Marianne Preindlsberger (1855-1927), better known under her married name of Marianne Stokes, was an accomplished painter before she met her husband Adrian Stokes, covered in the previous article.

She was born in Graz, Austria, and in about 1870 studied at the Graz Drawing Academy, before moving to Munich in 1874 to study painting under Gabriel von Hackl, Otto Seitz, and others. She appears to have met Johann Strauss, who dedicated a polka-mazurka, Licht und Schatten (Light and Shadow), to her in 1875.

Sweet Dreams (1875) is a good example of her early paintings, and makes Strauss’s point too: light and shadow indeed.

In The Milk Pot (before 1884) her style has become considerably more painterly, away from the face and hands of this little child.

In 1880, she moved to Paris, where she attended several academies, including the Académie Colarossi, where she won a silver medal in 1882. She painted mainly landscapes and rustic genre scenes, under the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage, but slowly her interests changed to mediaeval romantic and religious themes.

In 1881, she made friends with the Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck, and went with her to the artists’ colony at Pont-Aven in Brittany, in 1883. There she met Adrian Stokes. Later that year she had her first painting accepted for the Salon. The following year, she married Adrian Stokes in Graz, later travelling and staying for several months in Capri.

Homeless (On the Way to the Fields) (1885) is an example of her rural naturalism, under the influence of Bastien-Lepage and Millet, at this time in her career. It parallels the rural paintings of George Clausen at that time.

The Stokeses spent the summer seasons with the group of Danish Impressionists at Skagen in Denmark, in 1885 and 1886, where they became close friends of the Anchers. In 1885, she had her first painting accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy in London.

They returned to England in 1886, where they became early members of the New English Art Club in 1887, and travelled to Italy. They settled near St Ives in Cornwall in 1887, where they became active members of its developing artists’ colony, Marianne being a member of the Newlyn School.

During the late 1880s she moved on from rural naturalism, as shown in her The Frog Prince (c 1890), which is taken from the Brothers Grimm fairy tale of a frog who tranforms into a prince.

For a while, she also painted in Impressionist style, as seen in her In the Meadow (In a Field of Buttercups) (c 1890).

In 1890, she exhibited in Munich, winning a gold medal, and in 1893 she won another gold medal for her paintings shown at the Chicago World Fair.

Her mature work consisted of portraits, some of which are now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, and religious works, which became more strongly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Among the latter is her Angels Entertaining the Holy Child (1893).

She started to paint in tempera from about 1895, and progressively abandoned oils, becoming a member of the Society of Painters in Tempera in 1905.

Her overtly Pre-Raphaelite The Queen and the Page (1896) was engraved by Franz Hanfstaengl, making her first print.

Continuing with a Pre-Raphaelite interest in the mediaeval, her Aucassin & Nicolette (1898) shows the romance between a knight, son of Count Garin of Beaucaire, and a Saracen maiden. This was told in an anonymous 12th or 13th century French chantefable (sung story). She probably learned of this story from a translation which was published in 1887, or a plot summary in an anthology of 1896.

Among her most beautiful paintings in tempera are several classical versions of the Madonna and Child. This, from 1905, is a good example.

Her Madonna and Child with Symbols (c 1905) was set in an elaborate devotional Spanish frame.

In 1908, she helped design and make banners for the Women Suffrage Procession to the Albert Hall.

In 1905, the couple made their first visit to Hungary, returning in 1907 and 1908. Their many paintings from these travels were exhibited from 1907 onwards, and in late October 1909, their book (see references) was published by A & C Black. The following have been taken from that: although their quality is more limited than I would like, they form a unique record of the country deep into the Austro-Hungarian Empire before it fell apart as a result of the First World War. Here is fine art as an ethnographic record, twenty-five years before practical colour photography.

There are many more of their paintings included in their book; I have given all their dates as 1909 in the absence of any better information, although some may well have been completed as early as 1905.

Her Death and the Maiden (1908) is reminiscent of Horace Vernet’s The Angel of Death (1851), a sadly popular theme at the time.

In 1912, she designed a tapestry for (William) Morris and Company, which was exhibited across Europe.

During the couple’s travels, they had become friends with John Singer Sargent, with whom they started to travel and paint. At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, they were travelling with Sargent in Austria, which was then at war with Great Britain. The group was forbidden from leaving Austria, but by mid December had managed to reach Switzerland.

Conclusions

Were it not for one excellent recent account of their lives and works, by Magdalen Evans (see below), the Stokeses would have almost vanished now, as a result of their neglect during the rest of the twentieth century.

Their paintings have all but disappeared too: Adrian’s into provincial galleries across the UK, which seem intent on hiding them from the public (and don’t even make images of them freely available), and Marianne’s largely into private collections. Neither has a catalog raisonné, and they are barely mentioned in the literature.

Marianne Stokes was probably the most accomplished woman painter after the Impressionists, yet she is omitted from most accounts of women artists. She mastered a range of styles and media, and painted across many different genres, including her unique record of Slovak and other peoples of Hungary.

Adrian Stokes was perhaps less versatile than his wife, but his landscapes were distinctive in their treatment of light and colour, and he played an important role in the development of St Ives as a centre for art.

Don’t their paintings deserve better than the oblivion of neglect?

References

Wikipedia

Evans, M (2009) Utmost Fidelity, The Painting Lives of Marianne and Adrian Stokes, Sansom & Company. ISBN 978 1 9045 3785 4.
Stokes, A & M (1909) Hungary, Painted by Adrian & Marianne Stokes, Adam and Charles Black, London. Available to download from https://archive.org/details/hungary00stok

When discussing Lovis Corinth’s Ariadne on Naxos, I glibly asserted that previous monoscenic approaches were neither strong in a narrative sense, nor complete. Given that the best-known of those is a Titian, this article surveys other paintings which show that same story.

The story

Ariadne, the daughter of Minos the King of Crete, helped Theseus, son of King Aegeus, to kill the Minotaur. She had fallen in love with him at first sight, and when he had found his way back out of the labyrinth, the couple eloped to the barren island of Naxos.

Once there, Theseus had tired of her, and abandoned her, leaving her with her attendant nymphs Naiad, Dryad, and Echo for company. She then longed for death, and when Dionysus (Roman Bacchus) arrived, she married him, and bore him many children.

Analysis

There are two distinct moments when Ariadne’s fortune changes: it swings from good to bad when she discovers that Theseus has abandoned her, and it swings back from bad to good when Dionysus turns up and marries her. Neither is particularly associated with the revelation of any new knowledge or information, but they both appear to be capable of making strong narrative in a painting.

The difficulty with depicting the story in a single painting is that it consists of two events which necessarily take place at separate times.

The painter can therefore opt to show Theseus departing, but then somehow needs to cue the forthcoming arrival of Dionysus, or they can opt to show Dionysus arriving, leaving the problem of cueing the previous departure of Theseus. Using a ship departing/arriving as either cue is an obvious solution, but is insufficiently explicit to make clear the resulting change in fortune.

It is therefore surprising that no major painter appears to have made a pair of paintings, the first showing Ariadne wishing for death as Theseus departs, and the second showing Ariadne’s joy at the arrival of Dionysus.

There is also more to the original story than the vicissitudes of human love and relationships. Theseus needed Ariadne to enable him to kill the Minotaur and escape from the labyrinth; once she had enabled that, he had no need for her, and could abandon her on Naxos. An alternative version of the myth claims that Athena told Theseus to leave Naxos; he went on to be King of Athens and a founder of the Greek civilisation. Dionysus, on the other hand, took pity on Ariadne in her grief, and married her to make her happy again.

These question our motives, faithfulness to others, and perhaps to our (artistic) principles. In addition to depicting the narrative, a masterly painting would surely tackle those issues too.

Ariadne alone

A few painters have attempted to tell this story in a painting containing just the figure of Ariadne.

Angelica Kauffman’s Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus (1774) shows the grief-stricken Ariadne, with Theseus’ ship sailing off into the half-light. Strong in facial expression and body language, there is no reference to Dionysus, leaving the story incomplete. Neither is there any deeper meaning apparent. That said, Ariadne’s robes are wonderfully painterly and diaphanous.

William Etty’s Ariadne (probably about 1820) shows the back and buttocks of an essentially naked Ariadne, her face hidden from the viewer. It is possible that there may once have been a ship sailing off to the right, but there is no longer any trace of that. Etty has taken care to paint a wonderfully detailed and spiky shell in the foreground, but its significance is as elusive as any narrative content. I am not sure why this has become known as Ariadne, or whether it was Etty’s intent to even link it to the story.

John William Waterhouse’s Ariadne (1898) is another puzzle. Ariadne, one breast peeking from her rich red robes, lies back in languor, apparently asleep, two leopards or cheetahs resting by her. In the distance, Theseus’ ship has just sailed. There is no sign of any grief on Ariadne’s part. Although leopards are associated with Dionysus, they cannot be heralds of his imminent arrival.

It is possible that Waterhouse has chosen to show us the moments before Ariadne wakes to discover Theseus has gone, and the red robes could tell us that they have consummated their relationship, but there is nothing to indicate her forthcoming grief, or later elation with Dionysus. As with Etty, Waterhouse appears not to have engaged with the story given in the myth, nor any deeper meaning.

Ariadne plus one

With one additional figure, it should be easier to tell the story more eloquently.

Guido Reni’s Bacchus and Ariadne (c 1619-20) is a wonderful painting in exceptional condition for its age. It shows Ariadne still looking glum-struck, looking up to the heavens, and away from Dionysus, who is looking at her intently. Both the figures are almost nude, and Ariadne is holding her right hand out towards Dionysus in a gesture whose meaning is not clear (to me, at least). There are several white sails on the horizon, but nothing to associate them with the story, or with Theseus. Beautiful though this painting is, its narrative appears obscure.

Eugène Delacroix’s Autumn – Bacchus and Ariadne (1856-63) is one of a group of four allegorical works which were commissioned by the industrialist Frederick Hartmann, hence known as Hartmann’s Four Seasons. For autumn, Delacroix has chosen to show Ariadne, looking full of woe and the inertia of depression, being pulled up by one arm, by Dionysus, identified by his thyrsus (staff) and chariot drawn by big cats. Above the couple is a putto bringing out a garland to tell us that love is in the making, and a large flagon is shown on the ground to the right, presumably from her previous union with Theseus.

There is a pile of what appears to be armour in the foreground, which may be a reference to Theseus, although it would seem implausible that he would have stolen away without his armour and sword. Sadly Delacroix died before these paintings were completed, so we can only speculate as to what he intended. However, he does seem to be getting far closer to depicting a complete story.

Crowds

If two figures are not sufficient, then the solution might be to go for more, at the risk of confusing the viewer.

One of the earliest paintings to show this story is this fresco Dionysus and Ariadne found in the ruins of Pompeii. Well over a millenium before Alberti framed his rules for narrative in paintings, its painter shows Ariadne, recumbent against a nymph’s shoulder and looking grief-stricken, being surprised by a whole party accompanying Dionysus.

A winged putto (pre-Christian) is drawing Ariadne’s robes from her, presumably telling Dionysus that she is his for the asking. Those with Dionysus are hard to identify, but presumably include at least one bacchante, and an elderly and drunken Silenius who is being helped up by an African.

This rather later mosaic Bacchus and Ariadne in Sabratha, Libya, places the happy couple in Dionysus’ chariot, being drawn by a pair of big cats, with a bacchante in tow. The fourth figure, at the right, is probably also one of Dionysus’ retinue, rather than a link to Theseus and his previous departure.

Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-3) is probably the most famous painting of this myth, and another beautiful work. In the distance, at the left edge, Theseus’ ship is shown sailing away, with Ariadne apparently waving towards it, as Dionysus arrives and leaps out of his chariot. Above Ariadne in the sky is the Corona Borealis, or ‘northern crown’, a minor constellation associated with Ariadne. Behind her is a large drinking vessel on a screwed-up sheet, presumably the remains of the previous night’s celebrations with Theseus.

Dionysus comes with his whole party: his chariot is drawn by a pair of cheetahs, a drunken and bearded Silenius is swathed in serpents, and there are two bacchantes (maenads) and satyrs bearing the body parts of a deer.

This is one of the most complete accounts of the story, which only lacks clues to Ariadne’s grief in response to Theseus’ departure; her face is not sufficiently visible here for Titian to attempt to show any meaningful expression.

Annibale Carracci’s Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne (1597-1602) is a marvellous fresco on a ceiling in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. It shows a late phase of the happy union of Ariadne with Dionysus, complete with wedding festivities, but omits any reference to her previous grief, or even to Theseus.

The left side is centred on Ariadne, being crowned by a winged putto, and Dionysus, sat in his chariot complete with thyrsus (staff) and drawn by big cats. On the right side, the celebrations appear to be getting out of hand, and have been taken over by bacchantic revels. Figures in that group include the drunked and bearded Silenius, bacchantes with bared breasts, satyrs, and serving putti.

Sebastiano Ricci’s Bacchus and Ariadne (c 1713) gives a visible account of the discovery of a sleeping Ariadne by Dionysus, but contains subtle references to Theseus too.

Ariadne is still asleep, her left arm caressing the vacant area where Theseus must have been, and a large drinking vessel at the left edge of the painting. In the distance, just to the right of centre, is a man, presumably Theseus, about to steal away.

Dionysus, here with his classically ambivalent gender, has just arrived and stumbled across Ariadne. A bacchante and satyr point her out to him, and sundry putti and another bacchante make up the group. Dionysus holds his thyrsus (staff) in his left hand, and there is a big cat at his feet. As with Titian’s painting, the only element from the story which is lacking is any portrayal of Ariadne’s grief. Because Ricci has collapsed the two outer sections of the story in to overlap, there isn’t really any room for that.

Jean François de Troy’s Ariadne on Naxos (1725) shows Ariadne and Dionysus swooning with love for one another. Dionysus is shown in a leopard-skin, holding his thyrsus (staff) in his right hand. Plentiful putti are playing on chained bunches of grapes, and a satyr is trying to bring order in the left foreground.

The small window showing the background, on the left, is more revealing still. Look past a copulating bacchante-satyr couple, and other revellers, and there is Theseus’ ship sailing away from the island. Yet again there are no signs of Ariadne’s earlier grief.

Maurice Denis’ Bacchus and Ariadne (1907) is a radically modern treatment, which could be mistaken for a recreational beach scene at a Mediterranean resort. Buried in there, though, are some more traditional references.

Just to the right of centre, Dionysus stands behind Ariadne, helping to hold a red and white striped cloak or sheet on her left shoulder. Ariadne’s three attendant nymphs appear to be resting on the rocks at the left. Various bacchantes and other figures are riding black horses down in the water at the right, one of them clutching the thyrsus (staff). There is no sign of Silenius, a chariot, or big cats, and a yacht at the right edge may not have anything to do with the narrative.

Denis does not appear to include any cues to Ariadne’s earlier grief, nor to the events with Theseus.

I have already described Lovis Corinth’s Ariadne on Naxos (1913) and its composite scenic structure. By including Ariadne reclining on Theseus and the arrival of Dionysus with all his trappings, he gives a full account of the whole story in a single painting.

Conclusions

Each of the monoscenic treatments described above has lost some of the original narrative, which has been retained in Corinth’s composite approach.

In the case of Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-3), and Ricci’s Bacchus and Ariadne (c 1713), the losses are small, and not too damaging to the narrative. The Titian is the easier to read, as some of Ricci’s cues are quite subtle, assuming of course that I have read them correctly.

It is much harder to gauge whether any of these paintings, even Corinth’s, go deeper and use the story to consider the concept of faithfulness. This is claimed as a reading of Corinth’s painting, but I am not sure whether anyone has seen it in Titian’s or Ricci’s. Perhaps reading such deeper meanings is inherently more difficult in painted narratives.

References

Wikipedia on Ariadne.

Ariadne auf Naxos, opera by Richard Strauss – Wikipedia on the opera.

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

During the Renaissance, Venice was ideally situated for outbreaks of infectious disease. A major seaport which traded with most of the known world, it was densely populated, and in the summer the warm waters in the lagoon and canals, and its high population of rats, were perfect reservoirs. Every so often, a fresh wave of plague would sweep through the city, and a substantial proportion of its inhabitants would be stolen away to die on one of its special plague islands.

In the summer of 1510, one victim who was taken to the island of Lazzareto Nuovo, and died there shortly afterwards, was Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco, a young painter better known as Giorgione. His life and works are still the subject of mystery and speculation, but in his thirty-two or thirty-three years of life, he had become one of the most accomplished and celebrated artists in history.

The artist

Giorgione was born inland from Venice, in the small town of Castelfranco Veneto, in 1477 or 1478. (One reason for uncertainty in many of these dates is that the Venetian year started on 1 March, so knowing only his year of birth (following Venetian date conventions) could put it anywhere between 1 March 1477 and 28 February 1478.)

He was known to have been commissioned to paint portraits in 1500, and for an altarpiece in the cathedral of his home town in 1504. In 1507-8 there are records of him being involved in the painting of frescoes for the exterior of a building in Venice. Vasari’s account of his life claims that Giorgione met Leonardo da Vinci when the latter visited Venice in 1500 (or 1499). We also know that Giorgione was dead by October 1510.

Beyond those few dates, we know almost nothing factual about his life.

A later biographer (Ridolfi) stated that both Giorgione and Titian were pupils of Giovanni Bellini (c 1430-1516), and Vasari stated that Titian was in turn a pupil of Giorgione. All three appear to have known one another well, although whether there were simple master-pupil relationships is much less clear.

The paintings

His only painting which is signed and dated is the portrait of ‘Laura’ from 1506. A small core of his surviving works match those described in the notes, between 1525 and 1543, of the Venetian collector Marcantonio Michiel. Vasari’s attributions are confusing, and changed across the different editions of his book. Over the years, art historians and connoisseurs have attributed more than a hundred paintings to Giorgione, but current experts are only generally agreed over some forty.

This article will cover most of those currently considered to be painted by Giorgione before 1505; the next and final article on his work will cover those from 1505 to his death.

Trial of Moses (c 1496-9) shows the infant Moses, held by a woman dressed in black robes, about to take and put a hot coal in his mouth. Two pages offer the infant bowls, one containing hot coals, the other gold coins. Presiding over this is the Pharaoh, seated on his throne, who has turned to an old scribe with a suitably luxuriant beard. The scribe had proposed that Moses should be killed for having thrown down the Pharaoh’s crown when it was tried on his head, leading to this trial by fire.

This story is not based on any Biblical account, but the apocryphal manuscript Antiquities of the Jews, by Flavius Josephus, from the first century CE. The painting is a pendant to Giorgione’s Judgement of Solomon. Various proposals have been made for collaborators, but none seems to have gained much support.

The landscape shown behind the gathering in the foreground is very naturalistic and innovative for its time, particularly in the Southern Renaissance. The whole painting is an astonishing achievement if it is dated correctly, putting its creator’s age between 19 and 22 years.

Portrait of a Young Man (‘Giustiniani Portrait’) (c 1497-9) is one of the few unanimously-agreed portraits painted by Giorgione, out of many which have been attributed. The identity of the sitter is unknown. It is also agreed that it is an early portrait, and a remarkable achievement by a 20 to 22 year old. Unfortunately the letters V V were added in the 1800s, during a restoration.

Boy with an Arrow (c 1500) is another brilliant portrait, which appears one of the more soundly attributed to Giorgione, according to Michiel’s account from 1531. His subtle modelling of this face may reflect what he learned from his meeting with Leonardo da Vinci in 1499 or 1500.

The Three Ages of Man (c 1500) is usually interpreted as an allegory, in which the young boy’s musical training by the older men is seen as an attempt towards a more universal harmony. The attribution of this painting remains controversial, as does its date. The faces are very lifelike and expressive, and it is clearly from the hand of a master.

Virgin and Child with Saint Nicasius and Saint Francis of Assisi (‘Castelfranco Altarpiece’) (c 1500) is not only one of the most reliable attributions, but its date is also fairly secure. It is one of Giorgione’s most brilliant paintings, combining a fine depiction of the Virgin and Christ child with two wonderful saintly figures – Nicasius’ armour is spectacular – and an innovative naturalist landscape. The buildings at the upper left are meticulously painted, and there is excellent aerial perspective at the upper right. At this time, Giorgione was still only 23.

Virgin and Child in a Landscape (1500-05) has become more accepted as one of Giorgione’s works in recent years, although the range of dates proposed is wide, from 1495 to 1507. Here the Virgin, supporting the infant Christ’s head in her right hand, is sat on a rock overlooking a small village. The landscape is detailed, and shows good aerial perspective where it becomes mountainous in the distance.

The Virgin and Child (‘The Tallard Madonna’) (c 1500-05) is a more controversial attribution. Its first documented owner, the Duc de Tallard (hence its nickname), claimed it as a Giorgione, but ever since that first public appearance in 1756, opinion has been divided.

It shows the Virgin reading a book, with the infant Christ sat in front of her. The view through the window is even more fascinating, as it shows the Campanile and Palazzo Ducale by Piazza San Marco in Venice. It is one of the works featured here in the history in paintings of that square.

Knight and Groom (c 1502) is also a more doubtful attribution, although some have linked its black armour with that shown on Saint Nicasius in the Castelfranco Altarpiece above. The modelling of the two faces is not in keeping with earlier works by Giorgione, but the superb detail in the armour, dress, and weapons suggests a masterly hand. Whoever did paint this, it may represent Bishop Jacopo Pesaro on the eve of his departure for the 1502 naval battle between Venice and the Turks, a subject which overlaps with a painting known to be by Titian.

Judith (c 1504) seems to have become one of the more secure attributions, and likely to date between 1500 and 1504. It is an unusual and brilliantly painted full-length portrait of the Biblical Judith, with her left foot resting on the severed head of Holofernes. Full details of that narrative are here.

This is another astonishing painting with a high degree of naturalism in both the figure and the surrounding setting and distant landscape.

The next article concludes by considering eleven paintings attributed to Giorgione from 1505 through to his untimely death in 1510.

References

Wikipedia

Facchinetti S & Galansino A (2016) In the Age of Giorgione, Royal Academy of Arts. ISBN 978 1 910350 26 3.

The first article in this two-part series covered Giorgione’s early paintings, up to 1504. This article covers those from 1505 to his tragically early death from plague in 1510.

The Tempest (c 1504-8) is one of the earliest ‘proper’ landscape paintings, and is well attested in Michiel’s notes from 1530. Its theme is one which will become familiar in the much later landscapes of Poussin and others, of an approaching storm. The sky is filled with inky dark clouds, and there is a bolt of lightning in the distance. The buildings of a small town back onto a little river, with a simple footbridge cutting the view in half.

The foreground is more enigmatic: on the right, a young infant is suckling from the breast of its almost naked mother, who sits on the bank of the river. She stares blankly at the viewer. On the left, a soldier stands bearing a staff against his right shoulder, looking across at the mother and child on the opposite bank. Trees frame the buildings and lightning in repoussoir, an extremely early and innovative use of this compositional device.

Three Philosophers (1504-8) was one of the earliest and most explicitly attested paintings in the notes of Michiel, from 1525, who stated that it had been completed by Sebastiano del Piombo (c 1485-1547), although recent convention is for Giorgione to be credited alone. He confirmed that the three figures are philosophers, which would include most of the sciences, and that the seated man is observing the sun’s rays. Michiel also considered that the rock was “so admirably faked”.

The Holy Family (c 1505) is sometimes considered with the Allendale Nativity and the Adoration of the Kings to form the ‘Allendale Group’, and thereby is either included or excluded in Giorgione’s works. Current opinion generally favours their attribution to his hand.

It shows Joseph, the infant Christ, and the Virgin Mary sat together. Whilst Joseph is seated on a symbolically incomplete low wall, Mary appears to be on a low rock just in front of the wall, inviting additional interpretation in terms of its symbolism. Although delicately painted, the distant landscape is small, and not as fine as those in other accepted works.

Portrait of a Young Woman (‘Laura’) (1506) is the only one of Giorgione’s paintings which bears an autographic inscription with a date:
On 1 June 1506 this was made by the hand of master Giorgio from Castelfranco, the colleague of master Vincenzo Catena, at the instigation of misser Giacomo.
Vincenzo Catena (or de Biagio) (c 1470-1531) is known largely from this inscription, and from a few paintings which have been attributed to him.

One of the finest portraits of the Italian Renaissance, it is believed to have been a bridal portrait intended to be seen in a domestic setting, hence the background of laurel foliage, and the right breast exposed from her fur jacket. It was also one of Giorgione’s earlier works to leave Italy, as it was bought and shipped to Britain to join the art collection of King Charles I in 1636.

The Adoration of the Kings (1506-7) is quite a conventional approach to this popular subject, with fine modelling of the figures, delightful highlights forming details, and rich colour. Sometimes considered in the ‘Allendale Group’, opinion has varied as to whether this should be attributed to Giorgione. Currently the consensus is that it should be.

The Adoration of the Shepherds (‘Allendale Nativity’) (1505-10) is an altogether more sophisticated and innovative painting, which should probably be attributed to Giorgione, according to current opinion. It shows two shepherds paying their respects to the newly-born Christ and his parents, with superb modelling of those figures.

Behind is an Italianate landscape with fine details and strong aerial perspective in the distant hills.

Nude (c 1508) is a fresco fragment which is believed to have been painted by Giorgione as part of the multi-artist façade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice, which was undertaken in 1508. Further research into this is being undertaken in Venice.

Self-portrait as David (c 1508) has been claimed as Giorgione’s only self-portrait. It appears in a 1650 engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar, with the addition of a severed head, presumably Goliath’s, as a portrait of the artist.

La Vecchia (The Old Woman) (c 1508-10) is a masterly portrait of an old woman who comes to life in its rich detail. The paper which she is holding bears the words Col Tempo – ‘with time’ – making it a reminder of ageing and the inexorable progress of time. This was first described in the late 1560s as depicting Giorgione’s mother, and has quite an extensive history following that, including spending a period with a cover portrait of a man, since lost.

Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus (c 1508-10) is generally accepted as having been left unfinished when Giorgione died, so was completed by Titian, who later went on to paint the remarkably similar Venus of Urbino (1538).

This woman – there is no evidence that it represents the classical goddess Venus – has her eyes closed in sleep, and the sheet next to her is screwed up, as if someone else has just got up from it. Behind her is an Italianate landscape with features common to other paintings attributed to Giorgione, rather than the indoor scene in Titian’s later work. According to Michiel’s notes from 1525, the landscape was finished by Titian, who also is recorded there as having completed cherubs. It is not clear why there are no cherubs to be found in the painting now.

Bust Portrait of a Courtesan, also known as Head of a Venetian Girl (c 1509) is a more controversial attribution which does not currently have a positive consensus. For the moment it might be better ascribed to Giorgione’s circle than himself.

Conclusions

Titian was in his early twenties when Giorgione died, so it is not possible to draw any firm conclusions on the influence that Giorgione may have had specifically over Titian’s work. This is made the more complex by the difficulty in distinguishing their paintings: many which have in the past been attributed to Giorgione are now being considered to have been painted, or at least completed, by Titian.

If most of these attributions are correct, Giorgione appears to have been a key innovator and central figure in the development of the Venetian style. His portraits have a refinement which breathes life into their faces. Among his best are the paintings with the strongest evidence for being his: ‘Laura’, La Vecchia, and the full-length Judith.

His development of secular genres such as landscape and the nude provided a foundation on which Titian, the Venetian school, and ultimately Poussin and Claude Lorrain were able to build. Here too there are several quite securely attested paintings which should dispel any doubt over his role.

For some, this is enriched by the mystery surrounding his tragically short career. Thankfully Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and others were able to develop from his brief burst of brilliance.

References

Wikipedia

Facchinetti S & Galansino A (2016) In the Age of Giorgione, Royal Academy of Arts. ISBN 978 1 910350 26 3.

European painted narratives have been dominated by stories from the classical Greek and Roman canons. Until the 1800s, very few narrative painters tackled myths from other cultures. One early specialist in Norse myths and history was Peter Nicolai Arbo (1831–1892).

Born in Drammen, Norway, he trained first in Copenhagen, then in the Düsseldorf Academy, before returning to Norway in 1861. From 1863 to 1871 he worked most of the time in Paris, but spent much of the remainder of his career in his native Norway. He was an accomplished and successful painter and illustrator (mainly for history books on Norway). His paintings are in many galleries throughout Norway and Sweden, with a particular concentration in his family home in Drammen, 25 miles south-east of Oslo.

Valkyries and Norse Myths

One of the best-known segments of Norse mythology is of the Valkyries, a group of female horse-riders, often portrayed as warriors, who decide which soldiers die in battle, and which survive. They then bear the bodies of the dead warriors on their horses to the hall of the slain, Valhalla.

Along with other stories from Norse sagas and epic poetry, they were modified to form the narrative in Wagner’s operatic sequence The Ring of the Nibelung; The Valkyries is the second of the four operas, and was first performed in 1870, the year in which the Franco-Prussian War started.

Ever since, the Valkyries have been unfortunately strongly associated with German nationalism, particularly in the years prior to the Second World War, which is a strange turn for Norse myths! In more recent years, the musical association has become even more strained, following the use of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries in Francis Ford Coppola’s epic movie set in the Vietnam War, Apocalypse Now (1979).

Valkyrie (1864), now at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, is the earlier of Arbo’s two paintings of this subject. He painted it in Paris, but it was first shown in Stockholm in 1866.

Five years later, Arbo painted a second version, Valkyrie (1869), which has been retained in Norway’s Nasjonalgalleriet in Oslo. Both follow normal conventions in showing warrior-like women, with chain mail armour, shields, helmets, and spears. With them fly their accompanying ravens.

Åsgårdsreien (Åsgård’s Ride, The Wild Hunt) (1872) is drawn from a more general European folk myth, which is specifically including in the Norse canon, of a group of ghostly huntsmen passing in wild pursuit. Seeing the Wild Hunt was the harbinger of major catastrophe, usually a battle with many deaths. The riders could also snatch humans up and abduct them, perhaps to Valhalla, as Arbo shows in this powerful painting.

Dagr (1874) shows the Norse deity of the day (as opposed to night), the son of the god Dellingr, and the rider of the bright-maned horse Skinfaxi. Together they bring day and its light to mankind, much in the way that Apollo’s sun chariot crossed the sky for the civilisations of the Mediterranean. Arbo again shows a classical depiction drawn from the Norse myths, with Dagr’s right hand bearing a burning brand.

Nótt riding Hrímfaxi (1887) shows the dark side, the night. Nótt is given as the daughter of Nörvi; her third marriage was to Dellingr, the issue of which was Dagr. Interestingly, although Norse myth accounted for both day and night with gods, Greek myth had a much less prominent goddess of the night, Nyx (Roman Nox).

Hervör’s Death (1880) shows this shieldmaiden – who in many respects resembles a Valkyrie in her dress – dying in an inheritance conflict. She was leading an army against an assault of a much larger army of Huns. The conflict arose between her brothers, Hlöd and Angantýr, and it has been suggested that the men shown represent her foster father Ormar, and brother Angantýr. This appears to be a variation on the accounts of the Poetic Edda, where she is mourned by those men in Árheimar rather than on the battlefield as shown.

Norwegian History

Times Past (date not known) uses a very similar composition to that of Hervör’s Death to show the aftermath of another Norse battle.

Håkon the Good and the Farmers at the Sacrifice of Mære (1860) shows King Håkon Haraldsson (c 920–961) winning over landowners and promoting the conversion of the Norwegian people to Christianity. As the younger son of King Harald Fairhair, he was sent for safety to the court of King Athelstan in England, where he was converted to Christianity. On his father’s death, he returned to Norway with an expeditionary force, won the support of the landowners, and assumed the throne in 631. Mære was one of the most sacred pagan places in Norway, where sacrifices were made.

Saint Olaf’s Fall in the Battle of Stiklestad (c 1859) is a watercolor made for a print which appeared in the book Billeder af Norges Historie (Pictures of Norway’s History), published by Christian Tønsberg in 1860. This scene shows Tore Hund, at the right, killing King Olaf II of Norway with his spear, in the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030. The King was later canonised. Olaf’s younger half-brother, Harald Sigurdsson, survived the battle to succeed Olaf, only to die at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066.

The Battle of Stamford Bridge (1870) shows a battle between Norwegian (‘Viking’) forces and an English army in Yorkshire, during the fateful year in which England was invaded by Normans. Although there were some smaller subsequent campaigns by Norse invaders, this is generally taken to mark the end of the ‘Viking Age’ in northern England.

The Norwegian force was led by King Harald Hardrada and the English king’s brother, Tostig Godwinson. The English force was led by the King of England, Harold Godwinson, who died less than three weeks later at the Battle of Hastings, and so yielded his throne to William, a Norman. On 25 September 1066, King Harald Hardrada was killed when he was hit in the neck by an arrow, as shown in the centre of Arbo’s atmospheric painting. Tostig Godwinson and most of the Norwegian army were also killed.

King Sverre’s Escape over Voss Mountains (1862) shows another Norwegian King’s struggle – this time against the weather and mountains – when trying to take control of the country. Sverre Sigurdsson (c 1145/51-1202) was proclaimed king in 1177, but then had the difficult task of enforcing his authority. With his supporting force of Birkebeiners, he moved south, was driven north, and then tried to move west to take Bergen by surprise.

However, when he reached Voss, in the mountains, he was ambushed by locals. His small force of Birkebeiners fought off the attack, but he had lost the element of surprise. He therefore moved east, into the Voss mountains, in harsh winter conditions, as shown here, before overwintering in Østerdal. His route is still known as Sverresgong. His rival to the throne, Magnus Erlingsson, fell at the Battle of Fimreite in 1184, leaving Sverre’s authority unchallenged.

Miscellany

Liden Gunvor and the Merman (1874-1880) is drawn from an opera The Fishers, by Johannes Ewald and Johann Hartmann, which was first performed in Copenhagen in 1780. Liden Gunver or Gunvor is taken to sea by an alluring but deceptive merman (the male counterpart of mermaid). Mermen were a common feature in Greek, Finnish, Irish, and Norse myths, but appear much less frequently in paintings than mermaids.

Arbo also painted in other genres. In case he appears to be hidebound to ‘Salon’ style, this very painterly, perhaps fully Impressionist, landscape of a View of Frognerslot from Skovveien (1890) shows how comfortable he was sketching his native country.

Conclusions

Other arts – literature and music in particular – are generally more international and cross-cultural in the narratives which they use. In many cases, readers and audiences prefer a wide range of stories and mythologies. Those which form the basis of narrative paintings have been drawn from a much narrower range of sources, notably Greek and Roman myths, the Bible, and some key events in European history.

The reasons for this narrowness in sources may derive from the need for the viewer to already be familiar with the story being portrayed; the classics and the Bible are among the few which have been common across much of Europe. It is a shame that few painters have seen the opportunity to broaden their story base, and that other mythologies are seen as local, and thus of little general appeal.

I will consider this further in a future article looking at depictions of the Finnish epic, the Kalevala.

References

Wikipedia, and in Norwegian.
Norwegian Biographic Dictionary (in Norwegian).

Harriet Backer (1845–1932) is one of Norway’s most famous artists, and a pioneering woman painter too. Despite an internationally successful career, she is now hardly known outside her native country.

Born into a wealthy family living at Holmestrand in Vestfold (on the west bank of Oslofjord, south of Oslo), she showed an early aptitude for drawing. When the family moved to Oslo in 1857 she was originally sent to a school for governesses. She started drawing and painting lessons in Oslo in 1867, and was able to travel in the company of her sister, the concert pianist and composer Agathe Backer-Grøndahl. Her talent was recognised, and in 1874 she went to Munich where she became a pupil of Eilif Peterssen.

Avskjeden (The Farewell) (1878) was probably her first really successful painting. It shows a grown daughter, left of centre, bidding farewell to her family as she leaves home. Backer probably painted this from her own emotional experience, as her father died in 1877, and she had informed her mother that she did not intend returning home, but pursuing her painting career instead.

It also marked the year that she went to Paris, where she was a pupil of Léon Bonnat and Jean-Léon Gérôme, and for a brief period of Jules Bastien-Lepage.

In France, her style started to loosen up: another early success was her Solitude (c 1880), her first painting accepted for the Salon in 1880. This was one of her first interiors featuring limited light, whose play was to become a dominant theme in her paintings. Although she remained based in Paris, she returned to Norway each summer, where she seems to have painted mostly landscapes.

One of her friends, Asta Nørregard, another Norwegian painter studying in Paris at the time, was the model for her Blått interiør (Blue Interior) (1883). It develops the theme of the play of light from the window on the person and contents of the interior of the room. Here the composition is complicated by the presence of a large mirror at the left. Her brushstrokes are now very painterly, and bright colours are starting to bring their harmonies and contrasts.

To barn og tregruppe (Two children and a group of trees) (1885) is a good example of her summer landscapes, which were probably at least started en plein air, if finished in the studio, perhaps. She had learned to paint plein air in Paris, with its great popularity not just among Impressionists.

På Bleikeplassen, Jæren (At the Bleaching Place, Jæren) (1886) is a pure plein air oil sketch, in which time did not permit the addition of details to the buildings or figures. It shows three women hard at work laying linen garments out for bleaching in the sunshine.

På blekevollen (Bleaching Linen) (1886-7) is a more finished painting of similar activity. At this time her style was clearly Impressionist, but expressed in her distinctive way.

Back in Paris, she continued to explore the play of light in interiors, with Chez Moi (1887), for example. Here she strikes a fine balance between the painterly and fine detail: the piano keys, dress, plant, and above all the reflections on the pictures hanging on the wall, are all shown in with necessary precision.

In 1888 she finally returned to Norway and settled in Sandvika, on the outskirts of Oslo. There she continued to concentrate on interiors, including those illuminated by lamplight.

During the summer, she still went out into the rich countryside, where she painted en plein air, capturing the glorious colours of the intense Norwegian summer. Her Landskap fra Ulvin (Landscape from Ulvin) (1889) is a good example; sadly relatively few of her landscapes seem to have made their way into public collections. Most seem to be in private ownership, thus inaccessible.

Growing recognition, including the award of a silver medal at the Exposition Internationale of 1889, brought requests for her to take on pupils, and in that year she started teaching in what soon developed into a thriving art school. The final years of the 1800s and the start of the new century marked the peak of her career, with a succession of major paintings in addition to that teaching. I will show some examples of that later work in the next and concluding article in this series.

References

Wikipedia (English), Wikipedia (Norwegian).
Biography.
Many of her best paintings are in Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, and viewable online.

The early years of Harriet Backer‘s (1845–1932) career saw her progress from her initial Salon-ready realism to a more painterly and colourful style of her personal interpretation of Impressionism. Her landscapes captured the intensity of the Norwegian summer, and she had been exploring the play of light in interiors.

By 1890, her career was established, her art recognised and increasingly appreciated, and she had started to teach. She now turned her attention from the play of natural light to that of lamplight.

Syende kvinne ved lampelys (By Lamplight) (1890) reverses the lighting of her previous interiors. Now the view through the window is the blackness of night, and the interior is lit by a kerosene lamp on the table, inside. The play of light is changed into the play of shadow, with the woman’s shadow magnified on the wall behind her.

Her Aften, interiør (Evening, Interior) (Reading) (1890) takes this further, and shows the influence of Japonisme, particularly in the scarlet lampshade at the right. Backer shows how the harsh directional light casts strange shadows, which have the effect of altering our reading of facial features, the folds in clothing, and magnifying the shadow on the wall. Although the light does not create the woman and the objects around her, by determining how we see her, it transforms our perceptions and interpretation.

Kone som syr (Woman Sewing) (1890) takes us back to the more familiar lighting of daytime, as a woman (designated a wife in the Norwegian title) sits at her sewing. This appears to have been a quick oil sketch, with its highly gestural depictions of potted plants, table, and chair, going beyond Impressionism. However this is not a move towards abstraction: quite the opposite, as each mark represents physical reality.

In her Pike ved vinduet (Girl by the window) (1891), the girl looks out from the sunlit interior to a world which we cannot discern, beyond the miniature internal world of chair, stove, and potted plants.

Inngangskoner (Churching) (1892) shows a traditional ceremony in which a woman who has just completed the confinement following the birth of her child is received back at church, where she gives thanks for the survival of her baby and herself, and prays for their continuing health. This is believed to show the sacristy to the left of the altar in Tanum Kirke, in Bærum, Norway. Backer marks this important moment in a mother’s life with the light of hope, showing the emergence from the suffuse light of the nursery.

The next event in the life of mother and baby is shown in her Barnedåp i Tanum Kirke (Christening in Tanum Church) (1892), one of Backer’s most sophisticated and greatest paintings which must rate among the finest paintings in Post-Impressionism.

Again, she places the viewer inside, looking now both outward and inward. The left of the canvas takes the eye deep, through the church door to the outside world, where a mother is bringing her child in for infant baptism. The rich green light of that outside world colours the heavy church door, and its inner wood panelling, and the floorboards and perspective projection bring the baptismal party in.

At the right, two women are sat in an enclosed stall waiting for the arrival of the baptismal party. One has turned and partly opened the door to their stall in her effort to look out and see the party enter church. Backer controls the level of detail and looseness to brilliant effect, ensuring that we always see just what she wants us to, enough to bring the image to life, but never so much that the eye is lost in the irrelevant.

This painting is believed to have been influenced by Wilhelm Leibl’s (1844-1900) Three Women in Church (1882), which Backer had seen when studying in Munich. She considered this to be her greatest painting, and it was received favourably at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893.

Gamlestua på Kolbotn (Old Living Room at Kolbotn) (1896) is an intimate view of a friends’ living room on their farm in Østerdalen, Norway. Hulda and Arne Garborg are seen, sat at the table, Arne holding his fiddle. Behind them are paintings, among them two landscapes painted by Backer’s friend Kitty Kielland. Kielland, Backer and the Garborgs had first met in Paris in 1885.

Backer had not abandoned landscapes, but they too had moved on from regular Impressionism. Einundfjell (1897) shows her skills in capturing the more subtle light and colour of twilight. The bright surface of the distant lake separates the dark hills behind from the more colourful meadows of the foreground.

Thorvald Boecks bibliotek (Thorvald Boeck’s Library) (1902) is one of Backer’s few interiors which is devoid of people, here replaced by books from floor to ceiling. The intricate detail of their many spines, furniture, and other decorations contrasts markedly with the bare floorboards in the foreground.

In 1907, Backer had her first solo exhibition in Oslo. During the first decade of the twentieth century, her interiors switched away from the intimacy of the rural home, to those of Norway’s country churches.

Of the many wonderful later paintings that she made of church interiors, the finest must be Uvdal Stave Church (1909).

Stave churches were once numerous throughout Europe, but are now only common in rural Norway. Their construction is based on high internal posts (staves) which give them a characteristic tall, peaked appearance. Uvdal is a particularly good example, dating from around 1168. As with many old churches, its interior has been extensively painted and decorated, and this has been allowed to remain, unlike many painted churches in Britain which suffered removal of all such decoration.

Backer’s richly-coloured view of the interior of the church is lit from windows behind its pulpit, throwing the brightest light on the altar. The walls and ceiling are covered with images and decorations, which she sketches in, again manipulating the level of detail to control their distraction. Slightly to the left of centre the main stave is decorated with rich blues, divides the canvas, but affords us the view up to the brightly lit altar. To the left of the stave a woman, dressed in her Sunday finest, sits reading outside the stalls.

This is an expression of Backer’s own deep religious beliefs, her career-long exploration of lit interiors, and her profound love of her native country and its people.

In 1912, the year that she retired from teaching, she was awarded the gold King’s Medal of Merit, and in 1921 was made the State Laureate in Painting (Statens kunstnerlønn), an appointment previously held by Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Grieg. She was the first woman to be so appointed. She is known to have completed about 180 paintings in all.

Conclusions

The strength and weakness of Impressionism is the Impression: a visually startling image which concentrates on the immediate and superficial. Harriet Backer’s paintings take the viewer beyond such instant optical gratification, into her discourse between the inside of our lives and living spaces, the light that renders them in our mind’s eye, and the outside.

It is one of the great painterly discourses, and one which deserves to be much more widely known. By any standards, hers are great paintings, and masterly art.

References

Wikipedia (English), Wikipedia (Norwegian).
Biography.
Many of her best paintings are in Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, and viewable online.

Spring is not just a time for courting and cleaning: we have a succession of major new versions of software products arriving.

I have already been using Eastgate Systems‘ Storyspace 3.1, and written my first impressions here.

FileMaker Pro, and the other products in the line, including FileMaker Go for iOS, are now shipping in version 15. Further information is here.

QuarkXPress 2016 is due to ship on 24 May. You can still take advantage of various special offers until then: visit Quark for details.

Then just as we’re getting used to all the wonderful new features, we’ll be off on holiday and forget them all.

Edward Robert Hughes (1851-1914) was trained at the Royal Academy Schools in London from 1868, and became a popular portraitist. In addition, he was a studio assistant for more than fifteen years to the more senior Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt (1827–1910), and a meticulous painter in watercolours.

The two major paintings which Hughes is known to have worked on with Holman Hunt are his late and life-sized version of The Light of the World, which I will not discuss here, and The Lady of Shalott (1905), shown above. The latter was a popular narrative among the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers, and this version is particularly rich in symbols. It also has cross-references to other narratives such as that of Arachne and her spider’s webs, and a full reading would take an article in itself.

Bertuccio’s Bride (1895) is one of Hughes’ earlier narrative paintings, which was derived from a series of illustrations which he painted for WG Waters’ translation of a sixteenth century collection of Italian short stories by the obscure Straparola, known as The Nights of Straparola. These stories are told in a similar manner to those of Bocaccio’s Decameron, although the Nights of Straparola has never achieved the same fame. Many are bawdy tales, and each concludes with a rude riddle.

The story of Bertuccio is fairly straightforward. He uses his inheritance to ransom the body of a man from his murderers, and to free a maiden from robbers. The maiden turns out to be a princess, who makes a contract of betrothal with him before she returns to her kingdom. Bertuccio then meets a mysterious knight, with whom he changes clothes, and goes in quest of his bride. When he is returning home with her, they meet the knight again, and Bertuccio offers to divide with the knight the wedding gifts, in return for the help which the knight provided. However, the knight turns out to be the spirit of the murdered man, whose body he ransomed, and declines the gifts.

Shown here is Bertuccio making the knight the offer to divide the wedding gifts. The princess, in full bridal gown, is seen at the far left, looking anxious. The two men are discussing the matter of the gifts, which are arranged on the ground between them, together with a huge and ornate sword.

Hughes has produced a very detailed painting, in which the two main protagonists lack facial expressions or body language to contribute to the narrative depicted. Other than its involvement of the supernatural, the original story has its peripeteia at the time that the mysterious knight reveals himself to be the spirit of the murdered man, which occurs at some time after the moment shown. Thus a good knowledge of the original narrative is needed in order to read the painting properly.

Diana’s Maidens (1898) shows what I presume is Diana running and clutching her clothes to her naked body, while two other nude women cavort in a distant lake.

Diana was unusual for being primarily a Roman goddess, although she became associated with the Greek goddess Artemis. Sworn never to marry, she was frequently associated with the water nymph Egeria, who was her servant, and Virbius, a woodland god. She is usually portrayed hunting in association with oak woodland, and is often accompanied by deer or hunting dogs. Her most famous associated myth – which is a popular subject for narrative paintings – is that of Actaeon, who saw her bathing naked. Diana metamorphosed him into a deer, and he was promptly attacked and killed by his own hunting dogs.

The scene shown by Hughes is probably associated with the myth of Actaeon, but if it is, then it shows an earlier moment, prior to his appearance, during the start of the story. Apart from Diana clutching her clothes to her body and fleeing, it is hard to determine the narrative shown here.

Hughes painted at least two works showing Valkyries. The first, Dream Idyll (A Valkyrie) (1902), is an erotic fantasy derived from the Norse mythology, showing a naked and unarmed woman riding a winged horse in the sky over a late Victorian city, such as London. Careful examination of the Valkyrie’s posture suggests that Hughes did not work from a real nude on a horse (or even the model of one). As shown, her seat would be extremely precarious, as her legs are not astride but in a side-saddle position, and the horse is unsaddled. I do not know why Hughes omitted the traditional armour and weapons here.

The Valkyrie’s Vigil (1906) seems further still from the traditional Norse myth or its Wagnerian interpretation. A tranquil barefoot woman, wearing a sheer exotic dress and clutching a sword and winged helmet, stares languidly into the distance. She is sat on a chain mail singlet, on the high stones of a castle, with a city far below. This is an ethereal and fairy Valkyrie, not a bearer of dead warriors to Valhalla.

Hughes is now probably best-known for a series of paintings which he made later in his career, showing similarly ethereal females in fantasy flights across the sky (and related scenes). Wings of the Morning (1905) was his presentation of the dawn, the coloured doves receding into what he termed “a mass of cirrus clouds”, rose-tinted by the dawn light.

As the winged nude woman is not intended to represent any mythical figure or even angel, it is a “supernatural” fantasy rather than a re-interpretation of an existing story. The woman is bringing the early day, with its coloured doves, songbirds of the dawn chorus, and clouds, to dispel the bats and owl of darkness below her. Exquisitely painted and spectacular, it is also a good example of the difficulties that narrative painting had gone through during the 1800s.

Although not a pendant to Wings of the Morning, and painted seven years later, Night with her Train of Stars (1912) shows its complementary scene, the arrival of night. Portrayed as another winged woman, this time she wears a blue gown and swaddles an infant, her right index finger at her lips as if to bring the silence of the night. Her blue clothing, crown, and infant are likely to be an allusion to the Virgin Mary.

In her tow is a train of putti-like winged infants, the nearest clutching at her gown. Stars twinkle between them, and there are poppy flowers (classically hypnotic), blackbirds, and other dark birds in flight.

Conclusions

Hughes’ watercolours are exquisite and spectacular fantasies, but their underlying narrative is quite shallow. His strongest story, Bertuccio’s Bride, is entirely in keeping, showing a scene before the peripeteia, which would be completely meaningless unless you were familiar with its obscure text. These are problems which are by no means peculiar to him, as I have shown in other paintings from the late 1800s.

Reference

Wikipedia.

Narrative painting is not, of course, peculiar to European art traditions. I have already looked at some works from the Indian sub-continent, and here look at one particularly striking example from Japan.

Western painting has generally avoided the use of paper as a support for permanent works, preferring wood panels and stretched canvas for mobile paintings. The popularisation of oil paint during the Renaissance has been a major consideration, as its paint layer requires a rigid support to minimise cracking and eventual loss. Canvas and wood have in turn imposed physical restrictions on the size and format of paintings, although those have been pushed to the their limits as a walk through some parts of the Louvre reveal.

East Asian painting has been far more welcoming of paper as a support, and the use of water-based paints which do not form a substantial or rigid film. This has encouraged the development of painted scrolls, which can reach amazing lengths.

Although most East Asian paintings are non-narrative – typically being seasonal landscapes composed according to elaborate aesthetic conventions – there have been periods in their very long history when some narrative works have been prominent. Perhaps the most notable of these is the Golden Age of the handscroll or emaki, the Kamakura period in Japan (1185-1333).

This was a particularly interesting period in Japanese history, as it saw the emergence of the samurai as a caste, the rise of Buddhism, and government was based in Kamakura, on the coast to the south of modern Tokyo. Kamakura is a fascinating and beautiful place, and I strongly recommend you to visit it, if you ever get a chance to go to Tokyo.

Narrative strategies for emaki

Long scrolls are an ideal format for broad and breathtaking panoramic landscapes, and East Asian painting has developed them for that genre above all.

They are a bit more tricky when used to depict narrative. The obvious approach then is to paint several scenes or chapters from a narrative on each scroll, and that proved the most popular. This enables the artist to tell quite complex stories over a series of images, much as some Europeans have over multiple canvases. These have sometimes been constrained by the prevailing conventions – such as refraining from showing facial expressions – but in general offer similar opportunities for narrative.

An alternative approach is to use the width of the scroll to depict both space and time, and it is this which I will focus on here. This will only work with certain narratives, which progress in space and time together: it would be futile, for example, for depicting a series of scenes which took place in the same location.

This is, in essence, the toughest perspective projection possible. The artist has to reduce the four dimensions of space and time to 3D, and then depict those on the 2D scroll. Interestingly, this was being done at a time when Japanese artists were using a form of multi-point linear perspective projection, in which sections of each scroll would share the same vanishing points, but there would be multiple sets of vanishing points along the length of the scroll. The approach to time was similar: what is shown within each area along the length of the scroll would be roughly simultaneous, but as you move along the length of the scroll, so time progresses more rapidly.

Night Attack on the Sanjō Palace – Heiji Monogatari Emaki (Sanjo Scroll) (平治物語絵巻 (三条殿焼討))

This handscroll is 7 metres long, but only 41 cm deep, and shows events which occurred in the Heiji Rebellion in January 1160. As with all Japanese handscrolls, it is read from right to left (bearing out my contention that reading follows the same sense as writing), with the most recent events shown at the left. Scrolls were rolled and mounted to facilitate that.

Fujiwara no Nobuyori and Minamoto no Yoshitomo wanted to achieve changes in government, and seized the opportunity when Taira no Kiyomori, the military leader of Japan at the time, left the capital Kyoto on a family pilgrimage. They assembled their force of about five hundred, and attacked the Emperor’s Palace: it is this which is shown in the scroll. [Click on each image to open in your browser, and then click on that image to enlarge.]

At the far right of the scroll is introductory text, followed by the scene of a few people hurrying to the left. This moves into a confused mass of the rebel force, various nobles, and ox carts.

Within this mass, the same ox carts and people are shown two or more times, some running pedestrians over.

Reaching the left edge of that mass, there is a group of rebels outside the palace grounds. Further to left, the rebels have now entered the grounds, then enter the buildings. There Fujiwara no Nobuyori orders the retired Emperor into an ox cart. The palace buildings are set alight, and their occupants try to flee the fierce flames and billowing smoke. As the flames die out, the rebels leave the palace grounds. Far to the left the retired Emperor is seen in his ox cart, surrounded by rebels. As they take him away, at the front of the column is Fujiwara no Nobuyori, the rebel leader.

There is then a final section of concluding text before reaching the left end of the scroll.

Conclusions

In effect, this serial narrative is similar to that used during the Renaissance in Europe, but is formally structured along the length of the scroll. In this particular case, compounding changing time and location worked, but in many narratives conflicts would arise and make the technique inappropriate. This explains why there are few examples like the Sanjo Scroll, and many more which show a time series of separate events along the length of the scroll.

I would love to see an explanation as to how different cultures came to have different directions for their writing systems, which do seem to determine the direction in which you read very wide paintings like these magnificent scrolls.

References

Feature on the scroll with a scrolling viewer (requires Flash!).
Emaki on Wikipedia (French).
Wikipedia (English).

Most – perhaps all – societies have their own mythologies which shape their culture and collective identity. Oddly, until recently most European narrative painting has depicted myths from ancient Hebrew, classical Greek, or Roman societies, rather than those to which the artist belongs, as if their own cultural heritage was somehow inferior to those ‘classical’ cultures. The one stark exception to this is in Finland.

Although there have long been societies and cultures in what is now Finland, from 1216 to 1917 the area was ruled first by Sweden and then by Russia. The rise in interest in Finnish folklore and culture during the nineteenth century was an important part of the development of the Finnish nation.

In the early part of the nineteenth century, several scholars started to make formal collections of the runes or songs of Finnish folklore. Among them was a polymath named Elias Lönnrot (1802-84), who made long trips into the countryside of Karelia, the east of Finland which now runs into Russia, from 1828 onwards. Realising that these could fit into a substantial epic poem, he gradually built the fragments into a greater whole. In 1835, he published his first attempt to assemble them into the Kalevala, that version now being known as the old Kalevala.

His research continued, and in 1849 he published a second version which has become accepted as the definitive epic, the Kalevala that is today the Finnish national mythology. It has since inspired almost every Finnish creative, including most famously Jean Sibelius, and the painters whose works I show below, and in the next article about the greatest of the painters of the Kalevala, Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

The Kalevala is long, consisting of fifty separate songs and 22,795 verses, and its narrative is protracted and very complex. At the end of this article I have reprinted an English summary from WF Kirby’s translation of the whole Kalevala.

Ekman’s Ilmatar (1860) shows the daughter of the sky, herself the virgin spirit of the air, who is impregnated by the sea and wind, then models the earth, and gives birth to Väinämöinen, who swims to the shore. This is the start of the creation myth detailed in Song 1 of the epic.

Keinänen’s Väinämöinen and Aino (1896) shows a scene from Song 4. Väinämöinen, the central figure and hero of the epic, first meets the young girl Aino in the forest, and asks her to be his wife, shown here. She runs home upset, angry, and in tears, and tells her mother. Her mother tells her to stop crying, and to be joyful. Aino, distressed by the prospect of marrying an old man, wanders off, arrives at the shore of a strange lake, and drowns when trying to wash in the lake.

Godenhjelm’s Ilmarinen Forges the Sampo (c 1860) shows one of the most popular scenes, from Song 10. Väinämöinen returns home, and urges Ilmarinen to go to court the Maiden of Pohjola, who can be won by forging a Sampo (a mysterious talisman whose nature is open to speculation). When Ilmarinen refuses, Väinämöinen uses magic to transport him to Pohjola in a whirlwind. Once there, Ilmarinen forges the Sampo (shown here), but the Maiden declines his offer of marriage, so he returns home disconsolate.

Ekman’s Lemminkäinen’s Mother Gathering her Son’s Body from Tuonela’s River (1862) is drawn from Songs 14-15. Lemminkäinen is assigned three tasks in order to win the hand of the Maiden of Pohjola in marriage. He completes the first two, but the third takes him to the River of Tuonela, where he is killed, his body dismembered, and cast into the river’s rapids. His mother finds out that he is dead, so she takes a rake to the rapids, where she recovers her son’s body parts (shown here), joins them together, and uses charms and ointments to resuscitate him.

Keinänen’s Kullervo with His Herds (1896) shows narrative from Songs 31-33. Untamo lays waste the territory of his brother, leaving just one surviving woman, who is pregnant. She gives birth to a son, Kullervo, who – while still in his cradle – vows vengeance on Untamo. Kullervo is abused as a child, and brought up as a slave. As he grows up, he spoils everything that he touches. He is sold as a slave to Ilmarinen, who sets him to work herding cattle. Ilmarinen bakes a stone into the bread for his lunch, and when Kullervo tries to cut the bread, he ruins his knife (shown here), which is his only memento of his family.

The remaining two paintings show the same scene from Songs 40-41. When Väinämöinen is on his way with Ilmarinen to Pohjola to get the Sampo, they catch a huge pike, kill and eat it. Väinämöinen makes a kantele (Finnish harp) from its jaws, but no one else knows how to play it. Väinämöinen plays it so beautifully that all creatures make their way to listen to him playing, and all weep with emotion. Väinämöinen’s own tears fall into the water, where they become blue pearls.

Ekman’s Väinämöinen Playing (1857-66) shows Väinämöinen playing his kantele, with a bird perched on it, and people congregating in the water, on shore, and on a rainbow even, to listen to him playing.

Elias Muukka’s Väinämöinen Triptych (1914) is more barren, and appears to have been set before any birds, beasts, and other humans have arrived.

The second and final article in the series will consider Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s paintings of the Kalevala.

References

Wikipedia on the Kalevala.

The text, translated into English by WF Kirby from Project Gutenberg (free).
Audiobook in English translation (WF Kirby) from LibriVox (free).
List of translations, with links, on Wikipedia.

Mäkinen K, tr Brooks K, illustrations by Pirkko-Liisa Surojegin (2009) The Kalevala, Tales of Magic and Adventure, Simply Read Books. ISBN 978 1 897476 00 0. A very accessible and beautifully illustrated retelling in prose.
Pentikäinen JY, tr Poom R (1999) Kalevala Mythology, expanded edn, Indiana UP. ISBN 978 0 253 21352 5.

The world’s best collection of paintings of the Kalevala is in the Ateneum in Helsinki, which also contains many other fine works by Finnish artists. It is a day well spent in a lovely city, although you will probably prefer to visit in the summer, as Helsinki can get quite bitter in winter.

WF Kirby’s Summary of The Kalevala
(copied from the Gutenberg Library version of the Everyman Library edition of 1907.)

Song 1. After a preamble by the bard, he proceeds to relate how the Virgin of the Air descended into the sea, was tossed about by the winds and waves, modelled the earth, and brought forth the culture-hero Väinämöinen, who swims to shore.

2. Väinämöinen clears and plants the country, and sows barley.

3. The Laplander Joukahainen presumes to contend with Väinämöinen in singing, but is plunged by him into a swamp, till he pledges to him his sister Aino; after which he is released, and returns home discomfited. But Aino is much distressed at the idea of being obliged to marry an old man.

4. Väinämöinen makes love to Aino in the forest; but she returns home in grief and anger, and finally wanders away again, and is drowned while trying to swim out to some water-nymphs in a lake. Her mother weeps for her incessantly.

5. Väinämöinen fishes up Aino in the form of a salmon; but she escapes him, and his mother advises him to seek a bride in Pohjola, the North Country, sometimes identified with Lapland, but apparently still further north.

6. While Väinämöinen is riding over the water on his magic steed, Joukahainen shoots the horse under him. Väinämöinen falls into the water, and is driven onwards by a tempest, while Joukahainen returns to his mother, who upbraids him for shooting at the minstrel.

7. Väinämöinen is carried by an eagle to the neighbourhood of the Castle of Pohjola, where the chatelaine, Louhi, receives him hospitably, and offers him her beautiful daughter if he will forge for her the talisman called the Sampo. He replies that he cannot do so himself, but will send his brother Ilmarinen, so Louhi gives him a sledge in which to return home.

8. Väinämöinen, on his journey, finds the daughter of Louhi sitting on a rainbow weaving, and makes love to her. In trying to accomplish the tasks she sets him, he wounds himself severely, and drives away till he finds an old man who promises to stanch the blood.

9. The old man heals Väinämöinen by relating the origin of Iron, and by salving his wounds.

10. Väinämöinen returns home, and as Ilmarinen declines to go to Pohjola to forge the Sampo, he causes a whirlwind to carry him to the castle. Ilmarinen forges the Sampo, but the maiden declines to marry him at present, and he returns home disconsolate.

11-15. These Runos relate the early adventures of Lemminkainen. He carries off and marries the beautiful Kyllikki, but quarrels with her, and starts off to Pohjola to woo the daughter of Louhi. Louhi sets him various tasks, and at length he is slain, cast into the river of Tuoni, the death-god, and is hewed to pieces; but is rescued and resuscitated by his mother.

16-17. Väinämöinen regrets having renounced the daughter of Louhi in favour of Ilmarinen, and begins to build a boat, but cannot complete it without three magic words, which he seeks for in vain in Tuonela, the death-kingdom, but afterwards jumps down the throat of the dead giant, Antero Vipunen, and compels him to sing to him all his wisdom.

18-19. Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen travel to Pohjola, one by water and the other by land, and agree that the maiden shall make her choice between them. She prefers Ilmarinen, who is aided by his bride to perform all the tasks set him by Louhi.

20-25. The wedding is celebrated at Pohjola, an immense ox being slaughtered for the feast; after which ale is brewed by Osmotar, “Kaleva’s most beauteous daughter.” Every one is invited, except Lemminkainen, who is passed over as too quarrelsome and ill-mannered. Before the bride and bridegroom leave, they have to listen to long lectures about their future conduct.

26-30. Lemminkainen is enraged at not being invited to the wedding, forces his way into the Castle of Pohjola through the magical obstacles in his path, and slays the lord of the castle in a duel. He flies home, and his mother sends him to hide in a distant island where all the warriors are absent, and where he lives with the women till the return of the men, when he is again obliged to fly. He returns home, and finds the whole country laid waste, and only his mother in hiding. Against her advice, he persuades his old comrade Tiera to join him in another expedition against Pohjola, but Louhi sends the Frost against them, and they are driven back in great distress.

31-36. A chief named Untamo lays waste the territory of his brother Kalervo, and carries off his wife. She gives birth to Kullervo, who vows vengeance against Untamo in his cradle. Untamo brings Kullervo up as a slave, but as he spoils everything he touches, sells him to Ilmarinen. Ilmarinen’s wife ill-treats him, and he revenges himself by giving her over to be devoured by wolves and bears, and escapes to the forests, where he rejoins his family. One of his sisters has been lost, and meeting her accidentally and without knowing her, he carries her off. She throws herself into a torrent, and he returns home. His mother advises him to go into hiding, but first he makes war on Untamo, destroys him and his clan, and again returns home. Here he finds all his people dead, and everything desolate; so he wanders off into the forest, and falls on his own sword.

37-49. Ilmarinen forges himself a new wife of gold and silver, but cannot give her life or warmth, so he carries off another daughter of Louhi; but she angers him so much that he changes her into a seagull. Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen, who are afterwards joined by Lemminkainen, now undertake another expedition to Pohjola to carry off the Sampo. On the way, Väinämöinen constructs a kantele or harp of pikebone, and lulls Louhi and her people to sleep; but she pursues the robbers, and first the kantele is lost overboard, and then the Sampo is broken to pieces and lost in the sea. Väinämöinen saves enough to secure the prosperity of Kalevala, but Louhi only carries home a small and almost useless fragment. Väinämöinen then makes a new kantele of birchwood. Louhi brings pestilence on Kalevala, then sends a bear against the country, and lastly, steals away the sun and moon, hiding them in the stone mountain of Pohjola. Väinämöinen drives away the plagues, kills the bear, and renews fire from a conflagration caused by a spark sent down from heaven by the god Ukko. Ilmarinen then prepares chains for Louhi, and terrifies her into restoring the sun and moon to their original places.

50. The virgin Marjatta swallows a cranberry, and brings forth a son, who is proclaimed King of Karelia. Väinämöinen in great anger quits the country in his boat, but leaves the kantele and his songs behind him for the pleasure of the people.

The above excerpt is subject to the standard Gutenberg Library licence.

My previous article looked at several of the early responses in paintings to the publication of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. This concentrates on the single most prolific painter of the Kalevala, Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931).

I have already covered his career in more general terms in an earlier article. He was born Axél Waldemar Gallén, and from the 1880s was actively researching the Kalevala. He Finnicised his name in 1907.

The grandest mobile painting of his career, Gallen-Kallela’s Aino Myth (1891) is a triptych set in a gilt frame with quoted text from the Kalevala inset, showing scenes from Songs 4-5.

The left panel shows the first meeting between Väinämöinen, the central figure and hero of the epic, and the young Aino, Joukahainen’s sister, in the forest. The perpetually ancient Väinämöinen there asks Aino to be his wife, to her shock and anger. The girl runs back to her mother in tears, and tells her. Her mother offers no sympathy, but tells her to stop crying, and to rejoice at the offer.

Aino remains distressed at the prospect of marrying such an old man, so wonders off, and becomes lost in the forest. She comes across the shore of a strange lake, where she sees the maids of Vellamo playing in the water, as shown in the right panel. She enters the water to wash, and drowns.

In Song 5, Väinämöinen goes to fish for Aino in the lake, and catches a salmon, which he tries unsuccessfully to cut up, so the fish slips back into the water. It then changes into Aino, who mocks Väinämöinen that he may have held her in his hands, but he cannot keep her, shown in the centre panel. She then disappears. Väinämöinen then travels to Pohjola to court the Maiden there.

A copy of the triptych is also in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

Joukahainen’s Revenge (1897) shows the consequences of the death of Aino, from Song 6. Aino’s brother, Joukahainen, understandably bears a grudge against Väinämöinen, and waits for him to make the return journey from Pohjola. Joukahainen eventually catches sight of his quarry riding across a frozen lake, as shown here, and shoots at him with his crossbow, but strikes the horse. Väinämöinen falls into the water, where the wind catches him and carries him out to sea. Joukahainen rejoices, as he thinks that he has seen the last of his enemy, but Väinämöinen is rescued by an eagle which takes him back to Pohjola.

Forging of the Sampo (1893) is Gallen-Kallela’s first depiction of this central event in the Kalevala, described in Song 10. Väinämöinen returns home, and urges Ilmarinen to go to court the Maiden of Pohjola, who can be won by forging a Sampo – a mysterious talisman whose nature remains undefined. When Ilmarinen refuses, Väinämöinen uses magic to transport him to Pohjola in a whirlwind. Once there, Ilmarinen forges the Sampo, but the Maiden of Pohjola declines his offer of marriage, leaving him to return home disconsolate.

The next three paintings appear to be concerned with the death and recovery of Lemminkäinen in the River of Tuonela, described in Songs 14-15.

By the River of Tuonela (1903) was a study completed in preparation for Gallen-Kallela’s frescoes in the Jusélius Mausoleum in Pori, a lavish memorial to the daughter of an affluent businessman, the girl having died at the age of eleven; in 1895, Gallen-Kallela’s own daughter Marjetta had died when even younger. It is the only such mausoleum in Finland.

In Song 13, Lemminkäinen is assigned three tasks in order to win the hand of the Maiden of Pohjola in marriage. He completes the first two, hunting down the Hiisi elk on ski, and bridling the fiery-mouthed Hiisi gelding in Song 14. The third and final task is to shoot a swan on the River of Tuonela, in the underworld. This study appears to show Lemminkäinen boarding a canoe to attempt that task (as far as I can discover). Sadly the frescoes themselves underwent rapid deterioration, and were finally destroyed in a fire in 1931, but were repainted by Gallen-Kallela’s son, Jorma.

Lemminkäinen Came to the River (1920) takes the story one step further, with Lemminkäinen on the bank of the River of Tuonela, in the underworld, confronted by a fearsome white eagle which guards the bodies of the dead below.

He is then killed by a malicious cowherd, who had taken offence at Lemminkäinen earlier. His body is cast into the River of Tuonela, where is it dismembered when in the rapids.

Lemminkäinen’s Mother (1897) sees portents of her son’s death, obtains information about it, and takes a rake to the rapids. There she recovers her son’s body parts, joins them back together, and uses charms and ointments to resuscitate him (shown here). In the background is the swan which her son was trying to kill, and she is surrounded by the charms and devices which she has been using to bring him back to life. She succeeds.

In Songs 31-36, Untamo lays waste the territory of his brother Kalervo, leaving just one surviving woman, who is pregnant. She gives birth to a son, Kullervo, who – while still in his cradle – vows vengeance on Untamo.

Kullervo is abused as a child, and brought up as a slave. As he grows up, he spoils everything that he touches. He is sold as a slave to Ilmarinen, who sets him to work herding cattle. Ilmarinen bakes a stone into the bread for his lunch, and when Kullervo tries to cut the bread, he ruins his knife, the only memento of his family. He stands cursing in anger, shown in Kullervo Cursing (1899).

The next two paintings, and the last of Gallen-Kallela’s movable works which I show here, concern the later history of the Sampo, the talisman which was forged by Ilmarinen before, and kept in Pohjola. In Song 39, Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen set off on an expedition to recover the Sampo, arriving at Pohjola in Song 42.

Väinämöinen plays his kantele (Finnish harp) and lulls the forces of Pohjola to sleep. In The Abduction of Sampo (1905) they are shown removing the Sampo from the stone mountain, to take it down to their boat.

With the Sampo stowed in their boat, Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, and their crew from Kalevala set off to return home. The Mistress of Pohjola wakes up and realises what has happened. She sends the boat thick fog, a great wind, and more, to try to stop the removal of the Sampo. In The Defence of the Sampo (1896), Gallen-Kallela shows a scene from Songs 42-43, with the forces of Pohjola led by the Mistress at the upper right. Väinämöinen, still holding the tiller in his left hand, is shown with his long white beard and hair, brandishing a sword at her, and the crew fend her off with spears and boathooks.

At the bottom left, Väinämöinen’s kantele made from the jaw of a huge pike has been lost overboard.

This painting was commissioned by a rich decorative painter and trader, but after his wife had an “enormous nervous fit” when she saw it, the commission was amicably cancelled. When it went on public display it received high praise, and was considered the best painting that the artist had produced to date.

The most extensive paintings that Gallen-Kallela made of the Kalevala were his frescoes, originally for the Finnish Pavilion at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, but painted again in 1928 in the lobby of the National Museum of Finland, in Helsinki. They are extraordinary works and well worth seeing if you ever get to Helsinki.

The Forging of Sampo (1928) shows a different account of the events in Song 10 (see above).

Ilmarinen Ploughs the Snake Field (1928) shows Song 19, the first of three tasks required of Ilmarinen before he can have the hand of the Maiden of Pohjola in marriage. He has to plough a field which is full of snakes (vipers), which are shown attacking the horse and Ilmarinen, who is suitably protected by armour.

The Great Pike (1928) shows a story from the journey of Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen to Pohjola to get the Sampo, from Songs 40-41. They catch a huge pike, kill, cook, and eat it. Väinämöinen later makes a kantele (Finnish harp) from its jaws, which he plays so beautifully that all creatures make their way to listen to him playing.

The Defence of Sampo (1928) shows the same scene from Songs 42-43 which the artist had previously depicted in his The Defence of the Sampo (1896) above.

Conclusions

The compilation of the Kalevala opened up a unique opportunity for artists to depict the newly published but very ancient stories of Finnish culture. Those who responded did not disappoint, either in the quantity or quality of their narrative works. Neither did they see any need to embellish, embroider or otherwise tamper with the original narrative.

It is a pity that other, older nations have not had similar opportunities which might have led to a richer range of myths being painted and so brought back into other cultures.

As a result, Finnish painters do not appear to have undergone the same difficulties that narrative painting underwent in the rest of Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This suggests that one of the major factors in those difficulties was the source of narrative subjects for painting: in the rest of Europe, classical stories had become hackneyed and were no longer seen as being integral to contemporary culture, but there did not appear to be other stories to replace them.

References

Wikipedia on the Kalevala, and on Gallen-Kallela.

The text, translated into English by WF Kirby from Project Gutenberg (free).
Audiobook in English translation (WF Kirby) from LibriVox (free).
List of translations, with links, on Wikipedia.

Mäkinen K, tr Brooks K, illustrations by Pirkko-Liisa Surojegin (2009) The Kalevala, Tales of Magic and Adventure, Simply Read Books. ISBN 978 1 897476 00 0. A very accessible and beautifully illustrated retelling in prose.
Pentikäinen JY, tr Poom R (1999) Kalevala Mythology, expanded edn, Indiana UP. ISBN 978 0 253 21352 5.

The world’s best collection of paintings of the Kalevala is in the Ateneum in Helsinki, which also contains many other fine works by Finnish artists. It is a day well spent in a lovely city, although you will probably prefer to visit in the summer, as Helsinki can get quite bitter in winter. The National Museum of Finland, with its frescoes by Gallen-Kallela, is within walking distance of the Ateneum and well worth visiting too.

For most Mac and iOS device users, colour is very important. Even the most casual amateur photographer may now process their images through apps intended to ‘enhance’ their colour, and turn a quick snap into a well-liked post on social media. For those who make a living from images and designs, getting colour ‘right’ is critical to their professional survival.

Apple has long recognised this, and since it introduced ColorSync to what was then System 7 way back in 1993, its products have done their best to help us get colour to work properly. It is worth pausing for a moment to acknowledge the achievement of ColorSync’s original leader at Apple, Robin D Myers, and to remember that Apple co-founded the International Color Consortium which has set the standards ever since.

The idea at the heart of ColorSync and other colour management systems is simple. Each pixel of an image is represented by an ‘absolute’ colour value – now three floating point numbers – which is derived by correcting the input from devices such as cameras and scanners, and rendered appropriately to output devices such as displays and printers. The corrections and other transformations made to input and output versions of the image are determined by their colour profile and the user’s choice of technique.

These are most obvious, and most critical, in rendering the image to a display, now that few of us print many of our images, but want others to see them in faithful colours. Those who take most care about this will typically calibrate their display, and locate it so that ambient light will remain quite constant, both in brightness and colour balance.

This is all very well for desktop Macs, but falls apart when you are using mobile devices, such as an iPad. You might want to use that out in the bright sunshine of the middle of the day, or in a darkened bedroom at night. With the large-format iPad Pro becoming so popular among artists and designers, this is a significant problem. Arnaud Frich offers an account of how you can colour calibrate an iPad or iPhone display with a Spyder3 or Spyder4 Pro or Elite colorimeter, but any significant change in ambient lighting requires recalibration.

Now the new iPad Pro 9.7″ – but not yet the larger 12.9″ popular with creatives – has a True Tone display to perform automatic white balance adjustment to try to work around this problem. Apple has, as usual, applied a bit of common sense: the iPad Pro is equipped with light sensors to detect ambient conditions, and iOS performs automatic adjustments to keep the display looking right. Why shouldn’t all displays now do the same?

The answer is bedevilled by the big problem with colour management: it may work perfectly in physical terms, but human colour perception is far more complicated, and psychophysical in nature.

It is not hard to come up with simple demonstrations of how our visual system – by which I am mainly referring to the areas of the brain which process images, not the eyes themselves – does all sorts of processing on images. We regularly perceive colour where there is none, as shown in the Lilac Chaser illusion below.

Even relatively simple chroma-free perception can be readily confuddled, as shown in the Checker Shadow illusion below. It is very hard to convince yourself that the squares marked A and B have the same lightness, but you can verify that using a software spot colour tool.

We have mechanisms which make an orange fruit appear orange even when it is seen cast in tinted light – ‘colour constancy’ – and ‘simultaneous contrast’ illusions such as that below show how colour perception is altered according to adjacent colours. Strangely colour constancy varies according to the object seen: it works more strongly with objects of fixed colour, such as fruit, but is weaker when applied to objects whose colour can vary more widely, such as cars.

One of the fallacies with showing the adjacent displays of two iPads, one without and the other with True Tone enabled, is that when we are working with any display, our perception will adjust towards colour constancy.

Some have also suggested that all those using iOS 9.3 on their devices can achieve almost as effective compensation for ambient lighting changes by using the manual control in the new Night Shift feature. The snag with that suggestion is, of course, the fact that any adjustment made by manual control relies on the same psychophysics which makes any such adjustments misleading at best.

What we really need is to bring human perception into the control system somehow, to display a standard image and ‘read’ from the visual areas of the brain to check that its colours match our ‘standard’ perception. Until someone comes up with a practical way of doing this, the choice is simple: correct the display to output what is physically most accurate, or leave the display uncorrected, and hope that the brain will get it right.

For my money (and it will come down to that too), I think I’d prefer the display to do the best according to the physical models, in the hope that will help the accuracy of my perception. In which case, it is about time that all displays adopted Apple’s True Tone system. The iPad Pro 9.7″ looks to be blazing that trail.

References

From Pigment to Painting, part 1 series on this blog.

Kuehni RG (2005) Color. An Introduction to Practice and Principles, 2nd edn., Wiley Interscience. ISBN 0 471 66006 X.
Kuehni RG & Schwarz A (2008) Color Ordered. A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present, Oxford UP. ISBN 978 0 19 518968 1.

In case your calendar hasn’t already warned you: this summer we commemorate the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of Hieronymus Bosch (c 1450-1516). The official anniversary is 9 August, which will be exactly 500 years since his burial, but publishers and galleries are already hard at work building our enthusiasm.

Here are my suggestions for exhibitions worth attending, and books worth buying (or borrowing).

Exhibition

The big exhibition in Bosch’s home town of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Jheronimus Bosch – Visions of a Genius, has already been and gone. It brought 20 paintings, 19 drawings, and more, to the Noordbrabants Museum, but closed on 8 May 2016. The town will continue to celebrate with a range of events from circus to music concerts well into next year, though. Its events calendar details those.

The main exhibition to look forward to now is that at Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain. This opens on 31 May and runs to 11 September 2016. Because it includes all the works held at the Prado, it is actually more comprehensive, with 25 paintings by Bosch and a total of 65 works in all. Full details are at the Prado website.

Books

The extended catalogue for the exhibition in Noordbrabants Museum has been published as Matthijs Ilsink & Jos Koldeweij, Hieronymous Bosch. Visions of Genius, Yale UP (Mercatorfonds); ISBN 978 0 300 22013 1.

The large format paperback version is very reasonably priced at around £20. Its text is structured on his biography, and the exhibition catalogue, which limits its coverage of those major works, such as The Garden of Earthly Delights, which did not make it out of the Prado to the first exhibition. This makes it something less than a complete account of Bosch’s work, which is a shame. It includes excellent illustrations, with a fair balance between those showing whole paintings, and those of their details.

If you want an affordable and comprehensive account, Taschen has re-issued Stefan Fischer‘s Hieronymous Bosch, the Complete Works, in its Bibliotheca Universalis series; ISBN 978 3 8365 3850 3. This is a 2016 reprint of the 2013 original, a small format hardback which is 517 pages fat, and a bargain at around £12.

This gives a complete account of Bosch’s work within a biographic structure, devoting separate chapters to his major works The Temptation of St Anthony, the Garden of Earthly Delights, and The Last Judgement. It also includes catalogues of his paintings and drawings.

It overcomes the limitations of its small format by showing lots of details of the paintings. Its text is excellent and analytical, with a supplement of additional text sources, and a huge bibliography. This book is an excellent all-rounder at a bargain price; there is also a larger format, 300 page version available for around £19.

At the other extreme is Till-Holger Borchert‘s Bosch in Detail, Ludion; ISBN 978 9 491 81951 3. This is a huge format book to fill most coffee tables, and is very modestly-priced at around £29.95 in hardback.

Its illustrations are superb, and are up to the quality of this ‘in detail’ series, showing details which no other book can come near. It is also reasonably self-contained, starting with a survey of Bosch’s works. The bulk of the book then works through themed details, from landscapes to the four elements. This is perhaps best seen as an excellent supplementary which will put your nose right on the paint layer of each of Bosch’s amazing works.

There is a new catalogue raisonné due out now, by Matthijs Ilsink & Jos Koldeweij: Hieronymus Bosch, Painter and Draughtsman: Catalogue Raisonné, costing around £90. I have not seen this yet, but expect that it will be essential for the more serious scholar. Once I have got my hands on a copy, I will revise this entry here to include more information.

The same research project has produced a companion volume, edited by Luuk Hoogstede & Ron Spronk, Hieronymus Bosch, Painter and Draughtsman: Technical Studies, Yale UP (Mercatorfonds); ISBN 978 0 300 22015 5. This is a large format hardback at the cost of around £76.50.

It gives a systematic account of the technical details of the 21 paintings accepted by the new catalogue raisonné as being by Bosch, 4 attributed to his workshop, 7 to followers, 2 to either workshop or followers, and 3 supplementary works. It is rich with superb technical analyses, including details such as the dendrochronology, and contains thorough if not exhaustive images, including many from infra-red and X-ray studies.

My only disappointment with this book is that it does not attempt any systematic or synthetic account across the works, for instance trying to build a coherent picture of Bosch’s techniques. However it is essential for the more serious scholar, and a unique compendium of this information.

Other media

There are a few iOS apps containing collections of Bosch’s paintings, most costing around £0.79 each. I cannot vouch for any of them.

Very disappointingly there is an almost total lack of other modern media: I can find no DVDs, movies, or other worthwhile content in iTunes. Perhaps one of the exhibitions will be offered in movie form later in the year.

Coverage here

I am holding off further coverage of Bosch and his works until next month, but you can expect to see several articles from then through into the early autumn. He has always been one of my favourite artists, and I have been fascinated by his paintings since I was a child.

Armed with my brand new iPad Pro 9.7″ – that’s the regular-sized iPad Pro, not the larger one – and its Apple Smart Keyboard, I have now spent some time entering records into my FileMaker Go database.

FileMaker Go 15 is not only a delight to use, but is free from the iTunes App Store. The cleanest way to install it and your database file is through an iTunes Sync. Before starting this, open the App Store in iTunes and obtain the FileMaker Go 15 app, then run your normal sync in iTunes. Once that is complete, if FileMaker Go 15 has not been automatically installed (according to your preferences), install it. You can then drag and drop your FileMaker Pro database from your Mac into the document listing for FileMaker Go 15, to copy it across.

There are other ways of moving a copy of your database over to your iPad, of which the neatest is using iCloud, and you can share the database from your Mac. If you are really serious, you can share it from FileMaker Pro Server, but for a single user that is overkill! The FileMaker Pro and Go manuals explain all the various options, but I like to keep things simple and robust by working on a separate copy of the database.

Before trying this, I was uncommitted over the value of Apple’s Smart Keyboard. I have used a range of keyboards with iPads and similar systems in the past, and found their minor annoyances and inconveniences sufficient to deter me from using them for long. The Smart Keyboard turns out to be very easy to use when sat at a desk, and because it does not have a wireless connection it does not radically shorten battery endurance.

When you have entered sufficient records into the database on your iPad and want to move them into your Mac’s database, sync your iPad again in iTunes, select the database in the Apps page in iTunes, and drag and drop the database file back onto your Mac. You will then have two copies of your database on your Mac: the original, and that just brought over with all the additional records. I like to rename the latter, so that I always know which is which.

Open that enlarged version of the database and check that it looks good, with its additional records ready to copy across into your main database. At this stage you can delete any records which you know are already in your main database, leaving just those to be added. Then close that database, and open the master database which has remained on your Mac.

In the File menu, select the File… submenu of the Import Records command to import records from the database which you brought over from your iPad.

You will be prompted to locate the file; once you have done that, click the Open button to be taken through the succession of dialogs.

In the Import Field Mapping dialog, FileMaker Pro should have recognised that the two databases have identical structure, and offer a direct mapping. If not, map the source to target fields carefully. The Import Action should normally be set to Add New Records unless you have been updating existing ones. Then click the Import button.

The next dialog may seem more opaque. Check the box if you want any fields with auto-enter options to be updated during the import process. Then click on the Import button.

Once the import is complete, this dialog will inform you how many records were actually imported. FileMaker Pro will then show those imported records alone: click on Show All to view the whole database again, and to prepare to export the records for Storyspace/Tinderbox. Check through it again, then export the database using your script system, CSV file, or any other technique which you want to use. You now have your text file ready to import into Storyspace/Tinderbox.

If you are going to perform several or many incremental updates like this, it is worth thinking about making that as easy as possible. One potentially valuable tool is a field containing a serial number. This can be used to make it easier to select records to be added to the master database.

I tested this with real records, using both my scripted system detailed here, and the CSV approach detailed here. My scripted system worked fine, just as I had hoped; the CSV version also worked well but seemed unable to set the imported writing spaces or notes to the intended prototype events. This appears to be a limitation of CSV import, and makes me even happier that I opted for a script system instead.

Although using FileMaker Go and Pro is not as direct as being able to run fully-functional copies of Storyspace or Tinderbox on an iPad, it is little different when you need to enter large numbers of identically-structured writing spaces or notes, and takes little longer to accomplish, once you have set your script or import system up. I will continue to add records to my database, and keep moving them across.

Happy hypertexting!

Eilif Peterssen (1852–1928) was a major Norwegian artist who painted in most genres, progressing from Salon-style realism through Impressionism, to Post-Impressionism.

Born and brought up in what is now Oslo, he started his studies there, moved to Copenhagen briefly, then in 1871 went on to Karlsruhe in Germany. In 1873 he became a pupil of Wilhelm von Diez in Munich, where he got to know Arnold Böcklin and others. He travelled extensively in Europe, painting in France and Italy, before returning to Norway in 1886, where he was an established portraitist, painting Henrik Ibsen (at least twice) and Edvard Grieg.

His first painting to achieve widespread recognition was Christian II Signing the Death Warrant of Torben Oxe (1875-6), which shows a scene from the troubled early history of the Nordic countries. Christian II was the last Roman Catholic king of Denmark, who seized control of Norway in 1506, became King of Denmark and Norway in 1513, and struggled to gain control of Sweden too.

Torben Oxe was a noble who was appointed Governor of Copenhagen Castle. In the summer of 1517, Dyveke Sigbritsdatter, the king’s mistress, fell ill and died. Her mother accused Oxe of poisoning her through a box of cherries. Christian II took the girl’s mother (the widow of a Dutch merchant who was acting as advisor to the king) at her word, and summarily condemned his friend Oxe to death.

The case was then reviewed by the State Council, which declared him innocent and rebuked the King, who responded by assembling a jury of peasants, who delivered the famous verdict “We do not condemn him, but his deeds condemn him.” Despite even the Queen’s pleas for Oxe’s life shown here (she is at the King’s left hand), Oxe was beheaded, and his body burned.

Peterssen’s Mountains near Innsbruck (1877) marked the beginning of his departure from the smooth-finished style of the Salon, and from history painting. An atmospheric oil sketch in very painterly style, its composition is reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich‘s mountain paintings, with a lonely figure in the foreground facing enigmatically into the view.

With Peterssen’s portraits becoming popular, he painted perceptive depictions of people in uncommissioned work such as his Under Salmesangen (In the Church) (1878). Here he also traces the ages of woman, an unusual subject in comparison to those of man, with the furthest young girl, nearest young woman, and the older widow in between.

This may have influenced Wilhelm Leibl’s (1844-1900) Three Women in Church (1882) shown below, and Harriet Backer’s Barnedåp i Tanum Kirke (Christening in Tanum Church) (1892) shown in my article about her.

Peterssen travelled to Italy in 1879, where he concentrated on painting en plein air, and the following year visited again with PS Krøyer. Peterssen and Krøyer were central in the formation of the Danish Impressionists at Skagen in the 1880s. By the time that he visited Venice in 1885, his style was strongly Impressionist.

Peterssen returned to Norway in 1886, and that summer painted on Fleskum Farm in Bærum with Harriet Backer, Kitty Kielland, and others. One evening he started work on his view of the local lake, Dæhlivannet, which became one of his greatest landscape works, Summer Night (1886).

The following year, he took that same view, added some flowers, and worked in a nude to produce his Nocturne (1887), which was also widely acclaimed. The contrast in finish is marked, with the earlier painting very crisp in its detail, this version being much more painterly.

His naturalistic paintings of the Norwegian countryside and coast remained popular, being well received when shown at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. That summer he painted from the small village of Sele on the far west coast of Norway, including his From the Beach at Sele (1889). These show continuing influence from his summers at Skagen in Denmark.

On the Look-out (1889) is another of his paintings from that summer at Sele, showing a small group of men watching out to sea, presumably for the return of local fishing boats, much in the way that Winslow Homer’s women of Cullercoats had been doing just a few years before.

The summer of 1891 saw him back in Bærum, and painting the very impressionist Sunshine, Kalvøya (1891), which critics compared to the paintings of Berthe Morisot.

From the Norwegian Archipelago (1894) captures a typical view of the dissected islands around the Inner Leads of the west coast of Norway, an older and traditional woman propped against a low stone wall, with small crofts on the other side of the lead, and a fishing boat passing through. Although it is difficult to be certain, the woman appears to be knitting.

In 1896 he returned to Sele, and painted Kveld, Sele (Gedine på haugen) (Kveld, Sele (Gedine on a Hillock)) (1896). Taking advantage of the rich dusk light, he shows a friend, Gedine, seated on a rock hillock amid the flat and expansive landscape on the coast.

From Orre, Jæren (1897) is near Sele, to the south of Stavanger on the west coast of Norway. Peterssen found one of the working horses used on the flat land there, distant crofts, and the bright-lit cloud of a summer’s day.

From his early Impressionist paintings, Peterssen showed views in very low and night lighting. Coastal Landscape in Moonlight (1898) is one of the most successful of these, with its rich marks and impasto moon and reflection.

Over the following decade, Peterssen became interested in mediaeval legends, painting illustrations for a book based on French legends, and a series of works derived from Norwegian folk songs. Several of these later works were for large houses and churches. Sadly most of his paintings, particularly those of his latter years, appear to remain in private collections, and are consequently poorly documented and impossible to access.

Conclusions

Peterssen was a major Norwegian painter whose influence was substantial. At its best his work compares favourably with the best of the Skagen group and the French Impressionists. His influence extended to most contemporary Norwegian painters, including Harriet Backer, Kitty Kielland, Frits Thaulow, and most importantly Edvard Munch.

The great difficulty now is that, with so many of his paintings rendered inaccessible by virtue of being in private collections, it is impossible to view more than the select few which have remained in public ownership.

References

Wikipedia.
Harriet Backer’s work is covered in two articles on this blog, here and here.
Many of Peterssen’s best paintings are in Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, and viewable online. The museum also has hundreds of his drawings and sketches.

Charles Dickens (1812-70) was one of the most successful writers in history, and a true child of the nineteenth century. With increasing literacy and the progressive introduction of compulsory education throughout much of Europe, he and others such as Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Balzac, and Dostoevsky, were hugely popular story-tellers of the day. Many of their popular works were published very successfully in illustrated editions, yet hardly any of their narratives are told in paintings.

This article examines what happened to those popular stories of the nineteenth century. Unlike previous articles in this series, it tells its story by the remarkable lack of paintings.

A succession of pure illustrators and established artists produced illustrations for Dickens’ books and the others which sold so well during the nineteenth century. Among the most prolific illustrators of Dickens were Hablot Knight Browne – better known as Phiz – George Cruikshank, John Gilbert, and Augustus Leopold Egg. Although George Cruikshank‘s (1792–1878) paintings are less well-known, he did paint narrative works, such as that showing Herne’s Oak from Shakespeare’s 1602 comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor.

I can find no painting by Cruikshank depicting any characters or scene from any of Dickens’ novels, despite his intimate familiarity with them.

Three other artists who illustrated Dickens did, though, produce paintings of relevance. Joseph Clayton Clarke (better known as Kyd) (1857-1937) painted many portraits of Dickens’ characters, such as the splendid rendering of Mr Bumble from Oliver Twist, shown below. But he did not go so far as to produce any narrative paintings, as far as I can discover.

Charles Edmund Brock‘s (1870-1938) watercolour of Oliver Twist is also closer, but turns out to be one of many such paintings which he produced as illustrations for Dickens’ books.

Where painters have been responsible for creating book illustrations, as in the case of Sir Luke Fildes (1843–1927), their illustrative work and paintings appear to overlap very little indeed. Although Fildes was commissioned to produce illustrations for Dickens’ last book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, his own paintings on related subjects did not draw on Dickens’ stories.

Fildes’ early Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward (1874) was even exhibited at the Royal Academy with Dickens’ description of a scene outside a workhouse in 1855:
Dumb, wet, silent horrors! Sphinxes set up against that dead wall, and none likely to be at the pains of solving them until the general overthrow.

Fildes’ later The Doctor (1891) was commissioned by Sir Henry Tate, but the story tells of Fildes’ own personal tragedy when his infant son died in 1877. He even built a replica of a fisherman’s cottage in a corner of his studio to give the background greater authenticity of his own fictitious narrative which the painting shows.

The only artist in the nineteenth century who seems to have painted any significant number of narrative works drawn from contemporary popular stories is Robert Braithwaite Martineau (1826-1869). The Tate Gallery has two such paintings of his: Kit’s Writing Lesson (1852), above, showing a less than memorable scene from Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, and Picciola (1853), based on the 1836 novel of the same name by the obscure French novellist Xavier Boniface Saintine (1798-1865).

Narrative paintings were still very popular in the works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and their followers. But as I have detailed in other articles, their preference for narrative sources was very selective when it came to the contemporary. You will not find any Dickens among the core members of the Brotherhood, nor the likes of JW Waterhouse. He is also omitted from later problem pictures even in indirect reference.

Where these prominent artists did refer to contemporary writing, they preferred the likes of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s (1809–1892) poem The Lady of Shalott, which recounts part of the Arthurian legends as retold in an Italian novella from the 1200s.

Even when they constructed narrative series of paintings, Dickens does not seem to have been appropriate as their basis.

Prolific illustrators who also painted, such as Gustave Doré and Walter Crane, seldom chose to paint contemporary narrative. When the few Impressionists painted narrative works, even Cézanne who was from childhood a close friend of Émile Zola, did not depict any contemporary stories.

Extensive references on narrative themes in paintings, such as Roberts (1998, 2014), confirm that hardly any significant paintings use themes from the great nineteenth century novels. The most obvious exception to this was in Finland, where the ‘new’ Kalevala was published in 1849, and quickly became the dominant theme in painting.

The reason, I think, was the general belief that, great though they were, these popular novels and other prose works were not appropriate subjects for fine art. Classics and poetry, perhaps, but a painting based on a mass-market and often serialised novel could not be fine art.

Yet the many religious paintings of the Renaissance which went into places of worship were surely just as populist. Perhaps even the Impressionists saw themselves as catering for a market dominated by rich patrons and purchasers, rather than those who avidly read Dickens or Zola.

Reference

Roberts HE (1998, 2014) Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography, Themes Depicted in Works of Art, 2 vols, Routledge. ISBN 978 1 138 89259 0, 978 1 138 89260 6.

The very earliest paintings, those found in caves throughout the world, and many dating from more than 10,000 years ago, can appear to record events which could, in places, amount to narrative. Although many are strongly figurative, their interpretation is difficult, and it is hard to be sure whether any are truly narrative.

Egypt

The oldest paintings which can be reliably interpreted as being narrative are those of the ancient Egyptians. By about 1300 BC there were many good examples of stories being told through paintings on various supports, most clearly the Books of the Dead which accompanied their burials.

The Weighing of the Heart from the Book of the Dead of Ani (c 1300 BCE), now in The British Museum is one of the clearest examples. In the lower tier of images, the painting is read from the left. It first shows Ani and his wife Tutu entering the assembly of the gods. The centre section shows the god Anubis weighing Ani’s heart against the feather of Maat; should his heart be heavier, then he will not be admitted to heaven.

This procedure is observed by the goddesses Renenutet and Meshkenet, the god Shay, and his own ba. The right section of the lower tier shows the monster Ammut, who is poised to devour Ani’s soul if his heart were to prove heavy, hence unworthy of heaven. Thoth is there to record the outcome. The upper tier shows the other gods in oversight.

Other Egyptian paintings depict action such as wrestling, juggling, and hunting by means of multiple images, normally read from left to right too.

The Mediterranean

Unfortunately the many wall paintings of the ancient Greek and other pre-Roman civilisations in the Mediterranean have largely been lost, although written accounts attest the importance of narrative paintings of historical events to the Greeks.

One of the few to have survived intact is from the Cycladic civilisation on the Greek island of Santorini (Thera), which was destroyed by a huge volcanic eruption in about 1627 BC, engulfing the buildings and preserving them much in the way that Pompeii was. We can therefore be confident that its wall paintings were completed before that date.

The Flotilla Fresco (or Frieze) is a panorama showing a flotilla of boats making their way from one port to another. Although it is not certain, it appears likely that the individual vessels are shown more than once in the same image, combining two or more moments during the story into a single composite image.

The Etruscans

Over a millenium later, but still well before the earliest Roman paintings, the Etruscan civilisation left many tombs with extensive wall paintings. One of the better examples is from the site known as the François Tomb at Vulci, on the coast to the northwest of Rome, Italy.

The Liberation of Caelius Vibenna (c 340 BCE) shows a sequence of what are presumed to be historical events involving the liberation of Caelius Vibenna by Macstrna (identified as Servio Tullio) at the left. In the centre, Larth Ulhtes kills Laris Papathnas Velznach, of the Volsinii tribe. To the right of that are further killings, in each case their names inscribed above the figures.

Other paintings in the same tomb depict the sacrifice of Trojan prisoners, accompanied by one of the earliest depictions of a winged ‘angel’.

The Romans

There are far more extensive paintings which have survived from the Roman civilisation, particularly those from the city of Pompeii which were buried during a catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.

Among the most spectacular are the wall-paintings in the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, showing Dionysian Rites from before about 62 CE. Room 5 contains a frieze of 29 figures at nearly life size, which appear to depict a sequence of ritual events involving a mixture of Pompeiians and deities.

Myths were also a popular subject for Roman artists.

These could be simple images, such as that of Dido and Aeneas, or possibly Venus and Mars, (c 10 BCE – 45 CE) making love.

Medea Planning the Murder of her Children (c 50-75 CE) is slightly more sophisticated, showing Medea preparing to kill her two children as vengeance for Jason abandoning her to marry the King of Corinth’s daughter, Glauce. This was a variant of the story of Medea told in Euripides’ play Medea. The children are shown playing the popular game of knucklebones.

The story of Perseus and Andromeda appears to have been popular in paintings, with several examples known.

This version from Boscotrecase, near the coast at Pompeii, dates from soon after 11 BCE, and puts the story into a larger landscape, much in the way that later landscape painters such as Poussin were to do. I have detailed the full story here, but for the purposes of this article will summarise this section of it.

The daughter of the King of Aethiopia and his wife Cassiopeia is very beautiful, but her mother boasts openly of her beauty and incurs the wrath of Poseidon. The latter sends Cetus, a sea monster, to ravage the Aethiopian coast, and Cetus can only be sated by chaining Andromeda to a rock on the coast, to leave her to be devoured by the monster. As she awaits her death, Perseus flies past, returning from cutting Medusa’s head off. He spots Andromeda, frees her, and kills Cetus.

Andromeda is shown in the centre, on a small pedestal in the rock. Below it and to the left, the gaping mouth of Cetus is shown, as Perseus flies down from the left to rescue Andromeda, kill the sea-monster Cetus, and later marry Andromeda in reward, as shown on the right side of the painting. As with many later paintings, this sophisticated image shows a composite of at least two episodes in the story, and contains two separate versions of both Perseus and Andromeda.

This slightly later version, Perseus Freeing Andromeda (c 50-75 CE), adopts an approach more typical of very much later artists, showing a close-up of the couple. Andromeda is still chained to the rock by her left wrist, and is partially clad rather than naked as the myth related. Perseus has Medusa’s head tucked behind him, the face shown for ease of recognition. He is wearing his winged sandals, and carrying his sword in his left hand. There is no sign of Cetus, though.

Neither face shows anything other than a neutral expression. Their body language is limited too, and Perseus’ right hand in an unnatural position. However, it is not far from the best of the great Masters who were to come more than 1500 years later.

Conclusions

Narrative painting was an important, and at times the dominant, genre from the earliest paintings which we can read today. Although later techniques such as expression of emotion in the face, and clear body language, had yet to develop, the skills of the Roman painters two millenia ago were effective, and well on their way to later sophistication.

References

Haynes S (2000) Etruscan Civilization, A Cultural History, J Paul Getty Museum. ISBN 978 0 89236 600 2.
Ling R (2012) Roman Painting, 2nd edn, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 31595 1.
Pappalardo U (2008) The Splendor of Roman Wall Painting, J Paul Getty Museum. ISBN 978 0 89236 958 4.
Pollitt JJ (2014) The Cambridge History of Painting in the Classical World, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 86591 3.
Tiradritti F (2008) Egyptian Wall Painting, Abbeville Press. ISBN 978 0 7892 1005 0.

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

You can hardly find any painter of significance during the last quarter of the 1800s who was not greatly influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848–1884). Although that influence lasted long into the twentieth century, Bastien-Lepage’s promising career as an artist and mentor was cut tragically short when he died at the age of only 36.

Born as Jules Bastien in the village of Damvillers in the northeast of France, he showed an early aptitude for drawing, and his father taught him to paint. He enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1868, where he adopted the surname of Bastien-Lepage by incorporating his mother’s maiden name. While there he was taught the Academic and Salon tradition by Cabanel.

He fought, and was wounded, in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1, but managed to have his first work accepted for the Salon in 1870. Unfortunately this, and another acceptance in 1872, passed unnoticed by the critics and public. It was not until 1874 that his portrait of his grandfather, painted at home the previous year, was awarded a third class medal at the Salon, and he started to attract more attention.

He entered the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1875, and by public reaction would have received the award. However, the jury rejected his painting on a trumped-up technicality.

Bastien-Lepage’s submission for the final was The Annunciation to the Shepherds (1875). I should point out that the subject was not of his choosing: the prescribed subject was ‘the annunciation of the nativity of Christ by the angel to the shepherds of Bethlehem’, as in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verses 8-15.

If there is one painting which epitomises Bastien-Lepage’s approach, as a painted manifesto, it is this. Painted with exceptional skill, it builds on tradition rather than discarding it. Its strength is in its compromise between the gilding and Renaissance appearance of the angel, the rural realism of the shepherds who have come from Millet rather than Bethlehem, and the wonderfully controlled looseness and gesture of the darkened landscape.

The story may be a simple one, but Bastien-Lepage wastes not a brushstroke in its telling, in the almost averted facial expressions, the arms frozen in surprise, hands which have just been tending sheep, even their bare and filthy feet.

The jury of the Prix de Rome attempted to avert outcry by awarding Bastien-Lepage a consolation prize, but it was too late: the damage had been done. That damage stopped him from pursuing an Academic future, and for the good of art, he retreated to his rural village, and the pursuit of truth in his painting.

His transition was not quite as sudden. He painted some parting Academic works with a difference, such as his Achilles and Priam (or Priam at the Feet of Achilles) (1876). Here, Hector has been killed by Achilles, the Greek warrior, who then treats the body disrespectfully and refuses to return it for burial. Hermes escorts King Priam of Troy, the father of Hector, to plead with Achilles, as shown here. Achilles is deeply moved by this, relents, and calls a truce to allow Hector’s body to be returned for the funeral.

This was his second and final attempt to secure the Prix de Rome, and was again unsuccessful.

His Diogenes (1877) takes human anguish further still, in the depiction of this ancient Greek philosopher and cynic. Traditionally shown living in a barrel, Bastien-Lepage gives him cruelly mutilated feet, and one of the most expressive faces since Rembrandt. You will see this painting erroneously dated to 1873 in many places, although it is clearly marked as being signed by the artist in 1877.

Resting Peasants (c 1877) gives us a glimpse of the looseness of Bastien-Lepage when painting oil studies, and appears to have been an early precursor to the next finished work.

Les Foins (Haymakers or Hay making) (1877) was Bastien-Lepage’s return to the Salon of 1878. Although its canvas is almost square, its composition – particularly the recumbent man – and the lay of brushstrokes makes it feel almost panoramic. The artist’s cousin, Marie-Adèle Robert, was the model, and her utterly vacant stare is piercing. Its appearance at the Salon resulted in debate over the harsh life that it portrayed.

The following year, Bastien-Lepage returned with what is now sometimes known as October or Potato Gatherers (1878), but was originally shown as Saison d’Octobre: Récolte des Pommes de Terre. His cousin modelled again, still showing the hard graft typical of Millet’s paintings, but earlier debate was replaced by delight: it was a huge success. And somehow his almost square canvas once more becomes a broad panorama.

That same year, he painted the more personal, and wonderfully painterly, La Toussaint (All Souls’ Day) (1878), a heart-warming outing for an old man and his two grandchildren among the increasingly industrialised fields around towns.

The next and final article in this series will show some of his portraits and late works.

References

Wikipedia.
Appreciation by William S Feldman – strongly recommended.

As of this afternoon, QuarkXPress 2016, version 12.0.0.0, is shipping.

If you pre-purchased an upgrade from the previous version, you should have received a message from Quark informing you of how to obtain your copy. The new version will shortly be available to purchase, and to download for trial.

Those upgrading need their old 2015 serial number, and the new 2016 serial number which was included in the receipt when you pre-purchased. A link in the emails sent out today allows you to obtain your Validation Code, which you will need to enter when you first start the app.

On this Mac, the first attempt to start the new version up resulted in it hanging; I force-quit the app, and on the second attempt it eventually kicked in with the process of entering the validation code. When I went to register the new copy, it was already registered to my account.

First impressions are that it is a really great upgrade: I tried opening old documents which appeared fine, then created an empty new document and imported PDF pages into that. I have only very briefly looked at the documents and played with this, but it looks wonderful, if a tad pedestrian.

It imported PDF one page at a time; right-clicking then brought up the contextual menu, which allowed me to convert each imported page into its constituent native objects. During that process it identifies any missing fonts and allows you to select substitutes. Once done you can adjust text boxes, etc., and you have a regular and fully editable page in your document: miraculous!

App size has actually reduced from 612 MB (version 11.2.0.1) to 545 MB, and it feels significantly more responsive. There is no sign yet of any new version of Quark DesignPad for iOS, so I presume that the current version will continue to work with QuarkXPress 2016.

In case you are in any doubt, QuarkXPress 2016 is still sold on a perpetual licence basis: you do not have to pay any subscription for it, unless you want additional support.

Further details are here.