BIRTH: 1829 STANHOPE |
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Died on 20 January 2003: Al(bert)
Hirschfeld [photo >], US show biz caricaturist
born on 21 June 1903. —
Al Hirschfeld's caricatures captured the vivid personalities of entertainers
and their performances for more than 75 years. |
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Died on 20 January 1900: John
Ruskin, English Romantic
writer, art critic, and painter born on 08 February 1819. Ruskin's books Modern Painters (1843), which hotly supported Turner’s art, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1848), The Stones of Venice (1851-53) made him critic of the day, later he became the most influential art critic of the Victorian era. He supported artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. From 1867, Ruskin held the post of Rede Lecturer in Cambridge, and from 1869-1884 a professorship of fine arts in Oxford. He founded a museum and a drawing school in Oxford, and in Meersbrook a night school for craftsmen. Towards the end of his life Ruskin increasingly suffered from a severe nervous illness. His watercolors and drawings were exhibited from 1873 to 1884 at the Old Water-Color Society. See his Cascade de la Folie, Chamonix (1849), grandly atmospheric view of an Alpine chain, its expansiveness recalls early Turner. John Ruskin was born at 54 Hunter Street, London, the only child of Margaret and John James Ruskin. His father, a prosperous, self-made man who was a founding partner of Pedro Domecq sherries, collected art and encouraged his son's literary activities, while his mother, a devout evangelical Protestant, early dedicated her son to the service of God and devoutly wished him to become an Anglican bishop. Ruskin, who received his education at home until the age of twelve, rarely associated with other children and had few toys. During his sixth year he accompanied his parents on the first of many annual tours of the Continent. Encouraged by his father, he published his first poem, On Skiddaw and Derwent Water, at the age of eleven, and four years later his first prose work, an article on the waters of the Rhine. In 1836, the year he matriculated as a gentleman-commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, he wrote a pamphlet defending the painter Joseph Mallord William Turner [1775-1851] against the periodical critics, but at the artist's request he did not publish it. While at Oxford (where his mother had accompanied him) Ruskin associated largely with a wealthy and often rowdy set but continued to publish poetry and criticism; and in 1839 he won the Oxford Newdigate Prize for poetry. The next year, however, suspected consumption led him to interrupt his studies and travel, and he did not receive his degree until 1842, when he abandoned the idea of entering the ministry. This same year he began the first volume of Modern Painters after reviewers of the annual Royal Academy exhibition had again savagely treated Turner's works, and in 1846, after making his first trip abroad without his parents, he published the second volume, which discussed his theories of beauty and imagination within the context of figural as well as landscape painting. [1/2] On 10 April 1848 Ruskin married Euphemia Chalmers Gray, and the next year he published The Seven Lamps of Architecture, after which he and Effie set out for Venice. In 1850 he published The King of the Golden River, which he had written for Effie nine years before, and a volume of poetry, and in the following year, during which Turner died and Ruskin made the acquaintance of the Pre-Raphaelites, the first volume of The Stones of Venice. The final two volumes appeared in 1853, the summer of which saw Millais, Ruskin, and Effie together in Scotland, where Millais painted Ruskin's portrait. The next year his wife left him and had their marriage annulled on grounds of non-consummation, after which she married Millais. During this difficult year, Ruskin defended the Pre-Raphaelites, became close to Rossetti, and taught at the Working Men's College. In 1855 Ruskin began Academy Notes, his reviews of the annual exhibition, and the following year, in the course of which he became acquainted with the man who later became his close friend, the Charles Eliot Norton from the US, he published the third and fourth volumes of Modern Painters and The Harbours of England. He continued his immense productivity during the next four years, producing The Elements of Drawing and The Political Economy of Art in 1857, The Elements of Perspective and The Two Paths in 1859, and the fifth volume of Modern Painters and the periodical version of Unto This Last in 1860. During 1858, in the midst of this productive period, Ruskin decisively abandoned the evangelical Protestantism which had so shaped his ideas and attitudes, and he also met Rose La Touche, a young Irish Protestant girl with whom he was later to fall deeply and tragically in love. |
Throughout the 1860s
Ruskin continued writing and lecturing on social and political economy,
art, and myth, and during this decade he produced the Fraser's Magazine
"Essays on Political Economy" (1863); revised as Munera Pulveris,
1872), Sesame and Lilies (1865), The Grown of Wild Olive
(1866), The Ethics of the Dust (1866), Time and Tide,
and The Queen of the Air (1869), his study of Greek myth. The next
decade, which begins with his delivery of the inaugural lecture at Oxford
as Slade Professor of Fine Art in February 1870, saw the beginning of Fors
Clavigera, a series of letters to the working men of England, and various
works on art and popularized science. His father had died in 1864 and his
mother in 1871 at the age of ninety. In 1875 Rose la Touche died insane, and three years later Ruskin suffered his first attack of mental illness and was unable to testify during the Whistler trial when the artist sued him for libel. In 1880 Ruskin resigned his Oxford Professorship, suffering further attacks of madness in 1881 and 1882; but after his recovery he was re-elected to the Slade Professorship in 1883 and delivered the lectures later published as The Art of England (1884). In 1885 he began Praeterita, his autobiography, which appeared intermittently in parts until 1889, but he became increasingly ill, and Joanna Severn, his cousin and heir, had to bring him home from an 1888 trip to the Continent. He died at Brantwood, his home near Coniston Water. English critic and social theorist. During the mid-19th cent. Ruskin was the virtual dictator of artistic opinion in England, but Ruskin's reputation declined after his death, and he has been treated harshly by 20th-century critics. Although it is undeniable that he was an extravagant and inconsistent thinker (a reflection of his lifelong mental and emotional instability), it is equally true that he revolutionized art criticism and wrote some of the most superb prose in the English language. Early Life Educated by his wealthy, evangelical parents, Ruskin was prepared for the ministry, and until 1836 he spent his mornings with his domineering mother, reading and memorizing the Bible. In 1833 the family went on the first of its many tours of Europe, and the boy ardently studied nature and painting. His stay (1836-40) at Oxford resulted in his winning the Newdigate Prize for poetry and in his determining not to enter the ministry. A breakdown of health in 1840 forced him to travel. Critic and Reformer The first volume of Ruskin's Modern Painters appeared in 1843. This work started as a defense of the painter J. M. W. Turner and developed into a treatise elaborating the principles that art is based on national and individual integrity and morality and also that art is a "universal language. He finished the five volumes in 1860. The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) applied these same theories to architecture. In 1848, Ruskin married Euphemia Gray, a beautiful young woman with social ambitions; the union, which apparently was never consummated, was annulled in 1854, and Mrs. Ruskin subsequently married the painter John Everett Millais. From his position as the foremost English art critic, Ruskin in 1851 defended the work of the Pre-Raphaelite group. His third great volume of criticism, The Stones of Venice (1851-53), maintained that the Gothic architecture of Venice reflected national and domestic virtue, while Venetian Renaissance architecture mirrored corruption. About 1857, Ruskin's art criticism became more broadly social and political. He wrote Unto This Last (in Cornhill Magazine, 1860) and Munera Pulveris (in Fraser's Magazine, 1862-63). These works attacked bourgeois England and charged that modern art reflected the ugliness and waste of modern industry. Ruskin's positive program for social reform appeared in Sesame and Lilies (1865), The Crown of Wild Olive (1866), Time and Tide (1867), and Fors Clavigera (8 vol., 1871-84). Many of his suggested programs-old age pensions, nationalization of education, organization of labor-have become accepted doctrine. He was made the first professor of art in England (Slade professor, Oxford, 1870) and his lectures were well attended. His multifarious activities broke down his health, however, and in 1878 he suffered his first period of insanity. Recurrences of unbalance became more frequent, though some of his greatest prose, the autobiography Praeterita (1885-89), was written in the lucid intervals. Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (photo) Portrait by Millais RUSKIN ART LINKS A River in the Highlands (1847) Zermatt (1844) Cascade de la Folie, Chamonix (1849) Rose la Touche. WRITINGS OF RUSKIN ONLINE: The King of the Golden River — The King of the Golden River — Sesame and Lilies Unto This Last — "Work" (Lecture I, The Crown of Wild Olive) — About some writings of Ruskin |
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Born on 20 January 1829: John
Roddam Spencer Stanhope, English Pre-Raphaelite
painter who died on 02 August 1908. Spencer-Stanhope was one of the most important followers of Burne-Jones. He was a member of the group of artists which worked on the Oxford Union murals. His style owes a lot to Burne-Jones, yet Stanhope's color is stronger and less subtle, his drawing is harder and in general the softness and stillness of his master is lacking. His choice of subject-matter and interest in technique is individual. Eve Tempted (1877) is a striking and slightly unnerving interpretation of the serpent in the Garden of Eden whispering into Eve's ear as she stands under the Tree of Knowledge, on a faux-naïf early Renaissance carpet of flowers. Stanhope was in love with the Tuscan landscape and with Florentine art, and spent the latter part of his life in Florence. His niece was the painter Evelyn De Morgan - who often travelled to stay with him in Florence. LINKS Love Betrayed (80x53cm) _ This picture is an allegorical story represented through blind Cupid or Love, being led to his fall through the hole in the bridge where his bow has already fallen. The implication is that the young woman to the left of the picture is betraying him through false hope. Our Lady of the Watergate (122x61cm) [No! It is NOT Nixon's secretary Rose Mary 18-1/2 minute gap Woods. Actually the 20 June 1972, 11:26-11:45 gap was probably not an accidental erasure by her but a deliberate one by someone else, possibly Chief of Staff Alexander Haig] [Nixon's Watergate affair] Eve Tempted (1877, 163x76cm) The Waters of Lethe by the Plains of Elysium (1880, 147x282cm) Psyche and Charon |
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Died on 20 January 1875: Jean-François
Millet, French Realist
painter born on 04 October 1814. The son of a small peasant farmer of Gréville in Normandy, Millet showed a precocious interest in drawing, and arrived in Paris in 1838 to become a pupil of Paul Delaroche. He had to fight against great odds, living for long a life of extreme penury. He exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1840, and married two years later. At this time, the main influences on him were Poussin and Eustache Le Sueur, and the type of work he produced consisted predominantly of mythological subjects or portraiture, at which he was especially adept (Portrait of a Naval Officer). His memories of rural life, and his intermittent contacts with Normandy, however, impelled him to that concern with peasant life that was to be characteristic of the rest of his artistic career. In 1848 he exhibited The Winnower (now lost) at the Salon, and this was praised by Théophile Gautier and bought by Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, the Minister of the Interior. In 1849, when a cholera epidemic broke out in Paris, Millet moved to Barbizon on the advice of the engraver Charles-Émile Jacque (1813-94) and took a house near that of Théodore Rousseau. Devoted to this area as a subject for his work, he was one of those who most clearly helped to create the Barbizon School. His paintings on rural themes attracted growing acclaim and between 1858 and 1859 he painted the famous Angélus, which 40 years later was to be sold for the sensational price of 553'000 francs. Although he was officially distrusted because of his real or imaginary Socialist leanings, his own attitude towards his chosen theme of peasant life was curiously ambivalent. Being of peasant stock, he tended to look upon farmworkers as narrow-minded and oblivious of beauty, and did not accept the notion that `honest toil' was the secret of happiness. In fact, his success partly stemmed from the fact that, though compared with most of his predecessors and, indeed, his contemporaries, he was a Realist, he presented this reality in an acceptable form, with a religious or idyllic gloss. Nevertheless, he became a symbol to younger artists, to whom he gave help and encouragement. It was he who, on a visit to Le Havre to paint portraits, encouraged Boudin to become an artist, and his work certainly influenced the young Monet, and even more decidedly so Pissarro, who shared similar political inclinations. Although towards the end of his life, when he started using a lighter
palette and freer brushstrokes, his work showed some affinities with Impressionism,
his technique was never really close to theirs. He never painted out-of-doors,
and he had only a limited awareness of tonal values, but his draughtsmanship
had a monumentality that appealed to artists such as Seurat
and van Gogh,
who was also enthralled by his subject-matter, with its social implications.
Millet's career was greatly helped by Durand-Ruel. |
Mais la grande affaire pour tous était la préparation du Salon.
Pour celui de 1846, Millet fit un Saint-Jérôme tenté
par les femmes que Couture, l'ancien condisciple de l'atelier Delaroche
qualifiait de morceau étonnamment superbe. Hélas, encore une
fois, le Saint-Jérôme fut écarté par
le jury du salon. Oedipe détaché de l'arbre par un berger fut l'oeuvre présentée au Salon de 1847 et la critique commença à s'intéresser à Millet, mais c'était encore un tableau qui portait l'empreinte des XVIème et XVIIème siècles, c'est-à-dire encore loin des sujets qui allaient, par la suite, consacrer la gloire du peintre. La révolution de 1848 marque un tournant dans la carrière de Jean-François Millet. Dans la vague de libéralisme qui suivit, le Salon de 1848 fut déclaré ouvert à tous. Les angoisses des peintres qui présentaient des oeuvres en pensant toujours aux susceptibilités des examinateurs et au credo qui guidait immanquablement leurs choix, disparurent. Millet a trente-trois ans. Son esprit est mûr. Désormais, il dédaignera de plus en plus l'art conventionnel, les nudités de fantaisie et les scènes d'imagination empruntées à la Bible ou à la mythologie. Et cette année 1848 se révèle décisive pour Jean-François Millet. Pour le salon, il prépara deux envois: Le Vanneur et La Captivité des Juifs à Babylone. Tout le succès alla au premier, qui constitua son premier début dans le genre où il allait s'illustrer. Pour la première fois, il choisit comme héros le paysan qu'il devait évoquer ensuite dans toutes ses scènes du labeur de la terre. Le Vanneur est l'oeuvre de Jean-François Millet qui rencontra le premier vrai et franc succès. La critique admirait Le Vanneur. Le public cherchait à se renseigner sur cette toile si émouvante dont on lui disait que l'auteur tirait le diable par la queue. Ledru-Rollin, syndic de la ville de Paris, sur les instances de Jeanron, Conservateur du musée du Louvre, rendit visite à Jean-François Millet et lui acheta Le Vanneur, qu'il paya 500 F. Jeanron qui savait Millet en sympathie avec les républicains lui fit, en outre, obtenir une commande de 1800 F à partager néanmoins avec son ami Charles Jacque. C'est le reliquat de cette somme qui devait, plus tard, permettre aux deux artistes de partir pour Barbizon. Le 20 Decembre 1848, un Bonaparte devenait officiellement Prince-Président de la IIème République et un arsenal de lois répressives confortait désormais celui-ci et le nouveau gouvernement en place. Tout cela n'arrangeait pas les affaires des artistes-peintres, ni celles de Jean-François Millet en particulier, qui commençait à mal supporter ces continuels débordements de la rue et qui aspirait au calme et à la tranquillité nécessaire pour terminer ses commandes. Son envoi au Salon de 1849, Une Paysanne Assise, passa presque complètement inaperçue par ces temps troublés. L'épidémie de choléra qui sévissait alors à Paris et que Millet redoutait pour les siens, l'extraordinaire amitié fraternelle qui le liait à Charles Jacque, la petite fortune que les deux hommes possédaient encore, «l'aura» artistique qui entourait déjà Barbizon, toutes les conditions étaient réunies pour l'ouverture de la période la plus prestigieuse de l'histoire du village de Barbizon. - «Où diable pourrions-nous bien aller établir notre campement? demanda Millet. Connaîtriez-vous un endroit où nous pourrions vivre et travailler sans dépasser les limites de notre budget? Moi, vous savez, je ne connais que Gruchy, c'est peut-être un peu loin!» - «Allons du côté de Fontainebleau, rétorqua Charles Jacque ; il y a aux environs un charmant petit hameau, un trou placé sur la lisière de la forêt, et dont le nom finit par Ion . Diaz m'en a beaucoup parlé. Il paraît que le pays est admirable. Ce n'est pas trop loin, nous trouverons sûrement quelque chose par là.» - «Nous avons pris, Jacque et moi, la détermination de rester ici pendant quelque temps» écrivait Millet à son ami Sensier. Ce «quelque temps» devait durer vingt-cinq années. La découverte de la forêt de Fontainebleau émerveilla Jean-François Millet. La campagne autour de Barbizon avec ses paysans au travail lui rappelait son Cotentin natal. C'était là son vrai domaine, celui de son cher Gruchy, mais son destin avait basculé pour en faire un peintre et chanter les louanges du seul travail qui comptât à ses yeux, celui de la terre, qu'il allait magnifiquement glorifier dans les années à venir. C'est durant cette longue période que tant de chefs-d'œuvre virent le jour dans cette modeste maison que lui prêtait Sensier et qui abritait son atelier et sa nombreuse famille. Les Salons restaient toujours son objectif principal mais il commençait à commercialiser sa production, surtout grâce à l'amitié de son ami Sensier. Et ce furent Les Botteleurs et Le Semeur en 1850 (comparer par van Gogh d'après Millet: Le Semeur 1 et Le Semeur 2). Au salon de 1853, Millet envoie trois oeuvres: Le Repas des Moissonneurs, Une Tondeuse de moutons et Un Berger. Millet reçoit sa première consécration: une médaille de 2ème classe pour ses Moissonneurs, mais la critique restait très partagée. La vie à Barbizon demeurait très difficile pour Jean-François Millet, mais c'est à cette époque qu'il se lia d'amitié avec Théodore Rousseau, qu'il avait déjà rencontré à Paris, mais qui avait découvert Chailly et Barbizon, dès 1833. Durant les années qui suivirent, toutes les oeuvres maîtresses de Jean-François Millet, orgueil aujourd'hui de tant de musées français ou étrangers, virent le jour dans l'atelier du peintre à Barbizon. Citons, pêle-mêle, les principales: Le Paysan Greffant un Arbre, Le Paysan Répandant du Fumier (1855, 81x112cm), L'Angélus, Les Glaneuses, L'Attente, Le Bout du Village de Gréville, La Becquée, La Grande Tondeuse, etc. Et faudrait-il taire ces autres chefs-d'oeuvre? Comme L'Homme à la Houe qui devait déchaîner tant de passions (1862) ou La Naissance du Veau (1864) qui allait valoir une seconde médaille à son auteur. Le 14 Aug 1868, Jean-François Millet fut fait chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, consécration dont on n'a peu idée aujourd'hui, mais qui valait l'attribution d'un siège permanent parmi le fameux jury qui présidait chaque année les redoutés et redoutables Salons. La chance commençait donc à tourner pour Jean-François Millet, mais hélas, la maladie continuait à faire des ravages. Ses affreuses migraines qui le tenaillaient depuis tant d'années reprenaient de plus belle. Des quintes de toux le secouaient de longues minutes, ou durant plusieurs heures, lui ôtant toute vigueur et toute énergie. Le 20 janvier 1875, Jean-François Millet, alité depuis la mi-décembre, commença à délirer dans cette petite chambre du premier étage de son atelier de Barbizon. Une vie commencée à Gruchy, soixante et une années auparavant, s'éteignait. Il ouvrit une dernière fois les yeux, promena son regard sur Catherine Lemaire et son frère Jean-Baptiste restés à son chevet, puis prononça ces derniers mots : «C'est dommage, j'aurais pu travailler encore». LINKS L'Angélus (1858) Le Semeur Shepherdess with her Flock Glaneuses Jardin Burden Fishermen The Flight into Egypt Jeune Femme (1844) Spring (1870) Porteurs de Fagots, Bêcheur au travail Bêcheur Au Repos (1874) Harvesters Resting (Ruth and Boaz) (1853) Bringing Home the Newborn Calf (1858) The Church of Gréville (1874) 29 prints at FAMSF |
The 1863 painting: L'homme à la houe by
Jean-François
Millet inspired the 15 January 1899 poem The Man
with a Hoe, by US schoolteacher Charles Edward Anson Markham (1852-1940),
who used the penname Edwin Markham.. The poem quickly became as famous as
the painting. Both continue to be moving testimonies to what the too prevalent
inhumanity of humanity can cause. The Man with a Hoe Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave What gulfs between him and the seraphim! |
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O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to God, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? How will you ever straighten up this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Give back the upward looking and the light; Rebuild in it the music and the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? |
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, How will the future reckon with this Man? How answer his brute question in that hour When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores? How will it be with kingdoms and with kings-- With those who shaped him to the thing he is-- When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world, After the silence of the centuries? |