The Reading Lesson, by Léon Augustin Lhermitte

Today we conclude our weeklong look at the life and art of Léon Augustin Lhermitte (1844 – 1925), celebrating the 170^th anniversary of his birth. 

Lhermitte’s earliest experience with the arts was copying pictures in popular illustrated magazines and studying the work of other French painters.  His school-teacher father encouraged his work by allowing him to sketch.  As the boy’s talents expanded, his father showed his drawings to Count Walewski, then minister at the École des Beaux-Arts.  Walewski was impressed, and offered the boy a scholarship of 600 francs, permitting him to enroll in the École Impériale de Dessin.  Here he was introduced to a type of study of drawing that was based on memorization, a technique also used by James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903).  In this way he could view a scene, especially a landscape scene, and employ his memories to more fully execute the painting back in his studio. 

Lhermitte took part in both the Exposition Universelle in 1900, where he served as a member of the jury, and, the Exposition des Pastellistes.  In the latter part of his career, Lhermitte moved away from representing the human figure and concentrated more and more on landscape.  Figures in space lost their individual identity, and became part of the larger landscape composition.  At the same time, though, he also increased his focus on images of mother and child, as seen in today’s picture.

In his older age, Lhermitte stayed close to his home and executed several landscape pastels based on the banks of the Marne, which was near his studio, and other landscapes near his home.  He was decorated with several honors from across Europe, such as the Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael in Germany, and his works were regularly acquired by the state after initial exhibition.  His life and career ended on July 28, 1925 in Paris.  His reputation would wane considerably, but Lhermitte gained new cultural currency in the 1990s, when he was reappraised by an exposition at the Musée d’Orsay.

Here, Lhermitte moves away from the primacy of the landscape and back to the human scale.  With The Reading Lesson, Lhermitte celebrates simple motherhood and even simpler pleasures.  The centrality of the mother as wellspring of a food, support, education and emotion succor was a theme to which he would return regularly.  Did Lhermitte miss his mother… or, perhaps, was his mother absent, and he missed what he never knew?  I have not been able to discover the answer to this question … but many artists (be they writers or painters or musicians) who focus on an idealized past, often do so because they feel as if they had missed some vital emotional connection in early life.  It’s possible that, to Lhermitte, The Reading Lesson is a fantasy painting.

Most critics agree that Lhermitte’s oil paintings are not as aesthetically pleasing as his drawings, and The Reading Lesson is a case in point.

Here, as with his pastel work, Lhermitte renders details vague with a few, loose brushstrokes.  He dapples the hair of the little girl and the bangs of the mother with white to emphasize the golden light which fills the background sky, and washes out the distant hill, as well. 

Also, it seems that Lhermitte’s formidable sense of composition plays him false here.   In other drawings we have seen, the composition is such that it leads the eye around the canvas, taking in the human figures and landscape, alike.  Here, Lhermitte plants his central figures dead-center, and provides no tension for the eye.  It is a very static composition.

For all of its sweetness, I am not nearly as enamored of this painting as I was of the drawings seen earlier this week.  It seems too soft, too diffuse, as if Lhermitte was using a visual shorthand to inspire our emotional response.  In other drawings, the fact that the figures were vague and indistinct added to the mystery of their actions and interactions.  That same indistinctness is markedly unsuccessful when the intention of the picture and the emotions involved are more concrete and precise.  It is almost as if his loose style works well with ambiguity, but descends into disposable sentiment when taking a more defined direction. 

Finally, the two figures lack the humanity-in-all-its-flaws quality of the three drawings we looked at.  These are idealized figures, not actual peasants or laborers.  When a painting would not be out of place on a Hallmark card, we must question its overall success.

A Playful Moment, by Gustave Leonard de Jonghe

We had so much fun last week looking at a picture by Gustave Leonard de Jonghe (1829 - 1893), that we could not help but revisit him.  De Jongh was a painter and watercolorist of figures and genre scenes. He started his artistic training with his father, Jean-Baptist de Jonghe. After his parents died, the young de Jongh was granted a small pension by the Corporation of Curtrai to aid him in his study of art. He studied under François-Jean Navez at the Academy of Brussels, though his painting style was most strongly influenced by his friend, and fellow Belgian painter, Louis Gallait, who also advised de Jongh on many of his career decisions. Although de Jongh started his career painting historical and sacred subject matter, he is most famous for his genre paintings with bourgeois themes and rich materials. In 1855, he became in the direct successor of the renowned Belgian painter, Alfred Stevens, in Paris. He exhibited at the Royal Academy with his painting, The Birthday Wishes, in 1875.

Today’s picture features another society lady interacting with her pet.  But whereas L’admiratrice du Japon involved a moment of inter-species tension, today we simply have cats being cats.

Our society lady is in an opulent room treated with green leather, perhaps as a nod to Whistler and his famous Peacock Room.  Japanese screens, a vase and an urn help to makeup the décor, indicating again that our gentle aesthete is current with the fin de siècle fad for Japanese bric-a-brac.  The green upholstered chair behind the book table (stacked with complimentarily-colored red leather volumes) and the gilt embossing on the wall to compliment the screen unify the color scheme. 

The cat, playing with the pendulous folds of the lady’s dress, is elegantly and casually rendered.  The folds of the lady’s dress are carefully crafted without being fussy – and readers should remember that mastering the folds of drapery or clothing were something that the 19^th Century Masters drew and re-drew in order to master their form.

The fabric of her dress – alternately satiny and velvety – has a wonderfully tactile quality.  And the picture is, perhaps, ever so slightly … naughty.  Our lady lifts her skirt while playing with her cat, exposing the gauzy whiteness of her petticoats.

Marvel, if you will, for a moment on de Jonghe’s mastery of drawing.  The intricate leg of the table, the leaves of the wall sconce, the graceful curve of the woman’s body, the almost casual brilliance of her hands --this is a control drawing that has been long missing from most of our contemporary artists.

More de Jonghe tomorrow!

The Japanese Fan, by Gustave Leonard De Jonghe (c.1865)

Good heavens, I love this picture.  In the original French, the title for this painting is L’admiratrice du Japon; translated into English, the title The Japanese Fan is a double pun, making reference to the fan on the floor, and the woman herself.

It was painted by Gustave Leonard de Jonghe, who was born on February 4, 1829 in Courtrai, Belgium. He was a painter of figures and genre scenes, working in both oils and watercolors.  De Jonghe was the son of Jan Baptiste de Jonghe, himself a talented artist and Gustave’s first teacher.  (How often have we come across artists initially trained by their fathers?)  Afterwards, Gustave continued his artistic studies with the acclaimed master teachers and artists, Louis Gallant and Francois Josef Navez (1787 – 1869). Gustave would also study under the famed Belgian artist, Alfred Stevens (1828-1906).

De Jonghe began working in Paris and beginning in1850, exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon and continued to do so throughout his career. The Paris Salon awarded him with a third place medal in 1863 and, that same year, he received a medal in Amsterdam.  Honors increased in 1864, when Belgian King named him Chevalier de l’Ordre de Leopold.

In 1882, de Jonghe suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and returned to Brussels. In 1884, he moved to Antwerp, where he would die in January 1893.  Most of his work now rests in private collections, though several significant paintings can be found at the Musee d’Orsay, Paris, and The Hermitage, St Petersburg, Russia.

In 1855, Gustave de Jonghe moved from Belgium to Paris and exhibited regularly in the Salon for the next thirty years.  This period was the dawn of the Aesthetic Movement, which celebrated the beauty and delicacy of blue and white china, and the subtle coloration and grace found in an idealized view of Japanese living.  The Japanese and blue and white china craze would later enthrall such diverse figures as James Whistler (1834-1903), Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and de Jonghe’s own teacher, Alfred Stevens.  Collecting china and Japanese clothing and kimonos became a mania in major European cities, and often served as shorthand for refinement and delicacy of taste.  (Catalogs or picture books of Japanese scenes lie at our subject’s feet.)

The woman in the picture is obviously a fan of all things Japanese; and is the focus of the painting.  The Japanese fan, though, which may also be the point of the title, is simply an object on the floor.  The composition centers on the confrontation between the bird and the young woman which has, it appears, caused chaos in the room.  It is uncertain whether the woman is disciplining the cockatoo or the bird is threatening her.  To underscore the whimsy of the piece, the violent scene on the Japanese screen behind her reinforces the impression of a conflict between the two antagonists.

The wit of the picture is matched by de Jonghe’s masterful execution and composition.  Though the Japanese influence would later mean much to the Impressionists, de Jonghe flawlessly delineates kimono, dresser, china and screen.   Also precise is the subject’s expression, easily recognizable to any pet owner, just wait until I get my hands on you….

A Pack Train, by Frederic Remington

We close our weeklong look at Frederic Remington (1861-1909) with another of his nocturnes, A Pack Train, painted in 1909 (about 36x27). 

To pick up Remington’s story, his success as a Western painter made him the darling of Western Army officers fighting in the Indian Wars.  He was often travelling with them, usually with General Nelson Miles.  Remington touted the “heroism” of the military after the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, in South Dakota, where 150 Sioux, mostly women and children, were murdered by the U.S. Army. 

Remington continued on his frequent trips around the U.S. and Mexico, painting and writing books and articles on the West.  He wooed many celebrities and politicians – forging an important friendship with Theodore Roosevelt, for instance – but he was never able to break into the entrenched artistic establishment.  Partly this was because of his endless self-publicizing (which, for an interesting comparison, was also one of the problems with Whistler), and partly because he was viewed as a singularly difficult man (which, for an interesting comparison, was also one of the problems with most of the artists covered in The Jade Sphinx).

Remington died in 1909, the day after Christmas, following an emergency appendectomy that led to peritonitis.  It was not helped by the fact that he weighed in the neighborhood of 300 pounds and had lived a very high life.

A Pack Train is another attempt by Remington to paint nighttime scenes.  He does this by using a largely viridian palette, and contrasting larger and darker shades to make up his figures.  There is no crystal-clear delineation of the mules, packs or rider, but the overall impression is unmistakable.  Remington also masterfully captures the quality of shadows cast by moonlight – Remington’s shadows are never black, brown or gray, but shades of blue, green or purple.  He painted with both his brain and his optic nerve.

Two things are going on with this picture.  First off, the sense of how alone this man is.  The landscape around his is enormous and falls back to great distances of emptiness.  However, they sky above, also immense, is filled with stars and other points of light – life also separated by incalculable distances.

Also there is the sense of menace so often found in Remington’s work.  Though there is no clear danger depicted, the wary turn of the cowboy’s head and the sense of isolation and vulnerability in the dark is overwhelming.  Whether delivering supplies or transporting everything he owns personally, no one looking at the pictures wishes he was the driver.  Even the donkeys seem to be beaten down by care or worry.  It’s a remarkably emotional picture executed in a deceptively simple manner.

Whistler on Art

Originally I had planned to look at various posters selling the latest Hollywood wares, but after 10 minutes of this exercise I came away so despondent that I opted for something a little more interesting.  Look for our take on film advertising at a future date.

On my night table is Whistler on Art, a compilation of selected letters and writings edited by Nigel Thorp.  It makes for interesting reading.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903) is one of the most fascinating figures in the history of art – and his work and influence remain polarizing to this day.  Whistler’s work is perhaps best seen as the bridge between the Academic tradition and Modernism.  Though the Impressionists presented a radical break from established artistic tradition, Whistler was never really a member of their order, nor did he always approve of the excesses of the Impressionists.  Whistler’s influence was long-lasting and deeply felt by painters as diverse as Henry Ossawa Tanner, William Merritt Chase and John Singer Sargent.

But more than his technique and coloration, perhaps his longest-lasting contribution was to the philosophy of art.  Whistler devoutly believed that a picture should always be removed from its narrative, and be seen purely as an arrangement of color, line and mood.  He thought painting should aspire to the quality of music – just as we know music is sad when we hear a funeral dirge without knowing that it is a funeral dirge, and pictures should inspire certain moods and impressions without the viewer knowing any ‘backstory.’  It is no surprise that he used musical terms for many of his pictures, including Nocturne, Arrangement and Symphony

.

This, I believe, is all well and good in the latter years of the Victorian era when Enlightenment values and a Humanist tradition prevailed.  However it was Whistler’s views, I think, that opened the door to the excesses of Modernism and the eventual degradation of art.  Surely, the thinking goes, if a picture is any arrangement of color, then mere squares, dots or smears of color are art, as well?  Without Whistler there could be no Damien Hirst, or Tracey Emin.  As Whistler wrote, Art should be independent of all claptrap – should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye and ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it, and that is why I insist on calling my works “arrangements” and “harmonies.”

And that, I believe, was the beginning of the end.  I’m sure if Whistler – a conscientious and industrious if sometimes technique-challenged painter – could resurrect himself from eternity, he would be appalled at how his ideas have been applied to sharks in formaldehyde, urinals, cow effluvia and floor sweepings.  In fact, the great man may have had to rethink his entire philosophy.

Like many who believed in Art for Art’s Sake, what Whistler really argued was that beauty was paramount, more so than moralizing or instruction.  Beauty is at the core of Art for Art’s Sake.  Later painters and philosophers, however, have taken the Art of Art’s Sake credo to mean that art is anything we wish it to be.  It is not.

Reading Whistler on Art is an at-times heart breaking experience.  Letters from his earliest youth show a sweet boy, in love with art and devoted to his family.  Even through his mid-twenties, Whistler seems like a gentle-minded man.  But something happened to his temperament, and the once-youthful sweetness drowned in bile, bellicosity and bitterness.  He became an argumentative, blustery and sometimes clownish figure, always in some kind of contretemps with whatever ‘establishment’ he felt slighted him at that moment.  Perhaps Whistler’s greatest failing is that he never left his emotional adolescence.  It was a template that would be slavishly copied by many Twentieth Century artists.

Here are some pearls to be found in Whistler on Art:  Take the picture of my mother, exhibited at the Royal Academy as an Arrangement in Grey and Black.  Now that is what it is.  To me it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of the portrait?

The imitator is a poor kind of creature.  If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer.  It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features; in arrangement of colours to treat a flower as his key, not as his model.

This is now understood indifferently well – at least by dressmakers.  In every costume you see attention is paid to the key-note of colour which runs through the composition, as the chant of the Anabaptists through the Prophete, or the Huguenots’ hymn in the opera of that name.

Equally fine, though I disagree with the sentiment, is: The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter – perfect in its bud as in its bloom – with no reason to explain its presence – no mission to fulfill – a joy to the artist – a delusion to the philanthropist – a puzzle to the botanist – an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.

Interested readers can find some truly champion Whistlers in the Frick Collection in New York, as well as the National Gallery in Washington, DC.

The Beguiling of Merlin by Edward Burne-Jones

I had planned on posting some rather melancholy thoughts on our culture’s endangered future, but thought instead to end the week on a more hopeful note.  (Expect dire things next week!)  So, instead, let’s close the last week before the unofficial start of summer with this marvelous picture, the Beguiling of Merlin, by Pre-Raphaelite master Edward Burne-Jones, painted between 1872 and 1877.

With one-hundred-plus years of distance between us and our Victorian betters, it is easy to dismiss them as seemingly antiquated, stuffy or (cardinal sin of our age!) somehow repressed.  Actually, these misconceptions have little to do with the reality of Victoria’s age and her people.

The Victorians were actually an extremely modern people: dedicated to exploration, adventure, technology, experimentation and the scientific method.  (It is no mistake that detective fiction found its greatest expression in Sherlock Holmes, a romanticist’s view of the perfect scientific reasoner.)  However – and here is the great paradox – there was also a deep and vibrant strain of nostalgia to be found in the Victorians, and this sentiment colored their art and culture.

Nostalgia has a rather bad name today; it is associated with backwards thinking, slowed development or an escape from reality.  Disdain for nostalgia has recently given rise to the most loathsome locution in the modern lexicon of slang: “old timey.”  This is a meaningless phrase that often leaves your correspondent reaching for the nearest weapon (or heaviest dictionary) – and its practice should not be encouraged.

For the Victorians, nostalgia was not a mere wistfulness for the past; rather, it became a type of romanticism.  By imagining (or re-imagining) a better, greater past, the Victorians found a way of connecting with that best part of themselves, and also creating a template by which to measure future accomplishments.  This wasn’t an escape from reality as much as a redefinition of it – becoming a sort of secular religion that defined them as a people.  Whether it was an idealization of the English countryside or veneration for the age of Wordsworth (or Johnson), the Victorians connected with the imagined shades of their forebears and listened to their lessons.

One of the most persistent strains of Victorian nostalgia was for the great age of King Arthur.  Arthurian romance was the theme of their great poets, novelists, and, of course, painters.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (itself a sort of extended exercise in self-improving nostalgia) was greatly drawn to the myth of Arthur.  The Beguiling of Merlin is taken from one of the key moments in the legend.  Merlin, Arthur’s conscience and advisor, is trapped by Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, within the confines of a great hawthorn bush.  Nimue reads from her book of spells – and the great wizard will be imprisoned for all time, never able again to aid the great English king.

The Beguiling of Merlin is a cautionary tale: Merlin is consumed with lust for Nimue, but she refuses to become his lover until he teachers her the secrets of sorcery.  Once he has done so, she uses her new-found powers against him and, in the process, starts a cycle of events that will destroy Camelot.  The power of Victoria’s empire – which controlled a great deal of the world and its resources and people – would never be used against the powerless for base reasons without dire consequences.  How effectively the Victorians abided by this lesson is open to debate.

Artist Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) was primarily a watercolorist before turning to oils.  His lover was Maria Zambaco (1843-1914), who was a favorite model of the Pre-Raphaelites and whose image can be found in many great pictures, including works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and James Whistler.

Let’s take a moment to savor this magnificent picture.  The length of the picture is, to my eye, essential to its success, because it is used to delineate both the strength of Nimue and the languor of Merlin.  Nimue’s body twists to glance at Merlin, and her body language is all carless mastery and undisguised contempt.  Indeed, she seems about to walk away, book of spells in her hand, as if the great wizard offered no challenge at all.  Indeed, it is only in her face that Nimue holds a hint of sympathy – her face shows all the regret that her body cannot express.  Oceans of heartache and unnecessary tragedy can be found in her delicate profile.

Merlin lies in the hawthorn, powerless.  His arms lay limply at his side, his fingers lank and uncontrolled.  His face, too, seems affected by the paralysis of Nimue’s enchantment, but look at his eyes.  He looks at Nimue with all the hurt of betrayal, all the disappointment of failed love.  Those eyes, which can see visions of the future, know that he will be imprisoned there, and his own folly the cause of nationwide catastrophe.

The drapery of the figures is magnificent – look at how Burne-Jones uses Nimue’s robes to capture the movement of her legs.  The robe twists at the waist, with her body, and the fingers holding the book are delicate and beautifully rendered. 

Delicate, too, are Merlin’s feet, which are drawn with great sensitivity.  They are off the ground – indeed, Merlin will never meaningfully connect with this earth again.  The gray of his hair draws attention to the white of his haunting eyes – and cups the V-shaped shadow in his neck, framing his face. 

About the whole picture is a supreme delicacy of touch, a refinement of purpose that is mesmerizing.  As usual, Burne-Jones’ sense of color is astonishing.  The hawthorn is a pinkish, bluish white – but one never feels springtime, only death.  Nimue’s enchanted hawthorn may be the most beautiful coffin ever depicted in western art. 

Let’s share, for a moment, the nostalgic urge of the Victorians.  Think, for a moment, of the great wizard still in some great wooded vastness of England, repentant still for his many wrongs, but also still aware of the great gifts he could bestow upon his people.  Perhaps the magic of Nimue is not for eternity, and another Arthur will return to us with Merlin in tow, guided by wisdom, honesty and a sense of justice.

Part I -- Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde

For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it.  – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

I will break from tradition somewhat with this post, and insert an annoying autobiographical passage.

I started reading detective and gothic fiction of the Victorian era when I was a boy.  It was almost as if a world opened before me – a world of the mind and of the senses.

Armed with these twin passions, I also greatly enjoyed the pop culture transformations of them, including (or, perhaps, especially) the series of films based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe starring Vincent Price.  I became a card-carrying Vincent Price devotee.

So, imagine my delight when, in 1979, Price came to New York to star in the Broadway production of John Gay’s Diversions and Delights.  Diversions is a one-man show that takes as its conceit Oscar Wilde lecturing a Parisian audience near the end of his life.  The Broadway run did not last long, but it rapidly moved off-Broadway, where it settled at the Roundabout Theater (then on West 23^rd Street) for an extended stay.

Diversions and Delights is a remarkable work.  Culled largely from Wilde’s own writings, it also incorporates bits of later-written biographies and much of Gay’s own keen dramatic sense.  I believe that only two plays about Wilde have really captured him to some extent: Diversions and Moises Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde.

I initially went first to see Price, but returned again and again for Wilde.  I asked the management of the Roundabout if I could work as an usher at the theater in exchange for seeing the show every night, and I managed see Price as Wilde some 30-odd times.  It was a revelation to me.

Once the show was over, I immediately procured a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and it became my golden book – I read it countless times after first buying it, so much so that passages of it are now forever locked in my memory.  It was the beginning of a life-long love affair with Oscar Wilde.

In Dorian Gray, Wilde writes of a book that poisoned Dorian – a heavily perfumed volume that opened to him wonderful sins disguised with incomparable beauty.  I was indeed luckier than Wilde’s fantastic hero – instead of being poisoned by a book, I was saved by one.  London during the Yellow Nineties and fin de siècle Europe became for me an alternate world where I lived another, perhaps more intense, life.  Just as Renaissance Italy became for Wilde and his mentor, Walter Pater, more of a state of mind than an historical period, the world of the aesthetes became a cornerstone of my philosophical compass.

Aside from the dramatic and fantastic events of Wilde’s life, I became deeply enamored of the philosophy of aestheticism, and looked too at others who explored the same creed.  I became interested in Walter Pater, John Ruskin, James Whistler, Aubrey Beardsley, Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Théophile Gautier.

But more than aestheticism and a fascination with the Victorian era, I was deeply moved and beglamoured by Wilde himself.  And the thing that most fascinated me was that he was a figure at times fully-defined, and at others horrifyingly indistinct.  And that is because, I believe, that Wilde the man was too multiform and protean.  He embodied the Renaissance ideal of mastery of many types of mind and genius.  Even after reading Wilde for more than 30 years, I find it remarkable that the man who wrote the witty drawing-room comedy The Importance of Being Earnest is also the man who wrote the strangely musical, Symbolist Salome.  I have difficulty reconciling that the keen mind who deduced the possibility of Willie Hughes with the brain responsible for The Selfish Giant; and that the pen responsible for The Mind of Man Under Socialism is the same that wrote The Harlot’s House.  And is it possible that the bare, blunt and deeply affecting lines of The Ballad of Reading Goal could be written by the same man who wrote the perfumed and sensual Picture of Dorian Gray?

In the contemporary public mind, we have cut Wilde down to our own smaller-size.  We do not have the proper aspect ratio of the whole, multi-talented man.  We think of Wilde the Gay Martyr, or Wilde the Sensualist.  But these are only parts of the picture – if indeed they make up any significant proportion of the man at all.  To really know Wilde, we must know Wilde the gifted classics scholar and intellectual; Wilde the poet and Wilde the playwright; Wilde the novelist and Wilde the political thinker.  We have to consider Wilde’s upbringing and his deep appreciation of Irish folklore before knowing Wilde the fantasist.  We must know Hellenism and the works of Pater, Ruskin, Symonds and Mahaffy before we can fully understand Wilde the aesthete and dandy.  Aside from his success as a writer, the list of his accomplishments in so brief a life are immense, staggering: the finest talker and raconteur of his age, lecturer and arts advocate, moralist and social critic.  One of the most fascinating images in my mind’s eye is the thought of Oscar lecturing the denizens of the Old West about Cellini’s place in the history of art – it’s too delicious.  And to top it off, his was one of the most fascinating personalities of an age crammed with remarkable figures.  In his bravery and insouciance, his remarkable panache and élan, Wilde was also a swashbuckler without a sword, a courtier who became a type of personality unto himself.

Perhaps the only constant in Wilde’s life was his deep an abiding aestheticism; his passionate, deeply-ingrained and unending devotion to Art.  An appreciation of the arts (and the art of life) was encoded in Wilde’s DNA, it was impossible for him to engage in the world in any other way.  He saw his personal experience (both his joys and his tragedies) through the prism of art, and the world around him either reflected the canons of art, or fell disappointingly short.  There are many disparate facets of Wilde the man to explore, but if they are not seen through the green-tinted glasses of an aesthete, we do not see them as they really were.  It was the filter through which his protean intellect travelled, and the fundamental core of his philosophy and personal vision.

It is not impossible to believe that Wilde courted, to some degree, his own ruin and disgrace because it was the ending most dictated by satisfying dramaturgy.  That every epoch of his life, from his meteoric rise to his exile where he roamed Europe under the name Sebastian Melmoth, was in some way performance art, that he lived strictly for dramatic, aesthetic effect.

Tomorrow we finish our review of Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde

Cave of the Storm Nymphs by Edward John Poynter

With many of my readers still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Irene, I thought we might look at some of the nymphs and troublemakers responsible.  (Your correspondent, a New Yorker, did not emerge unscathed – a neighboring tree toppled into our yard, turning our deck and trellis into so many toothpicks.)

Sir Edward John Poynter (1836-1919) was an English painter and president of the Royal Academy.  Though English, he was born in Paris and left school early because of poor health.  He spent winters in Madeira and Rome, where he met the great English master Frederick Leighton in 1853.  So impressed was young Poynter by Leighton that he studied art upon returning to London before going to Paris to study with classicist painter Charles Gleyre.  (His classmates included James McNeill Whistler and George du Maurier, who would later record the Paris art world in his novel, Trilby, which also introduced the character Svengali.)

Poynter married society beauty Agnes MacDonald in 1866 and they had three children. Her sister Georgiana married artist Edward Burne-Jones; her sister Alice was the mother of writer Rudyard Kipling and her sister Louisa was the mother of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.  An illustrious family, indeed.

Poynter was more than an artist; he was also a celebrated teacher.  He was the first Slade Professor at University College, London, and principal of the National Art Training School.  He entered the Royal Academy in 1876, and also received a knighthood that year.

Like many artists of great talent and ambition, Poynter was enamored of large, historical canvases.  Many of his pictures depict the ancient world or touch upon the mythic qualities of the sea.  Many of his large pictures encompass the white-capped wastes of endless ocean, or take place in the underground grottos of mythic creatures.  His output declined in quantity dramatically with his acceptance into the Academy, where Poynter proved to be an able administrator.  He was a staunch advocate of high artistic standards, and lived to see the beginnings of a Modernism that would alienate much of art from the human condition for another 100 years. 

Cave of the Storm Nymphs was painted in 1903.  It is in many ways a remarkable picture.  The triangular composition ensures the dynamism of the three splendidly rendered figures.  The nymphs are in varying stages of action: setting aside a seashell harp, carelessly throwing away golden coins and lying luxuriously amid ship plunder.  The golden red hair of the top two figures is blown by wind and spray, the hair of the lower figure spreads wantonly about her head and purloined fabric.  The sculptural monumentality of the women is underscored by a sensitive rendering of anatomy.

The sand and cave wall of their retreat are thick with water – in fact, you can feel the cool dampness and moisture just looking at the painting.  Poynter uses few warm colors to enliven his work – the movement of the central figures and storm-tossed ship provide the vitality missing in his coloration.  The tempestuous green sea blows fiercely behind them, a ship reaching upwards before it is covered by the greedy, unforgiving waves.

It is clear here that the sea nymphs care little for the treasure, though they disport themselves around it so languidly.  No, these nymphs are sirens, luring seamen to horrible deaths as a form of amusement and diversion.

Poynter’s mastery of color and light are stunning.  Though the source of light is the raging storm without, it illuminates the contours of the nymphs within.  Rather than plunge the figures in darkness, it serves to illustrate their voluptuous contours.  The light also makes the shell-harp incandescent, the siren’s beacon for unwary sailors.  The hair of the central nymph seems to glow with the light; indeed, the hair of the central figure, and that of the nymph above, seems almost unhampered by gravity, as if they were still under water.

Cave of the Storm Nymphs makes us believe in an invisible world.  It is a picture cool and calculating, painted by a master at the top of his form. 

"Careless of wreck or ruin, still they sing
Their light songs to the listening ocean caves,
And wreathe their dainty limbs, and idly fling
The costly tribute of the cruel waves.
Faire as their mother-foam, and all as cold,
Untouched alike by pity, love or hate;
Without a thought for scattered pearl or gold,
And neither laugh nor tear for human fate."

In the Studio by Alfred Stevens

Though seldom considered today (thanks, mainly, to our intense interest in ‘artists’ like Jackson Pollack and David Hockney), Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens (1823 – 1906) painted too many magnificent pictures to be swept aside by the tide of contemporary art ‘criticism.’

Stevens was born in Brussels.  Both his older brother and son were painters, and another brother an art dealer and critic.  He came from talented parents – his father was something of a celebrated collector in his own right, and his mother ran the Café de l'Amitié in Brussels, a meeting place for politicians, writers, and artists.

Like many artists of the time, Stevens studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he mixed with several Neo-Classical painters, and in 1843 he went to Paris where he studies at the École des Beaux-Arts.  He started to show his own work in 1851, and he quickly became a medalist at the Paris Salon. 

Stevens soon became known for his masterful pictures of women in contemporary dress. He became a glittering part of the Paris social scene, befriending such worthies as Alexandre Dumas, Théophile Gautier, and Eugène Delacroix (who was a witness at Stevens’ wedding to socialite Marie Blanc).

During the Franco-Prussian War, Stevens fought for the French before returning to Belgium with his wife and family before the Paris Commune.  They returned to Paris after the war and he continued to win acclaim and commissions.  However, Stevens did not successfully manage his income, and after outliving most of his friends and family, died alone in a Paris hotel.

In the Studio is a remarkable picture for a variety of reasons.  Socially, it is quite interesting for a painting of the period to depict female artists.  Though there were certainly women painters at the time, they were, at best, marginal figures.  But also look at the easy composition: the painter stands aside her easel, palette in hand, listening in a languid attitude.  The studio visitor, obviously a lady of substance, leans forward in concentration and engagement.  The model, on the other end of the room (and of the social spectrum) sits isolated on the couch, splendid in her ornate dressing gown (which, no doubt, belongs to the artist).  Despite her classical beauty, the face seems, in repose, sullen and care-worn.  She is indeed a woman apart.

The studio itself is rich with the props and details often found in studios of this era – and is particularly rich in bits of Orientalia, including fans and a golden Japanese screen.  Stevens was a key figure in creating an interest in Japanese art, which was exploited by many artists of the era, including Whistler.  This wonderful picture is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and my readers are urged to visit it.

Below, to provide an additional taste of Steven’s Oriental oeuvre, here is his delightful La Parisienne japonaise.

Atkinson Grimshaw’s November Moonlight

One of the sadder side effects of the way art history is written is that great masters of light and color are under-appreciated when critical rhetoric moves in a different direction.  Case in point: John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893).

Grimshaw’s story is an interesting one.  Born in Leeds to a working class family (his father was a policeman), Grimshaw first found employment as a railway clerk.  However, he dreamed of becoming an artist, a choice that did not sit well with his father.  Grimshaw did have a London studio for a brief time, but, mostly, he recorded life in Northern England and parts of Scotland.  He bought Knostrop Hall on the outskirts of Leeds and was a prolific painter until his early death from cancer in 1893.  Four of his children would themselves become painters.  (A well-read man, Grimshaw named all of his children after characters in Tennyson poems.)

Though Grimshaw painted many types of pictures (portraits, ‘society’ pictures and even the odd fairy painting), it is his landscape work examining different types of light and weather that best exemplified his talents.  Grimshaw had a genius for weather, and his use of light allowed him to capture both mood and appearance in his landscapes.  He had a unique sense of twilight, of moonlight, of fog and rain – where lesser painters would create mud, his brush left limpid delineations of light and tone.

Grimshaw lived and worked during an interesting time in art history.  His contemporaries included, for example, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.  Grimshaw was not part of an avant-garde, had no particular or dramatic ‘story’ of his life, and he created little controversy.  Art history moved on without him – a great mistake even without the benefit of hindsight.  Now that representational painting and artistic expertise are having their own renaissance, Grimshaw once again is attracting notoriety.  A new retrospective exhibit called Atkinson Grimshaw – Painter of Moonlight is running from 16 April 2011 to 4 September 2011 at Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate.

Let’s close the week with a look at Grimshaw’s November Moonlight.  The cold, grayish-blue of the moonlight illuminates this streetscape.  The rutted, damp road reflects this cold light, and the dead trees stand out in dramatic relief.  The cart rider is alone, which underscores the unforgiving nature of the season.  Everything about this picture says late autumn, chilly air and the onset of winter.  However, Grimshaw brings a vital element of life by employing yellowish light to the parlor windows, creating a sense of warmth, of hearth and of refuge.  The stone wall, however, which is clearly illuminated by the cold moon, separates our rider from the home – he is alone, with only the cold moonlight for company.

This is a type of painting seldom done today, filled with quiet mastery, human connection to landscape and sublime emotion.  We could do much worse than reconsidering John Atkinson Grimshaw.

Tissot’s Passing Storm

Since we were looking at moon and candle light yesterday, I thought we might move on to that interesting light that occurs just before a storm breaks.

A Passing Storm was painted by James Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836-1902).  He was a French painter who spent much of his life in Britain.  Like many artists of his generation he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, exhibiting in the Paris Salon.  Like James Abbott McNeill Whistler (who was also a friend), Tissot became enamored of Japanese objects and costumes, and incorporated them for some time into his work.  (When Degas painted his portrait of Tissot, he depicted him near a Japanese screen.)

Tissot left France following the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, settling in London.  His painting evolved further, and Tissot spent the next several years depicting beautifully dressed society women. 

Though never really an Impressionist (his brushwork and drawing ability were too precise for that categorization), Tissot had many ties to the Impressionist community.  He stayed in London until 1882 when his lover, Mrs. Kathleen Newton, died of consumption.

Like many people who lose a loved-one, Tissot reacted by becoming more interested in faith.  He spent much of the remainder of his career painting religious pictures – one of which, What Christ Saw From the Cross, is a masterpiece of foreshortening.  However, I have never cultivated a taste for his religious work: like many born-agains, Tissot’s religious vision is cloudy and somewhat ossified.

Tissot painted several pictures where the action takes place in front of windows.  It was his signature device, and a very effective one, too, as his control of light was remarkable.  (Looking at many of these pictures at once the viewer can see the same windows, and sometimes the same costumes on the models, used to differing effects.)

A Passing Storm was painted around 1876.  The title is a clever joke on Tissot’s part: in the background, storm clouds gather while in the foreground, young lovers have obviously just quarreled.

Let’s look at the figures first.  The man in the painting stands on the terrace separated from his lover, brooding.  (One might say that his face has clouded over.)  She lies inside on the divan and though her body assumes the attitude of one who has recently been upset, look at her face.  She clearly is enjoying her power to manipulate him – in fact, she is happy to let him stew.

But of particular interest is that special brown-gray quality light has just before a storm.  There are patches of bright, cool light cutting through darker, muddier illumination.   Tissot manages to capture the quality of “glare” from the water, as a result of moisture in the air, and one can almost feel the cool rain about to come.  Think of the onset of storms you have witnessed yourself, and remember that quality of light.  Has not Tissot managed to capture it with is brush?

Tissot managed to create a picture that not only dazzles with his control of light and color, but matches the exterior atmosphere with the emotions of his subjects.  We have much to learn from him.