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Died on 17 January 1886: Paul
Baudry, French painter born on 07 November 1828. — Baudry entame sa carrière parisienne en 1857. Il exécute tout d'abord deux ensembles décoratifs, l'un pour M. Guillemin en 1857 (aujourd'hui à l'Hôtel Marigny), l'autre pour le ministre Achille Fould en 1858 (pour l'Hôtel Fould, aujourd'hui au Château de Chantilly) et il reçoit la commande d'une vingtaine de portraits. Mais pour établir sa réputation il se devait d'exposer des compositions représentatives de son art au Salon, alors le seul moyen pour un artiste de montrer ses oeuvres, de se faire connaître et d'être jugé. Au Salon de 1857 il avait été accueilli de façon plutôt favorable, mais avec des oeuvres réalisées à Rome dans le cadre de l'Académie de France. Au Salon de 1889 il exposa, outre des portraits, deux tableaux : La toilette de Vénus et La Madeleine pénitente. — LINKS — Le Tourment de Vestale — (Nu musclé) |
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Died on 17 January 1686: Carlo
“Carlino” Dolci, Italian artist born on 25 May
1616. — Carlo Dolci, pittore italiano (Firenze 1616-1686). Allievo di Jacopo Vignali, eseguì a diciassette anni il bel ritratto di Ainolfo de' Bardi, volgendosi poi a dipingere soggetti sacri. — Dolci was the leading painter in Florence in the mid-17th century, and an exponent of the restrained style of Late Baroque comparable with Sacchi's Roman works. Dolci was extremely precocious and one of his finest pictures is the portrait, painted when he was 16, of Fra Ainolfo dei Bardi (1632). Nevertheless, he later became very neurotic and felt himself to be professionally inadequate. Most of his later works are small devotional pictures often painted on copper in an extremely finicky and detailed manner. When Giordano was in Florence in 1682 he said jokingly that his own virtuoso style had brought him a fortune of 150,000 scudi, but that by spending so much time on his works Dolci would starve; an idea that preyed on Dolci's mind. One of his best works is the Martyrdom of St Andrew (1646) — LINKS — Self-Portrait (1674) — St Catherine Reading a Book — The Guardian Angel (1675) — Flowers (1675) — Ainolfo de' Bardi (1632, 150x119cm) _ This portrait was painted by Dolci, as appears from an inscription on the back, at the age of sixteen years; and it surpasses, both for the conception and the success and brilliance of the execution, later pictures by this precocious artist. Fra Ainolfo de' Bardi, Knight of Jerusalem, was a very notable soldier and man of politics in his day. He was born in 1573 and died in 1638. — Magdalene (1670, 73x56cm) _ This is among the most noted works of Carlo Dolci. |
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Died on 17 January 1654: Paulus
Potter, Dutch painter, specialized in animals, born on 20
November 1625. — [ancestor of Harry?] — Dutch painter and etcher, celebrated chiefly for his paintings of animals. Animals appear prominently in all of Potter's works, sometimes singly but usually in small groups silhouetted against the sky, or in greater numbers with peasant figures and rustic buildings in an extensive landscape. Potter is one of the minor Dutch masters. Potter entered the Guild of St. Luke at Delft in 1646. In 1649 he moved to The Hague, where in the following year he married Adriana, daughter of the architect Claes van Balkeneynde. In 1652 Potter settled in Amsterdam. He probably received his early training from his father, the painter Pieter Potter (c. 1597-1652), but his style shows little dependence upon that of earlier masters. In so short a career there was little development in style between the earlier and the later works, but 1647 seems to mark a peak in his achievement, for many of the finest paintings bear this date. Among works that depart from his normal scale or style, the huge Young Bull (1647), which is life-size, is his most celebrated, though not necessarily his finest work, while Orpheus Charming the Beasts (1650; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) is an excursion into a poetic world. Potter's etchings of animals show all the skill and sympathy of his paintings. — LINKS — Four Cows in a Meadow (1651) _ The bulk of Potter's work is devoted to horses and to scenes of cows, goats, sheep, and pigs, which show an extraordinary sensitivity to the various ways in which farmyard animals behave at different times of the day as well as to the different quality of light in the morning or at dusk in landscapes that almost invariably make country life appear idyllic. Notable too are are his portraits of dogs. — Orpheus Charming the Beasts (1650) — Diederik Tulp (1653) _ Potter worked for the court in The Hague, in nearby Delft, and in 1652 he settled in Amsterdam. According to Houbraken Nicolaes Tulp persuaded him to move to the metropolis where the famous doctor became his mentor. If true, once again Tulp showed he had an eye for young talent. Two decades earlier he had asked the twenty-six-year-old Rembrandt to paint the Anatomy Lesson (1632) which established Rembrandt's reputation in the city. In 1653 Potter painted this life-size equestrian portrait which has been traditionally identified as his likeness of Tulp's son Dirck (Diederik); however, the tradition may very well be apocryphal. The portrait proves that Potter was no exception to the rule that seventeenth-century Dutch painters never match the life-size equestrian portraits of royalty and their ministers by Velázquez, Rubens, or Van Dyck — Landscape with Shepherdess and Shepherd Playing Flute (1644, 67x114cm) _ The painting reflects the influence of Elsheimer, or the Dutch followers of Elsheimer. — The Farm (1649, 81x116cm) _ Potter's career was short. He died a few months after his twenty-eighth birthday. His early works show the influence of his father, the painter Pieter Symonszoon Potter (1598-1652) and Moeyaert who painted cattle in his biblical and mythological pictures. He is documented as a pupil of Jacob de Wet, a Rembrandt follower, and probably also knew the innovative prints done in the thirties by Moeyaert, Gerrit Bleker (active 1625-56), and Pieter van Laer, which prominently feature cattle, horses, and other livestock; he himself made etchings of animals. Potter tried his hand at a few subject paintings, but the bulk of his work is devoted to horses and to scenes of cows, goats, sheep, and pigs, which show an extraordinary sensitivity to the various ways in which farmyard animals behave at different times of the day as well as to the different quality of light in the morning or at dusk in landscapes that almost invariably make country life appear idyllic. — Young Bull (1647, 236x339cm) _ In the work of Paulus Potter views of nature and animals are seen for their own sake, and not as a backdrop for human action. Potter can paint equally well the bright sunlight and the cool air, but his real fame lies with his penetrating portraits of animals. His best-known work is the life-size Young Bull, an unusual heroization of a single animal, a counterpart to the monumental trend of Ruisdael and Cuyp. Although at first blush it appears to be a portrait of a prize young bull Potter most probably composed his famous beast from studies of more than one animal since its dewlap, horns, and teeth belong to bulls of different ages. The ancient Greek painter Zeuxis used a similar method; when he painted his portrait of Helen in the city of Croton he chose five beautiful virgins, in order to copy the finest features of each, for in one woman he felt he could not find perfect beauty. During the nineteenth century the Young Bull by the 22-year-old Potter ranked close in fame to the Night Watch of Rembrandt. Later generations have been less captivated by Potter's fidelity to nature when he worked life-size. Although the shapes of the farmer, the tree, and the bull against the light sky are impressive and the textures of the animals have been convincingly represented by the use of an original impasto which approaches relief, the entire foreground of this huge canvas seems airless. Atmosphere enters the picture only in the lovely distant view on the right, where a sunny light plays upon the cattle in the meadows and on the woods, making this passage one of his loveliest landscapes. Potter is more consistent on a small scale, and his cabinet pieces show him at his best. — 16 etchings at Fine Arts Museums of SF |
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