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Gustave Caillebotte – A patron among the Impressionists
The text below is the excerpt from the book Gustave Caillebotte (ISBN: 9781683256939), written by Nathalia Brodskaïa and Victoria Charles, published by Parkstone International. Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) is one of the most important figures of French Impressionism. He was not only a very passionate painter who created about 500 paintings, but also supported his contemporary fellow artists as a collector, patron, and initiator by funding and organising exhibitions. Nevertheless, he remains one of the less publicised Impressionist painters. Gustave Caillebotte was born on 19 August 1848 as the eldest of three sons of the twicewidowed cloth merchant, trade judge, and real-estate dealer Martial Caillebotte and his third wife Céleste Daufresne in Paris, where he…
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Paul Gauguin and the Impressionists (part 2)
You can read part 1 here. The text below is the excerpt from the book Paul Gauguin, written by Anna Barskaya, published by Parkstone International. Gauguin’s deviation from Impressionism first manifested itself during his stay in Rouen. It is particularly evident in his plastic works, a case in point being the carving of a small wooden jewellery box. The decor of the external sides ornamented with theatrical masks and ballet dancers in tutus (a design borrowed from Degas) is in striking contrast with the corpse-like figure in the bottom of the box, which is reminiscent of a Peruvian mummy. This clash of motifs – worldly amusements and death – leaves no doubt as…
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100th Anniversary of The Passing of Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919)
The next Sunday, 3rd December 2019, marks the 100th anniversary of the passing of one of the greatest artists in the world, Pierre-Auguste Renoir. We miss him so much!
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Berthe Morisot
A woman painter was a rare phenomenon in the mid nineteenth century and in the aesthetic camp hostile to official art, there was only one. Berthe Morisot participated in most of the Impressionist’s exhibitions. Berthe Morisot was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Jean-Honoré Fragonard and the artist painter Marguerite Gérard were distant relatives on her father’s side. Her father, Edmé Tiburce Morisot, held senior administrative positions. Berthe was born on 14 January 1841 in Bourges, in the administrative region of the Cher, because her father was then prefect of the Cher. Her mother, Marie-Cornélie Thomas, also from a prominent family, was the daughter of an inspector of…
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Whistler & Nature
Whistler & Nature casts a new light on the work of the great late-Victorian master, James McNeill Whistler. Born in America, but living in the UK for most of his life, he was known as an artist with a bold personality and a revolutionary attitude towards the natural world. Whistler suddenly shot to fame like a meteor at a crucial moment in the history of art, a field in which he was a pioneer. It was not by chance that the painter settled in London. Europe was, at the time, the greatest artistic and aesthetic battleground and this artist had a suitably combative temperament. Like the Impressionists, with whom he sided,…
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Pierre Bonnard – The colour of history
In October 1947, the Musée de l’Orangerie arranged a large posthumous exhibition of Bonnard’s work. Towards the close of the year, an article devoted to this exhibition appeared on the first page of the latest issue of the authoritative periodical Cahiers d’Art. The publisher, Christian Zervos, gave his short article the title “Pierre Bonnard, est-il un grand peintre?” (Is Pierre Bonnard a Great Artist?) In the opening paragraph Zervos remarked on the scope of the exhibition, since previously Bonnard’s work could be judged only from a small number of minor exhibitions. But, he went on, the exhibition had disappointed him: the achievements of this artist were not sufficient for a…
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Monet – Clemenceau (part 2)
You can read part 1 here. When Monet was in Paris he could most often be found in his favourite district on the right bank near the railway station of Saint-Lazare. These were familiar haunts for Monet, as he used to arrive here from Le Havre and leave from here when travelling out into the environs of Paris. He covered canvas after canvas here, creating in the first cycle of his career Saint-Lazare Station (1877). The theme of the railway was not a new one in European art. The views of Saint-Lazare station and his landscapes of Montgeron were Monet’s major contributions to the Third Impressionist Exhibition, but neither the…
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Book on Seurat
BOOK: SEURAT Universally celebrated for the intricacy of his pointillist canvases, Georges Seurat (1859-1891) was a painter whose stunning union of art and science produced uniquely compelling results. Seurat’s intricate paintings could take years to complete, with the magnificent results impressing the viewer with both their scientific complexity and visual impact. His Un Dimanche Après-Midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte (Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grand Jatte) has held its place among the most treasured and distinguished pieces of 20th-century art. Klaus H. Carl offers readers an intriguing glimpse into the detailed scientific technique behind Seurat’s pointillist masterpieces. SPECIFICATIONS Author: Lucie Cousturier Mega Square collection, 145 x 162…
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Second part.
Read part 1 here. In 1877, at the Third Impressionist Exhibition, Renoir presented a whole panorama of over twenty paintings. They included landscapes created in Paris, on the Seine, outside the city and in Claude Monet’s garden; studies of women’s heads and bouquets of flowers; portraits of Sisley, the actress Jeanne Samary, the writer Alphonse Daudet and the politician Spuller; and also The Swing and Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, Montmartre. The labels on some of the paintings indicated that they were already the property of Georges Charpentier. The artist’s friendship with the Charpentier family was to play a significant role in shaping his destiny. Madame Charpentier’s salon…
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David Hockney Pulls Out His Mushroom Trip
With Amsterdam just a stone’s throw away from his native England, there’s no way David Hockney didn’t take weekend trips to gather a little inspiration. With his landscapes breathing and ever-so-subtly undulating, Hockney has, in his art work, rather astutely recreated the kind of mushroom trip that the majority of festival-goers revel in: a magical connection with those insanely charming and huggable trees. Seemingly familiar, the works trick the viewer into recalling memories of frolics in the woods (both authentic and false memories), the works play on vivid colour, scale and distance, and leading lines to push our psyches into the surreal. Reminiscent of A Scanner Darkly the line between…
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