Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Photograph of the Painter (a. 1910)

By the end of his life, Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz (1848-1921) had served as the Director of the Prado Museum, won numerous international awards, including the French Legion of Honor, and held the position of the Director of the Spanish Academy in Rome. He is best remembered for having taught the painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida in Rome, and for the painting Doña Juana La Loca (Joanna the Mad) that galvanized a new generation of history painters in Spain and toured several European nations as a masterpiece.

Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Self-Portrait (1917). Oil on canvas. 4.5 BY 35.5CM. Madrid, Prado Museum.

Pradilla was heavily influenced by Velázquez, Titian, El Greco and Ribera, all of whom are well represented in the Prado Collection. Even late in life, he regularly copied Old Master paintings in order to improve his own. This was accompanied by his lifelong dedication to the study of Greek and Roman texts, along with Spanish historical documents which inspired many of his paintings. He was well noted by friends for a large library of rare books and an ability to speak several languages.

Early Life and Training

Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Rape of the Sabines (c. 1873-1874). Oil on canvas. 115 BY 150CM. Madrid, Universidad de Complutense, Facultad de Bellas Artes. Made as part of the audition to receive a scholarship to study in Rome.

Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz was born to a poor family in Zaragoza, Spain. He was accepted to the local Institute of Zaragoza. But, due to a lack of money, he was unable to pay for his own supplies and tuition and had to end his studies there.

Thereafter, Pradilla joined the workshop of the stage scenery painter Mariano Pescador. The work gave him needed money which he used to attend the Fine Arts School in the Academy of San Luis in Zaragoza and, eventually, move to Madrid.

In Madrid, he continued to make a living painting scenery for theaters. His ambition and talent eventually won him a place in the School of Painting and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. In addition to his classwork, the records of the Prado show that, beginning in 1869, he regularly visited the Collection in order to copy Old Master paintings.

Rome

Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Náufragos or "Survivors of the Shipwreck" (1876). Oil on canvas. Madrid, Ayuntamiento.

Pradilla was among the first group of students given government scholarships to study at the new Spanish Academy in Rome, founded in 1873, but opened to students in 1874. The Spanish School in Rome would become the most important center for artistic training in Spain and Pradilla would become one of its most influential students (1874-1877) and teachers (1877-1896).

During three years, students were required to produce copies of Old Master paintings and Greek and Roman statuary, in addition to regular travel in order to encourage a broader perspective. While a student, Pradilla traveled extensively, visiting Venice, Florence, Milan, Piza, Paris, and six cities in Germany.

The culmination of each student's study in at the Spanish Academy in Rome was a large, multi-figural history painting. In Pradilla's case his final painting for the Academy would be an internationally-praised work.

DoJuana la Loca (Joanna the Mad Queen)

Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Doña Juana la Loca (1877). Oil on Canvas 340 by 500CM. Madrid, Prado Museum.

The painting depicts a scene from the life of the Spanish Royal Joanna (1479-1555), the second daughter of King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella of Spain.

After the death of her husband, Joanna accompanied the body to its place of burial. Refusing to sleep or leave the casket, she kept vigil over the casket in torrential rain and winds. This, combined with other behaviors deemed as eccentric, estranged her from other royals. She spent the last years of her live in a convent.

Pradilla's portrayal is notable for its underlying classical composition combined with Realism. In addition to his strong figural work, the painting reflects Pradilla's understanding of landscape. He was a member of the Spanish Watercolorist Society, which specialized in disseminating landscape skills, and a student of the famous Spanish landscape painter Carlos de Haes. Several sketches for the landscape of Juana la Loca reveal the enormous amount of work he did to effectively portray the atmosphere, clouds, and ground convincingly.

End of Life

Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Landscape (a. 1900)

Pradilla served as the Director of the Spanish Academy in Rome for only eight months, from September, 1881 to April, 1882. He also served as the Director of the Prado for a short thirteen months, from January, 1896 to February, 1897, after an important work by Murillo, St. Anne Teaching the Virgin Mary, was stolen. (It was recovered in 1911).

During the last years of his life, both the national government and the government of his birth, Zaragoza, would commission several works. But, he never repeated the success of Doña Juana la Loca, although he continued to paint in the same style.

Retrospectives of his life and works were held in Madrid (1948 and 1985) and Zaragoza (1985). Three of his major works are now held in the Prado, but the majority are held in private hands or regional museums and government buildings, especially in his native Zaragoza.

Julien Dupre, French, 1851-1910. The Gleaners (1880). Private Collection. Dupre is one of many artists that should be better remembered.

With the intent of helping to resurrect appreciation for some of the great and less-remembered artists of the past, I plan on regularly writing about what I will call "Forgotten Masters."

Many nineteenth-century artists still sit in obscurity, not for lack of brilliance, but due to the shifting winds of culture at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. The meteoric rise of Impressionism and other artistic movements left many academic artists, still at the peak of their talents, in the dust.

As we have distanced ourselves from changing fashions of those times, painters like Ingres, Gerome, Bouguereau, Eakins, Leighton, and Alma-Tadema have become more well known and received the recognition their works deserve through major exhibitions, scholarly books, and, finally, coffee-table books (the ultimate evidence that an artist has "made it").

Yet we have only scratched the surface of nineteenth-century painting. According to a friend of mine, Dr. Vern Swanson, there were over 300,000 painters working in France in the nineteenth century.

300,000!

(For that number to sink in, here is an exercise: name as many French-Impressionist painters as you can. I come up with about 12 off the top of my head.)

Two websites, in particular, have been key in offering information and images of these artists:

• The Art Renewal Center: www.artrenwal.org
• Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide: www.19thc-artworldwide.org

If you have any nineteenth-century artists that you feel have been neglected and would like to see me post on them, please feel free to write me: mjc "at" beardedroman.com. Because my research is currently focused on Spain, many of the artists I will begin with in the series will be Spanish.

Starting tomorrow, look for posts tagged and titled "Forgotten Master."

Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) The Triumph of David. Oil on canvas. 118.4 BY 148.3CM. Dulwich Gallery, Dulwich, UK. Poussin is remembered for his highly structured paintings that influenced generations of artists looking for a more scientific approach to their painting. Three geometric analysis of this work are included in this article.

Over the past decade a new field of neurology has emerged, Neuroesthetics, with the intent of mapping the brain's reaction to the fine arts.

The term "neuroesthetics" and the field was pioneered by Dr. Semir Zeki, who is the first Professor of Neuroesthetics at University College London, founder of the Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London and the Minerva Foundation at UC Berkley, where he is an adjunct professor. The website of the Institute defines its work as seeking "to establish the biological and neurobiological foundations of aesthetic experience."

The notion of scientifically quantifying art might seem opposed a central purpose of art, which is subject to individual experience with an original work of art. In his long essay, What is Art?, Leo Tolstoy said it another way:

The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man's expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. To take the simplest example: one man laughs, and another, who hears, becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another, who hears, feels sorrow . . . And it is on this capacity of man to receive another man's expression of feeling, and experience those feelings himself that the activity of art is based.

(Leo Tolstoy. Aylmer Maude, trans. What Is Art? Bridgewater: Baker & Taylor, 2000. p. 48)

Tolstoy's way of describing art seems like a set up for a scientific experiment.

Geometric Analysis 1: Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) The Triumph of David. Oil on canvas. 118.4 BY 148.3CM. Dulwich Gallery, Dulwich, UK.

A scientific approach to art is not new. Many artists, most notably those of the Renaissance, approached art with a rigorous scientific mindset. The fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian schools of painting, especially in Florence and Rome, were concerned with geometry and the Golden Mean and were epitomized by the works of Leonardo Da Vinci and Raphael. European artistic training and up until the end of the nineteenth century, included classes in geometry and scientific theory. Impressionist and Divisionist artists, though rejecting traditional art, embraced new discoveries in color theory. In the twentieth century, the Futurist art movement applied current scientific understanding to effectively portray speed and movement on a canvas. Rothko was intensely concerned about the affect of color on the brain and was concerned about where his paintings would hang in case they would have an adverse results on the viewer (e.g. he believed that red was good for dining areas). I could think of a number of other examples.

The point is: science and art have been bedfellows for some time. So, it follows, why don't we use science to futher improve our understanding of art?

Geometric Analysis 2: Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) The Triumph of David. Oil on canvas. 118.4 BY 148.3CM. Dulwich Gallery, Dulwich, UK.

In 2004, Dr. Zeki and his colleague Dr. Hideaki Kawabata published a study titled Neural Correlates of Beauty in the April 2004 J Neurophysiol journal of the The American Physiological Society. The study reports on an experiment where ten woman, with at least one college degree, were asked to rate paintings on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being beautiful and 1 being ugly. (Note that the test controlled for a subjective experience with each painting, allowing personal preference and not scientific judgment to intervene.)

Each woman was placed in an MRI scan and, then, shown the paintings they rated in random order. The brain patterns of the women were mapped to determine whether or not the brain has has beauty or ugliness centers.

The conclusion of the study states:

The results show that the perception of different categories of paintings are associated with distinct and specialized visual areas of the brain, that the orbito-frontal cortex is differently engaged during the perception of beautiful and ugly stimuli, regardless of the category of painting, and that the perception of stimuli as beautiful or ugly mobilizes the motor cortext differentially.

(A PDF of the the full, published study, along with other studies by Dr. Zeki, can be found on the Wellcome Institute's website: neuroesthetics.org/research.php.)

In other words, setting aside a personal interpretation of beauty, the brain has established neuro-pathways that are triggered when looking at a beautiful or ugly work of art.

As the field of Neuroesthetics expands it may eventually influence the art world. As an art historian, I am curious about what makes a work of art or an artist have a lasting impact. To find out art theorist often uses a highly subjective and, therefore, uneasy mix of soft science. Having a more scientific approach to what makes a painting work, would be a welcome tool in my belt.

Geometric Analysis 3: Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) The Triumph of David. Oil on canvas. 118.4 BY 148.3CM. Dulwich Gallery, Dulwich, UK.

The effect of this kind of research on working artists could be useful or damaging, depending on the intent of the artist. If an artist wants to learn what affects her work is having on her viewers-- and, therefore, understand how to better hone those intended results--it seems very useful to use the ideas supported by neuroethetics. On the other hand, the last thing I would want to purchase it market-tested works of art. Thankfully, this doesn't seem to be the intent of Dr. Zeki's work.

Dr. Zeki has a blog, which he regularly updates: profzeki.blogspot.com. As the founder and leaders of the field of Neuroethetics, it is a good place to learn about his latest thinking.

John Trumbull. The Declaration of Independence. (c. 1817-1819) 144 BY 216 IN. United States Capitol Building Rotunda. (Click on the image for a high resolution version.)

The painting depicts the presentation of the draft of the Declaration of Independence to John Hancock, then President of the Second Continental Congress (1775-1777) by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, who were given by the task of writing the Declaration.

John Trumbull (1756-1843) was born in the Colony of Connecticut, where his father was the Crown-appointed Governor and the only Royal Governor to support Independence for the Colonies.

Using his family's close ties to England, Trumbull studied and worked in the London studio of the British portraitist Benjamin West. While in Europe he painted the portraits of John Adams, serving as the Ambassador to England at the time, and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who were both Ambassadors to the French Court. These portraits would later be incorporated into The Declaration of Independence.

The scale and multi-figural nature of the painting are ambitious. There are 47 portraits, all done from life. The painting itself was made over a period of three years. However, Trumbull, in his career as a portraitist in the Colonies, had gathered many of the portraits over f decades and brought together his sketches for this piece.

A key to the painting with the name of each figure.

The painting was later used as the back of the two-dollar bill.

United States Currency. Two-Dollar Bill.

The Declaration of Independence was commissioned by the United States Congress to be hung in the Capitol Building. It is one of eight paintings of the same scale that Turnbull painted for the Rotunda:

• Surrender of General Burgoyne
• Surrender of Lord Cornwallis
• General George Washington Resigning his Commission
• Death of General Warren
• Death of General Montgomery
• George Washington before the Battle of Trenton
• Battle of Princeton

But, because Congress had only commissioned four paintings, the last four were sent or sold to other institutions.

Vilhelm Hamershøi. Untitled (c. 1900) Oil on Canvas.

Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. The exhibition, Vilhelm Hammershøi: The Poetry of Silence, at the Royal Academy in London displays more than 60 of Hammershøi's works and runs until September 7. (It will then travel to Tokyo.)

Hammershøi received training at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and produced a number of landscapes early in his career. After graduating he submitted a number of portraits to the Royal Academy's annual exhibition, but was regularly rejected.

Portrait of the Artist's Sister (1887) Oil on Canvas.

Instead of challenging the system, beginning in the 1890s Hammershøi began painting interior scenes of his home that usually featured his wife, Ida. These paintings were generally sold directly to patrons and only occasionally on public view.

Vilhelm Hammershøi. Interior with Young Woman seen from the Back (c.1903–04) Oil on canvas. Randers Kunstmuseum.

The exhibition catalog often referred to Hammershøi's life as "an uneventful life." If that's true, I prefer the term "meditative" to describe his paintings.

For the past several days, I have been consumed by a deadline-driven project. From the moment I stepped into the exhibition, I was filled with a surpassing peace. The uneventfulness of Hammershøi's works are a wonderful antidote to a busy life. Without realizing it, I spent nearly two hours going from painting to painting.

Vilhelm Hammershoi's Palette.

Hammershøi's cool tones and bare compositions are typical of other painters working in Denmark at the time (e.g. Christian Krohg, L. A. Ring, Johannes Holbek). The choice of subjects and the incredible control over the gradation of light in the paintings also begs comparison to Vermeer.

However, Vermeer seemed to always have an underlying narrative to his works, and used a very wide palette, including copious amounts of lapis lazuli. By contrast, Hammershøi seems to have no obvious or hidden narrative and, as can be seen in the photograph (above) of his palette, he worked with an extremely limited range of colors.

Vilhelm Hammershøi. Sonnige Stube (1905) Oil on canvas, 49.7 x 40 CM. Nationalgalerie Berlin.

Hammershøi's deliberately visible brushwork and muted colors seems to resemble, above all, the influence the American painter James McNeil Whistler. Hammershøi's journals reveal his admiration for Whistler, who was working both in Paris and London at the time. More than once, Hammershøi went to England in the hopes of meeting Whistler; but, whether by poor planning or deliberate avoidance, Whistler always seems to have traveled to Paris when Hammershøi arrived in London.

Vilhelm Hammershøi. The British Museum (c. 1905-1906). Oil on Canvas.

Thinking of the title of the exhibition, The Poetry of Silence, I was reminded of a poem titled Silence by Billy Collins:

There is the sudden silence of the crowd

above a motionless player on the field,

and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase

before it strikes the floor

the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.

. . .

The silence before I wrote a word

and the poorer silence now.

(Excerpt from Silence by Billy Collins. The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems.)

For an antidote to the ever-busy lifestyle we all lead, I highly recommend finding a Hammershøi painting and sitting in silence for a time.

Art, Exhibitions, museums, Ramblings/IdeasMicah ChristensenJuly 1, 2008

Cover of Prado. On the Cover Design: A Preparatory drawing by the sculptor Cristina Iglesias for the Doors of the Prado Museum's new extension.

According to the last page of the magazine: "The format of Prado has the exact same proportions as the painting Las Meninas by Velázquez."

Diego Velázquez. Las Meninas. (a. 1656) Oil on Canvas. Prado Museum, Madrid.

The Prado Museum--one of the most important museums in Europe--has begun publishing a new magazine simply titled Prado. A press release on the Museum's website explains:

Starting this week, the new issue of Prado magazine will be available in the Museum's shop. This magazine, the first issue of which was published last year, is a bilingual publication in Spanish and English with contributions signed by prestigious guests such as, in this issue, the photographers Gianni Berengo Gardin and Attilio Maranzano, the essayist, poet and playwright Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Príncipe de Asturias Award for Communications and Humanities in 2002, or the architect and Professor Juan José Lahuerta, amongst others The magazine includes the documentary in DVD Patinir and the Invention of Landscape.

The magazine is beautifully illustrated and written. Rather than a stuffy, academic publication, it looks more like a high-end architectural or design magazine.

I wonder why I have to go to Madrid to buy a bilingual magazine from an internationally-renowned museum. I was lucky enough to be at the Museum shop when this issue came out. But, I'm not going to Spain to buy each new issue.

The Museum website does raise the unspecified possibility of getting the magazine another way by stating in its press release: "Purchase by email: tiendaprado@museodelpradodifusion.es."

Ordering it via email is definitely worth a try.

Three quarters of what constitutes painting is comprised of drawing. If I had to put a sign above my door I would write: 'School of Drawing,” and I'm sure that I would produce Painters. -Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Studies for "The Grand Odalisque," 1814. Graphite on three sheets of paper, 10 BY 10 1/4IN. (25.4 BY 26.5CM.). Département des Arts Graphiques, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Grand Odalisque, 1814. Oil on canvas, 35 1/4 BY 63 3/4IN. (89.66 BY 162CM.) Private collection.

Drawing was the fundamental teaching of the French art education system, a model that spread to the rest of the world.

In its original, seventeenth-century coursework, students submitted to a daily regimen beginning with copying modeles de dessin, plaster casts, and individual body parts. After years of practicing from inanimate objects, talented students were allowed to draw directly from nude models and compete for government commissions for work on the merit of their drawings.

Drawings Produced from 1800 to 1850

In the process of their study and work, nineteenth-century artists created specific kinds of drawings with distinct purposes. Because there was no widely recognized market, drawings were not made for the purpose of sale. Instead, the public purchased paintings or prints. However, this did not mean that the drawings were considered to be valueless. In the tradition going back centuries, David and Ingres kept stored and labeled drawings, and sometimes used them for instructional purpose.

Most of the drawings included in this post are by the prime example of academic drawing of the period: Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867). Ingres was the undisputed leader of the École des Beaux-Arts after the death of David. Ingres was David’s star pupil and had been awarded the Prix de Rome from the French Government, allowing him to study directly from classical works in Rome. He returned to Paris in 1841 and dominated teaching at the École.

EDUCATIONAL DRAWINGS

Individual parts of the body, from the plaster cast

Anonymous study of plaster foot. Musée d'Orsay. Paris, France.

Before students were allowed to work on the human figure, each was required to produce convincing two-dimensional reproductions of plaster casts made from ancient statuary. Greek and Roman works were considered representations of ideal beauty, and were often created using complex mathematical equations in pursuit of the Golden Mean.

The intent of this approach was to firmly establish a foundational concept of the human body in each student’s practice before he or she encountered wide-ranging variation in the natural human figure.

From the Nude

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Study of Seated Female Nude. c. 1830. Musée Ingres.

From the early Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century, mastering the human body was considered the supreme challenge and goal of academic painters.

This foundation was especially necessary for commercial success in France, where the most lucrative commissions came in the form of patriotic history paintings comparing the new French Republic to classical democracies in Greece and Rome.

The live drawing sessions were overseen by the head teacher of the École. In the beginning of the century, David arranged the school’s schedule around live model drawing.

The art critic Etienne-Jean Delécluze described the approach of Jacques-Louis David, who is responsible for the trajectory of the École in the first half of the century:

“in the eaves . . . facing the Pont des Arts . . . the model was posed twice a week, or rather every ten days, at the time. For the first six days the model was posed nude; the last three days, a model for the head only, and the studio was closed on the tenth day.”

These drawings did not relate to any particular painting, but were understood to assist the painter in his mastery of the human figure.

Years after receiving his first lessons in drawing the nude from David, Ingres was one of the most prominent portrait painters in Europe. In a surviving drawing, we can see that even when working with a fully-clothed sitter, Ingres used his understanding of human anatomy to understand the structure of the body beneath the clothing.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Study for the “Portrait of the Baronne James de Rothschild,” c. 1848. Graphite on paper, 8 BY 5 1/8IN. (20.4 BY 13CM.). Musée Bonnat, Bayonne.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Portrait of the Baronne James de Rothschild, 1848. Oil on canvas, 55 3/4 BY 40IN. (141.8 BY 101.5CM.). Private collection

I'm fairly confident that Ingres died not tell the Baronne that he was imagining her in the nude.

PREPARATORY DRAWINGS FOR PAINTINGS There were, broadly speaking, three classes of drawings created by artists trained in the École in the process of making a painting: the première pensée, the esquisse peinte, and the croquis. Again, Ingres will be used as the example.

The première pensée Drawings were seen as the beginning of the painting process. An artist’s first idea, or première pensée, would be captured in a rough sketch with the intent of developing composition. Successive drawings would develop the idea found in the original and create a clearer or more thoughtful expression of what had only originally been sketched. Detail such as figures, stance and gestures come into focus.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Study for "The Odalisque with a Slave," 1839. Pen and ink on paper, 6 1/4 by 7 1/4IN. (16 BY 18.5CM.). Musée Ingres, Montauban, France.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Odalisque with a Slave. 1839.

This drawing by Ingres is the first known draft for his painting Odalisque with a Slave (1839). It is a very small drawing. The quick lines and lack of any detail are used as a starting point for further drawings.

The esquisse peinte The second stage of drawing used by Ingres is referred to as the esquisse peinte and is used as a complete road map for the final painting. Much larger than the première pensée, it was often drawn to the scale of the final painting directly onto the canvas and then painted over by the artist.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Study for "The Odalisque with a Slave," 1839. Pen and ink, white pastel, and gouache on paper, 6 1/4 by 7 1/4IN. (34.5 BY 47.5CM.). Louvre. Paris, France.

The croquis

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Study of Hands and Feet for "The Golden Age," (1862), graphite on paper. Louvre, Paris, France.

Throughout the drafting process, areas of the painting that pose particularly difficult challenges (e.g. hands, feet, linen folds, facial expressions) are drawn sometimes multiple times and in multiple positions. In this way the adage of “measure twice, cut once” was applied to painting. In this way the artist could test multiple approaches to individual areas of the painting without jeopardizing the entire work.

Alphonse Mucha. Poster for the Exposition of The Slav Epic. (1928). Color Lithograph.

I went to Madrid to continue research on Spanish painters, and left with an obsession for the Czech painter Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939).

Photograph of the CaixaForum building's vertical garden.

While walking to a cafe next to my hotel, I stumbled onto an exhibition on Mucha. Titled Alphonse Mucha: Seduction, Modernity, and Utopia, the exhibition is a joint effort between CaixaForum and the Mucha Foundation. It will be on show at CaixaForums new building, located across the street from the Prado, until August 31.

The CaixaForum is the cultural wing of the Caixa Bank. Banks in Spain are required by law to use a percentage of their profits for cultural purposes. As a result, many important exhibitions, like this one, have come to Spain in the past few years. As a rule they are free to the public, and are almost always accompanied by beautiful catalogs. Unfortunately, these catalogs, like the one accompanying the Mucha exhibition, are almost never available in stores or online.

Photograph of Alphonse Mucha (1906)

Alphonse Mucha was born in Moravia (the modern-day Czech Republic). At the age of 25, he began studies at Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Two years later, he would move to Paris and study at the prestigious Academie Julien in France.

Eventually, he would become friends with Gauguin and participate in Symbolist art shows with Bonnard, Grasset, Toulouse-Lautrec, Mallarmé and Verlaine. His participation in Symbolism, which has underlying metaphysical and religious beliefs, went hand in hand with his participation in Freemasonry.

Mucha was initiated in the Masonic Lodge of Paris in 1898 and continued to practice Freemasonry until he died, including references to it in many of his works.

One of my favorite moments in the exhibition came from a group of school children visiting at the same time I was. Their teacher asked them: "Does anyone know what a Masonic Lodge is?" The students seemed puzzled and no one was able to answer the question. Lesson: Don't expect a group of students in a country where 94% of the public is Catholic to know much about Masonry. Besides being an important Symbolist, Mucha was one of the most influential players in the development of Art Nouveau, for which he is most remembered.

His Work

Alphonse Mucha. Madonna of the Lilies. (1905) Oil on canvas. Mucha Museum, Prague

One of the great discoveries of this exhibition for me was Mucha's ability to paint in oils. Had I only seen his posters, which often use a limited palette and solid colors separated by black lines, I would not think these paintings were his.

Alphonse Mucha. The Apotheosis of the Slavs. (1926) Oil on canvas. Private collection

In contrast to the posters, the oils are full of light and use a generous palette. His ability to gradate from one color to another is extraordinary. While looking at The Apotheosis of the Slavs (1926), I thought of late-fifteenth-century paintings by Bellini, where he was just beginning to use oil rather than tempera, egg-based paints. Almost overnight, Bellini was able to make smooth shadows and gradual changes in color that were previously impossible. Mucha seems to crown nearly five hundred years of oil painting with a symphony of color that seamlessly glides from one bright color to another.

The Slav Epic

Photograph of Alphonse Mucha at the opening of the Exhibition of The Slav Epic. (1919) Klementinum, Prague.

In 1911, Mucha had returned to Prague--never to return to Paris--and began creating his magnum opus: The Slav Epic. In over fifteen years of work, he created 20 paintings measuring nearly 18 by 20 feet each. Ten of the paintings depict historical events related specifically to the Czech nation. The other ten depict spiritual and mythological events in the history the Slavic race. The paintings, now in Prague, were missing for thirty years. Unbeknownst to his family, Mucha had rolled them up and hidden them from Nazi occupiers.

Alphonse Mucha. The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia. (1914) Tempera on canvas. Mucha Museum, Prague

Strangely, Mucha began his epic portrayal of his people at about the same time that Joaquín Sorolla had begun Visions of Spain, which was done in a similarly large scale.

Alphonse Mucha. Holy Mount Athos. (1926) Tempera on canvas. Mucha Museum, Prague

In can't wait to go to Prague to see the large canvases myself, and to learn more about Alphonse Mucha.

Art, Classical, Historical, museums, Ramblings/IdeasMicah ChristensenJune 24, 2008 Comment

Note: I have used several high-resolution images in this post. Depending on the speed of your internet connection, it may take a few moments to properly load them all.

Martin Lewis HA'NTED (1932) Drypoint with sandpaper-ground, 33.3 BY 22.6CM or 13 BY 9IN. (Although one of the least-featured works in the exhibition, it is one of my favorites.)

The British Museum has the largest collection of American prints outside the United States. Much of its collection has come from the artists' families themselves. Over a hundred prints are now on view in the in Museum's Print Room. In addition, a beautiful catalog, The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock, has been printed to accompany the exhibition. It includes many high-quality, little-published images. It is also beautifully written by Stephen Coppel, who is a great storyteller.

The American Scene exhibition is on show until September 7 at the British Museum. For those who can't be there in person, the exhibition website has an interactive section worth visiting. Because it is just around the corner from me, I've been able to sneak away, sometimes with my three-year-old son asleep in his stroller, to see some of the pieces several times.

George Bellows A Stag at Sharkey's (1917) Lithograph, 47.5 BY 61CM. or 18 3/4 BY 24IN.

A Stag at Sharkey's (1917) illustrated a time in the US when public boxing matches were illegal. To avoid prosecution and simultaneously gather paying crowds, gyms would have private boxing clubs. Members would pay dues to the gym in place of tickets and the matches would be held behind closed doors. George Bellows (1882-1925) was a regular viewer and sometimes participated in the matches. He was even given the boxing name "Chicago Whitey."

Bellows was born in Columbus, Ohio where he studied as Ohio State University and hoped to eventually become a professional baseball player. Instead, he studied under Robert Henri and John Sloan in New York at the Ashcan School. There he gained a solid foundation in drawing and painting the human figure, which is reflected in the above work.

Leonard Baskin MAN OF PEACE (1952) Woodcut on oriental paper 158 BY 78.7CM or 62 1/8 BY 31IN.

Together with his equally pessimistic work The Hydrogen Man, this piece by Leonard Baskin (1922-2000) greets everyone entering the exhibition. I couldn't help but wonder if the Museum curator who placed them there was making a statement about the United States' current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (It seems like at least twice a week I'm told by European acquaintances how the US is finally learning its lesson.) Maybe I'm projecting.

In any case, this work was meant to be an anti-war piece reflecting discontent with the Korean and Cold Wars in America. That's a dead dove in the man's hands. I think it is wonderfully effective in expressing the intended message and the kind of complicated emotions people felt at the time.

Despite my short-lived angst with their prominent display in a show whose mood they do not proportionately represent, while looking at Baskin's two works I found myself reflecting on my own pessimism, anger, sadness, regret, and helplessness that I feel about the current war in Iraq.

Julius Bloch THE PRISONER (1934) Lithograph 34 BY 25.3CM. or 14 3/8 BY 10IN.

Julius Bloch (1888-1966) was heavily influenced by French Realism from the late nineteenth century (e.g. Jean-François Millet) and American painters Thomas Eakins and Robert Henri. This work shows a kind of stripped-down simplicity that still borrows from a solid understanding of the human figure. (Look at the figure's chest and sides as the shoulders rise forward and they bend inwards. Wow.)

The Prisoner at once emanates sadness and hope. I found myself staring at it for a few minutes, lost in thought. It reminded me of the meditative paintings of seventeenth-century Bolognese painters like Guido Reni and Ludovico Carracci. From page 147 of the exhibition catalog:

The model was Alonzo Jennings, who had sat for an earlier portrait. In his journal Bloch described the placing of handcuffs on Jennings: 'I had a horror of putting them on him, but he only laughed, and said, "I'll trust you to take them off again.'" (Bloch, Journals, no. 3, 25 November 1933)

James Allen The Connectors (1934) Etching, 32.7 BY 25CM. or 12 7/8 BY 9 7/8IN.

Is there anything more American than building skyscrapers during the Depression? I submit that it stands aside hot dogs, baseball, apple pie, and John Wayne movies. The rising forms of buildings, soaring heavenward, must have been statues of optimism in a time when it was difficult to feel good about the future.

The Connectors depicts two workers supposedly working on the Empire State Building during the height of the Depression. As was the case with most workers, they are high above the ground without safety harnesses or scaffolding. James Allen (1894-1964) did a number of construction-worked pieces. I wonder how much of this piece is taken from first-hand experience or from Allen's imagination. Having served as a US pilot in WWI, he was no stranger to dangerous heights.

(He is not the same James Allen that wrote the essay As a Man Thinketh that is given to almost every hormonal teenager in my hometown.)

Robert Gwathmey THE HITCHHIKER (1937) Solor screenprint, 42.8 BY 33.3CM. or 16 7/8 BY 13IN.

The Hitchhiker is one of the promotional pieces used by the Museum to advertise the exhibition, and can be seen all over London. According to the Coppel label for the work, it is based on the only early painting by the artist that he did not destroy. That explains why several online searches for other works by Robert Gwathmey (1903-1988) had little result.

Gwathmey was a native Virginian who trained in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Europe. Later in life, his efforts were more as a teacher than producing artist.

Louis Lozowick New York (c. 1925) Lithograph, 29.2 BY 22.9CM. or 11 1/2 BY 9IN.

As a Russian Jew born near the turn of the century, Louis Lozowick (1892-1973) may have known my grandfather, a Jew living near Lozowick's hometown. Lozowick studied art in Kiev, but was forced to leave during the Russian revolution of 1905.

New York is his most famous work. Comparing it to works by Natalia Goncharova, a Cubo-futurist painter, it appears that Lozowick was heavily influenced by his Russian background. According to Coppel, Lozowick knew some of the major Russian artists of the day: Kasimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, and El Lissitsky.

My wife lived in Manhattan for several years. Seeing this lithograph, she said "I really, really miss New York," saying it was like living in a "man-made canyon."

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I've now been to the exhibition four times. For an American living in London, seeing images that carry a distinctly American flavor is like having comfort food. I plan on going many times more.

I spent Sunday afternoon at the preview for Sotheby's 19th Century European Paintings auction in London. (The auction will take place on May 30, together with nineteenth-century Scandinavian works.) I was so overwhelmed with the quantity and quality of paintings, that I went back this morning to take a second look.

While there, I had a wonderful time with Adrian Biddell, Head of the Nineteenth-Century Department, Claude Piening, Senior Director, and the specialist Marta Enille. They were each generous, showing me their personal favorites and sharing a wealth of information that, due to other considerations, cannnot fit into an auction catalog.

In a classroom setting, I once asked well-respected scholar what the difference between a museum catalog and auction catalog is. Her answer: "Length." Several of the pieces at the auction merit the kind of in-depth, drawn-out study than an auction catalog (or blog) can't give. For my part, I hope that many of these paintings resurface after the auction in order to be seen and written about at greater length.

I have pictured a few pieces here that I liked. They are not all the most highly valued ones at the auction, but they set off a spark in me.

Heroische Landschaft Mit Regenbogen (Heroic Landscape with Rainbow) by Joseph Anton Koch (42 3/4 X 37 3/4 in.)

The entry for this painting, written by Claude Piening, is an example of the amount of great thought that can be found in these catalogs. He writes:

In Heroische Landschaft mit Regenbogen, as in his other heroic landscapes, [. . .] Koch showed that neoclassicism could and should seamlessly blend into Romanticism and have ideological motivations. The picture spirits the viewer into a timeless, bygone realm populated by shepherds and shepherdesses.

This is the last of four copies of this painting by Koch. The other three are in major museums.

Far from being his premiere pensée, it was painted over a decade after the first version. Instead of spontaneity, it shows a mature structure not found in the other three.

As in Poussin's work--a comparison made by Piening in the catalog--the viewer is carefully drawn into the depth of the painting and shown around through visual devices (e.g. paths, figures, mountain slopes) that makes it difficult to look away. The clouds mimic the hills, which mirror the buildings.

While the composition shows lessons learned from Poussin and Claude, the rich coloring borrows from a Northern European tradition seen in landscapes by Rubens and Brill.

It is a wonderful and strange combination of the two traditions, Classic and Northern landscape.

The Presentation by José Tapiró (Spanish, 1836-1913) 19 1/2 X 27 1/2 in. watercolor and gouache on paper.

This is not a major painting by a major painter, but it sings. It is one of many Orientalist paintings and sculptures at the auction.

The painting depicts a group of young boys pretending to be guards with shaved branches instead of guns. It appears to be fun and games until a canon in the middle ground of the painting indicates that they are on the ramparts of a defended city.

It is beautifully composed and technically stunning, reflecting Tapiró's academic training in Reus, Barcelona, and Rome.

Each boy tells a story in his face. While looking at it, I found myself remembering childhood friends I thought I'd forgotten, but who just needed a little prodding from this piece to float back to the surface.

The Watchful Eye--The Vigil by Salvador Sánchez Barbudo (Spanish, 1857-1917) 58 X 100 1/2 in.

This is another Spanish painter who studied in Rome.

It is the kind of painting that an interior designer would find difficult because it is not, as one once told me, "optimistic." This is a painting where the artist's skill is immediately evident.

I have to admit that I feel very little emotional connection to this painting. For my part, the title gives too little information to make the narrative clear, but the subject isn't interesting enough to make me curious about much else than the composition.

I was totally fascinated by its construction. As Marta Enille pointed out to me, the woman is beautifully done. But it is the sprawled-out figure of the man that fascinates me. The difficult, angular pose of the unconscious man and woman in profile could easily have been done another way or less convincingly. It seems effortless in person.

It is perfectly large painting. Any smaller and it would have made the sprawled figure of the man unconvincing; any larger and he would have seemed unreal.

David Apres le Combat (David After the Battle) Jean-Antonin Mercié (French, 1845-1916) 44 in.

According to the catalog, this work was:

modified during [Mercié's] sojourn in Rome at the French Academy and was undoubtedly an extremely bold statement which begged comparison with seminal works of the Renaissance by Verrocchio, Donatello and Michelangelo. However, Mercié's youthful hero, with his effete charm and overtones of orientalism, could never be mistaken for a Renaissance work. It was exhibited at the Salon of 1872.

The picture hardly does it justice. In person, I felt refined in its presence. Rather than effete, it seems regal, serene.

It seems to me that every narrative has its own convincing medium. This is yet another proof that David and Goliath is best seen in 3D.

Les Deux Soeurs (The Two Sisters) by Charles Giron (Swiss, 1850-1914) 172 X 248 3/4 in.

Of all the paintings I have seen this year, I was least prepared for this. I spent over an hour dwarfed by it. It is nearly 15 feet tall and 21 feet long with figures in actual scale. As a result, the viewer is appropriated into the painting without need for imagination.

It needs to be seen to be believed.

According to Claude Piening, who researched the painting for the sale, it showed in the 1883 Paris Salon "causing reams of commentary" at the time.

This painting could be subtitled "the beginning of the end of history painting." It is done in the scale of classical history paintings championed by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, even at this late date. The background features classical columns, but the scene is entirely contemporary -- real people in everyday clothing and events.

The central narrative is of two sisters, one with three children and a husband obviously accustomed to manual labor and the other sister in silk clothing and a horse-drawn carriage. The poorer sister shoots an accusatory finger towards the other, as if publicly calling her out as a girl-for-hire.

No one but the two women and the husband seem to understand the deep emotional nature of the moment. The flower woman, in a masterfully painted effect, holds a string in her mouth as she ties a bouquet for a customer, the traffic continues its pace, and the children seem to be unaware of the conflict.

I have contacted several people about this painting in hopes that, at least, I can find it an appreciative home with visitation rights.