HILDEGARDE IN ART

Hildegarde Lasell

HILDEGARDE IN ART

By Joan K yanni

A recently-acquired painting of a young teen-aged girl now welcomes visitors to the 19^th century European gallery. The painting is by Ralph Peacock (1865-1946), a British artist who specialized in children’s portraits. The girl is Hildegarde Lasell (2005.16) who was a luminous 14-year-old when the portrait was painted on a visit to Europe with her parents.

The striking painting was donated to the Gallery in 2005 by Dr. and Mrs. Michael L. Watson. The Watsons have been staunch friends and patrons of the Memorial Art Gallery since Emily Sibley Watson founded the Gallery in memory of a son, James Averell, who died of cholera at the age of 26. A son of Mrs. Watson’s second marriage, James Sibley Watson, Jr. and Hildegarde were married in 1916. Watson, Jr. would become well known in the Rochester art community and in the art world at large for his literary and film endeavors. After the marriage, Hildegarde also became a dynamic force in the community. An actress, singer, writer, and historic preservationist, she counted e e cummings and Marianne Moore among her friends.

MAG has two other portraits of Hildegarde: a photograph by Man Ray and a portrait statuette by Gaston Lachaise. The statuette, Hildegarde Lasell Watson (67.11), is probably most familiar to docents, since it has been recently on view in the sculpture pavilion. The unusual sculpture, about 15½ inches tall, is the figure of a woman in a bouffant gown with a tight-fitting bodice and a long, full skirt. The right leg steps forward confidently; the left is hidden in the billowing skirt. Awareness, intelligence and refinement are depicted in the figure. It has been cast in bronze, with the bodice and skirt nickel-plated, a startling and original composition. Lachaise also executed a larger version of the figure in clay or plaster, as surviving photographs show.

Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935) was born in Paris, the son of a cabinetmaker. He attended the Ếcole des Beaux Arts, worked with Rene Lalique, and exhibited regularly at the Salon. Soon he rebelled against the academic tradition and joined the avant garde circle active at the turn of the century. In 1906 emigrated to the United States, which he described as “the most favorable place to develop as a creative artist”. Though he worked as a traditional apprentice for artist such as Paul Manship, the works he produced in his free time were unorthodox. Critics liked his work, but it never found favor with the public, and financial difficulties tormented his career. The patronage of several local families—the Watsons, the Iselins and Charlotte Whitney Allen--helped him survive, since he was never able to keep track of money. He seemed fixated on sculpting the ideal Standing Woman--a powerful presence exuding sex and mystery. She stands in a classic stance, large and voluptuous, but standing lightly on her toes. The face is often that of his beloved wife Isabel.

Hildegarde Lasell Watson

Lachaise probably met Watson through Harvard University connections, since Lachaise’s stepson Edward, e e Cummings and Watson were at Harvard together. The relationship continued when Watson and his friend Schofield Thayer, who were Ex-Harvard Monthly editors with money and the desire to educate the American public about the arts, purchased a 75 percent share of a monthly magazine called The Dial in order to re-create it as a vehicle for publishing the best writing and art of their time.

With Watson and Thayer at its helm the magazine was committed to reviewing significant books, theatre, and music, and reproducing some new works of art. The first printing of  T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” was included, as well as writings of Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, Vachel Lindsay, Hart Crane, e e cummings and Marianne Moore. They were joined by critics such as W. B Yates, D. H. Lawrence, John Dos Passos and George Santayana. Reproductions of art works by Cézanne, Demuth, Stuart Davis, William Gropper, Gauguin, O’Keeffe, Picasso and Lachaise made the publication unique. Lachaise enjoyed 23 full-page articles as well as four full-size essays. His full-length figure of Hildegarde was published in it, as was his bronze head of James Sibley Watson, Jr. (90.3), both in the MAG collection. Under Watson and Thayer The Dial operated for nine and one-half years, through the July, 1929 issue.

Though it is a fascinating work, Man Ray’s Hildegarde Watson (82.46) is not as familiar to docents as is Lachaise’s bronze figure. Because it is a photograph and subject to fading, the work cannot be on view for long periods of time. Ray’s photograph presents a portrait from the late 1920’s: a fashionably dressed woman wearing long beads and a large hat sits looking out of the picture, her left arm leaning on a table and her chin resting on her right hand. A second look will tell the viewer that the hand is that of a mannequin and that the Surrealist photographer must be Man Ray.

Man Ray (1890-1976), was born in this country but moved to Paris in 1921. He became the most influential American associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. A painter by training, he became friends with such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and Andre Breton, working in Paris in the 1920’s. In 1921 photography was his means of making a living: it was a solution for a frustrated painter who couldn’t sell his work. “I would have a gangster if I’d had the physique and the courage,” he said in an interview in the New York Times.  In 1930 he wrote a pamphlet stating, “Photography is not art”, adding that “what I can’t paint I photograph.”

Regardless of his attitude toward photography, his creativity came through his photographs. In typical Surrealist fashion, the inclusion of the mannequin arm in what is otherwise a straightforward society portrait of Hildegarde is mean to disturb and disorient the viewer—one of the aims of the Surrealist artists. It should be no surprise that Hildegarde Watson would be photographed by the man Jean Cocteau called “the poet of the dark room.”

Sibley (as Watson Jr. was known) and Hildegarde had two children, Michael and Jeanne. The family still continues their generous patronage of MAG.

^{Source: Curatorial file}

FRUIT, FLOWERS AND INSECTS; RACHEL RUYSCH

Floral Still Life

FRUIT, FLOWERS AND INSECTS:

RACHEL RUYSCH

By Joan K Yanni

Rachel Ruysch, the painter of Floral Still Life (82.9), was the best flower painter of her day and probably the greatest female painter before the second half of the 18^th century.  MAG’s painting, done in 1686, is one of the artist’s earliest known paintings.

Ruysch was born in Amsterdam in 1664 to highly distinguished parents.  Her mother, Maria Post, was the daughter of Pieter Post, a renowned architect, and her father, Anthony Frederick Ruysch, was a professor of anatomy and botany as well as an amateur painter. Her father collected scientific specimens--shells, fossils, insects, skeletons, minerals and rare plants. Rachel helped him with the dissections and mounting necessary for his collection and often painted backgrounds for his displays.

Rachel’s talent was discovered early, and when she was fifteen, she was apprenticed to Willem van Aelst, a versatile still life artist who specialized in fruit and flower paintings. This arrangement in itself was unusual. At this time it was not the custom for a woman, let alone a young girl, to be apprenticed to a male painter unless he was a relative. Luckily Rachel’s parents’ enlightened attitude helped get her the best possible training. As would be expected, her early work shows the influence of van Aelst.

Ruysch’s first dated works are from 1682, when she was only 18. One is a study of insects and a thistle plant in a landscape; the other is a painting of flowers, apples and quinces hanging together in a bunch.  She began to use contrasting scenes of dark woodlands and brilliant flowers in her works almost from the start. A work from 1685, Still Life with Flowers and Insects in a Landscape, uses a shady landscape setting as background for an impressive collection of flowers, vegetation, rocks and reptiles, all perfectly detailed.

This practice of combining dark and light shows her knowledge of and appreciation for the work of Otto Marseus van Schriek, a painter of the time whose specialty was a blend of dark settings contrasted with exotic flora and fauna.  Flower painting had fallen out of favor after the collapse of Holland’s tulip market in the 1630s; van Schriek’s nature paintings were a way of reintroducing pictures of flowers--but not tulips. Ruysch sometimes used elements of van Schriek’s paintings, rearranged and put into her own settings. Our Floral Still Life is one of about a dozen still lifes in nature painted early in her career. Technically, these are not flower paintings, but woodland still lifes.                                                                                    

Most of her early works differ drastically from the conventional flower painting of flowers in a vase in the center of a composition. She has avoided the vase and instead places plants in a dark, outdoor setting inhabited by insects, reptiles, and amphibians. The setting in Floral Still Life is entirely artificial, though details are realistically presented. The

                       

Spot lighted roses, lilies, iris, morning glories, opium poppies and mushrooms, for example, are painted with the same precision lavished on the trunk of the old tree from which they appear to grow. Although some of the plants pictured grow in or near water, the blooms are not indigenous to this environment. There are no tulips in the composition.

In 1693 Rachel married Juriaen Pool, a portrait painter.  The two had ten children, and it is remarkable that, despite her domestic responsibilities, she continued to paint. She and her husband entered the Hague Painters’ Guild together in 1701.  During her years in the Guild, Ruysch honed her skills and developed a style of her own, showing her technical virtuosity.  She highlighted vivid flowers in a natural setting, emphasizing the contrast between the grotesque and the beautiful in nature. When she used vases, they contained blossoms from every growing season as well as exotic flowers she must have seen only in Amsterdam’s botanical gardens where her father was supervisor.

Ruysch gained international recognition around 1708 when she and her husband were appointed court painters to the elector palatine, Johann Wilhelm, in Düsseldorf. The elector bought all of the paintings she produced during her eight years in his court, and sent two of them as a gift to his father-in-law, Cosimo III de’ Medici of Tuscany. These paintings are now in the Uffizi in Florence. After the elector died, Ruysch returned with her family to Amsterdam. She continued to paint until the age of eighty-three, two years before her death.

The flowers in MAG’s Floral Still Life are arranged in an

S-curve at the right of the canvas.  They seem to be growing out of a dead tree; a large rock anchors the tree trunk. Elements in the painting can be seen as vanitas references, reflecting the idea of memento mori, the transience of life: “Remember, man, that thou art dust and into dust thou shalt return.” The morning glories and opium poppies, standing next to each other, symbolize night and day; the lizards, toads, and half-eaten toadstools symbolize death. The butterflies in the composition reflect the resurrected soul.  However, the usual representations of death are absent: the skull, hour glass, candle, or goldfinch (which feeds on thistles and represents the crown of thorns in the Crucifixion) are lacking, suggesting that Ruysch was not interested primarily in vanitas. Rather, she chose blooms in an outdoor setting because she was familiar with nature and the creatures in it.  These she pictured with an accuracy that must have come from her work with her father.                  

Ruysch achieved an international reputation in her lifetime, but interest in her works did not decline after her death. Her works brought high prices when she was alive and they remain sought-after today.

Source: Susan Dodge-Peters, ed., Memorial Art Gallery, An Introduction to the Collection; Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists 1550-1950; Marianne Berardi, “The Nature Pieces of Rachel Ruysch,” Porticus, vol. X-XI 19 87-1988

NB: Paintings by van Aelst and van Schriek will be in the upcoming Natura Morta exhibit coming to MAG from April 1 to May 27.

HUBERT ROBERT, MASTER OF RUINS

Figures Amidst Ruins

HUBERT ROBERT, MASTER OF RUINS

by Joan K. Yanni

Hubert Robert, painter of MAG’s Figures Amidst Ruins (63.14), was one of the most prolific and admired painters in 18^th-century France. His fascination with ruins led to the development of the architectural landscape in French painting.

Early landscapes were merely backgrounds for historical and religious scenes, such as those painted by Renaissance artists. Gradually the landscapes grew in size and importance, and eventually became subjects in themselves, such as in the paintings of van Ruisdale in Holland, Constable and Turner in England, and Claude Lorraine in France.  The popularity of landscapes increased until, when the French Academy classified the genres of art in the 17^th century, they were placed fourth out of five categories in order of importance. (The categories were, from highest to least in importance, history, religious and mythological paintings; genre scenes or scenes of everyday life; portraits; landscapes; and still lifes. Some sources list landscapes last, but they were always popular.)

Hubert Robert was born in 1733 to an official in the service of the Marquis de Stainville in Paris. His father’s position insured an excellent education for his son: Robert attended the College de Navarre, where he studied ancient history and literature as well as Latin. Against his parents’ wishes, he also studied drawing under the sculptor Rene Michel Slodtz. Here he learned perspective and developed his interest in architecture.

In 1754 Robert traveled to Rome with the Comte de Stainville, the son of the Marquis, who had been appointed French Ambassador to the Vatican. The Comte’s influence was helpful in getting Robert admitted to the French Academy in Rome, even though he had not previously studied at the Academy in Paris and had bypassed the Prix de Rome competition. Robert was to remain in Rome for the next 11 years. His passion for architecture could already be seen in his work here, where he painted the classical architecture for which Rome is known, often in ruins, in a landscape setting.

At the French Academy in Rome Robert studied under the artist Giovanni Paolo Panini, during which time he met classmate and lifelong friend Jean-Honoré Fragonard.  Always sociable, Robert also befriended Giovanni Battista Piranesi, whose workshop was located near the Academy, and they often sketched buildings and ruins together.

Robert’s expanding social network provided him with the opportunity to view historic places firsthand. In 1760 the Abbé Saint-Non brought Robert and Fragonard to Naples, and the three visited Herculaneum and Pompeii. They also traveled to the abandoned Villa d’Este in Tivoli, where the ambassador to the Vatican from Malta had arranged for them to stay.  On these trips, Robert and Fragonard sketched continually together. Though their styles were similar, their subject matter was not. Whereas Fragonard was interested in society at play, Robert was fascinated by romantic ruins.

Robert returned permanently to Paris in 1765, and the following year, in an usual honor, was named an associate and a full member of the Academy is in the same session. Images of classical ruins were very popular by then and Robert exhibited at the Salon every year from 1766 until 1798. His paintings incorporated the antique architectural elements he had sketched during his stay in Italy, sometimes turning them into imaginative fantasies. Populated with lively figures, these works presented an appealing combination of silent monuments and busy contemporary life.

At the height of his career in the 1770s and 1780s, Robert was given commissions from royal patrons as well as wealthy private citizens. Louis XVI was an admirer as was Catherine the Great of Russia. In fact, one of the largest collections of his work is in the Hermitage.

During the Revolution in France Robert was arrested by the Jacobins and spent a year in prison, but obviously had access to canvas and paint since he completed more than fifty paintings as well as watercolors and drawings. After his release in 1794 he became curator of the Louvre, where he remained until Napoleon took control of the museum in 1802. Still actively painting, he died in 1808. His friend, the artist Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, recorded that he died brush in hand as he prepared to go out to dinner.

MAG’s painting, executed around 1775, shows a partial view of a ruined circular temple filling the height of the canvas on the right side.  The classical structure with Corinthian columns is based on the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. There is no pastoral landscape in this painting.  Instead, architecture stretches across the canvas. The perspective in the scene recedes abruptly, implying vast distance.

The triumphal arches are based on the design of the Arch of Constantine, but they have been squared three-dimensionally and form pavilions. Between them part of a pediment is visible, suggesting a temple overlooking an imagined Forum. Various sculptural figures are placed at the corners of the arches. A river or canal leads from the segment of land in the foreground to the first arch. An Egyptian lion fountain can barely be seen in the shadows at lower left.

Robert has scattered figures throughout this scene, walking among the columns, looking out behind the railings, sitting on the fragments of ruins in the foreground, and bathing and doing laundry where the steps descend into the water.

His loose painterly technique has sometimes been criticized as too facile, especially because of his prodigious output, but his reputation as one of France’s most revered painter of architectural landscapes is secure.                                           

Source:  Steven D. Borys, The Splendor of Ruins in French Landscape Painting, catalog of the exhibition; Grove Encyclopedia

SOLIMENA'S JUDITH

The Triumph of Judith

SOLIMENA’S JUDITH

by Susan Nurse

The reinstallation of the Fountain Court after the installation of the 18^th-century Italian Organ has brought works from the Baroque Period together, including our Francesco Solimena, The Triumph of Judith (77.109).  The painting, full of the drama of subject matter and the use of chiaroscuro and undulating forms is very representative of Baroque style.  So who are the figures in this dramatic painting?  Is that a woman holding a man’s severed head in the center of this work of art?  No wonder she has everyone’s attention.

This is Judith, the female heroine from the apocryphal “Book of Judith.”  Her story is extraordinary, and has the makings of a great source for visual images. We are seeing the end of the story. Judith has charmed the Assyrian general Holofernes, been admitted to his tent, and got him drunk. Then comes her triumph over the enemy of her town, the Assyrians, through the murder of Holofernes.  This apocryphal tale is of a Jewish widow who, with the help of God, slays the general by decapitating him with his own sword, thereby saving her own town of Bethulia and the entire state of Israel.  The word Bethulia, in Hebrew, is understood to mean house of the Lord, that is, the Temple, while the name Judith alludes to the Jewish people as a whole.  The moralistic message is of obedience to God's law and unwavering faith, unlike the town elders who offered to surrender the town.

Her story had been used in medieval times, usually depicted in narratives, and like other Old Testament figures, Judith and her triumph over Holofernes was interpreted as a pre-figuration of Mary. 

It was during the Counter Reformation that the heroism of Judith took on a new importance.  Holofernes had to die because as a Gentile, he had attempted to force the Jews to disobey the one true God.  Judith's fatal blow was done for the greater glory of this God, a deed highly meaningful to the resurgence of the Catholic Church over the heresy of Protestantism. 

It should not be surprising, looking at Solimina's work here, that his early training was in the elaborate ceiling frescos done by his mentor, Luca Giordano.  (Note that The Entombment by  Giordano hangs next to the Solimena in the Fountain Court).  Notice how, in the painting, we seem to be climbing a steep hill or stairway, looking up to see Judith with Holofernes's head held in triumph against the sky.  Regardless of the turmoil and the bodies swirling around her, Judith stands in a dramatic gesture, allowing us to focus on her and her prize. 

Solimena lived from 1657-1747 and brought great fame to the Naples area during his lifetime.  Arriving in the city in 1674, Solimena at 17 was seen as a prodigy.  His early work showed his preference for the flowing robes and gestures of the

painterly style with complex spatial arrangements that resulted from his father’s training.  It was Solimena’s introduction to

Giordano that brought a new solidity of forms and an increase in contrasts of light and shadow that are reflected in his mature work, including our Judith.  Another influence on Solimena was his trip to Rome in 1700.  His exposure to Guido Reni brought more classicized elements to his work.

                                                

These changes in style can be seen in Solimena’s most monumental work, the ceiling fresco in San Domenico Maggiore, Triumph of the Dominican Order of 1709. The Madonna points to St. Dominic, with a gesture clearly derivative of Giordano’s 1704 Triumph of Judith (fresco Chapel of the Treasury in the Certosa di S. Martino, Naples).  This gesture introduces the Saint to the Holy Trinity, while the Virtues and angels drive out heretics, who literally fall towards the viewer.  The hand of the Madonna is a focal point, just as is Judith’s hand in our picture, painted less than 20 years later.

Solimena used hands throughout our work to express surprise and wonder at the amazing spectacle before them: Judith, the widow of Bethuli, has returned to the town with the head of the Assyrian general!!  Solimena emphasized Judith's heroism by depicting her as an ordinary woman, not overly strong.  In this way, he emphasized the core of the story, that the hand of God must have helped her accomplish such an amazing feat. 

Solimena has created a variety of people who look up to Judith, both literally and figuratively, setting her off as a universal heroic figure.  Young and old, male and female, with different races represented, all swirl around the base of our painting, their gestures and movement further emphasized by the movement of the drapery of their clothes.   Even the elders, who had been willing to surrender the town, are awe- struck with the event that has taken place. They can no longer deny that a lone woman has done what they were unable to do. Through faith in God, she saved the town and Israel itself. The proof is before them.

Solimena did four other versions of this same story, one of which is now in Gemaldegalerie of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.  That work, dated 1730, is more derivative of his ceiling works.  But while ceiling size helped to dissipate a large number of figures, the number of figures in a work  similar in size to our own painting makes the painting appear  somewhat cluttered.  In MAG’s painting Judith is not accentuated to the degree necessary to understand the significance of her act of courage and the drama of the moment.

This painting is representative of the power of the Baroque style at the hands of a Neapolitan master, Francesco Solimena, and the representation of Judith as a heroic figure.

Sources- Curatorial files; Carmen Bambach “A Taste for Angels: Neapolitan Painting in North America, 1650-1750”; Stocker, Margarita, Judith, Sexual Warrior: Women and Power in Western Culture, Yale University Press, 1998.

Susan Nurse is MAG’s Visual Resources Coordinator

LIVING IN ANCIENT EGYPT

Pa-debeliu-Aset

LIVING IN ANCIENT EGYPT

By Libby Clay

Docents, it’s almost time to renew our passports… passport tours, that is. Since the Ethnographic Gallery won’t be available for some tithe, I ‘ve been looking for more material on the other areas we use on the tour. I began with Egypt:
because two things puzzle me: (I) why the bread and the food in the ancient gallery case are “hardened” and how they got that way, and (2) why Pa-debeliu-Aset (2000.11.2)is wearing a false beard when he was not a pharaoh.

 Minerals must have replaced the pore space in the food and bread, but how? Where did the minerals come from? Perhaps they were from small, modest entombments where no moisture could seep in. I wonder about the condition of foodstuffs in the large tombs. I know that the rice found in the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamen would still germinate, but what about other foodstuffs?

I didn’t find the answer to the beard, but I did find out more about pharaohs. Beginning at the top of the pyramid with the king, he (or she in the case of Queen Hatshepsut) wore a false beard as a sign of maturity and status. The daily purification rituals required of the King prevented him from growing his own beard. The false beard was square-ended and carved of wood or made of woven fibers. It was suspended by strings from the tabs on his brow band. When he died, the king was entitled to wear the longer, narrower plaited beard with a rounded, upturned end... like the one “Pa” is sporting.

The king had official headdresses, the simplest being the names, ahead cloth of blue and yellow stripes with two shaped lappets that hung down, one over each shoulder. The loose cloth at the back was gathered into a sort of pigtail. As with all his crowns, the nemes was attached to a brow band of leather or linen, tied behind his head with ribbons. King Ny-user-ra wears the nemes. Pharaoh never went bareheaded. If the occasion called for a crown, the choice depended on the specific power necessary for the event. The double crown, combining the crowns of Lower and Upper Egypt was a symbol of his power over the two parts of his realm. The crowns could be worn separately as well, the white crown of Upper Egypt and the red of Lower Egypt. In the eighteenth dynasty, the time of the Maya, the blue war crown was. developed. King Tutankhamen wears this crown in paintings on a chest found .in this tomb. The crowns always bore the sacred uraeus, a multi-colored cobra, symbol of Buto, and the cobra goddess who was ready to deal death to Pharaoh’s enemies.

The king wore the pleated shendjyt-apron with its triangular front piece. Ordinary mortals wore loincloths or kilts. Women wore simple shifts or wrap-around skirts. Priests were permitted to wear only garments of white linen and sandals
made from papyrus. Animal products in the form of leather or wool were considered “unclean” for the temple. Homes of all but the aristocracy were modest, made of hardened mud-brick, with only a door and perhaps a couple of small apertures to let in air and .keep out the sun.  They: had  flat roofs for sleeping in the cooler night air Lighting at night was by stone or baked clay cups in which twisted wicks coated with oil were burned. Furniture might consist of a chest for storage and simple cubic stools and small pedestal tables for meals. People slept on mats with head rests made of wood or stone, meant to promote sleep and protect the head from the stings of crawling insects

Besides raising children, a wife’s primary role was managing a household that could be quite large, sine it was a man’s responsibility to care for any unmarried or widowed females in his immediate family. Orphaned nieces and nephews would be adopted and brought up as the householder’s own. In addition, the wife would be responsible for getting water: several times a day from the Nile or an irrigation ditch. It was also her duty to see to baking the bread and brewing the beer that were the staples of Egyptian life. Grinding the grain for the flour was an arduous task, performed on a stone tray-like mortar. The resulting flour was coarse and, despite sieving, often had some grit in it, the molars of many mummies show severe wear. Bread .could come in as many as sixteen varieties and shapes, from flat pita-like bread baked on the outside of an oven, to yeast-risen bread baked in a domed oven set on stones. Beer was brewed using leftovers from the bread to start fermentation  It was often sweetened with dates. Children, of course, drank milk

Both boys and girls wore the side lock of youth, a lock of hair on the right side of the head. The rest of the hair was shaved off or cut short. A child went nude, often till puberty; with its side lock and its finger in its mouth to indicate recent weaning. See the little bronze statue (#1) of Horus as a child in the first case in the Gill Center.

Also in the first case is a mummified cat Cats were much admired because of their cunning, resourcefulness and ability to catch poisonous snakes. Later they were domesticated and served their families by catching the mice that plagued every house. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, if a house caught on fire, the family ignored the fire to make sure the cat was safe. If a domestic cat died of natural causes the whole family shaved off their eyebrows. No wonder one of their major gods was the cat-goddess Bastet.

In the case on mummification, there is a small dish of natron. Natron. is a naturally-occurring crystalline mixture whose principal constituents are washing soda and baking soda. This all-purpose cleanser was used in ancient Egypt for washing everything from household crockery to sacred vessels, from linen clothing to the people who wore the clothes. It was considered so necessary that bags and bowls of it were offered to the gods and requested in funerary offering lists. Pellets of natron were chewed to freshen the breath and clean the teeth. It was also used to wash the body for embalming and for desiccating it.

Sources: Cottreli, Leonard: Life under (he Pharaohs; Andreu, Guillemette:Egypt n the Age of the Pyramids; Herodotus: The Histories; Wilson, Hilary, People of the Pharaohs: From Peasant to Courtier.

BOLTANSKI'S MYSTERIOUS MONUMENT

Monument

BOLTANSKI’S MYSTERIOUS MONUMENT

by Sydney Greaves and Diane Tichell

From the moment of its 2004 installation, Monument by French artist Christian Boltanski has prompted many questions.  Who are the children in the photographs?  Does this piece refer to the Holocaust and WWII?  Why did the artist use bare wires and old-fashioned light bulbs?  We may be able to provide a few answers, or at least  ideas…

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Christian Boltanski was born in Paris in 1944 to a Corsican mother and a Christian-converted Jewish father.  As an artist his earlier work dealt with photography, film and installations.  In a 1984 interview he first publicly acknowledged his Jewish heritage, which would become an influence on his subsequent work.  Called “death-obsessed” by some, his post-1984 works explore the use of photographic images and materials, anonymous and out of context, as objects of memory: public and private, real and imagined.

Monument is one of a series of installations that explore identity and memory by utilizing delicate, impermanent materials such as photographs and wrapping paper as well as mundane objects like clothing, paper, found objects and lost property.  The small scale and everyday nature of Boltanski’s intimate installations contradict the accepted concept of a monument as a way to preserve memory.  The very word monument conjures up images of magnificent bronzes and marbles of suitably “monumental” size, and it is these contradictions that are a hallmark of Boltanski’s Monument series.

Our Monument consists of very basic materials; fifty-six small metal “picture frames” are individually mounted on the wall with adhesive Velcro in a stair-step, tall, triangular arrangement.   Each “picture” consists of paper, backed with thin cardboard, covered with glass and mounted in the frame using masking tape. Eleven small, old-style light bulbs connected by dangling wires sit on the “riser” of each step all the way to the top center. 

Of the 56 frames, 48 show a black speckle-patterned paper, the outer frames in a gold or tan color, the interior divided between blue on the left and gray on the right.  The eight remaining frames feature photographs.  The very top photo is the only color photo in the installation and features a scene of purplish-pink tulips in a garden.  An additional two photographs, arranged at the bottom left and right respectively, feature one little boy at full length and two children together.  Arranged in pairs in the interior of the triangle are four black and white, extreme close-up photographs of children’s faces, slightly blurry as if enlarged from very small old originals.

Many of Boltanski’s monuments have been described as resembling the structure of a Christian altar.  (Think of the MAG’s Gothic, Byzantine and Renaissance icons and altarpieces, especially Madonna and Child Enthroned Between

Six Saints and Angels, 27.1.)  S ome “altars” have a large central shape flanked by smaller ones on each side, while others, like ours, have a triangular stair-step arrangement.  All share the candle-like use of a series of small bare light bulbs, gently illuminating the installation and enhancing the religious nature of the space. The bare wires, draped and dangling in front of the photographs, serve not only an obvious electrical function (supplying power to the light bulbs) but unite the various elements of the work in a casual, home-made fashion, as if roughly constructed with materials at hand.

The haunting, blurry old photographs of Boltanski’s monuments come from various sources, such as photo archives, borrowed family albums, found objects and miscellaneous collections.  Many feature the close-up faces of children, obviously from another era.  In the context of the shrine-like installations, questions arise again:  Who are these children?  Do we know their names?   Are they alive or dead?  Did they die in the Holocaust, memorialized here as representative of the millions of others?  Perhaps comments from the artist himself provide something of an answer:

 “I never speak directly about the Holocaust in my work, but of course my work comes after the Holocaust.”    (1999 interview)

“I have never used images from the [concentration] camps.  My work is not about, it is after.”                               (1997 interview)

In other words, Boltanski relies on our collective cultural memory surrounding the events of WWII, knowing that our knowledge of the Holocaust inevitably colors our viewing of Monument.  We add up the elements:  shrine-like configuration, “candle” light, poignant old photographs of children, and of course the title Monument itself, and then use these to draw our own conclusions.  Those conclusions may reflect the intended effect of the work, or not, but …

[that effect] “has to be ‘unfocused’ somehow so that everyone can recognize something of their own self when viewing it.”

 (1999 interview)

In the end, the experience and reaction of the viewer, both individual and collective, is as integral to Monument as the photographs and light bulbs. Whether we stand in front of Monument and “see” a Holocaust memorial or, conversely, a  Birthday Cake or  Christmas Tree, as some child visitors have suggested, we are indeed heading in the right direction.  That recognition from something of your own experience,  be it historical memory, personal connection or contextual interpretation, is itself The Right Answer.

Sources:

Curatorial Files, 

Wired Image:  Ben Armstrong, The Installation of Monument: The

     Children of Dijon at Chapelle de la Salpetriere, Paris, 1986

     http://www.wiredimage.co.uk/archive/wiredimage/chapt5.html

frenchculture.org: Visual Arts, Christian Boltanski: “Coming and Going”

     Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, Feb 21-Apr 14, 2001

Tate Magazine, issue 2, Studio: Christian Boltanski

httpL//www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue/boltanski..htm

LEPRINCE'S THE VISIT

The Visit

LEPRINCE’S THE VISIT

by Joan K. Yanni

A combination of a landscape and a genre scene, Jean-Baptiste Leprince’s The Visit, (77.102) on view in the 18th-century gallery, is an example of the best in the artist’s work. Painted just two years before his death, it combines his facility in landscape with his remarkably detailed genre scenes.

The most important element in the painting is a huge tree rather than the people meeting in its shade. The landscape in the background, with its winding roads, stream, animals, castle and peasant dwellings, represents the ideal

in 18^th-century French painting: a departure from the frivolity of the Rococo painter Boucher and a return to the style and subject matter of the Dutch landscapists. It shows a moment in the daily life of people living on an estate in France.

The scene pictures the visit of nobles to a peasant family with a new baby. The nobles, dressed in fine clothes and on horseback, have come from the castle on the far right. The new mother is nursing her baby under the tree, while her husband sits on the ground at her feet. The child’s bassinette is being carried on the side of a donkey at the left of the group, while a loyal dog rests on the right side of the couple.

The tree dominating the painting illustrates Leprince’s principles of design as set forth in a treatise he wrote for the French Academy in 1773. He advised an artist who is painting nature to work from the detail to the whole, to proceed from a single leaf to a cluster, then to the mass of the tree, last to the direction of branches. He notes that a tree appears different at various distances. For example, a detailed leaf represents a tree close at hand, while at a distance only the “spirit,” which eliminates detail, can be shown.  He also advises that when working from nature, the painter should work for only two hours or less because the sun moves, changing the shadows and mass of the subject. If necessary to finish the work, the painter should return the next day at the same time to complete the look already on the canvas. Unlike the Impressionists, Leprince is aiming for a picture of  permanence and stability in his work rather then the fleeting moment. The variable here is not light, but distance from the object.

Leprince (1734-1781) was born in Metz, France, to a family of master-sculptors and gilders who had worked in the region around Rouen. When he was twelve he was sent to study with a local artist. Even at this early age he was impatient.  After a few years he decided he could do far better in Paris than in Metz, so he asked the governor of Metz for patronage and, having received it, accompanied the governor to Paris and went to study with the influential François Boucher. Always ambitious, he soon married a very rich woman twice his age and set about spending her money. The wife was displeased and the marriage a failure. Leprince went then to Italy, producing drawings of ruins for an amateur engraver. 

   His drawings showed little originality, for he was not captivated by the neo-classic. From these he turned to genre scenes. Though his work was pleasing and colorful, he had not yet found a theme that captured his attention.  In 1758, on his way to join his brothers in St. Petersburg where they were employed as musicians, he stopped in Holland to study the work of Dutch and Flemish masters. Their influence can be seen in his later work. Once in Russia, he finally found subjects that appealed to his imagination. He remained here for several years traveling and sketching the native peasant life. His reputation in Russia grew, but though he found the scenery and life in Russia to his liking, the climate did not agree with him. He returned to Paris with detailed drawings of customs and costumes he had seen on his travels there and would use them in his work in France.

On his return to France he published several sets of etchings which he used to get the attention of the Academy. These were created in 1768, using Leprince’s new formula for aquatint. Though Leprince claimed its invention, it has also been attributed to others. Whoever had invented it,  Leprince was a pioneer in its use.

He soon presented himself as a candidate to the French Academy and was received as a member in 1764. His reception piece was The Russian Baptism. It was shown at the salon that year along with several paintings of his Russian themes including a view of St. Petersburg, a party of Cossacks returning from a raid, a Russian pastorale and a landscape with figures in different costumes.

In his paintings he continued to use Russian landscapes,  with Russian costumes in his genre scenes. The French shepherds he had formerly painted turned into Russian peasants watching over real sheep and goats. His exotic costumes and unusual settings created a demand for his pictures. His Russian subjects were unique because they were not painted realistically, but in pastel hues--Rococo Russians presented by an artist who was trained under the master Boucher.

In 1773 Leprince read a treatise to the Academy on  the subject of landscape with four volumes of four plates, each illustrating  “Principles of Design.” His principles are based on a study from nature and have been described earlier.  Many seem self-evident, but they gained him acclaim.  Two years after presenting his treatise to the Academy, he bought a house in the region of Lagny. Though he exhibited eight landscapes at the salon of 1777, he was by then very ill. He died in 1781.

Though Leprince’s reputation in art history has long been based on his Russian genre scenes, his work in landscape may have been just as important   He embraced the tradition of landscape then taking shape,  showing an appreciation of the outdoors, fresh air, walks in the country, and the skies and light of France.

Source: Rémy Saisselin, “Leprince Landscape,” Porticus, Vol. II, 1979; “Jean -Baptiste Leprince,” The Memorial Art Gallery: An Introduction to the Collection; The Grove Dictionary of Art

THE ART OF PIETRO PAOLINI

Portrait of a Man Holding Durer's "Small Passion"

THE ART OF PIETRO PAOLINI

By Joan K. Yanni

It’s almost impossible to pass by Paolini’s Portrait of a Man Holding Dürer’s “Small Passion” (77.103) without stopping to look.  It is an unusual portrait. Rather than sitting stiffly in a formal pose, the anonymous subject is shown from the side, his head turned to look directly at the viewer. Interrupted in his contemplation of a book in his hand, he momentarily looks up, lips parted, as though questioning the intrusion. He is serious, but not unfriendly. He doesn’t want to chat, he wants to get back to the page at which he was gazing.

The background of the painting is dark, almost black. The light, coming from above, illuminates the subject’s face, the white silk sleeve of his left arm, the book in his hand, the left side of his chair. Also notable, though not as highly lighted, are books and a scroll on a shelf in the upper right of the picture, identifying the sitter as a scholar. The chiaroscuro (dramatic use of light and dark) is similar to that used by Caravaggio (1573-1610) and his followers, who used everyday scenes in their works but employed unusual lighting to achieve interest and drama. In fact MAG’s portrait had been attributed to Caravaggio himself until an art sale in the 1960s listed Paolini as the artist.  MAG acquired the work in 1977.

In the sitter’s hand one can see the frontispiece of the book he is holding: Dürer’s “Small Passion.” It pictures Jesus, “the man of sorrows,” seated with his bent head supported by his right hand. The crucifixion and resurrection have already  taken place, for Jesus wears the crown of thorns, and the nail holes in his feet are prominent. A verse written in Latin under the figure describes the reason for his sorrow:

                O cause of such great sorrows to me who am  just;

                O Bloody Cause of the cross and of my death;           

O Man, is it not enough that I suffered these things once for you?

                O cease crucifying me with new sins.

In addition to the pictured frontispiece, the book consists of thirty-six woodcuts, narrative plates with a Latin poem on the page facing each plate. Each plate invites contemplation and meditation. Dürer (1471-1528) was a painter as well as a printmaker and the most prominent engraver of his time. His works would have been well known to Paolini and his circle. The portrait is typical of Paolini’s mature work: sensitive and introspective. This portrait was not for public display, but a private, insightful presentation of his sitter’s inner thoughts and persona.

Pietro Paolini was born in Lucca, Italy, a town in Tuscany, in 1603. When he was 16 his father sent him to Rome to study

under painter Angelo Caroselli  (1585-1652), who had been a student of Caravaggio. How the young student paid for this sojourn is not known, since his family was not affluent. However, records of the prominent Buonvisi family of Lucca, who were bankers and had business in Rome, list one painting by Caroselli and six by Paolini in their holdings. They could have brought the artist and pupil  together.

Caroselli was probably chosen as his teacher because he knew the Roman art scene and was eclectic in his own painting. From him Paolini learned versatility and diversity in style. His earliest works were genre scenes with the lyrical style of Caravaggio, using familiar figures and details but dramatic lighting with heightened light and shadow. The Lute Player and The Fortune Teller are examples of this work.

There is no record of any other teacher,  though Paolini was probably influenced by the Italian and northern European artists,  followers of Bartolomeo Manfredi, who were active in Rome between 1620 and 1630. His first religious works, as well as many portraits done at this time, show the influence of his years in Rome. Many portraits from this time also demonstrate his early skill in portraiture and an interest in presenting likenesses that show the inner personality rather than the worldly possessions of his sitter.

                                            

Around 1628 he traveled to Venice, where he spent two years and learned the Venetian artists’ use of color. The Venetian influence can be seen in religious works such as two versions of Virgin and Saints, and history paintings, such as Esther and Ahasuerus.

He returned to Lucca in 1631. Here he created an original style encompassing  what he had learned from his experiences in Rome and Venice. He painted cabinet works, smaller works meant to be displayed in his patrons’ more intimate rooms, usually of musical or allegorical themes. He introduced still life painting to Lucca and found a ready market for his realistic still life works. 

Around 1650 the successful Paolini opened a painting academy which he was able to fund himself.  It was based on the principle of “art from nature.” Here numerous artists were trained, among them Antonio Franchi, Simone del Tontore and his brother Francesco.

Paolini’s life and prominence in his native town are recorded by local historians. He evidently moved in the aristocratic circles of  Lucca, fostering knowledge of and love for art.  He was regarded with esteem by his fellow citizens. He lived in Lucca until his death in 1681.

Source: Curatorial files, Grove Art Online, Gloria Williams, “Pietro Paolini’s Portrait of a Man Holding Dürer’s “Small Passion,” Porticus, Vol. XII/XIII, 1989-90.

BARYE, SCULPTOR OF ANIMALS

Elephant

BARYE, SCULPTOR OF ANIMALS

by Libby Clay

Lately “Animals in Art” tours have been rivaling “Passport” tours in popularity. Docents have been going where few went before...into the yellow, 19^th-century room to examine the realistic animal sculptures of Antoine- Louis Barye. His Elephant (63.4), an African elephant on the run, delights, while his Panther Attacking a Stag (55.4) emphasizes cruel realities of the natural world. Both amaze with their faithfulness to detail and in their transformations to miniature versions of the animals.

Barye, pronounced “bar-ree,” is usually associated with Romanticism.  However, art historical “isms” have fuzzy borders, and his early work is more like Neo-Classicism. He was greatly influenced then by the work of the English sculptor and draftsman John Flaxman (think Wedgwood). Barye produced historical and mythological works, both drawings and sculptures.

Panther Attacking a Stag

Toward the mid-point of his career, in the 1820s and 1830s, he was credited with “liberating” animal sculpture from the traditional classical noble beast to more dramatic, realistic beasts in the wild. He exploited the emotional, the moralizing, the narrative in his work.  His animals were not only anatomically accurate, they also conveyed powerful messages about the realities of untamed nature. Barye lived in a time of great political upheaval in Western Europe, especially in France. During a stint in the army he experienced firsthand the cruelty and brutality of war.  In a milieu of rapidly changing governments and wars, both internal and external, his animal sculptures reflected the chaos and frenzy of his time.

Barye was born in Paris in 1796, the son of a goldsmith.  It is interesting that many sculptors came from a goldsmithing background. At age 13 he began a series of apprenticeships, first in his father’s atelier, then with a sculptor, and finally with the goldsmith to Napoleon Bonaparte.  Here he learned the secrets of metal and foundry methods.  He also learned to miniaturize, to transform faithfully the large into smaller replicas. This was the distinctive genius of the goldsmiths, and it would be Barye’s genius in sculpture.

He also studied with the painter Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, whose romantic paintings of Napoleon “saving” France impressed him greatly. (Napoleon at Arcole and Napoleon on the Battlefield at Eylau are the best examples.) Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa was also an influence on him. Barye was accepted at the École des Beaux-Arts, where one of his friends and fellow students was the soon-to-be famous Delacroix. Both were interested in animals and spent long hours observing and sketching the menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes and the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle. Barye especially became interested in zoology and comparative anatomy, and attended autopsies of animals to increase his knowledge and understanding of their structure.

Barye’s finest productive years were the 1830s. He was exhibiting his sculptures at the Salon, and they received highly favorable reviews.  During these years an artist’s goal was the Salon, for here work could be seen by the public and, hopefully, would bring patrons. One such patron for Barye               was the young Duke of Orleans, son of the “citizen king,” Louis-Philippe. For him, Barye created an ensemble of nine sculptural groups for an elaborate table decoration, a surtout de table. The designs were of animal hunts in exotic lands or in long-ago historical periods. These purely decorative sculptures stood on their own merit and represented a breaking away from the tradition that such scenes should only be embellishments on table service, such as a salt cellar.  They inspired a small group of artist followers called the animaliers.

Barye continued to have a long and active career. He managed to remain a favorite artist through all the changing governments of France, Louis-Philippe, the provisional government of the Second Republic and the presidency of Napoleon III. He also taught, and his best-known pupil was Rodin. Barye was a great influence on not only Rodin, but also on Matisse and on Carpeaux, whose sculpture of the Breton Poet is encased in the same gallery opposite Barye‘s animals. Sadly, Barye did not receive the appreciation he deserved in our time until the 1950s. Then he was “re-discovered,” and the prices for his works increased by five to seven times. The Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore and the Corcoran both have extensive collections of his work.

When we look closely at MAG’s sculptures, we are impressed with their fidelity to life and with the detail Barye has included. The wrinkles on the elephant’s neck and legs appear to have been cast rather then etched in.  Barye’s name as well as the name of the founder, “F. Barbedienne,” appears on the base. Barye was meticulous about his work and never allowed anything to leave the foundry until he was satisfied that it was perfect. Only then would he sign it.  MAG acquired this sculpture through the Marion Stratton Gould Fund.

Elk and Cougar is a remarkable work, even if it might be too violent for young sensibilities. The six-point elk is braced against the attack, his nostrils flared. The cougar, tail almost twitching, pins the elk down with his right paw as he goes for the spinal cord. Gouge marks from his claws are visible. There is no founder’s mark on this piece, but Barye has signed it.

MAG is fortunate to have two sculptures from the admirable work left by Barye. He is now regarded as the greatest animal sculptor of the French school and as the creator of a new class of art.

Sources: Benge, Glenn F., Antoine Louis Barye: Sculptor of Romantic Realism. The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park and London, 1984. Clay, Jean, Romanticism (forward by Robert Rosenblum) The Vendome Press, NY, Paris, and Lausanne, 1981. (Benge’s book is available in MAG’s library and contains a number of illustrations of Barye’s works.)

THE ART OF DOMENICO FETI

St/ Stephen

THE ART OF DOMENICO FETI

by Joan K. Yanni

Domenico Feti's St. Stephen (29.61) has come out of storage and is now displayed prominently in the Fountain Court. At first glance, the work seems to be a life-size portrait of a seated Venetian gentleman in a red and gold damask robe--but a closer look reveals unusual details.

In his right hand, the young man is holding a large palm frond, the symbol of a martyr. His right elbow is resting on a large book, perhaps a Bible, open on a nearby table.  The left hand is lying on his right knee, palm up, as though in explanation of his beliefs. There are large stones in his lap. The figure is not that of a wealthy Venetian; the palm frond and stones tell us that it is St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr.

References to Stephen are from the Christian scriptures (Acts of the Apostles, 6: 1-15; 7: 51-60). Because some of the apostles were traveling to distant lands to spread the gospel of Jesus, seven men were chosen to help preach and distribute alms. Stephen, an early convert to Christianity from Judaism, was one of these. His impassioned sermons caused an uproar in Jerusalem that led to a charge of blasphemy, for which he was condemned to death by stoning.

The picture is the work of Domenico Feti (sometimes Fetti), an Italian painter who lived from 1589-1624. Born in Rome, he studied first with his father, Pietro, and later became a pupil of Ludovico Cigoli. Familiar with the bright colors of Titian and Tintoretto as well as the light and shadows of Caravaggio, he bridged the Renaissance and the Baroque. In our painting the large palm frond creates a diagonal in the picture and is echoed by a fold in the saint’s robe and in the arrangement of the stones. Feti’s art has moved from the calm, serene pyramid of the Renaissance to the livelier mood of the Baroque.

In 1611 Ferdinando Gonzaga, then a Cardinal in Rome, commissioned paintings from Feti, and three years later, when Gonzaga became Duke of Mantua, his patronage enabled the artist to take his family to that city.  His father and sister Giustina, who was a painter as well as an Ursuline nun, traveled to Mantua with him. They were followed by his brother Vincenzo, who became a priest and may also have been a painter.

Domenico became a curator of the extensive Gonzaga collection and, influenced by the variety of artistic styles he saw there, his own art matured, broadened by the example of the unfamiliar art in the collection. He was particularly impressed by the color and realistic figures of Rubens, who had preceded him at the Gonzaga court. He was also attracted by the silvery light and landscape backgrounds of Veronese. 

Most of Feti’s work in Mantua consisted of religious subjects: cycles from Biblical themes or portraits of saints.

Around 1617 he painted a melancholy but voluptuous Mary Magdalene, unhappily gazing at a skull.  She is surrounded by objects symbolizing man’s intellectual accomplishments and tangible successes, yet the skull suggests the futility of all worldly achievements. It becomes an allegory of vanities in the manner of the northern European paintings which Feti had seen in the Gonzaga collection.  By blending a variety of influences, he had developed an original style.

Feti was highly valued in the Gonzaga court. In 1620 the Duke presented him with a house, and the following year Feti made his first recorded journey to Venice. Around the same time he received his most demanding commission as a court painter: a series of pictures celebrating the Gonzaga family, with 23 figures interspersed with 18 small putti. Only two historical portraits survive from this project. His last major ducal commission was for a cycle of pictures illustrating the Parables.  Ten of these survive. The paintings are his most original works, showing the parables as events in everyday life. Enriched with lively genre detail, they show a tenderness and humanity in his work. By this time Feti, his work much in demand, had an extensive workshop and similar versions of his paintings exist, some done by the master, others copies by his workshop which included  his sister and father.  In addition to his religious themes, Feti produced sensitive portraits, reviving the Venetian tradition of showing the sitters with objects that they prized.

In 1622 Feti attended a sports event in Mantua with the painter Gabriele Balestrieri. They quarreled violently and Feti left Mantua for Venice. His reputation for excellence followed him to the larger city, where he easily found new patronage. In addition, his brother Vincenzo served as courier, carrying his paintings from Venice back to Mantua.

Though Feti died after only two years in Venice, he was instrumental in reviving painting in the city and is often classed as a member of the Venetian school. 

MAG’s St. Stephen illustrates the interesting oil technique Feti used, learned from advances made by 16^th century Venetian painters. A ruddy brown tone has been spread over the entire canvas. The painter then used oil pigments to broadly sketch the large areas such as architecture, sky and figure. Dark areas were painted very thinly over the dark ground, while thick paint was used on lighter areas to prevent the background from showing through. Once he had outlined his picture, Feti concentrated on refining and detailing his composition. His flesh tones are created by combining complements of red and green.  The harmony of his color, the beauty of the design and the modeling of the figure combine to produce a painting of great aesthetic appeal and importance.  MAG acquired the Feti in 1929, a gift from Mr. and Mrs. George Clark of Rochester. It is still one of the Gallery’s most impressive works. Feti’s paintings can be found in most of the leading museums of Europe.

Source: Grove Art Online, The Bulletin of the Memorial Art Gallery, Vol. I, No. 5, 1929, WEB Gallery of Art;  Clemems Jockle, Encyclopedia of Saints