By the closing years of the nineteenth century, Carl Larsson (1853–1919) had established his reputation as one of the major artists active in Sweden. He had painted a series of frescos in the Swedish National Museum in Stockholm, and his watercolours showing idyllic family life were catching on too.

Among Larsson’s more personal views of family life is Homework from 1898, which shows two of the Larsson children working in the evening by the light of a kerosene lamp.

His first book, A Home, was published in 1899, and proved popular in the Nordic countries given its relatively expensive production. However, all was not well within the Larsson home, as Carl’s wife Karin became gravely ill.

In Greetings (for Karin’s Day) (1899), Larsson not only celebrates his wife’s name day, but also her recovery from that illness. The family are here surrounded by the fruits of Karin Larsson’s interior design.

Larsson continued to paint more personal works which were not intended for reproduction in his books, including A Fairy (1899). This follows on from his earlier more Impressionist paintings, and again uses his favourite colour contrast of red against green.

In 1900, Larsson was awarded a First Class medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris.

Getting Ready for a Game (1901) shows Karin Larsson preparing a tray of decidedly adult refreshments, while two of their young daughters watch from behind the more appropriate teaset. From the layout of the room seen through the open door, the grown-ups are about to enjoy an evening of cards together with friends.

In 1902, Larsson’s second collection of watercolours was published under the title Larssons (The Larssons), which sold well and has even been reproduced in a modern facsimile edition. This was followed in 1906 by a third book, Spadarfvet, Our Place in the Country, which proved as popular as the first.

Larsson also pressed on with monumental murals for the National Museum in Stockholm, which he had been working on for over a decade. In 1907, he completed that of Gustav Vasa’s procession into Stockholm, 1523 which celebrated the accession to the throne of King Gustav I, who reigned until 1560. Gustav had led a rebel movement against King Christian II of Denmark, who had ruled Sweden as part of the Kalmar Union. Eleven days after being elected to lead the independent Sweden, Gustav’s entry into Stockholm marked the birth of the nation.

After the Prom (1908) shows one of Larsson’s older daughters, probably Suzanne (then 24), at the end of a Prom in the University of Stockholm. Behind her is an inscription explaining the two large murals on each side, which had probably been painted by her father. His easel and some paintings at the right suggest that he may have been painting other portraits that night.

In 1909, a selection of Larsson’s watercolours was published in Germany under the title Das Haus in der Sonne (The House in the Sun); this was an instant success, selling forty thousand copies in the first three months, and was frequently reprinted thereafter.

When Larsson painted his Self-Portrait in his new studio in 1912, he sits back with the ease of a successful artist in his late fities. Around him are the creature comforts furnished by that success, and designed by his wife. There are some gentle touches of eccentricity, like the sword passing through the huge book open in front of him, and the statue whose feet are propping the book up.

Larsson’s last, and what he intended to be his greatest, mural for the National Museum was drawn from the mythical sagas of the Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson, with additional material from Adam of Bremen. Larsson wanted it to form a contrast with the other murals which he had already painted.

It shows a dramatic scene which does not have any parallel in official Swedish history, of the sacrifice of the mythical King Domalde. According to Snorri Sturluson, there had been many years of crop failures, and the gods had demanded pagan sacrifice to appease them and ease the suffering of the people.

For this, Midvinterblot (Midwinter’s Sacrifice), he had painted a series of studies which had proved controversial, and were successively rejected, requiring many changes. This is his third and final study, to which he had returned after resigning from the task in acrimony in 1914. However, the controversy which his earlier studies had generated had not settled. Debate continued in the newspapers, even involving government ministers.

More recently it has been proposed that the underlying problem with Larsson’s painting was that it failed to meet the modernist ideals of Sweden in the early twentieth century.

Larsson completed the massive painting (above), and it was exhibited where it was intended to go in June 1915, before being finally rejected and removed.

Here, in the midwinter, the king has been dragged on a gilded sled in front of a temple in ancient Uppsala. The high priest who is to perform the sacrifice conceals the knife behind his back, as the king is about to step off the sled onto the altar.

At the far left, women are in religious ecstasy, behind priests who blow ritual horns. Beside them is a miniature earthly Yggdrasil, which Adam of Bremen reported was evergreen. At the far right are the king’s warrior chiefs, following the sled.

Larsson retreated into writing his autobiography, which he completed shortly before his death exactly a century ago today, on 22 January 1919. His final masterpiece had still not been accepted, and he was bitter to the end.

His painting was shown again at the National Museum between 1925-1933, then removed. In 1983-4, the painting was exhibited in the Museum of National Antiquities. It was first offered to the National Museum, which again declined, and the Museum of National Antiquities was unable to pay the asking price for it.

It was sold to a private collector in Japan in 1987, from auction at Sotheby’s, only to be loaned back for the National Museum’s bicentennial celebrations in 1992. Since then it has remained there, at first on loan, but in 1997 it was finally purchased by the museum and installed where it had originally been intended.

It is easy to think that the only art of that period worth taking notice of was Cubist, or at least strongly Post-Impressionist. Throughout the twentieth century, and today, there are many great and wonderful paintings which have remained realist. One big difference, though, is that rather than being controversial by virtue of the way in which it expressed the artist’s intentions, Larsson’s was controversial by virtue of its content.

At least in using conventional means of expression, there was little doubt over Larsson’s meaning. Perhaps the image of a king giving his life to save his people was a little close for comfort.

References

Wikipedia.

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

Naturalist painting was only one aspect of Naturalist art in the late nineteenth century. Indeed, mention the movement today and most people think first of literary Naturalism, particularly the novels of Émile Zola. Common to all these was a growing concern over the changes happening in society: rural deprivation and depopulation, urban growth and the many ills of cities, ‘immorality’ and prostitution, and more.

I hope that I have shown how popular and high-profile Naturalist painting was in the period between 1880-1895. This article considers what it achieved, both at the time and later.

There was an increasing awareness of the problems in society during the late nineteenth century. How much of it can ever be attributed to Naturalism I don’t know. In the Nordic countries, links between Naturalist artists like Christian Krohg and the rise of social democracy are strong, although I think it would be stretching a point to claim that Naturalist painting had any significant role in changing politics at the time.

What is perhaps more surprising is how, after 1900, painting became more detached from social issues. War artists gave their accounts of conditions during the First World War, but it seems doubtful that they have had much impact on society as a whole then or now.

From the First World War through much of the twentieth century, painting went through a period of deep, and often destructive, introspection. For the first time in art history, painters painted more about painting than they did about the world around them. But through this period realists telling stories and even social messages didn’t entirely disappear. For some, they turned inward and envisioned the mind and soul.

As early as 1872, the Naturalist Luc-Olivier Merson painted works such as The Vision, which combines an altered image of the crucifixion with that of a nun in an apparent ecstasy, and an angelic musical trio.

The late Surrealist paintings of the former realist landscape painter and war artist Paul Nash also show this inheritance.

Other descendants include the haunting nocturnes of Paul Delvaux (1897-1944) and the photographic realism of Salvador Dalí (1904-1989).

Tom Lea III’s painting of The 2000 Yard Stare from 1944 employs many of the techniques developed by Jules Bastien-Lepage: its horizon is high despite the presence of warplanes in the sky, it is finely detailed in the foreground and increasingly sketchy towards the background, but has the air of photographic reality. It was even published in the news magazine LIFE.

The nineteenth century Naturalists realised that their convincing fidelity relied on a detailed realist style. Loose, painterly brushstrokes and high chroma colours were fine for a mere Impression, but to look real a painting had to have the same detail that we see in the real world around us. And to tell a nuanced story also needed precision in the image.

Modern narrative painters such as Stuart Pearson Wright (above) and Kirsty Whiten (below) have revived realism to create their alternative realities.

Anastasiya Markovich’s recent Effect of Butterfly is another good example of the modern use of realist images of unreal events and objects.

What I haven’t explored in this series, largely because of the difficulty of obtaining suitable images on which copyright has expired, is the influence of Naturalism on the emerging art of photography. It’s significant that several Naturalist painters were enthusiastic photographers who exhibited their photographs and helped the new art emerge in the early twentieth century. Indeed, in his late life, Gérôme promoted photography more than he did painting.

Philipp Sporrer’s The Photo from 1870 shows well the early attitude of most painters to photography. The young photographer is not the sort of man you would leave your wife or daughter with: he is down at heel, unkempt, and his straw hat is abominably tatty. His studio is poorly-lit, probably an old shed, its floor littered with rubbish, and its window broken.

Even his subject is manifestly poor and uncouth, sitting in ill-fitting clothes and picking his nose as he waits for the photographer to fiddle around with his equipment.

My last painting shows the counterpoint to that, in Joaquín Sorolla’s portrait of The Photographer Christian Franzen from 1903. Franzen had worked throughout Europe as a photographer until he established his studio in Madrid in 1896. He was then appointed court photographer to King Alfonso XIII, just as many painters before him had also been appointed to the royal court.

I think that Naturalism’s greatest inheritance was not in painting – at least, not for many years – but in photography.

In the late nineteenth century, there were many individual artists whose paintings didn’t really conform to any particular school, so defy classification. Constantin Meunier (1831–1905) is a good example: although many of his works have features in common with Naturalism, and he seems to have had connections with Naturalist art, his style is quite distinct. This is the first of two articles looking at his paintings.

Meunier was born in a working-class district of the city of Brussels in 1831. His older brother had trained as an engraver, spotted young Constantin’s talents, and encouraged him to pursue them in his career. He started his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels in 1845, where he concentrated on sculpture rather than painting. On completion, he worked in the studios of two sculptors, and in 1851 exhibited his first plaster sketch at the Brussels Salon.

In the 1850s, following the advice of the painter Charles de Groux, he concentrated on painting. He completed a series about the lives of Trappists, but I have been unable to locate any usable images of these earlier paintings.

At a time of rising social concern, Meunier painted The Peasant War – Assembling in 1875. It shows country people gathering in the autumn of 1798 in an uprising against the French occupation of what is now on the borders of modern Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg. This was part of the French Revolution, now little-known outside Belgium and Luxembourg. In a month’s rebellion, around 15,000 were killed, and the French crushed the rebels.

From 1880 onwards, Meunier was commissioned to paint miners and workers in Belgium, which he continued to do for the rest of his career. I will look at those works in the next article in this series, as they’re rather special.

He went to Spain in 1882, where he was commissioned to copy a painting in Seville. He seized the opportunity to paint much more than that.

Procession of Silence, Seville from 1882-83 shows one of the silent processions which take place in Seville and elsewhere during the Holy Week of Easter.

Café del Buzero, Seville is a total contrast, showing the interior of one of the city’s bars, with a dancer up on stage.

Meunier took time to visit the major local industry at the time, tobacco manufacturing. This had started on a grand scale in 1728, with the construction of the Royal Tobacco Factory under King Charles III, which soon became the second largest building in Spain. This study for Cigar Makers in Seville was clearly sketched very briskly.

Meunier’s finished painting of the Tobacco Factory, Seville from 1883 gives an idea of the scale of the works, employing many of the women of the city.

He also painted this double portrait of Two Women in a Tobacco Factory in Seville at about that time.

Meunier returned to Belgium in 1883, where he was appointed professor at the Louvain Academy of Fine Arts. He then seems to have concentrated more on sculpture, but went and painted the lives of fishing families on the Belgian coast.

In 1885, he painted Shrimp Fishermen in Mariakerke, then a separate village to the west of Ostend on the southern coast of the North Sea.

The Harbour from 1886 shows one of the large docks on the coast of the North Sea, with dockworkers labouring to move large sacks away from the dockside. This was painted at the height of Naturalism, when Henri Gervex, for example, had exhibited The Quai de la Villette, Paris in 1882, showing the labour of colliers in Paris.

Fisherman’s Daughter at Nieuwpoort shows a poor girl in another fishing community on the coast of Flanders, Belgium.

Not known for his portraits, he painted two wonderful works showing Jeanne Meunier, who I can only presume was his daughter.

This formal Portrait of Jeanne Meunier was painted in 1886. Her gown shows the influence of Japonisme.

Nearly a decade later, in about 1895, he painted Jeanne Meunier in his studio. She looks more tired and drawn, and behind her is the artist’s glass palette with his tools resting on it.

In the next and final article I will look at his paintings of coal mines and other heavy industries.

Reference

Wikipedia.

Diego Velázquez (1599–1660) is most famous for his portraits, but several of his most important works – his landscape sketches of about 1630 from Italy, Las Hilanderas (The Spinners) from about 1657, and Las Meninas from 1656 – are very different and profoundly fascinating. In this series, I am going to try to get to grips with that Velázquez, who was so much more than a portraitist and painter to the court.

This article starts the series by looking at his training and first signs of brilliance in bodegones, lightly amusing genre paintings.

Velázquez was born most probably in May 1599, and baptised on 6 June that year in Seville. His parents were from the lesser nobility. His father’s name was Juan Rodríguez de Silva, and when Diego was admitted to the painters’ guild later, he signed his name Diego Velázquez de Silva, but for much of his life was simply known as Diego Velázquez. Such flexibility in naming was quite common at the time in Spain.

Velázquez was an able student in languages and philosophy, but from an early age seems to have been destined to become an artist. He is reported to have started his training with Francisco de Herrera, but the story is told that he was soon frightened off by his teacher’s temper.

The first reliable record of him starting training as an apprentice was in the workshop of Francisco Pacheco in September 1611, when Velázquez was twelve. He seems to have spent five years working and learning there, in Seville, and on 14 March 1617, he was made a member of the Guild of Saint Luke.

Just over a year after attaining guild membership, which was essential for him to paint for church and public commissions and to take in his own apprentices, Velázquez married his teacher’s daughter. Presumably still receiving guidance and advice from his father-in-law, he embarked on painting bodegones. At the time, a bodegón was a low eating place, much like a roadside cafe, and the typical bodegone painting showed ordinary people in a composition involving food and drink, such as are normally considered as genre works today.

Musical Trio is thought to be Velázquez’ earliest surviving painting, from 1617-18, and is a tentative composition of a musical variant of the bodegone. He adds some novel touches, such as the small monkey sat at the left, and an undecipherable painting hanging on the wall. One aim of the bodegone was to showcase the painter’s skills, and his depiction of glassware and liquids is very promising for someone so early in his career.

This was followed by Three Men at Table (The Luncheon) in about 1618. Sadly, this painting in the Hermitage is the worse for its age, and I show below an image which has been processed digitally to make it more readable. These three men are sat around a table on which there is bread and pomegranates. The older man is holding a turnip, and all three appear to be enjoying their meagre lunch.

By far the most impressive of these early paintings is Old Woman Frying Eggs which is dated 1618, and still in excellent condition. Velázquez’ composition has improved greatly, and the face of the old woman is superb. He includes a much wider range of reflective and transparent objects, which are shown better in the detail below.

The bright reflections of light on the flask of wine, the cooking pot for the eggs, and the mortar and pestle, are almost perfect, and his handling of shadows of these objects is impressive. Even at this early stage, his brushwork in fine detail is quite painterly, a trait which was to develop and attract criticism later in his career.

In the same year, Velázquez tried to mix religious narrative in a bodegone, in Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. In the foreground, the two women are busy preparing the food in their kitchen, in true bodegone style. Common to his earlier paintings are the mortar and pestle and eggs.

Then seen either in a framed mirror, or perhaps through an internal window such as a serving hatch, is the religious narrative of Christ with two women, one kneeling at his feet. Careful examination of the four women suggests that none is duplicated, and this in turn implies that the younger woman in the foreground is Martha, who looks miserably towards the viewer, while Mary is the figure sat at the feet of Jesus in the mirror.

Although relatively unusual in Spanish bodegone at the time, casting a religious scene within such genre food scenes was well-known in their Dutch Golden Age equivalents.

Slightly later, in 1618-19, Velázquez reworked the Three Men at Table into this Peasants at Table, which is in better condition and better composed and executed. It is more tightly cropped on the three figures, with no puzzling background detail to interrupt. The figures are engaging with one another rather than the viewer, and the man whose head is shown in profile at the right is painted very convincingly.

These bodegones were successful in drawing attention to Velázquez’ talent and skill. By 1620, he had started to receive commissions for portraits, and his later bodegones show his career starting to develop. This was just as well, as Velázquez’ wife Juana gave birth to their first child, Francisca, in the early summer of 1619. He now had a living to make for his family.

This weekend, to provide some background to this series on Velázquez, I will look at painting in Spain at that time.

References

Wikipedia

José López-Rey and Odile Delenda (2014) Velázquez The Complete Works, Taschen and the Wildenstein Institute. ISBN 978 3 8365 5016 1.

In the history of painting, it’s all too easy to get blinded by the brilliance of artists working in Italy and France, and forget those of Spain. When we think of Golden Ages, we think of the Dutch one, not that of Spain. Yet for about a century from 1570 onwards, there was a succession of major painters in Spain: El Greco, Jusepe de Ribera, Diego Velázquez, Vicente Carducho, and Murillo are the best-known who made up the Spanish Golden Age of Art.

To put my new series on Velázquez into context, this article and the next look at a very small selection of paintings by these other masters of the Spanish Golden Age, and some painted in Spain by its most famous visiting painter, Peter Paul Rubens, who stayed in Madrid on a diplomatic mission in 1628-29.

El Greco (1541–1614) was Greek in origin – his real name was Doménikos Theotokópoulos (Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος) – but was born on the island of Crete when it was a Venetian colony. He trained in post-Byzantine art there, and travelled to Venice in about 1567. In 1570 he moved to Rome, and did not settle in Toledo, Spain, until 1577, when he was 36. Thus his tendency towards colorito rather than disegno may be the result of his Venetian training.

El Greco’s uniquely painterly style is shown well in his Annunciation, which was one of his last works, painted in 1614, the year of his death. With its very natural gestures, this must have been the most unconventional painting of this very popular motif until the nineteenth century.

Another of his late works, The Vision of Saint John (1608-14) is just as idiosyncratic.

Jusepe de Ribera (also known as José de Ribera or Josep de Ribera) (1591-1652) was born near and trained in Valencia, but by 1611 had made his way to Rome, where he worked until 1616. He moved to Naples, which was then Spanish territory, where he remained for the rest of his career.

Ribera’s powerful interpretation of The Judgement of Solomon from 1609-10, when he was still working in Valencia, is emotionally eloquent and shows the influence of Caravaggio in what has become known as Tenebrism.

Shortly before he moved from Rome to Naples, Ribera painted a series of works showing the five senses. Among them, his Allegory of Sight (1615-16) was painted just a few years after the appearance of the first working telescope in 1608. Ribera’s figure is surrounded by these wondrous new inventions, as well as a traditional flat mirror. In his hands is an early telescope, possibly made in the Netherlands (which was also part of the Spanish Empire at the time) or Germany. Next to the mirror is a pair of spectacles, which had been developed from the middle of the thirteenth century.

Ribera’s Tenebrism lasted to the end of his career, as shown in this painting of the Penitent Mary Magdalene from about 1635-40.

Much of the output from the workshops of Spanish painters at this time was not two-dimensional painting, but polychrome wood carvings which were destined for religious use. Although 2D paintings were very influential on Velázquez and his art, during his apprenticeship he was almost certainly surrounded by carvers and assistants who were making these objects of devotion.

Juan de Mesa (1583–1627) was a Cordoban sculptor who trained and worked in Seville from 1606 to his death there in 1627. He was responsible for many of the processional effigies which were – and some still are – featured in the celebrations of Holy Week in Seville. The Immaculate Conception is a fine example of his work from about 1610-15.

The Spanish Royal Collection, much of which is now exhibited in the Prado in Madrid, grew greatly during the Golden Age, and was a particular attraction to many painters. It includes many magnificant paintings by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), whose life centred on Antwerp, then in the Spanish Netherlands.

Rubens was not only one of the greatest artists of the period, but was also an important diplomat, who travelled between the major capitals of Europe between 1621-30. In 1628-29, he stayed in Madrid, where he made copies of two of the greatest paintings by Titian, which were in the Royal Collection at the time.

Rubens’ quite faithful copy of The Rape of Europa is in rather better condition than Titian’s original, and was known to Velázquez.

Rubens’ version of The Fall of Man made at this time is more liberally-interpreted, with changes in Adam and the addition of a parrot, for example.

Rubens also painted some original works during his eight month stay, including his superb Adoration of the Magi. Rubens and Velázquez became good friends, and intended to travel together to Italy. However, Rubens was called back to Antwerp, leaving Velázquez to make his own way to Italy.

Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) was a contemporary of Velázquez who came to Seville to train as a painter in 1614, only three years after Velázquez had started his apprenticeship there. Zurbarán concentrated on religious work for almost his entire career, largely on the strength of an early contract with the Dominican monastery in Seville.

Typical of his commissioned religious works is this full-length portrait of Saint Margaret of Antioch, from 1630-34.

However, Zurbarán was commissioned by King Philip IV of Spain to produce a series of paintings showing the life of Hercules. The king was a major patron of the arts, the work of Velázquez in particular, and this series was most probably part of his attempt to impress his royal grandeur with the construction of the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid from 1631 onwards.

Later Philip became actively involved with religious mystics, and it is possible that his unconventional beliefs may have included Christianisation of some heroic figures like Hercules, but in the way that Botticelli had interwoven classical myth and Christian beliefs.

Zurbarán’s painting of The Death of Hercules from 1634 is unusual both for its obvious Tenebrism, and for showing what can only be a Christian martyrdom, with its victim staring up to heaven, commending his soul to God.

Tomorrow I will show examples of the paintings of Velázquez’ teachers, and of his successor Murillo.

In the previous article of this pair, I looked at a few paintings by artists of the Spanish Golden Age, from El Greco to Zurbarán. Here, I concentrate on four painters: two who were reported to have taught Velázquez, the Italian Vicente Carducho who preceded Velázquez in the Spanish royal court, and Murillo who could be considered to be Velázquez’ successor.

Older accounts of the training of Velázquez claim that he started in the workshop of Francisco Herrera the Elder (1576–1656) in Seville, but that he didn’t stay there long, apparently being frightened away by his master’s temper.

Herrera is less well-known today, and almost all his surviving and accessible works are religious. Among them is this austere account of Saint Bonaventure Receiving his Habit from Saint Francis which he painted in 1628.

Herrera painted this Epiphany in 1653, which bears comparison with that of Rubens (shown in the previous article) from almost twenty-five years earlier.

Although known as the founder of the School of Seville, I suspect that Herrera would have been outstripped by Velázquez fairly quickly.

Documentary evidence shows that the young Velázquez completed a five year apprenticeship in the workshop of Francisco Pacheco (1564–1644), who later became his father-in-law. Pacheco has been compared with the great Italian biographer of artists Vasari, as they both appear to have been very knowledgeable about painting and painters, but neither seems to have achieved particular success in their art.

Pacheco visited Madrid and Toledo in 1611, to study the work of El Greco and others. His most impressive painting is his Last Judgement (1614) now in the Goya Museum, which sadly is only accessible in very low resolution. He wrote a book, The Art of Painting, which was published in 1649.

Christ Served by Angels in the Desert from 1616 is unusual for its table detail, but this is no bordegone. It looks quite ancient for its date, and reflects intense conservatism in Pacheco’s painting.

Pacheco’s Saint Joachim and Saint Anne from about 1617-20 is decidedly Tenebrist, and his figures more realistically modelled. It shows the apocryphal parents of the Virgin Mary in an unusual landscape which has Netherlandish influence.

Pacheco’s book is also something of a curiosity. To avoid offending royal support, it goes out of its way to defend the loose style of one of the royal favourites, Titian, but is implicitly critical of Velázquez’ painterly approach. Fortunately it was published late in both their careers, so its immediate impact was limited.

That wasn’t the case for Velázquez’ great rival at court, the Italian Vicente Carducho or Vincenzo Carducci (1576–1638). He was born in Florence, and travelled to Spain as a boy, where he trained under his brother, Bartolomeo Carduccio (1560-1608). He established his reputation when working with his brother to paint works for Philip II and III of Spain; his brother died young, and he continued alone from 1608.

After painting a history of Hercules for Philip III, he worked for the monks of the Chartreuse of el Paular near Madrid, where in four years he completed a spectacular series of 54 canvases for them. He then worked for King Philip IV.

In Carducho’s The Vision of Dionisio Rickel, the Carthusian from 1626-32, he shows the pious and ascetic Carthusian monk who wrote more than 150 works, including a complete Bible commentary. Dionisio Cartujano (1402-1471), or Denys van Leeuwen, or Denis de Rickel, or Denis the Carthusian, was also responsible for building a monastery in ‘s-Hertogenbosch when Hieronymus Bosch was a young man there.

A black cat is playing with a tortoise, hinting strongly at allegory. If the cat represents the devil, the hard-shelled tortoise might indicate invulnerability to the wiles of the devil, perhaps.

Painted at around the same time, between 1624-34, The Apparition of the Virgin to the Dying Pedro Faverio is another monk’s vision, this time a painting-within-a-painting. There are also several diabolic symbols taking flight from around the monk’s strangely double bed.

Carducho also made several history paintings to please the royal court, among them The Victory of Fleurus from 1634. This shows the battle which Spain had won at Fleurus in the Spanish Netherlands (in modern Belgium), over the army of the Dutch Republic, in 1622 during the Thirty Years’ War. Carducho adopts a curious geometric layout for the battlefield, and includes an equestrian portrait of the Spanish commander Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba.

Allegory of Saint Ángel Custodio is a magnificent tiered vertical composition which bears the influence of some of Tintoretto’s paintings then in Venice. Carducho starts with humans on earth at ground level, with their ‘guardian angel’, ascending to the Virgin Mary and (I think) Saint Francis in the heavens, topped by the Holy Trinity – a Catholic hierarchy.

Carducho’s technical skill is apparent in this undated painting of the Ordination and First Mass of Juan de Mata. Fine detail and surface textures of the fabrics are particularly realistically painted. However, his complex composition and use of paintings-within-a-painting are less successful, despite his ingenuity.

It was as well that, with Pacheco’s encouragement and advice, Velázquez established himself in the royal court within a year or two of the death of Rodrigo de Villandrando at the end of 1622. Carducho’s most important work wasn’t a painting at all, but his book on painting, Dialogos de la pintura : su defensa, origen, essecia, definicion, modos y diferencias which was published in 1633.

Carducho singled out Caravaggio and the Tenebrists for his most severe criticism. He naturally praised the work of Titian, and by implication was more generous with his rival – already King Philip IV’s favourite painter – Velázquez.

Until their rediscovery in the nineteenth century, Velázquez and his predecessors had been all but eclipsed by his successor, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682), who is far less well-known now.

Murillo was also brought up in Seville, where he was training at the time that Carducho’s book was published. His early influences were Zurbarán and Ribera, and he probably didn’t see much of the work of Velázquez until he moved to Madrid in 1642.

Painted for the cathedral in Seville, Murillo’s Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (1640-45) is one of his first narrative works. This was strictly in accordance with the precepts of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in terms of its restraint in showing flesh.

Murillo returned to Seville in 1645, where he was commissioned to paint eleven works depicting miracles of the Franciscan saints for the convent of Saint Francisco el Grande.

Murillo also started painting some more secular works, such as The Melon Eaters (c 1645-55). Concentrating his attention on the poor, he takes care to make their tatty clothes appear genuine, and their feet dirty.

Four Figures on a Step (c 1655–60) is probably Murillo’s finest and most enigmatic secular work, and quite revolutionary for its time. It shows four disparate characters from the street life of Seville, and encourages the viewer to speculate on their lives and relationships.

At the left is a youth dressed quite snappily, leaning forward on his knee and looking straight at the viewer, a broad smile on his face. Behind him is a slightly older but still young woman, who is restraining the youth by his left shoulder. Her face is twisted in a grimace, which could be an attempt to wink with her right eye, but may represent a more lasting facial palsy (then commonly the result of birth trauma, injury, or disease). She is more plainly dressed, her left hand twisting her headscarf/veil free of her face.

At the right is an older woman, who is wearing prominent pince-nez spectacles which look out of place. She too is plainly dressed, and sits with the head of a young boy on her lap. Her hands rest on his hair, as if checking it for nits and lice. The young boy wears the rough and tattered clothing of an urchin, the seat of his trousers torn open to reveal his buttock. His face is concealed, but the soles of his shoes don’t appear to be in a poor or worn state.

The young woman’s raised scarf is an old sign of marital fidelity, but if she is trying to wink, that could easily signal the opposite instead. The older woman is even harder to read: with her spectacles and the position of her hands, she could just be checking the boy’s hair. Others have considered that her spectacles and scarf refer to the celestina figure of Spanish literature, making her a procuress, presumably for the young woman.

Today, the paintings of Velázquez stand out as those of one of the great masters of painting in Europe. But he was by no means the only major painter in Spain at that time. It truly was a Golden Age.

Fuelled by a witch’s rejuvenating brew, Faust wants to seduce a young girl, Gretchen, whom he bumps into in the street. Mephistopheles tells him it’s not quite as quick and easy to set up as Faust wants, but under pressure promises to take him to the girl’s room later that day.

That evening, Gretchen (Margareta) is wondering who the man was that she bumped into in the street. As soon as she leaves her room, Faust and Mephistopheles enter it. Faust’s imagination runs riot, particularly when he sees her bed. As the girl is about to return, Mephistopheles produces a box of jewellery which he has ‘acquired’, and places it in Gretchen’s cupboard for her to discover. The two leave in haste.

Gretchen returns, and sings a song as she undresses. She goes to put her clothes in the cupboard, where she discovers the jewel box. When she opens it, she is taken aback at the beauty of the jewellery, which she tries on.

In Scene 12, Faust is walking up and down, in thought. Mephistopheles arrives and tells him that Gretchen’s mother gave the jewels to a priest, saying to her daughter that ill-gotten gains would do her no good. Faust tells Mephistopheles to get Gretchen more jewels, and to get to know the woman who lives next door to the girl.

The next scene opens with the woman next door, Martha, telling the audience how her husband had ill-treated her, then went away and hasn’t been seen again. She says that she needs his death certificate, and on that Gretchen enters to report that she has just found a second jewel box. Martha instructs her not to tell her mother, but to bring the jewellery to her when she wants to wear it in front of the mirror.

It is perhaps this moment which is shown in Alexander von Liezen-Mayer’s Gretchen and Marthe, from about 1868-72, seen here in an engraving.

Mephistopheles then turns up at the door, claiming that he is looking for Martha. He says that has sad news, that her husband is dead. Martha asks where his possessions are, but Mephistopheles assures her that he had none, before making an aside to Gretchen that, if she’s too young to marry, she should take on a lover.

Dieudonné Raphaël Bourdier’s undated painting of Gretchen and Mephisto shows a caricature of the devil talking to the two women. Behind Gretchen is the second jewel box, some of whose contents she is already wearing.

Eugène Delacroix’s lithograph from 1828 shows Mephistopheles Visits Gretchen, with Martha and the box of jewellery.

Mephistopheles gives more details of the death of Martha’s husband, and before he is allowed to leave, the widow asks him for documentary evidence. Mephistopheles arranges a meeting that evening in Martha’s garden, to provide the certificates for Martha and introduce Faust to Gretchen.

Mephistopheles returns to Faust and explains how the two of them need to forge paperwork attesting to the death of Martha’s husband. Faust protests that this is dishonest, but Mephistopheles reminds him that he has lied before. Faust angrily accepts that he has no choice.

Delacroix’s lithograph from 1828 shows Faust Trying to Seduce Margarete.

Scene 15 opens with Faust and Gretchen walking up and down the garden, as Martha talks with Mephistopheles. Gretchen explains to Faust that she is alone much of the time, as her brother is serving away in the army, her little sister died, and she is left to run the house on her own. Mephistopheles tries to explain to Martha that he is a bachelor and has no interest in the love of women.

Ary Scheffer’s painting of Faust and Marguerite in the Garden (The Seduction) from 1846 captures this masterfully, with the dreamy Gretchen and Faust almost dancing together, as Martha tries to interest Mephistopheles in her rather than the young couple.

Hendrik Frans Schaefels also shows this in his Scene from Goethe’s Faust from 1863.

Mikhail A Vrubel’s remarkable watercolour sketch of Faust and Margarita in the Garden from 1896 was made in preparation for a finished painting which I have been unable to locate.

James Tissot’s Faust and Marguerite in the Garden from 1861 is based on Gounod’s operatic retelling, and shows the couple sat talking together on a bench, still quite distant, with Gretchen looking intently at a daisy she is holding.

Gretchen pulls the petals off the daisy with the childhood words ‘he loves me, he loves me not’, and when she removes the last petal rejoices in saying “he loves me!” She and Faust clasp hands at this before she runs away from him.

Gretchen runs behind the door of a summerhouse, where she hides from Faust. He catches her, and they kiss. Martha and Mephistopheles arrive shortly afterwards and tell Faust and Gretchen that the men must leave. Their departure ends the scene.

Scene 17 is set in a cavern in the forest, where Faust addresses the ‘sublime spirit’, and thanks it for his love of Gretchen. Mephistopheles arrives, and the two trade insults for a little, with Mephistopheles questioning why Faust seeks such wild places, and he reminds Faust that young Gretchen is pining for him.

Faust grows angry at Mephistopheles’ taunting, calling him (appropriately) a snake. Faust regains his lust for the young girl.

Meanwhile, Gretchen is sat alone at her spinning wheel, singing of her yearning for Faust and his love.

Georg Friedrich Kersting’s sketch of Gretchen Before the Mirror from 1827 shows Gretchen alone with her spinning wheel.

Scene 19 returns to Martha’s garden, where Gretchen and Faust are together. She asks him to tell her of his views on religion, but Faust is evasive. She complains that, while he may respect the sacraments, he doesn’t attend Mass or Confession. Then she asks whether he believes in God, forcing Faust to be even more evasive, talking about an ‘earth spirit’.

Gretchen next expresses her hatred of Mephistopheles, forcing Faust to try to excuse him as just being a bit odd. Gretchen tells Faust that she must go. He pleads with her to allow him to spend some time with her that night, but is told that Gretchen’s mother sleeps very lightly and must not be woken. For this, Faust provides Gretchen with a potion, three drops to be given to her mother to ensure that she sleeps soundly.

Gretchen questions whether her mother will wake safely, saying that she has already done so many things for Faust that there seems little left.

Pedro Américo’s Faust and Gretchen from 1875-80 is again probably based more on an operatic version. The shadowy figure of Mephistopheles is eavesdropping behind the curtain at the right, and white lilies, a symbol of virginity, lie fallen on the floor.

Gretchen then leaves, and Mephistopheles promptly appears. He and Faust trade insults before Mephistopheles asks whether the couple will make love tonight. Faust asks him what business it is of his, to which Mephistopheles says that he will take a certain pleasure too.

Night falls.

Over the last year, I have been gradually amassing articles here as I have been studying Naturalist painting in the late nineteenth century. This is the final article in a series of nine which brings together a summary, indexed against the previous eight articles in the series, links to each of the articles about themes in Naturalist painting, an alphabetical list of artists covered in separate articles, and a list of recommended books.

I will try to keep this article updated, so that you can use it as a reference.

Naturalist painting is the visual art sibling of literary Naturalism, typified by the Rougon-Macquart novels of Émile Zola.

1 Emergence (1883)

It emerged gradually from ‘social realist’ painting, particularly that of rural deprivation, notably the work of Jean-François Millet, during the 1860s and 70s.

Some common features of these paintings are:

• They tend to show ordinary people, rather than nobility, gods, or heroes,
• who are going about their normal daily activities,
• in their normal surroundings.
• They are painted with the impression of objectivity,
• rather than overt sentiment.
• Painting style is a neutral realism, showing such detail as is necessary for their purpose,
• sometimes being ‘photographic’ in quality.

Its dominant influence, until his premature death in 1884, was Jules Bastien-Lepage.

2 Origins

Naturalism ultimately originated in genre paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, together with the realism of Gustave Courbet in the mid nineteenth century. It was Millet who established its starting point in rural poverty, in his paintings during the 1850s. Other more proximate influences include Édouard Manet, and it was Léon Lhermitte who painted the first distinctively Naturalist works around 1880.

3 Spread

Naturalism may have developed in France, thanks in part to the Third Republic which formed in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, but it soon spread through much of Europe. Early adopters were artists from Nordic countries, many of whom worked in France at the time.

Among the most active of the Nordic artists, who was to remain a Naturalist until his death in 1925, was the Norwegian painter and writer Christian Krohg. Erik Werenskiold’s Naturalist response to Courbet’s Burial at Ornans is another example from the height of the movement in 1885.

4 Art and the State

Quite unlike Impressionism, at that time, Naturalism was enthusiastically supported by the Third Republic, as described so well by Richard Thomson (see reference below). Although many paintings recorded the achievements of the state, some artists drove home social messages which were more critical instead.

These included coverage by Robert Koehler of the industrial unrest in Belgium, social deprivation in Paris depicted by Fernand Pelez, and campaigns by Christian Krohg against prostitution in Oslo. Many Naturalist paintings proved controversial, and some were purchased by the state so that they could be hidden away from public view in provincial museums.

5 Growth of the city

A particularly popular theme in Naturalist painting was urban poverty and other social ills which worsened with the rapid growth of cities and their supporting industries.

This was as true in the capitals of the Nordic countries (above) as in the streets of Paris (below).

For a couple of decades, painting had acquired new social and political roles.

6 Science and technology

Naturalist painters were as enthralled by the rapid developments in science and technology, as were authors like Zola.

They even celebrated the technology brought with the development of photography, as seen in Louis Muraton’s painting of a photographer developing his plates in a dark room.

Others recorded the great advances in medicine and its formal teaching.

7 Decline

After 1895, there was a rapid movement away from Naturalism. Many of its greatest exponents were old, or had already died, and those who were still active found other motifs and styles.

Among the few who continued to paint Naturalist works were Léon Lhermitte in France, and Christian Krohg in Norway. Painting was changing rapidly, and by the early twentieth century realism was left to photography.

8 Outcome

There is little evidence that Naturalism changed society, although in the Nordic countries it was an influential element in social and political change, with the advent of social democratic movements.

A little realist or Naturalist painting survived during the twentieth century, when many were making intensely introspective works which didn’t attempt to depict scenes from the real world. It did influence the altered realities depicted often near-photographically by Surrealists.

Perhaps Naturalism’s greatest influence was not in painting, but in the new art of photography.

Themes

Down and out: Vagrants
Down and Out: Homeless
The drowned man
Utonula, the drowned woman
By the Sweat of their Brow – people at work 1
By the Sweat of their Brow – people at work 2
Woman Sewing: By hand 1
Woman Sewing: By hand 2
Woman Sewing: Slave to the sewing machine
The Rise of the Clinic: 1, family medicine
The Rise of the Clinic: 2, hospitals
Anatomy lessons, autopsies, and surgery: they’re different
In Hospital: 2, Light
Painting the Class: schools from 1860 to 1907
The Art of the Law: paintings of courts 1, to 1903
The Art of the Law: paintings of courts 2, Forain and court artists
All Out! Paintings of strikes
The Franco-Prussian War: Depicting defeat
The Franco-Prussian War: Destruction of Paris
The Franco-Prussian War: Aftermath
The Murder of Marat: Painting politics and perception
The Tables Turned: Painters paint photographers
Faites vos jeux: gambling on canvas 2, after 1850
Fly Like a God: Paintings of flight before Blériot
Fire, Fire 1: Brandjes and Napoleon
Fire, Fire 2: London and Frederiksborg Castle are burning
Umbrellas: Stop the rain
Umbrellas: Stop the sun

Individual Artists

Christian Krohg
1 – beginnings
2 – the fatigued and the fallen
3 – family and famine
4 – sailors and models

HA Brendekilde and LA Ring
HA Brendekilde 1883-1889
LA Ring 1882-1889
HA Brendekilde 1889-1894
LA Ring 1890-1894
HA Brendekilde 1895-1906
LA Ring 1895-1906
HA Brendekilde 1906-1914
LA Ring 1906-1914
HA Brendekilde 1915-1942
LA Ring 1915-1933
Moments of Genius

Bastien-Lepage
Jules Bastien-Lepage: Avatar of Naturalism, 1
Jules Bastien-Lepage: Avatar of Naturalism, 2
George Breitner
Amsterdam for Real: Paintings of George Breitner 1
Amsterdam for Real: Paintings of George Breitner 2
Eugène Buland
A Civic Starkness: Paintings of Eugène Buland
Alexandre Cabanel and pupils
Alexandre Cabanel and his pupils: the master
Alexandre Cabanel and his pupils: the pupils
Gustave Caillebotte
The Naturalism of Gustave Caillebotte 1
The Naturalism of Gustave Caillebotte 2
Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret
Painting and Photography: the work of Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret 1
Painting and Photography: the work of Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret 2
Édouard Debat-Ponsan
The painted politics of Édouard Debat-Ponsan
Albin Egger-Lienz
Albin Egger-Lienz: early Naturalism, 1887-1903
Albin Egger-Lienz: Work and War, 1904-1926
Émile Friant
The Last Naturalist: Émile Friant, 1
The Last Naturalist: Émile Friant, 2
Antonino Gandolfo
Down and Out in Catania: paintings of Antonino Gandolfo
Jean Geoffroy: the world of the child
Surgery, sinners, and soirées: the paintings of Henri Gervex
Jean Geoffroy
Erik Henningsen: the thirsty man
Aksel Johannessen
Aksel Johannessen’s street women and drunkards, 1
Aksel Johannessen’s street women and drunkards, 2
Henry Lerolle
The Organ Rehearsal: The paintings, friends, and collection of Henry Lerolle
Léon Lhermitte
Gleaners, Markets and Scientists: Paintings of Léon Lhermitte 1
Gleaners, Markets and Scientists: Paintings of Léon Lhermitte 2
Bruno Liljefors
No Greater Naturalist: Paintings of Bruno Liljefors, 1
No Greater Naturalist: Paintings of Bruno Liljefors, 2
Jules-Alexis Muenier
The Real Jules-Alexis Muenier: 1 Paintings
The Real Jules-Alexis Muenier: 2 Painting from photographs
Alberto Pasini
Alberto Pasini’s Oriental World, 1
Alberto Pasini’s Oriental World, 2
Fernand Pelez
Street Urchins: Paintings of Fernand Pelez
Alfred Roll
Strikes, Politics, and Zola’s ‘Germinal’: Paintings of Alfred Roll
Frits Thaulow
Ripples in Reality: The Landscape Paintings of Frits Thaulow, 1
Ripples in Reality: The Landscape Paintings of Frits Thaulow, 2
Berthold Woltze
Berthold Woltze and his problem pictures

Recommended Books

Øystein Sjåstad (2017) Christian Krogh’s Naturalism, U Washington Press. ISBN 978 0 295 74206 9.
Richard Thomson (2010) Art of the Actual, Naturalism and Style in Early Third Republic France, 1880-1900, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 17988 0.
Gabriel P Weisberg (1992) Beyond Impressionism, The Naturalist Impulse in European Art 1860-1905, Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978 0500 23643 7.
Gabriel P Weisberg et al. (2010) Illusions of Reality, Naturalist Painting, Photography, Theatre and Cinema, 1875-1918, Van Gogh Museum et al. ISBN 978 90 6153 941 4.

Today, Constantin Meunier (1831–1905) is best known for his gritty paintings of coal mining and foundries in Belgium in the late nineteenth century, and his sculpture. He started to paint these motifs in 1880, when he was commissioned to paint industrial parts of the country. He continued to paint and sculpt miners, foundry workers, and others employed to perform strenuous and unpleasant work until his death, as far as I can see.

Unfortunately almost all of these paintings are undated.

The similarities between Meunier’s Mining Area (above) and Black Country – Borinage (below) suggest that they are the same view, and that above may have been his original plein air sketch. The Borinage was one of the major coal mining areas in Europe at the time, and is in the Belgian province of Hainault. It was here that Vincent van Gogh lived between 1878-80.

From the 1880s, it was the scene of a succession of strikes, in which many of the protesters were injured or killed by police and military. After the Second World War, the coal mines went into decline, with the last of them closing in the 1960s.

The tower at the left is the pit head, where trucks of freshly-cut coal were brought to the surface.

The Roofs of the Coron shows the numerous miners’ cottages of this village near the French border, in the Borinage.

Coron, Women having a Chat gives insight into the close communities in these areas, and shows the main drain running down the middle of the street.

Meunier’s painting of Miner at the Exit of the Shaft shows several miners enjoying a few moments to smoke and relax at the pit head. Three are carrying safety lamps, which were used to minimise the risk of underground explosions even though they had flames inside them. These were developed in about 1815, after a long succession of mine disasters caused by explosions, and weren’t replaced with electric lamps until after 1900.

In his Return from the Mine, two male miners stride back to their cottages after completing their shift underground. With them is a young woman, employed to perform supporting tasks, who is walking barefoot and holding up her wooden clogs.

Painted in 1887, The Carriage Driver shows another working woman, taking a short break from her duties. She appears to be sat by the pit head, and has a safety lamp by her left leg, making it likely that she too is in one of the mining areas.

One task which was largely performed by women was the movement of wagons containing coal or spoil (general rock debris). These two young women, termed Les Hiercheuses, did just that, and were painted by Meunier in about 1885-90.

Meunier also made monumental reliefs and sculptures to commemorate the miners, as well as this Triptych of the Mine, which shows their Descent, Calvary, and Ascent, to parallel the Crucifixion.

Production of steel on an industrial scale started after 1857, with the introduction of the Bessemer Process. Meunier painted the viciously hot interior of a Steel Foundry, its workers unprotected from the hazards around them.

One of his later paintings, Foundry from 1902, shows a worker stripped to the waist to cope with heat, wearing a ‘protective’ leather apron.

Meunier’s The Foundry at Seraing shows the interior of one of the many steel factories near the city of Liège in Belgium. The first ironworks had been established there in 1809, and throughout the rest of that and the twentieth century, the area produced and worked both iron and steel.

Meunier painted other similar industries, here In a Salt Refinery at Rupelmonde, a town on the River Schelde in Belgium. This industrial process involves heating brine to generate a great deal of steam – another very hot and demanding workplace.

Finally, his Women Working in a Glass Factory shows an example of factory work employing many women. Seraing still has a large glass factory, and this work may have been painted when Meunier visited the town’s foundries.

Among Meunier’s many major sculptures is the Émile Zola monument in Avenue Émile Zola, Paris, completed with Alexandre Charpentier. Meunier died in Brussels in 1905.

By the time that Diego Velázquez and his wife had their first child, in the early summer of 1619, he had established the reputation of an up and coming provincial artist, thanks to his innovative bodegones (genre paintings centred on food and its preparation).

One of his first commissions appears to have been a pair of religious paintings for the Convent of Shod Carmelites of Seville, both of which have survived the last four centuries unscathed.

The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin (c 1619) is one of the earlier examples of this motif in Spanish art. This depicts the doctrine that the Virgin Mary herself was conceived without original sin. This was a controversial issue at the time, with the Carmelites of Seville campaigning in its favour. Interestingly, in 1620 Velázquez’s father-in-law wrote a paper on the subject.

Although painted in a very conservative style, Velázquez shows the Virgin as if in a vision, standing on the moon, with the stars forming a crown around her head. Below her it is night on the earth, its trees and fountains appearing tiny beneath her.

Its pendant is Saint John at Patmos (c 1619), which shows Saint John the Evangelist while he was on the island of Patmos, writing his book of Revelation. At his right hand is an eagle, one of his attributes. He is looking up at the vision of the Woman of the Apocalypse at the upper left corner, a reference to Revelation chapter 12.

Unlike his idealised and divine image of the Virgin, John is very clearly a local model and thoroughly human.

It’s thought that Velázquez was commissioned to paint this Adoration of the Magi in 1619 for a chapel in the Jesuit Novitiate of San Luis in Seville. This is one of his few dated works: although hard to read, the year is inscribed just below the Virgin’s feet.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Velázquez painted most of his figures from live models, and this gives them the impression of reality here. Coupled with the Tenebrist lighting, this must have appeared quite radical at the time. He was careful, though, not to cause offence: his father-in-law was charged with maintaining the moral standards of painters in Seville, and Velázquez went as far as covering the Virgin’s feet in his compliance. He also maintains distinction between the divine figures of Mary and Jesus, and the humans around them.

Analysis has shown that this was painted in a conventional manner, using the popular mantellilo linen with a brownish ground which gives the dark tonality. Radiography reveals several significant pentimenti: Velázquez is thought to have made preliminary studies only rarely, and made most adjustments directly in his finished works.

In early 1620, Velázquez took on his first apprentice, a mark of his establishment as a master in Seville.

The Waterseller (of Seville) from about 1620 is another of Velázquez’s finest early works. The face of the waterseller shown in profile is expertly modelled, and the glass and pottery highly lifelike. It also confirms the artist’s continuing Tenebrist tendencies.

Kitchen Scene, variously known as The Kitchen Maid or The Mulatto Woman, from about 1620, is very similar to another painting attributed to Velázquez which has a small view of Christ in the House of Martha and Mary seen through an opening in the wall at the upper left. It is thus a bodegone, with impressive surface effects.

At some time between 1620-22, Velázquez painted this portrait which is now believed to be of his father-in-law Francisco Pacheco. This was one of several portraits which he completed at that time. Pacheco here wears a gorguera or ruff, which is executed in a painterly manner. The gorguera was formally banned throughout Spain in 1623, putting a fairly secure upper limit on this painting’s date.

In 1621, King Philip III died unexpectedly, and was succeeded by Philip IV, who was only sixteen at the time. Velázquez aspired to paint at the court, and in 1622 travelled to Madrid to try to gain admission to the new royal court. He failed at this first attempt, so returned to Seville, where he tried to strengthen his influence with the Count of Olivares, who dealt with most affairs of state for the young monarch. Velázquez’s father-in-law had painted the Count’s portrait in 1610, giving him a valuable introduction.

In 1623, Velázquez headed off to Madrid a second time, meeting with success. On 6 October 1623, he was appointed a Painter Royal, and embarked on his long career at court with his major patron, Philip IV.

Philip IV, Standing (1624) is one of Velázquez’s first portraits of the monarch, and is recorded as being formally accepted in December 1624. One of the mysteries surrounding this work is its extensive pentimenti. It has been suggested that it wasn’t intended for open display, but as a model for the workshop. However, examination has shown that the changes, which bring greater realism in the king’s Habsburg facial features, weren’t made until four years later, probably in 1627-28. The reason remains a puzzle.

At around the same time, Velázquez painted the king’s most trusted advisor, in his Portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares (1624). It was he whose influence had secured the artist his place at court, and this portrait was intended as a pendant to that of the king, both being commissioned by Don García Pérez de Araciel, who was a close advisor to the Count of Olivares.

Velázquez was not the only painter at court. He had reached the bottom rung of that ladder, and his eyes were now set firmly at its top.

References

Wikipedia

Jonathan Brown and Carmen Garrido (1998) Velázquez, the Technique of Genius, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 10124 9.
José López-Rey and Odile Delenda (2014) Velázquez The Complete Works, Taschen and the Wildenstein Institute. ISBN 978 3 8365 5016 1.

Due to a sudden torrent of comment spam, I have had to block adding comments to articles older than forty days.

I apologise for this short interruption to the usual service, and will try to reverse this once those odious spammers have gone away again.

Over two years ago, as part of articles looking at the career and work of William Merritt Chase, I wanted to write about one of his most brilliant and successful pupils, Joseph Stella (1877–1946). Sadly, at that time Stella’s work was still in copyright, and I couldn’t show any of his paintings here.

As that copyright has now expired, I am delighted to be able to complete what I started back in 2016, and tell you a little of his life, and show you a small selection of his paintings. If you don’t know of Joseph Stella’s work, then I think you’re in for a surprise. He was one of the most technically-skilled and versatile painters of the early twentieth century, and eclectic in his styles and motifs. He painted and drew everything from grim industrial sites to phantasmagoric landscapes, in meticulous realist, cubist, futurist and precisionist styles.

I think that he is one of the most exciting painters of the twentieth century.

Born in southern Italy in 1877 as Giuseppe Michele Stella, into a family of lawyers, his older brother emigrated to the USA to study medicine, and Joseph followed suit in 1896. Like many migrants, he stayed in New York City, but abandoned his medical training in favour of art. He started attending classes at the Art Students League in 1897, and enrolled in the New York School of Art the following year, where he was taught by William Merritt Chase. He attended Chase’s Shinnecock summer school in 1901. One of Stella’s contemporaries was Marsden Hartley.

Stella proved very talented, and a brilliant draftsman and illustrator, and in 1902 visited Barbados.

Stella’s early paintings are predominantly quite dark and realist, as in this Self-Portrait from about 1900.

His skill with a Conté crayon is shown in this Head of an Old Man from about 1905.

Despite making a promising start, Stella had grown unhappy in New York, and in 1909 returned to Italy, where he came into contact with Modernism, which was popular there at the time.

At first, this exposure to the modernism of Europe had limited impact on Stella’s paintings. Made when he was in Rome in 1909, The Bagpipers is still quite traditional in style.

After two years in Italy, in 1911 he moved to Paris, which was awash with Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism all in full swing. Then in the autumn/fall of 1912, he decided to give America a second try, and returned to New York City.

Stella was attracted to the dazzling electric lights of Luna Park (1913) on Coney Island, which had opened a decade earlier. The style with which he had returned from Paris was startlingly different, and Futurist.

This was followed by Battle of Lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras (1913), one of the earliest, and still among the greatest, of American Futurist paintings. Although it is sometimes claimed that it was exhibited at the famous (even notorious) International Exhibition of Modern Art held in New York in early 1913 – known now simply as the Armory Show – Stella didn’t complete it until the autumn of that year, when it went on display in a private gallery in New York.

His reputation among the avant garde had been secured.

The following year, he painted Coney Island (1914).

Stella visited Europe and North Africa in the summer of 1914, just before the outbreak of the First World War.

Later during the war, Stella’s motifs and style changed again, concentrating on the smoky skies and factories of industrial America, for example in Telegraph Poles with Buildings from 1917.

Stella’s Bethlehem, painted in pastel in about 1918, shows the skyline and smoke of this city in Pennsylvania, from the mid-nineteenth century the centre of the steel industry.

He also seems to have become involved in social campaigning at the time. Stella’s atmospheric charcoal drawing of Equal Work/Equal Pay from 1918 shows a woman and a man stenographer (typist, or possibly typesetters) working back-to-back in one of the dimly-lit clerical sweatshops.

Following his return to New York City in late 1912, Joseph Stella (1877–1946) had radically changed his style and motifs. Late in the First World War, he had concentrated on industrial settings after initiating American Futurism in 1913.

Another pastel, Nocturne II from about 1919, starts to move away from smoky factories, but remains dark and quietly sinister.

But the same year, he painted this large almost Surrealist fantasy, Tree of My Life, which appears to have been influenced by the extraordinary paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. It is filled with exotic plants and birds, and passages are densely patterned, as shown in the detail below.

This painting was sold at auction late last year for nearly $6 million.

Stella’s eclecticism knew no bounds. After that, he painted probably his best-known work, this Cubist geometric analysis of Brooklyn Bridge (1919-20).

The most extraordinary feat of Stella’s work is the number of different styles which he used over any given period. From his earlier industrial settings came the Precisionism of Factories in about 1920-21.

In 1920-22, Stella completed a huge five-panel mural for the Newark Museum, titled New York Interpreted (The Voice of the City). Critics considered it to be the most successful attempt to show city life during the period between the wars.

Next, in the early 1920s, he briefly painted mythical narratives, with The Birth of Venus (1922), shown above, and Leda and the Swan (1922), below.

In The Virgin from 1922, Stella adopted a traditional religious motif, expressed in his near-Surrealist style with fantastic fruit, flowers and birds.

Stella became a citizen of the USA in 1923, but quickly felt unsettled and homesick. He spent much of the next decade travelling in Europe, returning to America mainly to organise his work for exhibitions.

As if these elaborately-detailed oil paintings weren’t enough, Stella developed a novel drawing technique combining metalpoint with crayons. he used it in this intimate portrait of Kathleen Millay from about 1923-24. His subject was a writer, the youngest sister of the poet Edna St Vincent Millay. Kathleen married Howard Irving Young, the famous screenwriter, and died in 1943. At the time of this portrait, she would have been about 27.

Then, just when you might have thought that Stella was done with factories, smoke and Precisionism, in about 1923-26 he painted this view of By-Products Plants.

By the mid 1920s, Joseph Stella (1877–1946) appeared to be pursuing three or more separate artistic careers, as a Precisionist who loved industry and smoke, as a modernist applying his great draftsmanship skills, and as a successor to Bosch in near-Surrealist fantasies.

The Apotheosis of the Rose from 1926, painted in oil on copper, is a brilliant example of the last of those styles, with its extensive collection of exotic birds and weird vegetation.

Stella’s Purissima from 1927 places a mystical woman between the two sacred Ibis birds. In the background is the Bay of Naples, with Mount Vesuvius at the right.

Later in the 1920s, Stella developed rhythmic palm structures, in Palm Tree and Bird from 1927-28. These were to be a recurrent feature in many of his later works.

Neapolitan Song (1929) brings a waterbird and palm in front of the quietly smoking volcano of Vesuvius.

This undated landscape sketch of Vesuvius III probably dates from this period. This appears to have been made looking south-east across the Bay of Naples, with Castel dell’Ovo nearest.

He changes motifs again in Tree of Nice from about 1930, which was presumably painted in the south of France.

The following year, his Flowers, Italy returns to near-Surrealism, with water-lilies at its base.

The Crèche from 1929-33 is an ingenious framing of the Nativity. At its centre is the Nativity ‘crib’ so often shown at Christmas, with an audience who appear to have been drawn from Stella’s home city in Italy, playing traditional bagpipes in homage.

In 1934, Stella and his wife finally settled in the Bronx. His popularity steadily faded, and a retrospective exhibition in 1939 failed to revive interest. His personal health also started to deteriorate at this time.

For much of his career, Stella painted occasional floral still lifes of great beauty. Hibiscus, Shell, and Plate from about 1935 is one of his later works in that series, with a single hibiscus flower in a white vase.

In 1937, Stella painted Serenade, a Christmas Fantasy, or La Fontaine, which is one of his last works combining birds and flowers in a fantasy setting. This appears to have been intended as a design for a Christmas card.

In 1942, Stella became mostly confined to his bed because of worsening heart disease.

Eggplant from 1944 is another work executed in crayon and silverpoint, and shows an aubergine and a couple of apples – popular fruit for a still life.

Joseph Stella died just after the end of the Second World War, in 1946. I haven’t come across any other artist who was, simultaneously, so many different painters, and so eclectic in his styles.

I have now enabled commenting again on all articles posted here, including those over 40 days old. Please feel free once more.

I apologise for the recent block to comments on older articles, but it seems to have done the trick, and chased the comment spammers away, for now.

In scene nineteen, Faust has seduced the innocent young Gretchen, and now intends consummating his lust that night. He provides her with a potion which he claims will ensure that her mother will sleep soundly, assuring her that it is safe.

Scene twenty is set some time later, as Gretchen and a friend go to the well to fill their water-jugs. Her friend asks Gretchen whether she has heard about a mutual friend, Barbara, who she reveals has had an illegitimate child. Gretchen expresses her sympathy for Barbara’s predicament, but her friend is hard-hearted and blames Barbara for her foolishness and immorality.

Ary Scheffer is one of the few artists who have depicted this, in his Margarete at the Fountain, thought to have been completed shortly before the artist’s early death in 1858. Although he introduces an additional woman at the well, Gretchen’s face says it all.

Gretchen walks back musing to herself that Barbara’s sin is now her sin too.

Gretchen is seen next at the foot of a statue of the Virgin Mary as Mater Dolorosa, Our Lady of Sorrows. Having placed some flowers on the statue, she prays for the Virgin’s help in her anguish, a moment which has proved popular with visual artists.

Peter von Cornelius’ early illustration of Gretchen in Front of the Mater Dolorosa from about 1815 follows Goethe’s text closely. She is seen kneeling and wiping her tears. The stork at the right may be a reference to pregnancy: the bird is implicated in the delivery of babies in various European folk tales.

Wilhelm von Kaulbach’s undated Gretchen in Front of the Mater Dolorosa shows Gretchen in greater grief, kneeling and bowed. Through the arch are three women at a well, perhaps in a composite of the previous scene.

Adam Vogler’s undated painting of Gretchen Before the Statue of the Virgin Mary shows her in a more contemplative sorrow.

The next scene takes place outside Gretchen’s house, at night, when her enlisted brother turns up. He says that he used to extol his sister’s virtue, but now that her reputation has been destroyed he is being taunted for her immoral behaviour. Faust and Mephistopheles then arrive. They are discussing a buried hoard of silver which Mephistopheles has stolen for Faust to give to Gretchen.

When Mephistopheles sings, accompanying himself on a zither, Gretchen’s brother leaps out and challenges them. A sword-fight ensues, in which Faust, with the devil’s help, mortally wounds the brother. The two men hurry away, leaving him on the roadside where he fell.

Gretchen and Martha look out of their houses. A crowd has already gathered, and tells Gretchen that there’s a body, that of her brother, who isn’t yet dead. He tells his sister that she’s now a whore and a slut, and predicts her downfall from sin, before dying in front of her.

Gretchen next attends a mass for the dead, presumably her brother, at the cathedral. She is there taunted by an evil spirit, who reveals that the sleeping potion which Gretchen had given her mother had killed the woman. These thoughts distress Gretchen greatly, who feels that the organ music is choking her. Following further taunts from the spirit, Gretchen faints.

Eugène Delacroix’s lithograph of Margarete in Church, from his 1828 series of illustrations, personifies the evil spirit, showing Gretchen as she starts to feel faint.

In Ary Scheffer’s Margarete in the Church from 1844, Gretchen is dressed in the black of mourning, for her brother or mother perhaps, and instead of looking ahead she stares straight at the viewer. There is no sign of the spirit which causes her to faint.

Scheffer first painted this scene in 1832, and the following year exhibited that larger work at the Salon, but it has since been lost. This is one of several later versions which he made, probably commissioned by dealers.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s early ink drawing of Margaret in the Church, from 1848, may be mistitled, as it seems to show Gretchen kneeling in prayer by a statue of the Virgin Mary, although not a regular Mater Dolorosa. Behind her is what is most probably the evil spirit, which suggests that this might be a composite of Goethe’s scenes.

In James Tissot’s Marguerite in Church from about 1861, Gretchen is cast in the role of the penitent Magdalene. Two innocent children kneel in front of a shrine, praying in a normal and obvious manner. Gretchen’s inner turmoil cannot bring her any closer to that shrine, or even to break herself out of her posture of dejection, eyes cast down, hands apart rather than held together in prayer. Above her is a painting of the Last Judgement, anticipation of her fate.

Scheffer also painted Marguerite Coming Out of the Church in 1838. This may show the sequel to the scene in the cathedral which is omitted by Goethe, as Gretchen emerges afterwards, with Faust and Mephistopheles waiting for her. Alternatively, this could be an idiosyncratic account of Gretchen and Faust’s first meeting.

Finally, Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s undated painting shows Faust and Marguerite emerging from the cathedral, as Mephistopheles skulks behind the monument in the churchyard, looking more an alter ego or doppelgänger than a demon.

Shortly afterwards, Faust and Mephistopheles set off to celebrate Walpurgis Night in the Hartz Mountains.

When Diego Velázquez was appointed a Painter Royal to King Philip IV in October 1623, he became the most junior of a group of artists of varied status and influence. Among the most senior was Vicente Carducho, who had been painting religious and narrative works for the court for over twenty years. Carducho was quite opinionated, and a decade later published what became one of the standard references for Spanish art.

The young Velázquez had very limited experience in religious or narrative works, and initially his court work consisted almost entirely of portraits: a genre which, though lucrative, was despised by the ‘best’ painters. For Velázquez to rise in status and influence at court, he had to become a superior narrative artist so that his work entered the royal collection on merit, rather than as a mere record of its sitter.

Velázquez moved up the ladder in 1627, after a jury appointed by Philip IV recommended that his portrait of the king was superior in competition against those of Carducho, Caxés, and Angelo Nardi. The king’s reward was to appoint Velázquez Usher of the Chamber, a great honour which brought with it a free apartment, free medical care, and coincidentally backpayments which had been due to him. The king also agreed to Velázquez visiting Italy, although no date for that was set.

In the mid 1620s, probably 1626-28, Velázquez painted Christ after the Flagellation Contemplated by the Christian Soul. A relatively unusual motif, this shows Christ after he had been whipped and scourged, still tied to a column, and with the instruments of his suffering laid on the floor beside him. At the right, the Guardian Angel has brought the personification of the Christian Soul to contemplate Christ’s suffering.

Although in previous paintings, Velázquez had preferred real models for his figures, Christ here appears to be have been based on his depiction in an Italian work from the royal collection. This is consistent with his visual distiction between the divine and the human, though. The painting is dark, no doubt on a dark ground, and could even be viewed as Tenebrist, which Carducho would have criticised, no doubt.

Then, in August 1628, the great Peter Paul Rubens came to stay in Madrid while he conducted one of his diplomatic missions. Rubens and Velázquez became friends (they had already corresponded), and there can be no doubt that Rubens helped the younger artist transform his narrative works.

Painted while Rubens was on hand to advise, The Triumph of Bacchus, or The Drinkers from 1628-29 marks a point of departure for Velázquez. Surrounded by a drinking party of older rugged-faced men, the young Bacchus is placing a crown on the head of a younger man, who kneels for the honour. Five of the figures are amazingly lifelike: very contemporary but also timeless, their faces and clothing telling so much about them.

Compositionally, though, it is quite weak. Three of those main figures are only seen down to the chest, and their gazes are all over the place, with one staring straight at the viewer, an alcoholic grin on his face. Philip IV paid Velázquez 100 ducats – a goodly sum – for this painting on 22 July 1629.

Velázquez and Rubens agreed to travel to Italy together, so the former could copy old masters and develop his skills. Unfortunately, Rubens was recalled to Antwerp, leaving Velázquez to journey without him. I sometimes wonder what the result would have been had the pair gone together.

Velázquez left Madrid in August 1629, and headed first to Genoa by sea, then overland to Milan and Venice. From there he travelled on to Rome, where he stayed for almost a year in rooms in the Vatican Palace.

Velázquez’s main task during his stay in Italy was to learn from the old masters by copying and studying their work. Two narrative paintings have survived from his travels, both of which are presumed to have been made while he was in Rome. Joseph’s Bloody Coat Brought to Jacob (1630) shows the crux of this well-known story from the Old Testament.

When living in Hebron, Jacob’s favourite son Joseph was the subject of intense jealousy from his half-brothers. When those half-brothers were grazing their father’s flocks in Shechem, Jacob sent Joseph to discover how they were getting on. The half-brothers returned to Jacob bringing with them Joseph’s distinctive ‘coat of many colours’ covered with blood, which Jacob presumed was evidence that his favourite son had been eaten by a wild beast. In fact, the half-brothers had sold Joseph into slavery.

Velázquez shows here how much his compositional skills had improved, even down to the light amusement of the barking dog. Although in much brighter style, he still used a relatively dark ground, though, and this is probably the last painting in which he did.

This was followed by his first narrative painting based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, The Forge of Vulcan from 1630. This shows Apollo, at the left, visiting Vulcan (to the right of Apollo) in his forge, to tell him about the infidelity of Vulcan’s wife Venus. As shown in the faces, this arouses great shock.

Although it has dark passages in the background, this is the first of Velázquez’s paintings in which he used a white ground. His modelling of the figures is brilliantly natural, and they integrate fully into the painting as a whole. What we see here is quite different from the artist’s initial painting: radiography reveals extensive changes, and his original canvas was extended on both sides to accommodate them.

Velázquez’s facture is also much more varied, ranging from thick impasto on Apollo’s tunic and the sheet of hot metal being worked, to dry brushstrokes in Apollo’s halo, and thin layers of paint for much of the background. He was developing virtuoso technique.

When Velázquez was staying in Rome, he spent two of the hottest months of the summer at the Villa Medici. Although the two landscape paintings which he made in its grounds are strongly suspected to have been made during this first visit in 1630, proof is lacking. If that is correct, they were probably the first landscape oil sketches made en plein air in European art.

Villa Medici in Rome, Pavilion of Ariadne (1630) shows one of the sculptures which Velázquez had been interested in drawing. It is relatively small, and as the detail below confirms, has been executed in a very sketchy manner, with thinned paint which has subsequently abraded from patches of the surface. The columns and arches are quickly formed, and the details of the two figures in the foreground are made from a series of quick brushstrokes, some with thicker paint.

The second landscape to have survived is Villa Medici in Rome, Two Men at the Entrance of a Cave (1630), which is the better-preserved. This shows the entrance to a grotto, which is thought to have been undergoing repair at the time, and is therefore boarded shut. The detail below again shows evidence that Velázquez was working quickly to produce a sketch.

In 1675, Joachim Sandrart claimed the he and Claude Lorrain had also painted landscape sketches en plein air during the 1630s, but no trace of those works has ever been found. These two small and quite modest landscapes thus remain the earliest such works of their kind, major milestones in the history of painting in Europe.

Soon after his return from Italy, by January 1631, Velázquez painted what was then quite a popular motif, in this Sibyl from 1630-31. Sibyls were prophetesses in classical times, and during the growth of the early Christian church somehow became mixed up in prophecies of the coming of Christ. By the time of the Renaissance, it was believed that ten or twelve Sibyls had foretold the birth and ministry of Christ, and they were quite widely depicted in art. I will look at this in more detail next weekend.

Velázquez has painted a portrait of a woman who conforms to the common pattern of a Sibyl: she is modestly dressed in exotic robes, looks earnestly into the distance, and holds a writing tablet (although it is empty). Her hair is bound up in a headdress, although not completely covered as in some other depictions.

Another suggestion is that this is a portrait of his wife Juana, who would have been about 30 at the time.

Velázquez was back in court.

References

Wikipedia

Jonathan Brown and Carmen Garrido (1998) Velázquez, the Technique of Genius, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 10124 9.
José López-Rey and Odile Delenda (2014) Velázquez The Complete Works, Taschen and the Wildenstein Institute. ISBN 978 3 8365 5016 1.

Some landscape artists created truly wonderful paintings which have now been all but forgotten. Today, I will look at the few works that I can find by the Austrian Emilie Mediz-Pelikan (1861–1908). Tomorrow I will look at a slightly earlier landscape painter from Austria, Theodor Hörmann von Hörbach, and on Friday at Fritz von Uhde, who was once known as Germany’s leading Impressionist.

Emilie Pelikan was born in Upper Austria in 1862, and went to assist and then be taught by Albert Zimmermann in Salzburg. When he went to Munich in the 1880s, she accompanied him, but he died there in 1888.

Her early paintings, such as Wooded Bank by the Brook, a view of the countryside near Brannenburg in Bavaria from 1886, were traditional and influenced largely by Zimmermann.

Heron at the Wooded Bergsee was probably painted around this time too. It’s unclear whether this refers to one of the lakes known as Bergsee or, perhaps, more generically to this lake in the mountains.

After Zimmermann’s death, Pelikan lived in the artists’ colony at Dachau, when it was a small country town (long before the Nazis built a concentration camp there), and around 1890 moved to Paris, from where she went to another colony on the North Sea coast, in the Belgian town of Knokke. Her first solo exhibition in 1890 met with a favourable critical reception, but little impact on her career.

Some of her paintings became higher in chroma following her exposure to Impressionism in France. She painted this clump of Sea Buckthorn at Knokke in Belgium in 1890.

Her broader landscapes, though, were looser and more muted, such as this Dune Landscape in the Evening, also painted at Knokke in 1890.

Although undated, I suspect that this Sunset was painted at about this time, and shows her extending into less conventional colours.

In 1891, she married the painter Karl Mediz, becoming Emilie Mediz-Pelikan. They tried to establish themselves in Vienna, then moved to Krems an der Donau in (northern) Lower Austria, on the river Danube. They finally settled in Dresden in 1894, travelling to the Tyrol, Italy and the Mediterranean coast to paint there when they could.

Painted in pastel in 1899, her Gschloß (‘castle’) shows a strange rocky hill from an almost alien landscape.

Flowering Chestnuts from 1900 is now perhaps her best-known, or least-forgotten, painting, with its contrasting rhythm in the flowers and the fine whorls of the clouds. Two small groups of people at the water’s edge provide subtle colour contrast.

She painted this View from the Dürnstein Ruins over the Danube Valley in about 1900 too. In the foreground are the ruins of Dürnstein Castle, near Krems, with the River Danube below, meandering tightly from the top. The castle was built in the early twelfth century, and King Richard I of England was held prisoner there in 1192-93. It was abandoned in 1679.

Mediz-Pelikan’s breakthrough finally came with two exhibitions around the turn of the century: the first exhibition of the Vienna Secession in 1898, where she and her husband showed three works, and at an international exhibition in Dresden in 1901.

This unusual View of Lacroma from 1902 was perhaps painted on a rock promontory of the island of Lokrum, just off Dubrovnik in Croatia. Its supernatural appearance suggests the development of symbolism in her work.

She painted this wintry scene at Berchtesgaden in 1903 using pastels, an unusual choice of medium for a snowscape with such fine detail.

I have images of three paintings of hers for which I am unable to even suggest a date, although I suspect that they were completed after 1890.

Wisteria, Fountain and Poplar Trees has a definite look of symbolism, with its ghostly purple wisteria bush, water fountain, and clump of poplar trunks.

At the Park Wall appears to be a quick oil sketch of some autumn vegetation, which could perhaps date from earlier, when she was in France or Belgium around 1890.

View of Villa Cipressi, Varenna, Lake Como has been attributed to her, and was perhaps painted in more Impressionist style when she and her husband travelled to Italy together.

In March 1908, when in Dresden, Emilie Mediz-Pelikan died suddenly from heart failure, at the age of only 47.

Most of her work fell into the hands of a single heir, who refused any exhibition of it, and after their death those paintings passed to the East German state, where many seemingly vanished. Her work is finally, more than a century after her death, being rediscovered.

Impressionism reached across the whole world, as far as Japan and Australia, but I can’t think of many Austrian Impressionists. One of the few – perhaps the only one – was Theodor von Hörmann von Hörbach (1840–1895).

He didn’t paint seriously until quite late in life: he served his younger years in the Austrian Army, seeing action in the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859, then the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. After those, when he was 33, he started studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, alongside those more than ten years junior.

From 1875 to 1884, he taught drawing and fencing at a military high school in north-east Austria.

His paintings from this period include some wonderfully sketchy plein air views, such as this Southern Landscape from 1878-79, which appears to have been painted in southern Europe, perhaps in Italy or even Spain.

Although undated, I suspect that this Mountain Slope with Trees also comes from early in his career.

Around 1883, he seems to have travelled to Hungary, where he painted this fine Hungarian Landscape (1883).

Hungarian Farmhouses may also have been painted at around this time.

In 1884, at the age of 43, he married, retired from the Army, and became a full-time artist. A couple of years later, he moved to Paris, where he lived until 1890. I have been unable to find any dated works of his from this period, but suspect that the next two paintings were made in those years when he came into contact with Impressionist art in Paris.

A Summer Day near Samois was painted, I think, close to the town of Samois-sur-Seine, near Fontainebleau. His treatment of the long grass is loosely rhythmic, and the painting light in tone.

In the Tuileries shows these famous gardens in the centre of Paris, in what is clearly a brisk plein air sketch made in the late summer or early autumn. The child in the foreground is playing with a hoop.

Von Hörmann apparently visited the Channel Isles of Jersey and Guernsey, but I have been unable to locate images of the paintings he made of them. Then in 1890, he moved back to what was then Znaim, now the South Moravian town of Znojmo in the Czech Republic near the Austrian border.

A Farmhouse was probably painted out in the countryside near there.

Most of his surviving paintings are small sketches, but there are some larger, more finished paintings such as Girl in Poppies from about 1892. The countryside shown here consists of small terraced fields on a steep hillside, probably not far from his home in Znaim.

Znaim in the Snow II is another finely detailed painting from about 1892, and shows the steep streets of the town being used by children for sledging on a thin covering of packed snow.

Near Znaim – Inn with Outbuildings Surrounded by Fields and Meadows is another view from this period, almost certainly painted in front of the motif. The figures on the road at the upper left seem disproportionately large in comparison with the nearer farmhouse.

Summer in the Garden, Znaim, from about 1893, must be one of his finest works. It is brilliantly lit and detailed without losing its painterliness. On the table are the remains of a meal, with an abandoned hat and white parasol, begging the question as to who was there just a moment ago.

Sainfoin Field at Znaim II also from about 1893 shows a crop now little-known: sainfoin, a chalk-loving forage crop which used to be important for working horses. This was a very quick oil sketch.

In 1893, von Hörmann moved to Vienna, where he joined the Artists’ Society (Künstlerhaus) shortly before the Vienna Secession. Thirty-eight of his paintings were exhibited that year in Vienna.

Seen amid poppies of more traditional colour, his Kneeling Farmer’s Wife with a Sickle is another of his finest works. It is unusual in that it is dominated by a figure, and not a pure landscape. The woman also looks away, towards two others standing in the distance, who are also facing away from the viewer. It suggests a narrative, which never resolves.

Also painted in flatter land, perhaps near Vienna, is this Avenue of Trees by a Stream from about 1893.

Von Hörmann continued to travel from his home in Vienna, visiting Sicily and Venice in 1894. In July 1895, he had reached the southern city of Graz in Austria when returning from Italy when he died, at the age of 54, after a full-time career of just over a decade. He was remembered in an exhibition of 235 of his paintings, most of which were auctioned to establish a foundation for young artists.

Two hundred years ago today, the major British art critic and writer John Ruskin was born in London. Although Ruskin appears to have painted only in watercolour, and for his own ends, this article takes a look at some of his paintings and his role as a major influence on British painting.

Ruskin was born into an affluent family, and travelled widely in the UK and Europe when still a child. In 1836, he started studies in Classics (‘Greats’) at Christ Church College in Oxford University, but his health was poor and academic achievements limited; he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1839, at his third attempt. In 1842, he was awarded a rare “honorary double fourth-class” degree.

He published his first substantial writing on painting the following year, which was to become the first volume of his highly influential series Modern Painters. This appeared anonymously as the work of “a graduate of Oxford”, and its main purpose was to extol the aesthetics of current artists, particularly JMW Turner, as being comparable to those of the Old Masters. Its initial reception was mixed, but the support of prominent literary figures such as Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell ensured Ruskin’s success.

Across Europe, the nineteenth century saw a change in influence over art. Previously major external influences over painting were patrons and purchasers, and other painters through their guilds and societies. In the nineteenth century, people who were neither professional artists, nor those funding an artist, started to become important determinants of a painter’s career and success.

When the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) formed in 1848, while its ideals were largely original, its emphasis on painting only from nature, and depicting nature in ‘true’ detail, were greatly influenced by Ruskin’s writing, although members of the PRB did not meet Ruskin for some time later. By that time, Ruskin had already criticised some of the early Pre-Raphaelite paintings. He sprung to their defence in 1851, writing to The Times newspaper in their support.

Ruskin then became embroiled in the tumultuous personal lives of the members of the PRB – his own wife divorced him to marry John Millais – and from 1855 wrote an annual review of the key British exhibition at the Royal Academy. His opinions expressed in the latter made and destroyed reputations and careers. Although he gave considerable financial and critical support to several members of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, that proved as capricious as his critical opinions.

Apparently for the first time in the history of art, a single critic who was not an experienced and knowledgeable practitioner in painting, was largely directing an avant garde movement. It would be grossly unfair, though, to dismiss Ruskin as not being an artist himself. He painted, and painted rather well.

This view of his old college Christ Church from St. Aldate’s, Oxford painted in 1842 shows clear influence from Turner.

Fragment of the Alps made in 1854-56 is another of his more complete paintings. Sadly, many of his watercolours are sketches clearly intended as personal records rather than for others to view and read.

Ruskin painted extensively during his travels, and undertook summer painting campaigns in the Alps. The Aiguille Blaitière from about 1856 is one of the more complete of those works.

He was an expert draftsman, as demonstrated in this view of Abbeville: Church of St Wulfran from the River from 1868. Perhaps his greatest achievements in visual art were the documentation of many of the architectural details of Venice. His writings and campaign to preserve those buildings helped rescue the city from centuries of neglect.

However, Ruskin’s influence on British landscape painting was almost disastrous, largely because of his limited insight into the practicalities of painting. At that time, there was considerable experience in the practical issues involved in painting en plein air using oil paints, but most of that had been gained in the warmer and more stable weather of the Roman Campagna. None of the PRB, nor Ruskin, had any experience of that, nor did they seek the advice and guidance of those who did.

Painters who had undergone classical training, such as Frederic, Lord Leighton, and Corot in France, had that experience, although Leighton didn’t return to Britain until 1859. Leighton continued to paint plein air oil sketches through his career. However, as they followed the classical tradition, as had Constable’s, they did not meet Ruskin’s precepts and the PRB’s derived principles for Pre-Raphaelite landscape painting.

Hunt’s Our English Coasts, 1852 remains one of the few Pre-Raphaelite landscapes to have won Ruskin’s sustained praise, and favourable comparison with the latter’s favourite works by Turner.

Thomas Seddon felt that Ruskin had been particularly pleased with this painting of Jerusalem and the Valley of Jehoshaphat from the Hill of Evil Counsel when he saw it in 1855, but by 1857 Ruskin was damning it with faint praise, implicitly putting Seddon in the ranks of “the prosaic Pre-Raphaelites”. Seddon had already died of dysentery in Cairo late in 1855.

John Brett’s Val d’Aosta (1858) was painted in close collaboration with Ruskin, and later Ruskin asked Brett to give him “some lessons in permanent, straight-forward oil painting.” Ruskin’s Academy Notes on the finished painting, when it was exhibited in 1859, begin with enthusiastic praise, before he started to find fault:
A notable picture truly; a possession of much within a few feet square. Yet not, in the strong, essential meaning of the word, a noble picture. It has a strange fault, considering the school to which it belongs — it seems to me to be wholly emotionless. I cannot find from it that the painter loved, or feared, anything in all that wonderful piece of the world.
(John Ruskin, Academy Notes, 1859, in Cook ET & Wedderburn A (eds) The Works of John Ruskin, vol 14, pp 234-8.)

When Brett’s extraordinary Florence from Bellosguardo was rejected by the Royal Academy in 1863, John Ruskin was out of the country, and of all Brett’s friends and associates, responded most weakly, urging Brett to make studies in black and white, preferably using pen and ink.

The fundamental problem for the Pre-Raphaelite landscape artist was the near-impossibility of the task posed by Ruskin, I am sure quite unwittingly. Painting substantial canvases in fine detail en plein air using oil paint is extremely time-consuming. In the more equitable and stable weather of the Mediterranean and Middle East, each painting is likely to take two months or more; in the more changeable climate of the British Isles, even a single summer may be insufficient.

Because of the protracted periods required, the artist cannot capture consistent details. During the course of painting, much of the motif will have changed substantially, and the painting ends up as a composite of appearance over time.

Unless a painter has a generous patron, such investment of time in a single work is also commercially very risky. As each of the Pre-Raphaelite landscape painters discovered, when you can only paint two or three significant works per year, it is very hard to pursue painting as a profession.

It is no small surprise, therefore, that most of those who painted landscapes in Pre-Raphaelite style did so for a short and relatively unproductive period, before moving on to less ambitious work. So by about 1870, after less than 25 years, the Pre-Raphaelite landscape was gone. Having started the century with two of the greatest landscape painters in Europe, Constable and Turner, by 1870 British landscape painting was all but dead.

Compare this with the Impressionists over in France, who defied critics rather than being directed by them, built upon established traditions of painting, and were able to paint many thousands of works, and eventually achieve popularity and financial security.

By comparison, Pre-Raphaelite landscape painting was bold, innovative, resulted in some paintings of extraordinary beauty and impressive technical achievement, but it was utterly impractical for anyone apart from the most obsessive amateur.

John Ruskin died on 20 January 1900. Many of his achievements – including his campaign to save Venice – endure. But his effect on British painting during the latter half of the nineteenth century was a mixed blessing, and British landscape painting didn’t really recover from Ruskinisation until well after Ruskin’s death.

References

Wikipedia.
PDF texts of all his writings at the University of Lancaster’s Ruskin Library.

Barringer T (2012) Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, revised edn, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 17733 6.
Newall C (2012) Review of Payne (2010), Burlington Mag. 154, July 2012, pp 498-499.
Payne C (2010) John Brett: Pre-Raphaelite Landscape Painter, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 16575 3.
Prettejohn E (2000) The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites, Tate Publishing. ISBN 978 1 854 37726 5.
Staley A (2001) The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape, 2nd edn, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 08408 5.