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| BIRTH:
1865 SEROV |
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Died on 07 January 1722: Antoine
Coypel, French painter born on 11 April 1661. — Antoine Coypel went to Rome as a child with his father Noël Coypel (1628-1707) and there is a strong Italian element in his style. This comes out particularly in his most famous work, the ceiling of the Chapel at Versailles (1708) which derived from Baciccio's ceiling in the Gesù in Rome. This and Coypel's decorations at the Palais Royal in Paris (1702, destroyed) rank as the two most completely baroque schemes found in French art of this period. The Versailles ceiling is more successful than much of Coypel's work, which often combines the bombast of the Baroque and the pedantry of the classical style without the virtues of either. — Father of Charles-Antoine Coypel (1694-1752), half-brother of Noël-Nicolas Coypel. — LINKS — Democritus (1692, 69x57cm) — The Swooning of Esther (1704, 105x137cm) |
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Died on 07 January 1507: Cosimo
Rosselli (Filippo di Lorenzo), Florentine painter born in
1439. — Rosselli's successful career (the highpoint of which was painting frescoes in the Sistine Chapel together with Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino) was based on his facility and high standard of craftsmanship rather than on any great distinction or originality as an artist. In Florence his painting includes frescoes in SS. Annunziata and S. Ambrogio. His pupils included Fra Bartolomeo and Piero di Cosimo. — LINKS — The Last Supper — Crossing of the Red Sea (Sistine Chapel fresco) _ Built between 1475 and 1483, in the time of Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere, the Sistine Chapel has originally served as Palatine Chapel. The Chapel is rectangular in shape and measures 40.93 m long by 13,41 meters wide, i.e. the exact dimensions of the Temple of Solomon, as given in the Old Testament. It is 20.70 m high and is roofed by a flattened barrel vault, with little side vaults over the centered windows. The architectural plans were made by Baccio Pontinelli and the construction was supervised by Giovanino de'Dolci. The wall paintings were executed by Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, Luca Signorelli and their respective workshops, which included Pinturicchio, Piero di Cosimo and Bartolomeo della Gatta. Michelangelo Buonarroti was commissioned by Pope Julius II della Rovere in 1508 to repaint the ceiling; the work was completed between 1508 and 1512. He painted the Last Judgement over the altar, between 1535 and 1541, being commissioned by Pope Paul III Farnese. |
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Born on 07 January 1865: Valentin
Alexandrovitch Serov, Russian painter specialized in portraits,
who died on 22 November 1911. — Serov was born into the family of a famous Russian composer Alexander Nikolayevich Serov (11 Jan 1820 – 20 Jan 1871 Gregorian). In 1872-73 the little boy with his widowed mother, née Bergman, lived in Munich, where he had lessons from the artist K. Kepping. In 1874, they moved to Paris, where Valentin regularly visited the studio of Ilya Repin, who was very fond of the little boy. In 1875, the Serovs came to live at Abramtsevo, the estate of the industrial tycoon Savva Mamontov, and the cultural center of the time, where artists, musicians and actors were always welcome. Valentin grew up in an atmosphere of constant creativity, which characterized the Mamontovs’ household. He was lucky in getting a professional education from early childhood from the best Russian artists, and he soon showed himself to be a remarkably precocious draughtsman. He would catch the likeness of a model often more quickly and surely than the older artists in the ‘facetious drawing competitions’, which were so much a part of the gay and idyllic life of Abramtsevo. At the age of 15 Serov entered Academy of Arts in the class of professor Pavel Tchistykov. There he met his lifelong friend Vladimir Derviz. His first exhibited works Girl with Peaches. Portrait of Vera Mamontova. (1887) and Girl in the Sunlight. Portrait of Maria Simonovich. (1888) were a sensation. Critics called them a new word in painting. At the time of painting them Serov was unfamiliar with the works of the French Impressionists, yet he came very close to Renoir in these luminous, sunny, splendidly composed portraits. Serov tried himself in different genres: he was a beautiful landscape painter in a more sensuous and less nostalgic vein than another teacher of his, Isaac Levitan: Pond in Abramtsevo. (1886), The Overgrown Pond. Domotcanovo. (1888), Village. (1898), Watermill in Finland. (1902). Serov’s historical paintings are also of value and interest: Peter II and Princess Elizabeth Petrovna Riding to Hounds. (1900), Peter the Great. (1907). Serov became the most successful and brilliant portraitist in Russia of the 1890s and first decade of the 20th century. His most famous portraits are Portrait of the Actress Maria Yermolova. (1905), Portrait of Henrietta Girshman. (1907), Portrait of Ida Rubenstein. (1910), Portrait of Princess Olga Orlova. (1911). He traveled much, participated in exhibitions in Russia and abroad. In 1897-1909, Serov taught in Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He was a superb technical master of the many media in which he practiced and that too did not fail to impress his students. Among his pupils were N.N. Sapunov, M.I. Mashkov, P.V. Kuznetsov, N.P. Krymov, K.S. Petrov-Vodkin, C.Y. Sudeykin, K.F. Yuon and others. In 1903, he was elected the academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. — LINKS — Self-Portrait (1883) |
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Died on 07 January 1830: Sir
Thomas Lawrence, British artist born on 13 April 1769. — Sir Thomas Lawrence was one of the foremost English portrait painters of his day. He was born in Bristol. A child prodigy, he was largely self-taught, although he spent some time at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1789 Lawrence won recognition for his portrait of an actress, Miss Farren (1789, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City). He became much in demand, and in 1792 he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as principal painter to King George III, who knighted Lawrence in 1815. Lawrence was made a member of the Royal Academy in 1794 and served as president of the academy from 1820 to 1830. Lawrence was a brilliant stylist and technician, whose vitality, rich color, and dramatic silhouettes anticipated romantic painting. Although uneven in quality, his work at its best is marked by a taste and elegance that lends distinction to the portraits of his sitters. These portraits include Lady Peel (1827, Frick Collection, New York City); Pope Pius VII and Archduke Charles of Austria (Waterloo Chamber, Windsor Castle); and The Calmady Children (1825, Metropolitan Museum). Lawrence was the first English painter to achieve success in Europe. With Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough he stands at the apex of English portrait art. — Painter and draftsman who was the most fashionable English portrait painter of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was the son of an innkeeper who owned the Black Bear at Devizes, where the young Lawrence won a reputation as a prodigy for his profile portraits in pencil of guests. Later he began to work in pastel, and in 1780, when his family moved to Bath, he set up professionally. He had little regular education or artistic training, but was working in oils by the time he moved to London in 1787. There he studied at the Royal Academy schools for a short time and was given encouragement by Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was handsome, charming, and exceptionally gifted. His early success was phenomenal, and when he was 20 years of age he was summoned to Windsor to paint the portrait, later widely acclaimed, of Queen Charlotte. He was elected associate of the Royal Academy in 1791 and academician in 1794. Lawrence was a highly skilled draftsman. He soon abandoned pastels but continued to make portraits in pencil and chalks. These were separate commissions and were rarely studies for paintings, as it was his usual practice to make a careful drawing of the head and sometimes the whole composition on the canvas itself and to paint over it. There are highly interesting references to his working methods in Joseph Farington's Diary. After the 1792 death of Reynolds, Lawrence was the leading English portrait painter. His works exhibit a fluid touch, rich colour, and an ability to realize textures. He presented his sitters in a dramatic, sometimes theatrical, manner that produced Romantic portraiture of a high order. After the death of John Hoppner in 1810 he was patronized by the Prince Regent, who knighted him in 1815 and sent him in 1818 to the political congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle and Vienna, where he painted 24 large full-length portraits of the military leaders and heads of state of the Holy Alliance. Executed with sovereign verve and elegance, these works now hang together in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle - a unique historical document of the period. By these works Lawrence was recognized as the foremost portrait painter of Europe. On his return to England in 1820 he was elected president of the Royal Academy. Lawrence was also a distinguished connoisseur. His collection of old-master drawings was one of the finest ever assembled, and he was instrumental in securing the collection of Greek sculptures known as the Elgin Marbles for the nation and in the founding of the National Gallery. — LINKS — Miss Martha Carry (1789, 76x64cm) — Diana Sturt, Lady Milner — Calmady Children (1824) — Mrs. Henry Baring and her Children — The Fluyder Children, (1805) — Queen Charlotte (1790, 239x147cm) _ The youngest of five children of somewhat improvident parents, Lawrence was an infant prodigy. At ten he was drawing profile likenesses of the clients of his father's inn at Devizes, and it was assumed early on that his talent for portraiture would support his family. Around 1787 he was brought to London by his father, began to paint in oils and to show at the Royal Academy. His fame as a painter of full-length portraits in oil was sealed at the Academy exhibition of 1790, which included, among a varied group of a dozen pictures by him, this masterly likeness of Queen Charlotte. Praised outside the royal family, the picture was never acquired by them, perhaps because the king was upset by the queen having posed bareheaded after Lawrence disliked the bonnet and hat she had chosen to wear. The queen herself found the 20-year old artist 'rather presuming' when he asked her to talk during the sitting, in an effort to animate her features. Eventually it was the Assistant Keeper of her Wardrobe who completed the sittings for such details as the bracelets bearing a portrait miniature of the king and his cipher. Lawrence, a draughtsman of extreme precision, worked very hard at the 'appearance of facility'. His dazzling brushwork, inspired by Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt and Titian, enabled him to enjoy painting draperies, unlike his ageing 'rival' Reynolds, who often left them to assistants. But there is more to admire here beside the rustling shimmer of the queen's silks, gauzes and laces. Queen Charlotte had been shocked and saddened by the onset of George III's illness shortly before the portrait was painted. X-rays show that Lawrence modified the careworn expression which he had first observed. Yet even in the final portrait, so formal in conception, so grand in execution, something of the queen's malaise remains touchingly evident. The landscape background shows a view of Eton College as seen from Windsor Castle. The trees are turning red — as they might well have been in late September when the queen posed for Lawrence, but also so that the color contrasts of carpet and dress may be echoed in the russet foliage against a blue sky. Although she cannot see the view behind her, the direction of the queen's glance draws our own eyes to these vivid yet melancholy harbingers of winter. |
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