BIRTH: 1832 HUGHES
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Born on 27 January 1669: Gaspar
de Crayer, Flemish artist born on 18 November 1584. LINKS Altar Alexander and Diogenes (196x278cm) _ The meeting between the classical ruler Alexander the Great and the philosopher Diogenes had been illustrated in the 15th and 16th centuries but was also a popular subject in Italian and Netherlands Baroque painting. Diogenes replied to Alexander, the conqueror of the world, when he asked him if he wanted anything: "Stand a little less between me and the sun." The contrast between the youthful and beautiful hero and the beggarly old man whose life exemplified asceticism is exploited in the composition and use of colors. The message of the painting is the meaninglessness of earthly power when confronted with ethical principles. The Antwerp artist de Crayer later became court painter to the archduke in Brussels. This work, reflecting his dealing with forms and themes in the work of Rubens, is one of his best. The Cardinal Infante (1639, 219x125cm) _ Crayer was a pupil and continuator of Rubens, also influenced by Van Dyck. He was the accredited painter for the churches of Brabant and Ghent. Head Study of a Young Moor (40x33cm) _ Rubens' style was imitated by many 17th-century artists, who devoted themselves to large-scale ecclesiastical commissions. Gaspar de Crayer, a Brussels master who settled in Ghent in 1664, was one of the most talented members of this group. A series of his paintings can be seen in local churches. De Crayer's best work is marked by the grandeur of its composition. Although he lacked Rubens' drive, he made up for it somewhat with his refined modeling and soft palette, and never descended into the tedium of most Rubens imitators |
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Died on 27 January 1851: John
James Audubon, naturalist,
ornithologist, and artist famous for his drawings and paintings
of North American birds, such as this Blue Yellow Back Warbler
[<<<], which he painted in 1812. He was born on 26 April
1785. John James Audubon was born in Les Cayes, Santo Domingo (now Haiti), the illegitimate son of French sea captain Jean Audubon and a servant, Jeanne Rabine. In 1789, a few years after the death of his mother, he was taken to France and raised by his father and stepmother. During a happy childhood at Coueron, near Nantes, he studied geography, fencing, and mathematics, but was most enthusiastic about exploring the out-of-doors and collecting and drawing birds' nests, eggs, and other curiosities. Audubon claimed to have studied with the French neo-classical painter Jacques-Louis David, but there is no documentation to support this. In 1803 he was sent to America to operate Mill Grove, a farm near Philadelphia that his father had purchased in 1789. Through mismanagement and neglect Audubon lost the farm, thus beginning a long series of early commercial failures for the young man, who preferred to devote his time to shooting and sketching specimens rather than to overseeing his business interests. At Mill Grove, Audubon met Lucy Bakewell, whom he married in 1808. They moved to Louisville, Kentucky, then to Henderson, Kentucky, and in later years to New Orleans. Because he was often absent on collecting excursions, his wife worked as a governess and schoolteacher to support the family. In 1819 Audubon was briefly jailed for debt. About this time he began to earn a living making likenesses in chalk, which he continued to do until 1826. He also worked as a taxidermist in Cincinnati in 1820. Although he had met Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) in 1810 and had seen Wilson's great work American Ornithology, it was not until ten years later that Audubon arrived at the idea of publishing his own illustrations of birds and began collecting and drawing specifically toward that end. With his assistant Joseph Mason, a young artist specializing in plants and insects, he journeyed from Cincinnati to New Orleans and Natchez. In 1822 Audubon took lessons in oil painting from an itinerant artist named John Stein (or Steen). This is his only recorded training in this medium. He had been working primarily in pastels, but about this time he began increasingly to use watercolors. Audubon visited Philadelphia in 1824 and arranged to show his work at the Academy of Natural Sciences. He won no sponsorship in that city, however, because of his rough manner and the threat his project posed to the work of the favored Alexander Wilson. In 1826 Audubon turned to England to gain support for his venture. He found a warm and encouraging reception in Liverpool, where he showed his drawings and paintings at the Royal Institution. Gradually he gathered a group of subscribers and found an accomplished London engraving firm, Robert Havell & Son, thus enabling him to begin his project of creating large (double elephant folio) illustrations of American birds. Audubon traveled back and forth between the United States and England a number of times over the next several years to secure specimens and financing for his production. He was assisted by his sons John Woodhouse, who accompanied him on collecting trips, and Victor Gifford (1809-1860), who supervised the marketing and printing of the plates in London. The Birds of America was issued in 87 parts of 5 plates each and when completed in June 1838 contained 435 hand-colored engravings of 1,065 birds of 489 species. Accustomed to seeing specimens shown simply, against a blank background, some naturalists objected to Audubon's use of dramatic poses and settings. Indeed, Audubon was sometimes guilty of endowing the creatures he depicted with almost human attitudes. Yet his attempt to position them as he thought they moved in the wild, using wire armatures to support the freshly-killed subjects, was truly revolutionary. Today The Birds of America engravings and the brilliant watercolors upon which they are based are admired not only for their ornithological exactness, but also for their vitality and keen sense of design. Even while Audubon was producing his visual record of American birds, he was documenting their characteristics and his own experiences in the wilderness in his Ornithological Biography, published in five volumes between 1831 and 1839. By this time he had become a celebrated figure in the United States, appearing in the press, lecturing to the public, and mingling with important people such as President Andrew Jackson. He was encouraged to undertake two new publications. The first was a version of The Birds of America comprised of reduced-size illustrations, lithographs rather than engravings, printed 1839 to 1843. The second was The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (printed 1845-1848), two volumes of handcolored lithographs based on watercolors by John James Audubon and his son John Woodhouse Audubon and accompanied by text written by their friend, the amateur naturalist, the Reverend John Bachman. Both of these efforts were very successful and allowed the artist to retire in comfort. Audubon's last nine years were spent at Minnie's Land, thirty-five acres
of property that he purchased on what is now upper Manhattan, facing the
Hudson River. He died there. |
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Born on 27 January 1832: Arthur
Hughes, English Pre-Raphaelite painter who died on 22 December
1915. Pre-Raphaelite painter and illustrator. Studied under Alfred Stevens. In about 1850 he converted to Pre-Raphaelitism. Met Holman Hunt, Rossetti, Madox Brown, and later Millais. In 1852 he exhibited his first major Pre-Raphaelite picture Ophelia. Throughout the 1850s and 1860s Hughes continued to produce a series of delicately poetic pictures, which hover on the knife-edge between sentiment and sentimentality but are always redeemed by their brilliant color and microscopic detail. Some of the best known are Home from the Sea, The Long Engagement, Aurora Leigh's Dismissal of Romney and April Love which Ruskin thought "exquisite in every way". In 1857 he worked with other Pre-Raphaelites on the frescoes in the Oxford Union. About 1858, Hughes retired to live with his family in the suburbs of London. He lived at 284 London Rd, Wallington, Sutton, and at Eastside House, 22 Kew Green, Richmond. Hughes being of a quiet and retiring nature, very little is known of his later career. After about 1870 his work lost its impetus. Hughes was the original illustrator of Tom Brown's Schooldays, and George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind and The Princess and the Goblin. He also illustrated Allingham's Music Master and many other novels, children's books and periodicals. He worked with Christina Rossetti on Sing Song in 1871. He died on 22 December 1915. A sale of his works took place at Christie's after his death on 21 November 1921. . Arthur Hughes and his daughter Agnes, photographed by Lewis Carroll. Drawing portrait by the artist's son, Arthur Foord Hughes) LINKS Self-Portrait (1851) Ophelia (1853; 68x124cm) _ The writing on the frame of this painting reads: 'There is a willow grows aslant the brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; There with fantastic garlands did she come. Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples. There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang an envious sliver broke. When down the weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook.' Buy print from art.com Buy print from AllPosters Buy print from Easyart (UK) Home From the Sea (1857, 51x65cm) _ A sailor boy has come back from the sea to find that his mother has died. With his sister he is mourning at her grave. Hughes began the picture in 1856, in the old churchyard at Chingford in Essex. At first the picture contained only the figure of the boy, and was entitled A Mother's Grave; later the sister was added, and the title was changed. The model for the boy may have been Hughes' nephew, Edward Robert Hughes. Knight of the Sun (1861, 22x32cm) _ An aged warrior mortally wounded, being carried by his men-at-arms to the shelter of a religious house. La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1863, 152x122cm) _ This painting is based on La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats _ See another painting on the same subject: La Belle Dame Sans Merci (by Cowper) _ Ophelia and He Will Not Come Again (1864, 95x60cm) _ described this painting as Ophelia 'approaching the water and looking back at us, singing her last song.' Inscribed on the back is the following verse: 'Ophelia (sings) And will he not come again? And will he not come again? No, no he is dead Go to thy death-bed He never will come again. His beard was as white as snow, All flaxen was his poll: He is gone, he is gone, And we cast away moan; Gramercy on his soul! And of all Christian souls, I pray God - God be wi' you. Exit'. A Music Party (1864) _ When exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1864, the accompanying lines from John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn were included in the catalogue: 'Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter Not to the sensual ear, but more endear'd Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.' Good Night (1866, 99x65cm) _ 'Day's turn is over: now arrives the Night's.' from Robert Browning, Pippa Passes. Sir Galahad (1869, 113x168cm) _ Inscribed on the back: 'The clouds are broken in the sky, And thro' the mountain-walls, A rolling organ-harmony Swells up, and shakes and falls, Then move the trees, the copses nod, Wings flutter, voices hover clear: Oh just and faithful knight of God! Ride on: the prize is near. So pass I hostel, hall, and grange; By bridge and ford, by park and pale, All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide, Until I find the holy Grail'. .... A gentle sound, an awful sight! Three angels bear the holy grail: With folded feet, in stoles of white, On sleeping wings they sail.' Endymion (1870, 76x106cm) _ 'Brain-sick shepherd prince, What promise hast thou faithful guarded since The day of sacrifice? or have new sorrows Come with the constant dawn upon thy morrows? Alas! 't is his old grief. For many days Has he been wandering in uncertain ways, Through wilderness and woods of mossed oaks' The Heavenly Stair (1888, 178x88cm) _ Little one who straight has come down the heavenly stair. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home. Wonderland (1912) The Annunciation (1858) The Nativity (1858) The Mower (1865) |
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Died on 27 January 1651: Abraham
Bloemaert, influential Dutch Mannerist painter and engraver
who born on 25 December 1564. The son of an architect, Bloemaert studied at Utrecht under eminent painters, spent three years in Paris, and then returned to settle finally at Utrecht, where he became dean of the Guild of St. Luke. He painted and etched historical and allegorical pictures, landscapes, still lifes, animal pictures, and flower pieces. His four sons - Hendrick, Frederick, Cornelis, and Adriaen - all achieved considerable reputations themselves as painters and engravers. Bloemaert's work was influenced by Caravaggio, and he in his turn was an influence on Jan Both, Aelbert Jacobszoon Cuyp, Gerrit van Honthorst, Hendrik Terbrugghen, and Jan Baptist Weenix. LINKS Landscape with the Ministry of John the Baptist (1600) Adoration of the Magi (1624, 420x290cm) _ The Catholic painter Abraham, resident in predominantly Catholic Utrecht, painted spectacular altarpieces in the style reminiscent of sixteenth-century Italian painting. He painted this altarpiece, one of his largest, for the church of the Catholic order of the Jesuits in Brussels, in the Southern Netherlands. Such commissions were extremely rare in the Dutch Republic. Bloemaert's jubilant colour and festive pageantry befitted the theme and answered the Jesuit's need for a lively backdrop to their main altar. <<< Adoration of Newborn Jesus by Shepherds and Angels (1612, 287x229cm) _ Bloemaert settled in Utrecht in 1593, and within a decade began to adopt the mild classicism that Goltzius had brought back from Italy. Utrecht was the leading Catholic centre in the northern Netherlands during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and even during the seventeenth century, when Catholicism was suppressed, it continued to keep something of its Catholic character. Bloemaert, a devout Catholic, received commissions for large altarpieces from patrons in both the northern and southern Netherlands, and many of his more than 600 prints were intended for a Catholic clientele. The Emmaus Disciples (1622, 145x215cm) _ Fortified by a religious tradition reaching back to the Middle Ages, a large Catholic community continued to exist at Utrecht inside the primarily Protestant Northern Low Countries of the 16th and 17th centuries. Although officially banned, the Catholic cult was tolerated there away from public view. Abraham Bloemaert, himself a devout Catholic, set up shop in Utrecht in 1593, remaining there till his death. For a short period the painter experimented with the possibilities offered by new artistic models from Italy, which he got to know indirectly via the material that his pupils Hendrick ter Brugghen, Gerrit van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen brought back from their study trips there. This group was influenced in particular by Caravaggio, in terms both of subject and style. Bloemaert combines the key features of this style in The Emmaus Disciples, a painting that forms a high point not only in his own career, but also in that of the school of the Utrecht Caravaggists in general, with the large, half length figures, the individualized figures with a strong sense of emotionality and in particular the use of chiaroscuro, with strong light-dark effects and sharp shadows, produced by introducing a source of minimum light, here two separate, smoking candles. This style was untypical for the Northern Provinces, where a tendency towards the intimate is so clearly visible in almost all other contemporary genres. The tableau presents the biblical scene in which Jesus - in a gesture that refers back to the Last Supper - breaks bread and in so doing confirms his resurrection from the dead to two of his disciples, who had not recognised him until then (Luke 24, 13-35). Two figures in the background represent the same two disciples, despairingly consulting with each other on the road to the village of Emmaus, before meeting the "stranger" who was to open their eyes for good. The visible emotional reactions which the revelation causes to the protagonists are seemingly totally lost on a fourth individual, a turbaned server. In terms of content and form this painting represents "a light shining in the darkness". |