The early seventeenth century was a time of conflicting ideas. On the one hand, the Netherlands had entered its Golden Age, in which it was the foremost maritime and economic power in Europe, and enjoying rising living standards if not wealth. On the other hand, contemporary religious thought, which pervaded life, held that worldly goods, possessions, and pursuits were futile and empty: “vanity of vanities, all is vanity”.

It was also a world in which women had fairly rigidly-defined roles. Trying to pursue a career as a woman artist was by no means impossible, but there were strict limitations. Most constraining was the inability of women to learn to paint the figure from life, which pretty well ruled out all the genres which involved painting people. So women in art were limited to painting flowers, or still lifes, the least prestigious of the genres.

Clara Peeters was one of the finest still life painters of any age. We don’t even know when she was born, but she seems to have trained in Antwerp, then pursued her career successfully in the Dutch Republic. She appears to have been internationally successful by 1611, when at least four of her paintings were sold to Spain. Her last reliably-dated works are from 1621, although there are a few paintings which have been attributed to her from later.

No one knows whether she stopped painting when she married, or when she died.

Venetian Glass, Roemer and a Candlestick (1607) is one of her earliest known works, which shows an extraordinary skill in rendering the varied surfaces and their optical properties. It is also one of the first still lifes in which the artist has included their own image reflected in the motif, here the base of the candlestick holder.

As in many still lifes, its contents have interesting symbolic meaning. The confectionery shown is sweet and ephemeral, the ring a sign of earthly riches and temporal relationships, the fly an indicator of earthly decay, and the burning candle combines remembrance with the strict limits on lifespan in this world. This is not just a still life, but an expression of vanitas, the futility and limits of our earthly existence.

Her paintings from 1611 which ended up in the Spanish Royal Collection, and are now in the Prado, leave the stern moral message behind.

In the last of these, Clara Peeters makes another cameo appearance in its reflections, providing tantalising glimpses of herself.

The following year, her still life with Flowers and Gold Cups of Honour (1612) reveals multiple miniature self-portraits reflected in the gold cup at the right. These are shown more clearly in the detail below.

In her still life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels from about 1615, her surface and optical rendering reaches the amazing, and all thoughts of vanitas are forgotten. This is a celebration of the very earthly sensuous pleasures of food. These are sustained in several of her other later paintings, shown below.

She had not entirely forgotten the spiritual dimension, though. Two of her most interesting paintings return to the concept of vanitas.

Her Fruit, Dead Birds and a Monkey (1615-20) shows a more peculiar collection of objects: the grapes are covered with bloom, a peach is going rotten, and there’s a fly on an apple. The little monkey, busy feeding from nuts, is gazing at a small pile of dead birds. There are no glass or metal surfaces to show off Peeters’ painting skills either.

Finally, what we must assume is a Vanitas Portrait of a Woman, almost certainly a self-portrait, from about 1618. The artist gazes into the distance, probably a carefully-angled mirror which she used to see her own reflection. She is around thirty years old, and prospering. Beside her head is a bubble, a sign that this is a vanitas painting.

In front of her, on the table, are the contents of a still life, including the goblet from Still Life with Flowers, Goblet and Dainties (1611) above. In addition, there are the symbols of the vanitas: gold and silver coins, jewellery, a couple of dice, with their association with chance and earthly pleasures such as gaming.

It’s a tragedy that Clara Peeters was never able to try figurative painting. But these still lifes are a reflection of her supreme skills as a painter, and small insight into the contradictions of her time.

The tragic story of Oedipus, his murder of his father, marriage to his mother, and subsequent agony, has been popular in plays and literary works since classical times. Perhaps because of its complexity and incestuous theme, it was hardly painted before 1800. As most art prior to the nineteenth century was made for patrons, it is difficult to envisage any patron commissioning a painting, say, showing Oedipus marrying his mother, or putting his eyes out.

The one episode in the story which has been painted repeatedly – although still only after 1800 – is Oedipus’ encounter with the Sphinx, which is mercifully incest-free and relatively positive in nature. It has led to some of the most psychologically insightful paintings too.

Having been told by the oracle at Delphi that he would kill his father and marry his mother, Oedipus fled Corinth and travelled to the city of Thebes. On the way, he met Laius, with whom he quarreled, fought, and killed. Although he did not know it at the time, Laius was the father of Oedipus.

When he neared Thebes, Oedipus came across the Sphinx, a ferocious beast with the head and bust of a woman, and the body of a big cat (usually a lion). The Sphinx had effectively put Thebes under siege, by refusing to let anyone past unless they successfully answered her riddle. Those who failed were killed, possibly by being flung from the nearby cliff, although some appear to have ended up providing the Sphinx with her next meal instead.

The riddle of the Sphinx was: “Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed, two-footed, and three-footed?”

Oedipus correctly guessed a person (crawling infant, adult, and the elderly walking with a stick), causing the Sphinx to self-destruct, probably by throwing herself from the cliff.

Oedipus carried on into the city, where he was welcomed as a hero, married its queen, Jocasta, who was (unknown to him at the time) his mother, became king, and had children who were his half-brothers and -sisters.

Two artists, both living in Rome at the time, tackled this story at almost exactly the same time.

François-Xavier Fabre’s Oedipus and the Sphinx from about 1806-08 takes a traditional narrative approach, keeping distance between the two figures, and those figures from the viewer. Although their gazes are locked intently, the tension of the moment is low.

JAD Ingres’ first version was a full-length figure study of Oedipus, which he sent from Rome in 1808 when he was studying there following his success in the Prix de Rome. It had a lukewarm reception, and in 1825, he decided to rework it, and had the canvas enlarged to accommodate this more elaborate version which now hangs in the Louvre.

He has moved in much closer to the two figures, and has moved them closer together, so that they are not just wrestling with the Sphinx’s riddle, but in a close-quarter, eyeball-to-eyeball battle of minds. The revised version was shown at the Salon in 1827, where it was well-received.

Later, probably in 1864, Ingres painted a reversed copy (below), which is now in the Walters. The Sphinx’s head is turned away, and almost invisible in the deep shadow of the cave. Although still a fine painting, it lacks the intense confrontation which makes his original so powerful.

In 1864, Gustave Moreau was bold enough to try his own version of this story; given the relatively recent success of Ingres’ work, this was a very risky venture.

Moreau undoubtedly knew Ingres’ painting as it had been shown in 1827. He reversed the positions of Oedipus and the Sphinx, and brought them so close together that they are right in one another’s face, staring one another out. The Sphinx is already latched onto what she assumes will be her next and delectable young meal. She promises to be femme fatale for the young man.

Oedipus knows that he cannot falter. A false guess, even a slight quaver in his voice, and this beautiful but lethal beast will be at his throat. His left hand clenches his javelin, knowing that what he is about to say should save his life, and spare the Thebans. He will then no longer be pinned with his back to the rock, and the threat of the Sphinx will be gone.

Moreau’s painting was a huge success, although by their comments many of the critics were unable to read it in its entirety.

Not long after the end of the Franco-Prussian War, in which he had served in the National Guard, Gustave Doré committed some of the apocalytic visions of the siege of Paris to canvas, in his The Enigma (souvenirs de 1870), and two other major paintings, all made using grisaille, the greys normally used to model tones in traditional layered technique.

This shows the shattered and still-burning remains of the city in the background, bodies of some of the Prussian artillery in the foreground, and two mythical beasts silhouetted in an embrace. The winged creature is female, and probably represents France, who clasps the head of the Sphinx, who personifies the forces which determine victory or defeat. The enigmatic question would then relate to the Franco-Prussian War, and the reasons for France’s defeat.

With its disturbing sexual implications, the painters of the Pre-Raphaelite movement on the other side of the Channel seem to have been keen to avoid this story. However, Dante Gabriel Rossetti drew his account in The Question, the Sphinx in 1875. Oedipus and the Sphinx are as close, but by turning their bodies more to face the viewer, he has lost much of the psychological tension. The other figures and landscape tend to distract too.

Across an even greater body of water, the Atlantic Ocean, and Elihu Vedder painted his The Sphinx of the Seashore in 1879. She looks lonely, still waiting for Oedipus to come, a beautiful but clearly dangerous beast in an alien landscape, surrounded by the skulls of her victims.

Moreau revisited the story during his later personal losses and grief. The Triumphant Sphinx, or The Victorious Sphinx (1886) explores the possibility of Oedipus answering the riddle incorrectly, and proving femme fatale to him as well.

Other artists took up the story too. Here, Armand Point’s Oedipus and the Sphinx (c 1890) tries out a combination of ideas taken from Ingres and Moreau. Its eye contact is weak, though, and there seems little tension as a result.

The overtly symbolist Odilon Redon took the Sphinx into a mediaeval court in his pastel painting of Mystical Knight or Oedipus and the Sphinx (1894).

Franz von Stuck’s The Kiss of the Sphinx (1895) was the next major landmark in the development of this story, bringing the pair into a deadly embrace and kiss. Gone is the gaze, replaced by intimate physical contact, with the Sphinx clearly taking the upper hand.

The following year, and presumably influenced by von Stuck, Fernand Khnopff painted his Art, or Caresses (1896). Oedipus is now an androgynous youth holding an ornate caduceus (less the intertwined serpents) in his right hand. His nipples appear to have been tattooed, or bear jewellery, and he is bare to the waist. He stands cheek-to-cheek with a beautiful young Sphinx with the body of a leopard. Behind her is a wooden booth, which has non-Roman characters or ideograms written on it.

In the final years of the century, Jan Toorop did away with Oedipus, in his Souls around the Sphinx (1892-97), and considered an intermediate between the Egytian and Theban Sphinxes.

François-Émile Ehrmann’s Oedipus and the Sphinx (1903) is a return to the intense one-on-one conflict outside Thebes. His is the most close-cropped image, and the most flagrant battle between the pair. The claws of the Sphinx’s right arm are bared, ready to sink themselves into Oedipus’ flesh; he grasps a vicious knife as if ready to retaliate. The psychological fight has been expressed in raw physical terms, although their gazes are still locked.

Georg von Rosen’s grim portrait of The Sphinx (1887-1907) completes my series. Alone again, maybe the Sphinx did get the better of Oedipus after all. She glowers menacingly at the viewer, with a large patch of congealed blood at the far right of the rocky ledge.

As with Salome before, the story seems to be changing, and is now centred on the femme fatale.

Few landscape paintings are made so far from the landscape that figures could not be seen in that view.

A good example of one of those few is this overwhelmingly detailed and distant view of Florence from Bellosguardo, painted in 1863 by the Pre-Raphaelite landscape artist John Brett. The closest which it manages to a foreground, in the cemetery and scrub at the lower edge, might just attain visible figures, but in the circumstances they would be too insignificant against the city itself.

Sometimes, those foreground figures are vital for instilling a sense of scale to the whole view. James Ward’s vast and imposing painting of Gordale Scar (1812–15) benefits greatly from the herds of cattle and deer at its foot. Without them it would be easy to misjudge the scale of the cliff faces and the huge cleft in them.

In most pure landscape paintings, the figures – no matter how artificial they might have been in their creation – are part of that landscape. Thomas Girtin’s Village of Kirkstall (1801) has villagers, who go about their lives in the middle of his motif. A farmer lets the two horses drawing his cart drink from the river, and others walk or stand along the main street.

Girtin astutely uses his staffage to add some contrasting colours, and to enhance the overall atmosphere. No one is rushing here, indeed the figures are almost as static as the fixtures and fittings like the buildings and bridge. Even the mirror-like surface of the river is in no hurry to flow downstream.

These figures are pure staffage: a word actually borrowed from German, but formed in pseudo-French, from staffiren, meaning to fit out or garnish. It is properly used to describe all the accessories of a picture or painting, but most commonly applies to the human and animal figures, and their mobile equipment such as the cart in Girtin’s watercolour. It could equally be used of vegetation and other objects which were not in the original view, but were added by the artist for ‘effect’, such as some trees used for repoussoir.

The implication of staffage is that it is generally neutral in influence. Girtin’s cart and villagers add a little to the atmosphere, but are hardly stylistic, narrative, or meaningful. In Salvator Rosa’s Rocky Landscape with a Huntsman and Warriors (c 1670), those figures are working rather harder, and are quite crucial to Rosa’s whole style, and the desperation of the landscape.

Just as Rosa’s weather and crags are romantic hyperbole, so his figures augment that hyperbole. They’re not peaceful village folk staring at a young painter with his watercolours, but desperados, brigands, criminals, murderers. They exist somewhere between staffage and side-narrative.

Narrative is also not an all-or-nothing concept. With moderately large, well-attributed figures clearly telling a story from a well-known source, there’s no doubt about the motif being the figures, and the landscape as its ground. But that is hardly the case in George Morland’s Winter Landscape with Figures (c 1785).

A man has slipped over on a frozen pond, and is struggling to get up, his walking stick resting beside him. A girl is gingerly making her way across the ice, her feet far apart to spread the load and avoid her own slippage. A younger boy stands at the edge with his mother, who is carrying two pails. Beside her is a small dog, and behind that are three donkeys looking on.

There is a narrative here, but it is hardly central to Morland’s painting, more a touch of wry and seasonal humour. Remove those figures and it does not transform the painting, although it would be the poorer without them. It’s another little device by which the artist converses with the viewer, just as did Fearnley.

Staffage is even less appropriate when much of the substance of the landscape are its inhabitants, as in Richard Parkes Bonington’s Fishmarket near Boulogne (1824). His fishmarket is the people, with the backdrop of the sails of the fishing boats illuminated in his golden light. Yet many of those figures are gestural, only partly formed or suggested: it is the mass of their assembly which is such an important part of his motif.

We are also on difficult ground when dealing with some artists who decorated their grand landscapes with little enigmatic and possibly highly meaningful clusters of figures. I will return to look at Frederic Edwin Church’s use of figures in another article, but those in The Heart of the Andes (1859) have the semblance of some greater meaning: the small group around a prominent crucifix at the lower left is of particular interest, despite their tiny size in such an imposing landscape.

Finally, there is the greatest problem of them all, the few possibly ‘pure’ landscapes painted by Nicolas Poussin, such as his Landscape with a Calm (c 1651). Entire books have been written about their close reading, and still we are none the wiser. Are they just staffage and accessories, or do they form a narrative, and if so, is that central to the painting or just marginal entertainment?

We are trapped in a catch-22: when we can read the painting, the meaning and relevance of the figures is clear. But to read the painting, we need to read the figures too.

Ovid concluded Book 4 of his Metamorphoses at the wedding feast of Perseus and Andromeda, and it is there that he opens Book 5. Perseus has just finished his stories of how he beheaded Medusa, and how Medusa came to have snakes in her hair in the first place. It’s at this point that the wedding feast gets out of hand – just as they always do in fiction.

The Story

As Perseus is completing his stories about Medusa, the palace is invaded by a rabble. Its ringleader is Phineus, the brother of King Cepheus, wielding a spear, who quickly establishes that, as far as he and his mob are concerned, Perseus has stolen his bride (who is also his niece). With a quick dig at Perseus’ conception by Danae with Jupiter’s ‘shower of gold’, Phineus and Cepheus argue.

Phineus then hurls his spear at Perseus, only to embed it in the furniture. Perseus throws it back, but Phineus has ducked behind cover, and it kills someone else. This is the cue for open warfare, which in turn prompts Minerva to appear and guard Perseus with her shield.

Ovid details a succession of violent deaths, in the course of which Perseus holds his own and remains unscathed. With his bride and her mother screaming for all they’re worth, the hall is awash with blood, and corpses are starting to stack up on the floor. Perseus realises that he is seriously outnumbered, and holds up the head of Medusa:
But when he saw his strength
was yielding to the multitude, he said,
“Since you have forced disaster on yourselves,
why should I hesitate to save myself? —
O friends, avert your faces if ye stand
before me!” And he raised Medusa’s head.
Thescelus answered him; “Seek other dupes
to chase with wonders!” Just as he prepared
to hurl the deadly javelin from his hand,
he stood, unmoving in that attitude,
a marble statue.

One by one, Perseus’ adversaries are transformed into stone. Only one of those defending him is caught out, but Phineus somehow manages to avoid looking at Medusa’s face. Phineus tries to excuse his conduct, claiming that he was only doing it for Andromeda. Perseus is not swayed:
And thus returned
the valiant Perseus; “I will grant to you,
O timid-hearted Phineus! as behoves
your conduct; and it should appear a gift,
magnanimous, to one who fears to move. —
Take courage, for no steel shall violate
your carcase; and, moreover, you shall be
a monument, that ages may record
your unforgotten name. You shall be seen
thus always, in the palace where resides
my father-in-law, that my surrendered spouse
may soften her great grief when she but sees
the darling image of her first betrothed.”
He spoke, and moved Medusa to that side
where Phineus had turned his trembling face:
and as he struggled to avert his gaze
his neck grew stiff; the moisture of his eyes
was hardened into stone. — And since that day
his timid face and coward eyes and hands,
forever shall be guilty as in life.

Perseus and Andromeda leave the palace filled with hundreds of statues, and return to Argos. There they find that Proetus has usurped power. He too feels the awesome power of Medusa’s gaze, as does another old enemy, Polydectes, the king of Seriphos.

This extraordinary wedding brings to mind the battle between Odysseus and Penelope’s suitors, although this story concludes very differently because of Perseus’ use of Medusa’s head. Ovid’s account is uniquely detailed and explicit, drawing parallels with Virgil’s account of Aeneas’ battle with Turnus over Lavinia, in the Aeneid.

The Paintings

Not as popular a subject in painting as Medusa or the rescue of Andromeda, Perseus’ wedding has still attracted some of the finest narrative painters prior to the nineteenth century, with the notable exception of Rubens.

Annibale Carracci and Domenichino combined their talents in painting this fresco of Perseus and Phineas (1604-06) in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. As Perseus stands in the centre brandishing the Gorgon’s face towards his attackers, Andromeda and her parents shelter behind, shielding their eyes for safety.

In Giordano’s Perseus Turning Phineus and his Followers to Stone (c 1683), the process of petrification is made less obvious, but the carnage and mayhem better-developed.

Ricci’s Perseus Confronting Phineus with the Head of Medusa (c 1705-10) also shows the final moments of the battle, as Phineus cowers next to two of his henchmen who have almost completed the process of changing into stone.

Suprisingly, none of those paintings made any clear reference to Minerva’s protection of Perseus, which is clearly expressed in Jean-Marc Nattier’s undated painting of Perseus, Under the Protection of Minerva, Turns Phineus to Stone by Brandishing the Head of Medusa. The goddess, Perseus’ half-sister, is sat on a cloud to the right of and behind the hero. She wears her distinctive helmet, grips her spear, and her left hand holds her Aegis, a shield which bears the image of Medusa’s face – a relevant narrative closure here.

Perseus points his weapons away from himself and Minerva, and is looking up towards the goddess. In the foreground, one of Phineus’ party seems to be sorting through the silverware, perhaps intending to make off it.

This story seems to have vanished from the repertoire of narrative painting during the eighteenth century. Although Edward Burne-Jones worked on a drawing for his Perseus series, that never progressed any further, and I can find no trace of any painting of this wedding feast during the nineteenth century.

Each of these paintings has captured the bloodshed and chaos brought to the wedding feast. I confess to having a particular liking for the last painting, Nattier’s, which is most complete in terms of the narrative, and has the boldest composition.

The English translation of Ovid above is taken from Ovid. Metamorphoses. Tr. Brookes More. Boston. Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922, at Perseus. I am very grateful to Perseus at Tufts for this.

On 29 April 1859, the first of more than twelve thousand people walked into the Studio Building on West 10th Street in New York City, to stand in awe and amazement in front of Frederic Edwin Church’s huge painting, The Heart of the Andes (1859). For many, its dramatic view of a densely-vegetated plain with its backdrop of snow-capped mountains was not its most impressive feature: it was the painting’s meticulous, almost overwhelming detail.

Tucked away among the brightly-coloured birds and rich plant life, at the very heart of The Heart of the Andes, is a cross, with two figures by it. Dressed as locals, one sits, facing the cross, while the other stands just behind the seated figure, looking in the same direction. The cross is made simply of wood, and appears to have been decorated with a floral garland. It is partly obscured by the luxuriant wayside plants.

Over its five square metres of canvas, these are the only visible humans. What is their meaning and purpose?

They are part of a complex passage. The cross stands just off a path, which winds its way past a dead tree-trunk, seen at the left here, on which the artist has ‘carved’ the year and his name. The path then curves to the left, along the bottom of a small gully, where it disappears into the trees and undergrowth.

On the other side of the river, to the right, is a small mission-like settlement. Facing the viewer is the tower and broad frontage of a church, with its large double wooden doors. Beyond and around is the enormity of nature: open plain with scattered trees, then rising ground to the first hills, and many miles distant the soaring white peaks of the Andes proper.

This was not the first time that Church had painted a crucifix in a landscape. In 1857, his Cross in the Wilderness featured a more prominent cross, here decorated with two garlands of flowers. But this wilderness is unpopulated, devoid of figures or other signs of human presence.

Many of Church’s other finished paintings contain figures, and The Heart of the Andes is by no means unusual among them.

Church’s early landscape painting of West Rock, New Haven (1849) is a good example. As shown in the detail below, its foreground features three figures making hay, which they are stacking onto carts drawn by oxen. Down at the river bank, a dog is enjoying a paddle. Just peeking proud of the distant treetops is the white tip of a church spire.

Two people are making their way along the path to the ranch in the foreground of Church’s Cotopaxi (1855). One is mounted, the other almost hidden by the laden mule they are leading, and a dog follows behind. Again, they appear to be the only humans visible in this grand view.

Church’s paintings after The Heart of the Andes continued to include figures too. Beneath the spectacular double rainbow of Rainy Season in the Tropics (1866), they add a dash of contrasting colour.

As shown in the detail below, there’s even more on the move in this painting. Splashing through a rocky stream is a small train of pack animals with two drivers, who have paused for a moment to adjust a load.

Spanning much of the foreground of Church’s Pichincha (1867) is a suspended bridge, one end glowing in the early morning light. Just over half way across, a woman wearing a brilliant red blouse is riding side-saddle on a mule, which is picking its way slowly across the thin logs which form the walkway of the bridge. At the left end is another mounted figure, who has just completed that frightening crossing.

In Church’s late view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives (1870), the Holy City is reminiscent of John Brett’s Florence from Bellosguardo (1863) in its projection and detail. But Church’s lower vantage point allowed him ample foreground, in which there are four people and two camels making their way along the dry, stony track which skirts the ancient olive trees and crosses the valley to the city.

Although not as brightly lit by the late afternoon sun as the Dome of the Rock in the distance, Church draws attention to the figures in the foreground by silhouetting them against the light on the track.

Then how should we read the two figures and the cross in Church’s The Heart of the Andes? Is there some concealed story, or hidden meaning to them? If all the indications are that the artist often placed figures as staffage in the foreground of his landscapes, why should they be any different?

One big, indeed very big, difference is the size of that painting, and the manner in which it was intended to be viewed. When advertised to the public, viewers were requested to bring ‘opera glasses’ (binoculars). In its frame and surround, the whole stood more than three metres (twelve feet) high. From dawn to dusk, its exhibition room was seething with people.

The world had changed a great deal since Thomas Fearnley’s more intimate landscapes in the first half of the nineteenth century. Those who paid their twenty-five cents to see Church’s great glory as it toured the cities of America were more affluent and more used to optical devices. Although photography was still quite novel, and hardly everyday, optical instruments were far more widely available. Viewers were now more used to getting ‘close up’ with their aid.

For them, looking at Church’s painting was no different. With opera glasses held to their eyes, they’d expect to see such intricate details. But with the milling crowds, there would be no chance to get up and close to the painting. In any case, because of its height, few would be able to see much detail without optical aids.

A little subtle staffage in the foreground – colourful birds, a couple of people, and all those visibly different plants and trees – was perfect. It made bringing the opera glasses worthwhile.

Reference

Raab, Jennifer (2015) Frederic Church, The Art and Science of Detail, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 20837 5.

After their catastrophic wedding feast, Perseus and Andromeda returned to his home at Seriphos, still under the protection of Perseus’ half-sister, the goddess Minerva. Ovid then leads on to a complex interconnected web of stories, which start with Minerva’s departure from Seriphos, then hand over narration to the Muses.

The Story

When Minerva leaves Perseus and Andromeda in Seriphos, she heads straight for Helicon, the mountain abode of the nine Muses. The goddess has heard that Pegasus, the flying horse ‘born’ from the blood of Medusa, has brought forth a new spring on Helicon, which arose from his hoof-print.

Urania, Muse of astronomy, welcomes Minerva and confirms the story about the new spring and its novel origin. One of the Muses then raises concern for their safety, telling the story of Pyreneus who had tried to imprison the nine in his house. Fortunately for them, he then leapt from the high tower of that house, and his skull was smashed.

As this brief story comes to a close, the goddess is distracted by voices:
Minerva, thinking they were human tongues,
looked up in question whence the perfect words;
but on the boughs, nine ugly magpies perched,
those mockers of all sounds, which now complained
their hapless fate. And as she wondering stood,
Urania, goddess of the Muse, rejoined; —
“Look, those but lately worsted in dispute
augment the number of unnumbered birds. —
Pierus was their father, very rich
in lands of Pella; and their mother (called
Evippe of Paeonia) when she brought
them forth, nine times evoked, in labours nine,
Lucina’s aid. — Unduly puffed with pride,
because it chanced their number equalled ours,
these stupid sisters, hither to engage
in wordy contest, fared through many towns; —

The challenge made, the nine Pierides (daughters of Pierus) then sang their tales in turn. They told false stories of the Titans, which belittled the gods, including claims of the gods had taken refuge in the form of animals.

After the Pierides had finished, the Muses sang their tales. They offer to repeat these for Minerva, who accepts, and sits herself down for the next – and much longer – story, which I will tell in the next article.

The Paintings

Today, the myths of Minerva visiting the Muses on Helicon, and of the Pierides, may seem obscure, but they were popular through the seventeenth century, and have been quite frequently painted. Indeed, several artists of that period seem to have become quite obsessed with the story: around 1600, Hans Rottenhammer painted at least two different versions of Minerva visiting the Muses, and Hendrick van Balen made at least three.

Joos de Momper’s splendid Helicon or Minerva’s Visit to the Muses (c 1610) is one of the most complete accounts to be firmly rooted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Pegasus, perhaps a little smaller than I had imagined, rears on his wings at the top of the new spring, which cascades down a small cliff at the right. Minerva – suitably helmeted, holding her spear in her left hand, and with her shield bearing the image of Medusa’s head (an Aegis substitute) – is at the left. Between them are the nine Muses, each busily engaged in exercising their arts, with a mischievous putto fiddling with the back of the organ.

Wheeling above a rugged landscape of Helicon are slightly more than nine birds, some of which bear the distinctive black and white markings of magpies – the Pierides after their transformation.

Jacques Stella’s Minerva and the Muses (c 1640-45) is a slightly later, but almost as complete, account. We are clearly higher up the slopes of Helicon, and in the distance on the left is Pegasus, being mobbed by putti. Minerva is on the right, armed with her spear and Aegis-shield. Several of the nine Muses are accompanied by appropriate attributes, and two are engaged in conversation with Minerva. There’s no sign of the Pierides, though.

Hendrick van Balen’s Minerva and the Nine Muses (c 1610) also shows all the key figures. The nine Muses are seated, forming a small orchestra with their contemporary rather than classical instruments. Minerva, at the left, is being engaged by a tenth woman, whose identity is not clear. In the far distance, just beyond a waterfall (the new spring), Pegasus is about to take off from a high cliff. Above there are two magpies, implying the imminent arrival of the Pierides.

So by the mid-1600s, these stories seem to have largely faded from the canvas. Occasional works appeared, from Richard van Orley in 1732, and Jean Pierre Norblin de la Gourdaine in 1830. Then in 1886, Gustave Moreau started to paint The Pierides, which he sadly never completed.

What we see of his work in progress is something of a puzzle, as a result of the confusion of names (which is hardly of Moreau’s doing). For in later classical times, the Muses also became known as the Pierides, so Moreau’s title could refer to either the Muses themselves, or their failed rivals. This confusion arose because the Muses, the daughters of Mnemosyne and Jupiter, were born in Pieria, near Mount Olympus, and were sometimes referred to as being Pierians.

In any case, there are at least fifteen figures in this painting, although some are in groups of three, and some are winged. It seems most probable that the black-winged figures are intended to be the daughters of Pierus who have been turned into magpies and are now fleeing the triumphant Muses. It is a great shame that Moreau never completed this painting, which should have made its story clearer.

My favourite has to be Joos de Momper’s fine and complete telling of Ovid’s unusual story, although it would have been very exciting if Moreau’s painting had been completed.

The English translation of Ovid above is taken from Ovid. Metamorphoses. Tr. Brookes More. Boston. Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922, at Perseus. I am very grateful to Perseus at Tufts for this.

Few of us ever get to visit the Pacific North-West, but one painter has, more than anyone else, defined its ‘look’. She is also one of a very few prolific women artists for whom there are sufficient good images as to justify a short series of articles: she is Emily Carr (1871–1945), one of the major painters of North America.

She was born in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1871, to parents who had emigrated from England. The large family was quite affluent, thanks to her father’s business dealings, but her mother died of tuberculosis when Emily was only fourteen, and her father died two years later.

Thanks to her guardian, Carr started studies at the California School of Design in San Francisco in 1890, but in 1893, when family finances became tight, she had to return home.

Her still life of Melons dates from those years in California as a student, in 1892.

Back in Victoria, she started teaching art in her studio, which enabled her to save up enough money to study abroad again.

In 1898, she travelled to Ucluelet, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, where she stayed among the Nuu-chah-nulth (‘Nootka’) people, her first exposure to indigenous culture. Cedar Cannibal House, Ucluelet, BC (1898) is a watercolour which she made during that visit. This group of tribes had early contact with European settlers; they had suffered badly from epidemics of infectious disease, and at the time that Carr visited, their population was probably as low as 3,500.

In 1899, Carr travelled to London, where she studied at the Westminster School of Art. She found the teaching there was too conservative, and did not cope well with conditions in the sprawling city of London, so left there in 1901 to visit Paris, and later the St Ives art colony in Cornwall. She stayed in St Ives through the winter, being taught in the Porthmeor Studios by Julius Olsson (1864-1942) and his assistant. She later studied further in Hertfordshire under John Whiteley.

Carr then became ill, and in 1903 entered the East Anglian Sanatorium with a diagnosis of hysteria. She was unable to paint there, and managed to return to Canada in 1904. She resumed teaching, this time in Vancouver. However, she did not get on well with the society women who attended her classes: they complained of her behaviour of smoking and swearing at them in class.

Carr’s Breton Church (1906) is a puzzle, as she was back in Canada at that time, and did not paint in Brittany until after 1910. This image also suggests that it is quite high in chroma, which would have been more likely during or after her time studying with Harry Gibb there, when her style became overtly Fauvist.

In 1907, Emily and her sister Alice travelled to see the sights of Alaska, where she was enthralled by the totem poles of Sitka. It was here that Emily Carr first resolved to document the totems and indigenous villages of British Columbia – an inspiration which may have been influenced by Theodore J Richardson (1855-1914), an American artist who spent years documenting in his paintings the indigenous peoples of Sitka and Alaska more generally.

One of the places which she visited was Skagway (1907), painted here in watercolour. Then a bustling small city, it was the port of entry to the south-east of Alaska, in its ‘pan handle’. It had expanded greatly with the gold rush of 1897 onwards, but by the time that the Carr sisters visited that was long since over, and the economy had been in sustained decline.

The sisters also visited Baranof Island, where they saw the famous Totem Walk at Sitka (1907), shown in this watercolour. These totems were made by the Tlingit and Haida peoples, but had been removed from their original locations for display at the St Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Following that, they were moved again into this newly constructed National Park.

Carr’s fascination with trees in the landscape developed early during her career. Arbutus Tree (c 1909) is a sophisticated watercolour portrait of one such tree, probably painted near Vancouver.

Beacon Hill Park (1909) is a watercolour in Impressionist style, showing a small corner of the 200 acre park in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. This overlooks Juan de Fuca Strait, and is shown here with the flowers of late spring or early summer, with arbutus trees in the distance. The Carr family home bordered on this park.

Carr also started to paint distinctive works showing the dense trunks of a Wood Interior (1909), here lit powerfully by rays of low sunshine. This was to remain a recurrent motif throughout her career.

Alert Bay (1910) is another watercolour, showing a small village on Cormorant Island, at the opposite (north) end of Vancouver Island from Victoria. Home to the ‘Na̱mg̱is nation of the Kwakwaka’wakw, this shows Carr’s rapidly developing interest in documenting the totems of the north-west coastal area.

In 1910, Carr returned to Paris for over a year of study, with her sister Alice. Again she found living in a big European city was stifling, and spent time in a spa in Sweden. She studied with Harry Phelan Gibb (1870-1948), at Crécy-en-Brie just outside Paris and in Brittany. This was her first exposure to Fauvism, and proved a major influence on her style.

I suspect that Carr’s already high chroma has been further exaggerated in this image of her famous painting of Autumn in France (1911), which represents her Fauvism at its height. She uses bold and confident brushstrokes rich with raw colour to show the countryside of Brittany in brilliant summer sunlight.

Two of Carr’s painting were accepted for the autumn Salon in Paris in 1911. She returned to Vancouver in 1912, and promptly exhibited her Fauvist work in her studio there. She then set out on her project to document the indigenous peoples of the north-west coast.

References

Wikipedia.

Lisa Baldissera (2015) Emily Carr, Life & Work, Art Canada Institute. ISBN 978 1 4871 0044 5. Available in PDF from Art Canada Institute.

Western painting has been remarkably selective about its heroes and legends. Even quite minor and obscure Greek and Roman figures can end up in dozens of fine paintings, now admired by crowds visiting galleries around the world.

Ruling the largest empire in the ancient Near East, as did Cyrus the Great between about 550 and 530 BCE, does not qualify you a place in art history, although two superb paintings by Masters may be a help. This article and the next (publishing tomorrow) look at paintings of Cyrus the Great in life, and death.

Cyrus II of Persia was the King of Kings, and the King of the Four Corners of the World. At its height, his empire stretched from the Hellespont, at the eastern edge of the Greek civilisation, to the Indus River, and swallowed up Persia, Media, Lydia, and Babylon.

Oddly, his childhood has been depicted not infrequently by European artists, thanks to a gruesome legendary account by Herodotus. During his mother’s pregnancy, her father, Astyages the King of Media, had two prophetic dreams, which were interpreted for him as warning that his grandson would one day replace him as king.

Astyages summoned his daughter Mandane back to his capital so that he could have her child killed after birth. The task was delegated by an advisor to Mithridates, a shepherd, whose wife had a stillborn son; the shepherd passed the dead baby off as Mandane’s, and raised Cyrus in secret as his own.

Sebastiano Ricci’s painting of The Childhood of Cyrus the Great (1706-08) shows Astyages’ advisor Harpagus handing the infant Cyrus over to the shepherd Mithridates. Behind, there is a discussion going on between two women, one stood beneath a window, the other leaning out of that window; they are arranging the substitution of the stillborn son to be returned to Astyages as evidence of his grandson’s death.

Jean-Charles Nicaise Perrin’s Cyrus and Astyages (c 1790) shows the exchange of infants about to take place, apparently in Astyages’ palace. At the right, Mandane is about to have the infant Cyrus taken away from her, and at the left Mithridates is holding his stillborn son ready to provide as a substitute.

When the young Cyrus was ten, Astyages discovered his existence, and returned him to his natural parents to be raised by them. He vented his wrath on his advisor Harpagus who had failed to carry out his command, by chopping the advisor’s son into pieces and serving them to his father at a banquet.

Through Cyrus’s great conquests, and serial military successes, there are very few paintings of the King of Kings, although there is one in the Palace of Versailles of a youthful Cyrus in battle, by Claude Audran the Younger. But Cyrus was such a huge influence over many civilisations at the time, that his reign of around thirty years couldn’t slip past entirely unnoticed.

Rembrandt’s imagination was fired by a story from an apocryphal section of the book of Daniel, and realised in his marvellous Daniel and Cyrus before the Idol Bel of 1633.

The young prophet Daniel (of lions’ den fame) was Cyrus the Great’s confidant, according to the book of Daniel. When Cyrus asked Daniel why he did not worship the Persian god Bel (Baal), Daniel responded by saying that he worshipped a living god, and not a mere idol.

Cyrus then claimed that Bel too was a living god, and pointed to the offerings of food and wine which were placed before his statue, and were consumed each night. Daniel remarked cautiously that bronze statues do not eat, which for a moment threw Cyrus. But Daniel had exposed the deception of Bel’s priests.

Rembrandt has captured Cyrus, standing in the centre, pointing at the food and wine placed on the altar to Bel, whose huge idol is seen rather murkily at the upper right. Behind the modest figure of Daniel are some of the priests who maintained this deception.

Painted in mid-career, this work bears many of the hallmarks of Rembrandt’s late masterpieces. Viewed from a distance, the figure of Cyrus is portly and very solid. In this detail, it is clear how Rembrandt built him up from very painterly marks, which in places are highly gestural.

The metallic highlights on Cyrus’s clothing are often no more than rough squiggles and dashes, and in places do not appear to have been made by a brush. Even the king’s face is formed from an assemblage of marks.

Daniel and Cyrus before the Idol Bel is one of the less well-known works of Rembrandt which surely deserves to be more widely known and better appreciated.

Other than the events surrounding Cyrus’s death (the subject of my next article), his great empire and influence passed almost unnoticed in Western art. There is one notable exception to this: his tomb, which still stands in Pasargadae in Iran (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), has appeared in a few paintings.

The great French landscape painter Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes shows Alexander at the Tomb of Cyrus the Great in this work from 1796.

Alexander the Great was not just there to pay homage to Cyrus as the ruler of an empire of comparable size to Alexander’s. Alexander invaded Persia with his defeat of Darius III, and had as a young man read Xenophon’s account of the achievements of Cyrus the Great. The new ruler of Persia had Cyrus’s tomb restored and protected, out of his respect for the King of Kings.

How Cyrus came to be laid to rest in that tomb – and the other painting of Cyrus by a great Master – is the subject of the next article.

Reference

Wikipedia.

Cyrus the Great may have been King of Kings, but he has appeared in remarkably few Western paintings. Apart from some showing a rather gruesome legend about his infancy, and Rembrandt’s magnificent depiction of him with Daniel, he has mostly been shown dead and dismembered.

These images have been drawn from another legend, this time surrounding the circumstances of his death, which was generally agreed to have been in about 530 BCE near the Syr Darya river (also known as the Jaxartes), roughly where modern south Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are, between the Aral Sea and Tashkent.

Cyrus’s rise to great power had been the result of a succession of bloody military campaigns. In around 553-550 BCE he fought his grandfather’s armies to make himself king of the Median Empire, and swallowed Sogdia after a campaign between 546-539. In around 546, he also conquered the Lydian Empire, then Lycia, Cilicia and Phoenicia by 542, after which it was Elam’s turn by 540, and he then took the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539.

Around 530 BCE, Cyrus the Great was trying to extend his empire to the north-east, in the steppe around the Syr Darya, which was then the territory of the Massagetae; their queen, Tomyris, challenged him in battle. According to the account given by Herodotus, Tomyris’ son and general Spargapises was tricked into defeat by Cyrus and taken prisoner. Spargapises committed suicide in captivity, which caused his mother’s determination for vengeance.

Queen Tomyris personally led her forces into battle, and inflicted massive casualties on Cyrus’s army. Cyrus himself was killed, but Tomyris was not content with mere death. She had the body of Cyrus decapitated, and dipped the head into blood, as a symbol of revenge for Cyrus’s lust for blood, and her son’s death in his captivity. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

Even Herodotus admitted that there were other versions of events, and the histories left by Ctesias, Xenophon, and Berossus differ again. However, it is the revenge of Queen Tomyris which has most inspired Western artists.

Peter Paul Rubens’ The Legend of Tomyris or The Head of Cyrus Brought to Queen Tomyris from about 1622-23 is by far the best known of the paintings of the fate of Cyrus the Great.

Queen Tomyris, at the left with her court, is watching as Cyrus’ head is lowered into a bowl of blood. Behind her, at the far left, are two pages, who were modelled from Rubens’ own sons, although much of the painting was probably made by his studio assistants.

It is thought that this unusual painting was the result of a commission by Isabella Clara Eugenia (1566-1633), the Infanta of Spain and ruler of the Southern Netherlands at the time. Apparently she had already linked herself with the legend of Queen Tomyris, and pageants in her honour had strengthened this association.

By 1662, Rubens’ painting had come into the possession of another powerful woman, Christina, Queen of Sweden (1626-1689), who was another colourful character, and in 1941 it finally made its way into the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA.

Rubens and his patron the Infanta of Spain must have seen Tomyris as an epitome of the triumph of virtue over the evil of Cyrus, the success of a strong and brave woman over a barbarous man.

Mattia Preti’s Queen Tomyris Receiving the Head of Cyrus, King of Persia (1670-72) shows the queen herself immersing Cyrus’ head in the bowl of blood, in a closely-cropped view.

This painting is one of very few works known of Luciano Salvador Gómez, for whom we do not have dates of birth of death. His The Vengeance of Tomyris was probably painted sometime around 1670, and is a derivative of Rubens’ painting with the image reversed left to right.

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini may have painted two different versions of Queen Tomyris. This, from 1719-20, shows her, bare-chested, pointing down with her left hand. In front of her, a page holds a warrior’s helmet. In the background a maidservant appears to be assisting with her dress, and behind her is a man dressed for battle in his helmet.

The other (for which I have been unable to locate any image) shows Tomyris overseeing the immersion in blood of the head of Cyrus, in a manner similar to the earlier paintings above.

I think it most likely that this version is either part of a larger painting showing Tomyris being undressed after her success in battle and the death of Cyrus, pointing down at his severed head to direct its immersion, or a more close-cropped allusion to the bigger picture.

Was Cyrus as evil as this story makes out, and was Tomyris really a virtuous queen? With only the legends handed down to us, it is impossible to make such a judgement today. However, Cyrus’s empire proved more stable and successful than even that of Alexander the Great, and in the fullness of the history of the region, he looks to have earned his epithet of Cyrus the Great.

Reference

Wikipedia.

When you see a landscape painting by a landscape painter who has little or no record of painting narrative works, it is not difficult to make the assumption that any figures in that painting are most unlikely to be narrative in intent. And almost all the time, you’d be right.

Some of the greatest artists have, though, been exceedingly accomplished and prolific in painting both narrative and landscape works. Two who come to mind are Poussin and JMW Turner. In their paintings, it is notoriously difficult to know whether figures have narrative intent or not.

I will try to tackle the problems posed by Poussin in a later article; this tries to address those in Turner’s paintings.

In many ways, Turner was very traditional in his approach to landscape painting. He made very many views, showing different scenic locations around the UK and continental Europe. And he made many oil paintings which told well-known stories, often from classical myth, set in landscapes.

Thankfully Turner’s work is generally very well documented, and we know his titles, when most were first exhibited, and whether their presentation to the public was accompanied by clues of their intent, such as short texts or references to narrative sources, or inclusion in a particular series of scenic views.

So, for example, his Story of Apollo and Daphne (1837) may show very small figures in a much more expansive landscape, but Turner does not seek to mystify, he tells us what we are supposed to see. In any case, these figures could hardly be staffage: they are too incongruous.

We might like to try to read little sub-narratives into what might be going on among different figures in The Dogano, San Giorgio, Citella, from the Steps of the Europa (1842), but this is primarily a scenic view. We can speculate as to whether Turner had in his own mind some deeper meaning in the figure at the far right, who appears to be wearing Arab dress. But that is not what this painting is about.

Turner was extremely skilled at using human and animal figures to enhance the effect of a landscape view. In The Lake, Petworth: Sunset, Fighting Bucks (c 1829) he may well be drawing comparison between the cricket match which appears to be taking place in the left middle distance, and the two white buck deer engaged in battle in the right foreground. But, as in other similar dusk views around Petworth, the figures are not the dominant part of the painting, it is the landscape and effects of light.

Some of Turner’s paintings, such as The Opening of the Wallhalla, 1842 (1843), engage great numbers of extras which stretch into the far distance. Although they are integral to this view of a specific event, and there is supporting information in some of their baggage and behaviour, these are not the stars of the occasion in the way that buildings, location, landscape, and light are.

Earlier in his career, Turner used extensive staffage, as in his view of Pope’s Villa, at Twickenham (1808). These figures are (relatively) larger than those in his Story of Apollo and Daphne, but constructing a story from or among them is a diversion. It is not consistent with the title of the work, and there are no clues to tell us how they might cohere with the rest of the view.

Where Turner wants the viewer to read meaning into his figures, he generally points us in the right direction. There can be no doubt that the people in the foreground of his Wreckers – Coast of Northumberland, with a Steam-Boat Assisting a Ship off Shore (1833-4) are the ‘wreckers’ who deliberately put ships into danger so that they could steal valuables washed ashore after the vessel was wrecked.

It is far from clear how the men and women shown here, even in the detail below, are actually trying to wreck the ship seen in the distance, but Turner tells us that is their intent.

Others seem determined to read narrative into every one of Turner’s works that they can.

Crossing the Brook (1815) is one of Turner’s larger and more traditional oil paintings from quite early in his career. I see a view looking down from the north of Plymouth, towards the city in the far distance. In the foreground, two young women and their dog are crossing a small tributary of the River Tamar, which then runs under the large viaduct, down into the city, and so into Plymouth Sound.

The late Eric Shanes argues that is refers to two or three earlier paintings of the same title, none of which was a narrative work. He accepts a proposal by Jack Lindsay in 1966 that the two young women are Turner’s daughters, and that crossing this brook is a symbol of their transition to womanhood. It is thus Shanes’ case that the painting is nothing less than an allegory of female puberty.

Unfortunately, Shanes quotes Turner in his later correspondence (in 1845) referring to this painting:
“the Crossing the Brook Picture (Thank Heaven, which in its kindness has enabled me to wade through the Brook) – it I hope will continue to be mine – it is one of my children.”

Turner referred to several of his paintings as being his “children” although they had nothing to do with members of his family. Had Turner considered that crossing a brook was symbolic of the transition to womanhood, then it is hard to understand how Turner felt that the kindness of Heaven had enabled him “to wade through the Brook”.

Neither does Shanes explain how Turner’s estranged daughters by Sarah Danby, then aged 14 and 4 years, could possibly account for the two quite physically mature young women in the painting, nor the role of the object which the dog holds in its mouth.

There is great danger in looking for ‘human stories’ in figures which are quite probably innocent staffage. Turner’s magnificent watercolour of Scarborough, painted in about 1825 for his Ports of England, contains a wealth of detail in the activities of the figures in the foreground, shown below.

Closest is a young woman whose clothes, shoes and belongings are heaped with a basket, guarded by her dog, at the left. She is engaged in shrimping with a ramshackle net. Between the dog and woman is a starfish on the sand: this was apparently a common feature of Turner’s views of Scarborough made after 1809.

Behind at the left are washerwomen, in the centre a team helping to unload the wares from a cutter, and at the right a woman who appears to be bathing a child. Wrapping all these figures up into a coherent narrative would require a great deal of imagination and ingenuity, and has not a shred of support in the painting or its title.

Even Turner’s overtly narrative paintings can be intractable problems of interpretation.

One of the most famous of these is his Regulus (1828, 1837), one of three narrative works painted and exhibited in Rome in 1828, and reworked before exhibition in 1837. Interestingly, this is the painting which Thomas Fearnley painted a sketch of Turner working on during a ‘varnishing day’.

Regulus was a Roman general and consul for a short period in 267 BCE. He was successful in the First Punic War against the Carthaginians, but in 255 BCE was defeated by them and taken prisoner. He was released so that he could return to Rome to negotiate peace, but then urged the Roman Senate to refuse any such proposal.

Turner appears to have depicted him leaving Rome in a dusk view referring strongly to the landscapes of Claude Lorrain. When he returned to Carthage, he was tortured to death; one account claims that his eyelids were excised and he was exposed to the North African sun until he was blinded by it.

One problem which already arises in this association is that, while Turner is known to have been familiar with the account given by Horace of Regulus’ story, that did not include details of his torture and blinding, which in any case took place after Regulus had left Rome.

Nevertheless, it has been claimed that the dazzling low sunlight in this painting is a reference to Regulus’ fate.

The painting has an abundance of figures, none of which stands out as being a Roman general whose name is its title. John Gage has claimed that Turner puts the viewer in the position of Regulus, so that its dazzling light is intended to mimic the suffering which he experienced. This is supported by the fact that an engraving of this work gave it the title of Ancient Carthage — the Embarkation of Regulus.

Unfortunately, even if this painting were to represent Regulus departing from Carthage, he had not at that time been subject to mutilation to his eyes, nor does reference to that later act make any narrative sense at this stage.

Furthermore, unlike Rome which sits astride the River Tiber, ancient Carthage did not straddle any river of this nature. This view could have been obtained from looking along the length of its harbour, but that runs due south and could not show the sun low in the sky at any time of day.

When Turner tells us that his painting is narrative, reveals the story in its title, and still leaves us debating how to read it nearly two centuries later, we should be very cautious about trying to read in narrative when all the signs point to a regular landscape.

The art in reading Turner is knowing when to draw the line.

Reference

Shanes, Eric (1990) Turner’s Human Landscapes, William Heinemann. ISBN 0 434 69502 5.

Minerva is with the nine Muses on Helicon. She has just been told the story of their contest with the Pierides, and the Muses offer to repeat the stories which Calliope had sung so successfully in that challenge. The first of these is one of the longest in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and tells of the rape of Proserpine.

The Story

Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, introduces and praises Ceres, goddess of the harvest, then abruptly takes us to the triangular island of Sicily, where Mount Etna is an active volcano, and much of her story is set. Living in fear of Etna’s eruptions is Pluto, the king of Hades, the underworld, who has left his dark kingdom, and is riding in his chariot to check that all remains well.

Venus sees Pluto, and decides to get her son Cupid to make him fall in love with Proserpine (Greek Persephone), the young daughter of Ceres. Cupid selects his finest arrow, which strikes Pluto in the heart. Meanwhile Proserpine is playing and picking flowers by Lake Pergus, an idyllic spot:
“While Proserpine once dallied in that grove,
plucking white lilies and sweet violets,
and while she heaped her basket, while she filled
her bosom, in a pretty zeal to strive
beyond all others; she was seen, beloved,
and carried off by Pluto — such the haste
of sudden love.
“The goddess, in great fear,
called on her mother and on all her friends;
and, in her frenzy, as her robe was rent,
down from the upper edge, her gathered flowers
fell from her loosened tunic. — This mishap,
so perfect was her childish innocence,
increased her virgin grief. —
“The ravisher urged on his chariot, and inspired his steeds;
called each by name, and on their necks and manes
shook the black-rusted reins.”

As Pluto makes off with the young girl in his chariot, they pass a pool where the nymph Cyane lives. She tries to stop them, but Pluto opens up a cleft in the ground, and drives quickly through it down to his kingdom. Cyane is heartbroken:
But now
the mournful Cyane began to grieve,
because from her against her fountain-rights
the goddess had been torn. The deepening wound
still rankled in her breast, and she dissolved
in many tears, and wasted in those waves
which lately were submissive to her rule.
“So you could see her members waste away:
her hones begin to bend; her nails get soft;
her azure hair, her fingers, legs and feet,
and every slender part melt in the pool:
so brief the time in which her tender limbs
were changed to flowing waves; and after them
her back and shoulders, and her sides and breasts
dissolved and vanished into rivulets:
and while she changed, the water slowly filled
her faulty veins instead of living blood —
and nothing that a hand could hold remained.

Cyane – whose name means the blue colour that we know as cyan – has melted away in her tears of grief.

Ceres has missed her daughter, and starts searching the world for her. As it is getting dark, she looks for somewhere to rest:
“Wearied with labour she began to thirst,
for all this while no streams had cooled her lips;
when, as by chance, a cottage thatched with straw
gladdened her sight. Thither the goddess went,
and, after knocking at the humble door,
waited until an ancient woman came;
who, when she saw the goddess and had heard
her plea for water, gave her a sweet drink,
but lately brewed of parched barley-meal;
and while the goddess quaffed this drink a boy,
of bold and hard appearance, stood before
and laughed and called her greedy. While he spoke
the angry goddess sprinkled him with meal,
mixed with the liquid which had not been drunk.
“His face grew spotted where the mixture struck,
and legs appeared where he had arms before,
a tail was added to his changing trunk;
and lest his former strength might cause great harm,
all parts contracted till he measured less
than common lizards. While the ancient dame
wondered and wept and strove for one caress,
the reptile fled and sought a lurking place. —
His very name describes him to the eye,
a body starred with many coloured spots.”

For his rudeness to the goddess, the boy has been transformed into a spotted newt.

Ceres continues the search for her missing daughter. She reaches Cyane’s pool, but after her transformation that nymph is unable to tell her what happened. Guessing that her girl had been abducted, Ceres tears her hair and clothing. The harvest of Sicily is destroyed in that grief.

At last, Arethusa tells Ceres of Pluto’s abduction of her daughter. Ceres goes straight to Jupiter, Proserpine’s father, and pleads the case that the girl should be freed from Hades. Jupiter agrees on the condition – which is set by the Fates – that Proserpine has not eaten whilst in the underworld. Sadly, that proves not to be the case:
“Not so the Fates
permit. — The virgin, thoughtless while she strayed
among the cultivated Stygian fields,
had broken fast. While there she plucked the fruit
by bending a pomegranate tree, and plucked,
and chewed seven grains, picked from the pallid rind;
and none had seen except Ascalaphus—
him Orphne, famed of all Avernian Nymphs,
had brought to birth in some infernal cave,
days long ago, from Acheron’s embrace—
he saw it, and with cruel lips debarred
young Proserpine’s return. Heaving a sigh,
the Queen of Erebus, indignant changed
that witness to an evil bird: she turned
his head, with sprinkled Phlegethonian lymph,
into a beak, and feathers, and great eyes;
his head grew larger and his shape, deformed,
was cased in tawny wings; his lengthened nails
bent inward; — and his sluggish arms
as wings can hardly move. So he became
the vilest bird; a messenger of grief;
the lazy owl; sad omen to mankind.”

Ascalaphus is transformed into a screech-owl for being sole witness to Proserpine’s nibbling at a pomegranate. The daughters of Achelous, water-nymphs who were playing with Proserpine when she was abducted by Pluto, are tranformed into the Sirens, half-woman and half-bird, for their inattention to her care.

Jupiter is forced to compromise over the fate of Proserpine:
“But Jupiter,
the mediator of these rival claims,
urged by his brother and his grieving sister,
divided the long year in equal parts.
Now Proserpina, as a Deity,
of equal merit, in two kingdoms reigns: —
for six months with her mother she abides,
and six months with her husband. — Both her mind
and her appearance quickly were transformed;
for she who seemed so sad in Pluto’s eyes,
now as a goddess beams in joyful smiles;
so, when the sun obscured by watery mist
conquers the clouds, it shines in splendour forth.”

Thus it is Proserpine’s half-year spent with her mother Ceres during which the land is fertile and food can be grown; when she returns to Pluto in Hades, the earth lies barren through the winter.

The Paintings

For such a vile rape of a young girl, Ovid’s account is long, relatively sensitive, and dramatic; it has inspired many paintings, of which I show here a small selection of the finest and most significant.

This story has been popular among artists since classical times. In a small royal tomb found at Vergina in Macedonia, there is a superb wall-painting of Hades Abducting Persephone which dates from 340 BCE. The view above shows the whole of Pluto’s chariot, with its horses, while the detail below shows Proserpine being carried by Pluto within, with sophisticated modelling of the heads and fabrics.

Niccolò dell’Abbate’s The Rape of Proserpine (c 1570) gives a fine account of Ovid’s story using multiplex narrative. Under ink-black clouds associated with Hades, Pluto is seen carrying Proserpine up a hill. At the far right, he is about to drive his chariot into a huge cavern, which will take them down into the underworld.

In the foreground, Cyane is by her pool, and about to literally dissolve into tears in its water. Six other nymphs, the daughters of Achelous, are also protesting at the girl’s abduction.

Rembrandt’s The Abduction of Proserpina (c 1631) is probably the earliest real masterpiece to show this story, although he deviates significantly from Ovid’s version. Pluto is trying to drive his chariot away, with Proserpine inside it. She is putting up fierce resistance, though, and trying to fend him off.

Hanging on to the hem of Proserpine’s floral dress is a woman who should perhaps be her mother Circe, but bears the crescent moon normally associated with Diana. Pluto’s chariot is being drawn by two black horses, through an ethereal almost fluid carpet of flowers. The horses and chariot are about to disappear into a black cleft in the earth, and make their descent to the underworld.

Peter Paul Rubens also shows a composite story, in his superb The Rape of Proserpina (1636-38). Pluto’s face looks the part, his eyes bulging and staring at Minerva, who is trying to stop the girl from being abducted. Below the chariot, the basketful of flowers which Proserpine had been picking is scattered on the ground.

Rubens shows irresistable movement to the right, as Pluto struggles to lift the girl into his chariot. Two winged Cupids are preparing to drive the black horses on, once the couple are secured inside.

Few artists have been diverted by the side-stories offered here by Ovid. Adam Elsheimer, though, depicted Ceres at Hecuba’s Home in about 1605: this is believed to be a copy made in his workshop of his original. The young boy is mocking Ceres slaking her thirst during her search for the missing Proserpine; for that, he is about to be turned into a newt.

Paintings showing the abduction of Proserpine inevitably became far less frequent during the eighteenth century. But in the nineteenth, more sensitive approaches started to appear.

In the late years of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s career, he became quite obsessed with Proserpine, and from 1871 made at least eight paintings of her. The image above show his last, Proserpine, which he completed shortly before his death in 1882. She stares into the distance, clutching her partly-eaten pomegranate, an oil lamp guttering below. The verses at the top right read:

Afar away the light that brings cold cheer
Unto this wall, – one instant and no more
Admitted at my distant palace-door.
Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear
Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here
Afar those skies from this Tartarean gray
That chills me: and afar, how far away,
The nights that shall be from the days that were.

Afar from mine own self I seem and wind
Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign:
And still some heart unto some soul doth pine,
(Whose sounds mine inner sense is fain to bring,
Continually together murmuring,)
“Woe’s me for thee, unhappy Proserpine”!

At the same time, an almost unknown Pre-Raphaelite, George Wilson, painted two works derived from the myth. His Rape of Proserpine is in a private collection and I have been unable to locate a usable image of it, but The Spring Witch (c 1880) was inspired by Jupiter’s compromise in which she spent half her life in Hades, and half above.

Wilson shows Proserpine when she has just emerged from the underworld, to start her six months sojourn with her mother. She holds a fateful pomegranate in her left hand, from which a magical fibrous band emerges to wind around her body.

These are wonderful paintings of a story which is horrific even for a classical myth. There’s something truly magical about Rembrandt’s, though, which I think sets it apart. That deep blue night sky, the fluid carpet of flowers, and the forward rush of the fierce lion on the front of Pluto’s chariot: I haven’t seen another Rembrandt quite like it.

The English translation of Ovid above is taken from Ovid. Metamorphoses. Tr. Brookes More. Boston. Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922, at Perseus. I am very grateful to Perseus at Tufts for this.

When Emily Carr returned to Vancouver from Paris in 1912, she first established herself there as a Fauvist when she exhibited her work from France in her studio. Equipped with what she had learned over the last 22 years in California, Canada, and Europe, she then set out on her project to document the indigenous peoples of the north-west coast.

In the summer of 1912, Carr travelled north to Haida Gwaii (formerly Queen Charlotte Islands), the Upper Skeena River, and Moresby Island. There, she documented the totems and buildings of the Haida, Gitxsan, and Tsimshian peoples.

She returned to Vancouver to teach and work, then travelled north again when she could afford to.

Cumshewa (1912) is a watercolour showing totems and part of the Haida settlement of Cumshewa, in the Haida Gwaii archipelago off the coast of British Columbia. It was a centre of the maritime fur trade until the early nineteenth century, and named in commemoration of an important Haida chief during the period of that trade. Carr remarked on its incessantly damp climate.

Potlatch Figure (Mimquimlees) (1912) shows a figure which had been involved in gift-giving practices which had been banned by the Canadian government, until they were decriminalised after the Second World War.

Potlatches were held as rites of passage, on the occasion of births, deaths, weddings, etc., and typically more frequently during the winter period. A feast was held, attended by a kin group, and hosted by the richer people. This was accompanied by the exchange of gifts, which distribution and sometimes destruction of property was an important part of the dynamic – and the feature which the government was concerned about.

Skedans Poles, Queen Charlotte Islands (1912) is a watercolour showing a remarkable array of totems at this Haida village in Haida Gwaii. It is now part of the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site, and in its own right a National Historic Site of Canada.

Skidegate (1912) shows a single totem in another Haida community in Haida Gwaii.

Tanoo (1912) is a watercolour of two totems at another Haida site in the Haida Gwaii archipelago, near Cumshewa.

Carr’s watercolour of Tsatsisnukomi, B.C. (1912) was, I believe, painted on the British Columbia mainland near Johnstone Strait, to the north of Vancouver Island, in which case it shows totems of the Tlowitsis Nation of the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples.

First Nations War Canoes in Alert Bay, 1912 (1912) shows three large canoes in this Kwakwaka’wakw village on Cormorant Island, which is just off the north coast of Vancouver Island. Unusually for Carr’s paintings, it includes a small group of figures, who are talking together under the prominent tree behind the canoes.

As far as I can tell, this is a finished oil version derived from a watercolour painting which is considerably less Fauvist in style.

Yan, Q.C.I. (1912) must be one of Carr’s finest paintings of this campaign in the north of British Columbia. It shows an arc composed of numerous totems in this bay in Haida Gwaii, during the summer with the flowers in full bloom. The colours are vibrant but not garish or dazzling, and her brushwork develops a rich range of textures.

Indian House Interior with Totems (1913) is another superb painting, showing the interior of a large house with its brightly-painted totems, complete with a kin group, pets, and possessions.

She also painted some views of the south, including this strongly Fauvist Vancouver Street (1912-13), a marked contrast from her more rigorously documentary depictions of totems and villages in the north.

In 1913, Carr organised an exhibition of two hundred of her paintings from her travels to the north, the largest solo exhibition mounted by an artist in Vancouver at that time. Reaction to her paintings and a lecture she gave on them was mixed: when she offered her paintings to the new provincial museum, they were refused, and the minister of education failed to offer any support.

Carr decided to return to Victoria, where some of her sisters still lived. For the next thirteen years, she concentrated her attention on running a boarding house on Simcoe Street, and painted infrequently.

References

Wikipedia.

Lisa Baldissera (2015) Emily Carr, Life & Work, Art Canada Institute. ISBN 978 1 4871 0044 5. Available in PDF from Art Canada Institute.
Thom, Ian M (2013) Emily Carr Collected, Douglas & McIntyre. ISBN 978 1 77100 080 2.

Camille Pissarro is probably the ideal ‘core’ French Impressionist whose work shows the evolution of figures in landscape paintings during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

As one of the landscape specialists among the Impressionists, the great majority of his works are pure landscapes. He did paint some figurative works, and some fine ‘rural genre’ scenes with motifs similar to those of Jules Breton, even his own take on gleaners, but these are readily distinguished.

Before he left his native Caribbean for France, Pissarro was painting in fairly conventional realist style, as shown in his Two Figures Chatting by a Roadside (1856). Although the title of this painting, the two figures are no more than staffage for this fine landscape.

In his few surviving paintings made before the Franco-Prussian War, as his style rapidly became more painterly, so his figures became more roughly formed. They remain pure staffage, both in Apple Trees at Pontoise, the House of Père Gallien (1868) above, and his many views of the roads around Louveciennes, in the two paintings below.

Pissarro used figures to draw the eye into a painting, as in Avenue in the Parc de Marly (c 1871) above, and to add quite substantially to the overall effect of the painting, as shown in Hoar frost at Ennery (1873) below.

In Pissarro’s huge series of works showing the countryside around Bazincourt and Éragny, there are many which contain figures, and many which don’t. The construction of these figures changed along with his style, from the high Impressionism of Meadow at Bazincourt (1885) above, to the more Neo-Impressionist The Steeple and Manor-House at Éragny, Sunset (1891) below.

Even his most radical and brilliant landscapes often contain a figure or two – in the case of this view of Saint-Charles, Éragny (1891) a few broken strokes in a different rhythm, drawing the viewer deep into the rich colours and textures made by his marks.

Pissarro’s staffage sometimes used contrasting colours to extend the range of hues on the canvas, adding interest and variation. In most, like The Big Walnut Tree in Spring, Éragny (1894) (above) the figures remain quite small.

Occasionally, a landscape like Morning Sunlight on the Snow, Eragny-sur-Epte (1895) starts to cross over into a genre scene, here showing a poorly-dressed country woman carrying a couple of pails in the snow.

I could equally have traced similar changes in the figures of Monet’s or Sisley’s landscapes over this period. Where Pissarro is more unusual is in his urban series which he started painting in the late 1890s.

Around Bazincourt, Pissarro has shown us many trees, few buildings, and the occasional figure. In his Boulevard Montmartre, Spring (1897), the balance has changed completely: this is a landscape composed primarily of buildings and streets, a plethora of figures, and countless carriages to move those people around. As with Richard Parkes Bonington’s Fishmarket near Boulogne, the figures are an integral part of this landscape.

In the foreground, Pissarro may have formed each quite roughly, but he has painted in sufficient detail. Three white horses range in tone and colour, with highlights on the front of each head. You can see which people are wearing hats, and spot ladies in their fashionable clothing.

Deeper into the distance, detail is lost, and the carriages and crowds merge into one another. Still they have a rhythm, highlights and shadows, and form.

By this stage in his career, Pissarro was clearly an incredibly rapid and efficient painter. These marks, which we resolve into tiny objects in the distance, must have been painstakingly formed from strokes and splodges of paint, at a very brisk rate. Monet and other Impressionists did the same at various times, but only Pissarro constructed long series showing the crowded streets of Paris. He must have spent day after day at his hotel window populating these busy streets.

In his Rue Saint-Honoré, Sun Effect, Afternoon (1898), the human throng is more scattered, and the carriages and figures in the foreground rather larger.

Pissarro accordingly forms his blots and strokes to deliver more detail. A few carefully-shaped brushstrokes of a mid-browny-grey, and there’s a woman wearing an elegant hat, with a waist in her long coat, carrying a bag. The carriages have wheels, and there is a charabanc, with a group sat in the open on top.

Every stroke, dot, splodge gives the visual cortex of our brains just enough information to see in our mind the detail of an object, for it to be recognisable, even though much of what we see is hardly there on the canvas at all. This is miraculously perceptive painting: knowing exactly what, and how much, to hint at, so that our minds will fill in the rest.

We see the same effect in the crowds fading into tiny specks in the distance of The Garden of the Tuileries on a Winter Afternoon (1899).

Just a year before his death, Pissarro painted this amazing view of the crowds on The Pont-Neuf (1902).

Many here even have faces, with different skin complexions. There’s a brown horse harnessed in to a posh-looking green-gold and black carriage, another charabanc with a sub-crowd on its open top, and dozens and dozens of pedestrians.

For the last few years of his life, Pissarro painted something new: human landscapes in which the figures are the landscape. We have seen them here in Paris; they were to come to New York, London, and other major cities too, in paintings by Colin Campbell Cooper and George Bellows.

References

Pissarro’s series paintings (this blog): here and here.
General account of Pissarro’s work (this blog).

Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, has just finished telling the long and harrowing story of the rape of Proserpine. She moves on to her concluding and far shorter stories, the first being about Arethusa, who had told Ceres of Pluto’s abduction of Proserpine.

This is very indirect narration, as it is Ovid’s account of Calliope’s story of Arethusa’s telling of her life story.

The Story

Ceres, Proserpine’s mother, is delighted when her daughter is restored to her from the underworld, even if it is only for a period of six months. Ceres thanks Arethusa for her help, and asks how she came to be made into a sacred stream.

Arethusa says that she had been a nymph in Achaea. One day she had been returning from hunting in the heat, and started to bathe in a stream to cool her body off. As she slipped into the clear water, she removed her clothes and hung them from a tree. Alpheus, a river god, suddenly appeared, calling her. She took fright and flight, leaving her clothes behind.

At first, Arethusa was able to keep her pursuer at a comfortable distance, but as they ran further, she started to tire and sensed him drawing closer. When she was exhausted, she called on Diana to come to her aid:
‘Oh, help me — thou whose bow and quivered darts
I oft have borne — thy armour-bearer calls —
O chaste Diana help, — or I am lost.’
‘It moved the goddess, and she gathered up
a dense cloud, and encompassed me about. —
The baffled River circled round and round,
seeking to find me, hidden in that cloud —
twice went the River round, and twice cried out,
‘Ho, Arethusa! Arethusa, Ho!’

Although Alpheus could not see her any more, he waited, trying to discover where Arethusa had gone:
‘He watched the cloud and spot, and thus besieged,
a cold sweat gathered on my trembling limbs.
The clear-blue drops, distilled from every pore,
made pools of water where I moved my feet,
and dripping moisture trickled from my hair. —
Much quicker than my story could be told,
my body was dissolved to flowing streams. —
But still the River recognized the waves,
and for the love of me transformed his shape
from human features to his proper streams,
that so his waters might encompass mine.
‘Diana, therefore, opened up the ground,
in which I plunged, and thence through gloomy caves
was carried to Ortygia — blessed isle!
To which my chosen goddess gave her name!
Where first I rose amid the upper air!’

After her transformation into flowing water, Arethusa’s stream was joined by Alpheus’ river, but disappeared into the ground in a rock cleft – what is known in limestone terrain as a swallet hole – to reach Diana’s island of Ortygia, in the centre of the city of Syracuse, on Sicily.

The Paintings

This relatively simple and little-known myth has inspired many paintings, most of which are no more than full-length nude portraits of a beautiful woman. There is nothing to distinguish them as being of Arethusa, and they have little narrative merit. A few lesser-known painters of myth did do better, mostly around 1700.

Although popular in Rome at the time, Carlo Maratta has been largely forgotten now. His Alpheus and Arethusa, probably from around 1680, shows Diana – distinguished by her crescent moon symbol – intervening by bringing cloud down to conceal the nymph, just as Alpheus is about to catch her up.

The landscape behind includes a watery area in which Maratta may have included another scene, perhaps after Arethusa’s transformation. If that is the case, this painting uses multiplex narrative.

Attributed to Luigi Garzi, another popular painter in Rome during this period, Alpheus and Arethusa from perhaps slightly later, around 1690, includes a similar group of figures. Diana is again in the clouds, and passing clouds down to hide Arethusa from Alpheus. Oddly, the nymph is here fully dressed, and it is her pursuer who is nude.

Under their feet, and under the watching eyes of another river god and nymphs, the couple are starting to transform into rivulets of water, which combine and drop into a small pool, which joins a larger river at the far right.

Antoine Coypel was French, and remains far better-known today. His slightly later Alpheus Chasing Arethusa, probably from about 1710, oddly omits Diana. Arethusa, still carrying her bow, is just about to be caught by a faun-like Alpheus, as she passes another river god. In the background, two other nymphs look on in surprise.

A century passed before this myth was told again in a major narrative painting, this time by John Martin, whose large work showing Belshazzar’s Feast was lauded when shown in 1821.

Martin’s Alpheus and Arethusa (1832) is a powerful work in which the story is depicted in figures so tiny that they could easily be overlooked, were it not for the pale pink flesh of Arethusa. Martin later went on to paint apocalyptic visions such as The Great Day of His Wrath (c 1853), and to be lambasted by the criticism of John Ruskin.

Both the paintings by Maratta and Garzi are fine and faithful accounts of Ovid’s highly indirect narrative. They might also tempt me to look for their other works, to see if there are any hidden gems among them.

The English translation of Ovid above is taken from Ovid. Metamorphoses. Tr. Brookes More. Boston. Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922, at Perseus. I am very grateful to Perseus at Tufts for this.

I love visiting the Louvre, but there are rooms in which I feel a little lost. One is the Galerie Médicis, in the Richelieu Wing, where Rubens’ paintings in the Marie de’ Medici Cycle hang. They are huge and wonderful paintings, but cracking the code to their meaning seems so difficult. This article and the next look at one of the stories embedded in those canvases, and how some of the paintings in that grand cycle can be read.

If you have not looked at them before, this series of twenty-four paintings by Peter Paul Rubens tells the story of Marie de’ Medici, a panegyric to celebrate her achievements first as the wife of King Henry IV of France, following her marriage in 1600, then as the Regent of France following Henry’s assassination in 1610.

The series was commissioned by Marie in 1621, to adorn her Luxembourg Palace in Paris for the wedding of Marie’s daughter, Henrietta Maria, to King Charles I of England in 1625. It was a colossal task, and an extraordinary achievement by Rubens and his workshop.

Before the paintings in which I am most interested here, Rubens shows Marie’s birth, education, and her marriage by proxy to Henry IV. They later meet, she has a son, who was to become King Louis XIII, and Henry consigns her the Regency before he goes off to war. He is then crowned in the Basilica of Saint-Denis in Paris.

Although history has judged King Henry IV (Henry Navarre) to be one of France’s better monarchs, religious fanaticism was his undoing. Several attempts had already been made on his life, and on the day after his queen’s coronation ceremony, 14 May 1610, he was stabbed to death in his coach by a Catholic fanatic.

As in the rest of the series, Rubens does not depict a real scene from history, but shows it in allegorical terms, using figures from classical mythology mixed with those from real history. Instead of painting a scene of Henry’s assassination, he made The Apotheosis of Henry IV and Homage to Marie de’ Medici, one of three landscape-format canvases in the series.

The left side of the painting shows the assassinated king being welcomed into heaven as a victor by the gods Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter, as king of the Olympian gods, is Henry’s divine counterpart; Saturn, holding a sickle in his right hand, marks the end of Henry’s earthly existence. Below them is Bellona, an ancient Roman goddess of war, who is stripped of her armour and appears tormented.

On the right side, Marie is seated on her throne as Regent, wearing black widow’s weeds, as the personification of France kneels in homage and presents her with an orb of office. Behind the Regent, at the far right, is Minerva bearing her Aegis, the shield emblazoned with the image of Medusa’s head. Also present are Prudence and Divine Providence, and her court are paying tribute from below.

When Marie de’ Medici, Queen of France, 1575-1642 (1622) became Regent, she had next to no experience or even interest in politics or government. She has since been characterised as “stubborn and of limited intellect” who was under the influence of her maid.

She was desperate to form a strong alliance with Habsburg Spain, which she felt would lead to more permanent peace within Europe. It was she who appointed Armand Jean de Plessis to her councils: he later became Cardinal Richelieu, whose name is given to the wing of the Louvre in which Rubens’ series is exhibited.

Rubens very tactfully shows Marie’s planning in the form of The Council of the Gods, another in landscape format, and one of the most complex paintings in the series, which remains hard to interpret.

In the foreground centre are Athena (helmeted and in armour, with her Aegis) and Apollo (with his bow). They are chasing off the figures at the lower right, consisting of Discord, Hate, Fury, and Envy.

In the upper right, Jupiter debates with a group of gods and goddesses, including Saturn (with his scythe), Diana, Neptune, and a woman wearing green over black mourning dress, who can only be Marie, but is holding Mercury’s caduceus. Other figures recognised include Pluto, Pan, Flora, Hebe, Venus, Mars, and Juno.

Whatever divine advice Marie may or may not have received, she decided that the best way to secure peace was through marriage. Not one wedding, but two: Anne of Austria to her son Louis XIII of France, and his younger sister Princess Élisabeth to the future king of Spain, Philip IV.

Rubens’ Portrait of Anne of Austria, Queen of France, 1601-1666 (c 1622-25) shows Marie’s intended future Queen of France. The eldest daughter of King Philip III of Spain and Margaret of Austria, she was the Infanta of Spain and Portugal, and Archduchess of Austria. Despite her name (the result of her royal House), she had been born in Spain and raised there, in Madrid.

Diego Velázquez’ Equestrian Portrait of Élisabeth of France (c 1635) shows Marie’s eldest daughter a decade after the marriages. Born in 1602, she was soon betrothed to the Prince of Piedmont, who was expected to succeed his father as Duke of Savoy. However, he died young, and in any case Marie was not interested in securing peace with Savoy. Élisabeth was born in the Palace of Fontainebleau in France, and lived away from the main court in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Two years after she had become Regent of France, Marie successfully negotiated both betrothals.

Reference

Wikipedia on the whole cycle.

Marie de’ Medici, the Regent of France after her husband King Henry IV had been assassinated in 1610, planned to bring peace to Europe by marriage. In 1612, she had negotiated the betrothals of Anne of Austria (then aged 11) to her son Louis XIII of France, and his younger sister Princess Élisabeth (then only 10) to the future king of Spain, Philip IV.

This article concludes my brief look at one of the stories in Rubens’ extraordinary series of paintings, the Marie de’ Medici Cycle, in the Louvre.

The betrothal of Anne to Louis had not been easy. Her dowry amounted to half a million crowns, but was fully returnable in the event of Louis’ premature death – a very real possibility in view of the state of health and the risks of assassination at the time. There were also elaborate arrangements over her rights of succession.

With the marriages taking place by proxy in Burgos and Bordeaux on 24 November 1615, Rubens continues his panegyric with The Exchange of Princesses of France and Spain, 9 November 1615. In the centre, shown in profile, is Élisabeth of France, who holds hands with Anne of Austria. They are presented by the personifications of France (right) and Spain (left), with the supervision of Hymen and putti bearing wedding torches.

In the heaven above is ‘Felicity of a Golden Age’, who is showering the princesses with gold from a cornucopia, and is surrounded by more celebratory putti. In the foreground below is the god of the river Andaye, pouring water from his large pot, and attendant water deities. This exchange took place on a barge in the middle of the Bidassoa River, which formed the border between France and Spain.

Rubens had intended that the next painting in the series was to show Marie’s expulsion from Paris by Louis XIII in 1617, but that was refused. Its replacement was apparently painted entirely by Rubens on the spot.

The Felicity of the Regency shows Marie on her throne, in the role of the personification of Justice. At her left are Minerva (in her armour with her Aegis) and Prudence, around whose right arm a snake indicates serpentine wisdom. At the far right is Abundance carrying her cornucopia.

At the left is Saturn, who holds his scythe signifying the march of time. Above them are two figures of Fama (Fame or Pheme) blowing fanfares on their trumpets. Below are Envy, Ignorance, and Vice, together with four attendant putti.

Rubens wrote optimistically that this shows the flowering of the Kingdom of France, under Marie’s rule of prudence and equity.

In truth, the marriages did not proceed as planned. When they were only fourteen, Anne and Louis were put under pressure to consummate their marriage which might otherwise have led to annulment, but Louis did not co-operate. Marie prevented Anne from integrating into court by ruling France as its monarch. Louis claimed his throne in 1617, and around 1619 finally consummated their marriage, although her first live child was not born until 1638; he became King Louis XIV of France.

Élisabeth, known in Spain as Isabel, seems to have had a less troubled time despite her husband’s many mistresses. In 1621, the year that the couple claimed the throne following the death of King Philip III, she gave birth to her first child, but it was not until 1629 that she had a son, who died before he became seventeen.

Marie and her son, Louis XIII, were reconciled, at least for a time. Rubens depicts this in the last painting of the series, The Triumph of Truth. Mother and son are shown in heaven, at the top, joined by a symbol of concord. Below them, the winged Saturn is raising Veritas (truth), who is being ‘brought to light’.

Marie’s plan to unite the crowns of France and Spain, and so bring peace to Europe, was a miserable failure. It did nothing to stabilise central Europe, where the Thirty Years’ War broke out in 1618. French involvement in that resulted in turn in the Franco-Spanish War, which started in 1635, before the birth of the future King Louis XIV of France.

This did not deter Marie in her quest for diplomacy by matrimony: Rubens’ deadline for completion of the whole cycle was 13 June 1625, the date of the marriage of Marie’s daughter Henrietta Maria to King Charles I of England. Queen Henrietta Maria was forced to flee to The Hague in 1641, and Charles was executed in 1649.

Ironically, Rubens was probably a much greater influence for peace in Europe than Marie. Thanks in part to his diplomatic efforts on behalf of the Spanish crown, Europe did not destroy itself by the time of Marie’s death in 1642. But she had long gone into exile away from France, and by a strange quirk of fate she died in the same house in Cologne which had been rented by Rubens’ parents when he was a young boy.

Reference

Wikipedia on the whole cycle.

For Carl Larsson (1853–1919), painting was a route out of the abject poverty and abusive environment of his childhood. You’d never guess from his later watercolours of his wife and children enjoying family life together in an ideal and idyllic Swedish home.

Larsson’s later collections of paintings were, and remain, hugely popular in books, regularly making the best-seller lists throughout northern Europe in the early twentieth century. My aim in this short series of articles about his work is to get better insight into the real Carl Larsson, who painted rural scenes in France long before those books appeared, and whose last great masterpiece was still mired in controversy when he died.

His life and work also make a fascinating contrast with those of his Norwegian contemporary, Edvard Munch, for example.

Larsson was born to a feckless, hard-drinking and abusive father, and a mother who worked long hours as a laundress to try to feed her family. They lived in a succession of slums in Stockholm Old Town, and were evicted from at least one of them. Larsson later wrote:
As a rule, each room was home to three families; penury, filth and vice thrived there, leisurely seethed and smouldered, eaten-away and rotten bodies and souls. Such an environment is the natural breeding ground for cholera.

If they didn’t die during an outbreak of cholera or other infectious disease, many escaped by emigrating to America. Larsson’s opportunity to escape came when his talent for art was spotted when he was attending the local Poor School. He was encouraged to apply to the main school of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, and succeeded. He proved an excellent student there, winning a medal for his life drawing, and he started to produce graphic work for newspapers.

Although his published caricatures and graphics enabled him to give money to his parents, Larsson aspired to become an academic painter, so in 1877 he moved to Paris. He spent two summers painting en plein air at Barbizon, and the first of his significant oil paintings come from that period.

Strömkarlen (The Musician) (1878) is one of his earliest surviving paintings, made while he was living in Paris. At this time he felt that he should become a history painter, and remained detached from the changes being brought by the Impressionist movement.

Larsson did see value in learning to paint en plein air, as shown in this oil sketch of a Landscape Study from Barbizon (1878). He visited this area with Hjalmar Sandberg, his close friend who was a pure landscape painter. The two supported one another, and often painted side by side.

Larsson’s Idyll is thought to have been painted when he was in Paris, in the period 1880-82, and his model may have been the French woman with whom he was living at the time, known only as Gabrielle. This appears to have been Larsson’s first and last figurative painting of contemporary life in Paris.

Larsson also started to paint some motifs drawn from popular tales, here of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in the Forest (1881). These may have been related to illustration work in which he was engaged.

In 1882, he joined the artists’ colony at Grez-sur-Loing, which was popular with Scandinavian artists at the time, as well as several notable Americans including John Singer Sargent. There he met, and later married, the artist Karin Bergöö, and became accomplished in watercolours.

Larsson’s paintings from Grez appear to have been influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage, who was to die unexpectedly in 1884. Larsson’s watercolour of The Old Man and the Nursery Garden (1883) shows similar muted colours, and common rural themes.

He painted this touching portrait of The Bride (1883) at Grez. It almost certainly shows his wife Karin, and was presumably made as a wedding gift to her.

À la Campagne (In the Country) (1883) is typical of a number of views that he painted of the rural poor in and around Grez, in the same realist style with soft colours. That year, he had his first painting accepted by the Paris Salon, and was getting valuable commissions for book illustrations.

The single figure in Larsson’s watercolour Autumn (1884) is dressed anachronistically in clothing from the previous century. This was most probably to please the Salon jury, as eighteenth century scenes were fashionable at the time. Its setting at Grez and his soft realism combine to make this one of his finest watercolours of this period.

Late during his stay in France in 1884, Larsson painted The Vine, a watercolour diptych which is considered to be a gently humorous allegory of love. In the first painting (above), a woman picks grapes which are turned into wine. This then gets the man in the second painting (below) drunk.

The diptych was bought when it was shown in Stockholm the following year, and was later lent for exhibition at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1889.

In 1884, a year after they married, the Larssons had their first child, as shown in this wonderfully intimate pastel double-portrait of A Studio Idyll. The Artist’s Wife and their Daughter Suzanne (1885). Mother and child are sitting in Larssen’s studio. A talented artist in her own right, after their wedding, Karin Larsson concentrated on interior design, and was responsible for most of the household interiors shown in Larsson’s later paintings.

At their best, Larsson’s watercolours and oil paintings converge in their appearance. A Bite! (1885) was painted in oil on wood, and comes closest to resembling his best watercolours. As with Autumn above, its single figure is dressed in period costume from the previous century. Larsson was also working on illustrations for a book set in the eighteenth century while he was in Grez.

Although Larsson never really embraced Impressionism, several of his works show clear Impressionist influence. In his watercolour The Bridge in Grez, Medieval (1885), he uses a combination of high chroma colours applied with generally loose brushwork. Coupled with the much more contemporary fashions shown, it appears far more modern.

Carl, Karin and Suzanne Larsson moved back to Sweden in 1885, where their first task was to find somewhere to live. Then Carl Larsson had to establish himself in the Swedish arts market.

References

Wikipedia.
Carl Larsson: how a loved and popular painter became lost in controversy (this blog)

Puvogel, Renate (1994, 2003) Carl Larsson, Watercolours and Drawings, Taschen. ISBN 978 3 822 88572 7.

In 1913, Emily Carr’s exhibition of two hundred of her paintings of totems and villages of the First Nations in the Pacific North-West had flopped. Despite trying to enlist the support of the minister of education in British Columbia, her art had been rejected, even being refused by the new provincial museum.

Carr returned to Victoria, and opened a boarding house on Simcoe Street, painting infrequently. But she did not stop painting altogether, and by the late 1920s was travelling to indigenous villages again to study and paint First Nations culture.

Carr continued to paint in Fauvist style over this time, as seen in her Logging Camp (c 1920).

This painting of an Arbutus Tree (1922) makes a fascinating contrast with her previous watercolour of the same species from about 1909. This tree is painted much more loosely and in vibrant high chroma.

In 1924, Emily Carr met with Seattle artists, most importantly Mark Tobey, who helped her rebuild confidence in her art.

Her Self-portrait from 1924-25 shows her still suffering from her rejection, though. Most unusually for a self-portrait, she faces away from the viewer, and is working on a painting which is unrecognisably vague and formless.

A visit by Eric Brown, director of the National Gallery of Canada, made 1927 the turning point in Carr’s art. She was invited to join the Group of Seven in a major exhibition in Ottawa, and twenty-six of her oil paintings, together with pottery and hooked rugs made when running the boarding house, were shown there. She became particularly close to Lawren Harris (1885-1970), who became her mentor.

In the summer of 1928, Carr made her first major trip north since 1913, to the Nass and Skeena Rivers and Haida Gwaii. Among the important paintings which resulted is this superb watercolour of a totem presumably at Ankeda (1928).

Kitwancool (1928) shows a forest of poles at a village now known as Gitanyow, populated by the Gitxsan. This is near the Kitwanga River, which is a tributary of the Skeena, in north-west British Columbia. This village is now a National Historic Site.

Carr’s watercolour of a Queen Charlotte Islands Totem (1928) shows another site in what is now known as Haida Gwaii, which she had visited extensively in the years prior to 1913.

The Raven (1928-19) is a precursor of one of Carr’s best-known paintings, Big Raven (1931), and shares with it a motif based on a huge carved raven silhouetted against the sky, and the sculptural forms of trees. These were derived from an early watercolour painted at Cumshewa in 1912, which shows this massive totem. It heralds a new emphasis in Carr’s painting on the modelling of forms, which was influenced by Lawren Harris in particular.

Blunden Harbour (c 1930) shows Carr’s evolving style particularly well. This village, inhabited by ‘Nak’waxda’xw (Nakoaktok) of the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples, was on the coast of the British Columbian mainland opposite Haida Gwaii, seen to the right, at the mouth of the Queen Charlotte Strait.

It was an isolated community, and in 1964, its population was forced to relocate to Port Hardy, about sixteen miles away. Before the last of its inhabitants had even left in their boats, officials set fire to the village and burnt it to the ground, to ensure that no one would try to return.

There is uncertainty as to the source of Carr’s motif; it has been claimed that she painted this from a photograph of the village taken in 1901 by the ethnographer Charles F Newcombe. However, the great majority of Carr’s paintings of the north-west appear to have been painted from life, rather than old photographs taken by others.

Path among Pines (c 1930) is another sign of the changes taking place in Carr’s art at this time. Its trees are solid forms, with swirling hues over their surfaces. The path swoops up into the distance in a carved curve. Totems would remain important in Carr’s art, but she was now taking to the forest too.

By 1930, Carr’s career was transformed. She was a national if not international success, and travelled to New York, where she met Georgia O’Keeffe among others. She exhibited with the Group of Seven that year too. It is often stated that Emily Carr was a ‘late developer’: I hope that you agree that it was not her late development, but the shocking delay in the recognition of her art.

References

Wikipedia.

Lisa Baldissera (2015) Emily Carr, Life & Work, Art Canada Institute. ISBN 978 1 4871 0044 5. Available in PDF from Art Canada Institute.
Thom, Ian M (2013) Emily Carr Collected, Douglas & McIntyre. ISBN 978 1 77100 080 2.

As Ovid reaches the end of book 5 of his Metamorphoses, there is time for one last story, narrated indirectly by the Muse Calliope.

The Story

With Arethusa transformed into an underground river, Ceres harnesses a pair of dragons to her chariot, and travels to visit Triptolemus. She gives him seed, which he is to sow in unproductive land, which has never been cultivated or has long lain fallow. The young Triptolemus flies away in her chariot, and eventually comes to Scythia, where he enters the palace of its king, Lyncus.

Triptolemus provides the king with seed, promising him rich harvests from it. Lyncus is jealous, though, so entertains Triptolemus lavishly; when the young man is sound asleep, the king tries to stab him in the heart. Ceres intervenes, and transforms Lyncus into a lynx:
“The envious Lyncus, wishing to appear
the gracious author of all benefits,
received the unsuspecting youth with smiles;
but when he fell into a heavy sleep
that savage king attacked him with a sword —
but while attempting to transfix his guest,
the goddess Ceres changed him to a lynx: —
and once again she sent her favoured youth
to drive her sacred dragons through the clouds.

That completes the stories sung by the Muses in their contest against the nine pretenders, the Pierides. Ovid closes the book by reminding us of their fate:
“But these Emathian sisters laughed to scorn
our threatening words; and as they tried to speak,
and made great clamour, and with shameless hands
made threatening gestures, suddenly stiff quills
sprouted from out their finger-nails, and plumes
spread over their stretched arms; and they could see
the mouth of each companion growing out
into a rigid beak. — And thus new birds
were added to the forest. — While they made
complaint, these Magpies that defile our groves,
moving their stretched-out arms, began to float,
suspended in the air. And since that time
their ancient eloquence, their screaming notes,
their tiresome zeal of speech have all remained.”

The Paintings

As far as I can tell, there have been very few paintings made of Lyncus trying to kill Triptolemus, or of the king being transformed into a lynx. The one which I have been able to trace is sadly not available as an image for use here.

Triptolemus was an important deity, though, as an assistant to Ceres in bringing productive grain crops to Europe, and for his involvement in the secret rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries. I have chosen three images which show Triptolemus in his role of providing seed to produce nourishing crops.

This tondo of a red-figure Attic cup, now in the Louvre, is typical of many classical depictions of Triptolemus and Ceres, and dates from 470-460 BCE. The young deity is sat in Ceres’ special winged chariot, as she provides him with seed to be distributed to the lands around the world.

Triptolemus also assumes the same role in the left foreground of Jerzy Siemiginowski-Eleuter’s splendid Allegory of Summer (1684—86), made as a ceiling painting for the bedroom of King John III Sobieski of Poland.

Ceres herself is in the centre foreground, handing an unusual blue floral wreath to Triptolemus. Above him is an allegory of the night, with the figure of Aurora-Astraea, who was modelled by Queen Marysieńka (Marie Casimire Louise de la Grange d’Arquien), wife of King John III Sobieski of Poland (1629-1696).

Low in the sky is the ‘dog star’, which is generally visible across Europe in the summer. Above is the chariot of the sun, which is in the constellation of the lion, Leo. These symbols of summer are coupled with the more obvious signs of harvest, to complete the elaborate seasonal allegory.

Károly Brocky’s Ceres and Triptolemos (c 1853) is a later and simpler evocation of these gods and their roles in productive agriculture, which uses a quiet form of multiplex narrative. In the foreground, Ceres is bidding the young Triptolemus to sow seed from the bag carried by a young child.

However, in the background the harvest is also in full swing, many months after that seed would have been sown.

I regret not having any lynxes to show, but love Siemiginowski-Eleuter’s intricate allegory.

The English translation of Ovid above is taken from Ovid. Metamorphoses. Tr. Brookes More. Boston. Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922, at Perseus. I am very grateful to Perseus at Tufts for this.

These days, particularly in comparison with his rival JMW Turner, John Constable’s paintings may look rather staid and traditional. But in many respects, Constable was every bit as radical as Turner, and this article looks at his depictions of figures, particularly in the many studies which he painted.

Constable was unusually helpful to us in leaving not only a great many of the studies and sketches which he made for his finished paintings, but also explaining how he approached composition and his attitude to ‘truth’ in painting. Although he had a realist style, and his finished paintings give the illusion of being faithful and detailed representations of what he saw in front of him, that was not the case.

He may have painted en plein air, in front of his motif, when working up studies for a finished painting, but he did not intend to make images exactly like what he saw in front of him. Instead, he recomposed and adjusted his mental image according to his aesthetics, and painted something which was similar to reality, but not identical – he captured its essence, rather than copying it slavishly. Trees, churches, and other elements in the landscape were all mobile and modifiable as he saw fit.

If you have ever visited the areas in which many of Constable’s most famous paintings were made, in Suffolk, England, you will have seen how well he captured the spirit of what he saw, although the details were often changed quite substantially.

Like his better-travelled contemporary Thomas Fearnley, Constable painted figures and other details in many of his sketches and studies. In this watercolour of Landscape at East Bergholt (c 1805), there are small blobs representing cattle in the field on the left.

Constable’s oil sketches are amazingly ‘modern’ in appearance, and still contain individual figures in among the squiggles and blobs of paint, in this case making up his sketch of Fen Lane, East Bergholt (c 1811).

This undated ink and watercolour sketch of Brighton Beach Looking West is thoroughly gestural, as shown in the detail below of the closest figures.

Dedham Lock (1819-20) appears to have been sketched in great haste, but as usual Constable took those extra minutes to add some marks indicating his disposition of figures, most prominently the lock-keeper, who is shown in detail below.

Looked at closely, what Constable painted was not even a representation of a human form. It is almost a place-marker suggesting some of the colours which might be applied more carefully as his ideas and mental image started to coalesce.

This early sketch for Constable’s most famous work The Haywain (c 1820) is as rich in figures, and the wagon itself, as the finished painting. The detail of the haywain (below) would have appeared quite progressive 250 years later, although the artist clearly spent some time forming it and giving it colour.

This superb Study of the Trunk of an Elm Tree (c 1821), with great detail in its bark and lichens, could not have looked complete to Constable without a single magpie on the grass.

In this sketch of Harnham Gate, Salisbury (1820-21), Constable felt it necessary to include at least five human figures, including two who are on the far side of the gate and barely visible.

As his paintings matured towards their finished state, so their figures became less gestural, and more highly detailed. In this view of The Cornfield (1826), a boy shepherding the small flock of sheep has paused to drink from a pond. The figures draw the viewer’s gaze into the cornfield, then on to two people in the distance, silhouetted against the water-meadow in the background.

This advanced study of A Boat Passing a Lock (c 1823-26) makes its figures work: the lock-keeper is working his lock, readying it for the small sailing boat to enter. As seen in the detail below, Constable has taken more time and care to paint the lock-keeper here, although the fittings on the lock are depicted with greater precision.

When Constable reaches his finished paintings, those rough squiggles and blobs are replaced by figures as carefully detailed as the branches and leaves in the trees. They are seldom more than minor compositional aids, though. The clerical couple just beyond the gate at the left are reminding us to look at the cathedral, as if we wouldn’t. The cattle remind us that this is a water-meadow, almost open countryside, and still actively grazed.

In this different view of Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831), the staffage is threatening to overwhelm the foreground. There’s a large wagon drawn by three horses, which is slowly making its way through the river, as shown in the broken water. Behind that, a fisherman, perhaps, has stepped out of his boat into the reeds. A black dog on the bank just in front of the viewer is watching the scene, and at the far left there’s a man wearing red and a cow down in the water.

At their best, Constable’s canvases are less cluttered, and his figures of greater value.

This early sketch of Hadleigh Castle (1828-29) already contains some surprisingly detailed passages: at the far left, a shepherd, his black dog by his side, with a small flock of sheep, which are grazing near the ruined tower (shown in the detail below). There’s a brown and white blob on the seaward slope, probably a cow grazing there. Wheeling in wrinkles of impasto above the tower are a few birds, which resemble small runnels of liquid metal like solder.

By the finished work, the splendid Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames – Morning after a Stormy Night (1829), the basic disposition of those figures has changed little, but Constable has changed each to suit his image. The shepherd, still carrying his long crook, is separated from his dog, and has lost his sheep, which have become scattered rocks (detail, below).

The single cow on the sloping grass has gained a couple of friends, and a cowherd. Beyond them are another couple of tiny specks of figures, and there are more by the wood in the lower right corner.

At last Constable’s facture has become more painterly, his brushwork more gestural and more like his sketches.

The question, of course, is whether Constable’s figures were really there when he painted them. In each of those amazing sketches, were the people and animals present at the time? Did he adjust their placement, perhaps? We’ll never known, but I don’t think that it’s important anyway. They were clearly present in Constable’s mind, and that is what he reveals in his paintings.