A century ago this month, on 24 January 1920, Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) died of tuberculous meningitis, at the time a fearsome and untreatable consequence of tuberculosis. He was only thirty-five when he died, but in little more than a decade of ‘serious’ painting he had created some of the foremost Modernist figurative paintings of the early twentieth century. Tragically, he also became addicted to alcohol and drugs, which played a significant role in his early death.

In this short series of articles, I’m going to look primarily at the development of his figurative painting during his period in Paris. He was also a sculptor, and I will show a couple of examples of his sculptures where they cast light on his painting.

Modigliani was born and brought up in the Italian port of Livorno, in a Sephardic Jewish family who had been successful in business, his father managing a metal mine in Sardinia and large forests. However, shortly before his birth, the family business went bankrupt, and they moved into education. Like many children of the time, he suffered several serious childhood diseases, including typhoid, and when he was sixteen, he contracted tuberculosis. He studied in a local studio run by the master Guglielmo Micheli, then in 1901 moved to Rome, where he came to admire the paintings of Domenico Morelli. In 1902, he moved to Florence to take life classes there, then on to Venice, where he adopted a bohemian lifestyle.

In 1906, Modigliani moved to Paris, where he drew from life at the Académie Colarossi, then radically changed his lifestyle and destroyed most of his earlier work, concentrating on sculpture.

Modigliani’s major influences during his early years in Paris were Toulouse-Lautrec, Edvard Munch and Cézanne, but he quickly established an independent style. This Portrait of Maude Abrantes from 1907 shows his departure from Post-Impressionism.

In these early portraits and nudes, such as this Seated Nude, Little Jeanne from 1908, he is already starting to exaggerate the proportions of his sitters, as if making their caricature, with a long neck and stylised face.

Modigliani exhibited in the Salon des Indépendants in 1908, but his paintings there were overshadowed by the arrival of Cubism and more radical works such as Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. He was introduced by the painter Henri Doucet to Dr Paul Alexandre, who provided Modigliani with modest patronage.

His Seated Nude from 1909 is more conventional, if heavily outlined.

His sculpture appears to have been influenced by art from well beyond Europe, perhaps including the Easter Island monumental statues or moai and carvings in Cambodia, as shown in this limestone carving of the Head of a Woman from 1910-11. Modigliani made friends with the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, who became his mentor for a period prior to the Great War.

Shortly before the war, Modigliani embarked on a major project to draw, paint and sculpt female figures acting as columns, caryatids. These were quite widely adopted in Classical architecture, and continue to be used in more modern buildings. He had conceived the idea of a ‘temple to humanity’ which would be surrounded by hundreds of these carved columns. In all, he made more than seventy preparatory drawings for them, using a range of media.

This gouache of a Caryatid from about 1914, now in Houston, shows his concept, of a nude woman supporting the upper structure with her raised arms and head.

Some of his most distinctive drawings were made using blue crayon, as in this example of a Caryatid from about 1913-14. His curves have become crisp and stylised.

This watercolour of a Caryatid from 1913 shows his concept even more clearly, its figure more detailed, and still using many of his distinctive curves.

He carved a couple of these, such as this limestone Caryatid from about 1914, which shows the upper plinth which the figure supports.

The outbreak of war made materials for his sculpture difficult to obtain, and in 1914, after being declared unfit for military service, Modigliani decided to return to painting. At the same time, his consumption of alcohol and drugs also increased.

In the last episode of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, just before Christmas, we left the woman knight Marfisa and her colleagues, who had just escaped the fearsome tribe of women who had held them captive, and sailed to the French port of Marseilles. All that is apart from Astolfo, who had been blowing his magic horn to terrify the population, and was left behind wondering where Marfisa and the others had gone.

After arriving in Marseilles Marfisa goes her own way, leaving the other four knights to travel on together to a castle which fills them with unease. Marfisa travels on and comes across a sad old woman, who used to be the servant of the robbers who had earlier been killed and dispersed by Orlando. The old woman asks Marfisa to carry her across marshy land, which she is happy to do. There they meet Pinabello, who had previously betrayed Bradamante; the damsel accompanying him mocks the old woman riding pillion with Marfisa, who is upset by this, and challenges Pinabello to fight for dress and horse.

Marfisa promptly knocks Pinabello from his horse with her lance, and leaves him stunned on the ground. So Marfisa makes the damsel strip and hand over her fine clothing and mount, which she gives to the old woman.

Four days later, Marfisa comes across Prince Zerbino, who is pursuing a knight who broke the code of chivalry. He too mocks the old woman, now dressed in the damsel’s fine clothes, and (being unaware that Marfisa is a woman) he assumes that she is the knight’s ugly and withered wife. They too end up fighting, and again Marfisa’s lance unseats another knight and leaves him stunned on the ground. Marfisa then exacts her prize, leaving the old woman with Zerbino as she gallops off into the wood, after revealing that she is a woman, to the prince’s mortification.

Zerbino then laments the loss of his fair and beloved Isabella, and his presumption that she must now be dead. The old woman, though, knows the truth, and teases him with the fact that she knows Isabella’s fate. All she then reveals is that she’s not dead, but longs for death’s release. They continue to travel together as the old woman wishes, according to the code of chivalry, but now in a frosty silence.

They meet Ermonide of Holland, a knight known to the old woman, who challenges Zerbino with a threat against the old woman’s life. Despite his dislike for the old woman, Zerbino fights, wounds Ermonide in the shoulder and unseats him. Lying there wounded, Ermonide reveals that Zerbino’s companion is evil, as she tried to seduce his wounded brother Filandro, who attempted to escape from her. The old woman then told her husband that it was Filandro who had tried to seduce her, and her husband fought and defeated him, but spared his life.

Filandro was then confined in prison, where the old woman tried to seduce him again. The old woman’s husband, who was still holding Filandro captive, then pretended to go away to Jerusalem, to trick his enemy into making a move against him. The old woman used this as a ploy to get Filandro to kill her husband, which he did, thinking he was the husband’s enemy instead. She then threatened to have him executed for that crime, leaving him no option but to submit to her desire before being freed and allowed to return home in great grief.

The old woman then decided to have Filandro killed by poison administered by a doctor. To ensure that the only witness would also be dead, she first made the doctor swallow some of the poison before it was given to Filandro; both were left dead as a result of her evil.

Zerbino is naturally moved by this, and makes the wounded Ermonide as comfortable as he can before moving off cursing the old woman. Towards dusk, they hear the sounds of combat, and head towards them. When they reach the gully in which there had been fighting, they find a dead knight.

Meanwhile Astolfo had been left behind after scaring all the women away, and the departure of Marfisa and the other kinghts for Marseilles. He travels through Anatolia then takes a boat up the River Danube through Hungary, crosses the Rhine and enters France. From its north coast, he takes another ship to England, and rides on to London. He discovers that his father Otto and all the other nobles have gone to France to support Charlemagne, so takes a ship to return to Calais. Due to unfavourable winds, he ends up in Rouen instead.

Still carrying his magic horn that drives so many away, he heads toward Paris. Reaching a wood, he rests near a spring. As he is wetting his lips, a peasant steals his horse and rides off on it. Astolfo gives chase on foot, and the horsethief keeps him in sight until they reach Atlante’s enchanted palace being used to imprison many by magic. There the thief and horse suddenly vanish, and all Astolfo can find are its many deserted rooms.

Suspecting this is the result of a spell, Astolfo refers to the book of counter-spells which had been given to him by Logistilla. He finds many to deal with such illusory buildings, and as he starts trying them out the evil magician Atlante makes Astolfo appear in different forms to the other knights he has trapped in the palace. Just as they’re about to attack him, Astolfo blows his magic horn and they all run for cover, including Atlante himself.

At this, Astolfo breaks the spell of the palace, which vanishes into thin air. He then discovers the hippogriff, which had been brought to the palace after it flew away from Ruggiero. As he is already familiar with how to control the hippogriff using its bridle, Astolfo decides to fly away on it once he has found someone to entrust his own charger to.

Among the others who scattered when the magic horn was blown are Ruggiero and Bradamante, who at last are able to see one another, now that Atlante’s magic is undone. They embrace in joy, and agree to marry once Ruggiero has been baptised. They make their way to an abbey in Vallombrosa, but Bradamante is in tears. When Ruggiero asks her why, she replies that the lover of King Marsilio’s daughter is to be burned at the stake by morning. Ruggiero resolves to rescue the young man.

The pair have two routes to reach the condemned man: the direct one will get them there in time, but passes by a castle from which Pinabello has been putting all passing by through a shameful ordeal in which they must lose their clothes and horses. The other and safer route simply won’t get them there in time.

Apparently Pinabello is exacting this penalty because it happened to him recently, when he met Marfisa and the old woman. This has already been forced on Grifone, Sansonetto, Aquilante and a younger knight-errant, who had not long arrived in the country. Worse still, each of those knights is now bound by their word to exact the same penalty on others whom they meet, in turn.

Ruggiero and Bradamante choose the shorter route, and as they reach the castle they hear a bell ring twice. An old man riding a nag comes rushing out and tells them the custom of the castle, as they had feared. He advises them not to engage in combat, but for Bradamante to undress, and surrender their weapons and horses there and then. Ruggiero refuses to give in, and accepts the challenge to combat, although Bradamante wants him to let her fight in his place.

Sansonetto is first to fight, and is immediately wounded and unhorsed by Ruggiero’s lance. Pinabello then comes out to see who has succeeded in this first fight, and is riding the same horse that he stole from Bradamante eight months earlier, when he had thrown her down Merlin’s cave and abandoned her for dead. She recognises him and her horse, draws her sword and challenges him to right the wrong that he did her. Pinabello turns and rides off for his life, with Bradamante in hot pursuit.

The occupants of the castle stay to watch Ruggiero now take on the other three knights, who are reminded by Pinabello’s damsel of their solemn promise to fight him. Those knights are in deep shame, as they are duty-bound to fight Ruggiero. He recalls the three previous times that he has used the magic shield which he is carrying to render his foes unconscious, but decides not to deploy its power here.

Grifone’s weapon makes a small tear in the silken cover which proves sufficient for its blinding ray to collapse him from his mount. Next, Aquilante tears the rest of the cover from the shield, and both Ruggiero’s remaining opponents are made senseless and fall to the ground. When he turns his charger round to face further combat, he sees that everyone, even the horses, has succumbed to the magic ray from his shield, and is lying on the ground incapable.

Ruggiero rides off in search of Bradamante, once he has restored a cover for his shield using the mantle taken from Pinabello’s damsel. But the knight is embarrassed that his victory had been the result of magic, not his skill at arms. As he reaches a deep well, he ties a heavy stone to the shield, and casts it into the water so that it sinks immediately to the bottom. This story travels quickly through France and Spain, and others set off in quest for this magic shield.

While this is taking place, Bradamante catches Pinabello and kills him with her sword. She then rides back but can’t find Ruggiero, and goes deeper into a wood, where she is forced to spend the night in tears for separation from her beloved knight.

At dawn she quickly finds her way out of the wood, where Atlante’s magic palace had stood until its recent destruction, and she had been held captive. There she finds her cousin Astolfo, who is still seeking someone to look after his charger so he can fly off on the hippogriff. He entrusts his horse to her, and asks that she transfers his weapons to Montalbano for him, enabling him to travel light.

As Astolfo flies off, Bradamante is unsure what to do. Should she return to the abbey to meet Ruggiero? As she is wrestling with this, a peasant appears, and she hands the horses (Astolfo’s, and hers recovered from Pinabello) over to him, securing her cousin’s weapons to them for transportation. She then picks a route at random, from where she can soon see the castle at Montalbano where her mother lives. But she changes her mind and decides to head for the abbey instead, and Ruggiero.

She soon meets her brother Alardo, who has been finding billets for the soldiers and horses recruited for Charlemagne’s forces, and turns back to ride to Montalbano with him. Her mother is greatly relieved at her return, and they send a damsel to the abbey at Vallombrosa to explain her delay in getting there for her wedding to Ruggiero.

As this damsel is on her journey, she meets Rodomonte, led by a dwarf, who had sworn that he would take the first horse that he came across. Assuming that the damsel’s horse is not her own, he asks her whose it is. She replies that it is Ruggiero’s, so Rodomonte takes the horse, telling the damsel that Ruggiero is welcome to charge him for its use if he so wishes. The damsel is left walking, hurling curses at Rodomonte as he rides away.

Shortly after Bradamante had killed the treacherous Pinabello, Zerbino happened to pass, still stuck with the old woman in tow. Not knowing what had happened, Zerbino sets off in search of the killer, leaving the old woman behind. He returns shortly, after the woman had robbed the corpse of a jewelled belt. As it will soon get dark, Zerbino and the woman head for the castle of Altaripa, where they are given beds for the night. There they learn that Count Anselmo has just been told that his son has been found murdered in a nearby mountain pass.

Later that night, Pinabello’s body is brought into the castle, and his father announces a bounty for anyone who knows who killed his son. The old woman seizes the chance, and tells the Count that it was Zerbino, providing the belt as evidence. Zerbino is immediately thrown into heavy shackles and jailed, and later sentenced to be dismembered at the place that Pinabello was killed.

The following morning, Zerbino is tied to an old nag ready to take away to be executed. But as that is happening, Orlando arrives, accompanied by Isabella, whom he had rescued from being held captive by pirates. Isabella is also Zerbino’s beloved, you will recall, and as soon as she sees who is being taken away to his death, Orlando hears her vouch for Zerbino. Orlando instructs the rabble from the castle to untie their victim immediately. When one of them challenges this, Orlando breaks his neck with his lance, runs another through the chest, and kills a total of at least eighty.

When Zerbino sees Isabella, he wants to embrace her, as he had thought her long drowned, but assumes that she is now Orlando’s lover, which hurts him more than if she were dead. The three ride in tense silence to a spring, where the two men remove their helmets. Isabella runs straight to Zerbino to embrace him, and reassure him that she loves no one else.

This celebration is cut short by sudden noise from a nearby wood, as Mandricardo emerges with a damsel. He had set out to avenge the deaths of Manilardo and Azirdo on Orlando, and quickly recognises him. The pagan knight explains that he swore he’d not wear a sword unless it was Orlando’s Durindana, won from him in combat. He accuses Orlando of killing Agrican by vile treachery, which Orlando denies, saying that Agrican’s fate was just and fair. They then fight for Durindana, which Orlando hangs from a tree.

Their contest is evenly matched, and both survive the first charges. They wrestle together, hand to hand, and Orlando ends up on the ground, taking the reins from his opponent’s horse with him. That makes Mandricardo’s horse bolt uncontrollably into the wood, and his damsel Doralice rides after him. Mandricardo’s horse meets a ditch, into which both horse and rider fall. The old woman who had falsely accused Zerbino of Pinabello’s killing then arrives on the scene, making Mandricardo and Doralice laugh at her inappropriate dress and horse. The Saracen takes the reins from the old woman’s horse for his own mount, and makes her horse gallop off into the distance.

Orlando has taken this time to remount his charger, but seeing no sign of Mandricardo’s return, he rides off with his sword Durindana, looking for his opponent in vain. Two days later, Orlando reaches a stream where he notices names inscribed in the bark of a tree, and recognises Angelica’s writing, paired with the name of Medoro. He sees them again and again on trees, each time his grief growing. He first tries to build false hope that his love might have been referring to him as Medoro.

Orlando then rests in a small grotto, where Medoro had written on the wall verses in Arabic describing how they had made love there. He reads these again and again, as his heart grows more pained by their meaning. He is overcome with sorrow, and for a while wonders how he can prove them to be forged. He rides to a nearby shepherd’s cottage, where the couple had stayed, and asks for a bed for the night. But he can hardly sleep, his grief and pain tormenting him all the more.

The shepherd tells Orlando of the couple and their sojourn in his cottage, and at the end of his account shows the bracelet which Angelica had given him on their departure. That is the final blow, proof to Orlando that his beloved Angelica is now married to another man. Tears well up, he sighs and groans in despair, and he realises that the bed that he is lying on is that in which the couple made love. Orlando jumps up and rushes out, wanting to escape the place, and rides around sobbing in grief all day and all night. He returns to their cave to slash at the poem on the wall with his sword, and at every tree where they had inscribed their names.

His grief only grows into madness: he tears his armour off, then his clothes, even abandoning his precious sword. He starts uprooting whole trees, tearing up forests in his despair.

Orlando furioso!

Principal Characters

Angelica, beautiful daughter of the ruler of Cathay, who is loved and pursued by innumerable knights both Christian and not, and marries Medoro.

Aquilante, son of Oliver, a Christian knight, and brother of Grifone.

Astolfo, son of the King of England who is abducted by Alcina then turned into a myrtle bush.

Atlante, an evil magician who is in fact an old man, but abducts people to keep in his magic palace, where he tries to protect Ruggiero from his future.

Bradamante, Rinaldo’s sister, “the celebrated Maid”, a brave Christian knight who is the equal of her brother. She is loved by Ruggiero.

Ermonide of Holland, Filandro’s brother, wounded by Zerbino.

Filandro, Ermonide’s brother, killed by the treachery of the old woman Gabrina.

Grifone, son of Oliver, a Christian knight, and brother of Aquilante.

Guidone Selvaggio, illegitimate son of Count Aymon, a Christian knight.

Isabella, daughter of the King of Spain, who falls in love with Zerbino, son of the King of Scotland, and tries to elope to him.

Mandricardo, King of Tartary and son of Agricane, an ‘oriental’ pagan knight.

Marfisa, Ruggiero’s sister, a valiant and fearsome ‘pagan’ warrior.

Medoro, one of Prince Dardinello’s Moorish soldiers, a ‘pagan’, who marries Angelica.

Orlando, the hero, Charlemagne’s nephew and his most outstanding paladin.

Pinabello, son of Count Anselm Altaripa, a treacherous Maganzan who doesn’t follow the laws of chivalry, although a Christian.

Rodomonte, the African King of Sarza and Algiers, the son of Ulieno.

Ruggiero, son of the King of Reggio, a non-Christian knight who is in love with Bradamante.

Sansonetto, envoy to Jerusalem, son of the King of Persia, who was baptised by Orlando.

Zerbino, son of the King of Scotland and the leader of the Scottish forces.

The artists

Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) was a Swiss symbolist and mythological painter who trained at the Düsseldorf Academy, and worked in Italy, Switzerland (Basel and Zurich), and Germany (Munich). I have recently written two articles about his symbolist paintings, and have also looked at his narrative works.

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was a major French painter whose Romantic and painterly style laid the groundwork for the Impressionists. In addition to many fine easel works, he painted murals and was an accomplished lithographer too. Many of his paintings are narrative, and among the most famous is Liberty Leading the People from 1830. This article looks at some of his narrative works.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Having produced large sets of illustrations for classics such as Dante’s Divine Comedy earlier in his career, he started work on a set for Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso in the late 1870s, for publication in 1879. These are the last major illustrations which he made. This article looks at his paintings.

References

Wikipedia on Ariosto
Wikipedia on Orlando Furioso

Barbara Reynolds (translator) (1975, 1977) Orlando Furioso, parts 1 and 2, Penguin. ISBNs 978 0 140 44311 0, 978 0 140 44310 3. Verse translation with extensive introduction and notes.
Guido Waldman (translator) (1974) Orlando Furioso, Oxford World’s Classics. ISBN 978 0 19 954038 9. Prose translation.

The most significant movement in British painting history in the nineteenth century was the Pre-Raphaelite, but few of the most important British painters of that century were members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) itself. One of the leading narrative artists was close to the PRB, very influential over it, but pursued an independent style of his own: Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893). But he wasn’t really a Pre-Raphaelite at all, painted many narrative works, and was teacher and career-long mentor to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the dominant painter of the PRB.

In this short series, I’m going to explore a selection of Brown’s narrative and landscape paintings.

Brown, or Madox Brown perhaps, had comparatively humble origins: his father was a purser in the Royal Navy, who married into an old Kentish family with the surname Madox, which was passed down as a middle name, not the first part of a ‘double-barrelled’ surname. The family moved between lodgings in the Pas-de-Calais and the houses of relatives in Kent. When Brown showed artistic talent, they moved to Bruges for him to study in the academy there, on to Ghent when he transferred there in 1836, and the following year to Antwerp.

By 1840, when only his father survived, Brown first exhibited at the Royal Academy. The following year he married for the first time, and moved with his wife and father to Montmartre in Paris.

Inspired by Byron’s ‘metaphysical drama’ Manfred (1816-17), Brown painted Manfred on the Jungfrau when he was in Paris in 1842, the year that his father died there. It follows Byron’s Faustian theme, and appears to have been influenced by the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. Manfred is stepping precariously over a cornice on the Jungfrau mountain, his guide looking on in horror. Manfred’s face is also familiar as the expression of madness in Gustave Courbet’s contemporary self-portrait The Desperate Man (c 1843).

Although Brown met with little success at this stage of his career, an early admirer was the young Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who asked him to be his teacher in 1848, and thereafter Brown remained Rossetti’s mentor. Despite that, Brown stayed independent of Rossetti’s nascent Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He found the money to travel too, visiting Basel in Switzerland in 1845, and Rome in 1845-46, where he admired the paintings of Holbein and Friedrich Overbeck in particular. Brown’s first wife died in Paris in 1846, as the couple were returning to England from Rome.

Brown lived with his model Emma Hill, the daughter of a working-class bricklayer, and Brown’s model at the time, from 1848, and they finally married in 1853.

When Brown was still struggling for recognition in 1847, he started work on his largest and most complex narrative painting, Chaucer at the Court of Edward III, which he exhibited in 1851. It was also his first attempt to show realistic natural sunlight and shadow, following the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of ‘truth to nature’. As a narrative painting it is perhaps a little over-ingenious: the poet and his monarch are shown towards the top of its crowd, with Chaucer in religious garb, and the King looking at him as he reads from his lectern. They are surrounded by characters from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1387-1400), and the distant rolling coastal countryside of south-eastern England.

In 1854, Brown simplified this in a watercolour copy of just the central story, shown below, which demonstrates the virtue of its greater simplicity.

Over the same period, he painted the first scholar to translate the Bible into (Middle) English, John Wycliffe Reading His Translation of the Bible to John of Gaunt (1847-48, 1859-61). Wycliffe’s translation was completed by the time of his death in 1384. John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, was a son of King Edward III and a major statesman who would have been 44 at the time of Wycliffe’s death. Brown probably modelled the figure of John after a portrait painted in about 1593 by Edward Hoby, two centuries after the Duke’s death.

Having tried the literary and erudite, Brown turned to more populist themes in the 1850s.

Today his Pretty Baa-Lambs (1851/9) may appear a sickly-sweet over-sentimental pastoral, which is almost devoid of narrative, but it adhered to the ideal of ‘truth to nature’ in almost all respects apart from the unnatural positions of some of the sheep. Although the distant landscape suggests this was painted on the north coast of Kent, Brown spent about five months painting this during the summer of 1851, mostly at his house in Stockwell, south of London. Each day when the weather was suitable, providing the full sunlight he required, the lambs and sheep were driven from their grazing on Clapham Common to Stockwell to act as models.

The dates and background to this incomplete painting Take your Son, Sir! remain unclear. It’s thought that Brown started work on this in 1851, although it clearly shows his second wife Emma with their newborn son. Their first son, Oliver, wasn’t born until 1855, and their second, Arthur, in September 1856, which would suggest that Brown didn’t start this until at least 1855. It’s generally held that this shows not Oliver, who lived until 1874, but Arthur, who died aged ten months in July 1857, at which time Brown abandoned the painting.

It’s most interesting for the detail seen reflected in the mirror, which shows a contemporary living room and a man, presumably a self-portrait. This is reminiscent of Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding (1434). The artist’s wife appears to be pale and flushed, as if the labour wasn’t free of incident either.

This painting also appears to have had an interesting history, in that it was presented by the sisters of John Singer Sargent to the Tate Gallery in memory of their brother, perhaps from his personal collection.

Brown then turned to a landscape in pure Pre-Raphaelite style, An English Autumn Afternoon, 1852-1853, which he painted during the whole month of October in 1852, from his landlady’s bedroom window in Hampstead. This intricately detailed view (below) over Hampstead Heath to the churches of Highgate in the suburbs of London was finally completed after a further two months work in the Spring of 1854. He sold it in June of that year.

Brown also tried some social realism, in Waiting: an English Fireside of 1854-55, which he is thought to have painted in the period 1851-55. Dates are again a problem here: the years of the title almost certainly refer to the Siege of Sevastopol (1854-55) during the Crimean War (1853-56), making it unlikely that he started this work as early as 1851.

The mother and child shown are clearly waiting alone for the return of the husband-father. Unlike later ‘problem pictures’ which provided ample visual clues to the underlying narrative, the only obvious references in the painting to its background are an open locket on the table at the left showing a portrait of a man in scarlet military uniform, and what appears to be a letter underneath it.

Many of those most strongly associated with Symbolism seem now to have been long since forgotten, artists like Carlos Schwabe, also spelt Carloz, (1866–1926), whose work I’m going to look at in this and tomorrow’s articles.

Schwabe was born in Altona, Germany, which has now been absorbed into the western part of the city of Hamburg, but moved with his family to Geneva in Switzerland, where he studied art at the academy. When he completed that training, he moved to Paris and designed wallpaper. He seems to have continued to work in decorative art for much of his career, adopting an Art Nouveau style, and became a leading book illustrator.

One of his first major sets of illustrations was to accompany an edition of Émile Zola’s Le Rêve (The Dream), the sixteenth in his Rougon-Macquart cycle, which had first been published in book form in 1888. I suspect that the first two paintings of his shown below are from that set. Zola was a Naturalist, and the Symbolists of the day expressed strong opposition to his Naturalist art; this makes Schwabe’s illustrations of particular interest.

His watercolour of Day of Death from 1890-92, sets a trend in his paintings for overlaying decorative elements on his figures, here a curtain of long tendrils which dissects the dark figure standing behind. Various mystical symbols are included, such as a triangle set in light rays at the top, and the artist signs his name as an inscription on a stone plinth at the lower left.

Evening Bells, a watercolour from 1891, may also have been destined for this set of illustrations. It’s an unusual composite of three different views: dominating the right and lower areas is a view of a belltower, with a rhythmic series of angels emerging from one of the windows and flying downwards. At the lower left is an aerial view of a contemporary French town, and at the upper left a coastal view with water lapping on a flat shore.

By the time that Schwabe made this famous design for a poster for the Salon de la Rose+Croix in 1892, he had moved away from any early Naturalism and was an active member of the Rosicrucian and Symbolist group founded by Joséphin Péladan, the avant garde of Symbolist art. Schwabe had probably been introduced to its ranks as a result of his friendship with other members of the movement including the composer Vincent d’Indy. This was the first of a total of six of these Salons, led rather regally by Péladan, a controversial figure who wanted to revive a mediaeval secret society, the Rosicrucians, and named himself its new high priest, employing the suspicious title of Sâr.

Although supported by the Durand-Ruel Gallery, Péladan’s invitations to selected artists weren’t well received, and their Salon of 1897 proved to be the last.

This painting of an Angel of Hope from 1895 also appears to have been intended for use in print. As with many of Schwabe’s angelic figures, it is unmistakeably female and has black wings.

His watercolour tondo portrait of Medusa from the same year has startlingly feline eyes and that characteristic wide-mouthed look of utter horror. This is unusual for being one of the few close portraits in which Medusa is still alive.

Around 1895, Schwabe started work on a set of colour illustrations for a new edition of Charles Baudelaire’s notorious poems Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil), which was published in 1900. This volume of poems had first been published in 1857, but author and publisher were prosecuted for offending public decency and six poems were removed, not being restored in full until 1949. Themes range through decadence and sex, with explicit references to practices which the affluent of the day considered should be kept in the brothels they frequented, for instance. These poems became a touchstone for more ‘progressive’ movements in art, including Symbolism.

Benediction accompanies the poem of that name, whose text is available in the original French and English translations here. A haggard devil is extracting the heart from a beautiful young woman, while apparently copulating with her. She is identified as a poet by the lyre she is wielding above her head. Other devils are trying to lick and suck parts of her legs.

This painting is titled Crepuscule in the original, which is here more likely to refer to Dawn rather than dusk, as it seems a better fit with the text. This giant female figure of “dawn, shivering in her green and rose garment, was moving slowly along the deserted Seine”. Hanging from each hand is a column of the citizens she is awakening.

Doomed or Damned Women most probably refers to the shorter post-censor version of the text. This celebrates lesbian practices including flagellation.

Death, which is dated 1896, was probably intended as the frontispiece for the final group of poems. It shows a vengeful female version of the Grim Reaper figure well known through the history of modern painting, with feline eyes. She swings her scythe high above her head as she stands at the prow of a boat with an elaborate figurehead adorned with red roses.

In the first article looking at the paintings of Carlos Schwabe (1866–1926), I showed examples up to about 1895-96, ending with four taken from the illustrated edition of Baudelaire’s poems Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) which was published in 1900.

In February 1896, Schwabe was among those who exhibited with les artistes de l’âme (Artists of the Soul) in the lobby of Théâtre de la Bodinière in Paris. Other noted Symbolists who had formed this breakaway movement included Edmond Aman-Jean, Alphonse Osbert and Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer. Although it attracted the attention of the critics of the day, its impact was less than that of the Salon de la Rose+Croix.

In 1898, Schwabe designed and painted this poster for the French première performance of his friend Vincent d’Indy’s opera Fervaal, which was staged on 10 May 1898 at the Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique, Paris. Based in part on an obscure Swedish poem, it centres on Celtic battles with Saracens, with a good deal of Norse mythology and sorcery added. This painting shows the closing moments, in which the Gaulish hero of the title carries the lifeless body of his lover, daughter of the Saracen emir and a sorceress, up a mountain just as the reign of a ‘new God’ is about to start. Sadly, the opera wasn’t a success, and has been performed very infrequently since.

The following year, Schwabe painted one of at least two versions of a more conventional Christian motif, The Virgin with Lilies (1899) (above), which is dominated by the sweeping curve of its rhythmic flowers. Below is another version with the same title, but no date, on a tondo. This lacks the same rhythm, emphasising the rays of heavenly light instead.

Schwabe developed the theme of the Grim Reaper further in his watercolour of Death of the Gravedigger from 1900. An old gravedigger is seen deep in his own work, on a snowy winter’s day. Squatting beside that grave is the female figure of Death, holding in her right hand a small oil lamp emitting an unnatural green light. She looks languidly down at the gravedigger, and he looks up at her in fear. The long barren twigs of a weeping willow form a curtain which echoes the curves of her wings.

Woman with a Cradle Among Flowers, or Fate, from 1900 appears to be a decorative work, showing a mother tending to an infant’s cradle suspended among rich blossom. She looks down at the baby, but it’s not revealed to the viewer, which is exceptionally unusual in such paintings. This is also one of Schwabe’s few works which may depict a real-life motif.

Schwabe painted this rather romantic portrait of a Woman with a Lyre in 1902. She has the dark wings typical of so many of his angels, but is more wide-eyed as she sings against the backdrop of a starry night.

His watercolour of Elysian Fields from 1903 is ambiguously titled, in that it could refer to the famous avenue of the Champs Élysées in Paris. A woman looks languidly at the viewer as she strolls over a floral carpet on overgrown steps, which lead up to an avenue of cypress trees, long associated with graveyards and death. Shw is dressed in black, with a long black mantilla, and carries a classical lyre in her left hand, indicating that she is a poet. In classical Greek mythology, the Elysian Fields were the final resting place of the souls of heroes.

Schwabe appears to have painted mainly in watercolour during much of his career, but a few of his accessible works were made in oils. One of these is this dramatic Wave from 1907, in which the bodies of angry accusative women, possibly the Furies, are embedded in the wall of a wave as it rushes towards the viewer.

He also revisited some of the paintings which he had made for the illustrated Les Fleurs du Mal a decade earlier. Schwabe’s oil painting of Spleen and Ideal from 1907 is a fairly explicit depiction of two figures making love in a breaking wave, presumably indicating the moment of climax. The figure ‘on top’ is an angel with white wings, and appears to be male, whilst that ‘below’ has the breasts of a woman, although her face is obscured by her long hair. Writhing in amongst their interlocked bodies are the coils of a serpent, adding a very dark twist to the composition.

His earlier illustration was probably used as the frontispiece to the section of this title, in which most of the poems are to be found.

The last dated painting I have been able to find is this superb portrait of his daughter Lotte, painted in chalk in 1908. She comes across as a resolute young woman with a distinct air of mystery; I wonder how accurate that was?

Although Schwabe didn’t die until 1926, I have been unable to locate any usable images of his paintings during the last eighteen years of his life, from the age of only forty-two. He seems to have retired to live in the small town of Avon in the Fontainebleau Forest, and the few paintings of his dated after 1910 appear to be fairly conventional depictions of classical myths.

If you’ve ever been to Paris, I’m sure that you’ll have visited its eighteenth arondissement, Montmartre: the hill that rises out of densely-packed streets, capped by the huge domed edifice of the Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur, green trees embracing its foundations. In this article, and its conclusion tomorrow, I look at some of the best paintings made of this district now known for its strong artistic connections, as well as its nightlife.

Montmartre takes its name from the Mount of Mars, implying that Romans may have had a temple here during imperial times, although so far no archeological evidence has been found to support that. If you believe the Abbot of the Monastery of Saint-Denis who wrote an account of that saint before about 885, the Mount of Mars was later supplanted by the Mount of Martyrs.

Léon Bonnat’s ornate showpiece in the Panthéon of The Martyrdom of Saint Denis (1874-88) tells the Abbot’s story quite explicitly.

According to this legend, Saint Denis, patron saint of the city of Paris, was martyred by beheading on Montmartre hill. It’s claimed that after his head had been cut off, Denis picked it up and walked around preaching a sermon. The legendary location became a place of veneration, then the Saint Denis Basilica, and the burial place for the kings of France.

By the fifteenth century, the slopes of Montmartre had grown into a village, tucked among vineyards and orchards. In 1529, windmills were built on the windward (western) slope to grind locally-harvested grain. By 1790, with the city of Paris growing steadily, Montmartre was just outside the outer boundary of the metropolis, and stone quarries and gypsum mines were slowly eating their way into its hillside.

Georges Michel’s view of The Mill of Montmartre, which was probably painted in about 1820, shows how rural the area remained just a few years after the Russians had bombarded the city below using their artillery from the hilltop. By this time, there were only a few windmills left.

When the pre-Impressionist Johan Jongkind came to paint this View of Montmartre in about 1850, it still had tumbledown cottages, rustic horses and carts on mud tracks, and three remaining windmills on the skyline.

Jongkind also painted this sketchy watercolour Self-portrait in August 1850, adding annotations ten years later to the effect that he is standing in Montmartre. This possibly qualifies as the first such self-portrait to have been painted in Montmartre. It was also the last to be made before the area became assimilated into the city of Paris, which occurred on 1 January 1860.

Just as Jongkind’s art was followed by the French Impressionists, so they followed his lead to live and paint in Montmartre. By this time, the area had become famous for its cafés and cabarets, and still had a slightly rural air to it.

Alfred Sisley spent as little time in Paris as he had to, but shortly before the Franco-Prussian War, he moved with his family to live in the Cité des Fleurs, from where he painted this View of Montmartre from the Cité des Fleurs in 1869.

The following year, Montmartre was the site of a major event in the history of balloons as a mode of travel. By 7 October 1870, Prussian forces had encircled the city. The French government had fled to Tours, leaving Léon Gambetta, the Minister of the Interior, trapped in the city. As shown in Jules Didier and Jacques Guiaud’s painting of the Departure of Gambetta in the Balloon ‘Armand-Barbès’ on 7 October 1870 (c 1870), he made his escape by balloon from the foot of Montmartre hill.

In 1874-76, Ilya Repin visited Paris, painted there, and exhibited paintings at the Salon. This was an important period during his early career, when he was able to experience the art of the French Impressionists at the height of the movement. Among his paintings from that period is The Road from Montmartre in Paris (1875-6), which makes interesting comparison with Jongkind’s above. How little seems to have changed.

But Montmartre was about to change beyond all recognition: as a gesture of expiation for the suffering imposed on the city of Paris during the Commune in 1871, the Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur (but not of Saint-Denis) was built on the top of the hill between 1876-1919. It is now one of the major landmarks of the city.

During the late Spring of 1876, Auguste Renoir made various studies and sketches near his new rented house and studio in Montmartre. He then worked them up during May into one of his – and Impressionism’s – masterpieces, Bal du moulin de la Galette (Dance at the Moulin de la Galette) (1876). This was exhibited at the Third Impressionist Exhibition, and has become one of the canonical European paintings of the late nineteenth century.

Paintings of Montmartre have proved decisive works for other artists. Jean Béraud had his first painting accepted for the Salon in 1872, but it wasn’t until 1876 and his Leaving Montmartre Cemetery that he attained recognition. It has the same greys and blacks as Caillebotte’s Paris Street, Rainy Day painted the following year, but lacks the latter’s photographic view.

Renoir painted oil sketches of people and scenes inside the cafés of Montmartre. In the Café from about 1877 is typical of these, but surprisingly it was accepted for the Salon of 1878, his first work to be exhibited there for eight years.

Auguste-Louis-Marie Jenks Ottin (1811-90) was the oldest of the artists who exhibited at the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, and was the treasurer of the Impressionist group at that time. Although primarily a sculptor, he later painted this view of Montmartre, Paris (1882). Two windmills are still visible, and to their left a small dome, which I don’t think is part of the new Basilica under construction.

In tomorrow’s article, among other more recent paintings of Montmartre, I will feature some by its most famous visitor of the time, Vincent van Gogh.

By the late 1880s, as shown in the first of these two articles, the hill of Montmartre on the edge of the city of Paris was being transformed with the construction of the huge domed edifice of the Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur. It was well-established as the place in the city for artists to live and work, where they and many other bohemian people frequented its cafés and cabarets.

Vincent van Gogh moved to Paris in 1886, staying with his brother Theo, who lived in Montmartre. He worked at Cormon’s studio and met painters including Émile Bernard, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Signac, for a while adopting the Divisionist style of ‘pointillism’. Here I show just four of his many paintings of the area, starting with the same Le Moulin de la Galette (1887) in whose gardens Renoir had painted his Bal du moulin de la Galette a decade earlier.

Van Gogh’s Montmartre: Behind the Moulin De La Galette (1887) show the still rural view behind that windmill.

Montmartre: Mills and Vegetable Gardens (1887) looks at the mills from slightly further back, revealing the smallholdings and gardens which still covered much of the area. I believe that the large cream-coloured building on the skyline to the left of the windmill is the Basilica under construction.

One of van Gogh’s most remarkable paintings of the area is this, believed to show Square Saint-Pierre, Paris (1887), with its overtly pointillist technique. This work has also been claimed to show a completely different location in Asnières.

In 1872, Ferdinand Beert (1835-1902), popularly known as Fernando, started a circus in Vierzon, France, which he moved to Paris the following year, and into purpose-built premises on the edge of Montmartre in 1875. Cirque Fernando became popular among artistic and literary circles, including the French Impressionists. Fernando’s wife encouraged this by allowing artists free access to both rehearsals and performances, so that they could sketch freely.

One of the artists who frequented the Cirque Fernando, and who lived in Montmartre for twenty years, was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. In his The Rider at the Cirque Fernando of 1888, Fernando’s son Louis is the ringmaster looking at one of his equestrian performers, who is riding side-saddle in a typically skimpy costume. Toulouse-Lautrec visited his first prostitute in Montmartre, and drew and painted in several of the brothels there.

By the 1890s, Renoir was prevented from painting outdoors by his rheumatoid arthritis, but in about 1892 it must have been warm enough to allow him to paint this wonderful plein air oil sketch of a View From Montmartre.

Montmartre had been popular with the more renegade artists in the late nineteenth century, particularly the Impressionists, but hadn’t featured in the work of Naturalists such as Jules Bastien-Lepage, which had its roots in the countryside and rural deprivation. Some of the later Naturalists did though take to the streets of Montmartre for their motifs.

La Vachalcade (The Cow-valcade) (1896) is Fernand Pelez’s reversal of a portrait of an affluent family by way of parody. Thirteen young revelers are taking part in a carnival procession, one of the Vachalcades which took place in Montmartre at the time. Some wear masks, others have the close-shorn hair characteristic of the poor, a measure against endemic parasites.

At the centre is a boy very similar to Pelez’s famous Little Lemon Vendor, wearing an adult’s jacket and a huge hat. Behind him is a Pierrot character, and in the background a banner bearing the word Misère – misery. Dangling on that is a dead rat, a reference to a well-known café on the Place Pigalle. The ‘vache’ (cow) in the title refers to the French phrase manger de la vache enragée, meaning to live in poverty.

Alongside Vincent van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec, the third great artist of Montmartre in the late nineteenth century was Pierre Bonnard, who painted its streets by day and by night. It was in Montmartre that he met a young woman, whose real name was Maria Boursin, but who called herself Marthe de Méligny. She was his first model, became his partner for life, and appears in hundreds of his paintings, drawings and photographs. Only in Montmartre…

Bonnard’s Rue Tholozé or Montmartre in the Rain from 1897 shows one of the streets at the heart of Montmartre. Seen from the third or fourth floor, it’s a grey and wet evening in which the lights of the windows provide a pervasive warm glow.

Place Clichy (The Green Tram) (c 1906) shows this very busy intersection at the edge of Montmartre, more properly known as Place de Clichy, and one of Bonnard’s favourite locations at this time. The streets are crowded with a tram (which had only recently been electrified), several horse-drawn vehicles, and a market barrow in the foreground. There are also pedestrians almost everywhere, even some small dogs.

Montmartre has also had its moments of shame.

Maximilien Luce’s The Execution of Varlin (1914-17) is a historical painting from the Paris Commune of 1871. Eugène Varlin was a political activist who had started his career as a bookbinder, and become a socialist revolutionary and pioneer trade unionist. During the seige of Paris by the Prussians in 1870, he had distributed aid from his co-operative restaurant.

In March 1871, he took part in the storming of the Place Vendôme, following which he was elected to the Council of the Paris Commune. In ‘Bloody Week’ in May, he fought against government troops. When the Commune was suppressed and broken, he was captured, taken to Montmartre, tortured and blinded by a mob, and finally shot, as shown here.

The final work of art which I show isn’t a painting, but a vast and breathtaking mosaic – among the largest in the world – in the ceiling above the apse of the Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur, which was designed by Luc-Olivier Merson: Christ in Majesty.

By a strange coincidence, Merson died a hundred years ago, and later this year I will look in more detail at his paintings. A better-known painter who died ten months before him was Amedeo Modigliani, another of Montmartre’s most famous artists.

Following the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) largely abandoned sculpture and returned to painting portraits. He had tried to enlist in the army, but was declared unfit for military service because of his tuberculosis, the disease which was causing his health to deteriorate.

This portrait of the young and aspiring art dealer Paul Guillaume was painted early during the war years, in September 1915 when Guillaume (1891-1934) would only have been about twenty-four. He was one of the few dealers in Paris who seemed prepared to promote avant garde artists like Modigliani and Chaim Soutine.

Lola de Valence (1915) isn’t a portrait of a contemporary figure, but refers to Édouard Manet’s full-length painting of the famous Spanish dancer, which he completed in 1862, only to be rejected by the Salon jury. Its appearance is nothing like the figure in that earlier painting, but more closely resembles Modigliani’s previous sculptured heads, exaggerated vertically with a very long neck, apparently inspired by masks from the French Congo.

Madame de Pompadour (1915) is another historical figure, here Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, the Marquise de Pompadour and official chief mistress of Louis XV between 1745-51. Behind her is what could be an African mask.

Among the fellow artists whom Modigliani painted in 1915 was Juan Gris (1887–1927), at the time a renowned Cubist who was then painting in Synthetic Cubist style, using bright colours and collage.

Probably the most famous of these, and of his subjects, is this Portrait of Picasso, painted in about 1915.

Portrait of Leopold Zborowski from 1916 shows another young and aspiring art dealer, who was also a poet and writer. During Modigliani’s final years, he was his primary dealer, a close friend, and provided him with a studio. Zborowski (1889-1932) also dealt with Chaim Soutine, Maurice Utrillo, Marc Chagall and André Derain, and from sale of their works amassed large profits which he lost again during the depression in the early 1930s. He died in poverty in Paris from a heart attack at the ago of only forty-three.

Modigliani’s double portrait of Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz from 1916 shows this Cubist sculptor and his wife, who is seated beside him. Lipchitz (1891-1973) started to exhibit in 1912, and attained fame in the 1920s when he was commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in the US to produce seven bas reliefs and two sculptures. He fled France during the Second World War, and settled in the USA.

From 1915-16, Modigliani lived with the British writer Emily Alice Haigh (1879-1943), known by one of her pen names as Beatrice Hastings, and shown in this portrait (above) of Beatrice from 1916. They lived together in Hastings’ apartment in Montmartre, and she posed for some of his nude drawings and paintings, including Seated Nude (below). Hastings led a colourful life, and prior to moving to Paris just before the Great War, she had been the concurrent lover of both Alfred Orage, her editor at the time, and the writer Katherine Mansfield.

In 1916, his dealer Zborowski commissioned Modigliani to paint nude models that he supplied, using his apartment as a studio. As Modigliani had just broken up with Beatrice Hastings, he moved into that apartment in Montparnasse. Among these works is this Nude on a Sofa thought to show a woman named Almalisa, which he completed in 1916. Zborowski paid the models, provided materials, and paid the artist 15-20 francs per day, which helped finance Modigliani’s deepening addiction to alcohol and drugs. In 1917, these paintings of nudes were to be exhibited, and made Modigliani famous.

Orlando has discovered that his beloved Angelica – who disliked him intensely – had married Medoro, and is driven to madness as a result. He tore his armour and clothes off, abandoned his precious sword, and started uprooting trees with his bare hands.

Shepherds are drawn to the great noise that Orlando is generating as he rips up woods. When one of them approaches, Orlando tears his head from his body, then swings his corpse like a club at the others, killing another two of them. The shepherds understandably retreat.

When Orlando starts killing their flocks and cattle, everyone around drops what they’re doing to climb onto a rooftop to watch. In a nearby town, a force of a thousand is raised immediately to put a stop to this destruction, but the paladin slaughters them too, until they all run for their lives. Soon the countryside around him is deserted, as people and animals flee. He travels through France like this, until he reaches a tower by a broad river.

After Orlando had left Zerbino, the Prince of Scotland waited before choosing a different route with his love Isabella. They then come across a knight with his hands and feet tied up being carried on a horse, escorted by two knights in armour. Isabella recognises the prisoner as Odorico, into whose care she had been entrusted by Zerbino. The two guards recognise Isabella, stop, dismount, and pay their respects to the prince. It turns out that the two were the other survivors of the shipwreck with Isabella and Odorico: Almonio and Corebo.

Almonio then tells their story following the shipwreck. When Almonio returned from being sent by Odorico to La Rochelle and discovered his colleagues had gone, he followed their footsteps. Those led into a dark wood, where he found the wounded Corebo, but couldn’t find any trace of the others. Fearing that Corebo would die, he had him transported to La Rochelle where a surgeon was able to save him. The two then resumed the search for the missing Isabella and Odorico.

They found Odorico in Biscay, at the local king’s court. When Almonio had explained the man’s treachery to the king, he was given permission to deal with Odorico as he wished. Wanting to bring his prisoner to Zerbino for formal trial, Almonio and Corebo had set off in search of the Prince of Scotland. Now that they have found him and told the full story, Almonio calls on the prince to make his judgement.

Odorico then falls back on his previous trustworthy reputation, putting Zerbino in a difficult position. As he is pondering this, the evil old woman arrives on her horse, which galloped there with her hanging on for her life. They detain her, and Zerbino announces his penalty for Odorico, that he shall look after the old woman and be her faithful champion for the next year. The prince makes him swear to do that, then asks Almonio and Corebo to let their prisoner go. Within a day, Odorico has hung the woman from a tree, for which Almonio later hangs him in return.

Zerbino then waits three days for Mandricardo to return, searching for him all the time. With Isabella beside him, he comes across the lovers’ inscriptions made by Angelica and Medoro, and the cave in which they had made love. There they find Orlando’s armour, horse, and his sword Durindana, and wonder whether the paladin might have been killed. When they meet a shepherd who witnessed Orlando’s madness, they learn the terrible truth.

While they are gathering up Orlando’s belongings, a woman named Fiordiligi rides up in search of her partner Brandimarte, who had left the city gate many months ago. She is unaware that he was one of the knights who had been held prisoner in Atlante’s magic palace; when Astolfo blew his magic horn, Brandimarte had returned to Paris, but by this time Fiordiligi was travelling the country in quest of him.

Having gathered together Orlando’s weapons, Zerbino hangs them on a pine tree and inscribes on its trunk a warning that they are the paladin’s. Just as he is about to remount to ride away, Mandricardo arrives. After Zerbino explains what has happened, the Saracen takes Orlando’s sword in triumph. The prince tells him to leave it alone, and they quickly proceed to fight, Zerbino dodging Mandricardo’s swipes with Durindana. Despite the prince’s deft moves, the sword cuts him superficially down the front of his body. Although Zerbino fights back, his opponent then inflicts a series of further wounds.

Doralice, Mandricardo’s damsel, and Isabella plead with their knights to call a halt, to which they agree, and Isabella leads Zerbino away. Fiordiligi continues her search for her husband.

Zerbino still feels shame about Orlando’s sword, but is suffering badly from his wounds. He grows weaker until they stop by a stream where he speaks his last to Isabella and dies in her arms. She makes one last promise to him that she won’t kill herself with his sword, and will live out her natural life. The wailing and cries of her grief are then so loud that she disturbs a hermit, who comes to investigate. He comforts her, but won’t try taking her back to his cave for shelter, so takes her instead towards a convent close to Marseilles.

In the meantime, Mandricardo has been resting in the shade until Doralice announces to him that Rodomonte is approaching, intending to challenge him.

Mandricardo has been looking forward to this, remounts his horse, and rides towards his adversary. The two knights hurl oaths at one another before their swords clash in a vicious battle. Mandricardo strikes a powerful blow to Rodomonte’s head, leaving him stunned and dangling from his saddle. Rodomonte springs back up and strikes his opponent similarly. A further blow kills Mandricardo’s horse.

As they resume their fight, an envoy arrives and informs them that King Agramante seeks the aid of all knights to rally to his cause. Doralice stands between them and brings their combat to a sudden halt, for them to answer the request which they cannot refuse. After calling a truce they ride away, Mandricardo on Orlando’s abandoned horse, which had been grazing nearby. On their way to serve Agramante, they rest in a meadow with a fountain, where they both can remove their helmets. A damsel then comes and sits beside them.

Ruggiero, who had just thrown his magic shield down a well, is also greeted by a messenger calling all Saracen knights to the aid of King Agramante, which puts him in a quandary. He makes his decision quickly: the lady wins, so he turns to head towards her. With the sun setting, he reaches a castle in central France which has recently fallen to ‘pagan’ forces. Making his way in to the central square, he sees a youth who is about to be executed in front of a large crowd.

When he sees the youth’s face, Ruggiero is convinced they are Bradamante, and supposes that she had tried to rescue the young man she knew was about to be burned at the stake, and had been captured. He resolves to rescue her, and swings his sword wildly at the crowd. He cuts a few heads off, and kills a few more with deft strokes of his blade. The youth is freed, and Ruggiero keeps the crowd at bay as they make their escape from the citadel.

Once free, the youth asks Ruggiero to whom he owes the honour, which puzzles the knight, who still assumes that this is Bradamante. All is then revealed: he has just rescued Bradamante’s brother, Ricciardetto, who looks so like her that they are often confused. The young man then explains that his sister had recently been wounded in the head by a Saracen, and her long hair was cut off by a hermit to stop the bleeding, so she now has close-cropped hair.

When Bradamante was resting to gather her strength after this injury, she fell asleep, and a young woman Fiordispina chanced upon her. She saw Bradamante in her armour, with short hair, armed as a man, and mistook her for a male knight. Fiordispina quickly burned with passion for this young knight, and stole a kiss. To this Bradamante thought that she’d better explain that she wasn’t a man, and how she’d been trained to fight and go on adventures. At this tragic news, Fiordispina grew increasingly distressed.

As it was then late in the day, the two headed for a nearby town, the same place from which Ricciardetto had just escaped. There, Fiordispina went to pains to show that Bradamante was a woman rather than a knight. The two took lodgings, in which they shared the same bed, driving Fiordispina into flights of fantasy in which Bradamante changed sex.

The time came for Bradamante to return home, and Fiordispina gave her a horse with gold trappings, and a fine surcoat. They each went their way, and Bradamante rode back to her mother at Montalbano. There her brother Ricciardetto decided to take advantage of Fiordispina’s desire for his sister, and rode off in search of the young woman, wearing the surcoat and mounted on the horse she had just given his sister.

When they met, Fiordispina kissed Ricciardetto immediately, assuming that he was Bradamante returned to her in love. She rushed him up to her room and removed his clothes before dressing him as a woman. She then took him down to dinner with many guests, after which Fiordispina invited him to sleep the night with her, still presuming him to be his sister.

When they were alone together that night, Ricciardetto told Fiordispina a story in which he was Bradamante, but had changed gender. That occurred when he rescued a nymph from being eaten by a troll. As his reward, the nymph changed Bradamante into a man, and here he was. Fiordispina had got what she wished, and the two lived together as man and wife for several months, enjoying great pleasure, until her father the king heard about it – and it was the king’s anger which took him to the stake.

With the completion of Ricciardetto’s account of his affair and how it backfired, they reach the citadel of Agrismonte, which is surrounded by deep ravines.

Principal Characters

Angelica, beautiful daughter of the ruler of Cathay, who is loved and pursued by innumerable knights both Christian and not, and marries Medoro.

Astolfo, son of the King of England who is abducted by Alcina then turned into a myrtle bush.

Atlante, an evil magician who is in fact an old man, but abducts people to keep in his magic palace, where he tries to protect Ruggiero from his future.

Bradamante, Rinaldo’s sister, “the celebrated Maid”, a brave Christian knight who is the equal of her brother. She is loved by Ruggiero.

Doralice, daughter of the King of Granada, and Mandricardo’s damsel.

Fiordispina, a princess who falls in love with Bradamante.

Isabella, daughter of the King of Spain, who falls in love with Zerbino, son of the King of Scotland, and tries to elope to him.

Mandricardo, King of Tartary and son of Agricane, an ‘oriental’ pagan knight.

Medoro, one of Prince Dardinello’s Moorish soldiers, a ‘pagan’, who marries Angelica.

Odorico, a sea captain who had previously been loyal to Zerbino, and trustworthy, until he was entrusted with Isabelle

Orlando, the hero, Charlemagne’s nephew and his most outstanding paladin.

Ricciardetto, Bradamante’s brother, who appears identical to her.

Rodomonte, the African King of Sarza and Algiers, the son of Ulieno.

Ruggiero, son of the King of Reggio, a non-Christian knight who is in love with Bradamante.

Zerbino, son of the King of Scotland and the leader of the Scottish forces.

The artists

Daniel Berger (1744-1825) was a German engraver who was sufficiently eminent to be appointed professor of the Prussian Academy of Arts.

Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) was a Swiss symbolist and mythological painter who trained at the Düsseldorf Academy, and worked in Italy, Switzerland (Basel and Zurich), and Germany (Munich). I have recently written two articles about his symbolist paintings, and have also looked at his narrative works.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Having produced large sets of illustrations for classics such as Dante’s Divine Comedy earlier in his career, he started work on a set for Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso in the late 1870s, for publication in 1879. These are the last major illustrations which he made. This article looks at his paintings.

Guido Reni (1575–1642)was an Italian painter who trained in Bologna alongside Domenichino, then went to train with the Carraccis. He painted many frescoes and easel paintings of mythological and other narrative motifs, working in Rome, Naples and Bologna. One of the major artists of the Baroque period in Italy, he was a major influence on painting in Italy, France and Spain.

References

Wikipedia on Ariosto
Wikipedia on Orlando Furioso

Barbara Reynolds (translator) (1975, 1977) Orlando Furioso, parts 1 and 2, Penguin. ISBNs 978 0 140 44311 0, 978 0 140 44310 3. Verse translation with extensive introduction and notes.
Guido Waldman (translator) (1974) Orlando Furioso, Oxford World’s Classics. ISBN 978 0 19 954038 9. Prose translation.

By the mid-1850s, Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893) must have been getting increasingly frustrated. He’d tried several different genres and themes, from traditional history painting, literary narratives, sentimental genre, to landscapes. Although he had earned a great deal of respect as mentor to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his paintings still didn’t sell well. His painstaking technique fulfilled the ideals of the Pre-Raphaelites, but limited his output considerably.

These came to a head in his major religious painting of Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet which he started in 1852 but didn’t complete until 1856. It shows the familiar Biblical story of Christ washing his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper. It has an unusually low viewpoint and compression of space. In keeping with one of the ‘secret’ techniques of the Pre-Raphaelites, Brown tried to paint this on a ‘wet white ground’ to make its colours more ‘luminous’, but this proved too difficult. It originally depicted Jesus only semi-clad, which caused an outcry when it was first exhibited and it remained unsold for several years until Brown had reworked the figure in robes.

The only sculptor among the Pre-Raphaelites, Thomas Woolner, had struggled when in England, so decided to emigrate to Australia, leaving Britain in 1852. Brown’s thoughts turned to India, and then painting emigrants in what has become one of his best-known works.

Brown’s original oil version of The Last of England (above) was probably started at the time of Woolner’s departure in 1852, and is one of his most subtle compositions. He painted a half-size replica for a patron using watercolour (below), whose colours haven’t survived as well.

Central to his imitation of a circular tondo is a middle-class couple who are not enjoying the fact that the ship is ‘all one class’. They both stare with grim determination at the prospect of sharing the next few weeks with the rowdy working class passengers behind them, eating the same once-fresh vegetables which are now slung from cords around the ship’s rail in front of them.

This isn’t just a couple, though: look closely at their hands, and the woman’s left hand is clutching the tiny hand of her baby, who is safely swaddled inside her weatherproof hooded travelling cape. Her right hand, wearing a black leather glove, grasps that of her husband, whose left hand is tucked under his heavy coat. Splashes of brilliant colour are supplied by the wind blowing the woman’s ribbons.

Brown and his family were the models: the husband is a self-portrait, the wife is Emma Brown, the artist’s wife, and the infant’s hand is claimed to have been based on that of their son Oliver (Nolly), who was only born in 1855, perhaps just in time for the completion of this painting. Adhering to Pre-Raphaelite ideals, Brown painted this largely outdoors, and had his models sit outside in all weathers, even during the winter. His aim here was to recreate “the peculiar look of light all round” which he considered prevailed when at sea, in particular.

Other small details lend authenticity and a little humour: behind are the white chalk cliffs of Dover, which is consistent with this ship having sailed from London, and there’s a paddle steamer working its way inshore, closer to the cliffs. A cabin boy is selecting some vegetables for cooking from the lifeboat in the background, and a smaller ship’s boat reveals the name of the migrants’ vessel to be Eldorado, the mythical city of gold in Colombia.

Although this work didn’t sell immediately, when it did it brought Brown the sum of 325 guineas, which is probably equivalent to around £30,000 today.

In the late 1850s, Brown set out to paint better landscapes using Pre-Raphaelite ideals, which we realise now posed him the impossible combination of fine detail and being painted in front of the motif.

The first of this series, Carrying Corn from 1854-55, is hardly rich in the truth of detail, and proved to need more than a month of painting every evening, when the light was reasonably consistent. His persistence paid off, though, when he sold this in June 1855, so he was back out painting with the harvest on 28 July that year.

It took him until late October to almost complete The Hayfield (1855-56), and even then he had to do some more work on the foreground and some other passages, which he didn’t finish until that Christmas. But it fetched more than three times as much as had Carrying Corn. Its foreground is noticeably less detailed than in his earlier landscapes, and in parts this painting looks quite sketchy. The moonlight has not dulled its colour, and its look benefits from the unreal lighting effect.

The culmination of this series of landscapes is this most famous view of Walton-on-the-Naze (1860), which happens to be where I lived for much of my teenage years. Brown is believed to have started this when he visited this coastal village in north-east Essex, England, in late August 1859, but cannot have worked long at it en plein air before returning home. It incorporates two unusual features: ephemeral lighting effects by way of the rainbow, rising full moon, and setting sun, and inclusion of the artist and his family as its main figures.

With its flat landscape, distant detail, and complex lighting, it is an ambitious composition for even an experienced and adept landscape painter. Although Brown’s painting succeeds in the middle distance and beyond, his attempts at detail in the foreground are at best rather gauche, and at worst plain wrong: the foreground shadows are incorrect for the cut stooks, and absent altogether for the three figures.

Modern readings of this painting commonly concentrate on explaining the significance of each element within it, such as the Martello Tower at the right, a remnant from the Napoleonic Wars, and the distant beacon tower near the base of the rainbow at the left, with its even older origins. Few seem to have noticed how closely this view relates to the early tradition of Dutch landscapes, including its low horizon placing the emphasis on Brown’s superb sky, which is probably the most carefully-observed and best-executed part of the painting.

The following year, Brown was a founding member of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, and much of the rest of his career was devoted to design, rather than landscape painting.

In the late nineteenth century, the German landscape painter Eugen Bracht (1842–1921) was as well known as Arnold Böcklin, and Bracht’s Symbolist masterpiece was so popular that he painted at least six versions of it. Kaiser Wilhelm II hung his copy next to Böcklin’s renowned Symbolist painting The Island of the Dead. Yet today Bracht and his Shore of Oblivion (Gestade der Vergessenheit) (1889) are almost forgotten. Here, in this article and the next, is his story and a selection of his paintings.

Eugen Felix Prosper Bracht was born in Morges, on the shore of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, but his family moved to Darmstadt in Germany, where he became a student at the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts. During the summer of 1860, he painted with Hans Thoma in Schwarzwald. In 1861, he moved to Düsseldorf to study under the great Norwegian landscape painter Hans Gude, but three years later he abandoned painting and worked in business in Berlin for over a decade. In 1876, he returned to art, moving back to Karlsruhe and concentrating on painting landscapes.

Bracht’s landscapes are unusual in a quiet way. His Sieben Steinhäuser (Seven Stone Houses) from 1875 shows a famous group of five dolmen graves on Lüneberg Heath in Lower Saxony, Germany, which are thought to date from around 2800 BCE. According to local legend, they were created by the Giant of Borg.

He also painted on the island of Rügen, just off the Baltic coast of Germany. Göhren on Rügen (1877) is a magnificent oil sketch of this location when it was still relatively wild, complete with a feral goat.

From 1880-81, Bracht travelled through the Middle East, in Syria, Palestine and Egypt. His paintings from that trip established him as an Orientalist, although his motifs were quite different from those which had become popular.

Dusk on the Dead Sea (1881) shows the unearthly landscape on the shore of this famous lake, the parched land strewn with the dessicated remains of trees.

Bracht’s paintings of the Middle East avoid the crowded and bustling towns, preferring the barren, arid areas in which just a handful of people travel with their camels In the Arabian Desert (1882).

In 1882, he settled down as a Professor of Landscape Painting in the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin.

Although painted when he was back in Berlin from sketches made in front of the motif, Memory of Gizeh (1883) captures the scene and its rich colours perfectly.

From the Sinai Desert (1884) shows more groups on the move in the relentless heat.

The following year, 1885, Bracht painted a large cyclorama of the Battle of Chattanooga for an American company. I suspect that depicted the series of battles which took place in October and November 1863, during the American Civil War, in which Major General Ulysses S Grant led Union forces to victory over General Braxton Bragg. It seems to have been commercially successful.

Then in 1888, Bracht started painting the work which brought him fame: The Shore of Oblivion (1889).

On a remote and forbidding shore, below towering rock slabs, small waves lap on the sandy beach below snowslopes. The low sun lights the top band across the rocks, while behind is a dense and dark bank of cloud. Scattered across the beach are large numbers of bleached white objects, which on close examination (detail below) prove to be human skulls, apparently washed up by the water. This is the apocalypse, all that remains of the human race, oblivion for humankind.

I don’t know what inspired this stark landscape. In the late nineteenth century, some expeditions took artists and photographers with them to record locations such as this. For example, in 1869 the American painter William Bradford (1823–1892) sailed with an expedition to the Arctic. Their copiously illustrated account of the journey was published in 1873, and the artist toured Britain at about that time. Bracht will also have had ample inspiration from views of the Alps.

This first version of The Shore of Oblivion was exhibited in Darmstadt in October 1889, to a rapturous reception, and the painting was acquired (free) by the Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig. A copy was made for Kaiser Wilhelm II, who hung it next to Böcklin’s Island of the Dead, another major Symbolist landscape painting of the time. Bracht was duly rewarded with a Grand Golden Medal.

Bracht made further versions in 1897 (two), 1911 and 1916.

Meanwhile, not content with being a renowned painter of Symbolist landscapes, Bracht’s style became distinctly Impressionist, as shown in this view of Um-Baghek on the Dead Sea (1891), with its more painterly brushwork and rich colours.

In 1893, Bracht painted the tiny Isle of Bergeggi viewed from the heights on the mainland of Italy, to the south-west of Genoa. Its towering storm clouds are threatening.

A few years later, he visited the long and low German island of Sylt in the North Sea, off the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein, where he painted this Rocky Coast on Sylt (1897).

In 1889, the German landscape artist Eugen Bracht (1842–1921) had painted a celebrated Symbolist masterpiece in his Shore of Oblivion, which the Kaiser himself rated so highly that he had his copy hung next to Arnold Böcklin’s The Island of the Dead.

Although I’ve not been able to discover any subsequent overtly Symbolist landscapes painted by Bracht, this nocturne of the Morning Star from about 1900 is more ethereal than his daylight views.

In 1901, Bracht moved to a teaching post in the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts.

He apparently painted The Old Pine during a visit to Norway in 1903. It may just be coincidence, but Hans Gude, Bracht’s former teacher, died in Berlin that year, which might have prompted his former pupil to travel there, perhaps for Gude’s funeral in Oslo.

By 1905, Bracht was well into his sixties, and still teaching in Dresden, when he took on a new sub-genre: the industrial landscape.

The largest employer in the German city of Dortmund was its steelworks, which had been founded in 1871. In 1905, Bracht painted this Impressionist view of the Hoesch Steelworks from the North, with its tall chimneys and their plumes of acrid smoke.

The following year, he travelled to the border between Switzerland and Italy, in the Pennine Alps, where he painted this superb View of the Monte Rosa, West Side (1906). The Monte Rosa massif is a complex of peaks rising to a maximum of 4,634 metres (15,203 feet), which is the second highest in western Europe (excluding the Caucasus) after Mont Blanc.

Another year later, Bracht was back in Dortmund painting the Hoesch Iron and Steel Plant, Dortmund (1907), the complete antithesis to the Monte Rosa.

Bracht’s longstanding fascination with clouds and ‘skying’ continued with Evening Clouds from 1911, which remains gently Impressionist.

Loisachbett (Loisach Bed) from 1916 shows a section of the River Loisach, probably near Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Austrian Tyrol, or perhaps in Bavaria. This appears to be an oil sketch made in front of the motif.

In the same summer season, Bracht visited the Wetterstein Alps on the southern border between Germany and Austria, where he painted this fine view of the Zugspitze (1916). At just under three thousand metres (nearly ten thousand feet) elevation, this is the highest mountain in Germany. This also appears to have been painted en plein air.

At the end of the Great War in 1918, Bracht visited Swabia, the region to the west of Munich, in south-western Germany. He there painted this Impressionist view of a Swabian Village.

Slope with Beeches (1918) appears to have been painted as the autumn colours were just starting to develop.

Bracht retired from teaching in 1919, and lived his remaining years in Darmstadt.

After he had made the last copy of his famous The Shore of Oblivion in 1916, Bracht continued to paint. Stormy Day from 1920 is another fine example of his Impressionist skying, with a large bird, possibly a heron, in flight over the inky grey clouds near the horizon.

Bracht died in Darmstadt in late 1921.

This weekend I’m looking at the bad boys and girls of mythology – satyrs and sirens. As everyone who has seen paintings of them knows, satyrs sneak up on sleeping nymphs and rape/seduce/abduct them, and sirens use their beautiful voices to lure sailors to their death before eating them. Both are commonly depicted as being half human: for satyrs, below the waist is goat, and for sirens the lower bits are bird. More fascinating are their differing histories of appearing in paintings. So I’ll start with satyrs today, and show sirens tomorrow.

In ancient Greece, satyrs had a really bad name. They were usually shown with an exaggerated erect phallus – hence the origin of the term satyriasis – and the rest of their body was comically hideous, a caricature which associated them with the god whom they often accompanied, Dionysus, who became Bacchus with the Romans. Like all the worst men, they were addicted to music, wine and women.

One motif which emerged during the Renaissance and remained popular ever since is that of the hirsute, ugly goat-legged satyr surprising a naked young nymph. This is so hackneyed that I won’t do it the honour of showing any of the hundreds or thousands of paintings of that scene. Such images were clearly good business for painters and their overwhelmingly male patrons, but I can’t think of one which has any artistic merit.

Piero di Cosimo’s painting below is very different. It has been claimed that it shows The Death of Procris, but this is clearly an error: Cephalus wasn’t a satyr, Procris was impaled in the chest by a javelin, and was behind cover spying on Cephalus, not out in the open like this.

Piero’s A Satyr Mourning over a Nymph from about 1495 is a brilliant painting, using the full width of a panoramic panel to show a satyr with his goat legs and distinctive ears, ministering to a dying or dead nymph, who has a severe wound in her throat. At her feet is a hunting dog, with another three in the distance.

When not having their evil way with them, satyrs engaged in horseplay (or goatplay, perhaps) with nymphs and sundry other women, including the humans who followed Dionysus, Maenads or Bacchantes. On the left side of Claude Lorrain’s Landscape with Nymph and Satyr Dancing from 1641, a Bacchante holds her tambourine (tympanum) aloft, and another bears earthly riches at her left side. A satyr crouches low over a leopard, and proffers a cornucopia filled with fruit to the figures at the right.

Peter Paul Rubens painted an even more complex group in his Minerva Protects Pax from Mars (Peace and War), of which the above is a detail from the foreground. Although Dionysus/Bacchus isn’t present, his chariot is normally drawn by leopards (or similar big cats), and he is accompanied by Bacchantes. Here a satyr leans over one of the leopards to grasp fruit from a cornucopia.

In the nineteenth century, painting satyrs remained a good excuse for a nude woman and the implication of sex, thus remained popular with those stuck in academic style to pander to the outmoded whims of the Salon.

Perhaps inevitably, it is William-Adolphe Bouguereau, arch-enemy of the modern, who provides the best example in his Nymphs and Satyr from 1873. I accept in his mitigation that here it’s the nymphs who are taunting the satyr, but ultimately it’s just another male fantasy on canvas.

Meanwhile, the more progressive painters looked to something different.

Elihu Vedder had been thinking about the grisly myth of Marsyas (see below), particularly during 1877. Rather than show the contest between this satyr and Apollo or its grim consequence, Vedder reasoned that Marsyas must have proved his skill with the aulos before the challenge arose. His conclusion was that the satyr might have been charming hares, which led him to paint Young Marsyas or Marsyas Enchanting the Hares (1878).

Vedder shows a young Marsyas in the snows of the New England winter early in 1878, surrounded by enchanted hares. Although a wonderful and original depiction, this painting didn’t do well when it was exhibited at the Universal Exposition in 1878.

Satyrs were included by Gustave Moreau in his lexicon of mythological people and creatures. Poet and Satyrs, painted around 1890-95, is an unusual watercolour which shows the satyrs kneeling before the androgynous poet, complete with their halo and lyre.

A satyr also appears in the well-known fable of the Satyr and the Traveller (classified as Perry 35), which became a popular narrative in paintings during the Dutch Golden Age. In this story, a man made friends with a satyr; when the man’s hands were cold, he blew on them to warm them up. When the two were eating together, the man blew on his hot food in order to cool it. The satyr couldn’t trust a creature whose breath blew both hot and cold, so broke off the friendship.

Jacob Jordaens’ Satyr Visiting a Peasant, from about 1625, shows the satyr at a meal in a family home, presumably when the hot food is cooled by blowing on it, as the satyr is giving his reason for leaving.

In 1653, Constantijn à Renesse, a former pupil of Rembrandt, painted his version of this fable, in Satyr at the Peasant’s House. This is perhaps more helpful than Jordaens’ in showing one of the family blowing on the hot food on their spoon, although at that stage the satyr’s reaction is less overt.

It is perhaps Jan Steen, in his telling of The Satyr and the Peasant “Who Blows Hot and Cold” from about 1660, who strikes the best balance, with a satyr looking quite worried at the viewer, as a man (still wearing his hat) blows on a bowl of hot stew. He also has marvellous attention to details such as the cat skulking under the table, and a rich supporting cast.

Ultimately, satyrs were the bad boys, and bad boys get punished. No punishment could ever be as harsh or as gruesome as that of Marsyas the satyr, who had been painted so affectionately by Vedder.

The goddess Athena is said in some myths to have invented the aulos, a double-piped reed instrument. When she was playing it one day, she looked in a mirror, and noticed to her dismay how she puffed out her cheeks and looked silly, so she threw the aulos away, putting a curse on it that anyone picking it up would be severely punished.

It was Marsyas the satyr who found Athena’s aulos, and taught himself to play it. When he was an expert, he challenged the god Apollo to a musical contest to see who was the more musical: Apollo on his lyre, or Marsyas on his aulos. With the Muses as jury, Apollo’s victory was never in any doubt, giving him the choice of penalty. Out of sheer vindictiveness, Apollo decided to have Marsyas flayed alive.

By far the most famous painting of the flaying is one of Titian’s last great works: The Flaying of Marsyas (c 1570-1576).

The satyr has been strung up by his legs from a tree, his arms also bound, and is now having his skin and hide cut off, Apollo kneeling at the left with his blade at Marsyas’ chest. Standing above the god is one of the Muses, playing her string instrument and gazing upwards. Near her left hand are Pan pipes, rather than an aulos, strung from the tree next to the body of the satyr. At the right, another satyr has brought a pail of water. Others gaze on in dismay at the grisly scene.

Tomorrow I’ll look at paintings of sirens, who ate the sailors who they lured with their beautiful voices.

In the first article of this pair looking at bad boys and girls in mythological paintings, I showed a few of the many paintings of satyrs from their early popularity in the Renaissance onwards. Today I look at paintings of sirens, bad girls whose beautiful voices lured sailors to their deaths, so that the women could eat them.

Although the sirens attained fame in Homer’s Odyssey, they have been described and depicted outside that story, their origins predating Homer and the fall of Troy. They are variously described as inhabiting islands in the Mediterranean, typically those with treacherous coasts on which ships became wrecked. Their bodies were composites of (beautiful) women and birds, normally the top half being human, and the lower half including the legs those of a bird. As Odysseus almost found to his cost, they watch for approaching vessels, then fly out to greet them. The sirens make alluring music, a combination of vocal and instrumental, which enchants the sailors, causing their vessel to founder on the rocks. The sirens then eat the sailors.

Prior to 1800, sirens had not been a popular motif in paintings, and where they had been shown, they were represented as naked women, a bit like mermaids, rather than being composites of women and birds.

William Etty’s The Sirens and Ulysses from about 1837 is one the pioneering accounts in paint of the story from the Odyssey. His three naked sirens are all woman, one playing a lyre, and doing their best to draw the sailors from Odysseus’ ship to a shore on which lie the remains of earlier victims.

Edward Poynter’s portrait of The Siren from about 1864 is non-narrative, and doesn’t deface the woman’s body with anything birdlike.

Arnold Böcklin takes an unusual approach of almost dereferencing Odysseus in this painting of Sirens from 1875 – although there is an approaching vessel which could be his – and making the sirens fill his canvas.

The sirens shown are very human down to the waist, below which they resemble birds. One sits facing us, clearly in full voice, and very alluring in looks. The other, her back towards us, appears to be playing a flute-like instrument, and looks rather obese, to the point of almost being comical, her right breast laid upon a flat-topped rock. At their feet are three human skulls and other bones to indicate their graver intentions.

Gustave Moreau’s The Sirens (1882) shows them as beautiful figures in a static scene, with a saturnine setting sun. There is, though, a lone sail on the horizon, which doesn’t seem to have attracted their attention yet. Their lower legs turn into the writhing coils of sea serpents, but the beach isn’t littered with human remains, nor does Moreau give them wings or musical instruments.

Moreau’s later group portrait of The Sirens (c 1885) is a more complete account, with Odysseus sailing past, but its three figures are clearly all woman and zero bird.

The following year, Hans Thoma painted his Eight Dancing Women with Bird Bodies (1886), which surely shows an expanded group of sirens. In another painting showing the sirens trying to lure a passing ship, Thoma paints very similar figures, suggesting that these are also intended to be sirens.

It wasn’t until the closing years of the nineteenth century that this story was painted in full, initially by John William Waterhouse, who shows fine details derived from Homer’s account. Circe had helpfully advised Odysseus/Ulysses that he would have to sail past the sirens, two to five creatures who lured men to their death with their singing. In preparation, Odysseus got his sailors to plug their ears with beeswax before they reached the sirens, so that they could not hear their song, and to bind him to the mast. He gave them strict instructions that under no circumstances, no matter what he said at the time, were they to loosen his bonds, as he would be listening to the sirens’ song.

Waterhouse’s depiction is quite close to the Homeric account, although he has provided a total of seven sirens, very appropriately shown as a large eagle-like bird of prey with the head and neck of a beautiful young woman. He has added bandage wrappings around the head of each sailor to make it clear that their ears are stopped from hearing sound. This is a good example of a visual artifice which makes the cue to the text much clearer, even though it is not what is literally described in that text.

Waterhouse submitted this to the Royal Academy for exhibition in 1891, from where it was bought, on the advice of Herkomer, for the public collection of the National Gallery of Victoria at Melbourne, Australia.

Almost a decade later, Waterhouse painted this non-narrative portrait of The Siren (1900).

The Sirens (1903) marked Henrietta Rae’s return to painting narrative works featuring classical nudes. Odysseus’ ship is in the distance, as the three beautiful sirens use their aulos (the same instrument as Marsyas) and lyre to lure its occupants. This was shown at the Saint Louis Exhibition in 1904, where it sold to a collector from Philadelphia.

In the same year, Edward Poynter’s Cave of the Storm Nymphs shows a related story probably drawn from Homer’s Odyssey, book 13, of naiads living in a sea cave as ‘Wreckers’, who lured ships onto rocks in order to steal their precious cargos. This made them sirens without the distasteful habit of cannibalism.

Since then, sirens have remained popular with artists, although references to them have become steadily more obscure.

Georg Janny’s fantasy painting of Sirens Bathing by the Sea from 1922 is throughly other-worldly, and there’s no trace of their bird legs.

Most cryptic of all is Paul Nash’s Surrealist Nest of the Siren (1930), which brings together the incongruous and hardly refers to Homer’s story. The painting is framed by brightly-painted walls with pillared decorations, perhaps ornate wainscot panelling. In the middle of these is what might be a painting, but also seems to be a three-dimensional plant trough containing sinuous shrubs. In the middle of those is a small nest, like an acorn cup.

Standing in front of this is a structure resembling a weather-vane, mounted on a turned wooden shaft. At the weather end of the vane is the faceless figure of a siren; the leeward end appears purely decorative. Three red rods appear to have detached themselves from the walling, two protruding from the plant trough, the third resting on the floor.

Homer isn’t the only literary reference to sirens, which also appear in the less well-known second part of Goethe’s play Faust.

Margret Hofheinz-Döring is one of the few artists who has painted from this second part. With the Sirens from 1962 is a pastel painting which shows the sirens among rocky inlets of the Aegean Sea, a sub-scene which concludes the second act.

Late mythology suggests an unpleasant end for the sirens, which parallels the flaying of Marsyas: Hera/Juno challenged the sirens to enter a singing contest against the Muses. When the latter won, the penalty they exacted of the sirens was to have all their feathers plucked out to make crowns with. As a result of that disgrace, the sirens turned white, fell into the sea, and formed the islands which include modern Souda, on the north-west coast of Crete in the Mediterranean.

I leave you to ponder why satyrs were popular in painting from the Renaissance onwards, but have become rare in motifs over the last 150 years. In contrast, sirens had hardly been painted at all until the early nineteenth century, and have been most popular since about 1890. Could this be the result of more recent fascination with the femme fatale?

In 1916, Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) had been commissioned by his dealer Zborowski to paint a series of nudes. The artist moved into his dealer’s apartment in Montparnasse, where he painted models supplied and paid for by Zborowski, for 15-20 francs per day. This helped finance Modigliani’s deepening addiction to alcohol and drugs.

His drawing of a Seated Female Nude from about 1917 shows the same fair curves which he’d used earlier to construct the figures of his caryatids, prior to the Great War.

Female Nude Reclining on a White Pillow (c 1917) is probably one of the series which Modigliani painted for Zborowski in the latter’s apartment. She has a decidedly languid look on her face as she lies back and relaxes.

This Reclining Nude from 1917 appears more post-coital.

Nude on a Blue Cushion from 1917 is probably from the same commissioned series too.

In April 1917, Modigliani was introduced to a beautiful young student at the Académie Colarossi, Jeanne Hébuterne, and they moved in together in an apartment in Montparnasse. On 3 December, at least seven of the thirty paintings of nude women which he had completed for Zborowski featured in an exhibition in the Berthe Weill Gallery. But on its opening day, it was shut down by the police on grounds of the indecency of several of the paintings on display in the gallery’s windows. It appears to have resumed after those had been removed, and continued to be controversial with both critics and the public.

The following year, the threat of German invasion had grown to the point where Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne left Paris for the Mediterranean coast, where they lived in Nice and Cagnes-sur-Mer. The artist continued painting portraits, which he sent to Zborowski in Paris for sale.

This Boy in Short Pants from 1918 was probably painted when Modigliani was in Nice. Initially, he tried selling these portraits to wealthy tourists, but was only able to get a few francs for them, so sent them to Paris in the hope that Zborowski might get better prices.

Portrait of Mme Zborowska from 1918 is one of his most styled figurative paintings, in which the model’s neck is as long as her elongated head.

Several of these late works show his partner, including this Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne, Seated from 1918.

Young Woman in a Shirt (1918) shows other distinctive stylistic features, including the head cocked to one side, and the lack of detail in the eyes, which leaves them looking slightly unearthly.

In late 1918, while still in Nice, Jeanne Hébuterne gave birth to their first child, a girl. Shortly after that, some more of Modigliani’s paintings were exhibited in Paris.

When he was in the Midi, Modigliani painted a few landscapes including Cypresses and Houses at Cagnes, which he completed in 1919, the year that Renoir died in his house nearby.

The following year started with success: his dealer Zborowski arranged for several of Modigliani’s paintings to be shown in London, where they at last began to gain interest from British collectors. He planned a trip to Italy, but by the end of the year Modigliani’s health was deteriorating rapidly, and those plans were cancelled.

Elvira Resting at a Table from 1919 shows one of his favourite models, apart from his partner Jeanne. Elvira’s surname isn’t known, but she is thought to have been a working class woman, and appears both nude and clothed.

In Modigliani’s Girl with a Polka-Dot Blouse (1919), the artist follows the practice of the Nabis of depicting patterned clothing without projecting the pattern in three dimensions, giving it a flattened and more decorative appearance.

This late Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne from 1919 exaggerates the angle at which her head is held by countering that with the angle of her neck. The length of her neck is also exaggerated by the roll-neck top she is wearing. Hébuterne’s parents were conservative Catholics, who understandably were very concerned at Modigliani’s reputation for consumption of alcohol and drugs, and his extremely bohemian lifestyle. The artist committed himself in writing to marry Hébuterne, but her parents resisted, and the issue was soon overtaken by events.

By the start of 1920, Modigliani was in a very bad way, and he died from tuberculous meningitis on 24 January. Jeanne Hébuterne was distraught: their daughter was only just over one year old, and she was pregnant again. Two days after Modigliani had died, she threw herself from a fifth-floor window and died, together with her unborn child. Modigliani was thirty-five, and Hébuterne was only twenty-one.

After Ruggiero had rescued Bradamante’s brother Ricciardetto from being burned at the stake, and heard his account of how he came so close to death by posing as his sister, the two knights rode to Aldigiero’s citadel of Agrismonte, which is surrounded by deep ravines.

Aldigiero welcomes them, and immediately tells them that his two half-brothers have been captured by Ferraù and are about to be sold. He had already sent word to Rinaldo, but cannot see how he can rescue them. Ruggiero offers to go with a guide and bring them back alive, in spite of his duty to ride away to support King Agramante, and his pledge to meet his beloved Bradamante for their marriage. He writes her a letter explaining his delay, undertaking to return in fifteen to twenty days, once he has liberated the Africans trapped outside Paris by Charlemagne.

Ruggiero sets off at dawn the following day, with Aldigiero and Ricciardetto, and rides to the barren and dry Bayona, where the two half-brothers are due to be sold that day. They see a knight bearing the emblem of a phoenix crossing this plain, and ride to meet them. The knight challenges them to fight, but when Aldigiero explains the reason for their presence, the knight agrees to join them: it is Marfisa, although at the time the others don’t know her identity.

Soon, a group of Saracens approach, with the two captive brothers in the middle of them. From the other direction comes a group of Maganzans, bringing the gold and other precious goods with which they intend to buy the prisoners from the Saracens. With Aldigiero in the lead, the four knights attack both groups. Although so few in number, they quickly despatch their opponents, who, having suffered many casualties, turn and flee, leaving their two prisoners and all the booty which had been brought to buy them.

Their mission accomplished, the knights adjourn to a nearby fountain to cool off and eat. This is one of only four fountains in France which had been made by Merlin. In its polished marble surround, the magician had carved figures showing a monster which kills Popes in Rome until it is destroyed by King Francis I of France, and a succession of other monarchs across Europe. One of the group explains that these figures prophesy the future, and puts names to the leaders who have yet to come, each of who will slay this beast in turn.

As this draws to a conclusion, they see a lone woman riding quickly towards them: Ippalca, who was bringing Ruggiero’s horse to him but had it taken from her by Rodomonte. She explains this to Ricciardetto, pretending that she doesn’t know Ruggiero. She had followed Rodomonte for a long time in the hope that he would return the horse to her, and left him in a fight not far away. Ruggiero excuses himself to the other knights, and rides off with Ippalca in search of his missing horse.

Once they are away from the fountain, Ippalca tells Ruggiero a personal message that she brings from Bradamante. They reach a fork in the track, where Ippalca chooses the shorter, uphill route, unaware that Rodomonte, with Ruggiero’s stolen horse, has taken the other way.

Meanwhle, back at the fountain, Aldigiero and Ricciardetto have persuaded Marfisa to doff her weapons and dress up in the fine clothes and jewellery which had been brought by the Maganzans in their booty. Mandricardo sees her as he approaches in company with Rodomonte, and decides to abduct this fine-looking damsel. He therefore challenges her companions to fight for her.

Mandricardo quickly defeats the knights, wounding Aldigiero in the shoulder, and Ricciardetto’s horse falls, putting the rider on the ground. Mandricardo assumes that the damsel is his and goes to the fountain to claim her, but she challenges him to fight once she has donned her armour and weapons. They are more evenly matched, making Rodomonte intervene and call for a truce for the day, reminding them of King Agramante’s summons for aid. They agree to that.

Ruggiero had followed Ippalca, and realised that they had missed Rodomonte. He sends Ippalca back to Montalbano, giving her the letter he had written to Bradamante, and turns back to head for the fountain, where he catches his quarry at last. Rodomonte is riding Ruggiero’s horse, so the latter challenges him for the mount. For the first, and last, time Rodomonte refuses on grounds of King Agramante’s summons, knowing also that he would have lost the stolen horse. Ruggiero accepts this on the condition that Rodomonte returns his horse.

To this, Mandricardo challenges Ruggiero to fight for his emblem of an eagle, which both claim should be theirs. Drawing Orlando’s sword, Mandricardo joins combat with Ruggiero forthwith, but Rodomonte and Marfisa intervene, reminding them of Agramante’s summons. As angers rise, Marfisa is left to plead with them to delay their fight. Rodomonte then attacks Ruggiero, and the two fight viciously until Rodomonte is stunned and left dangling from his horse. Marfisa takes Mandricardo on, but her horse slips, and Ruggiero kindly strikes her opponent a heavy blow to buy her time to recover.

One of Aldigiero’s companions then starts casting spells in a bid to bring this to an end. He puts a demon into Doralice’s horse, sending it charging off, leaping into the air. Rodomonte and Mandricardo both give chase, leaving Marfisa and Ruggiero still wanting to settle their arguments with the two. They decide to hold fire until they reach Paris. The others too split up, leaving the wounded Aldigiero to make his way more slowly.

The palfrey bearing Doralice doesn’t stop until it has passed through the warring Christian forces and reached King Agramante himself. Rodomonte and Mandricardo follow it closely for a day, then continue at a steadier pace towards Paris, where Gradasso and Sacripante are also heading. There the Christians are in disarray, with Orlando mad, and Rinaldo now riding back and forth between castles looking for him in vain.

Satan sees the opportunity to give the Saracens the upper hand again, and sends his demons to encourage those travelling to Agramante’s aid, and to slow the progress of Marfisa and Ruggiero to prevent them from catching Rodomonte and Mandricardo and renewing their quarrels. As they reach the Saracen troops, they’re enthused to launch an attack on the Christians, who wonder what is going on.

Charlemagne is mystified as to why the Saracens have suddenly attacked. He sees scenes of horror, with his dead forces immersed in a great pool of their own blood. The four Saracen knights lead another assault on the Christians, taking them ever closer to the walls of the city. Charlemagne’s forces withdraw within the walls and prepare to defend them against the surging warriors who are coming at them.

The Archangel Michael is dismayed, having failed in his mission for God. He blames Dame Discord, who instead of bringing division among the Saracens, had clearly brought them together. Michael flies to the monastery where Discord frequents, and discovers an election in progress in its Chapter House. Discord sits smiling and watching, so Michael pulls her by the hair and attacks her. He takes her to the Saracen camp and tells her to get on with her task.

Now the Saracens have the upper hand again and Charlemagne has retreated into his citadel, Ruggiero, Mandricardo, Rodomonte and Marfisa ask King Agramante if they can settle their disputes with one another. They can’t even agree which should be settled first, so the king leaves the choice to the goddess Chance, in a drawing of lots. They find an open space not far from Paris, and prepare it for the jousts to take place.

As Gradasso is arming Mandricardo, he notices that his sword is Durindana, which had been given to Orlando when he was young. Gradasso had previously tried to recover it unsuccessfully, and can’t understand how Mandricardo acquired it. The latter explains how he had fought for it only to take it once Orlando had gone mad. At that, Gradasso takes the sword and tells Mandricardo that it was he who had won it by rights, and he wouldn’t return it unless Mandricardo were to win it in combat.

Ruggiero objects to the two knights fighting first over the ownership of the sword. As this argument proceeds, Mandricardo jumps at Gradasso and strikes his arm so forcibly that the latter drops the sword. Gradasso sees red and draws his scimitar, prepared to fight both Mandricardo and Ruggiero, who fall into dispute over who should fight first. The three then attack one another, until King Agramante and Marsilio enter and restore order.

While King Agramante tries to get the knights to agree a compromise, Rodomonte and Sacripante start brawling in the next tent over the rights to Ruggiero’s horse, which Sacripante claims is his. Although happy to lend the horse to him for this jousting, Sacripante won’t let Rodomonte keep it without winning it in a fight. So they proceed to unequal combat, as Sacripante is wearing no armour. Despite that disadvantage, the latter compensates by his great agility.

Agramante is brought in to intervene between the two, but to no effect. While they are arguing, a thief steals the horse from under Rodomonte, and their shouts draw Marfisa into the tent. She discovers that Brunello had stolen her sword, he whom Agramante had crowned King of Tangier. With her armour secured, Marfisa then goes over and grasps Brunello by the chest and lifts him up, as he cries for mercy. Marfisa carries the thief to the king and demands to hang her prisoner for his crime.

She rides off with Brunello draped over her saddle, to a nearby tower, where she will wait three days for any challenger before hanging the King of Tangier. Agramante is advised not to challenge her, but to request that he, the King, should be the judge over Brunello’s fate. If she refuses that, then he should let her hang the man, and not lose her as a friend. Dame Discord and Pride are both delighted.

King Agramante next turns his attention to resolving the issue of the order of combat. He first proposes a compromise over the issue of which knight should win Doralice’s hand, and gets Mandricardo and Rodomonte to agree that she should express her preference, which they will be bound to accept. In front of the King, she chooses Mandricardo, and Rodomonte leaves the Saracen army in deep grief.

At first, Ruggiero sets out to follow him and recover his horse, but reminds himself of his forthcoming fight with Mandricardo; in turn, Sacripante gives chase to the departing Rodomonte. He is delayed rescuing a woman who falls into the River Seine, and then has to capture his own vagrant horse before he can resume the pursuit. Rodomonte rides on, venting his anger at Doralice, women in general, and King Agramante. After long days and nights in the saddle, he arrives at the River Saône, which is bustling with craft moving supplies for the Saracen army in France.

Rodomonte decides to stay at an inn there for the night, and when dining with the landlord drinks alcohol, against his faith. He becomes out of sorts as a result, and starts asking others there about their wives and their fidelity. The landlord casts doubt on the faithfulness of wives, telling a story of a Venetian gentleman who he once met, who was well versed in the deceits of women. He offers to tell Rodomonte one of the most remarkable stories of all – which is sufficiently worrying that Ariosto warns his female readers to skip the whole of the next Canto, in which he relates the Venetian’s tale.

Principal Characters

Agramante, King of Africa, who is leading the war against Charlemagne in revenge for the killing of his father, Troiano. Non-Christian.

Aldigiero, bastard son of Buovo, and master of the castle of Agrismonte.

Angelica, beautiful daughter of the ruler of Cathay, who is loved and pursued by innumerable knights both Christian and not, and marries Medoro.

Bradamante, Rinaldo’s sister, “the celebrated Maid”, a brave Christian knight who is the equal of her brother. She is loved by Ruggiero.

Brunello, a non-Christian knight who was made King of Tangier by Agramante.

Charlemagne, Charles the Great, Christian King of France and Emperor.

Doralice, daughter of the King of Granada, and Mandricardo’s damsel.

Ferraù, nephew to Marsilio, King of Spain, and a non-Christian.

Gradasso, King of Sericana, an ‘oriental’ and non-Christian.

Ippalca, a member of Bradamante’s household.

Mandricardo, King of Tartary and son of Agricane, an ‘oriental’ pagan knight.

Marfisa, Ruggiero’s sister, a valiant and fearsome ‘pagan’ warrior.

Merlin, the good sorceror from Arthurian legend, long dead but still active in spirit.

Orlando, the hero, Charlemagne’s nephew and his most outstanding paladin.

Ricciardetto, Bradamante’s brother, who appears identical to her.

Rodomonte, the African King of Sarza and Algiers, the son of Ulieno.

Ruggiero, son of the King of Reggio, a non-Christian knight who is in love with Bradamante.

Sacripante, King of Circassia, an ‘oriental’ and non-Christian.

The artists

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Having produced large sets of illustrations for classics such as Dante’s Divine Comedy earlier in his career, he started work on a set for Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso in the late 1870s, for publication in 1879. These are the last major illustrations which he made. This article looks at his paintings.

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872) was a German painter who trained at the Vienna Academy, from where he went to Rome in 1815 to join the Nazarene movement there, with Johann Friedrich Overbeck and others. He was involved in the campaign to re-introduce traditional fresco painting, and in 1822 was commissioned to paint frescoes depicting Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso in the entrance hall to the Villa Massimo in Rome. He completed these by 1827, when he returned to Munich to paint frescoes for the new palace there showing scenes from the Nibelungenlied. He later turned to Biblical illustrations and designs for stained glass windows.

References

Wikipedia on Ariosto
Wikipedia on Orlando Furioso

Barbara Reynolds (translator) (1975, 1977) Orlando Furioso, parts 1 and 2, Penguin. ISBNs 978 0 140 44311 0, 978 0 140 44310 3. Verse translation with extensive introduction and notes.
Guido Waldman (translator) (1974) Orlando Furioso, Oxford World’s Classics. ISBN 978 0 19 954038 9. Prose translation.

In 1861, Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893) became a founding member of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, and from then until that firm’s dissolution in 1874, he appears to have been mainly concerned with the design and production of furniture and other objects inspired by mediaeval arts and crafts. His other major project during these later years was the Manchester Murals, showing the history of the city, for the Great Hall in Manchester Town Hall. He started that series of twelve paintings in 1879, and completed them shortly before his death in 1893.

Brown started work on Work, which is often considered to be his greatest painting, as early as 1852, as a commission for the collector Thomas Plint, who died in 1861, four years before it was completed. While still working on that original, now in Manchester, Brown was commissioned to paint a second, which is now in Birmingham. The original wasn’t completed until 1865, but Brown finished the slightly smaller second version two years earlier.

This is the Birmingham (second) version of Work, painted between 1859-63, which is rather lighter and richer in colour, making it easier to read.

This is a crowded street scene in Heath Street, Hampstead, one of London’s ‘leafy’ suburbs at the time, in which Brown has crammed references to many contemporary aspects of Victorian society, including an election campaign.

At its centre is a gang of navvies, that term originating with the word navigators, usually Irish labourers, who dug the canals during the previous century. Here they are engaged in digging up a road, probably to lay a sewer as part of the campaign to improve the hygiene of Victorian London. Inspired by the social satirical comment of William Hogarth’s many prints and paintings, Brown is effectively giving a meticulously detailed account of the breadth and depth of contemporary society.

A full description and explanation of all those details is given in the excellent Wikipedia article about these two paintings, which is based on Brown’s own description, and exemplified in the detail below. There’s even cameo portraits of Thomas Carlyle and Frederick Maurice at the far right; Carlyle was a philosopher whose writings praising work were probably the underlying theme of the painting, while Maurice founded educational institutions for workers, in which Brown worked.

Although an elaborately constructed artifice, Work is probably the closest that Brown and the Pre-Raphaelites came to the Naturalism which was developing in France.

Even before the original version of Work was completed, Brown returned to literary motifs in his Death of Sir Tristram from 1864. This shows an episode taken from Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, in the story of Sir Tristam and La Belle Iseult, but is perhaps more of a showpiece for a stained glass window which had been produced by Brown’s company for the entrance hall of a Bradford merchant’s mansion. Brown painted a watercolour of this in the previous year, before making this in oils for a commission.

The Coat of Many Colours (1864-66) is a religious story, based on the Old Testament account of Joseph and his jealous brothers. The brothers sold Joseph into slavery, then brought his distinctive coat, suitably bloodstained, to their father to convince the latter that their brother had been killed by wild animals. Brown packs many figures into his image, which is set against a background based on Thomas Seddon’s landscape paintings made in front of the motif in Palestine. In 1867, the artist painted a watercolour copy which is now in the Tate, London.

Brown returned to the literary in The Finding of Don Juan by Haidée from 1869-70, which is a watercolour version of a painting which exists in two oil versions, and a preparatory pastel study. This refers to Lord Byron’s poem Don Juan, and shows Haidée, a Greek pirate’s daughter, and her nurse discovering the apparently lifeless body of the hero on a beach. Brown had just completed an illustration for a collection of Byron’s poems edited by William Michael Rossetti, brother of Dante Gabriel.

This version was commissioned by Frederick Craven of Manchester, who paid just over £200 inclusive of its frame. It was then taken back in part exchange for the larger of the two oil versions, which is now in the Louvre in Paris.

At the same time, Brown was painting this interpretation of the balcony scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1869-70). In a vertiginous composition, the couple are here alone, and squeezed rather incredibly onto a balcony smaller than a single bed.

I have already mentioned the eighteenth century British artist William Hogarth (1697–1764) in the context of Brown’s painting Work. Towards the end of his career, Brown drew from one of Hogarth’s best-known series of engravings, Stages of Cruelty. Hogarth had produced this series in 1751, based on the simple story:
Tom Nero, a boy living in the slums of St Giles in London, is one of many children who get entertainment from torturing animals. When he grows up and becomes a Hackney coachman, he beats and harms his horse too. He progresses to become a thief, and brutally murders his pregnant lover. He is arrested, tried, and found guilty of her murder. After his death by hanging, his body is handed over for dissection, and it too is mutilated.

In Hogarth’s First Stage of Cruelty: Children Torturing Animals, the schoolboy Tom Nero is seen, together with many of his peers, in a street in the slum district of St Giles in London. He is shown in a ragged white coat just below the centre of the image, inserting an arrow into a dog which is plainly in agony. The dog’s owner pleads for mercy, offering Tom a pie, but others help hold the dog for Tom. Just to his left, someone has drawn a hanged man with Tom’s name below, a grim prediction of what is to come.

All around there are vicious acts of cruelty taking place to animals. A cat and dog are fighting, cockfighting is in progress, another dog has a bone tied to its tail, two boys are burning a bird’s eyes out, two cats are suspended by their tails from a vintner’s sign, and a cat has been thrown out of a high window with balloons attached to it.

Brown’s updated story appears in a single painting, Stages of Cruelty from 1890, when the artist was still working on the Manchester Murals. It is very unusual, if not unique, among Pre-Raphaelite paintings for using multiplex narrative, in which the girl and the woman are the same figure, seen years apart. This visual narrative technique had been popular during the Renaissance, but had fallen out of favour.

In the lower left, Brown shows the woman as a girl, hitting her bloodhound with a bunch of flowers, appropriately known as Love-Lies-Bleeding. The dog, whose face shows signs of previous injury, holds up a paw in response. Behind, the woman shows that childhood cruelty grown into an adult, as she shuns the pleas of her lover, who is being rejected into the lilac bush.

Brown had started this painting in about 1856, then left it unfinished until the late 1880s, when he completed it for a brewer.

My Symbolist painter of the week is Alphonse Osbert (1857–1939), who in his day was in the avant garde, and painted some of the best exanples of pure Symbolist art from the height of the movement. Sadly, his work is largely forgotten now, but if you were to visit the thermal baths at Vichy in France, you’ll see some even better examples than the easel paintings I have been able to locate.

Osbert was born in Paris in 1857, and trained at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in the city, where he worked in the studios of Henri Lehmann, Fernand Cormon and Léon Bonnat. Initially, his style was influenced by Spanish old masters and was Naturalist, as was all the rage at the time. During the mid 1880s he adopted more progressive Post-Impressionist styles, at one stage experimenting with Divisionist or ‘Pointillist’ technique thanks to his friendship with Georges Seurat, who became a friend when they were pupils together.

His most significant influence, though, was Symbolism, as expressed in the paintings of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, and he soon abandoned painting real world scenes in pursuit of deeper meaning.

Osbert painted this unusual portrait of the ancient Greek poet Sappho in 1888, shortly after he had come under the influence of Puvis de Chavannes. It avoids any narrative, and establishes his approach to Symbolism, with a very constrained palette, simplified earth forms, and a rising or setting sun or moon. This was a time when Sappho was a frequent motif, particularly in the paintings of Gustave Moreau, a major influence on Symbolism.

Between 1892-96, Osbert exhibited in the Salon de la Rose+Croix, the leading platform for Symbolist artists of the time.

Without knowing who the figure is, you might mistake this for a painting of Joan of Arc, but it’s Osbert’s 1892 Vision of Saint Genevieve. The patron saint of the city of Paris, Genevieve had similarly humble origins as a peasant girl in Nanterre who experienced frequent visions, leading her to save the city from Attila’s attack in 451. Osbert limits his colours to blue and green, which have symbolic associations with melancholy and hope respectively.

This is probably Osbert’s best-known work, and was first exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1892, again at the second Salon de la Rose+Croix the following year, and featured in a travelling exhibition of Symbolist art in the mid-1970s.

His Reverie in the Night from 1895 combines similar elements in a painting of profound tranquillity, which defies any detailed reading, just as Osbert wished.

In February 1896, Osbert was among those who exhibited with les artistes de l’âme (Artists of the Soul) in the lobby of Théâtre de la Bodinière in Paris. Other noted Symbolists who formed this breakaway movement included Carlos Schwabe, Edmond Aman-Jean and Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer. Although it attracted the attention of the critics of the day, its impact was less than that of the Salon de la Rose+Croix.

The Solitude of Christ (1897) introduces a sharp colour contrast with the moon on the horizon. There are still traces of his earlier Pointillist technique in the sky above the horizon.

In the early years of the twentieth century, Osbert completed a series of commissions for large murals, including at least two for the thermal baths in Vichy.

Sleeping Nymph (1905) brings a little more background detail, and the golden hair and lyre of the nymph, but has even more restricted use of colour.

Osbert’s later paintings cautiously added more detail and slightly less severe palettes, as in Ancient Evening from 1908.

Lyricism in the Forest (1910) has an even richer palette, and looks much more representational, although his figures remain statuesque.

Painted in 1918, at the end of the Great War, The Muse at Sunrise has been further liberated to show the effects of the dawn light on the tree canopy and textured bark.

His late painting of Evening Harmony on the Sea from 1930 is suggestive of Sappho, although these rocks aren’t intended to represent the Leucadian Cliff from which she is reputed to have thrown herself.

Alphonse Osbert died in Paris in 1939, just a few weeks before the start of the Second World War.

A century ago today, on 24 January 1920, Amedeo Modigliani died in hospital in Paris from tuberculous meningitis. Just two days later, his partner Jeanne Hébuterne threw herself from a fifth floor apartment, killing both herself and their unborn child. This double tragedy brought to an untimely end one of the most promising figurative artists of the early twentieth century.

Over the last three weeks, I have looked at a small selection of Modigliani’s works, and traced his brief career. At the end of this short tribute, I list those articles with links.

When I started researching these articles, I knew that Modigliani was too important an artist not to cover, but I must admit that I wasn’t convinced that I was going to appreciate his work. Over those weeks, as I have looked at more of his drawings, paintings and sculpture, they have grown on me. Unlike some of his contemporaries, his people are real and his depictions full of grace and calm. His stylistic exaggerations and faired forms work to create portraits and nudes which we can really enjoy.

Although he seems to have largely abandoned sculpture in 1914, when the outbreak of war must have made materials scarce, this limestone Head of a Woman from 1910-11 serves as an ideal introduction. These stylised heads have multiple influences: ancient Mediterranean civilisations, masks from the French Congo, Cambodian carvings, maybe even Easter Island monumental statues or moai, brought together with the mentoring of the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși.

This drawing of one of his Caryatids, intended to support his ‘temple to humanity’, shows Modigliani’s emphasis on clean form, its faired curves revealing a pure geometry.

Although referring to Manet’s portrait of a Spanish dancer which had been rejected by the Salon, Modigliani’s Lola de Valence is more closely related to his earlier sculpture.

Those same forms transfer to this double portrait of a fellow sculptor and his wife.

And on into the face, shoulders and breasts of his lover Beatrice Hastings, in this Seated Nude from the middle of the Great War.

His unique series of nudes painted around 1917 was commissioned by his dealer Zborowski, who provided and paid the models, gave Modigliani his materials, and even let the artist live and paint in his apartment in Montparnasse, Paris. In return, Modigliani was paid a mere 15-20 francs per day, and produced paintings which went on to bring the police to deal with their ‘indecency’ when some were exhibited in the artist’s only solo show during his lifetime.

Under the oil paint, Modigliani remained true to his anatomical geometry.

Modigliani’s figures are stylised by vertical exaggeration, giving them tall heads and long necks like his sculptures. The head is typically cocked to one side, and the eyes are an even blue-grey without pupils. They have quiet gracefulness and a deep air of calm. Above all, these are gentle people.

Modigliani was introduced to the young and beautiful art student Jeanne Hébuterne in the Spring of 1917. She was quiet and shy, but they were soon living together in an apartment. When they left Paris and stayed in Nice, she gave birth to their daughter, also named Jeanne.

Modigliani’s lifestyle was never going to see him into old age. Like Vincent van Gogh, his star burned intensely for but a few years. His consumption of alcohol and drugs didn’t help his health, but it was tuberculosis which he had contracted at the age of sixteen which stopped his art short, less than twenty years later. The disease was known as King Death, and continued to kill the brilliant, artists, poor workers, mothers, those from every part of society, for another twenty-five years, until immunisation got under way and there was effective treatment.

Previous articles tracing Modigliani’s life and work:
1 1907-1914
2 1915-1916
3 1917-1919

I hope that you have enjoyed seeing his graceful people as much as I have.

It’s that time of year, with ‘February Fill-Dyke’ fast approaching, that we’re getting used to rain. And more rain. Drizzle, showers, downpours, mizzle, stair-rods – over the winter we get the lot, sometimes all in the same day. This weekend’s pair of articles ‘celebrates’ paintings not of distant showers (if only they did keep their distance), but of actually being in the rain. Have your mac at the ready.

Painting in the rain is quite a challenge to the artist. In a studio, of course, it’s hard to observe the subtle effects that falling rain has on the world around us, and trying to paint when both you and your work are getting wet is not just unpleasant, but was claimed to be the death of several artists, including Paul Cézanne.

We’ve become used to graphic artists depicting rain with oblique streaks descending down the image, as used so effectively by Jan van der Straet in this engraving for the Third Circle of Dante’s Inferno. This shows The Gluttons (1587) suffering pouring rain, snow and huge hailstones. Even Cerberus, the fearsome three-headed canine monster which guards this circle, is soaked by the unceasing rain. But in paintings, such rain streaks didn’t appear until relatively recently, as far as I can see.

It took Turner’s impressions to incorporate Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway in 1844, but I don’t feel his rain running down my neck.

As far as I can see, the first faithful painted descriptions of falling rain came with the French Impressionists in the late nineteenth century. It was possibly Gustave Caillebotte who broke fresh ground in the closely-observed ripples in Rain on the Yerres (1875). This is the point at which you put your hood up or unfurl your umbrella, captured so eloquently in those carefully projected ripples.

A year later, Jean Béraud developed the theme in Leaving Montmartre Cemetery, which brought him acclaim at the Salon of 1876. This wet world is all black and grey, with the distinctive sheen of rainwater on the road and kerb in the foreground.

The following year, Caillebotte tried a similar view with what must at the time have seemed a startling three-dimensional projection. His oil study (above) for Paris, a Rainy Day from 1877 already demonstrates how the finished painting (below) will look. It is one of his masterpieces, and coincided with growth in popularity of the black umbrella.

Rain and umbrellas then became popular themes for paintings. Just before the Norwegian Naturalist Christian Krohg went to Grez-sur-Loing in France, he visited Normandy, where he painted this view of a Village Street in Normandy (1882). Its curved recession of umbrellas with disembodied legs is memorable.

Umbrellas are hardly suitable for the more severe weather on the coast of Kintyre in Scotland, where William McTaggart caught this small group sheltering from the Wind and Rain, Carradale in 1883.

Back in the Belgian winter, Guillaume Vogels chose a more distant view of Ixelles, Rainy Afternoon in about 1883.

I can’t help but think that it was Caillebotte who inspired Frederick Childe Hassam’s Rainy Day, Columbus Avenue, Boston in 1885.

There’s another more subtle phenomenon that landscape painters have observed, that rainfall in the countryside brings about an intensification of natural colour. As enthusiasm for carefully projected grey cityscapes started to fade, this came to replace them.

Not known for his landscapes, the Symbolist artist Fernand Khnopff seems to have been one of the first to record intensification of colour in his view At Fosset: Rain from 1890. He painted this at his family’s country home in the forest of the Ardennes, another region noted for its rainfall. The bright areas in the field at the lower left and the blank white wall of the building pop out so much they appear almost unnatural.

Another artist who recorded this in the same year is the American Impressionist Julian Alden Weir, in his Autumn Rain (1890).

Just a few months before, one of the most famous paintings of rain was made at Auvers in France, which I will show in the next and final article in this series.