have been completed in a single session. It is also likely that the religious procession was a late addition, influenced by a Le Nain painting in the Louvre. Noon considers that this was “almost certainly the last picture Bonington painted before his final illness in July 1828.”

Comparisons

Here are some example oil paintings from other prominent artists of the same period as Bonington.

Although Constable’s sketches and studies were very loose and progressive, his finished paintings were much more traditional in style.

At this time, Corot, who was six years older than Bonington, was starting his plein air campaign in the Roman Campagna. His Ville-d’Avray: Entrance to the Wood (c 1825) makes an interesting comparison with Bonington’s A Wooded Lane (c 1825) shown in the first part of this series and repeated below.

JMW Turner was undergoing the transition from his more traditional oil paintings to that more typical of his later years.

Conclusions

In less than a decade of painting professionally, Bonington was amazingly prolific: Noon’s catalogue includes 400 watercolours and oil paintings, and there are undoubtedly many others which are still not known about or have been lost.

Bonington had a direct influence on Delacroix, and thereby indirectly on the Impressionists and the major changes which happened over the course of the latter half of the 1800s. His use of colour and light, his painterly brushwork, his development of coastal landscapes in Normandy, and of riverbank scenes in the Île de Paris, were important groundwork for the Impressionists.

Bonington’s scenes of the traditional fishing industry operating on beaches may even have influenced Eugène Boudin in his paintings on the Channel coast of France, and perhaps the much later watercolours of Winslow Homer at Cullercoats in England. It would seem to be a fruitful area for further work to examine Bonington’s influence.

References

Biography by Bruce MacEvoy
Wikipedia short article

Noon P (2008) Richard Parkes Bonington, The Complete Paintings, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 13421 6. Note that numbers given after the year of each painting in the captions refer to Noon’s catalogue.

Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830–1896) was a bastion of the arts establishment in the UK in the late nineteenth century, being the President of the Royal Academy from 1878 to 1896. He trained under the Austrian history painter Eduard von Steinle, Giovanni (Nino) Costa, a Roman member of the Macchiaioli, at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, and then lived in Paris from 1855-1859.

Although Wikipedia claims that he won the coveted Prix de Rome, his name does not appear in the list of winners on Wikipedia, and elsewhere it is claimed that he won the award for sculpture rather than in painting, in 1889. However Wikipedia does not list him for sculpture either, although he was also an accomplished sculptor.

With the popularity of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism at the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, Leighton’s work was not just forgotten, but reviled for many decades. It is only in recent years that it has been re-evaluated and he is in the process of being ‘rehabilitated’. Whether or not you have a taste for his paintings, he was an extremely accomplished narrative painter, and his work merits examination in that context.

It is often not appreciated that Leighton did not simply turn out fashionable eye-candy such as his still hugely popular Flaming June (1896), but tackled a wide variety of genres and subjects. He painted many superb and very painterly plein air oil sketches around Europe, some huge murals, and even made a set of book illustrations for George Eliot’s historical novel Romola, which was first published in a 14-part series in Cornhill Magazine during 1862-3.

The Death of Brunelleschi (1852)

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) was a central figure in the Southern Renaissance, an architect and civil engineer who is generally credited with developing the first geometrically correct perspective projection for use in 2D drawings and paintings. It was he who designed and supervised the construction of the brick dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral in Florence. He died there on 15 April 1446.

Leighton follows convention in locating Brunelleschi’s death in a building in Florence, whose window opens to a view of the dome of the cathedral. Brunelleschi is shown half-recumbent in extremis in a chair, as if flattened onto a two dimensional plane. The complex array of buildings seen between the window and the dome appear to defy correct perspective projection, but have in fact been carefully projected, and contrast with the flatness of the dying man.

Leighton, who painted this when he was in Italy, thus uses this simple story to discuss Brunelleschi’s perspective and its effects in painting in a visual manner.

The Feigned Death of Juliet (1856-8)

Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet (published 1597) explores the relationship between two lovers from families engaged in a long-standing feud, in Verona, Italy. After her secret marriage to Romeo, Juliet is promised in marriage to Count Paris, of the ruling house of Verona. The friar who performed their marriage offers her a potion which will put her into a deathlike coma for forty-two hours, which she takes in order to avoid her arranged marriage.

The play reaches a climax when Juliet is then discovered apparently dead, and her body is placed in the family crypt. However a messenger intended to inform Romeo of Juliet’s plan fails to reach Romeo in time. Learning of Juliet’s apparent death from his servant, Romeo buys poison, and goes to the crypt in which Juliet is laid out. Meeting her fiancé, the two men fight, and Romeo kills her fiancé before taking poison himself. When Juliet awakens from her coma, she sees Romeo dead, and stabs herself with his dagger. Following this triple death, the Capulet and Montague families make peace and end their feud.

Leighton shows Juliet apparently dead, laid out at home before she is moved to the crypt. She is surrounded by her immediate family, the Capulets, who are shown highlighted for emphasis. Lord and Lady Capulet are closest, with Juliet’s nurse behind. Count Paris is at the right, with Friar Laurence behind him. A queue of others leads into the background. The window reveals the two prominent towers of Verona, and at the back of the house preparations are still being made for Juliet’s wedding.

Facial expressions are of grief and anguish, with body language in support. Leighton’s use of lighting for emphasis is reminiscent of its use in narrative by Rembrandt, and seems particularly appropriate for a painting of a play. He also painted a scene showing the resolution of the plot, in which the feuding families are reconciled.

Winding the Skein (c 1878)

A woman is sat at the left, her hands outstretched to carry the little that remains of a skein of red wool. At the right is a young girl who is winding the wool from that skein into a ball. At her feet are four balls of wool which she has already wound. By the side of the woman, closer to the viewer, is a woven basket containing other skeins of wool in various colours. This takes place on the roof terrace of a house, behind which are distant bays and rocky scenery of the Bay of Lindos on the island of Rhodes, Greece.

No external narrative appears to be referenced by this painting, and it is easily read as just a pleasant view, a superficial confection. However, it contrasts its timeless air with an activity which is often used to fill in time with a purposeful but repetitive task. I think that Leighton also saw these references to the immediate passage of ‘momentary’ time against the much bigger scheme of ‘deep’ time, and how the days in our short lives measure up against the much slower progress of centuries and civilisations.

Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon (1868-9)

In Greek myth, Electra was the daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra. When her father was murdered by her mother and stepfather, on his return from the Trojan War, she and her brother Orestes plotted revenge against them. This plot originated when Orestes and Electra met at their father’s tomb, and was inspired by Electra’s face there. The story is told in detail in plays by Sophocles and Euripides, and she appears in many other plays.

Leighton shows Electra in funereal black, beside what appears to be a substantial mausoleum. She is in profound grief, her brows knitted, her eyes closed, their lids puffy from tears. Her arms are thrust up behind her head, where her hands are pressed against the top of her head, in a ritual gesture as if tearing her hair.

This is a classical approach using Alberti’s ‘laws’. Despite the angle of her face, its expression is unmistakeable, and her body language also very clear. This painting is unusual for not showing Orestes, and it may have been Leighton’s intent to put the viewer in his place.

Cymon and Iphigenia (1884)

The tale of Cymon, a young nobleman, and Iphigenia, a beautiful young woman, is one of the hundred novellas bundled into Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron (1348-1353). Cymon had been an arrogant lout before he set eyes on Iphigenia. It is dusk on a warm May day, and she is sleeping in the woods with her servants and a dog. Cymon becomes a reformed character as a result, transforming into a perfect polymath.

Leighton shows Iphigenia, stretched out languidly in her sleep, in the last warm light of the day; behind her the full moon is just starting to rise. He has changed the season, though, for autumn, with the leaves already brown but the days still hot. Cymon stands in shadow on the right, idly scratching his left knee, gazing intently at Iphigenia.

Without knowing the original story, this is hard to read because so many of its cues and clues are non-specific. Apart from the change in season – which makes pictorial sense given the warm light of dusk – Leighton appears faithful to the original.

Captive Andromache (c 1886)

Andromache is also drawn from Greek myth, in particular the Iliad, and two plays (Andromache and The Trojan Women) by Euripides. She was born and raised in Cilician Thebe, where her father was ruler. She married Hector, the Trojan prince who was the greatest fighter for the city-state of Troy during the Trojan War, at which time they had an infant son. When Hector was killed by Greek Achilles and the city of Troy fell, she was taken into captivity as a concubine by Neoptolemus, who had killed her son. She eventually went to live with Pergamus in Pergamum, where she died in old age.

Andromache is shown, in black mourning clothes, in the centre of Leighton’s painting. She is queueing with many other women, presumably who were captured from Troy, to fill her vase with water from a well, shown at the right. Although others have children and appear to be clustered into groups, Andromache is stood in isolation, her head bowed in silent thought.

There are references to Nicolas Poussin’s famous depiction of women with vases at a well in his Eliezer and Rebecca, but here in very different circumstances. His composition, particularly the use of a nearby family group, use of body language and clothing, are very effective at making Andromache appear completely isolated despite her physical proximity to others.

Perseus and Andromeda (1891) and Perseus On Pegasus Hastening To the Rescue of Andromeda (c 1895-6)

This Greek myth tells of Andromeda, who was the beautiful daughter of the King and Queen of the North African kingdom of Aethiopia. Her mother, Cassiopeia, was so proud that she boasted that Andromeda was more beautiful than even the Nereids, who often accompanied Poseidon, the god of the sea. The latter decided to punish Cassiopeia for this arrogance, and sent Cetus, a sea monster, to ravage the coast of North Africa including Aethiopia.

The king was told by an oracle that the only way to be rid of Cetus was to sacrifice Andromeda to it. She was therefore stripped and chained to a rock on the coast, abandoned for Cetus to devour her. Perseus was just returning from killing the Gorgon Medusa when he chanced upon Andromeda in chains. Wearing Hades’ helm of darkness to render him invisible, Perseus killed Cetus, set Andromeda free, and married her. Various geographers of the day, including Strabo, considered that Andromeda had been chained up at Jaffa, modern Tel Aviv.

Leighton’s earlier painting shows the ‘invisible’ Perseus astride Pegasus, the winged stallion, shooting arrows into Cetus, while the monster surrounds Andromeda. Cetus is shown as a fairly conventional fire-breathing dragon, complete with stereotypical wings and a long tail. Andromeda is not naked, but some modesty is preserved by draping a white robe around her waist.

Similarities with the story of Roger rescuing Angelica as shown by Ingres and in Böcklin’s Roger Freeing Angelica (1873, 1879-80) are clear. Leighton’s Andromeda is too contorted to allow us to see her facial expression, which in view of Cetus’ position is unnecessary for a reading. That contortion does convey the clear message that she is affixed to the rock.

A few years later, Leighton made a separate painting of Perseus riding Pegasus, still holding the head of Medusa, which is remarkably similar to the inset image in Perseus and Andromeda.

And the Sea Gave Up the Dead Which Were in It (1892)

The title of this painting is a quotation from the book of Revelation in the New Testament:
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
(Revelation Chapter 20, verse 13.)

Considered to be one of Leighton’s most dramatic paintings, it was first intended to decorate Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, but was rejected as being unsuitable. It was commissioned at reduced size by Henry Tate for his new gallery of British art, now The Tate Gallery in London.

Unlike much of the fearsome imagery of the Second Coming described in the book of Revelation, this is essentially an optimistic scene, being the resurrection and spiritual salvation of those who have died at sea – an all too common fate around the British coast. A central family group shows stages of awakening: the man has been fully awakened, his son is just starting to breathe but still white, and his wife still bears the pale green hue of the dead.

Around them, others are likewise being awoken from their coffins, presumably from burial at sea, or from the water itself. Leighton’s tones and colours probably refer to Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1819), by far the most famous painting of shipwreck and death at sea, which Leighton would have been very familiar with. There are also references to Michelangelo’s Entombment (1500-1), which was in the National Gallery and a favourite of Leighton’s at the time.

Conclusions

By and large, Leighton is eloquent in telling stories in these paintings. With his extensive classical training, he uses the basic tools laid down by Alberti very effectively, and augments them with the skillful use of light, perhaps developed from Rembrandt, adept composition, and many other cues and clues.

Other more static paintings by Leighton may well have deeper and narrative readings. I will return to the topic of time in narrative painting in a future article.

Leighton also researched his paintings exceptionally thoroughly. He was involved in the British Museum and frequently accessed its library and collections to provide material for narrative paintings. Although, as Barringer & Prettejohn point out, some of the concepts and decisions made may today appear inappropriate or anachronistic, this is more likely to be the result of changing knowledge rather than carelessness on Leighton’s part.

It is hard to see why his paintings are not more widely enjoyed today. Many of them tell engaging and topical stories exceedingly well.

References

Wikipedia

Barringer T & Prettejohn E eds (1999) Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 07937 1.

This is an index of the 7 well-known stories and narratives of non-European origin which are covered in articles about narrative painting on this blog. These are arranged in alphabetical order, for each giving the type of narrative and its origin, links to the paintings featured here, and a ‘lead’ example painting is shown. There are separate illustrated indexes for other sources of narratives, e.g. Biblical.

Bhagavata Purana, Life of Krishna (Maha Puranic text of Hinduism) Krishna Storms the Citadel of Narakasura (S India, Mysore workshop, c 1840)

Bhagavata Purana, Pandavas (Maha Puranic text of Hinduism) The House of the Pandavas is Set on Fire (Pahari, c 1765)

Hamzanama, Amir Hamza (Mughal Indian epic) The Prophet Ilyas Rescues a Prince (Mughal, c 1567-72)

Ibrahim Adil Shah (Deccan Indian history) Farrukh Beg, Ibrahim Adil Shah Hawking (Deccan, Bijapur, c 1590-95)

Mahabharata, Shakuntala (Indian epic) Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906), Birth of Sakunthala; Shakuntala looking back to glimpse Dushyanta

Ramayana of Valmiki, Hanuman and Trisiras (Mughal Indian epic) Shyam Sundar, Hanuman beheads Trisiras (Mughal, c 1597-1605)

Urvashi and Pururavas (Indian legend) Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906), Urvashi and Pururavas (ഉർവ്വശിയും പുരൂരവസ്സും)

Much of the time, tutorials and demonstrations of sophisticated apps get bogged down in detail, and make the app look difficult to use. Very capable, yes, but equally daunting to the inexperienced user. This short and very simple tutorial should show you how easy it is to create visually attractive hypertext using Storyspace 3 – or beautiful notes using Tinderbox 6, as it transfers across directly too.

When I am writing articles for my blog, I am constantly thinking in terms of hypertext, and how I could better express my stories using Storyspace. Having just completed writing a brief account of the cruelly short life of the brilliant nineteenth century British painter Richard Parkes Bonington, I thought that it might be valuable to display his paintings in France on a Map view to illustrate where they depicted, as well as on a timeline. I was also aware that my previous explorations of the Map view had been quite limited.

My first task was to get a better understanding of the Map view and its co-ordinate system. This is made easy by the fact that Control-clicking (or its equivalent) at any location in that view displays a popup window, at the top of which are the co-ordinates of that location.

Any writing space can also reveal its location in the Map view by exposing the $Xpos and $Ypos attributes. To those you can also add $Width and $Height to see its current dimensions too.

Exploring the Map view using these basic tools shows that, by default, the top left corner is around (-23, -32.5), and the bottom right is around (36, 50). So if you are going to set $Xpos and $Ypos, and set the Map view up reasonably, it is good to constrain co-ordinates within a rectangle defined by (0, 0) at the top left, and (20, 30) at the bottom right, for example.

If you are putting small writing space tiles onto a Map with plenty of space between them, then you might want to create user attributes to contain their (decimal) latitude and longitude, then write a simple script to scale those into your visible rectangle. In my case, I knew that each writing space tile would need to be placed manually, and there was no benefit to setting $Xpos and $Ypos by script. In other circumstances, that could be a very neat approach.

So what I set out to do was – as simply and quickly as possibly – to create a Storyspace document in which Bonington’s limited output could be shown attractively on a map of the north east of France, and on a timeline.

Create a new writing space by double-clicking on the Map view of a fresh, empty document, name it painting, and expose the following key attributes: $Xpos, $Ypos, $Lock (all from Map), $StartDate and $EndDate (from Events). Then make it a prototype and tuck it away from the visible area of the Map view.

You next need a decent-sized image of the map area which is going to be used in the Map view. I made mine using a screenshot from Apple’s Maps, but if this is intended for commercial use, you will have to be very careful over copyright: most of the convenient mapping apps use protected data, and may need to be licensed for commercial purposes.

Drag and drop the JPEG image of your map onto the Map view, placing its top left corner around the (0, 0) origin. Open the window up to a good viewing size, then Shift-drag the lower right corner of the map adornment until it fills the Map view to the extent that you wish. Shift-dragging is a standard gesture for altering the size of an object whilst preserving its aspect ratio, which is ideal here.

Adjust the window size iteratively until you are happy. Then select the map adornment and click on the padlock icon, locking it into place.

For this, as in other projects, I have scaled my paintings so that they are flattened JPEG images with neither side greater than 512 pixels. These ensure that the picture is intelligible, but not so large as to make the whole document huge.

Create a new writing space for your first painting by double-clicking away from the map adornment. Set it to use your painting prototype. Switch to Edit rather than Read, then drag and drop your first painting onto its content area. With the insert mark at the right of the image, add any text you might wish, such as its caption details.

Resize the writing space’s tile in the Map view until the painting is shown well in it, then drag it over the map adornment until its bottom left corner is close to the correct place on the map. Then insert its date(s) of creation correctly.

Repeat this for each painting which you wish to include, adjusting the positions of their tiles on the map adornment according to the location referenced and good layout principles.

Once they are all in place, make any final adjustments, then go through the tiles one by one and set the $Lock attribute to true (ticked) so that they cannot be moved inadvertently.

Finally create a new window for the document, and set that to show the Timeline rather than Map view. You will again need to tweak the window size to get it to look right. Your paintings will now also be shown on the document’s timeline, without any further effort.

After amazingly little work, and without any complex scripts or other power features, you can now view the paintings in space in the Map view, and over time in the Timeline. You can do this in Storyspace or Tinderbox, and use the resulting document in either app.

Here is my example file: Bonington

Happy hypertexting!

A great flood is one of the most common elements in most mythologies. Floods appear in several variations across many quite different mythologies, and are a popular subject for depiction in European and non-European paintings.

Flood myths

The best-known story, at least in Europe, is that given in the Old Testament, in Genesis Chapters 6-9: the people of the world had become wicked and turned their backs on God, so God decided to send a flood to wipe them off the face of the earth. Only the faithful Noah and his family were to be spared, in recognition of their more godly ways. Noah was therefore told to build a large vessel, the Ark, into which he placed himself, his family, and a breeding pair of all the animals and birds on the earth.

The rain then fell and the earth flooded for a period of anything between 40 and 150 days. Everyone and everything else was engulfed in the waters and died. As the flood started to recede, Noah sent out a dove every seven days. One day the dove returned with an olive branch; a week later the dove did not return, and had presumably reached dry land, in the vicinity of Mount Ararat.

The flood then subsided and the earth was repopulated by the survivors from the Ark, and God made a covenant that the earth would never be flooded again in this way, and the rainbow would serve as the marker of that covenant.

There is a parallel account in classical Greek myth, told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and elsewhere. Prometheus warned his son, Deucalion, who was the ruler of Phthia, that a flood was coming, and to build a chest to contain provisions. The flood came, and only Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha survived. The chest touched ground at Mount Parnassus (or Mounts Etna, Athos, or Othrys, depending on the version). As Deucalion and Pyrrha were old at the time, they consulted an oracle, who told them to cover their heads and throw rocks behind them. This they did and the rocks turned into people, who then repopulated the world.

Among the other myths is a Hindu account of a great flood in the Puranas, where it is Manu, the first man, who avoids the flood. Sadly there are only limited images available to represent that, and none is really comparable with those of the European stories.

Paintings depicting the Biblical or Greek great flood fall into two main categories: those showing the process of flooding and the deaths of the wicked, and those showing the flood at its height or falling.

Flooding and death

This painting by an unknown artist of The Great Flood (c 1450-1499) features Noah’s Ark, with its rich collection of wildlife, at the lower left. This is floating in the remains of a populous town, whose inhabitants fill the forming lake. Few facial expressions or body language bring out their distress, though, leaving a relatively bland overall impression.

Michelangelo’s The Great Flood (c 1509) in the Sistine Chapel is quite different. Noah’s Ark is in the background, and rescuing survivors from the water. Those who make it to land are more obviously distressed, and one appears to have drowned already. Desperation and panic are setting in.

Joachim Wtewael’s The Great Flood (1595) has more atmosphere, although its naked bodies appear curiously contorted. Wtewael is enjoying something of a revival as the result of exhibitions last year, but here at least seems enigmatic.

Adam Elsheimer’s The Great Flood (c 1600) is more conventional. It is nighttime, and the dense clouds are lit only by flashes of lightning. The population of a village is processing up to higher ground to escape the rising floodwaters. Faces are anxious, but there is no terror or panic.

Poussin combined his depiction of the flood with one of his late seasons, Winter (c 1660-1664). Lightning flashes in the background, where Noah’s Ark is seen floating securely. A small crowd has taken to the roof of a building to escape the waters. More desperate struggles are shown in the foreground, with a boat almost capsized, its occupant raising his hands in prayer.

More curious is the appearance of a snake, on the rocks at the left. Poussin not infrequently included snakes in his landscapes. This has not been explained convincingly, except as a reference to the role of the serpent in the Fall of Man, Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.

John Martin’s The Deluge (1834) is more thoroughly apocalyptic, and refers to a non-Biblical account of a great flood resulting from an adverse alignment of the sun, moon, and earth and coincident impact of a comet.

Unusually, Merwart’s The Flood, painted towards the end of the 1800s, refers primarily to the Greek myth of Deucalion, who is here holding his wife up from the crashing waves. Unfortunately he does not appear to refer to the chest which was key to their survival.

Comerre’s The Flood of Noah and his Companions (1911) seems to have an inappropriate title, but captures most dramatically the struggle of a packed mass of naked humans and animals, with others slipping into the waters below to drown. This is also one of the few paintings of the flood which successfully conveys the impression of rain and everything being sodden wet. This appears to refer to Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, most appropriately, too.

Holzer’s The Flood (1975), from his Noah Cycle, includes a surprising amount of detail in its simplified content: a bolt of lightning, the Ark tossed around on the waves, splashes of white foam, a toothed shark, a whale, a tiger stranded on a rock. In the foreground, and clearest of all, is a single person, gasping for breath, their left hand held up in a bid for aid.

The waters at their peak, or falling

Thomas Cole’s The Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge (1829) shows a more serene view, of the Ark floating peacefully in the middle distance, as barren land returns from the falling waters. Remains of uprooted and smashed trees appear, as does a single white human skull at the bottom.

Turner’s painting of the flood itself is, I think, altogether too vague to support much in the way of narrative. However its companion The Morning after the Deluge – more correctly Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) – the Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis – (c 1843) has more structured content.

In a colour vortex based on Turner’s interpretation of Goethe’s Colour Theory, Moses is seen in the distance, writing the book of Genesis. In front of him is the brazen serpent used by Moses in the wilderness as a cure for plague, which symbolises Christ’s redemption of mankind in the New Covenant of his ministry on earth.

Although a visually spectacular painting, I do not think that Turner’s attempt to link colour theory with three completely asynchronous narratives results in a readable painting.

Discussion

Until the eighteenth century, most European artists (in common with the general population) believed the account in Genesis literally, and they would thus have thought that they were depicting a historical event, albeit with strong moral overtones. During the Age of Enlightenment, it gradually became clear that the earth’s and human history must have been different, and by the mid 1800s those who had a better education realised that the great flood was a myth.

The 1800s also saw the birth of archaeology, and of many important excavations, particularly in the Middle East, where the Biblical story was centred. Although other sciences, notably geology, were dismissive of flood myths, the deciphering of the Flood tablet (tablet 11) and the Gilgamesh series around 1872 brought another account of a great flood from even deeper human history.

Strangely, despite very extensive publicity, the Gilgamesh flood (and the Epic of Gilgamesh as a whole) has inspired almost no visual art over the 140 years since it first became widely accessible. As shown above, modern depictions of the great flood – which remain popular in painting and other visual arts – appear firmly based on the account in Genesis, although Merwart opted for Greek myth, and Martin for a substitute theory.

The Epic of Gilgamesh would have been known to many established narrative painters, including specialists such as Gérôme who had already visited the Middle East and painted many narratives from there. I think the main reason for those artists to reject the idea of painting Gilgamesh or his flood myth was the nearly complete lack of supporting visual material: almost all that we know from the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Akkadians has come to us in cuneiform texts, with few visual depictions to form a starting point for their visualisation.

Even the most experienced narrative painter needs some visual clues to start with.

Reference

Wikipedia

Cregan-Reid V (2010) Discovering Gilgamesh: Geology, Narrative and the Historical Sublime in Victorian Culture, Manchester UP. ISBN 978 0 7190 9051 6.

William Dyce (1806–1864) was another very well-trained Victorian British painter. Born in Aberdeen, he was trained in the Royal Academy Schools in London, and spent about two years in Rome between 1825 and 1828. When he returned to the UK, he set up as a portraitist, but started painting religious narrative works as well.

He had a long and significant career in art education, starting with the School of Design in Edinburgh. He was then invited to run the newly-established Government School of Design in London, which later became the Royal College of Art. In 1838 he was commissioned to enquire into the future of art and design education, and formulated what became known as the South Kensington System, which was the dominant model for art education for the remainder of the nineteenth century.

The Judgement of Solomon (1836)

This quite popular story for depiction in paintings is drawn from the Old Testament, the First book of Kings, chapter 3.

Solomon was known as a just and very wise king over the Israelites. Like many kings, he sat in judgement over disputes, assuming the role of the ultimate court of appeal. One day, two young women who lived in the same house came to him seeking his judgement. Both had recently given birth to sons, but one of the sons had died, leaving the mothers in dispute over the surviving infant.

The first mother claimed that the other mother had accidentally smothered her own baby when she was asleep, so had taken the first mother’s baby instead. The second mother claimed that no such thing had happened, but that the first mother’s baby had died, and the living baby was her own. So both mothers claimed the one living child as their own.

After some thought, Solomon called for a sword, and declared that the only fair solution was to cut the live child in two, so that each mother could receive half of him. The true mother then implored Solomon to give the whole baby to the other mother if that would spare his life, but the liar called on Solomon to go ahead and divide the infant as he had proposed. This could be the first description of what is now known as a classic problem in Game Theory.

Dyce’s composition of what is otherwise a classical narrative painting is unusual: Poussin and most others before him elected for symmetric views directly at Solomon on his throne, with the mothers on either side. Dyce chooses a side-on view which results in a linear sequence of figures, from a very young (rather than visibly sagacious) king high on his throne at the left, and putting the two mothers and their babies in the centre of the painting. This proves very effective.

Otherwise he follows Alberti, with good facial expressions and abundant body language. The view of the sky in the background appears sketchy if not incomplete, though.

Francesca da Rimini (1837)

This story is one of many embedded in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, in its first part Inferno (Hell). Paolo and Francesca da Rimini were in the second circle of hell for their sins of lust: she committed adultery with her husband’s brother, Paolo Malatesta. Her husband Giovanni (or Gian Cotto) then killed them both.

This is more conventionally depicted when they are both in hell, for example Doré’s Paolo and Francesca da Rimini (1863).

Dyce’s selection of scene for his painting is strange, in showing the adulterous couple engaged in apparently quite modest lovemaking, fully clad, under a crescent moon. However, an ominous hand belonging to someone else – presumably Francesca’s husband – is seen at the extreme left. There is also evidence of a more complete figure of Giovanni having been at that left edge, now presumably painted over. Without that, there are no real clues as to the narrative, nor to its imminent climax.

Neptune Resigning to Britannia the Empire of the Sea (1847)

In 1845, Dyce was invited to paint frescos for the Royal Family, and he travelled to Italy to learn technique. On his return in 1847, he painted this curious composition in Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s new and luxurious holiday palace of Osborne House, at East Cowes on the Isle of Wight (just a few miles from where I live).

Neptune stands astride his three white seahorses (with fish tails!), holding their reins in his right hand, and passing his crown with the left. The crown is just about to be transferred by Mercury (with wings on his cap) to the gold-covered figure of Britannia, who holds a ceremonial silver trident in her right hand.

Neptune is supported by his entourage in the sea, including the statutory brace of nudes and conch-blowers. At the right, Britannia’s entourage is more serious in intent, and includes the lion of England, and figures representing industry, trade, and navigation.

The narrative is novel, and a tribute to his monarch, to denote the assumption of power over the seas of the world by Britannia, symbolising the Queen herself. It is undiluted tribute and flattery, of course.

Culver Cliff, Isle of Wight (1847)

While he was working on this fresco, Dyce appears to have taken a little time off to travel from Osborne, in the north, to the south-east, to paint this fine watercolour sketch from Shanklin looking across Sandown Bay to the distant red and white Culver Cliffs, forming the eastern promontory of the island.

I show this not because I would suggest that there is any narrative in this lovely painting, but for its relevance to his other work. For in addition to painting portraits and narrative works, Dyce was an accomplished landscape artist, with a predilection for coastal scenes featuring cliffs. Osborne House has its own private beach, and a few minutes away, in Cowes, there were ample opportunities for marine views. Yet Dyce chose to travel more than ten miles over quite rough tracks to what was then an undeveloped bay to paint this view.

Piety: The Knights of the Round Table about to Depart in Quest of the Holy Grail (1849)

Dyce also engaged in the popular Victorian sub-genre of Arthurian legend. This watercolour uses the hatching more commonly found in illustration and prints, and was the study for a fresco for the Queen’s Robing Room in the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament).

It shows a melée of knights of the Round Table paying tribute to King Arthur and Queen Guinevere (at the right), as those knights prepare to depart on their quest for the Holy Grail, the legendary chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper, before his crucifixion (or possibly a cup used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect Christ’s blood). It is perhaps the Arthurian equivalent of Frith’s Derby Day.

Unusually, Dyce tried to couple this series of Arthurian frescos with the seven Christian virtues. He completed those for Mercy, Hospitality, Generosity, Piety, and Courtesy, but not for Courage or Fidelity. The links between the narratives chosen and the corresponding virtue are not particularly strong.

The Meeting of Jacob and Rachel (detail) (1850)

The meeting and marriage of Jacob and Rachel is described in the Old Testament, in Genesis chapter 29. Laban, Jacob’s uncle, had two daughters, Leah the older, and Rachel. Jacob was sent to Laban’s town to avoid being killed by Esau, and to find himself a wife. One day he was by the well, where Rachel was about to water Laban’s sheep, and decided to marry her; Laban required him to work for him for seven years to take Rachel as his wife. However, on the wedding night, Rachel’s older sister was substituted by Laban, who argued that it was customary for the older daughter to be given first in marriage, and offered to give Rachel to Jacob too if he worked another seven years for him. That he did.

Dyce follows convention in his portrayal of this first meeting. Rachel is shown as being shy and coy, her eyes and head downcast. Jacob stares intently at her, clasping her right hand to his chest while his left hand holds the nape of her neck.

King Lear and the Fool in the Storm (c 1851)

Shakespeare’s tragedy of King Lear, written in 1605-6, was based on the legend of a pre-Roman British king Leir, and shows gradual descent into madness of old age. As in several of his other plays, the role of Fool gives Shakespeare great scope for mockery, and to give deeper insight into Lear himself.

This particular scene occurs after Lear rages at Regan for putting his messenger in the stocks. Lear rushes out into a storm, accompanied by his Fool, where he rants against his ungrateful daughters, Regan and Goneril.

King Lear is shown having a good rant into the wind of the storm, his body language profuse. Resting with his head propped on the heels of his hands, the Fool also looks up to the heavens. This is another example of Dyce’s classic use of narrative techniques.

Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5th 1858 (c 1858)

Generally acclaimed as Dyce’s finest painting, this shows Pegwell Bay on the Kent coast, during a family holiday visit: a coastal scene with many similarities to that of his earlier Culver Cliff, but worked up into a large finished oil painting for exhibition at the Royal Academy (where it was shown in 1860).

Dominating the view are chalk cliffs, their strata and fine texture rendered in detail. The foreshore in front of them is relatively flat, and consists of rock ledges with intervening sand. The tide is well out, probably close to full ebb. The sun is setting and, although not visible in this image (it is high in the centre), the sky also shows Donati’s comet, which is not due to return until 3811.

Various figures are scattered across the beach. At the foot of the cliffs is a small group of donkeys, a common feature of seaside resorts, and some sheep and their shepherd. Three heavily-dressed women and a small boy are in the foreground. One woman is bent double, inspecting the ground intently by a chalk rib. The small boy, presumably Dyce’s own son, holds a beach spade, but appears to be staring emptily into the distance.

There is no obvious narrative in this painting, which by its title and content might appear to be a straightforward coastal view. Yet it is generally held that there are deep readings: Cregan-Reid, for example, considers that it is about time – astronomical time of the comet, deep geological time of the cliffs and fossils, the more momentary existence of the people, and the regular cycles of tides and sun.

I am afraid that I am not entirely convinced.

Welsh Landscape with Two Women Knitting (1860)

If Dyce’s view of Pegwell Bay lacks incongruities which might support a deeper reading, this slightly later painting goes out of its way to be odd.

In the autumn of 1860, Dyce stayed in the Conwy Valley for six weeks, where he sketched and painted avidly. After his return to London, he painted this in oils, showing the rough and rugged scenery above the valley, a rock outcrop filling much of the left half of the painting. In its centre is an old woman, and to the right a young one, each dressed in traditional clothes, and knitting. A sliver of a crescent moon is visible low in the sky.

The younger woman wears a formal ensemble which had recently been revived and designated the ‘Welsh national costume’, as might be worn for Eisteddfods and other special occasions. They are both knitting stockings from scavenged scraps of wool, an activity which might have been common earlier in the century and performed indoors at home. It had largely disappeared by 1860, and is a conspicuously incongruous activity for such an outdoor location.

If there is one of Dyce’s paintings which shouts out that it has a deeper reading, it is this. It is easy to postulate that this too is about time: the contrasting ages of the women and their ‘historic’ costume, knitting (as with Leighton’s Winding the Skein) being an activity used to pass the time usefully, the geology of the rock outcrop, and the moon. But is that Dyce’s intent?

Discussion

William Dyce was an eloquent if rather conventional narrative artist, when tackling traditional stories. The difficulties in reading his paintings, though, come with works such as his view of Pegwell Bay, and above all his Welsh landscape. Are they about time? Without a recent catalogue raisonné and appropriate studies, it is very hard to know.

References

Wikipedia

Cregan-Reid V (2010) Discovering Gilgamesh: Geology, Narrative and the Historical Sublime in Victorian Culture, Manchester UP. ISBN 978 0 7190 9051 6.

Paul (Hippolyte) Delaroche (1797–1856) was a lifelong resident of Paris, who trained under Baron Gros alongside fellow student Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828). One of Delaroche’s students was Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Throughout his career, Delaroche painted portraits and depictions of major events in French and British history, together with a few religious scenes. In contrast to his contemporary Bonington, Delaroche’s paintings were invariably simple compositions showing full detail, and with a flat Salon finish. He never showed any tendency towards the painterly. With historical subjects, this gives them the appearance of great accuracy and authenticity, almost as if he had been present at the event.

Delaroche also lived through a great deal of history himself: he first exhibited in the Salon in 1822, in the early years of the Bourbon Restoration after the downfall of Napoleon. In 1830 the July Revolution led to the July Monarchy, then the Revolution of 1848 brought the Second Republic. In the final years of his life, Delaroche saw the start of Napoleon III’s Second Empire, bringing France full circle.

The Sick Joan of Arc is Interrogated in Prison by the Cardinal of Winchester (1824)

Jeanne d’Arc, or Joan of Arc, (c 1412-1431) was a peasant girl from Domrémy in north-east France who had visions instructing her to support the uncrowned Charles VII of France, in his struggle against occupying English forces. She gained fame when, only nine days after being sent to the siege of Orléans, that siege was lifted. Following this the French had a series of quick victories, and Charles’s coronation took place in Reims.

She was captured by English allies on 23 May 1430, and handed over to the English, who had her interrogated, put on trial, and burned at the stake on 30 May 1431, at the age of about 19. Twenty-five years later she was declared innocent, and a martyr, and in 1803 Napoleon made her a national symbol of France.

Delaroche puts the two central figures of the Cardinal of Winchester, as interrogator, and Joan of Arc, as prisoner, facing the viewer. But the Cardinal’s gaze is directed at Joan, and she looks dreamily up to heaven, her manacled hands clasped in prayer. A figure in the background gloom makes a written record of proceedings for the subsequent trial. Excellent use is made of facial expression and body language.

The Duke of Angoulême at the Capture of Trocadero, 31 August 1823 (1828)

After the downfall of Napoleon, there was a political crisis in Spain. King Ferdinand VII of Spain refused to adopt a liberal constitution, and in 1820 there was a rebellion against the monarchy. The King was held at Cádiz, and other European powers authorised France to intervene and restore the King’s rule. On 17 April 1823, the Duke of Angoulême led French forces through the Pyrenees into Spain.

They reached Cádiz in August, and on 31 August 1823 launched a surprise attack on the fort of Trocadero there. Cádiz finally surrendered on 23 September, and the king was handed back. The battle of Trocadero was one of the events which triggered the US Monroe Doctrine, and the Duke of Angoulême was honoured as the ‘Prince of Trocadero’.

The Duke of Angoulême is shown in a dominating pose, his adjutant behind him, scanning the situation intently to the right. Around them are casualties from the intense battle, and a gun crew in the background. Although the painting says little about the story of the battle, it tells much about the leadership and outcome.

The Death of Elizabeth I, Queen of England (1828)

Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland (but not Scotland) (1558-1603) was one of the most autocratic and successful British monarchs, and remained unmarried despite many rumours of relationships. She never named a successor, and being without any direct heir, there were fears of a power struggle when she died.

The autumn of 1602 saw the deaths of several close friends, and she apparently was plunged into depression as a result; the onset of winter would not have helped. She fell sick in March 1603, and her depression deepened. She died between 0200 and 0300 on the morning of 24 March 1603 at Richmond Palace. Within hours, her successor was proclaimed as James I of England and Ireland, also James VI of Scotland.

The haggard queen is shown slumped on a makeshift bed on the floor, which appears most implausible, but puts her low in the painting. Her maids and other female attendants are in distress – one even covering her face with her hands – behind her, supporting the pillows on which her head rests.

I presume that the male kneeling by the queen and extending his right hand towards her is Robert Cecil, leader of the government at the time, and behind him are other members of the Privy Council of England, who were shortly to install Elizabeth’s successor. In addition to facial expressions and body language, Delaroche makes very good use of directions of gaze to inform us of the complex interactions taking place.

Edward V, Child King of England, and Richard, the Duke of York, his Younger Brother (the Children of Edward) (1830)

King Edward IV of England had two sons: Edward, the older, was destined to succeed him as King Edward V, and his younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. Edward V had the unusual distinction of being born in Westminster Abbey, where his mother had sought sanctuary. These were troubled times for the monarchy in England, and Edward IV’s death on 9 April 1483 only made matters worse.

When Edward V succeeded his father to the throne, he was only 12, so was put under the care of his uncle, the Lord Protector, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who aspired to be king himself. The plot started to take shape soon after the death of Edward IV, with the arrest and eventual execution of the young king’s companions. Then on 19 May 1483, King Edward V took up residence in the Tower of London, a month later being joined by his brother Richard.

A move was made to declare Edward IV’s marriage retrospectively (and post mortem) invalid, making their sons illegitimate. The Lord Protector, Richard Duke of Gloucester, was therefore declared the legitimate king on 25 June, and he acceded to the throne as King Richard III the following day.

The boys Edward and Richard were confined to inner parts of the Tower of London, and eventually disappeared altogether. Although there is still considerable uncertainty about what happened, it must be presumed that King Richard III had the boys murdered, probably by suffocation. In 1674, the bones of two children were discovered in the Tower, and King Charles II ordered that they be presumed to be those of ‘the Princes in the Tower’, and interred in Westminster Abbey.

Delaroche uses another simple composition, supported well by facial expressions. The two boys are seen, huddled together on a bed. Edward is staring wistfully into the distance, his head cocked on one side, knowing too well the fate that awaits them both. His younger brother has an illustrated book open on Edward’s thigh, but is looking anxiously, his brow knitted, to the left, as if he can hear someone approaching and their fate drawing close. At the foot of the bed is a small dog, also looking into the dark beyond.

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833)

England in 1553 was in turmoil. King Edward VI’s reign of six years was marred by economic problems, social unrest which erupted into open rebellion, and war with Scotland; these had culminated with the King’s death at the age of just 15.

As he had no natural heirs, there was dispute over his succession; his plan for a cousin, Lady Jane Grey, to become Queen was put into action, starting her rule on 10 July 1553. When King Edward’s half sister Mary deposed her on 19 July, she was committed to the Tower of London, convicted of high treason in November, and executed on Tower Green by beheading on 12 February 1554 at the age of just 16 (or 17).

Lady Jane Grey and the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Bridges, take the centre of the canvas. She is blindfolded, the rest of her face almost expressionless. As she can no longer see, the Lieutenant is guiding her towards the executioner’s block, in front of her. Her arms are outstretched, hands with fingers spread in their quest for the block. Under the block, straw has been placed to take up her blood.

At the right, the executioner stands high and coldly detached, his left hand holding the haft of the axe which he will shortly use to kill the young woman. Coils of rope hang from his waist, ready to tie his victim down if necessary. At the left, two of Lady Jane Grey’s attendants or family are resigned in their grief.

Lady Jane Grey wears a silver-white gown which dominates the entire painting, forcing everything and everyone else back into sombre mid tones and darker.

Delaroche might appear to have made an accurate depiction of the scene, but in fact he made one major alteration: Lady Jane Grey was actually executed in the small court-like space within the Tower known as Tower Green, not in a dark room.

Although he has little scope to use facial expression, body language is very important, and there are numerous cues to the original narrative. Its simple composition and the radiance of Lady Jane Grey’s gown help charge the painting with atmosphere, and it caused a sensation when first exhibited at the Salon of 1834.

The Assassination of the Duke of Guise in the Château de Blois in 1588 (1834)

The Duke of Guise, Henry I, Prince of Joinville and Count of Eu (1550-1588) was a key figure in the French Wars of Religion, as a strongly anti-Huguenot (anti-Protestant) leader, and founder of the Catholic League. The aim of the League was to keep the new heir, Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot, from succeeding Henry III. Guise made the Treaty of Joinville with Philip II of Spain to make Cardinal de Bourbon heir to the throne. As a result, Henry III sided with the Catholic League.

When Guise organised an uprising in Picardy, Henry III became alarmed and ordered Guise to remain in Champagne. However, Guise ignored this and challenged royal authority by entering Paris. Henry III tried different tactics, and made Guise the Lieutenant-General of France. Still feeling threatened by him, the King sent for Guise when he was staying at the Château de Blois, and had him murdered by the King’s bodyguard as he watched. The following day, Guise’s brother, Louis II, Cardinal of Guise, was also murdered.

These two assassinations resulted in such outrage among the Guise family that Henry III had to flee and take refuge with Henry of Navarre. Henry III himself was assassinated the following year by an agent of the Catholic League.

Delaroche divides his canvas in two. On the right, the Duke of Guise lies, dead, in a melodramatic posture with his arms outstretched, at the foot of a bed. At the left, a group of men are talking with one another, most clutching their swords, but none paying the slightest attention to Guise’s body, as if it was not there. Presumably that group includes Henry III and his bodyguard. There is no opportunity to use facial expression, and only body language and composition are needed to establish the story here.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1850)

Napoleon seized power in France on 9 November 1799. In early 1800 he made military moves to reinforce French troops in Italy, so that they could repossess territory which had been lost to the Austrians in recent years. Napoleon, leading the Reserve Army, crossed the Alps via the Great St Bernard Pass in May, and fought their first battle at Montebello on 9 June.

Jacques-Louis David was initially commissioned by the King of Spain to produce an equestrian portrait of Napoleon crossing the Alps. David painted a highly idealised image, which proved so popular that he made five copies between 1801 and 1805. David had previously been a figure of considerable importance in the French Revolution.

When Arthur George, the third Earl of Onslow, visited the Louvre with Paul Delaroche in 1848, he commented on the impracticality and implausibility of the image painted by David. He therefore commissioned Delaroche to paint a more faithful version.

Delaroche swaps the impressive but completely inappropriate rearing horse used by David, for a mule, the only beast capable of taking Napoleon over the pass in these conditions. This is not in the least demeaning, and does not detract from Napoleon’s image as a leader, of course.

However, Delaroche is still a good way from the truth. Napoleon’s face is bare, his left hand uncovered and resting on the pommel of his saddle, and he is wearing a thin cloak and thin riding breeches. It remains a ‘photographic pose’, even if slightly closer to reality.

The Hemicycle of Fine Art (1836-41, 1853)

This was commissioned in 1837 as a tribute to the greatest artists of history, an apotheosis if you will, to cover the walls of the semi-circular auditorium in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Modelled after Raphael’s School of Athens (1509-11), a famous fresco in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, Delaroche set out to include all the most important figures in the history of painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, and print-making.

Some of those he included now appear odd, and are almost unheard of, and there are some surprising omissions. However, Botticelli, El Greco, and Vermeer – who are absent – were not rediscovered until later in the 1800s.

Being painted in oils and wax on a hemispherical wall, it is very hard to show the complete painting in situ. Delaroche’s student Charles Béranger (1816–1853) was commissioned to make a miniature copy onto canvas, which I show below.

The three throned figures in the centre are Ictinus (architect), Apelles (painter), and Phidias (sculptor). Flanking them on the left are personifications of Greek and Gothic art (left), and Roman and Renaissance art (right). Below is the figure of Fame, who is distributing laurel wreaths to the winners of the Prix de Rome. The figure of Gothic art is said to be a portrait of Delaroche’s wife Louise, daughter of Horace Vernet.

On the left are: [Corregio, not shown], Veronese, da Messina, Murillo, van Eyck, Titian, Terborch, Rembrandt, van der Helst, Rubens, Velazquez, van Dyck, Caravaggio, Bellini, Giorgione, Ruisdael, Paulus Potter, Claude Lorraine, and Gaspard Dughet (all painters); Vischer, Bontemps, della Robbia, da Majano, Pisano, Bandinelli, Donatello, Ghiberti, Palissy, Goujon, Cellini, Pilon, [Puget, and da Bologna, not shown] (all sculptors).

On the right are: Delorme, Peruzzi, von Steinbach, Sansovino, Luzarches, Palladio, Brunelleschi, Inigo Jones, di Cambio, Lescot, Bramante, Mansart, and Vignola (all architects); Fra Angelico, Marcantonio, Edelinck, Holbein, Le Sueur, del Piombo, Orcagna, Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Domenichino, Fra Bartolommeo, Mantegna, Romano, Raphael, Perugino, Michelangelo, Masaccio, del Sarto, Cimabue, [Giotto and Poussin, not shown] (all painters and/or print-makers).

All told this painting is about 4.5 metres high, and 27 metres long. Delaroche completed it in 1841, but in 1855 it was badly damaged by fire. He set about restoring it, but died before that could be completed; the task was finished by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, then a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Conclusions

As an accomplished narrative painter, Delaroche was adept in the use of facial expression and body language, to which he added simple but highly effective composition and use of space, and directions of gaze.

His history may seem grim, and focus on treachery, execution, and murder, rather than human achievements. However, the stories which he uses reveal much about our past, and offer clear guidance for our future. They are far less moralistic than many paintings of the nineteenth century, but uncomfortable reminders of our inhumanity in the past.

No matter how authentic his depictions of history may appear, Delaroche’s decisions were ultimately determined by overall effect, and on several occasions he departed significantly from historical fact. But he gets away with it.

References

Wikipedia

Ruutz Rees J (1880) Vernet and Delaroche, Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists, Scribner and Welford. No ISBN.

The two fundamental elements common to all narrative – in paintings, text, movies, or computer games – are events and time. Whereas other articles in this series focus on the events depicted and those referred to, this article looks at time and its depiction.

As a narrative medium, painting has a very limited range of tools and techniques for dealing with time. Language, in contrast, has rich and very precise mechanisms such as the tense of verbs, which in some languages can succinctly pin down exactly when, how long for, and how often something happened, without the need for any reference to exact dates and times, or external information.

There are three aspects of time which are commonly required in narrative paintings. The most obvious is some means of telling the viewer when the event depicted in the painting happened. Also of importance to most narrative paintings is being able to show, or refer to, events which occurred in the narrative chain, before or after the event depicted in the painting. The final and less frequent requirement is to be able to refer to time as a concept, putting it in the vocabulary of the narrative painter.

The moment

By definition, a static image in a painting refers to a moment in time, although including elements from different moments in time was not unusual in early European painting before the end of the Renaissance, and continues to be accepted in Indian painting. There are many ways in which the artist can place that moment: almost any painting outdoors in temperate climates will allow approximate location in time, through indicators of the seasons, time of day, etc.

There are also techniques by which those general indications can be made more precise, such as the inclusion of a clockface, details which refer to specific events such as the passing of a comet (William Dyce’s Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5th 1858 (c 1858) for example) or a forthcoming boxing match (Hogarth, below).

Hogarth’s Four Times of the Day: Noon (1736) provides many clues as to the season and time of day, but the most obvious and specific reference to time is provided by the clock on the church in the background.

Hogarth’s Second Stage of Cruelty: Coachman Beating a Fallen Horse (1751) goes even further than is usual: posters by the door to Thavies Inn on the left advertise a cockfight, and a boxing match between James Field (who was hanged a couple of weeks before the first prints were issued) and George ‘The Barber’ Taylor, a previous English champion.

Before and after

For a painting to have complete and most effective narrative, references to events before the moment depicted in the painting, and to those in the future, are important; when an artist wishes to use the strong narrative of peripeteia, those references are essential.

Generally speaking, these are achieved by including pictorial elements which are or make such references, as I exemplified when discussing peripeteia. There are occasional instances of flashback and flash-forward in paintings, but these are relatively rare compared with their use in text and movies.

Detaille’s Le Rêve (The Dream) shows an (imaginary) collective dream of previous battles spread across the coloured clouds of the dawn sky, as a form of flashback.

Father Time as allegory

A traditional way in which to depict abstract concepts such as time in a painting was to refer to it by means of an allegory, as ‘Father Time’.

Bronzino’s An Allegory with Venus and Cupid (Allegory of Lust) (c 1545) puts Venus and Cupid at the centre, kissing, but above them is a bald old man with a white beard, stretching out his right arm across the top of the painting. Time’s characteristic ultramarine blue robe forms the background to the right side of the painting. Behind his head is the hour-glass which confirms that this is Father Time, and a grey wing, although it is harder to interpret his gesture. For the sake of completeness, the figure opposite Time is usually considered to be Oblivion.

As is so often the case, it is Poussin who shows Father Time most clearly, in his brilliant A Dance to the Music of Time (c 1634-6). He sits at the right side, bald and bearded, now with very obvious wings, playing his lyre (another symbol of time), and his blue robe is on the ground. His hour-glass is being held up by the putto beside him.

The four young people dancing are sometimes interpreted as being the seasons, but this is probably not the case: they are most likely Poverty (male at the back, facing away), Labour (closest to Time and looking at him), Wealth (in golden skirt and sandals, also looking at Time), and Pleasure (blue and red clothes) who fixes the viewer with a very knowing smile. Opposite Pleasure is a small herm of Janus, whose two faces look to the past and the future.

Above them, in the heavens, Aurora (goddess of the dawn) precedes Apollo’s sun chariot, on which the large ring represents the Zodiac. Behind the chariot are the Hours.

This painting was the inspiration for Anthony Powell’s cycle of novels called A Dance to the Music of Time. Powell’s own reflections on the painting are given in the opening to A Question of Upbringing, by the narrator Nick Jenkins:
These classical projections, and something from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin’s scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure, stepping slowly, methodically sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.

Poussin’s later tondo Time Defending Truth against the Attacks of Envy and Discord (1641) puts Father Time at its centre, with a firm grip around Truth’s waist, while Envy and Discord sit below them. On this occasion Time does not have a hand free for an hour-glass.

Mignard’s lovely Time Clipping Cupid’s Wings (1694) is another very explicit allegorical painting featuring Father Time with his standard features, although here he has a luxuriant head of white hair instead of being bald, and has been equipped with a scythe (on the ground) rather than a lyre. Although we tend to associate scythes with the Grim Reaper of Death, they have also been used extensively for Death’s precursor, Time.

Finally, Batoni’s fine Time orders Old Age to destroy Beauty (c 1746) reiterates Father Time’s key features of advanced age, wings, blue robe, and hour-glass.

The thread of time

Allegory is too blunt an instrument for a lot of narrative painting, where more subtle metaphors which can be worked into realist paintings are much more useful. I have not seen any discussion of this in the literature, but there is extensive and long evidence that one such metaphor is the thread of time, and the association of time with what are now called the fibrecrafts, particularly weaving and knitting.

This is most obvious in language. The word thread and its equivalents in other European languages is used for the thread of life, which is spun and cut off by the Fates according to classical mythology. In English at least this has extended to encompass the thread of time: the Oxford English Dictionary cites several quite old uses, including 1645 (City Alarum 19) “Consider first what a thred of time the German wars have spun out” and 1736 (Butler Analogy of Religion II vii 362) “To make up a continued thread of history of the length of between three and four thousand years.”

Of course thread is also used to refer to narrative itself, the thread of a story, which dates back to 1642.

One ancient mythological reference to fibrecraft, life, and the thread of time is Penelope, the wife of Odysseus/Ulysses. In the many years that her husband was away on the Odyssey, she told potential suitors that she could not remarry until she had completed weaving a shroud for Odysseus’ father. Although they saw her weaving intently by day, she then unravelled her work each night, as shown in Joseph Wright of Derby’s Penelope Unravelling her Web by Lamp-light (1785).

In William Dyce’s curious Welsh Landscape with Two Women Knitting (1860), I believe that the significance of their knitting is again as a representation of time.

I also wrote that I considered Frederic, Lord Leighton’s Winding the Skein (c 1878) another example of the metaphor of the thread of time.

In Walter Crane’s The Bridge of Life (1884), the continuous white thread of life is also the thread of time. Even more explicit is this remarkable painting by John Melhuish Strudwick (1849–1935), a pupil of Burne-Jones of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

His A Golden Thread (1885) was originally accompanied by the lines:
Right true it is that these
And all things else that under Heaven dwell
Are changed of Time.

Strudwick has structured his painting into three areas. At the bottom, the three Fates from classical mythology are seen spinning the thread of life using gold and grey fibres, the gold section determining the allotted span of an individual’s life. These are shown in the detail below.

Above the Fates, a young couple are courting, time being marked by the tolling of the bell in the tower. At the top, Love’s chariot awaits them.

Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott also invokes fibrecraft as a metaphor for time. The Lady is subject to a mysterious curse which confines her to weaving images on her loom, and must not look directly at the outside world.

As with most fibrecrafts, weaving is a time-consuming activity which is often seen as occupying time in a useful and productive way, working with the thread of time.

Conclusions

At first sight, narratives in painting might appear severely constrained in expressing time, in comparison with the riches of language. Although limited, painting has developed some subtle tools for fixing the moment in time, for referring to prior and later events in the narrative, and for discussing time itself – provided that we recognise them.

Alessandro Magnasco (1667–1749) is, I think, the most peculiar and individual painter that I have come across, at times making Goya and El Greco look conventional. You are most unlikely to have even come across him, although most of the major collections around the world hold examples of his work. Perhaps the best way to describe those works is to take a measure each of essence of Poussin, Goya, Salvator Rosa, and Francesco Guardi, simmer for a while, and serve whilst still hot.

Magnasco was born in Genoa, but his father died when he was three, so he was sent to Milan to learn commerce rather than following in his father’s line as a painter. When in Milan, he acquired a patron who was prepared to fund his apprenticeship as a painter. After that he worked as a portraitist, but fairly soon switched to painting scenes from contemporary life, particularly those of different religious groups.

Around 1700, he was painting mainly narrative works, regularly collaborating with specialist landscape artists such as Peruzzini (1668-c 1725), Onofri, and Marco Ricci (1676-1729), and the specialist in architectural ruins Clemente Spera (d c 1730). He moved to Florence in 1703, and back to Genoa in about 1735.

Magnasco’s narrative paintings and landscapes are like no one else’s: set in eerie, stormy landscapes rich in the sublime (if not downright horrific), his brushwork is free and profuse. Figures are made from swirling gestures, and often appear scattered across the canvas. He usually left areas of priming bare too, giving his paintings a rough facture more typical of the late nineteenth century.

Noli Me Tangere (1705-10)

In the New Testament Gospels (e.g. John 20:11-18), it was Mary Magdalene who was the first witness to the resurrected Christ. As he had not at that time ascended to heaven, Christ warned her not to touch him – in Latin, noli me tangere – but to tell the disciples of his resurrection.

Magnasco has painted his figures over a background of ruins made by his collaborator. Christ is shown standing, holding a long-hafted implement, probably a spade, in his left hand. Mary is on her knees, a small urn in front of her. Their clothes are rough, and Christ’s appear to be his burial linen, blowing in the wind. Several small putti are shown on the left side, apparently blowing as winds. At this stage, Magnasco’s work is starting to look a little eccentric, perhaps.

The Tame Magpie (Teaching the Magpie to Sing) (c 1707)

Against another background of ruins, a motley assortment of misfits and the poor are seen watching the young man in the centre trying to teach a tame magpie (on top of the barrels) to sing. Magpies are capable of speaking, not as well as parrots. I wonder if there is an old Italian proverb or legend about teaching a magpie to sing, perhaps, which inspired this quirky painting?

Christ and the Samaritan Woman (1705-10)

Another story about Christ, this time from the beginnings of his ministry, as recorded in the Gospel of John, Chapter 4: Christ paused to rest at Jacob’s Well, which was holy to both Jews and Samaritans. He asked for a drink of water from a Samaritan woman, who was surprised because of the traditional enmity between Jews and Samaritans. They talked: a scene quite popular in Italian painting.

The two are seen, either side of a well, Christ seated and in the midst of talking, the woman drawing water for him. Up to the right, winds blow again, causing the woman’s clothing to billow profusely.

Landscape with Shepherds (c 1718-25)

Against a landscape inspired by Poussin but sketched in quite briskly in parts, there is a strange scattering of people. They are painted very gesturally, and just seem to be sprawling around, doing nothing in particular. One tree, in the middle distance towards the right, has an upright crucifix and a regular cross X on its trunk. Although these figures and objects look as if they should combine to bring a story or meaning, none is apparent.

Landscape with Stormy Sea (c 1718-25)

At the coast, it is blowing a gale. The wind blows spray from the short, steep waves, and at the left a small sailing boat has been driven onto rocks and wrecked. Sketchy figures dot the coastline: three in the foreground are busy doing something, although it is not clear what. This painting appears very atmospheric, and certainly captures a coastal gale well, but it looks as if it holds a story too.

The Raising of Lazarus (1715-1740)

Returning to the New Testament Gospels, this is another story from Christ’s ministry, but found only in John chapter 11. Christ was informed that Lazarus was ill, but told his disciples that he was going to wait until Lazarus was dead. When they eventually arrived at Lazarus’ house in Bethany, he had been dead and buried for a full four days. Christ mourned for Lazarus, and asked for the stone of his grave to be removed. He then commanded Lazarus to come out, and Lazarus was raised from the dead, by a miracle.

Magnasco shows quite a different scene from that in John’s Gospel. Lazarus is being pulled up from a catacomb below the ground, and Christ – dressed in blue – is working his miracle. The clothing is getting rougher and more gestural here, with extensive use of white for its highlights.

The Triumph of Venus (1720-30)

Venus is naked on her chariot at the lower right. Its progress is assisted by putti, and celebrated by nymphs, satyrs, and others. A rich range of other mythical figures and creatures are also present, and in the distance there are naked people reclining in some sort of gathering.

Bacchanale (c 1720-30)

Among a background of ruins, perhaps painted by Clemente Spera in his final years, a broad assortment of largely naked people are immersed in their revelry and feasting.

Among the figures shown, several have clothing which appears blurred by their vigorous movement, others are splayed out on the ground in their inebriation, or struggling to ride animals. In the centre of this detail is Pan: half man, half goat.

Joseph Interprets the Dreams of the Pharaoh’s Servants Whilst in Jail (1726-31)

According to the Old Testament book of Genesis, Joseph the patriarch was sold into slavery and taken to Egypt. There he was sold to Potiphar, Captain of Pharoah’s Guard, and Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him. When Joseph ran away from her, she accused him of trying to rape her, and Joseph was thrown into prison. There he interpreted dreams for others, eventually being summoned to interpret a dream which Pharoah had, so earning his freedom, and appointment as Vizier to the Pharoah.

Against the background of the jail, painted by a collaborator, Magnasco’s figures are spread among shackles and other equipment for constraining and maiming prisoners. Two of the prisoners are in chains, but one, seated just to the left of centre, appears to be listening intently to a person wearing prominently blue clothes, who is sat on some stone steps.

Magnasco painted several other canvases showing more gruesome aspects of prisons and torture, but this one is in particularly good condition.

Sacrilegious Robbery (1731)

It is night outside a monastery, looking in through its open cloisters. Inside and around the outside are skeletons, running, bearing torches, and apparently attacking four men, who are armed with pistols and apparently trying to break into the buildings and commit robbery. The skeletons have apparently been resurrected from rows of graves outside the church.

In the top right, a saintly figure appears as a vision in the sky, apparently directing the defence by the skeletons.

This is a straight ‘gothic’ horror story of divine retribution, and a very strange subject for a painting.

The Baptism of Christ (c 1740)

Christ’s baptism in the River Jordan by John the Baptist, later beheaded for Salome, is one of the most popular New Testament narratives in paintings. Magnasco’s version is unique in setting it in a storm, with ‘white horses’ on the river. The figure of Christ, surmounted not by a halo but a golden star, is white, which makes it prominent despite its small size in the picture.

Christ at the Sea of Galilee (c 1740)

After Christ performed the miracle of feeding the five thousand, he sent the disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee by boat, while he remained alone, in prayer. After nightfall, there was a storm, and the boat in which the disciples were travelling was caught in the bad weather. The disciples saw Christ walking on the water of the lake, and were afraid, but Christ reassured them. As Christ entered the boat, the wind settled. According to the version in the Gospel of Matthew, Peter walked on the water until he became afraid, then started to sink, before Christ rescued him.

Magnasco has probably shown Peter sinking in the water, just about to be rescued by Christ. The spume-rich waters are similar in appearance to those in The Baptism of Christ, and unique among the many paintings of this narrative.

Saint Carlo Borromeo Receiving the Oblates (date not known)

Charles Borromeo di Arona (1538-1584) was Archbishop of Milan from 1564-1584, a reformer who became a leading figure of the Counter-Reformation. Among other achievements, he introduced the foundation of seminaries for the education of priests, and was canonised as a full saint in 1610.

He founded the fraternity of Oblates of St Ambrose, a society of secular men who, while not taking orders, devoted themselves to the church, and pursued a monastic life.

This extraordinary canvas appears to have suffered some damage, but shows Saint Carlo Borromeo in his Cardinal’s red vestments, blessing a man in black who is on his knees – presumably one of the Oblates. Looking up the painting from those Oblates, there are figures and parts of figures around the foot of the prominent column, and apparently emerging from the wall higher up. There are no further clues as to what these might represent.

Conclusions

Later artists such as Francesco Guardi used similar gestural techniques in capriccios which were, compared to Magnasco’s dark narratives, light froth. No one seems to have explained how he developed his style, nor why it became so popular with his patrons. From a narrative viewpoint, it makes his plainer stories quite curious, and his dark tales become the stuff of nightmares.

Reference

Wikipedia

In a previous article, I wrote of, and showed, paintings which depicted the thread of time, and gave a brief glimpse into the subject for this article, the thread of fate and the Fates themselves.

The Fates

In classical Greek and Roman mythology, the lives of humans are determined by the thread spun for them by the Moirai (Greek) or Fatae (Roman). Because of their importance, the Romans also came to refer to them euphemistically as the Parcae (the sparing ones). The three were further identified as:

• Clotho (or Nona), the spinner, who holds the distaff and spindle, and spins the thread of life;
• Lachesis (or Decima), the allotter, who measures the thread allotted to each person using her measuring rod;
• Atropos (or Morta), the unturnable, who cuts the thread for each person, choosing the time and manner of their death.

Il Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi) (1477–1549), The Three Fates (c 1525)

This classical depiction of the Fates shows, from the left, Lachesis, Atropos wielding her shears, and Clotho with her distaff and spindle. This painting may have been influenced by the contemporary publication of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1512-1532), in which cantos 34-35 describe St John taking Astolfo to meet the Fates.

Pieter Thijs (1624–1677), Time and the Three Fates (c 1665)

Thijs shows an even more significant group, with the Fates before Father Time. From the left, the Fates are Clotho and Lachesis, who are working together, and Atropos, with her shears, who is disarmingly looking straight at the viewer, knowing your fate.

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), The Fates Spinning Marie’s Destiny (or The Destiny of Marie de’ Medici) (1622-5)

Rubens’ painting is the first in the series of twenty-four which were commissioned in 1621 to decorate the Luxembourg Palace, Paris, for Marie de’ Medici, who was the wife of King Henry IV of France.

He shows the three Fates without a pair of shears, suggesting the Queen’s relative immortality. Above them are Juno and Jupiter; Juno appears throughout the series at the Queen’s avatar, and Jupiter as the King. Given Jupiter’s promiscuity, this may have indicated deep insight into the royal relationship.

Paul Thumann (1834–1908), The Three Fates (c 1880)

This Salon-style depiction of the Fates was extremely popular throughout Europe, and was often reproduced on mass-produced porcelain. It is unusual for drawing such marked distinctions between the women: Atropos, on the left, is shown as a morose older woman, armed with her shears; Clotho stands to weave, and is young, very pretty, and bare down to the waist; Lachesis is modestly-dressed and holding sprigs of vegetation, at the right.

John Melhuish Strudwick (1849–1935), A Golden Thread (1885)

The bottom panel of Strudwick’s painting (shown in full in the previous article) contains a very different depiction of the Fates.

Clotho and Lachesis are at the front, working together to spin and measure out the thread, which is here a mixture of gold (for life) and grey. Atropos sits behind, poised to use her shears when ready. I am not sure of the origin of the two different coloured threads, which may be original to this artist.

Jacek Malczewski (1854–1929), Saint Francis of Assisi (1908)

Malczewski modernises the Fates in his fascinating allegorical portrait of St Francis of Assisi. All three appear similar, with similar clothing, hair, and features. Clotho is at the left, with a pink apron, Atropos holds a modern pair of scissors rather than the traditional shears, and has a light purple apron, and Lachesis is on the other side of St Francis, with a pale blue apron. The right of the painting contains a group of semi-human mythical creatures, rather than the traditional birds and small animals typically associated with this saint.

Henry Siddons Mowbray (1858–1928), Destiny (1896)

Mowbray’s Destiny is also more complicated, and elaborates on the classical myth; it bears careful examination, as the three women sat together at one end of the tapestry may not all be Fates!

The three who do appear identifiable are Clotho, who is standing at the far right with a whole web of threads, Lachesis who is at the back of the group of three, bringing a thead down from Clotho, and Atropos, who is at the left, armed with her shears. The group appears to be working on a tapestry which might represent individuals, or mankind more generally.

Norns

The classical Fates are unusual in having many parallels in other European myths and legends, even extending to Shakespeare’s three witches in his play Macbeth, modern Celtic-based religion, and Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters (1988), although their roles and characteristics become far removed from the originals.

Their closest parallel are the Norns (or nornir) of Norse mythology, named Urðr (Wyrd), Verðandi and Skuld in Snorri Sturluson’s interpretation of the Völuspá. Inevitably there are various accounts which differ greatly in detail, but one fairly common role is to draw water from the Well of Urðr (Fate) which they pour over Yggdrasil (the immense holy ash tree) so that its branches will not decay. They rule the destiny of the gods and of humans.

Johan Ludwig Lund (1777–1867), The Norns of Norse Mythology (c 1844)

JL Lund’s painting is atypical in that it shows one Norn with wings. They are here symbolically equipped with a book, containing the record of fate, a balance to weigh people’s lives with, and (I think) a wooden measuring stick. Their names are given in Runes below: Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld.

Alois Delug (1859-1930), The Norns (1895)

Delug’s evocative depiction shows them at the foot of Yggdrasil handling the thread of fate, bringing a more Greek interpretation.

Spinning and weaving

Spinning fibres such as wool into yarn to be woven into fabric have been common tasks throughout the world for around 20,000 years, and have become increasingly sophisticated and more productive. Hand spinning was commonplace from classical times until the spinning jenny was invented in about 1764, and was progressively mechanised thereafter. It is therefore not surprising that many paintings show spinning, weaving, and their equipment.

However, I have tried to select those in which spinning or weaving is part of a deeper reading of the painting, to explore their symbolic and metaphorical use in narrative paintings.

Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), The Spinners (Las Hilanderas, The Fable of Arachne) (c 1657)

For a long time, it was believed that Velázquez’ Las Hilanderas showed the tapestry workshop of Santa Isabel, and it was not until 1948 that Diego Angula proposed that it depicted the legend of Arachne.

Arachne, in Greek and Roman legend, was described in three different accounts, of which Ovid’s, in his Metamorphoses, is probably the most popular and appropriate here. Arachne was a shepherd’s daughter who became the greatest weaver in the world, and boasted that her skill was greater than that of the goddess Athena. The latter set up a contest between them, posing as an old woman who then challenged Arachne before revealing herself.

Unfortunately for Arachne, she not only produced work more beautiful than Athena’s, but it showed the many lapses of the gods and their unfairness to mankind. Athena was enraged by this, ripped Arachne’s work to shreds, and sprinkled her with Hecate’s potion, which turned her into a spider. She and her kin were thus condemned to weave for all time.

Reading this painting has also been complicated by the fact that it was probably damaged by fire in 1734, as a result of which it was significantly enlarged, presumably as part of its repair.

The current reading of this painting is that the foreground section shows the weaving contest between Athena, as an old woman on the left, and Arachne, as a young woman on the right. The background area then displays their completed tapestries, of which Arachne’s is visible, and shows a copy of Titian’s The Rape of Europa, another Greek myth.

The snag with that reading is that it does not fit what the painting actually shows: the older woman at the left is not weaving but spinning, using a spinning wheel which would also have been an anachronism at the time of Arachne’s contest. Ovid’s account is also clear in stating that, before the contest started, Athena revealed herself in her full glory, and did not retain the appearance of an old woman. Furthermore, the woman on the right is not weaving either, but is winding spun yarn into balls. Neither is there any evidence in the foreground of the presence of any dyed yarn which might be suitable for weaving.

It thus appears more probable that the original reading of this painting is correct, and the women in the front of the painting are spinning as the first part of the process of creating the large and ornate tapestries seen at the back.

John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), The Annunciation (1914)

In the New Testament Gospels, the angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary in a vision, in which she was told that she would conceive and become the mother of Christ. In pictorial representations, the angel shown traditionally holds white lily flowers, to mark Mary’s purity.

JW Waterhouse’s depiction of this extremely popular Christian narrative breaks some conventions, most obviously that the angel is not Gabriel but a female with beautiful blue wings. Mary, wearing her traditional blue clothing, has by her side a loaded distaff used for spinning. There are various anachronisms, such as the lectern at the right edge of the canvas.

It is possible that Waterhouse was making the thread link to concepts of fate, and highly likely that he intended us to take account of the distaff in our reading.

William Holman Hunt (1827–1910) & Edward Robert Hughes (1851–1914), The Lady of Shalott (1905)

I have already shown Waterhouse’s painting of the Lady of Shalott at her weaving. Holman Hunt’s equivalent wraps her up in numerous coloured threads from that weaving, invoking thread metaphors and reference to Arachne and her spider’s webs. This painting is also rich in other symbols and references.

Albert Anker (1831–1910), Queen Bertha and the Spinners (1888)

Bertha of Swabia (c 907-966) was the daughter of Burchard II, Duke of Swabia, and became the Queen Consort of Burgundy by her marriage in 922 to King Rudolph II of Burgundy. After his death in 937, she married Hugh of Italy, and married a third time after he died in 947.

Albert Anker shows Bertha seated, wearing a plain crown, with three girls who are presumably children within the royal court, who are learning to spin using distaffs. This is generally interpreted as nostalgia for artisanal work before the Industrial Revolution, as happened during the Arts and Crafts movements which swept Europe in the latter half of the nineteenth century. However, the significance of a long thread dispensed by the three Fates is appropriate for a woman who somehow survived three marriages, at a time when reaching the age of thirty was quite an achievement.

Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848–1884), Joan of Arc (1879)

Joan of Arc remains a popular and evocative figure from the early history of France. Painted by Bastien-Lepage during the years of revanchism after France’s ignominious defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1, it met the same needs as the history paintings of Évariste Luminais.

He chose to show Joan at the moment of her first peripeteia, when she first received her call to arms against the English, in her vision of 1424. She is watched by Saints Michael, Margaret, and Catherine in semi-transparent forms, and behind her, at the left, is the frame on which she was spinning (probably winding spun yarn into a ball) prior to her vision. The thread of fate was of great significance to her over the remainder of her tragically brief life.

Conclusions

The three Fates have remained popular figures in narrative painting for many centuries, although in more recent years their appearance has been in more complex situations, reflecting the increasing complexity and indirection of many narrative paintings since 1800. The thread of fate, derived from the classical myth of the Fates, may well have transferred into paintings which do not include the Fates themselves. However, there are traps to catch the unwary, and it is very important to understand the differences between spinning, which makes the thread, and weaving, which turns it into a finished fabric.

Elihu Vedder (1836–1923) was a symbolist painter who trained in New York, and with François-Édouard Picot in Paris before going to Italy, where he was influenced by the Macchiaioli, particularly Giovanni Costa. He returned to the USA in 1860, where he undertook illustration work. After the Civil War, he went to live in Italy, and visited the UK and the USA. He was commissioned by Tiffany to design products for them, and was also commissioned to provide murals for the Library of Congress.

Paintings

Return from Calvary (c 1867) shows an unusual view of Christ’s Crucifixion, with the crosses in the background behind a large crowd presumably dispersing back into Jerusalem. Although it is tempting to presume that the figures in the foreground are the Marys and Joseph of Arimathea, as they were present at the deposition of Christ’s body from the cross, and its removal for burial, that could not be the case.

The Roc’s Egg (1868) shows a scene from the legend of Sinbad the sailor, a story-cycle probably of Middle Eastern origin. These tales were a late addition to the compilation known widely as the Thousand and One Nights, but seemed to exist independently before being incorporated there.

In the second voyage of Sinbad, he is accidentally abandoned on an island on which there are roc eggs. Rocs are legendary enormous birds which appear in a number of sources. Here the sailors remove the contents of one of the roc’s giant eggs, which they cook on an open fire. Later in that adventure Sinbad uses a roc to obtain diamonds, before returning home to Baghdad.

The Dead Alchemist (c 1868) shows a lone figure, slumped and apparently dead against a carved chest. Scattered around him is the equipment which might have been used by an alchemist. During the Age of Enlightenment, alchemy was progressively unmasked as bogus, and at best misguided. Although its replacement by scientific chemistry was a slow process, by the late nineteenth century alchemy was scorned and ridiculed. Vedder may have used this image to illustrate poetry.

Memory (1870)

This remarkable painting is one of the earliest symbolist images made by an American artist. Its origins are probably in sketches which Vedder made in 1866 and 1867, according to Regina Soria. The earlier of those was a response to Tennyson’s poem Break, Break, Break (1842), in which he ponders the memory of loved ones when contemplating the sea – which is exactly what Vedder shows here. The crisp realism of the waves and beach contrast with the soft vagueness of the face in the clouds.

The Cumean Sibyl (1876)

In the classical world, sibyls were prophetesses who were able to see into the future, and when consulted could provide guidance and predictions. Ten or a dozen different sibyls are known from records, of which the most important was that at Cumae, shown in this painting.

The Cumaean (Cumean) sibyl played a major role in the foundation and success of Rome and its empire. The first key role that she had was of selling the Sibylline books to the last king of Rome. The second key role was to prophesy to Aeneas (hero of Virgil’s Aeneid) about his future in Italy, which drove him to travel there.

Vedder appears to have focussed on the first role, in that he shows the sibyl striding out, clutching several scrolls under her right arm, presumably the Sibylline books which were to guide the future of Rome.

Young Marsyas (Marsyas Enchanting the Hares) (1878)

In Greek mythology, Marsyas was a satyr (top half human, bottom half goat) who one day found a double-piped reed instrument known as a double flute (although it is not a flute) or aulos. This had been tossed aside by Athena, who had invented it, when the other gods made fun of the way that she puffed her cheeks out when playing it. Marsyas became an expert aulos player.

Unfortunately, he later lost a musical contest with Apollo, as judged by the Muses, and was flayed alive – a grisly scene which was once quite a popular subject for paintings.

Late in 1877, Carrie Vedder, the artist’s wife, recorded in a letter that her husband had been thinking about Marsyas, and considered that, before the contest with Apollo, Marsyas must have proved his skill with the aulos. He therefore came up with the idea that this must have at least been charming hares with the instrument. He started this painting early in 1878, setting it in the New England winter. This and The Cumean Sibyl were shipped to Paris for show at the Exposition Universelle later that year, but Vedder was disappointed that they did not do well there.

The Sphinx of the Seashore (1879)

The sphinx was a mythical creature with the head of a human, the haunches of a lion, and sometimes a bird’s wings. Two varieties were known: the Greek sphinx, based on a woman and typically shown with human breasts, and the Egyptian, based on a man’s upper body. The only Greek sphinx known was that which guarded the entrance to the city of Thebes, which I have already discussed and shown together with Oedipus, who guessed its riddle.

Vedder shows a distinctly Greek sphinx in a coastal desert which could readily be close to the city of Thebes, in the rich red light of sunset. Around the sphinx are the skulls and other remains of those who did not solve its riddle correctly.

The Pleiades (1885)

In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were originally the seven daughters of the titan Atlas and the sea-nymph Pleione. When Atlas was made to carry the heavens on his shoulders, Orion started to pursue the Pleiades, so Zeus transformed them into doves, then into stars. Their name is given to a star cluster, which it appears that the constellation of Orion chases across the night sky.

Vedder’s painting was made in association with his first illustration for the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, representing Khayyam’s horoscope. Interestingly it shows each connected with their corresponding star by a thread, here perhaps representing the process by which they were turned into stars, or catasterism.

The Etruscan Sorceress (1886)

Although identified as being Etruscan, a civilisation which preceded Rome in central and northern Italy, this painting has all the symbolic associations of Medea, from the legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece. She is holding a vial which Jason used to capture the fleece, and at her feet is an open fire which is associated with preparation of the potion for the vial. Classical legends were rich in other sorceresses, but that is the most likely association.

The Fates Gathering in the Stars (1887)

This painting is Vedder’s only known depiction of the Fates, although in an atypical setting. Derived from another of the illustrations which he made for the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, it shows the three Fates bringing in the fabric of the heavens, which holds the stars. To enable them to do this work, they have placed the tools of their trade – distaff, spindle, and shears – in the fabric of the foreground. This must also be one of very few paintings of the Fates in which they are not handling the thread of fate.

Fortuna (date not known)

In the Roman religion, Fortuna (Greek equivalent Tyche) was the goddess of fortune and luck, both good and bad. More usually depicted as being veiled and/or blind, to indicate the chance involved, she was the embodiment of capriciousness. Vedder shows her as a carefree, happy-go-lucky woman, with the wings of a dragonfly (or possibly mayfly), sat next to a sack of gold coins.

The Cup of Death (1885, 1911)

Vedder first painted this in 1885, but reworked it extensively in 1911. It shows an angel holding a cup to the face of a young woman who is swooning, and being supported by the angel. The light is eerie, with half the moon visible through a break in the cloud. It might possibly be a representation of the common subject of early death, using a more subtle approach than the usual Angel of Death or Grim Reaper.

Elements Gazing on the First Man (c 1913)

This delightfully loose and painterly oil sketch was probably associated with a poem which he quoted in his autobiography, titled The Advent of Man. That described how the elements delighted in man until his destructive nature was manifest. Here man is shown in almost embryonic form, cradled in the arms of the figure on the right. This does not appear to have been worked up into a more finished painting, but was particularly poignant given the outbreak of the First World War in the following year.

The Library of Congress Murals (1896)

Vedder’s most prominent and lasting achievements are the murals in the Lobby to the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

In Peace and Prosperity (1896), the symbolic figure rests her hands on laurel wreaths, indicating victory. At the left, a youth is painting decorations onto urns, and behind him is a lyre. On the right, another youth is planting a tree for the future, with a billhook and spade.

Corrupt Legislation (1896) is a more elaborate composition which looks at the consequences of poor government. The central figure is more floozy than goddess, holding a set of scales in her left hand. At the right of the painting, and on that left hand, is a lawyer, with an open book labelled The Law. At his feet, banknotes fall out of an urn, there are small sacks of grain, and a small portable ‘safe’.

At the left, apparently pleading with the central figure, is a young girl holding any empty distaff and bobbin for spinning. Behind her are shards from a broken pot, and a broken-down wall.

Vedder also made a beautiful mosaic which is in the central arched panel leading to the Visitor’s Gallery of the Library of Congress: Minerva of Peace (1897).

Minerva, derived from an Etruscan goddess, was the Roman goddess of wisdom, the guardian of civilisation, and sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. Shown here as the Minerva of peace, Vedder stressed that this was attained by warfare, and shows a miniature statue of Nike, the Greek winged goddess of victory, known to the Romans as Victoria. Nike holds the palm frond of peace, and the laurel of victory.

Minerva’s helmet and shield rest on the ground, but she remains ever-vigilant in holding a spear in her right hand. Her left hand holds a scroll, which she gazes at, listing the fields of learning, from Agriculture to Zoology and Finance. These show Minerva’s association with wisdom and knowledge. To the left of Minerva’s right knee is an owl, symbolising wisdom.

The inscription below, Nil invita Minerva, quae monumentum aere perennius exegit, means Not unwilling, Minerva raises a monument more lasting than bronze, and is quoted from Horace’s Ars Poetica.

Conclusions

Vedder’s richly symbolic paintings contain references to a wide range of different narratives. As so often happens, some have become detached from their original stories, which makes them puzzles now. This is particularly likely when paintings refer to excerpts of verse which may have been shown with them when they were first exhibited, but which have now become lost and forgotten.

Paintings in galleries open to the public are normally provided with helpful information about them which aids their reading; those in private collections may still be accessible via online images, but lack any such information unless it has been provided when they were last sold.

Reference

Wikipedia

The tragic death of Icarus is quite a popular story for narrative paintings from classical times onwards. It has also lent itself to contrasting treatments, which make it valuable for gaining insight into the techniques of narrative painting.

Myth and legend

According to classical Greek legend, Daedalus was a master craftsman who was most famously responsible for creating the Labyrinth on Crete, which contained the Minotaur. Because of his knowledge of the Labyrinth, Minos, the king of Crete, shut him up in a tower to prevent him from spreading that knowledge. Daedalus therefore set about building himself and his young son Icarus sets of wings, so that they could fly from the island and escape.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses (book 8, 183-235) describe how they did this, tying feathers together, securing them at their midpoints with string, then at their bases using beeswax. Once Daedalus had completed his own set of wings, he found that flapping them in the manner of a bird generated lift, so he made a second pair for his son.

Father and son then prepared to make their escape from Crete. Daedalus specifically warned Icarus that he should not fly too low, or the moisture from the sea would soak the feathers, nor too high, or the heat of the sun would melt the wax and the wings would disintegrate. They set off, and were making good progress passing several islands when Icarus became over-confident and soared upwards towards the sun. This melted the wax as Daedalus had warned, Icarus’ wings fell apart, he plummeted into the sea, and was drowned near what became known as Icaria, an island ten miles southwest of Samos, in the northern Aegean Sea.

There was also a separate myth concerning Phaethon, which has sometimes become confused with that of Daedalus and Icarus; because the two legends have a common theme of people becoming overambitious and coming to grief as a consequence, this confusion may of course be intentional.

In Greek mythology, Phaethon was the son of Apollo, the sun god, and the oceanid Clymene. Apollo, as the god of the sun, drove the chariot of the sun across the heavens each day, as shown in the detail above from Poussin’s A Dance to the Music of Time (c 1634-6).

When Phaethon was challenged by his peers to prove this, he asked his father, who promised to grant him whatever he wanted in proof. Phaethon asked to drive the sun chariot for a day, and despite Apollo’s concerns, did so. Once Phaethon was in charge of the chariot, he lost control of the horses, and Zeus had to kill him with a thunderbolt to prevent the chariot from crashing to earth and burning it up. This is shown in Moreau’s The Fall of Phaeton (1878) below.

Themes and events

The story of Icarus brings together several themes or morals which could be incorporated into a painting. These include:

• the tendency of humans to become overambitious to the point of failure and disaster;
• the significance of known weaknesses in design and manufacture;
• father-son rivalry;
• the importance of thorough planning and preparation.

There are several events which might make good narrative paintings. I have analysed the narrative using Eastgate’s Storyspace 3 app as follows:

There are two significant changes of fortune, both of which are accompanied by some element of revelation: the first is when Daedalus and Icarus start their flight, which marks a change from bad to good fortune, with the new knowledge being the discovery that they can fly. The second is the moment that Icarus’ wings disintegrate, and his fortune changes from good to bad, with the confirmation of Daedalus’ prior suspicion that the beeswax would melt.

As moments of peripeteia, according to classical Aristotelian narrative, and particularly for a tragedy such as this, these should be the most powerful and moving events to show in a painting, given references to the prior and subsequent states of fortune.

In the overall structure of the story, there is no doubt that the second moment of peripeteia is the climax, with the most dramatic action.

Pre-flight

Andrea Sacchi’s (1599–1661) Daedalus and Icarus (c 1645) shows Daedalus, at the left, fitting Icarus’ wings, prior to the boy’s flight. Icarus has his right arm raised to allow the fitting, and looks intently at his new wings. Daedalus is concentrating on adjusting the thin ribbons which pass over his son’s shoulders, and may be explaining to him the importance of flying at the right altitude.

Van Dyck’s (1599–1641) slightly earlier Daedalus and Icarus (1615-25) puts the boy at the centre, his wings already attached to his back, and his father apparently explaining the importance of flying at the right altitude. Father and son hold out their right hands, pointing with the index finger as if using it to enumerate important matters. Icarus looks to the front, appearing to concentrate, while his father looks at him and appears to be speaking.

Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830–1896), in his Icarus and Daedalus (c 1869), shows the pair on the roof of the tower overlooking a bay. Daedalus is crouching while fitting his son’s wings, and looks up at Icarus. The boy holds his right arm up, partly to allow his father to fit the wings, and possibly in a gesture of strength and defiance, as the two will shortly be escaping from Crete. Icarus is looking to the right, presumably towards the mainland to which they will shortly be travelling. This painting also suggests that Daedalus is dark-skinned, and Icarus more ‘Caucasian’ in appearance; Daedalus is wearing a scalp-hugging cap which appears intended for flight.

Landon’s (1760–1826) Icarus and Daedalus (1799) shows the moment that Icarus launches in flight from the top of the tower, his arms held out and treading air with his legs during this first flight. Daedalus stands behind, his arms still held horizontally forward from launching Icarus.

Few paintings seem to show father and son flying successfully across the sky, but they resume immediately after Icarus’ wings have disintegrated, and he has started falling through the air.

The fall from the sky

Gowy’s (c 1615-1661) The Fall of Icarus (1635-7) and Rubens’ (1577–1640) The Fall of Icarus (1636) are almost identical. Gowy was working at this time as an apprentice within Rubens’ workshop, and may therefore have made his finished painting from Rubens’ initial oil sketch, or both may have been painted by the same hand.

They show Icarus, his wings in tatters, plunging down through the air past Daedalus. Icarus holds both his arms up as if still trying to fly despite the loss of his wings, his mouth and eyes are wide open in shock and fear, and his body appears to be tumbling as it falls. Daedalus is still flying, his wings intact and fully functional; he looks alarmed, towards the falling body of his son. They are both high above a bay containing people and a fortified town at the edge of the sea, now named Icaria.

Blondel’s (1781-1853) spectacular painted ceiling showing The Sun or the Fall of Icarus (1819) combines a similar view of Daedalus flying on, and Icarus in free fall, with Apollo’s sun chariot being driven across the heavens. There is nothing to suggest that it is being driven by Phaethon, though, and the chariot appears to be making normal progress with its horses under control.

Joos de Momper’s (II) (1564–1635) Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c 1565) is one of a few similar landscapes which show Icarus’ descent as relatively small events taking place within a much bigger landscape, in which some of Ovid’s references are included. These are:

• an angler catching a fish with a rod and line,
• a shepherd leaning on a crook,
• a ploughman resting on the handles of his plough.

This painting shows all three, which are easily spotted as de Momper has helpfully painted their clothing scarlet. Up at the top left, Daedalus is seen to be flying well, but Icarus is in an inverted position as he tumbles down.

Impact

Long believed to be Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s (1526/1530–1569) original painting, his Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is now thought to be a very good copy of the original from about 1558, and possibly also painted by de Momper. It is similar in approach: the painting is a big landscape in which Ovid’s three other activities are shown, although here with less help from colour coding.

However Icarus has already plunged into the sea, only his legs being visible above the surface, slightly closer to the viewer than the prominent ship at the right. From the direction of gaze of the shepherd, Daedalus has flown off to the upper left.

Vlaho Bukovac (Biagio Faggioni) (1855–1922) painted two different versions of Icarus reaching earth: in The Fall of Icarus (1898), one panel of a diptych about this story, he shows Icarus on the seabed, as he drowns, the remains of his wings still visible.

His earlier Icarus on the Rocks (1897) departs from Ovid’s account and has Icarus crash onto rocks; his posture is similar in the two paintings.

Finally, Herbert Draper’s (1863–1920) Lament for Icarus (1898) shows a more apocryphal and romantic view, in which three nymphs have recovered the (apparently dry) body of Icarus, and he is laid out on a rock, while they lament his fate, to the accompaniment of a lyre. Perhaps influenced by contemporary thought about human flight, Draper gives Icarus huge wings, and they are shown intact, rather than disintegrated from their exposure to the sun’s heat.

Conclusions

In the 250 years over which painters have sought to depict this story, they have shown most of the events which make up its narrative. Although those showing preparations for flight have been effective depictions, they rely on the viewer’s knowledge of the outcome, and Icarus’ fate. None has been able to build in sufficient cues or clues to the climax.

Paintings showing the climax, of Icarus plummeting through the air, have had sufficient cues and clues to the prior events for them to meet the requirements for peripeteia, thus to be powerful and emotive. However the unusual treatments of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Joos de Momper, and followers, who showed small and distant images of Icarus overwhelmed by a greater landscape do not appear to be so effective, although they do allow incorporation of small details from Ovid’s account.

Blondel’s spectacular painted ceiling may tend to confuse the viewer with its references to the sun chariot, which might in turn seem to be a reference to Phaethon. Overall, I think that Rubens and Gowy provide the most vivid and gripping depiction of this story, in correctly identifying the best moment and ensuring that it is expressed clearly and without any grounds for confusion.

What do you think?

References

A hypertext analysis based on this article will be published later today, including a complete downloadable copy.

Wikipedia

Barolsky P (2014) Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Botticelli to Picasso, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 19669 6.

In the previous article, I have written an account of the different approaches used in paintings showing the story of Daedalus and the fall of Icarus, as given in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. As I was completing that, I was also transforming it into a hypertext document using Eastgate Systems‘ Storyspace 3 app. This article provides a copy of the first version of that hypertext, which you can explore, and explains how I designed and implemented the hypertext version.

I also used Storyspace 3 to generate a graphical analysis of the story of the fall of Icarus, which was included in that article, and shown below, although in the end I decided not to use that structure in the final hypertext.

Provided that you have a Mac running OS X Yosemite or later, you can download a copy of Storyspace 3 from here, and use it to explore the hypertext itself in this Zipped archive: FallOfIcarus

If you want to learn how to create your own hypertext like this, all the techniques are detailed in the series of tutorials which are listed and indexed in this article.

Structure

As with the blog article, the central thread in the hypertext is Ovid’s account in Metamorphoses book 8. I first divided this up into suitable sections, each of which I put into its own writing space. I then grouped these writing spaces into the basic structural blocks of the story, and created a container for each of those blocks. Seen in the Map view, these containers trace the storyline from Background through to Death and burial.

In the other axis, I wanted to present my analysis of the structure, the choices open to those painting the narrative, and my short discussion of the results.

These start from a single focal writing space acting as the reader’s Guide, and result in this layout in the Map view.

The Guide then provides text links – from the blue text items – to enter the storyline detailed in the translation of Ovid, a summary version provided by the containers for that narrative, a gallery showing just the paintings, and a little side story about Phaethon. However the normal link from this writing space (if you do not click on one of the blue text links) takes you on to the discussion about the narrative itself, along the vertical path in the Map view.

Ovid’s story

Each of the containers in the horizontal path, giving Ovid’s account, then has a chain of writing spaces which contain the translated text from Metamorphoses. These are linked in a simple chain which take the reader from the Guide, through each section in turn, and returns them to the Guide at the end.

The paintings (which use a similar painting prototype to those used in other tutorials here) are then placed next to the relevant sections of the text, within each container, according to which part of the story they depict. At present the paintings are not linked in to any of the other writing spaces: the reader can view them as and when they wish. Although the paintings do have an order, they do not have any inherent linkage with one another. The only slight exceptions to this are the pair by Gowy and Rubens, and the landscapes by de Momper and Brueghel.

The containers making up the horizontal path for the storyline each contain the brief summary of the story which I originally gave in my article. These should be useful for a reader who wants to get the gist without stepping through Ovid’s full account. All too often I do not make as full use of containers as I should.

Extras

The side story about Phaethon is implemented like one of the containers making up the main story, although it has but a single writing space with my text summary of the story, which refers to the two paintings shown.

In addition to showing the paintings in the relevant sections of Ovid’s account, I also wanted to provide a container for them as a gallery. This is accessed via a text link from the Guide, and a single red writing space at the bottom left provides an easy way back to the Guide. The writing spaces here are simply aliases to the originals in each of the containers of the story itself. This is an efficient implementation, of course.

I think the Map view here is gorgeous – who says that hypertext should be just text?

By putting the date of creation for each of the paintings, a feature of my painting prototype, this means that you can also view a timeline showing all the paintings, with minimal additional effort. I did find that I had to set custom $TimelineStart and $TimelineEnd dates for the timeline itself, so ensure that the text was not cropped. That is easily done using the Inspector.

One issue with this Timeline view is that it contains entries not just for the original writing spaces for each of the paintings, but their aliases are also included, doubling the entries up. Hopefully one of the Marks who really know what they are doing will suggest how that can be improved.

How long did it take?

Having already written the text for the blog article, implementing this hypertext document took just four hours, including the time required to scale and adjust images. I am sure that someone who is more adept at using Storyspace could do it more quickly.

One thing that I was particularly careful about in this project was ensuring that the images for paintings were not just resized correctly, with a maximum dimension of 512 pixels, but that their resolution was set uniformly to 72 dpi. One slight irritation in my previous use of scaled images has been that, when dragged and dropped into a writing space, some appear tiny. I think that is due to their having a high resolution, for example of 300 dpi, which results in additional scaling when they are added to Storyspace. It did not happen in this document.

What next?

One feature which I will be adding to this hypertext is the ability to click on any of the scaled images and see a full-sized version of that image in Preview; I have previously detailed how to do that, and will add that next. That increases storage requirements, of course, and my preferred solution is to put those larger image files in a separate folder.

It would also be good to add more text links – for example, in the discussion about the narrative success of the paintings, it would help the reader to be able to link out to view each painting as it is discussed. The snag with doing that is providing an easy way to return the reader from the painting to the original writing space. We have considered ways of doing this in previous tutorials here, but the simplest will hopefully be a command built into Storyspace, as there is now in Tinderbox.

I welcome your comments on this, and your responses to using the hypertext document.

If you can spare the time, I would be grateful if you could read my original article here, created using linear HTML in WordPress, and compare your reading experience with that of the hypertext version. It is hard for me to judge, being the author of both, but I think the hypertext version is a much richer and more flexible experience: the sort of document that you enjoy spending some time exploring, and really getting to grips with Ovid’s story, the paintings, and their narrative techniques.

To you and me, a painting is a work of art.

It has been crafted by an artist who spent years learning and developing their skills, who may have put years of effort into that single painting. It is a part of our culture: in a couple of centuries time, when all the terabytes of digital candyfloss have vanished into the bit-bucket of history, today’s paintings should provide the same sort of window on twenty-first century culture as Vermeer and Rembrandt do on the Netherlands of their time.

But to those who can afford to buy the more expensive paintings, they are simply movable property. As the Panama Papers are starting to show, many of those who own parts of our cultural heritage do so as a means of becoming more wealthy.

Look through a recent catalogue raisonné of any reasonably high-valued artist, and you will see countless paintings which are in private collections, or perhaps unaccounted for altogether. Many of the most important paintings of Monet, Cézanne, Pissarro, Degas, and many others have not seen the light of public exhibition for many decades, and some have not even been seen or traced since the 1940s or 1950s.

If you want to view them, the best places to visit would be the world’s freeports, of which the largest and most valuable is surely that at Geneva. There the wealthy, those whose names appear in the Panama Papers, and many more who still remain anonymous, have stashed away their movable property, safe from the tax man, and the likes of you and I.

Sometimes these paintings appear in the catalogues of auction houses, giving us a brief glimpse of the riches of which society is deprived. But many of these works are strictly off the record, untraced and untraceable, so that their value is completely concealed. Initial revelations about missing Modiglianis, van Goghs, and others are given in this fascinating account by the ICIJ.

There are more pervasive and sinister effects of these secret spoils too.

Because the high end of the art market is dominated by the world’s super-rich, they drive prices up into their league, where a couple of extra zeros at the end of the price is all the better. Comparable works in public ownership, and in the galleries around the world which have to keep up with these dizzying prices, are also prodigiously valuable. This increases the costs of many of the overheads associated with their ownership and display. Those galleries therefore have inflated budgets, and putting together exhibitions becomes seriously expensive. Although some of those costs are met by sponsorship, in the end, it is we, visitors, and donors to public art funds, who foot the bill.

The art market is distorted into what is essentially an investment market, driven by speculation and the thirst for profit, regardless of cultural heritage. Read any of the books written by those who have worked in auction houses and other sectors in the trade, and you will be shocked at what happens. We get occasional glimpses: although I do like Peter Doig’s paintings, and agree with the critic’s assessment that he is “a jewel of genuine imagination, sincere work, and humble creativity”, was his The Architect’s Home in the Ravine really worth $12 million at auction in 2013?

There are many fine modern painters whose works are, by comparison, absurdly undervalued, and don’t they suffer as a result. Just as the super-rich are polarising society, so the effects of their art investments are polarising art itself.

It is this market for movable property, this callous disinterest in cultural heritage or art, which fuels the modern Art Industry. And the Panama Papers are already helping to lift the lid on some of its previously well-guarded secrets. After all, using your tax-free wealth to sequester cultural objects in freeports is little different in its effect from the Nazis’ looting works of art across Europe.

The primary purpose of most first (bachelors) degrees is to learn how to obtain and evaluate information. If you completed your degree more than a few years ago, you are unlikely to have used the full range of resources now available. When you want to learn more about an art movement, an individual artist, or one of their works, the following should provide a good start.

Basic

Wikipedia – although its art history coverage is patchy, overall it is the most extensive and comprehensive compilation ever. Be wary that, particularly for less well-known artists, its articles may be compiled from a single source which may not be the most up-to-date or reliable.

Wikimedia Commons – most artists included in Wikipedia also have good collections of images of their work in Wikimedia Commons. These are usually best entered from their Wikipedia entry, although sometimes you have to chase around through less complete galleries before you get to the folders of images.

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History – superb chronology, essays, and examples provided free by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Individual Museums and Galleries – locate some of the artist’s works, and visit the websites of the museums and galleries which hold them; this is helped by using ArtCyclopedia (below) to do the chasing for you. Many will not only have detailed information about that work, but biographic summaries, and you may even chance on a recent exhibition, free book, or more. The larger and public galleries are usually the best for this, but French resources are often surprisingly limited. Most US sites allow non-commercial use of images, but many European sites are still more difficult in this respect.

WikiArt and The Athenaeum – good for images, but they have limited supporting information.

ArtCyclopedia – lists well-known works with links to museum and gallery coverage, and to their own search facilities. Excellent for tracking down works in major collections, and as a gateway to individual search facilities.

ARC, the Art Renewal Center – a huge collection of mainly non-modern oil paintings. Requires a free account, encourages paid-for membership.

Search engines such as Google – these can turn up excellent sites, but you must be very careful with your search terms, or you will just end up with a vast list of vendors of painted copies or prints.

This blog’s Painting Topics page.

More Advanced

The Burlington Magazine looks very expensive, but is worth every last penny. If you can possibly afford a subscription, pay that bit more to get full access to its amazing archives, going back over a century. It is unique, and is now run by a not-for-profit organisation. A quick search in its archives can save you a great deal of work elsewhere. Its archives are also accessible through JSTOR (below).

British Art Studies is a recent online, open-access (i.e. free to use) peer-reviewed journal covering the area, and looks extremely promising.

Other open-access online journals include RIHA Journal, International Journal of Art and Art History, University of Toronto Art Journal, and the V&A Online Journal.

The Art Newspaper is best for news about current art, but does cover historical matters too, and is good at topical exhibitions and other news. Consider subscribing, which not only provides you with a monthly printed copy, but gives you free access to full content online too, with iOS apps, etc. There is also The Art Tribune, which carries news, reviews, etc.

Online catalogues raisonnés – there is a growing number of these, listed here.

Christopher Witcombe’s Art History Resources – an extensive list of resources.

JSTOR and academic search engines have in the past been confined to those in academic institutions. However you may well be able to obtain access through your alumnus organisation if you are a graduate. They can search a vast range of publications, including the superb Burlington Magazine, giving you access to PDF copies of papers for many decades, sometimes centuries. Learn to use their search engine and its advanced options to get the best out of them, or like Google you can easily get overwhelmed by useless hits.

Libraries – the most valuable and coherent accounts of art history are still normally those found in books, few of which are published electronically (Kindle, iTunes). Membership and reading facilities at a good library, preferably one supporting a university with a history of art department, is invaluable.

If you have other resources which you wish to share, please add them as a comment.

… Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
(William Shakespeare, Macbeth Act 5, scene 5.)

In this and the next article, I would like to provide some insight into the short but very promising career of Thomas Girtin (1775-1802), a British watercolour painter who was both a friend and rival of JMW Turner. As Girtin died 35 years before John Constable and 49 years before JMW Turner, his achievements were cruelly limited. But Turner recognised how good his friend was when he said about him “Had Tom Girtin lived I should have starved”.

Thomas Girtin was born to a prosperous brush maker in Southwark, London, on 18 February 1775 (the same year as JMW Turner’s birth), but his father died when he was three. As a boy, he was given drawing lessons, and he was therefore taken on as an apprentice by Edward Dayes, a watercolour painter of views based in Long Acre, in central London, in the summer of 1789. Such apprenticeships had long been the main route for training as a painter, but in the same year Turner had entered the new, improved version of the Royal Academy Schools – formal training instead of seven long years learning the trade.

Girtin’s earliest surviving works, such as this view of Eton College from Datchet Road (1790), are impressive for someone less than two years into their apprenticeship, if illustrative in style and a bit wonky in perspective.

He soon started showing even greater promise, as in the fine sky and effective aerial perspective in his Rochester, Kent: from the North (c 1790), although some have argued that this dates from a couple of years later.

Girtin probably terminated his apprenticeship as early as 1792, by which time engravings of his work were being published in Copper Plate Magazine. His technique adjusted to facilitate the making of prints from his topographical views, as shown in his Kirkstall Abbey from the N.W. (c 1792).

By 1793, he was working for the antiquarian James Moore. He was taking on more challenging landscapes, including the rugged Findlater Castle, Banff (1792-3). His spirited sea is impressive for someone with such limited experience of coastal views.

Most of these earlier paintings were not made in front of the motif, or even from his own drawings made from the motif, but from drawings and engravings by other artists, including Dayes.

Here he appears to have been experimenting with techniques of depicting water, and of the roughness of Dumbarton Rock itself, using visible brushtrokes and patches of colour.

He gradually used less ink, here confining it to foreground detail.

Although he had possibly travelled to paint earlier, his first major painting tour with James Moore was of the Midlands in 1794. They visited Warwick, Stratford, Lichfield, Peterborough, and Lincoln; this fine view of Lichfield Cathedral (1794) was one of its successes, and already secured him a place alongside the better watercolour landscape painters of the day. In the same year he had his first painting accepted by the Royal Academy, a view of Ely Cathedral now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Later in 1794, Girtin started to attend instruction in the home of Thomas Monro, along with the young JMW Turner, where the two became friends and of great mutual influence.

Girtin’s skills of composition were well in advance of his experience and time. This view of Glasgow Cathedral (1794-5) has similarities to some of Constable’s studies of Salisbury Cathedral from around 1830, such as that shown below.

Girtin’s Lincoln Cathedral (c 1795) shows the last vestiges of ink and an illustrative approach fading, and his pure watercolour starting to flourish.

In 1795, his major painting tour was to Sussex, in company with his employer, James Moore.

In the late summer of 1796, Girtin toured independently for the first time, travelling in the north of England and into the Scottish borders. Among many sketches made during this trip were those for the next painting of Holy Island.

Holy Island and Lindisfarne are spectacular and evocative locations on the north-east coast of England, steeped in history, wild and mysterious. Connected to the mainland via a tidal causeway, Girtin would have had little time there to attempt painting en plein air even if he had wanted to, so painting this back in his studio he would have been reliant on the sketches, notes, and memories of the previous year.

In 1797, Girtin had ten watercolours accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy, made from his sketches during his northern tour the previous year. These generated his first newspaper reviews, and he was now able to charge significant amounts for commissions, and to enjoy growing patronage. That year he painted in Devon and Dorset, including this beautifully informal view of Kingswear Seen from Dartmouth, Devon (c 1797).

His career had got off to an excellent start. In a very few years he had developed the technical skills to compete with the best watercolour painters of the day, including Turner, another rising star. He enjoyed good patronage, although he preferred not to have to cultivate it, but to sell through dealers when possible. The next and concluding article will look at the final few years of his work.

References

Wikipedia

Smith G (2002) Thomas Girtin: the Art of Watercolour, Tate. ISBN 978 1 854 37394 6.

In the first part of these two articles on the tragically brief life and work of Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), I looked at his work from his initial watercolours of around 1790 to his success – both artistically and commercially – in around 1797.

In 1798, he was again well represented at the Royal Academy, with nine of his watercolours being hung in its annual exhibition. During the late summer, he toured North Wales, making sketches which he then worked up into finished paintings over the winter. He also started to paint beyond the boundaries of the topographical view, as in this atmospheric capriccio among the Roman ruins, Classical Composition (1798-9), after Marco Ricci (1676–1730).

The results of his previous year’s visit to North Wales resulted in acclaim of the six watercolours which he showed at the Royal Academy in 1799. However, his hopes of accompanying Lord Elgin to Greece on an archaeological expedition failed. In the end, Elgin employed the Neapolitan watercolour painter Giovanni Battista Lusieri (1755-1821) to document the expedition and its archaeological discoveries.

Girtin’s tour that year was to Yorkshire, a far cry from Greece, but which saw him venturing into more transient effects of light, and de-emphasising architectural features.

His wonderful view of Durham Cathedral and Castle (c 1800) contains as much detail as his earlier views, but it is better integrated into the whole instead of competing for the viewer’s attention.

The ruined abbey at the centre of his Jedburgh Abbey from the South East (1800) bears only the marks of the brush, not of the pen.

In his Ripon Minster, Yorkshire (1800), it is the features of the river – its bridge, cattle, and a single angler – which steal the gaze, rather than the bulk of the minster behind.

In 1800, he showed his last watercolours at the Royal Academy. He also managed to tour two areas, returning to Yorkshire, where he concentrated his sketching along the River Wharfe. Then in the late summer he went back up to the Scottish borders, before marrying in the autumn.

Among the paintings which he completed in 1800 was The White House at Chelsea, which is probably his most famous. Girtin chose to look upstream of the River Thames from a location close to the modern Chelsea Bridge. The landmarks shown include, from the left, Joseph Freeman’s windmill (or Red House Mill), a horizontal air mill, the white house close to where Battersea Park is now, Battersea Bridge, and Chelsea Old Church.

For once, buildings are the least significant elements in the painting, which is dominated by the sky, water surface, and the momentary light on the white house.

His paintings from the campaign in Yorkshire were also quite different. Instead of concentrating on cathedrals and other prominent buildings, the River Wharfe was now the centre of his attention. Here, the Ouse Bridge, York (1800) and the small boats using the river are more dominant.

In his The Abbey Mill, Knaresborough (1801), the mill building is a smaller and less prominent part of the painting, with the river and trees more dominant. He has also used significant areas of ‘reserved’ white space and a drier brush on the rough surface of the paper to depict ‘white’ water and highlights.

Another superb product from his Yorkshire tour the previous year, Girtin’s The Village of Kirkstall, Yorkshire (1801) shows an angler fishing from his cart in the ford in a sophisticated composition.

The following year, 1801, Girtin exhibited an oil painting at the Royal Academy, the only oil painting which he appears to have shown. This was met with great acclaim, but has since been lost. He toured Yorkshire for the last time, and then spent the winter of 1801-2 in Paris.

In addition to completing watercolours from his tour in 1801, Girtin spent much of the spring and summer of 1802 producing watercolour studies, and then the final 5.5 x 32.9 metre panoramic painting, for Eidometropolis in London. This was finished by its opening on 2 August 1802, and was a major speculative commitment on Girtin’s part.

Unfortunately it does not appear to have been a commercial success, and the panorama has since been lost. Opinion is that, although his studies were made in watercolour (and survive), he painted the panorama itself in oils, whose relative unfamiliarity could only have made the task more difficult. Most such panoramas were painted in tempera.

Following one of his visits to North Yorkshire, Girtin painted Guisborough (Gisborough) Priory in watercolour.

The Yale Center for British Art has an oil painting apparently made from this view, which some believe to have been the only surviving oil painting by Girtin. However others dispute this attribution, considering it too crude to have been painted by him.

Over the last year or so, Girtin’s health had been troubling him more, and he died, probably of an asthma attack or possibly from a complication of pulmonary tuberculosis, on 9 November 1802, aged 27, just a fortnight after Richard Parkes Bonington was born.

Conclusions

In little more than a decade, Thomas Girtin had mastered the techniques of the ‘British’ school of watercolour, and had then started to take watercolour beyond that, exploring the effects of light, sophisticated composition, and ‘advanced’ techniques; this is shown in the pair of paintings of Jedburgh Abbey below, made just seven years apart. These were a great influence over JMW Turner, John Sell Cotman, and other painters of the nineteenth century.

However, Girtin painted almost exclusively landscapes, and almost exclusively in watercolour. Turner’s broader training in the Royal Academy Schools enabled him to excel in other genres, and most importantly in oils as much as in watercolour. Most of Turner’s best works were created well after Girtin’s death, and there is no way of knowing whether Girtin would have been as successful in other genres, or in oils. He was, though, a vital part of the development of painting in Europe in the nineteenth century.

References

Wikipedia

Smith G (2002) Thomas Girtin: the Art of Watercolour, Tate. ISBN 978 1 854 37394 6.