A Street in Venice

A Street in Venice, John Singer Sargent

Study: At a Reading Desk

Study: At a Reading Desk, Lord Leighton

Saint-Tropez, Pier, 1912

Saint-Tropez, Pier, 1912, Pierre Bonnard

Vercingetorix Throws Down his Arms at the Feet of Julius Caesar

I had to post this, as It has been on my mind a lot. Vercingetorix Throws Down his Arms at the Feet of Julius Caesar  is a great moment in history, as great and rare as any when history herself chooses to change her own course.

 

 

Unlike, say Hannibal, Caesar was no great tactical genius at battle, neither was he a great commander. Caesar was, in one word, will. Pure and unadulterated, not fancy resolve or ambition, just raw will.

Imagine being surrounded on all the sides by an enemy who outnumbered you 1 : 5 , in a land distant and unfamiliar, with your own troops  battle-weary, running out of ration and hopelessly homesick, how on earth would you even conceive of succeeding against such a volley of unbeatable odds ? Well, that's Caesar, starving his men out, starving himself, and blinded by only one thing - Victory. It was a pure display of will, that I have never known or heard of in history. As Cicero so eloquently put it to Julius Caesar: Your spirit has never been content within the narrow confines which nature has imposed upon us.

The painting is the famous Oil Painting by a less known painter of his time - Lionel-Noël Royer, The grandness aptly captures the moment  when Vercingetorix, having recognised that he has been beaten comes out of his fort in Alesia  and lays his arms before the Caesar in his encampment,  thus handing his greatest victory which in due course would end up changing the pathway of the entire western world.

The Last Day of Pompeii

Last day of Pompeii, Karl Briullov

Karl Briullov painted this massive*  wonderful, and need I add dazzling pre-modern version of DSLR Time Freeze portrait in 1827. It was very well received  and was later almost revered by many artists.

Briullov during his stay in Italy visited the newly excavated Pompeii and was reported to be very impressed. He soon found Russian art collector Count Anatoly Demidov willing to fund his painting, and started off with his huge project. Briullov spent around three years researching for the painting - studying artefacts and excavations, even reading letters of Pliny±, an important witness of the Vesuvius eruption. Reportedly, the scale and ambition of the painting attracted lot of visitors, even when it was a work in progress. 

The last day depicts the last day of the residents of Pompeii when the volcanic Mt Vesuvius erupted destroying the cities of Pompeii and Herculeanium in 79 AD. Briullov paints the scene of fleeing residents when the heavens above have opened as black rains from the hovering dark clouds with the accompanying thunder and lightning in the background destroying the Roman statues. The residents are frozen in various motions of activities as it was found in Pompeii. The painting is meant to depict the romantic insignificance of human life before the supremacy of nature, yet emphasising its ( human life's) cherished values like love, belongingness that makes it dear to us all.

The Last Day sealed Bruillov as one of the important painters of his era and won him acclaim and appreciation from not only many contemporaries but also many a reputed artists from successive generations. It was one of the favourite paintings of Stendhal. Danish sculptor Bertel Torvaldsen claimed that none of the painters living in Rome were able to even arrange such a work. Inspired by the work, Edward Lytton wrote the novel The Last Days of Pompeii. Pushkin reportedly wrote a poem after the painting. It is said that Sir Walter Scott stood before the painting for a whole hour and later even knelt before the painting. He is believed to have said “rather than a picture, it's a whole epopee”. 

*25 square metre one of the biggest paintings of the time, now in State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, Russia.

± Pliny is reportedly depicted int he painting as the young man persuading his mother to come with him on the bottom right corner ( 5 O' Clock) of the painting. It is also said Bruillov also painted himself in the painting - the man gazing upwards towards a falling? sculpture or a statue at the left upper corner ( 9' O Clock).

Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife

Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife, 1885, John Singer Sargent

In case you are wondering, Stevenson was 5ft 9in tall

Untitled (Car)

(painting source: Saatchi Gallery)

Untitled (Car), 2004, Tom McGrath

The winter issue of The Paris Review features some glorious paintings of Tom McGrath: Portfolio

McGrath's paintings try to capture images from the viewpoint of a car seat. I loved the one in TPR where the wiper is just about to move and wipe away the rain water (see Portolfio link above.)

More paintings at the Sue Scott Gallery

Definitely an artist to keep a tab on.

Solitary Tree

Only when the mind is completely alone can it know what is beauty, and not in any other state.

-J Krishnamurti

Solitary Tree, 1821, Caspar David Friedrich


PS: A happy new year to Pigmentium readers!

Giovanni Agostino della Torre and His Son, Niccolò

Giovanni Agostino della Torre and His Son, Niccolò, (c.1513-16) Lorenzo Lotto
(image taken from the LRB article linked to below)


Powerful writing has the ability to show things newly, to make memorable that which might have slipped by unnoticed. Colm Tóibín's piece on the painting above in the London Review of Books some months ago does just that. I cannot look at this painting without seeing what he made me see. Remarkable.

500 years of Women in Art

Found this rather creative montage of close-ups of some of the famous female portraits in art history and thought I'll share them here. You can find the list of all the paintings and painters on the montage here, but may I suggest a rather more stimulating exercise of identifying them on your own ?

PS- For my musical taste ( which is not the best informed in classical music) I find Bach can be slightly jarry esp. if it's very early in the day. So, I suggest a warm and soothing cup of green tea as you watch.

Women In Art from Philip Scott Johnson on Vimeo.

Man with the Blue Sleeve

Man with the Blue Sleeve,1510,  Titian

My favourite elements from this painting are the fluffs and ridges on the expansive blue sleeve and the thin gold chain running along the line of the collar.

There is something about the Man that is alluring, whether it is his sidelong glance or his expression which seems to suggest that he is not too happy about his sleeve getting all the attention from the artist. I love the shades of darkness in the background, the cloak like garment draped on his left shoulder both visible and invisible. The Man's hair is again a combination of black on the crown and brown on the sides. The eyes are appealing as well. I wonder how he would have looked with eyelashes. If you look long enough, the left eye takes on a life of its own.

The ledge on which he rests his arm is a tease. You want to know what is written on it; alas, you can only see so much and you are welcome to imagine the rest.

Helene Fourment in a Fur Coat

Helene Fourment in a Fur Coat, Peter Paul Rubens

What did Paul Rubens have in mind when he thought of painting Helene such? Surely not the pleasure of a generic observer who might have been more pleased with a traditional rendering of the naked female body; in other words, the standard nude. Instead, Rubens has given this painting such a feeling of intimacy that one feels like an intruder to even look at Helene who is directing a meaningful glance elsewhere.

In writing about the difference between painting nakedness and nudity, John Berger opens a new way of looking at the nude in painting. Is she naked? Or is it another nude? Who is it intended for?

Helene Fourment in a Fur Coat is an 'exceptional painted image of nakedness', says Berger in Ways of Seeing.

Her body confronts us, not as an immediate sight, but as experience - the painter's experience. Why? There are superficial anecdotal reasons: her dishevelled hair, the expression of her eyes directed towards him, the tenderness with which the exaggerated susceptibility of her skin has been painted. But the profound reason is a formal one. Her appearance has been literally re-cast by the painter's subjectivity. Beneath the fur coat she holds across herself, the upper part of her body and her legs can never meet. There is a displacement sideways of about nine inches: her thighs, in order to join on to her hips, are at least nine inches too far to the left. 

Rubens probably did not plan this: the spectator may not consciously notice it. In itself it is unimportant. What matters is what it permits. It permits the body to become impossibly dynamic.

The structure of the naked body looks like a nod to Venus de'Medici says Wikipedia.

Renaissance of sorts

As you would find on the Header, we started this site with a view to make ourselves more acquainted with the different painting schools and painters. Assorting paintings here over the last few years has been immensely fruitful as well as enjoyable. It has not only given us a good fundamental grasp of the history but also enabled us to appreciate and judge art , both the skill and the context.

With that purpose served, it would only be pointless to assort a painting everyday. Instead we propose to spread it out over random days to upload paintings that we find interesting, either the painting itself or its artistic background. We will also share along information in the form a brief missive of why we find it interesting.

Thank you.
 

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Today being the day of 500 years of Sandro Botticelli’s death, I’m kicking off the venture by uploading what could arguably be one of the greatest paintings of renaissance and perhaps of all time. The Birth of Venus.





The Birth of Venus which Botticelli drew from the Venus Medici has become , to use a modern term, gold standard to represent  beauty esp. feminine beauty. It is believed that the Botticelli painted Venus entirely from memory, modelling her after his love interest  Simonetta Vespucci nine years after her death. Simonetta was a great beauty of her times and was married to a nobleman Marco Vespucci. Well, given her beauty it is said that she courted a number of men including Botticelli. However, it isn’t clear if they did have a relationship or an affair. But it is said she had such a tremendous impact on Botticelli that he painted her portraits including Birth of Venus after her death. She died at a young age 22 , suspected of pulmonary Tuberculosis.[1]  He remained unmarried throughout his life and after his death was buried near Simonetta’s grave as per his request. Details, as of any such medieval affairs often tend to be hazy and hence controversial.


[1] I am reminded of John Keats , another young victim of Pulmonary Tuberculosis. He died aged 25  studying medicine . Interestingly Keats has been buried in Rome, Italy where he died.  Quite strangely both Keats and Simonetta - young victims of TB -  were key figures in two important artistic movements in human history , namely, Renaissance and Romanticism.

Figura

Figura, Ismael Nery

Nude and Cactus

One of the famous Tarsila do Amaral paintings - Nude and Cactus. Love the perspective moving proximo-distal on the human nude. The Toe is bigger than the face, yet amazingly aesthetic. A tribute to early 20th century experimentation.

Independence or Death

I must apologize for my patchy contributions to the group here. Hopefully, I should be able to contribute more regularly. I had been thinking about doing a series on South American painters and while was looking about stumbled upon the brazilian painters. I was surprised to see how little we knew about them. Hence the following:

Starting with the well known Independence or Death by Pedro Americo, which depicts the moment of Independence for Brazil from Portugal.

Independence or Death, Pedro Americo

Cristina of Denmark

Cristina of Denmark, 1538, Hans Holbein the Younger

Notes: Apparently Holbein executed this painting in three hours. Cristina was a prospective bride for Henry VIII (read more)

Jane Seymour

Jane Seymour, 1537, Hans Holbein the Younger

Henry VIII in 1540

Portrait of Henry VIII, 1540, Hans Holbein the Younger

Notes: another portrait of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein

Sir Thomas More

Sir Thomas More,1527, Hans Holbein the Younger

Thomas Cromwell

Thomas Cromwell, 1533, Hans Holbein the Younger

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve, 1932, Tamara de Lempicka

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve (Unfinished), 1917-1918, Gustav Klimt

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve, 1597, Peter Paul Rubens

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve, 1570, Titian

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve, 1507, Albrecht Durer

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve, 1533, Lucas Cranach the Elder

The Seamstress

The Seamstress, Thomas Wade

The Shoemaker

The Shoemaker, 1945, Jacob Lawrence

The Milliner

The Milliner, 1881, Édouard Manet

The Dressmaker

The Dressmaker, 1746, François Boucher

At Low Tide

At Low Tide, Edward Poynter

La Bella Raphaela

La Bella Raphaela, Tamara de Lempicka

Between Poses

Between Poses, Stanslaws Penrhyn

La Toilette

La Toilette, Felix Vallotton

Aurora

Aurora, James Bertrand

Hope

Hope, artistName

Female Nude Standing

Female Nude Standing, Pierre Bonnard

Enchantress

Enchantress, Luis Ricardo Falero

Cupidon

Cupidon, William Bouguereau

Repos

Repos, 1939, Cesare Bacchi

A Game of Croquet

A Game of Croquet, 1872, Louise Abbéma

picture courtesy: 1st art gallery

The Card-Players

The Card-Players, 1595, Caravaggio

Notes: Card-Players was a very popular theme and many paintings have used this theme in very interesting ways. Worth doing an entire series on.

The Chess-Players

The Chess-Players, 1876, Thomas Eakins

Skittle-players

Skittle-players,1663-1666, Pieter de Hooch

The Ball-Players

The Ball-Players, 1908, Henri Rousseau

Moonrise over the sea

Moonrise over the sea,1822, Caspar David Friedrich

Mr and Mrs Andrews

Mr and Mrs Andrews, 1748, Thomas Gainsborough

Self-Portrait (Fiesole)

Self-Portrait (Fiesole),1948, Oskar Kokoschka

The Three Graces

The Three Graces, approx 1505, Raphael

Streets of Berlin

Streets of Berlin,1913, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner