Jacques-Laurent Agasse - Two Leopards Playing

 Two Leopards Playing - 1808

Private Collection

For popular amusement in the early nineteenth century, an array of wild beasts – from tigers to boa constrictors – was exhibited at Exeter Change, in London, a building on the north side of the Strand with an arcade where animals were kept in small cages and displayed to the curious public for educational purposes. The menagerie became a creative place where artists such as Swiss-born Jacques-Laurent Agasse (1767-1849) and poets such as Wordsworth and Byron visited frequently in order to get inspiration for their paintings and poems.

Exeter Change - 1820 - Londo

Exeter Change presented a unique and invaluable opportunity for Agasse, who had trained in dissection and veterinary science, to intimately observe animals in motion. “Two leopards playing” depicts the beasts languid movement, but also sympathecally represents the discomfort of their living conditions, confined to small cages and without any possibility of freely movements. For Agasse the advantages of being near the cage ' bars allowed him to demonstrates his evocative skills and a wonderful look at nature.

The two leopards appear as if captured in the middle of an intimate play. The lying female leopard’s left leg arched, suggestively against the dominant male’s belly, tells us that she is not dead or even defeated – she is still in charge of the game. The contrast between the animals’ feral flirtation and the indignity of captivity gives the painting its potent emotional charge. Agasse illustrates these tentions with characteristic physical accuracy and emotive sensitivity. Agasse’s empathy for animals and ability to represent their physical and psychological states made him renowed in Victorian England as the creator of some of the nineteenth century’s most exquisite animal studies.

Source: Wikipedia, Sara White Wilson

Sandro Botticelli - Primavera

Primavera - 1477-82

Galleria degli Uffizi - Florence - Italy

After starting his professional life as a training goldsmith Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) became apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-69). Lippi had developed a style of portraying expressive interactions between figures, and employing highly decorative detailing inherited from the late Gothic period, when art became more expressive and the bridge between Middle Age Art and Renaissance was being built. Botticelli was also influenced by Antonio Pollaiolo (1432-98), whose muscular modeling announced a new approach to figurative work, accounting for human anatomy and proportion. Botticelli painted on many scales, and his delicate evocations of landscape and figuration ensure his place as one of the most beloved painters of all time.
Some scholars have argued that his painting is an example of Botticelli’s interest in Neoplatonism – a blending of pagan and Christian identities which was raised by the hand of Cosimo de Medici in Florence, after rescuing The Platonic texts following the fall of Constantinople and its conquest by the Otomane Empire. The texts were on the basis of the Florence Platonic Academy founded by the Medici and lead by Marsilio Ficino.

La Primavera (Spring) celebrates the Florantine Renaissance - a cultural, political and economic rebirth of the Republic. The painting was originally hung in the summerhouse of the Medici family as a companion piece to the Birth of Venus. In La Primavera, Botticelli has created a  lively scene that included, from left to right, the mythological figures of Mercury; the Three Graces; Venus, goddess of love; the nymph Chloris; Flora, goddess of fecundity; and the west wind Zephyr. Above them, Cupid, the god of erotic love, aims his dart at the Three Graces.

They seem to be performing the slowest of dances in a garden full of flowers touching the ground with only the tips of their toes and breathing a spirit of serenity in the midst of nature in all her majesty. All of them seem too light to be real and too elegant to have had to learn their dance steps. All of them look perfect far away from the human vices and from the turbulent relationships which affect humans. That's why they are Gods and Graces, and Nymphs and we feel so far away from their perfection that we can only enjoy the opportunity to attend this uplifting performance.

In the center, Venus lifts up her hand as if she was giving us a sign, although the gesture may not be directed at us, after all. If we look carefully, Venus, the goddess of love,  is the only figure which is motionless and yet her head is above all. The painting was said to be ordered either to celebrate platonic love, between Giuliano de Medici and Simoneta Vespucci, or as a wedding gift for Lourenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici, who married in 1482. Maybe that's why Spring, the tall young woman on the right, with fair hair and a dress spangled with flowers, whose movement with her hands suggest she is sowing seeds, appears as a renovation and the advent of a new season. Around Venus serenity, we can sense a strong wind, blown by an energetic god whose cheeks are distended. He is trying to catch a scared young nymph. Helplessly she tries unsuccessfully to escape from this force of nature but she is caught, issuing flowers from her mouth as an intermediary figure of coming Spring.
On the left, the Three Graces seem to perform the harmonious movements of a dance, and by twinning their arms together, they preserve an innocence which sets us apart from carnal love, overlooking Cupid, who is trying to harrowing Chastity.
Hermes, on the left, represents everything which is fake and misinterpreted. Being the god of the thieves, of the crossroads, of the forging links between language and the mind, Hermes busies himself chasing away the clouds that were forming a shield above him and waits that everything changes to a coming Spring which we'll never see but we can surely anticipate.

Finally, looking at the all painting we cannot help feeling some melancholy. No matter where the gods are coming from, and although they look perfect, they always give us a sense of far away exile, where they can never be reached. We are sure that their world is not ours. That their divine immortality is here to stay as if we were looking at them through a colored glass, seeing their different lives shining with its particularly forms and bright colors. Something which was always known, although seldom said.
Sources: Wikipedia.

Vincent Van Gogh - The Bedroom in Arles - 3 versions

Bedroom in Arles - First Version - 1888
Van Gogh Museum - Amsterdam - Netherlands

When Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90) lived in Arles, he decorated most of the rooms of the house with yellow paintings. It was buy that time that the famous 7 sunflowers paintings were depited. Vincent also painted his room in 3 versions.

The first version of this painting in the Autumm of 1888, during one of the happiest interludes in his life. He belived that his move to Arles would mark a new chapter in his art. He asked his brother, Theo to persuade Paul Gaugain to come and join him and rapidly painted a series of pictures to hang on the walls and create a welcoming atmosphere for his new guest. To a large extent, these paintings were designed simply as decorations for the house, but Van Gogh also wanted to show that his own works could bear comparison with those of Gaugain’s, whose talent he was in awe of.

Recently this first version was thoroughly restored before being sent to an exhibition in Japan. Already returned to Amsterdam, conservationists from the Van Gogh Museum designed a 2D and 3D room in order to have a perspective of how it was. It can be seen here.

Following what Vincent had written to his brother Theo, conservationists tried to achieve the equivalent tones originally used by Vincent. "Calm" or "Repose" is suggested, in a way to avoid contrasts. This means using colors that are equally light or dark – in other words, equivalent tones.

If we look at The bedroom this way, we immediately see what is wrong with it: namely, the walls and the blanket. The walls are too light in tone, and the blanket too dark. The digital impression restores the lavender color of the walls (by removing the white) and brightens the red of the blanket, bringing the tonal values into balance and restoring the sense of repose.

Vincent writes that the only white he wanted in the painting was the reflection in the mirror. As he puts it, the fourth pair of complementary colors, white and black, is represented by the mirror and its frame. At present, this effect is cancelled out by the abundance of white in the walls.

Bedroom in Arles - Second Version - 1889

Museum Fine Arts - Chicago -U.S.A.

In the Bedroom at Arles, many of the items are shown in pairs – two chairs, two pillows, two pairs of pictures – signaling his expectation of companionship. Yet his friendship with Gaugain turned sour just two months after his arrival and Van Gogh had a mental breakdown.

Recuperating in a lunatic asylum in St. Rémy, he painted the third version of the painting, for his mother. Although structurally very similar to the first two, certain details are significantly different. In the first version, Van Gogh painted the floor a rosy pink; on the third he used a brownish-gray color, reflecting his more depressed mood. The two top right-hand paintings are different in each version as well. In the first two versions, the portraits are indistinct and cut off. In this third version, though, they are very much discernible – the one on the left is Van Gogh himself and the one on the right is of his sister, Wil. Ten months after he painted this picture, Van Gogh died in mistery. Today we aren't sure if he killed himself or was killed by a group of children by accident. Will we ever find out the truth?

Bedroom in Arles - Third Version - 1889

 Musée D'Orsay - Paris - France

Camille Pissarro - Boulevard Montmartre by Night

Boulevart Montmartre by Night - 1897

National Gallery - London - U.K.

Camille Pissarro 1830 – 1903) was the leader of the a French Impressionist movement. Born on the island of St Thomas (today US Virgin Islands) his father was a french merchant, a portuguese descendent jew, who immigrated to the island to deal with business affairs. When Camille was twelve his father sent him to France in order to continue his studies. In Paris he worked as assistant to Danish painter Anton Melbye and studied paintings by other artists whose style impressed him: Courbet, Charles-François Daubigny, Jean-François Millet, and Corot.

Although initially Pissarro painted according with the standards at the time in order to be displayed at the Paris Salon, (the official body whose academic traditions dictated the kind of art that was acceptable) soon he started to show his own tendencies sharing with his master Camille Corot, who tutored him an interest on rural scenes painted from nature. With Corot, Pissarro was inspired to paint outdoors, also called "plein air" painting. Pissarro later explained the technique of painting outdoors to a student: ”Work at the same time upon sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on and equal basis and unceasingly rework until you have got it. Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression.”

Cézanne would later called him “the first Impressionist”. In 1873 he helped establish a separate collective, called the "Société Anonyme des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs," which included fifteen artists like Cézanne, Monet, Manet, Renoir, and Degas. Pissarro created the group’s first charter and became the “pivotal” figure in establishing and holding the group together. With a youthful temperament and creativity Pissarro gave wings to imagination, turning up side down the way people saw nature's depiction setting up with his pears what was known as the "Impressionist Movement".

By the 1880s, Pissarro began to explore new themes and methods of painting in order to break out of what he felt was an artistic “mire”. As a result, Pissarro went back to his earlier themes by painting the life of country people, which he had done in Venezuela in his youth. Degas described Pissarro’s subjects as “peasants working to make a living”. This period also marked the end of the Impressionist due to Pissarro’s leaving the movement and the begin of a decade with influences from Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, which led to Pissarro's Neo-Impressionism.

It was by the end of the 80's that Pissarro decided to rent a room in the Grand Hôtel de Russie, on the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue Drouotin, in Paris. From his bedroom window he'd lookout of the left of his window onto one of Paris’s grandest boulevards. He had come here specifically to paint a series of Parisian views, of the Boulevard Montmartre, at different times of the day partly because his eyesight was falling, and painting out of doors was being increasingly difficult.

This particular picture shows the boulevard in the evening. As with the whole 14 paintings series, the strong central shape of the receding boulevard, flanked by rows of trees and impressive buildings, dictates the simple, powerful composition and perspective, given drama by the high viewpoint. Strong brushstrokes on the sky and roas help to draw the eye down this busy thoroughfare. Sketchily painted figures and carriages, like blurred photos, add a bustling movement, although the effect of pearly winter sun diffused through mist makes this view calmer than some of the others. In many places, such on a road surface, a broad pointillism is used.

Pissarro had previously experimented with this technique, and abandoned it, but its influence remains. By the 1890’s Pissarro felt that series paintings such as this gave him the artistic direction he craved. They showed that his heart was in exploring the changing light and weather effects found all around us – a major impressionist preoccupation.

Source: Ann Kay, net, wikipedia

Four views of the Boulevart Montmartre, taken in different hours of the day - 1897 (Image take here)

José Gutiérrez Solana - The Clowns

The Clowns - 1919

Museo Centro de Arte Reina Dona Sofia - Madrid - Spain

José Gutiérrez Solana (1886-1945) was born in Madrid, where he spend much of his life, and his work reflects both the asthetic qualities of the Spain he experienced from day to day and his concept of the character of the times. As a young man, he spent his days in the slums and suburbs of Madrid and in the Cantabrian harbours, studying the most wretched aspects of Spanish life. These journeys were the basis for his gloomy and corrosive literary works, Scenes and Customs of Madrid, 2 vol. (1912, 1918), and for his intense and dramatic paintings. He started his artistic training in 1893, taking private lessons before entering the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, in Madrid, in 1900.

In 1904 Solana became involved with the Generation of 1989 movement - a group of writers and philosophers attempting to re-create Spain as an intellectual and literary leader in response to the sociopolitical disaster of its defeat in the 1898 Spanish-American War. Solana's paintings and writing reflect the group's somber, ironic attitude, and throughout his career his work remained largely melancholic.

The clown figures can be seen here with a mirror behind. Maybe by showing their back on the mirror, Solana is telling the viewer that all clowns wear a mask and by looking closely their performances we understand that  there's an hidden man inside, different, storng or fail, we'll never know. The two clowns look like fragil figures, specially the one on the right. Both are trying to express themselves with a visible overwhelming effort and, for their faces, it looks like the audience is not much focuses on their performances. Both, do not show a confident pose, although the one with the accordion is evidently performing with his maximum involvement and commitment, surely expecting to captivate his audience attention. This Vaudeville performance has an athmosfere steeped into both tragic and comic and for some reason we get the perception that it'll not leave any good rememberence neither in the audience nor, surely, for both clows. In a way, the viewer ends up being pity for the unconfortable pose of the men wishing that their struggling performance ends up as soon as possible. Solana, expresses here the performance of anguished and tortured souls, when men act in unatural ways and at the end suffer beneeth their masks. Staring impassively with a disquieting detachment, Solana's clowns evoke neither sympathy nor fear, but a polarity of menace and tragedy. Drawn in a precisely linear manner and colored with the subdued palette that was typical of his work, the two clowns border on the mechanical, which further emphasizes the surreal quality of the painting.

The clown theme was adopted by several artists of the era as the ultimate parody - the tragic hero defined by the comic mask of his existence, and there was an identification between artists and the clown in the struggle for their art in the face of modern criticism. Solana was greatly influenced by fellow artists and countrymen Juan de Váldes Leal (1622-90) and Francisco Goya 1746-1828).
Source: Wikipedia, Tamsin Pickeral, net

Gustav Klimt - The Kiss

The Kiss - 1907-08

Osterreichische Galerie - Vienna - Austria

The Vienna Secession of 1900 included Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the The Glasgow Four who were to influence the direction of European art and craft. Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) was a brilliant iconoclast and a key figure in the Viennese Secession and the art nouveau movement. Although he left the group in 1905, he was influenced by Margaret MacDonald, Mackintosh's wife, whose linear style included the use of semiprecious gems. Klimt major works include paintings, mural, sketches, and other art objects. His primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. He attempted the subject of fulfillment, most notably in the final panel of Beethoven Frize, of 1902, which refers to a phrase from Shiller's Ode of Joy, "the kiss to the whole world". Klimt turned Schiller's wider political meaning into something much more personal and located the embrace in a womblike space, which remains in "The Kiss".

"The Kiss" is probably Klimt's most famous work. He began working on it in 1907 and it became the highpoint of his so-called 'Golden Period', when he painted a number of works in a similar style. It depicts a couple embracing, their bodies largely hidden by elaborate robes decorated in a style that bears little relation to any historical textile designs. The painting is decorated with circular biomorphic forms. Both figures are situated at the edge of a patch of flowery meadow. The man is wearing a robe with black and white rectangles irregularly placed on a gold background containing spiral decoration, and wears a crown of vines. The woman wears a tight-fitting dress with flower-like round or oval motifs on a background of parallel wavy lines. Her hair is sprinkled with flowers and is worn "up" in the style of the day; it forms a halo-like circle that highlights her face, and is continued under her chin by what seems to be a necklace of flowers. As well as conventional oil painting, gold leaf has been used, one of the aspects of the work that gives it a strikingly modern appearance, while evoking memories of much earlier art.

Both patterns have developed from Klimt's own personal symbolism. The image is so seductive that it is easy to miss the other, photo-Expressionist element of Klimt's style, which can be seen in the hideously bent toes and contorted hand of the woman, and in the coloration of her flesh, which suggests putrefaction. This expressive graphic style sits provocatively alonside the voluptuous decorative excess in Klimt's work, led him to be under attack for "pornography" and "perverted excess" particularly in those works commissioned to decorate the ceiling of the University of Vienna", which a good example are the paintings Medicine, Jurisprudence and Philosophy", received at the time with revultion. However, it was this aspect of his work that later would influence his younger contemporaries.Source: Wikipedia, Wendy Osgerby, net

Vincent Van Gogh - The Yellow House

The Yellow House - 1888

Van Gogh Museum - Amsterdam - Holland

"The subject is frightfully difficul, but that is just why I want to conquer it. It's terrific, these houses, yellow in the sun, and the incomparable freshness of the blue. And everywhere the ground is yellow too."

- Vincent on a letter to his brother Theo.

When Vincent van Gogh arrived at Arles it was snowing. So much for the warm and sunny south as described by Toulouse-Letrec. Arles was a small city with no more than 200.000 inhabitants. It had once been much grander. Julius Caesar brought it under Roman rule about 46 BC, and  it developed into one of the greatest centres of the Western Roman Empire, as is still evident from the amphitheatre (part ruined but still usable) and the remains of other Roman buildings, including the palace of Constantine. Arles never regained its ancien eminence, but in Vincent's time it was not just a sleepy little market town. The railway had reached it comparatively early, and many italien immigrants setled on nearby villages. When Vincent lived in Arles there was no tourists and the city had few amusements. Vincent found lodging in almost the first place he came to from the station, in an attic room of the Hotel-Restaurant Carrel. He soon started painting, founding on a small shop nearby all the paints and canvas he needed although pigments quality supplied in town were not as good as he wanted. Soon Vincent asked Theo to send him a large quantity of paints directly from Paris.

From his first week in Arles, Vincent had mentioned the desirability of having his own establishment. In May, of that year 1888, he rented the famous Yellow House, It was a two-up, two-down dwelling, one of an adjoining pair, whose twin pedimented facades, on the corner of the "Place Lamartine" just outside the city walls, faced one of the medieval gates. Van Gogh rented four rooms. Two large ones on the ground-floor to serve as atelier and kitchen, and, on the first floor, two smaller ones facing Place Lamartine. The window on the first floor near the corner with both shutters open is that Van Gogh's guest room, where Paul Gauguin lived for nine weeks from late October, 1888. Behind the next window, with one shutter closed, is Van Gogh's bedroom. The two small rooms at the rear were rented by Van Gogh at a later time. In a letter to his sister he described the house:

"My house here is painted in yellow colour of fresh butter on the outside with glanringly green shutters; it stands in the full sunlight in a square which has a green garden with plane trees, oleanders and acacias. And it is completely whitewashed inside, and the floor is made of red bricks. And over it there is the intensively blue sky. In this I can live and breath, meditate and paint".

Vincent intended to use the house as a studio and store, while making one room fit to sleep in. He spoke already of showing his friends'paintings there and later of persuading them to come and stay. Although his dream of an artists' community was one motive, Vincent's move was expedited by his dissatisfaction with his present circunstances in the Carrel Hotel. Not only did he have no proper studio, he believed that, in addition to the grudging service of which he complained, he was being overcharged. The rent for the Yellow House was 15 francs a month, a lot less than the 4 francs a day he paid to the Carrel.

On the building  painted pink, close to the left edge,Van Gogh used to have his meals It was run by Widow Venissac, who was also Van Gogh landlady, and who owned several of the other buildings depicted. 

Later, the building suffered various rebuilding, before it was severely damaged in a bombing raid, by the Allies, on June 25th, 1944. Later, it turn out to be demolished.

The "Yellow House" painting never left the artist's estate. Since 1962, it is in the possession of the Vincent Van Gogh Foundation, established by Vincent Willem van Gogh, the artist's nephew, and on permanent loan to the Van Gogh Museum, in Amsterdam.

Source: net, Van Gogh Museum, Wikipedia

Ken Currie - Three Oncologists

Three Oncologists - 2002

Scottish National Portarit Gallery - Edinburgh - U.K.

I've became fascinated with yesterday's news regarding astonishing advances in cancer therapy. Portugal is going to receive, through the Champalimaud Foundation, an unique equipment which represents a major steap on radio therapy treatments. In a short 10m session it will be possible to atomize localized cancer cells avoiding the unconfortable symptons arised by countinuous therapy sessions. The news reminded me the contemporanious painting "Three Oncologists" from the Scottish painter Ken Currie (b. 1960).
Currie's paintings are primarily concerned with how the human body is affected by illness, ageing and physical injury. Closely related to these themes, his work also deals with social and political issues and philosophical questions. Although many of the images dealing with, for example, metaphysical questions do not feature figures, a human presence is nevertheless suggested.

In this painting, Currie paints an idelible image that articulates the fear people feel when contemplating the reality and myths of cancer, a desease highly stigmatized in Western society. As well as pain, cancer patients often suffer shame, thinking they might have contributed to their disease. In "Three Oncologists", Currie - an artist who brillantly explores the emotional ramifications of sickness and the notion of diseases as metaphors for social, political, and personal states - represents the almost spiritual pressure placed on oncologists as putative dispensers of healing in the face of disease. And yet, Currie gives this living matter a surreal, otherworldly quality, imbuing it with a ghostly blue aura that removes the paintings from the realm of mere reproduction.

The three men depicted in this unnerving painting are professors in the Department of Surgery and Molecular Oncology at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School in Dundee, Scotland. Sir Alfred Cuschieri, The Head of the Department and Professor of Surgery, is situated at the center with Sir David Lane, Professor of Molecular Oncology, on his right and surgeon Professor R. J. Steele at his left. Throug his luminous use of paint - the men surrounded by omnious darkness and posed as if interrupted in mid-operation - Currie casts the figures as spectral figures hovering over the division between life and death.

All three wear intelligent, sensative expressions, yet Professor Steele holds his blodstainess hands away from his body and Sir Alfred Cuschieri holds away from his body and Sir Alfred Cuschieri holds a mysterious medical implement, summoning up the confusion, fear, and concern felt by the subjects of their struggles when confronted with the perils and realities of medicine.
Source: Wikipedia, Ana Finel Honigman, net

Thomas Gainsborough - Mr. and Mrs. Andrews

Mr. and Mrs. Andrews - 1750

National Gallery - London - UK

This is Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88) first masterpiece, painted early in his career. It shows his blossoming talent, not just as a portraitist but also as a landscape painter.

The picture was probably commissioned as a marriage portrait. The sheaves of corn on the right were a standart symbol of fertility, often used in images of this kind. The couple were married in 1748 in the nearby town of Sudbury, faintly visible in the background, and are shown here on their private estate. The composition, with the figures pushed to one side, is unusual, although it does give the newly-weds a proprietorial air, as if they were proudly displaying their land to the outside world.
Marxist and art critic, John Berger once commented that:

“Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, were not a couple in nature as Jean Jacques Rousseau imagined nature. They are landowners and their proprietary attitude towards what surrounds them is visible in their stance and expressions”.

Robert Andrews cradles his shotgun under his arm as his dog looks up at him. He stands proudly in the midst of his huge estate, which had just become even more extensive thanks to his marriage. His attitude is aloof yet businesslike. Frances Carter is sitting on a wooden Rococo bench. Her satin dress shows Gainsborough at his best, while it also reveals strong Rococo elements. The extent of Van Dyck’s continued influence on English portraiture can be seen through the capturing of fabrics in paint. The play of light, movement and the choice of the other colours make the light blue of the informal hunting dress spring to life. Her pose might have been lifted straight from a book of etiquette. Both sitters gaze cooly at the spectator. The oak tree in front of which they stand has several connotations beyond the choice of location: stability and continuity, and a sense of successive generations taking over the family business.

Gainsborough’s inexperience is evident from the poses of the figures, which are a little stiff and doll-like. The artist was in his early twenties and that may also account for the unflattering haughty expressions of the couple, which raises the question of their relationship with the artist: Gainsborough had known them both since childhood, though never as social equals. He had attended the same school as Robert Andrews, but while the latter had gone to Oxford University, he had become a lowly apprendice. Similarly, when Gainsborough’s father had run into financial difficulties, Frances’s family had come to his assistance. This social gulf may explain the disdainful way in which the couple are looking at the artist.
Mr and Mrs Andrews contained the most landscape of Gainsborough's works, and was a style to which he would not return. Future paintings would be set against neutral or typical rococo settings. It has been theorised that Gainsborough wished to show off his landscape ability to potential clients, to satisfy his personal preference, or his sitters' wishes.

Source: Wikipedia, Iain Zaczek, net.

Henry Fuseli - Titania Awakes, Surrounded by Attendant Fairies

Titania Awakes, Surrounded by Attendant Fairies - 1794

Kunsthaus - Zurich - Switzerland

“Titania is awakened by Bottom's singing and immediately falls in love with him. She lavishes him with attention, and presumably makes love to him. While she is in this state of devotion, Oberon takes the changeling. Having achieved his goals, Oberon releases Titania, orders Puck to remove the donkey's head from Bottom, and arrange everything so that Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, and Helena will believe that they have been dreaming when they awaken. (...) The lovers decide that the night's events must have been a dream. After they all exit, Bottom awakes, and he too decides that he must have experienced a dream "past the wit of man. Afterward, Oberon, Titania, Puck, and other fairies enter, and bless the house and its occupants with good fortune”.
Final Act from the Play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" from William Shakespeare

One of the leading figures of the Romantic Movement, Henry Fuseli (German: Johann Heinrich Füssli) ( 1741–1825) created pictures that explored the darker side of the human psyche. This image is in a similar vein to The Nightmare (1781) which bends horror and eroticism, though it also focuses on another of the Romantics’s favorite themes: fairies. Fuseli drew much of his inspiration from literary sources, most notably Shakespeare, John Milton and Dante. 

Fortunately for him, there was a major revival of interest in the former at the time. In 1789, John Boydell (1719-1804), a future lord mayor of London, decided to promote the cause of British art by opening a purpose-built Shakespeare Gallery, devoted solely to paintings of scenes from the plays. Then, four years later, James Woodmason, inspired by Boydell’s sucess set up a similar gallery in Dublin but the exhibition was a failure. By January 16, 1794, Woodmason reopened his gallery in London, where it remained open until March 1795. Fuseli contributed with paintings to both of these projects – nine to Boydell and five to Woodmason. A Midsummer Night’s Dream provided material for two of Fuseli’s chief interests: fairies and dreams.

This picture, "Titania Awakes, Surrounded by Attendant Fairies" comes from the Woodmason series and the fairies are considerably less sinister than those in the Boydell paintings. While Titania dotes on Nick Bottom, Peaseblossom (fairy) massages his ass’s head. To the right, Cobweb (fairy) has donned a suit of armor and is killing a bee, to steal its honey-sack for the queen’s lover. In the foreground, other fairies dance and sing, among them one with an insect’s head, who was borrowed from a figure in the Commedia dell’Arte. In the top right-hand corner, Puck survey’s the scene, prior to releasing Titania from her enchantment.

Source: Wikipedia, Iain Zaczek, net

Fiona Rae - Untitled (Emergency Room)

Untitled (Emergency Room) - 1996

Tate Collection - London - UK

Born in Hong Kong in 1963, Fiona Rae, emerged as an abstract painter in the late 80's after she graduated from Goldsmiths Colledge, London, in 1987. She came to prominence in the seminal 1988 warehouse exhibition Freeze - curated by fellow "Young British Artist" Damien Hirst. In 1991 she was nominated for the UK's Turner Prize for her contribution in extending the range of subject matter explored in abstract painting. In "Untitled (Emergency Room)", vivid and colorful geometric shapes contrast with a mishmash of black and white brushstrokes. The ambiguity of the work challenges our expectations of paintings and symbols and there is no doubt that the struggle to interpret the piece is part of the artistic experience. The enigmatic approach of Rae's abstract work has caused much debate in the art world. Even when describing her own work, the artist has said: 

"My paintings of the early nineties looked like a fight to the death between the different kinds of things on the canvas."

However, it is the justaposition between random shapes, vibrant colors, splattered paint, and even images borrowed from other artworks that make Rae's work so exciting. There is a deliberate lack of absolute meaning to her pieces so each viewer will interpret the same image in a different way. Whatever one feels about the absence of narrative meaning in art, there can be no argument about the dynamism of Rae's work - a powerful energy shines through and she continues to demonstrate that there is a place for the abstract in our conformist world.

Source: Wikipedia, Jamie Middleton, net

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones - The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune - 1875-83

Musée d' Orsay - Paris - France

Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-98) was a British artist and designer. Associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood , he worked closely with William Morris, on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company. Burne-Jones was closely involved in the rejuvenation of the tradition of stained glass art in England. His early paintings show the heavy inspiration of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but by the 1860s Burne-Jones was discovering his own artistic "voice". He studied for a time under Rossetti, sharing his passion for early italian art, which is clearly evident under this painting.
“The Wheel of Fortune” portrays a giant wheel, turned by the Goddess of Fortune. Attached to which are three mortal men, a slave at the top, a king in the middle and a poet below. Burne-Jones, suggesting his allegoric purpose wrote:

"My Fortune's Wheel is a true image and we take our turn at it and are broken upon it".

The foreground takes up almost all of the view, leaving only a small portion free in the upper left corner to show a wall and a tree beneath a grey sky. The Goddess of Fortune towers above the three men. Her heavy clothing and cap, covering most of her body, is in contrast to the almost complete nudity of the mortals. Their faces seem strangely void of expression. Fortuna is gazing down dispassionately and both the slave and king are looking into the distance. Only the poet looks, not at Fortune's face but at her feet, with a mildly pleading air.
The figures are reminiscent of Michelangelo's works, as well as the ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, with their idealized bodies and Fortune's distinctive contrapposto pose. The figure of Fortune bears a resemblance to that Michalangelo's "Delphica Sibyl" at the Sistine Chapel. Burne-Jones considered Michelangelo work "immeasurable" and had copies of his sculptures in the drawing room of his house.
The Wheel of Fortune was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1883 after a very long period of execution, after which the artist suffered from exhaustion for several weeks. It was bought by Arthur Balfour, the future Prime Minister and patron of the artist, who later commisioned him to paint the "Perseus" series of pictures.
On June 1933, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, a nephew of Burne-Jones, officially opened the centenary exhibition, featuring Burne-Jones's drawings and paintings, at the Tate Gallery in London. In his opening speech, at the exhibition, Mr Baldwin expressed what the art of Burne-Jones stood for:

“In my view, what he did for us, was to open, as never had been opened before, magic casements of a land of faery in which he lived throughout his life. It is in that inner world we can cherish in peace.”
Source: Michael Robinson, Wikipedia, net

Paul Gauguin - Nevermore

Nevermore - 1897

Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery - London

Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolism movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, writer, influential wood engraving and woodcuts art forms. He was a man of deep emotions and he was always searching for answers to his spiritual needs, using painting as a means of resolving his inner questions. Gauguin sought to establish a style that would express emotion and feeling in a modern way. In 1891, Gauguin sailed toFrench Polynesia to escape European’s civilization and “everything that was artificial and conventional". After coming back to France, in 1895, he returned definitely to Tahiti after a difficult period in Paris where his work was not successful. By that time he produced a number of large paintings including Nevermore, which was prompted by the death of his daughter Aline. 

Nevermore is a long painting, with little perspective dept. On the background, includes a familiar motif of two people whispering, and a raven, suggesting misfortune. The bird brings to mind the poem The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe. which Stéphane Mallarmé recited at the Café Voltaire when Gauguin left Paris. In the poem, a man imagines that the bird flapping at the window repeating the word “nevermore” is the spirit of the dead lover.

The picture is dominated by a full length reclining Tahitian nude. The girl faces the viewer but her body is not for erotic consumption as in the tradition of Western painting. The curve of her hip is exaggerated, strangely distorted and elevated. Her eyes are open but she does not look at us. Her attention seems to be turned towards the figures and the raven in the background. Are they fragments of her imagination? The picture is pieced together so as to suggest reality and also, at the same time, to deny it. There is no answer. To make true contact with the picture we need to leave the world of cut and dried reality and enter the world of half suggested, dreamlike, unreality and give way to sensuality much as one is inclined to do when listening to romantic music. Gauguin was not interested in painting external reality, and this is one of the reasons why he quarreled with Van Gogh who held the opposite point of view. Gauguin’s priority was his inner vision. He once wrote:

"in painting as in music one should look for suggestion rather than description".

The space in the picture is articulated more by a combination of decorative panels than by an illusion of three-dimensional space. The figures and bird in the background could be real but they could also be figures painted on to a screen. This ambiguity is intentional. Gauguin’s aim was to fill the picture with mystery. The melancholia and implied threat in the painting is an indication of Gauguin’s unstable state of mind. Later, that year, he unsuccessfully attempted suicide.

The transitions between reality to unreality are also a central thread in Gauguin’s life history. He abandoned his European life, wife, family, stock broking and Parisian Bourgeoisie respectability and game himself up to art, poverty, illness and lack of recognition. In Tahiti he lived with a teenage Tahitian girl and described the women of the island as possessing something mysterious and penetratin.

In recent years, Gauguin had been the subject of much criticism for this painting. Yet it is difficult to view the past and the complex social structure of another culture from a 21st century perspective. It is perhaps too easy to criticize his “primitive” nudes as misogynist. Gauguin told Strindberg that "It is the “Eve”, of the Western imagination,  that makes men misogynists. Only the “primitive Eve” is naturally naked".

Source: Wikipedia, Wendy Osgerby, net

Tom Roberts - The Break Away!

The Break Away! - 1891

Art Gallery of South Australia - Adelaide - Australia

Born in Dorchester, England, Thomas William Roberts (1856-1931) emigrated with his widowed mother to Australia in 1869, where they settled in a suburb in Melbourne. He became a photographer’s assistant, a job he kept for ten years, while studying art at night under Louis Buvelo and befriending others who were to become prominent artists. He returned to England for a full-time art study, from 1881-84, and became the first major Australian painter to study at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, which he did for three years before returning to the south Hemisphere in 1885 to dedicate himself to painting the light and color of Australian bush. "Shearing the Rams" and "Break Away!" are among his best known works. Many of Robert’s comtemporaries considered the life of ordinary Australians an unfit subject for “fine” art, but his studies of life in the bush were loved by subsequent generations of Australians for their dignified and affectionate depiction of working people. A Break Away! Shows a tumultuous chase, as the drover charges headlong down a steep slope in a cloud of dust after the panic-stricken, escaped sheep. Whether it was sheepshearing, wood splitting, or droving, Roberts’s paintings are heartfelt, exhilarating works.
Source: Wikipedia, Terry Sanderson, net

Giuseppe Arcimboldo - Summer

                                                                Summer - 1563

                                             Kunsthistorisches Museum - Vienna, Austria

Last year, I had the fortune to visit Vienna and one of my top priorities was to spend a hole day at the fantastique Kunsthistorisches Museum. There I could see, for the first time, “alive” some of the most famous master pieces from Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-93). Arcimboldo was an italian painter known for creating imaginative portraits made entirely of objects, as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish and books, arranging them in such a way that the paintings formed a recognizable portrait subject. During his life time, Arcimboldo was highly successful. In 1562, he became court portraitist to Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor at the Habsburg Court, in Vienna. According to Morigia in his “Historia dell'Antichitd di Milano”, dated 1592, we can have some clues about the happy association between the monarch and the painter:

"In 1562 Arcimboldo left his country and joined the Emperor's court, where he was liked and treated well and received with great kindness, and the Emperor gave him a good salary worthy of his merits and also showed his affection in many other ways. And so our Arcimboldo lived a very fulfilling and honorable life at the Imperial court, not only for him (Ferdinand), but also the entire court, not only with his paintings, but also many other works of art and pieces of woodwork for occasions such as tournaments, games, weddings, coronations, and especially when Archduke Charles of Austria took a wife. This noble and inspired man fashioned a great number of rare and delicate works of art which caused considerable amazement among all the illustrious noblemen who used to congregate there, and his lord and master (Ferdinand) was very pleased with him.”

Arcimboldo died in Milan, to which he retired after leaving the Prague service. It was during this last phase of his career that he produced the composite portrait of Rudolph II, as well as his self-portrait as the Four Seasons. His Italian contemporaries honored him with poetry and manuscripts celebrating his illustrious career which would be revived by the end of the nineteenth century with the beginning of the surrealistic movement.

Source: Wikipedia, Tansin Pickeral, net

Gunnar Berndtson - Summer

Summer - 1893

Turku Art Museum - Finland

Studying painting in Paris, Finnish painter Gunnar Berndtson (1854-95) regularly exhibited at the Salon at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Berndtson mainly depicted  genre subjects, particularly elegant interiors and lush country scenery. Summer brings together Finnish landscape and nineteen-century bourgeois life. This romanticized view of a sunny summer day is in direct contrast with the reality of Finnish life at the time, which was mostly agricultural and in places even impoverished. The languid mood of the painting speaks of upper-class life, with its opportunities for enjoying  leisure time for farmimg and harvesting. The female figure appears to have been started from her reading by the boy on the boat, or perhaps she is a doting mother or nanny. The landscape is unmistakably Nordic. Berndtson's attention to detail is impeccable: rocks can be seen under the water, the hazy summer sunlight is reflected on the surface of the lake, and the foldsin the central figure's clothes are intricate and lifelike. Berndtson's reputation is somewhat overshadowed by his contemporais, who were inspired by a budding nationalism and promoted the idea of a Finnish nation throu their art. Artists such as Akseli Gallen Kallela (1865-1931) painted poor rural life and subjects from the national epic, The Kelevala. Rather than offering sociopolitical commentary, Berndtson, a genuine salon painter, instead celebrates beautiful clothes and tranquil ladscapes.
Source: Wikipedia, Rikka KUitinnen, net

Caspar David Friedrich - The Stages of Life

                                                        The Stages of Life - 1835

Museum der Bildenden Kunste - Leipzig - Germany

Casper David Friedrich the leading artist of the German Romantic Movement , translated his melancholy temperament into some of history’s most masterful landscapes. Friedrich painted the Stages of Life when he was sixty-one, five years before his death. Tough it was a pastiche of sketches he had made during different travels in his youth, “The Stages of Life” was an anomaly in his oeuvre because it was a painting of an imaginary location. The recognizable geographical references in the work are all highly personal and the landscape serves almost as an autobiography for the deeply introspective artist. The main body of the painting appears loosely based on the harbor of Greifswald where he was born, in the north of Germany. Five ships are depicted at various distances in the water. They symbolically represent the passing of life. On the shore, an old man stands in the foreground facing toward the water and it is assumed that he is Friedrich at the time of the painting. Nearby stands a young man in a top hat, modeled after his nephew, who in this context represents maturaty. Playing beyond them both is a graceful young girl, modeled after his eldest daughter, who represents youth, and portraits of his two youngest children playing with a Swedish flag, who represent childhood. The mast of the central ship forms a crucifix, a sign of Friedrich’s deep faith, yet tranquil, luminous, poetic painting is not filled with redemptive hope, or the yearning for heaven after death, but with the bittersweet awareness that mortal life is precious and passes quickly. In keeping with the Romantic ideals of the time, Friedrich intended his paintings to function purely in visual terms, and thus he was cautious that the titles given to his work were not overly descriptive or evocative. It is likely that the relatively literal title “The Stages of Life” was not given by the artist himself, but that the work was instead renamed during a revival of interest in the artistin the late 19th or early 20th century.
Source: Wikipedia, Ann Hildyard, net

Edward Hopper - Nighthawks

Nighthawks - 1942

Art Institute of Chicago - USA



The term "night-hawk" is used figuratively to describe someone who stays up late. Curved geometric forms, accentuated by an Art Deco facade and angular light, provide an almost theatrical setting for a group of insulated and isolated figures. The Phillies cigars advert, on the top of the diner, shows this is not an up market location, since Phillies, is a brand of American-made popular cheap cigars commonly sold at convenience stores and gas stations. These “nighthawks” are bathed in an oasis of fluorescent light in an all-night diner. It could have been shot as a perfect set for a film noir of the gender "Chandler-esque setting". There is no doubt that American Edward Hopper’s (1882-1967) expressive use of artificial light, playing upon the simplified shapes, gives the painting its beauty.

The corner of the diner is curved glass. The light from the restaurant floods out, onto the street outside, and a sliver of light casts its way into one of the windows.
The Bogart-and-Bacall couple stare at the bar boy bending below the counter, while their hands almost touch. This portrayal of modern urban life, as empty or lonely, is a common theme throughout Hopper's work. It is sharply outlined by the fact that the man, with his back to us, appears more lonely because of the couple sitting next to him. If one looks closely, it becomes apparent that there is no way out of the bar area, as the three walls of the counter form a triangle that traps the attendant. It is also notable that the diner has no visible door leading to the outside; the viewer is shut out from the scene, making it more intriguing, which illustrates the idea of confinement and entrapment. Hopper denied that he had intended to communicate this in Nighthawks, but he admitted that,

"unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city."

In any event, the diner itself was inspired by one in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, where Hopper lived for fifty-four years. Hopper’s practice was to make sketches while he was out and about in New York and then come back to his studio and sketch a combination of poses together with his wife, Josephine, as he did here for what has become one of the iconic images of the twentieth-century.

Source: Wikipedia, James Harrison, net.

Kitty (Christine) Lange Kielland - Summer Night

                                                                 Summer Night - 1886

                                                        National Gallery - Oslo - Norway

Kitty (Christine) Lange Kielland (1843-1914) was born in Stavanger, Norway, into an old-established, patrician family. She was the sister of the famous norway writter Alexander L. Kielland and their contact was important for both of them as artists. Since her young age Kitty was aware of her talent for painting but she was only able to embark on serious painting studies when she was over 30 due to prejudice, regarding women on a men's world, having been undoubtedly hindered by the chauvinistic attitudes of her time. She had decided she wanted to be a landscape painter. She travelled to Karlsruhe, in 1873, where she started her training, taking private lessons with professor Hans Gude (1825-1903), from whom she received a foundation in Realism that would perpetuate and influence throught all her career. Kitty worked hard, and was quick to make progress. In 1875 she moved to Munich, joining the Norwegian artists' colony there. During her time in Munich she painted open landscapes of a windswept and somber nature, with its huge skies, dark peat bogs and slow-moving streams. They became her favourite motif. Naturaly Kitty draw inspiration from the sceneries of her native Norway where she continued to go every Summer. She moved to Paris, in 1879, along with several other Norwegian artists. There she was influenced by the work of the landscape artist Léon Pelouse (1838-91) and her works became infused with a lighter and more romantic quality. Summer Night is one of her most evocative paintings from this period. It is a work of tranquility and reflection, with the still waters peppered with lillies and glowing with light of early evening. Appearing almost photographic in the clarity of form, Summer Night is clearly reminiscent of her early training, but it is infused with an athmosphere of nostalgia and gentle affection for Norway. Kielland’s art was important in the development of Realism in Norway, and she paved the way for successive female artists, both through her paintings and her active participation in the fight for women’s rights in the art' s world.
Source: Wikipedia, Tamsin Pickeral, net

Andrew Wyeth - Christina's World

                                                         Christina's World - 1948

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) - New York - USA

Just as life appereared to be in Cushing, Maine, where most of Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) paintings were set, his style remained steady for more than fifty years. The son of Newell Convers Wyeth, a famous American illustrator and artist, Andrew Wyeth was the youngest of five children who were all home-schooled and taught art by their father. The house in the far distance of Christina’s World was the location of Wyeth’s studio for almost three decades. The austerity of its stark rooms and somber exterior captured in many of his paintings and lithographs. As Wyeth explained:

“I happen to paint things that reflect the basic truths of life: sky, earth, friends.”

In Wyeth’s painting, Christina Olson, a reclusive young friend of Wyeth and his wife, who had been crippled in childhood with polio, feebly raises herself on skeletal arms and gazes at her home in the distance. Her disability is not obvious from the painting, but her body subtle contortions create a disquieting impression. Initially, the painting may seem to represent a pastoral ideal, but it harbors a pervasive undercurrent of loneliness, longing, and unease. Art historian Sir David Piper said of the painting:

“It seems to express both the tragedy and the joy of life with such a vivid poignancy that the painting becomes a universal symbol of the human condition”.

When Olson died in 1969, she had lived her life in the house Wyeth painted in the distance. Neighbors say she never knew Wyeth’s image of her had become one of the most well-known and haunting paintings in the American art history. The house depicted in the painting is known as the Olson House, and is located in Cushing, Maine, USA. It is open to the public as a part of the Farnsworth Museum complex; it is a National History Landmark and has been restored to match its appearance in the painting. In the painting, Wyeth separated the house from its barn and changed the lay of the land. This tempera work, done in a realistic style, is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as a part of their permanent collection.

Source: Wikipedia, Ann Finel Honigman, net