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Born on 30 November 1642: padre Andrea
Pozzo (or Puteus), Italian artist who died on 31 August 1709.
— Andrea Pozzo was an extraordinarily versatile artist, an architect, decorator, painter, art theoretician, one of the most significant figures of Baroque Gesamtkunst. He entered the Jesuit order at an early age, and his artistic activity is also related to the order's enormous artistic enterprises. His masterpiece, the decoration of Rome's Jesuit churches Il Gesu and San Ignazio, determined for several generations the style of internal decoration of Late Baroque churches in almost all Europe. His fresco in San Ignazio, with its perspective, space~enlarging illusory architecture and with the apparition of the heavenly assembly whirling above, offered an example which was copied in several Italian, Austrian and German churches of the Jesuit order. Pozzo even published his artistic ideas in a noted theoretical work entitled Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum (1693) illustrated with engravings. On the invitation of Emperor Leopold I, in 1704 be moved to Vienna, where he worked for the sovereign, the court, Prince Johann Adam von Liechtenstein, various religious orders and churches. Some of his tasks were of a decorative, occasional character (church and theatre scenery), and these were soon destroyed. His most significant surviving work in Vienna is the monumental ceiling fresco of Liechtenstein Palace, The Triumph of Hercules, which, according to the sources, was very admired by contemporaries. Some of his Viennese altarpieces have also survived. His compositions of altarpieces and illusory ceiling frescoes had many followers in Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and even in Poland. — LINKS — The Apotheose of S. Ignazio (1689, fresco) _ detail: The Continents 1 _ detail: The Continents 2 — Saint Francis Xavier (1701, 235x137cm) |
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on 30 November 1543: Francesco Granacci, Florentine
painter born on a 23 July 1477 or perhaps 1469. — Granacci was of the generation immediately preceding Michelangelo whose friend he was from early youth. Like Michelangelo, Granacci was a pupil of Domenico Ghirlandaio, whose assistant later he became. Granacci was one of the assistants engaged by Michelangelo in 1508 for the beginning of the Sistine ceiling but, like the others, was dismissed after about one month. On his return to Florence Granacci fell under the influence of Fra Bartolomeo, and his later works have elongated figures in an attempt at monumentality. The Dublin Holy Family, which is usually attributed to him, has also been attributed to Michelangelo and shows the approximation of their styles. Basically, however, Granacci was a quattrocento artist and is thus very similar to such transitional painters as Ridolfo Ghirlandaio and Franciabigio. — LINKS — Madonna and Child (85x64cm) — Entry of Charles VIII into Florence (1518} — A pupil of Ghirlandaio, Granacci seems precociously to have assimilated ideas from the activity of Michelangelo - who was his friend - although he later fell back more modestly on the monumental breadth of figures in the style of Fra Bartolommeo. His finest achievements can be seen in works like this, with a narrative content, full of highly individual stylized touches inspired by Pontormo. |
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Born on 30 November 1904: Clyfford
Still, US Abstract Expressionist painter, who died on 23 June
1980 — [When he said to his model “Be Still!”, did she
take it as a marriage proposal?] — Clyfford Still was born [but not stillborn] in Grandin, North Dakota. He attended Spokane University in Washington for a year in 1926 and again from 1931 to 1933. After graduation, he taught at Washington State College in Pullman until 1941. Still spent the summers of 1934 and 1935 at the Trask Foundation (now Yaddo) in Saratoga Springs, New York. From 1941 to 1943, he worked in defense factories in California. In 1943, his first solo show took place at the San Francisco Museum of Art, and he met Mark Rothko in Berkeley at this time. The same year, Still moved to Richmond, where he taught at the Richmond Professional Institute. When Still was in New York in 1945, Rothko introduced him to Peggy Guggenheim, who gave him a solo exhibition at her Art of This Century gallery in early 1946. Later that year, the artist returned to San Francisco, where he taught for the next four years at the California School of Fine Arts. Solo exhibitions of his work were held at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, in 1947, 1950, and 1951 and at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, in 1947. In New York in 1948, Still worked with Rothko and others on developing the concept of the school that became known as the Subjects of the Artist. He resettled in San Francisco for two years before returning again to New York. A Still retrospective took place at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, in 1959. In 1961, he settled on his farm near Westminster, Maryland. Solo exhibitions of Still’s paintings were presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1963 and at the Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York, in 1969–70. He received the Award of Merit for Painting in 1972 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, of which he became a member in 1978, and the Skowhegan Medal for Painting in 1975. Also in 1975, a permanent installation of a group of his works opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gave him an exhibition in 1980. Still died in Baltimore [and he is still dead]. — LINKS — [blotches] (1947) — [more blotches] (1949) — [still more blotches] (1948, 179x158cm) _ By 1947, Clyfford Still had begun working in the format that he would intensify and refine throughout the rest of his career—a large-scale color field crudely applied with palette knives. Still liberated color from illusionary design by allowing large, uninterrupted tonal areas to interlock on a flat plane. He dispensed with typically “beautiful” colors in favor of more disquieting hues to create unsettling impressions. In 1948, visceral smears of brown, mustard, and dark crimson impasto seem to spread beyond the canvas. The painting’s soaring scale and the energy of the roughly painted crags suggest the boundlessness the artist revered. The patches of earth tones in many canvases, including 1948, have been interpreted as organic shapes: parched riverbeds, frozen wastelands, swamps, and even flayed skin. Wishing to avoid the possibility of such associations, Still left his paintings untitled, or identified them simply by the year of their creation. Evocative titles, in the artist’s opinion, might influence the viewer’s experience as they contemplate the palpable tension and sense of the infinite that can be found within the canvas [blah..blah..blah]. Still espoused what he regarded as particularly American ideals such as absolute freedom and individuality, which were manifested in his works as well as in his artistic career. Although he was given solo exhibitions at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery in 1946 and Betty Parson’s Gallery in 1947, he disdained the commercial aspects of the art world and became increasingly aloof from the burgeoning New York School, to the point of refusing to exhibit for a period between 1952 and 1958. Although the artist scorned categorization, his expansive canvases dominated by jagged fields of color were influential among the Abstract Expressionist artists he was grouped with, in particular Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, who shared his interest in the metaphysical sublime. These artists believed that a painting could convey meaning without reference to anything outside of its inherent formal and material qualities. Rather than capture a realistic representation of the world in his abstract paintings, Still sought to create a transcendental experience that was purely visual and impossible to describe with words [at least not with words that can be repeated in polite society] [similar drivel is written about paintings by chimps and elephants]. |
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Born on 30 November 1636: Adriaen
van de Velde, Dutch painter who died on 21 January 1672. — He was the son of Willem van de Velde the Elder (1611-93) and brother of Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633-1707), and was a prolific painter of sunny, atmospheric landscapes and beach scenes. His landscape etchings of rural scenes were particularly sensitive, but he also excelled in animal painting and often executed the animal figures in the paintings of other prominent contemporary artists. — LINKS — Portrait of a Couple with Two Children and a Nursemaid in a Landscape (1667) — The Hut (1671) — Amusement on the Ice (1669, 33x40cm) _ The varied oeuvre of Adriaen van de Velde includes winter scenes, portraits in landscape settings, and amongst his most original pictures are his rare beach scenes. He was frequently called upon to animate his contemporaries' pictures with his exquisite figures. His staffage appears in paintings by Jacob van Ruisdael, Hobbema, Allaert van Everdingen, Philips Koninck, van der Heyden and Wynants. — The Beach at Scheveningen (1658} — Amongst Adriaen's van der Velde most original pictures are his rare beach scenes, which capture the lucidity of the moist sea air and have a freshness and rarely matched plein-air effect. An outstanding example of the last named is The Beach at Scheveningen. — The Farm (1666) — Adriaen van de Velde, who was more versatile than Philips Wouwerman, also painted small landscapes in which animals and figures play an important role. Bode rightly wrote of the 'Sunday atmosphere' (Sonntagsstimmung) of his pictures of the Dutch countryside, and of the precious holiday peace that spreads over his meadows, seen in the bright sparkle of sunny days softened by the haze of the nearby sea. Adriaen was the younger brother of the well known marine painter Willem van de Velde the Younger; they probably were pupils of their father, the marine painter Willem van de Velde the Elder. Adriaen also is said to have studied with Wijnants at Haarlem, but the influence of Wouwerman and Potter is more evident in his early works. Houbraken reports that 'He zealously drew and painted cows, bulls, sheep and landscapes' and adds 'he daily carried his equipment out to the countryside - a practice he continued until the end of his life.' Although many of Adriaen's drawings survive, only a handful made on his excursions to the countryside have been identified; the finest, now at the Amsterdam Historical Museum, served as the basis for his magnificent Farm at Berlin. Adriaen also made numerous drawings of clothed and nude models in his studio; many have been identified as preparatory studies for figures in his landscapes and subject pictures. |
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Died on 30 November 1647: Giovanni
Lanfranco (or Lanfranchi) di Stefano, Italian Baroque
painter born on 26 January 1582. — He was born near Parma, where he was a pupil of Agostino Carracci, and was also much influenced by the domes by Correggio. He was in Rome in 1612, and about 1616 decorated the ceiling of the Casino Borghese in a manner derived entirely from the Farnese Gallery. He developed Correggio's sotto in sù type of illusionism to an extravagant point, and painted several domes and apses in Roman and Neapolitan churches in this manner. To him Domenichino lost part of the commission for the decoration of S. Andrea della Valle in Rome, a slight he resented so bitterly that - so the story goes - he weakened part of the scaffolding, hoping that Lanfranco would break his neck. Lanfranco completed the dome with an Assumption, Correggiesque in inspiration, between 1625-27, and such was its success that he was then employed at St Peter's until 1631. From 1633/34 to 1646 he was in Naples, and in 1641-43 painted the dome of the S. Gennaro chapel in the Cathedral, which by its more up-to-date illusionism and greater showiness appealed far more to local tastes than Domenichino's works there. His dome is based on Correggio's type of illusionism and replaces one actually begun by Domenichino. He died in Rome, where his last work was the apse of S. Carlo ai Catinari. — LINKS — Hagar in the Wilderness (138x159cm) _ Sarah, Abraham's childless wife, brought her Egyptian maid Hagar to him so that he would produce an heir with her. However, when she herself bore Isaac, she demanded of her husband: "Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac." (Genesis 21:10) Hagar and Ismael wandered in the wilderness, dying of thirst. Yet God heard the lamentations of the mother and sent her an angel who showed her the way to a spring and prophesied that her son would be the founder of a great nation. In the painting, Hagar, who has been crying, is just lifting her head to look up at the angel in astonishment; her child, half hidden behind her shoulder, is also looking up incredulously at the kindly angel who has taken Hagar by the arm and is showing her the way to the water. It is the handling of colour, in particular, that highlights the unexpected aspect of the occurrence so clearly: against the gloomy brown of the wasteland, the sumptuous red and midnight-blue of Hagar's robes radiate like a lamentation of pathos. Her pale, exhausted face is turned towards the shining figure of the angel that seems to have brought light with it. Light bathes the figure, and radiates from the angel towards Hagar, rising in a pale cloud behind the angel and inflaming the orange of his hair and robe. — Miracle of the Bread and Fish (1623, 229x426cm} — Lanfranco studied at Agostino Carracci in Parma and worked in Rome and Naples. His main rival was Domenichino. |
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on 30 November 1825: William Adolphe Bouguereau,
French painter who died on 19 August 1905.. — Bouguereau had a long, successful career as an academic painter, exhibiting in the annual Paris Salons for more than 50 years. His paintings of religious, mythological, and genre subjects were carefully composed and painstakingly finished. Thus he opposed the admission of works by the impressionists to the Salon, because he believed that their paintings were no more than unfinished sketches. After a period of neglect following his death, Bouguereau's paintings were returned to view as part of a renewed interest in and reappraisal of academic painting and of École des Beaux-Arts works in general. From 1838 to 1841 Bouguereau took drawing lessons from Louis Sage, a pupil of Ingres, while attending the collège at Pons. In 1841 the family moved to Bordeaux where in 1842 his father allowed him to attend the École Municipale de Dessin et de Peinture part-time, under Jean-Paul Alaux. In 1844 he won the first prize for figure painting, which confirmed his desire to become a painter. As there were insufficient family funds to send him straight to Paris he painted portraits of the local gentry from 1845 to 1846 to earn money. In 1846 Bouguereau enrolled at the École Des Beaux-arts, Paris, in the studio of François-Edouard Picot. This was the beginning of the standard academic training of which he became so ardent a defender later in life. Such early works as Equality (1848) reveal the technical proficiency he had attained even while still training. In 1850 he was awarded one of the two Premier Grand Prix de Rome for Zenobia Discovered by Shepherds on the Bank of the River Araxes (1850). In December 1850 Bouguereau left for Rome where he remained at the Villa Medici until 1854, working under Victor Schnetz and Jean Alaux (1786–1864). During this period he made an extensive study of Giotto’s work at Assisi and Padua and was also impressed by the works of other Renaissance masters and by Classical art. On Bouguereau's return to France he exhibited the Triumph of the Martyr (1853) at the Salon of 1854. It depicted St. Cecilia’s body being carried to the catacombs, and its high finish, restrained color and classical poses were to be constant features of his painting thereafter. All his works were executed in several stages involving an initial oil sketch followed by numerous pencil drawings taken from life. Though Bouguereau generally restricted himself to classical, religious and genre subjects, he was commissioned by the state to paint Napoleon III Visiting the Flood Victims of Tarascon in 1856, so applying his style to a contemporary historical scene. In 1859 he provided some of the decorations for the chapel of St. Louis at Ste. Clothilde church, Paris (in situ), where he worked under the supervision of Picot. The austere style of the scenes from the life of St. Louis reflect Bouguereau’s knowledge of early Italian Renaissance art. Among Bouguereau’s Salon entries of the 1860s was Destitute Family (Charity) (1865), which conformed to a declining though still prevalent fashion for moving contemporary subjects. It depicts a mother surrounded by her children, seated by the Madeleine church in Paris. Though the mournful mother and wretched children were intended to play upon the emotions of the public, the classically inspired architectural backdrop and carefully arranged poses tend to idealize and ennoble the subject so as to avoid offense by too honest a form of realism. In 1867 Bouguereau executed the ceiling decorations for the chapels of Sts. Pierre~et~Paul and St. Jean~Baptiste at St. Augustin church in Paris (in situ), where he was required to follow the rigid instructions of the commissioning body. In 1869 he painted decorations and the ceiling of the Salle des Concerts at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux (in situ). Bouguereau remained in Paris during the 1870~71 siege in the Franco-Prussian War and in 1875 he began teaching at the Académie Julian in Paris. The sober, even melancholy, nature of several works of the 1860s gave way to lighter, playful paintings in the 1870s. Most notable of these is Nymphs and Satyr (1873), which depicts nymphs playing around a satyr in a woodland setting. Employing an elegant, dynamic composition, the work was much praised by critics as well as being favored by Bouguereau himself. A similar spirit pervades Donkey Ride (1878), which was based upon the traditional festival that accompanies the harvest. Bouguereau was always eager to include children in his works and he here altered the figure playing Bacchus from the traditional young man to a small child. This prevalent use and idealization of children is often responsible for the sentimentality in many of his works. In 1881 Bouguereau was commissioned to provide decorations for the Chapelle de la Vierge of the St. Vincent~de~Paul church in Paris (in situ). He executed eight large paintings depicting traditional scenes from the life of Christ, the last of which was finished in 1889. In 1884 he completed the huge painting of The Education of Bacchus (1884) showing the young god amidst a wild, dancing crowd at the coming of summer. As it was highly priced by Bouguereau, the work remained in his studio until his death. Many of the figures in the painting were inspired by those in contemporary and antique sculpture, an influence that was noticeable in other works also. In 1888 he was appointed a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He continued painting and exhibiting until his death and among his later canvases is the characteristic work Admiration (1897), which shows how little his style had changed throughout his life. In addition to his better-known figure works, Bouguereau was also admired for his portraits, one of the most striking being Aristide Boucicart (1875), a stern three~quarter~length portrait of the founder of the famous Bon Marché store in Paris. Although his work was widely collected by the English and more especially by the Americans in his lifetime, Bouguereau’s reputation in France was more equivocal — indeed quite low — in his later years. While popular with the public and various critics, his work ignored the increasing demand for paintings of modern life which had been made by Charles Baudelaire and was to be fulfilled by the Impressionists. Bouguereau remained a staunch supporter of the academic training system at a time when it was criticized for stifling originality and nurturing mediocrity. With the advent of modernism he was scorned as one of the most prominent representatives of everything the new movement opposed: high technical finish, narrative content, sentimentality and a reliance on tradition. This hostility was further heightened by the perceived association of academic painting with the bourgeois values that had resulted in world war. However, recent more objective assessments have reinstated Bouguereau as an important 19th~century painter. — LINKS — The Broken Pitcher (1891) [scrollable image, zoomable to near life~size] — Self Portrait (1879) — Love's Resistance (1885) — Dance (1856) — Fraternal Love — Mother — Nymphs — Birth of Venus — Rest — Seated Nude — Standing Angel — Bathers — Bohémienne |
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