|
|
|
BIRTH: 1841 RENOIR |
| ^ Died
on 25 February 1639: Roeland Jacobszoon Savery,
Flemish painter born in 1576. — Savery was a painter and etcher of landscapes, animal subjects, and still-life, the best-known member of a family of artists. He was born in Courtrai, grew up in Amsterdam, studied under Hans Bol, and in 1619 settled in Utrecht, but he is best known for his association with Prague, where he worked for the emperor Rudolf II from 1603 to 1613. Rudolf's famous menagerie allowed him to study in detail the exotic animals that became the trademark of his work. He painted and drew creatures such as pelicans, ostriches, camels, and the now extinct dodo, and was one of the first artists in the Netherlands to do pictures of animals alone. His favorite subjects, however, were Orpheus and the Garden of Eden, which allowed him to include any number of colourful beasts. Savery's bright and highly finished style is similar to that of Jan "Velvet" Bruegel, but is somewhat more archaic. His rare flower paintings are sometimes of outstanding quality, and with Bosschaert he was an influential Flemish exponent of this genre in Holland. Houbraken, the Dutch painter and author of a large biographical work, says that Savery died insane. — LINKS — Crab Fishermen (39x34cm) _ By the early 17th century, painting had begun to split into a variety of specialist fields. Roelandt Savery, who came from Kortrijk (Courtrai) but worked mostly abroad, was an interesting figure in this respect. Rudolph II of Prague commissioned him to paint landscapes after sketches and drawings made during a journey through Bohemia and the Tyrol. He was fond of picturesque locations and romantic forests and cliffs, like those in the Crab Fishermen. — The Garden of Eden (54x87cm) _ The fully-fledged animal painting emerged in the late 16th century with the rise of biological research and collections of rare creatures. Roelandt Savery in The Garden of Eden demonstrates a thorough knowledge of exotic animals such as the water-buffalo and the dromedary. The artist uses a narrative subject as a vehicle for painting his animals. — Landscape with Birds (1628, 42x57cm) _ Savery's painting, outmoded both in type and composition, adheres to the style of late Mannerism. Landscape as an imaginary combination of heterogeneous, natural and invented components, had by now been replaced by details of familiar surroundings, and animal images that seem to be taken straight from the pages of a zoological almanac had given way to portraits of domestic pets. Savery's painting calls for a close reading and an appreciative eye. His art lies in his scholarship and well-founded knowledge, reflecting the interest of the age in the natural sciences and exotic phenomena. The new Dutch painting, on the other hand, calls for a more sensually perceptive and contemplative approach. In its narrative, the landscape with birds is comparable to those Flemish floral still lifes which, for a period, presented botanic diversity in great detail. Savery's compositional form has its origins in the paradise portrayals of the 16th century, in which Adam and Eve are shown in harmony with the animal world around them. Picturesque ruins in the manner of Maerten van Heemskerck are also common features, soon to be adopted by the Italianate landscape painters. Savery's prolific drawings are spontaneous and precise, individual studies which he then transferred to his paintings. — Landscape with Animals (28x47cm) _ By the early 17th century, painting had begun to split into a variety of specialist fields. Roelandt Savery, who came from Kortrijk (Courtrai) but worked mostly abroad, was an interesting figure in this respect. Rudolph II of Prague commissioned him to paint landscapes after sketches and drawings made during a journey through Bohemia and the Tyrol. He was fond of picturesque locations and romantic forests and cliffs, like those in the Crab Fishermen. He took advantage of his time at court to study exotic animals in the zoological gardens. The influence of this period continued to make itself felt in his later work, too. Landscape with Animals, with its characteristic, paradisiacal atmosphere is a fine example. — Landscapes with Wild Beasts (1629, 35x49cm) _ Savery was a Flemish painter of landscapes, animals and flowers, trained in Amsterdam. He worked in Prague and Vienna in the sevice of Emperors Rudolf II and Mathias, but later settled in Utrecht. This painting shows Savery at his best. The subject reflects the great scientific interest in nature which was characteristic of the period. — Rocky Landscape 117x157cm) _ Roelandt Savery introduced landscape painting in Utrecht. — The Paradise (1618, 35x107cm) _ detail1 _ detail2 |
| ^
Born on 25 February 1841: Pierre
Auguste Renoir, French Impressionist
painter who died on 03 December 1919. —Auguste Renoir, pintor francés. — Son of a tailor and dressmaker, Renoir moved with his family from Limoges to Paris in 1844. He was apprenticed to a porcelain manufacturer from 1854 to 1858, where he painted rococo-style decorations. In 1862~63 he attended the École des Beaux-Arts in the studio of Charles Gleyre (1808=1874), where he met Sisley (1839-1899), Pissarro (1830-1903), Monet (1840-1926), and Fantin-Latour (1836-1904). Renoir first exhibited at the Salon in 1864 and began at about this time to work out-of-doors. Courbet (1819-1877), Corot (1796-1875), and Daubigny (1817-1878) were important early influences, although his progress toward a more vivid and sketchy style was encouraged by the work of Monet and Manet (1832-1883). He participated in the first impressionist exhibition of 1874 but subsequently in only the second, third, and seventh group shows. In 1881-82 Renoir traveled to Algeria and Italy, where his exposure to ancient and Renaissance art led him to introduce into his impressionism a new linear and sculptural direction. Afler years of financial struggle, a retrospective at DuMond-Ruel in 1892 signaled greater popular success. Although his health began to fail in the late nineties, Renoir continued to paint and even experiment with sculpture until his death. — Renoir was originally associated with the Impressionist movement. His early works were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling color and light. By the mid-1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women (e.g. , Bathers, 1887). In 1854 Renoir began work as a painter in a porcelain factory in Paris, gaining experience with the light, fresh colors that were to distinguish his Impressionist work and also learning the importance of good craftsmanship. His predilection towards light-hearted themes was also influenced by the great Rococco masters, whose works he studied in the Louvre. In 1862 he entered the studio of Gleyre and there formed a lasting friendship with Monet, Sisley, and Bazille. He painted with them in the Barbizon district and became a leading member of the group of Impressionists who met at the Café Guerbois. His relationship with Monet was particularly close at this time, and their paintings of the beauty spot called La Grenouillère done in 1869 (an example by Renoir is in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm) are regarded as the classic early statements of the Impressionist style. Like Monet, Renoir endured much hardship early in his career, but he began to achieve success as a portraitist in the late 1870s and was freed from financial worries after the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel began buying his work regularly in 1881. By this time Renoir had 'travelled as far as Impressionism could take me', and a visit to Italy in 1881-82 inspired him to seek a greater sense of solidarity in his work. The change in attitude is seen in The Umbrellas , which was evidently begun before the visit to Italy and finished afterwards; the two little girls on the right are painted with the feathery brush-strokes characteristic of his Impressionist manner, but the figures on the left are done in a crisper and drier style, with duller coloring. After a period of experimentation with what he called his `manière aigre' (harsh or sour manner) in the mid 1880s, he developed a softer and more supple kind of handling. At the same time he turned from contemporary themes to more timeless subjects, particularly nudes, but also pictures of young girls in unspecific settings. As Renoir's style became grander and simpler he also took up mythological subjects (The Judgement of Paris), and the female type he preferred became more mature and ample. In the 1890s Renoir began to suffer from rheumatism, and from 1903 (by which time he was world-famous) he lived in the warmth of the south of France. The rheumatism eventually crippled him (by 1912 he was confined to a wheelchair), but he continued to paint until the end of his life, and in his last years he also took up sculpture, directing assistants (usually Richard Guino, a pupil of Maillol) to act as his hands (Venus Victorious). Renoir is perhaps the best-loved of all the Impressionists, for his subjects — pretty children, flowers, beautiful scenes, above all lovely women---have instant appeal, and he communicated the joy he took in them with great directness. `Why shouldn't art be pretty?', he said, `There are enough unpleasant things in the world.' He was one of the great worshippers of the female form, and he said `I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it.' One of his sons was the celebrated film director Jean Renoir (1894-1979), who wrote a lively and touching biography (Renoir, My Father) in 1962. |
| — Renoir was a French impressionist painter noted for his radiant, intimate paintings, particularly of the female nude. Recognized by critics as one of the greatest and most independent painters of his period, Renoir is noted for the harmony of his lines, the brilliance of his color, and the intimate charm of his wide variety of subjects. Unlike other impressionists he was as much interested in painting the single human figure or family group portraits as he was in landscapes; unlike them, too, he did not subordinate composition and plasticity of form to attempts at rendering the effect of light. Renoir was born in Limoges. As a child he worked in a porcelain factory in Paris, painting designs on china; at 17 he copied paintings on fans, lamp shades, and blinds. He studied painting formally in 1862-63 at the academy of the Swiss painter Charles Gabriel Gleyre in Paris. Renoir's early work was influenced by two French artists, Claude Monet in his treatment of light and the romantic painter Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) in his treatment of color. Renoir first exhibited his paintings in Paris in 1864, but he did not gain recognition until 1874, at the first exhibition of painters of the new impressionist school. One of the most famous of all impressionist works is Renoir's Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette (1876), an open-air scene of a café, in which his mastery in figure painting and in representing light is evident. Outstanding examples of his talents as a portraitist are Madame Charpentier and Her Children, Georgette-Berthe and (at her knee) Paul-Émile-Charles (1878) and Jeanne Samary. Renoir fully established his reputation with a solo exhibition held at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris in 1883. In 1887 he completed a series of studies of a group of nude female figures known as Les Baigneuses. These reveal his extraordinary ability to depict the lustrous, pearly color and texture of skin and to impart lyrical feeling and plasticity to a subject; they are unsurpassed in the history of modern painting in their representation of feminine grace. Many of his later paintings also treat the same theme in an increasingly bold rhythmic style. During the last 20 years of his life Renoir was crippled by arthritis; unable to move his hands freely, he continued to paint, however, by using a brush strapped to his arm. |
| Other
notable paintings by Renoir include La
Loge (1874); Girl
with a Fan (Mlle. Alphonsina Fournez) (1875) and The
Swing (1875); The
Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881); and Vase
of Chrysanthemums (1895) – one of the many still lifes of
flowers and fruit he painted throughout his life. — Renoir was born in Limoges and brought up in Paris, where his father, a tailor with a large family, settled in 1845. From the age of thirteen he worked as an apprentice painter, painting flowers on porcelain plates. This early apprenticeship left a certain trace on his art, which was always decorative in spite of its later realism. After machines for coloring ceramics had been introduced, he had to switch to decorating fans and screens. Having saved some money, in 1862 Renoir entered the Atelier Gleyre and there made friends with Monet, Sisley and Bazille; some time later he met Pissarro and Cézanne. He first exhibited at the Salon in 1864; after that the jury rejected his works and only in 1867 accepted Lise, portrait of his model and lover Lise Trehot. In 1867, he and Monet lived at Bazille’s house. In 1868-1870, he shared a studio with Bazille (1841-1870) in Paris. The young artists sat for each other, i.e. Frederic Bazille at His Easel by Renoir and Portrait of Pierre-Auguste Renoir by Bazille. Renoir spent the summer of 1869 with Monet at Bougival on the Seine; together they worked out the main principles of the Impressionist method. It was most strongly manifested in the plein-air studies of La Grenouillère (1869). See and compare La Grenouillere by Monet and La Grenouillere by Renoir, the painters worked side by side. It was in the 1870s, that Renoir’s Impressionism style reached its peak. He worked at Argenteuil and in Paris. He participated in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1874, 1876, 1877 and 1882 and was a founding member of the review L’Impressionniste (1877), where he published his article on the principles of contemporary art. The Swing and the great composition of Le Moulin de la Galette, one of the finest, most smiling of his masterpieces, the models for which were his friends, mostly artists, and Montmartre girls. It is like a marvelous tissue of interwoven sunlight and soft hazy blue. Renoir achieved recognition earlier than his friends. In 1879-80, he sent several portraits to the official Salon, among them Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary and Portrait of Mme Charpentier and Her Children. The artist found himself at a critical point. In 1880, he met Aline Charigot, a common woman, whom he would marry in 1890, they had 3 sons: Pierre (1885-), Jean (1894 - ), who would become an important film director, and Claude (1901- ), called “Coco”. The same year, 1880, Renoir broke his right arm and for some time painted with his left hand. In 1881, he traveled to Algeria, later to Italy, where he was impressed by Raphael and the Pompeii frescoes. The Luncheon of the Boating Party is certainly one of Renoir’s finest canvases. In the 1880s, he abandoned Impressionism for what is often called the “dry style”. He began a search for solid form and stable composition, a search, which led him back to the masters of the Renaissance. He worked more carefully and meticulously, his colors became cooler and smoother. He later returned to hot rich colors and free brushwork of his earlier days to portray nudes in sunlight, a style, which he continued to develop to the end of his life: The Bathers (1887). In 1886, the art dealer Durand-Ruel exhibited 32 of Renoir's paintings in New York, thus opening the American market for Impressionism. The evidence of Renoir’s (and other Impressionists’) success in the USA is a great number of their pictures in American museums. In December 1888, Renoir suffered the first attacks of arthritis, which would cripple his hands; in 1898 after a serious attack of the disease his right arm was paralyzed. From now on he painted, overcoming strong pains, strapping a brush to his wrist. In 1919, not long before his death, he finished, in great pain, his large-scale composition The Great Bathers (The Nymphs). Renoir died in Cagnes. — Renoir and Monet worked closely together during the late 1860s, painting similar scenes of popular river resorts and views of a bustling Paris. Renoir was by nature more solid than Monet, and while Monet fixed his attentions on the ever-changing patterns of nature, Renoir was particularly entranced by people and often painted friends and lovers. His early work has a quivering brightness that is gloriously satisfying and fully responsive to what he is painting, as well as to the effects of the light. Renoir seems to have had the enviable ability to see anything as potentially of interest. More than any of the Impressionists, he found beauty and charm in the modern sights of Paris. He does not go deep into the substance of what he sees but seizes upon its appearance, grasping its generalities, which then enables the spectator to respond with immediate pleasure. "Pleasure" may be decried by the puritanical instinct within us all, but it is surely the necessary enhancer that life needs. It also signifies a change from Realism: the Impressionists' paintings have none of the labored toll of Millet's peasants, for example. Instead they depict delightful, intimate scenes of the French middle class at leisure in the country or at cafes and concerts in Paris. Renoir always took a simple pleasure in whatever met his good-humored attention, but he refused to let what he saw dominate what he wanted to paint. Again he deliberately sets out to give the impression, the sensation of something, its generalities, its glancing life. Maybe, ideally, everything is worthy of attentive scrutiny, but in practice there is no time. We remember only what takes our immediate notice as we move along. In The Boating Party Lunch, a group of Renoir's friends are enjoying that supreme delight of the working man and woman, a day out. Renoir shows us interrelationships: notice the young man intent upon the girl at the right chatting, while the girl at the left is occupied with her puppy. But notice too the loneliness, however relaxed, that can be part of anyone's experience at a lunch party. The man behind the girl and her dog is lost in a world of his own, yet we cannot but believe that his reverie is a happy one. The delightful debris of the meal, the charm of the young people, the hazy brightness of the world outside the awning - all communicates an earthly vision of paradise. One of Renoir's early portraits, A Girl with a Watering Can, has all the tender charm of its subject, delicately unemphasized, not sentimentalized, but clearly relished. Renoir stoops down to the child's height so that we look at her world from her own altitude. This, he hints, is the world that the little one sees — not the actual garden that adults see today, but the nostalgic garden that they remember from their childhood. The child is sweetly aware of her central importance. Solid little girl though she is, she presents herself with the fragile charm of the flowers. Her sturdy little feet in their sensible boots are somehow planted in the garden, and the lace of her dress has a floral rightness; she also is decorative. With the greatest skill, Renoir shows the child, not amid the actual flowers and lawns, but on the path. It leads away, out of the picture, into the unknown future when she will longer be part of the garden but an onlooker, an adult, who will enjoy only her memories of the present now depicted. — Son of a tailor and dressmaker, Renoir moved with his family from Limoges to Paris in 1844. He was apprenticed to a porcelain manufacturer from 1854 to 1858, where he painted rococo-style decorations. In 1862 63 he attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the studio of Charles Gleyre, where he met Sisley, Pissarro, Monet, and Fantin-Latour. Renoir first exhibited at the Salon in 1864 and began at about this time to work out-of-doors. Courbet, Corot, and Daubigny were important early influences, although his progress toward a more vivid and sketchy style was encouraged by the work of Monet and Manet. He participated in the first impressionist exhibition of 1874 but subsequently in only thesecond, third, and seventh group shows. In 1881-82 Renoir traveled to Algeria and Italy, where his exposure to ancient and Renaissance art led him to introduce into his impressionism a new linear and sculptural direction. Afler years of financial struggle, a retrospective at DuMnd-Ruel in 1892 signaled greater popular success. Although his health began to fail in the late nineties, Renoir continued to paint and even experiment with sculpture until his death. — LINKS — Madame Clémentine Valensi Stora (L'Algérienne) (1870) — Mother, Child, and Cat (1895, 117x104cm) — Landscape at Beaulieu (1893, 65x81cm) — L'Enfant au Biscuit (Jean Renoir, son of the artist, future film director) (1899, 62x48cm) — Bazille Working (at his easel) — Claude Monet (reading book, holding pipe) — Claude Monet Reading the Paper — Les Parapluies (1882 and 1886) —La famille de l'artiste — In the meadow — Feeding — Young Boy with a Cat — A Morning Ride in the Bois de Boulogne — La Loge — La Parisienne — La première sortie — Nini dans le Jardin — La Petite Fille à l'Arrosoir — La Balançoire — Le Moulin de la Galette — Young Women Talking — Madame Charpentier and Her Children Paul (at her knee) and Georgette — Jugglers at the Cirque Fernando — The Laundress (1880) — Sur la Terrace — Les Parapluies — Jeunes filles au piano — La famille de l'artiste (1896) — La promenade — Young Girl Seated — Déjeuner des canotiers — Les Baigneuses — Monet au Jardin à Argenteuil — Portrait de Monet — Portrait de Bazille — Richard Wagner (1900) — William Sisley (1864) — Young Man Walking with Dogs in Fontainebleau Forest. (1866) — Woman in a Boat. (1867) — Le Pont des Arts, Paris (1867) — A Morning Ride in the Bois de Boulogne (1873). — Madame Monet with Her Son. — |
|
|
| ^ Died
on 25 February 1970: Marcus Rothkowits “Mark Rothko”,
US abstract expressionist painter, born in Russia on 25 September 1903.
— Mark Rothko, pintor estadounidense. — Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz in Dvinsk, Russia (today Daugavpils, Latvia), the fourth child of Jacob Rothkowitz, a pharmacist (b. 1859), and Anna Goldin Rothkowitz (b. 1870), who had married in 1886. Rothko and his family immigrated to the United States when he was ten years old, and settled in Portland, Oregon. Rothko attended Yale University in 1921, where he studied English, French, European history, elementary mathematics, physics, biology, and economics, the history of philosophy, and general psychology. His initial intention was to become an engineer or an attorney. Rothko gave up his studies in the fall of 1923 and moved to New York City. In the 1920s Rothko attended classes at the Art Students League, briefly studying under Max Weber, who encouraged him to work in a style reminiscent of Cézanne. During the 1940s Rothko's imagery became increasingly symbolic. In the social climate of anxiety that dominated the late 1930s and the years of World War II, images from everyday life--however unnaturalistic--began to appear somewhat outmoded. If art were to express the tragedy of the human condition, Rothko felt, new subjects and a new idiom had to be found. He said, "It was with the utmost reluctance that I found the figure could not serve my purposes....But a time came when none of us could use the figure without mutilating it." One of the preeminent artists of his generation, Mark Rothko is closely identified with the New York School, a circle of painters that emerged during the 1940s as a new collective voice in American art. During a career that spanned five decades, he created a new and impassioned form of abstract painting. Rothko's work is characterized by rigorous attention to formal elements such as color, shape, balance, depth, composition, and scale; yet, he refused to consider his paintings solely in these terms. He explained: It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. By 1949 Rothko had introduced a compositional format that he would continue to develop throughout his career. Comprised of several vertically aligned rectangular forms set within a colored field, Rothko's "image" lent itself to a remarkable diversity of appearances. In these works, large scale, open structure and thin layers of color combine to convey the impression of a shallow pictorial space. Color, for which Rothko's work is perhaps most celebrated, here attains an unprecedented luminosity. His classic paintings of the 1950s are characterized by expanding dimensions and an increasingly simplified use of form, brilliant hues, and broad, thin washes of color. In his large floating rectangles of color, which seem to engulf the spectator, he explored with a rare mastery of nuance the expressive potential of color contrasts and modulations. Alternately radiant and dark, Rothko's art is distinguished by a rare degree of sustained concentration on pure pictorial properties such as color, surface, proportion, and scale, accompanied by the conviction that those elements could disclose the presence of a high philosophical truth. Visual elements such as luminosity, darkness, broad space, and the contrast of colors have been linked, by the artist himself as well as other commentators, to profound themes such as tragedy, ecstasy, and the sublime. Rothko, however, generally avoided explaining the content of his work, believing that the abstract image could directly represent the fundamental nature of "human drama." — LINKS — Vessels of Magic (1946) — Number 10 (1950) — Ochre and Red on Red (1954) — Centre Triptych for the Rothko Chapel (1966) |
site safe for children 
Pierre-Auguste
Renoir