Note: Right now there are two remarkable exhibitions taking place: The Sacred Made Real, about religious Spanish sculpture, a loan of John Singer Sargent’s painting The Children of Darley Bolt (1882) to the Prado Museum, where it hangs next to Velázquez’s Las Meninas (c. 1656). I know I have written about Eakins and Velázquez before, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the Spanish Master’s influence on nineteenth-century artists. For me it is a source of endless curiosity and one of the more unexplored aspects of the period.

When John Singer Sargent travelled to Spain in 1879 his approach to painting fundamentally and irrevocably changed. There his understanding of painting was forever infused by the restrained palette, virtuosic brushwork and reverence for nature learned principally from Diego Velázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660).

Sargent travelled to Spain at a time when France, the center of the international art world, had rediscovered Spanish masters. King Louis-Philippe’s Galerie Espagnole (1835-1853) and the marriage of Emperor Napoleon III to Eugenie Contador, a Grandée of Spain (1853), brought a newfound appreciation to the Spanish Golden Age and its artists that excited a generation of artists working in Paris.

Édouard Manet, Léon Bonnat, Jean-Léon Gêrome, Thomas Eakins, Julian Alden Weir, William Merritt Chase, and many others travelled to Madrid to copy works found almost exclusively in the Prado Museum. Chief among the artists copied by foreigners was Diego Velázquez, considered a new, viable alternative to French classical models that dominated Academic painting.

Sargent was a student at the prestigious and exclusive École des Beaux-Arts, when his instructors Carolus-Duran (French, 1837-1917) and Léon Bonnat (French, 1833-1922) suggested that his development as an artist would improve dramatically from a visit to Spain. Sargent visited the Prado Museum multiple times from October to November in 1879. The official Registry of Copiers records Sargent copying The Crucifixion (c. 1632), Las Meninas (c. 1656), and Las Hilanderas (c. 1644) by Velázquez.

As court painter to Philip IV of Spain, Velázquez was employed by the most powerful country on earth. However, unlike many other Baroque painters of his time, whose grandiose works were showcases of extravagant colors, exotic creatures, and obscure subjects,Velázquez’s work features everyday people in everyday settings. Even his few religious and mythological works are notable for not idealizing their subjects.

The French discovery of Velázquez came at a time when artists were breaking from a long-standing tradition of Classicism, which shunned Realism in favor of idealized subjects and painterly technique that obscured the artist’s hand. In Paris, Sargent’s education was considered the best in the world. It emphasized compositional formulas based on the Greco-Roman tradition as interpreted by French masters such as Nicolás Poussin (French, 1594-1665) and, later, Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748-1825). Their approach to art required rigorous draftsmanship that often resulted in statuesque, figures in classical landscapes or architecture. This interpretation of classicism was the official style in Europe for nearly 300 years. The rigidity of Academic painting limited the kinds of subjects artists could produce for competition and patronage.

When Louis-Philippe opened his Galerie Espagnole in 1835, works by Velázquez, José de Ribera (Spanish, 1591-1652) and Francisco Zurburán (Spanish, 1598-1664) were introduced to the French public for the first time. Working at the same time as the founding fathers of French art, these Spanish artists offered an alternate classicism that emphasized nature.

The study of Velázquez’s work changed a generation of French artists’ approach. Unlike many Academic painter, Velázquez was unafraid to leave distinguishable brushstrokes on his canvases. Thick strokes of paint are clearly visible, demonstrating both his virtuosic skills–capable of reproducing an astonishing array of textures–and making the painting more of a three-dimensional work. His palette is limited, almost exclusively earth tones. When Velázquez did use color, it was muted, rather than garish; and, therefore, subjects appear more lifelike. Whether painting mythological figures, royal portraits, or multi-layered religious narratives, Velázquez captures the natural surroundings and features of his subjects without idealizing them. As a result, he exalts and dignifies the truth while simultaneously making them more approachable.

In Crucifixion, Sargent paints one of Velázquez’s most repeated subjects: the crucified Christ. It is important to note that, rather than the actual cricified Christ, both Velázquez and Sargent painted wooden crucifixes. Velázquez was influenced and mentored by the Spanish sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés (1568-1649).

Known as the Michelangelo of wood, Montañés created hundreds of religious sculptures that are still in use in religious festivals. The crucifix in Velázquez’s La venerable madre Jerónima de la Fuente (c. 1620) and Sargent’s Crucifixion are both based on Montañés models.

In his Crucifixion, Sargent captures a private moment of meditation on Christ’s sacrifice. The crucifix hangs on a chapel wall while light streams from an upper window.

Using a wooden crucifix, rather than a realistic Christ, emphasizes the religious experience of the viewer, rather than Christ’s experience on the cross. This is a meditation on what reflecting on the crucifixion means to the viewer well after the event has taken place. Sargent capitalizes on this reflection by using Velázquez’s technique of broad visible brushstrokes. This allows the mind of the viewers to fill in the details and, therefore, participate in the subject in a way that incites the imagination like no detailed rendition could. Sargent also adopts Velázquez’s use of ochres. The nearly monochrome palette draws greater attention to Sargent’s remarkable brushwork, which like Velázquez, is unabashedly visible, at times broadly defining Christ figure and at others using miniscule strokes.

These hallmarks of Velázquez’s technique were studied and absorbed by Sargent. He transmuted them into his own French education and used the two to become the world’s most sought-after portraitist and, arguably, the greatest American painter of the nineteenth century.

The youngest son of the powerful Duke of Sutherland, Lord Ronald Gower (British, 1845-1916) was educated at Eton and Cambridge.  He distinguished himself as a popular politician, serving in the British Parliament from 1867-1874. Following his political career,  Gower became an unlikely, critically-acclaimed sculptor and an historical writer. In the words of his mother, the Duchess of Sutherland, Gower  had  “a certain unpractical side of his character.”

Gower’s first serious attempt at sculpting was, ironically, for his mother’s grave in 1868.  He collaborated with Matthew Noble (British, 1818-1876) who was hired for a memorial befitting the Duchess. Noble was the son of a stonemason who studied sculpture in London. Chronically ill from childhood, Noble nonetheless exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition until he died at the age of 58. Though Gower mentions Noble as a major influence in his artistic development, the ex-politician was largely self-taught.

Untrained and unmotivated by financial gain, Gower was derisively considered a “gentleman sculptor.” Despite all this, his work received international critical and popular praise. Gower’s sculptures were accepted to the Paris Salons of 1880 and 1881, the Paris International Exhibition of 1878, and numerous competitions at the Royal Academy, placed alongside sculptures by Alfred Leighton.

The first public sculpture by Lord Gower was Marie Antoinette (1876), completed two years after his retirement from politics. Eight years later, Gower published Marie Antoinette: An Historical Sketch (1885). Both the sculpture and the book were part of a larger late-nineteenth-century reexamination of Marie Antoinette’s reputation. Gower’s works joined a chorus of scholars who asserted that the Queen was a scapegoat of unrestrained revolutionary fervor.

During French Revolution of 1789, angry mobs successfully captured King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. The King was quickly executed, while the Queen was kept under arrest, where she reportedly refused to eat or move. In the weeks that followed, révolutionnaires cast Marie Antoinette as the personification of Royal excess and frivolity. Her fate became a national debate. During a two-day show trail, filled with unsubstantiated accusations of gross immorality, Marie Antoinette refused to defend herself, saying “If I have not replied it is because Nature itself refuses to respond to such a charge laid against a mother.” Fearing rising sympathy for the deposed Queen, the Revolutionary Tribunal cut short her trial.  A mother of four and 37 years old, Marie Antoinette was publicly and summarily beheaded on  October 16, 1789 at 12:15 p.m. The incident was famously captured by Jacques-Louis David, a passionate supporter of the revolution–in his humiliating sketch of the Queen on the platform of the guillotine.

Lord Gower’s sculpture Marie Antoinette (1876) preceded his biography by nine years, indicating the subject had preoccupied him for some time. Gower depicts the deposed Queen being led to the guillotine. With hands tied behind her back and hair shorn to elicit further humiliation, the deposed Queen walks forward, resolutely and unbowed.

The work is not a technical masterpiece. Anatomically it is more stylistic than correct. Like so many of the the artists featured on this blog, there are very few examples of Gower's work available for public view and almost no images to speak of. However, Gower's last work, Hamlet (1888) is perhaps his best and most memorable.

In 1883, the city of Stratford-Upon-Avon commissioned Lord Gower to create a memorial to the city's most famous citizen: William Shakespeare. Gower worked for five years at his own expense. (In his memoirs, Gower claims it cost him an average of £500 per year, which he never charged the city.)

Though he lived another 28 years, Lord Gower declared the monument his last work and never sculpted again.

If you saw the above work and thought "Bougeureau," you could be forgiven. Hugues Merle (French, 1823-1881) is in many ways a forgotten proto-Bougeureau. Merle and William-Adolphe Bougeureau (1825-1905) knew one another well and, for a time, were represented by the same gallery. Born two years apart, both graduated from the École de Beaux-Arts, were members of the French Academy and regulary exhibited at the annual Paris Salon. Their penchant for mythical, allegorical and literary scenes combined with mastery of the monumental human figure, made them competitors for the same pupils, positions, prizes and patrons. While Merle was only two years Bouguereau's senior, he died nearly a quarter century earlier. A strong argument could be made–and I may tackle it some day–that had Merle lived to Bouguereau's age, memory of his work would have not suffered such anonymity.

Two years ago, someone I know bought major work by Hugues Merle–Romeo & Juliette (1879). Since then, Merle has become a pet project that has taken me to France, England, Belgium and the United States in search of primary documents and published materials. There is disappointingly little available on public record.  By increasing awareness of his work, its my goal to encourage those who have information relating to Merle to raise their hands and help us all piece together the life and work of an artist to has a lot to offer.

There is a precedent for this. Thirty years ago, Damien Bartoli (1947-2009) took up the cause of Bouguereau and worked to produce a catalogue raisonné for the artist. Sadly, Bartoli died last month; but, not before publishing dozens of articles and submitting his final manuscript of Bouguereau's complete works. (It will be this by the Antique Collectors' Club in London.) Over the same 30 years, Bougueraeu has experienced a revival. Although it would be hard to establish a causal relationship, since Bartoli picked up his pen Bouguereau has seen a dramatic increase in awareness, appreciation and prices for his work. I'm no Bartoli and Merle is not Bouguereau. But, as Bougeureau's star continues to rise, I believe it is only a matter of time until Merle's follows. The two were closely associated in life and deserve to be in death.

Hugues Merle was born in Saint–Marcellin in the region of Isère (i.e. Southeast France). Little is know about his family or upbringing. As a community, Isère was politlcally charge, known for strong Protestant roots and nearly uniform support for the Empire. Early in his career, Merle painting a number of pro-Empire works that may be a reflection of his origins.

Merle was accepted as a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the nation's most prestigious school for aspiring artists. There he enrolled in the studio of Léon Cogniet (1784-1880). Cogniet had studied at the École under Pierre -Narcisse Guérin, at same time as Eugene Delacroix, Ary Scheffer and Theodore Géricault, with whom he maintained life-long friendships. While he distinguished himself by winning the Prix de Rome in 1817, Cogniet is largely remembered as a teacher. Of him, Baudelaire wrote:

If he does not aspire to the level of genius, his is one of those talents which defy criticism by their very completeness within their own moderation. M. Cogniet is as unacquainted with the reckless flights of fantasty as with the rigid systems of the absolutists. To fuse, to mix and combine, while exercising choice, have always been his role and aim; and he has perfectly fulfilled them.

(Charles Baudelarie. The Mirror of Art, rans. and ed. by Jonathan Mayne. New York: 1956, p. 21)

Cogniet students include some of the century's most respected painters, including Alfred Dehodencq, Jean-Louis Ernest Messonier, Jules Joseph Lefebvre, Léon Bonnat, Raimundo de Madrazo, and Jean Paul Laurens. As a teacher, Cogniet advocated vigorous and rough sketching above meticulous, time-consuming preparation. This became what Albert Boime described as "the sauce Cogniet [that] became a popular epithet to describe the technique of his disciples." (Art and the Academy, p. 104). This resulted in a fluid naturalism in Cogniet's own work, which influenced Merle's approach during the the 1840s and 1850s.

Having seen nearly 200 of Merle's works (I have no idea how many he painted yet), ranging from the early 1840s to his death in 1881, I would divide his ouvre into roughly three periods:

1. Multifigural History Painting (1840s and 1850s)
2. Genre Scenes (1850s and 1860s)
3. Monumental Romantic Figures (1860s t0 1881)

1. MULTI-FIGURAL HISTORY PAINTING (1840s and 1850s)

It is no surprise that works from early in Merle's career have more in common with Cogniet's work than his latter works. They  are politically-charged or mythological history paintings–the kind that students at the École were trained to produce. Like Cogniet, many of these works are romantic in coloring and stroke. The brushwork is loose and the palette is warm.

2. GENRE SCENES (1850s and 1860s)

It is my guess that once he had established his academic credibility, Merle had to make a transition into becoming a commercial success. In mid-nineteenth Paris, this meant appealing to the bourgeoisie. Rather than mythological or heroic scenes that appealed to aristocratic tastes or political agendas, the easy sell to the upwardly mobile French middle classes was domestic family life and narratives lionizing traditional French values. Merle painted pictures of mothers and daughters, family gatherings, country scenes and home interiors. According to one source, it during this period Bougeureau and Merle had the same picture dealer, and that dealer encouraged  Bougeureau to take up Merle's successful theme of familial grieving.

In this era, Merle developed his own technical approach that distanced him from Cogniet. He replaced warm colors with a high-contrast, jewel-like palette. His paintings became sparsely populated and the remaining figures grew in proportion to fill the canvas. As the figures grew, they became more idealized with an emphasis on line over color.

3. MONUMENTAL ROMANTIC FIGURES (1860s t0 1881)

Merle's critical successes in the  Salons of the 1860s led gave him international recognition. Like many others, Salon prizes resulted in a lucrative business of painting portraits Brits and Americans.  But, it was Merle's work as an interpreter of major literary romantic figures that set him apart.

Upon seeing a photo of Merle's interpretation of the Scarlett Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne is purported to have said: "It is the most true representation of my work I have ever seen." Merle painted a number of biblical and literary figures, especially romantic couples, including Tristan & Isolde, Benedick & Beatrice, and Romeo & Juliet. These figures were painted as large as life. They dominated the canvas. Merle removed all unnecessary narrative devices, relying on his audience's familiarity with the subjects.

In 1865, François-Victor Hugo (Victor Hugo's son) had translated the complete works of Shakespeare into French. For the next fifteen years, the French poured over and re-interpreted the Bard's narratives in ballets, operas, sculptures, and paintings. Merle's Romeo & Juliette depicts the couple's first meeting in Act I, Scene V. Here Romeo steals a "pilgrim's kiss" from Juliet who coyly responds "You kiss by the book."

The increased sophistication of Merle's subjects was rising mastery of the human form. While his treatment of the clothed figure indicate his skill level, it is in nude that we are able to see an artist's true mastery of the figure. Bougeureau's female nudes leave us in awe of his skill and ensure his immortality. There are accounts of several painting of nude figures by Hugues Merle that have not surfaced in the art market. For me, this is a major omission in his ouvre and one that will continue to dog him if he is to regain stature.

(Dear Readers, I am currently on vacation and will be back and posting regularly at the end of September. Have a great summer!)

(Note: The following was written for the private collector who owns these two bronzes. I enjoyed my research so much, that I thought I would share it here, with his permission.)

At a time when Paris was the center of the art world Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) was one of France’s most decorated artists. Principally remembered as a painter, his greatest contribution may well be his work as a sculptor. The works La Fuite en Egypte and Les Rameaux were both made in 1897, near the end of Gérôme’s career and at the height of his ability.

Born on France’s east coast, Gérôme received the reluctant permission of his father, an accomplished goldsmith, to study at the country’s most prestigious art academy, the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. There he excelled under the direction of Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) and Charles Gleyre (1806-1874). Gleyre’s studio, which placed emphasis on the revival of Greek forms in art, had a lasting affect on his student’s interest in classical subjects and models. Gérôme’s own work would span Classicism, Orientalism and Realism; traces of all three can be found in his later works.

When Gleyre was appointed Director of the French Academie in Rome in 1844, Gérôme followed. There he completed his academic education through close study of Old Master and Greco-Roman works. (Gérôme traveled throughout his career to Greece, Egypt and the Holy Land.) As a result of his studies, his works bore the technical virtuosity of an academic artist combined with personal first-hand knowledge of monuments, foreign landscapes and exotic peoples. La Fuite en Egypte and Les Rameaux directly reflect his study of bedouin costume and animals observed during a visit to the Holy Land.

Returning to France in 1847, Gérôme enjoyed his first of many successes at the highly competitive Salon de la Société des Artistes Français. That year, the eminent French critic Theophile Gautier wrote: “Let us mark with white this lucky year, unto us a painter is born. He is called Gérôme. I tell you his name today, and tomorrow it will be celebrated.” Works by Gérôme were accepted nearly every year from 1847 to 1903. There they inspired popular novels and music. By the end of his life, Gérôme had been made a member of the Institute de France (1865), a knight in the Légion d’honneur (1867), and awarded the Order of the Red Eagle by King Wilhelm I of Prussia.

Such success merited prominent commissions from the state, as a well as a bevy of patrons, including the Empress Eugenie, who became a close friend. Today, his paintings and sculptures are found in many world’s finest museums including the Musée d’Orsay (Paris), National Gallery of Art (London), National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), Hermitage (St. Petersburg), Art Institute of Chicago, and Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York).

Géróme’s high profile had academic currency. He was hired as one of three studio teachers at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts. There Gérôme fathered a dynasty of academic painters in France and America, among them Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847-1928), Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Pascal Dagnan Bourveret (1852-1929), William M. Paxton (1869-1941) and Julian A. Weir (1852-1919). A lifelong tutor to many, he maintained a close relationship with his students beyond their studies.

In 1889, Gérôme travelled to Florence and Padua with two students: Edouard Detaille (1848-1912) and François Flameng (1856-1923) There he studied the equestrian works of Italian Renaissance masters, including Donatello and Verrocchio. The trip was a book end to the studies he began as a young artist and had first seen the works. He later wrote to a friend about the journey:

I went to Florence . . . I had stayed there as a youth and had not returned since. What a deception! What an eye-opener! I saw crumble--I won’t say all--but almost all my youthful heroes.

Rather than arrogance, here Gérôme displayed a genuine sense of disappointment and the honest assessment that then--in his late sixties--he may have moved beyond youthful lessons and on a level with the masters. It is possible this insight led Gérôme to  look beyond standard models.

Late-nineteenth-century archeologists discovered color residues on Roman and Greek works, proving that the austere white marble we see today was, in fact, covered in bright blues, reds, greens and precious metals. Gérôme learned of the use of polychrome and incorporated them in his own works, including Les Rameaux and La Fuite en Egypte, which both bear the subtle but unmistakable use of polychrome unique to Gérôme.

The sculptures were produced during the last decade of his life, when Gérôme dramatically increased the amount of time and resources spent on his sculptures. In 1890, Gérôme hired Emile Décorchement to work as a full-time sculpting assistant. He also teamed up with the foundry of Siot-Decauville.

Established in the 1890’s, Siot-Decauville’s innovative ability to scale down large bronze models made their foundry especially attractive to Gérôme, who prided himself on fidelity to reality. The remarkable precision visible in Les Rameaux and La Fuite en Egypte were accomplished by Gérôme working with models twice the size of the finished bronzes. In this way, he was able to add details-the animals’ fur, the wilting leaves of Christ’s palm branch, and the gauzy folds of Mary’s bedouin clothing--with larger tools that would have been ineffective in smaller-scale versions.

In the late-nineteenth-century, table-top bronzes were an popular feature of tasteful interior decor. This pair of  Les Rameaux and La Fuite en Egypte were cast in the same year as Gérôme’s painting, La Fuite en Egypte, was submitted to the Salon. According to his standard studio practice, Gérôme’s sculptures, sometimes in unfinished stages, were the inspiration for paintings and vice versa. In this case, it is unknown which work was first.

Les Rameaux captures the moment Christ enters Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1-11, Mark 11:7-10; Luke 19:28-44; John 12:12-19), on what is traditionally known as Palm Sunday, hence the branch in Christ’s left hand:

5 Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.

6 And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them,

7 And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon.

8 And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way.

9 And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.

10 And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this?

11 And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week, which ends with Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. Gérôme indicates the journey ahead by placing Christ on a slight incline. As he enters the gate, Christ raises his hand in a sign of blessing, often attributed to Christianity, yet believed to be derived from a bircas kohanim (Jewish priestly blessing).

The juxtaposition of Les Rameaux with La Fuite en Egypte brings attention to details otherwise imperceptible. Christ sits on a femial donkey and Mary on a mael. Christ is on an incline, Mary on unvaried, steady ground.

La Fuite en Egypte depicts a pensive Mary, uprooted from her home and traveling to Egypt with family in tow. According to St. Matthew:

And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

Despite the tumult inherent in the narratives, Gérôme shows Mary and Christ unfazed by their circumstances. These are not the contorted, pained figures of works often used for public ritual. They are works of private reflection.

When Gérôme created Les Rameaux and La Fuite en Egypte, he was 73. His last seven years were a flurry of activity. On the morning of January 10, 1904, Gérôme was found dead in his studio before a self-portrait of Rembrandt and his own painting Truth. He left a studio full of partially finished and un-cast plasters. Les Rameaux and La Fuite en Egypte were among his last finished works.

According to Ackerman there are at least three sizes of each statue known to have been cast. These were the first and largest versions and, therefore, their production, from start to finish, would have been overseen by Gérôme himself. In addition to their authenticity, Ackerman believed that they were created as a pair and not separate works.  These two bronzes have been in the same family for three generations and are believed to have been purchased directly from Siot-Decauville. If true, these represent a rare combination. There is no similar pair known to exist in any public or private collection.

SOURCES

Gerald Ackerman. The Life and Work of Jean-Léon Gérôme with a Catalogue Raisonné (New York: Sotheby’s Publications, 1986

Gerald Ackerman, telephone interview with author, June 29, 2009

Mark Bradley. “The Importance of Colour on Ancient Marble Sculpture.” Oxford Art Journal. Vol. 32. (June, 2009)

Antonia Boström, ed. The Encyclopedia of Sculpture. Vol. 2 (London: Fitzroy Dearborn)

Lorinda Munson Bryant. French Pictures and their Painters. (New York: Mead and Company, 1922)

Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Catalogue Illustré des Ouvrages de Peinture, Sculpture et Gravure. Paris: A. Lemercier et Cie, years 1847-1903

Helena Wright. Gérôme and Goupil: Art and Enterprise. (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1999)

H. Barbara Weinberg. The American Pupils of Jean-Leon Gérôme (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum, 1984), 10-20)

It's been over for a week, but I feel compelled to post pictures from my visit to the Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair. Before it ended, I was able to spend several hours with dealers and buyers one of the longest-running and grandest art fairs in Europe. 

Despite the gloom and doom supposedly hovering over the art world, there was a great deal of optimism from both dealers and collectors at the Fair. I came on the next to last day, and nearly everyone of the dealers of nineteenth-century or traditional art I talked with had sold a large number of his or her inventory. This was not the case with contemporary art dealers I met. Though not scientific, to me it indicates the slow and steady, if not always sexy, appeal of working with established genres.

While there were world-class  ceramics, furniture, modern art , works of silver and ancient relics, I was principally focused on nineteenth-century academic works. The photos from my visit, therefore, are a terribly unbalanced representation what was on view. Sorry.

Another thing to keep in mind: As in past review of fairs, I have taken photos of these images in person, at the fair and the results are sometimes surprisingly and sometimes less than ideal. 

The first work that caught my eye was a remarkable sketch (above) by  Géricault. Known for his obsession with horses--entire coffee-table books having been dedicated to them--its still startling to see one in person, and how much he can conjure with so few few lines.

Someone once told me a joke: "Question: What do you call the crumbs that fall from Richard Green's table? Answer: Cake."

The implication was that Richard Green Galleries is remarkably consistent in getting the best of the best. Most dealers and collectors would be satisfied to have the slightest portion of what this London dealer offers.

Previous to arriving several people had suggested that if I saw one work at Grosvenor, it should be the Green's Lesbia and her Sparrow (above). A cult following of British Olympic painters (e.g. Leighton, Tadema, Godward, and Poynter) has come fruition in the pas three decades. Poynter is one of the group's finest, and this is one of his gems. 

Lesbia was the great love of the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (c.84-52 BC) and the subject of 25 of his surviving poems. Poynter chose one in particular as the subject for this painting: 

Sparrow, my girl’s darling

Whom she plays with, whom she cuddles,

Whom she likes to tempt with finger-

Tip and teases to nip harder

When my own bright-eyed desire

Fancies some endearing fun

And a small solace for her pain,

I suppose, so heavy passion then rests:

Would I could play with you as she does

And lighten the spirit’s gloomy cares!

(cited in My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, ed. Jeffery Eugenides, Harper Perennial, London, 2009, p. x).

Poynter began his career working in stained glass and cabinetry. This probably contributed to his heightened use of color and remarkable ability to imitate various materials, a skilled often needed wood graining.

Sir Alfred Munnings described Frederick Henry Prince (above) as "one of the most amazing characters I had ever met . . . a grown up boy." This painting was commissioned by Prince, showing him at one of his favorite activities and the kind of scene Munnings had made his name producing: sporting pictures. If you are not familiar with Munnings' work, you can be forgiven. Due to the way his paintings are sold--at sporting auctions and not nineteenth-century art auctions--outside of Great Britain, Munnings has not received the recognition his skill merits.

Everything in this painting is world class: the figures, the composition, observation of nature, and the economy of materials (note in particular the tails of the dogs; some only consisting of a single stroke.). Munnings is a genius.

Leytens is one of those great Flemish painters following in the wake of the Brueghel dynasty. There were so many wrote compositions mass-produced in enromous artist studios. Works that are able to transcend the typical formulae to create something original and compelling. The light and darks Winter landscape . . . (Above, and pitifully captured by my camera) made this work visible from far away. Upon close inspection it has all the charm of cabinet paintings from the period that were often meant to be viewed with a magnifying glass.  

Behold the power of narrative painting. A family has lost the recently-deceased patriarch's will, and a scoundrel--seen exiting stage right--trying to take advantage of the resulting ambiguity. After searching through numerous documents--in the foreground and on the table--the will is held high and the rightful, and obviously deserving, inheritors are vindicated. Mustached evil is chased out the door by the family dog, the embodiment of fidelity.

Though I haven't found it yet, it is highly likely that George Smith produced The Will Found to be a print. Prints and contracts with printers were often more lucrative for painters than the sale of the original work. Such was the case with Holbien in the eighteenth century.

There is disappointingly little written about James Webb, who regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy. The preponderance of his output was in watercolor, not oils. Yet, he shows an astounding facility and painterliness in this work.

Look at this beautiful passage of clouds! 

Robert Bowman is one of the world's great dealers and experts of nineteenth-century sculpture. For several years he maintained both contemporary and nineteenth-century galleries. However, a few years ago, he downsized by closing his nineteenth-century gallery and showing those works almost exclusively at fairs like Maastricht and Grosvenor.

This year Bowman had several works by artists like Leighton and Rodin that can be seen in larger scale versions in museums around the world. Seeing The Sluggard (above), at this small size gave me a completely different eperience than the larger-than-life version I am used to seeing at the Royal Academy in London. While I find the larger version imposing and dynamic, this appears more delicate bring out a kind of beauty I hadn't seen in the other. Also, the patina of this smaller work is beautifully rendered.

Claudel's piece L'Abandon (above) was given a place of prestige at Bowman's booth; and, it deserves all the attention it gets. According to Bowman:

This 1905 rare bronze . . . is the earliest edition ever seen on the open market. This is the second of an edition limited to 18, the first cast having been kept by the owners of the foundry.

Claudel, was 18 years old when she met and began a 15-year affair with August Rodin, aged 42. Understandably, Rodin had an enormous influence on her work. Bowman relates that the statue borrows from and reverses the gender roles of Eternal Spring (1881) by Rodin and is based " on the eponymous 5th century Hindu legend in which the heroine, Sakoutala, loses the affection of her beloved prince only to regain it once more."

Baily is the sculptor of the iconic statue of Lord Nelson, standing atop the column in Trafalgar Square in London, perhaps the most seen statue in the country. The monument to Nelson was completed in 1843, and Psyche (above) statue was finished the same decade.

Psyche, unlike the statue of Lord Nelson, is meant to be seen at an intimate range. The delicate butterfly is held in beautifully articulated fingers that include minute details of fingernails and lines in the palm.  

The statue is the epitome of idealistic beauty and looking at it, even briefly, can drop your blood pressure by several points.

Directly across from the Bowman Galleries stall was the that of Joanna Booth, a dealer in mediaeval and archaic works of art. St. Martin dividing his cloak for a beggar (above) is a remarkably fully-realized piece. This single angle of the work does not adequately capture the full effect it has in person. The beggar with a wooden leg, the bold gesture of the Saint cutting the cloth, and the interesting choice to make one so much larger than the other, the author's mastery in depicting varied textures. . . here it looks almost like a cartoon caricature; but, in person, it takes on a majestic air that is humbling.

For me, going to museums is exhausting, but I rarely get weighed down at fairs like Grosvenor. This is due in part to the kind of paintings, like The Toyshop Window (above) rarely, if ever, shown at museums. Museum are after a kind of gravitas in their paintings. Unfortunately, this makes a whole category of paintings, full of charm and humor, absent from public exhibitions. Like eating heavy foods all the time, I get museum indigestion. Sometimes, I want dessert or, at least, a sorbet, to cleanse my palate.

I wanted to begin and end this post with my favorite work from the exhibition: For the Squire (above) by John Everett Millais. Millais's works rarely appear in the private market; and, when they do, it is not often in the form of a fully-realized canvas. It is the kind of work that will never be featured in a show due to the lack of drama. It has all the so-called sentimentality that turns many off to the period. 

For me there is a purity of spirit, an innocence in this work that is communicated in a way that only painting can. The narrative--the delivering of a letter--is the lightest of pretexts for painting this little girl. Unlike the style that characterized his early Pre-Raphaelite works, this painting is not consumed with details. (The background, fabric, and hair are more suggested than copied.) Done when he was 53, it seems the product of a mellowed Millais.

--

There are many, many more works not included in this post that I have uploaded to my Flickr account. (In some cases, a work is followed by a photo of its label. That's my way of remembering what I've seen and where I've seen it.)

Artists and art historians in the classical tradition like to point out the close relationship that art and science enjoyed from the Renaissance. Mathematical perspective, anatomical study of human and animal figures, geology, and meteorology all played serious roles in the fine arts.

This week the exhibition“Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts" opens at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England. It features a number of contemporary reactions in the fine arts to the publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species (1859). One of its most stunning works is by the Pre-Raphaelite painter William Dyce (Scotland, 1806-1864).

Dyce was an ardent Anglican who had painted several religious works. In 1858 he traveled to Southeastern England. There it had become fashionable for professionals and amateurs alike to dig ancient urchins, plants, and brachiopods from the chalk cliffs of Kent. At the time, there was no widely accepted scientific or religious theory to explain the fossils. It was not until one year later that Dawin published his own ideas and ignited a firestorm.

During the firestorm, from 1859 to 1860, Dyce painted Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th 1858. The title is a double entendre, referring both to his own memory of the scene and the collective rediscovery of relics from the dinosaur age. At first glance it looks like a typical, nineteenth-century landscape filled with well-bred people. Therein lies one of its great strengths: the commentary that behind something seemingly so ordinary there is a much greater issue at stake.

The painting itself has all the hallmarks of the best Pre-Raphaelite works: brilliant coloring, meticulous detail, careful observation, and poignancy of theme. For me, it is one of the great paintings of the 1850s, and one of the least known.

While not forgotten in Spain,  Carlos de Haes' work has been little recognized elsewhere. As a teacher and award-winning artists, Haes is perhaps Spain's greatest  landscape painter.

Carlos de Haes (Brussels, 1826-Madrid, 1898) was born in Belguim to Spanish parents. Due to financial troubles, the family was forced to return to Spain in 1835. There, Haes studied with Luis de la Cruz, a Court Painter to King Ferndinand VII and a member of the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.

In 1850, at the age of 24, Haes traveled back to Brussels to study Flemish landscapes. There he competed and regularly placed in Belgium's annual Salons. Six years later, Haes returned to Spain.

His international experience carried a great deal of currency in Spanish painting circles, and immediately set him apart from his peers who rarely studied beyond Spain and Italy. His dedication to landscape also changed the Spanish Academy's attitude towards landscape painting.

Despite having been accepted as a major genre in other European countries, during the first half of the nineteenth century, Spain had not widely  participated in Romantic and Sublime landscape painting. Instead, landscapes were considered a second-rate genre, a necessary part of an artist's education insofar as it related to the composition of history painting.

Haes' work Cercanías del moasterio de Piedra (1858) was the first landscape painting to win a First Place medal at the Exposicion Nacional, Spain's equivalent of the Paris Salon. The award represented a giant leap forward in the estimation of landscape painting as a stand-alone discipline. Shortly afterwards, Haes was made a member of the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the nation's most prestigious art school. His appointment in 1860 to the Academia de San Fernandoand and subsequent teaching there effectively caught Spain up with other schools of landscape painting in Europe. As a teacher, Haes fathered a dynasty of Spanish landscape artists that continues today. Among Haes's more prominent students are Martín Rico y Ortega (1833-1908), Jaime Morera (1854-1927).

It could be argued that Haes' one of most important contributions to Spanish painting was with non-landscape painters. Through him, history painters, whose work enjoyed the widest attention at the Exposiciones Nacionales, developed a new appreciation and approach to landscapes, arguably bringing it on par with their figural work. Artists like Francisco Pradilla, José Casado del Alisal, Placenscia Maestro, were required to take Haes' course at the Academia de San Fernando considered a serious part of their large history paintings, sometimes producing numerous studies devoid of figures.

In particular, Haes brought to Spain an increased emphasis on three aspects of landscape painting: luminosity, porportion and direct observation from nature.

Traditionally, Spanish artists favored the use of sandy-colored grounds for use in painting. This created a unifying effect in their works, but resulted in the overall dampening of light. While Haes continued to use sand-colored and reddish grounds in his works, he would incorporate large patches of lead white and subdue the quantity of sandy grounds.

Very few of Haes' works exceed 150 by 200 centimeters. This was at a time when history paintings, often exceeding 6 by 10 meters, were competing for top prizes at Exposiciones Nacionales. Haes' landscapes, though bold in composition and epic in subject matter, maintained comparatively modest proportions. This set a precedent in landscape painting throughout Spain, which more or less continued throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, even when history paintings became more ambitious in size.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, Haes was a proponent of direct observation from nature and led several expeditions. This resulted to an almost nationalistic fervor for Spanish landscape painting, that featured Iberian natural wonders.

Today, Carlos de Haes' work can be found in nearly every major Spanish museum. However, the largest body and greatest works from his ouvre are held in the Prado Museum and not currently on display. A new wing of the Prado, dedicated to Spanish nineteenth-century art, is planned to open in 2012.

(Click here for a list of works and biography of Carlos de Haes by the Prado Museum.)

Bibliography:

• Carlos de Haes (1826-1898) en el Museo del Prado, cat. exp., Madrid, Museo del Prado, 2002.
• Cid Priego, Carlos, Aportaciones para una monografía del pintor Carlos de Haes, Lérida, Instituto de Estudios Ilerdenses, 1956.

Occasionally, I come across a book that was made with me in mind. Figures du Corps: Une Leçon d'Anatomie à l'École des Beaux-Arts is the catalogue of the exhibition by the same name held from October 21, 2008 to January 4, 2009 at the l'École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. (Painfully, I first learned about the exhibition after seeing this book in a bookshop window in London, which is either a testament to my own ignorance of events like this or a sign that marketing efforts had limited reach.)

The catalogue is an ode to the bewildering and wonderful arsenal of contraptions, tools, plaster casts, photographs, and any other useful aid created to assist artists in the study of human and animal figures.

Resembling part medical research facility and part life-science museum, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts gathered human and animal anatomical examples--ideal, real and atypical--for use in training. 

For artists at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, academic training meant mastering the human figure. As described in a previous post, this training took place over a series of graduated steps, beginning with isolating parts of the human figure, to studying idealized forms in Greco-Roman statues, and, finally, working with live models.

The catalogue includes several examples of classical forms that have been worked over to reveal underlying skeletal and muscular structure. It is evidence of a startling lack of superficiality in their approach to their craft and art. There are numerous accounts of dissections of both humans and animals, and visits from surgeons to discuss recent medical discoveries.

Looking at examples of plaster casts from the book, I was surprised at how many of them were obviously taken from human subjects and not from statues. The catalogue is unclear as to when many of these casts were made and used. Regardless, it is fascinating to see that they went to great lengths to articulate hands and feet in a wide range of challenging positions that were not always quoted from classical forms.

One of the greatest costs in training was the hiring of live models. As a result, contraptions of all kinds--mannequins, photographs, stereoscope images--were made to substitute, or perhaps more accurately, supplement, models. 

One man at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paul Richer (Chartes, 1849-Paris, 1933) was particularly skilled both as a creator of artist aides and as a sculptor himself. 

His work Tres in Una, above, is a terrific example of the late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century combinations realist and classical approaches to art. There is disappointingly little written about Richer in the catalogue, yet he is clearly one of a rare breed, simultaneaously gifted at educational innovation and a talented artist in his own right. For one, I would love to learn more about him, and hope to.

A great deal of the catalogue is dedicated to the anatomical models of animals, especially horses Just as in England, where George Stubbs (British , 1724-1806) led a generation of artists at the Royal Academy to explore and correctly understand the anatomy of horses, the French Academy invested a great deal in equine models.

One stunning example of an artist using the models is a study of horse legs, below, by  Théodore Géricault (Rouen, 1971-Paris, 1824). 

This catalogue makes it possible to comprehend the lengths to which artists would go to learn their craft. For me, it is both an inspiration and a reminder of how much we can learn from them.

There is a growing phenomena of painting and sculpting studios working to resurrect models of art education from the past. Some of the schools I am thinking of include the Grand Central Academy of Art in New York, The Florence and Angel Academies of Art in Florence, and the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art in California. There are many more.  As an enthusiastic supporter, I have come to know some of the artists who have founded and attended some of these schools. In almost every case, these artists refer to a handful of foundational books that have influenced their approach.

The bible of most seems to be  the late Albert Boime's book, The Academy and Painting in the Nineteenth Century. In it, Boime takes bird's-eye and ground-level views of studio practice in the French Ecole des Beaux-Arts from its foundation in the seventeenth century to its height of influence in the nineteenth century. It is a foundational text and deserves a great deal of attention.

Those who have read Boime's work may be surprised at how many different classical academic models there were in the nineteenth century and before.  Knowing the plurality of approaches and their strengths and weaknesses may help anyone attempting to reinstate aspects of the classical tradition today.

Throughout the next year,  I hope to explore various models of classical arts education.  Today, I begin with the Academia dei Desidorosi, credited with being the first art academy to include life drawing a regular part of its curriculum.

The Academia dei Desiderosi (roughly translated as "those desiring perfection") was founded in the Northern Italian city of Bologna by brothers Agostino (1557-1602) and Anibale Carracci (1560-1609) with their cousin Ludovico (1555-1619). From the  late-sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries, the Desiderosi was a training ground for some of the the period's most influential painters, including Guido Reni (1575-1642) and Francesco Albani (1578-1660). Drawings produced by the Academia and its artists were highly sought after by other academies. In fact, many were collected and used for instruction by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

At the time, Bologna was small, but influential. A rich agricultural center, it also had one of the oldest universities in Europe. The Carracci brothers were unusually well-educated at a time when most artists were illiterate and considered craftsmen. Both Agostino and Annibale had begun legal training before setting it aside for art.  They could read and write and had a good working knowledge of Latin. Agostino, especially, was well regarded for his understanding of philosophy, poetry, mathematics, and, even,  mechanics (e.g. clocks and machines).

The Academia dei Desidorosi claims among its members some of the most important painters of the time, including Guido Reni (1575-1642) and Francesco Albani (1578-1660). Unlike many nineteenth-century academies, the Desidorosi did not draw a distinction between teachers and pupils. Instead, the Carracci considered themselves first among equals and participated in all exercises. The Desidorosi only accepted experienced artists. Most members were in their mid-to-late twenties. This approach differed from most studios and academies of the time like the older, well-established Roman Academia di San Luca, which accepted students as young as eight years old.

The study of the human figure was central to studies at the Academia dei Desidoerosi. Until the nineteenth century, life drawing was almost exclusively done with male models. The use of female models was considered immoral, and in most of Italy, Germany, France, England, and Spain, was illegal. Instead, artists relied on classical statuary, contour drawings of the female figure or simple substitution of the male for the female. (Some attribute the masculinity of of Michelangelo's women to the lack of female models, believing that he and others simply put breasts and long hair on the male form. Though, I believe this is an oversimplification, it may have some truth.)

Live models were hired. But, also, students posed for one another. In some instances, the Carracci brothers took the then unusual step of inviting a "Dr. Lanzoni"--little is known of his real name or role in the community--to dissect corpses for the benefit of students. (Autopsies of the rich and noble were then common as a way of assuring the cause of death was not foul play.)

In addition to live models, the Academia used drawing books and examples from the Antique (Greco-Roman statues, reliefs, coins, and architectural drawings). According to Gert-Rudolf Flick:

The Carrracci also relied on the use of drawing-books for instruction, a format that subsequently became fashionable in its own right. Most of these drawing-books were produced by professional artists, and reflected current studio practice and art theory. A drawing-book can be defined as a pedagogical work in which the visual instruction dominated the verbal, and is thus quite different from treatises such as Alberti's De Pictura or (more obviously) Vasari's Vite, or even from anatomical texts and books on perspective. The drawing-books in question contain numerous sheets filled with parts of the human body such as ears, noses, legs, and feet, depicted from different points of view: front, three-quarter and rear. (Gert Rudolf-Flick. Masters & Pupils: The Artistic Succession from Perugino to Manet, 1480-1880. London: Hogarth Arts, 2008. p. 106-107)

Agostino Carracci had a large collection of busts, statuettes, Old Master drawings, engravings and contemporary medals that students were allowed to copy and study.

Studies were not focused exclusively on the human figure. The Desidorosi believed that the overall goal was a closeness to nature, which was defined more widely as humans, animals, plants, and the rules of architecture.

Certain hours were set aside for theoretical questions, perspective and architecture, all of which Agostino was especially adept at demonstrating in condensed form in a small number of maxims as can be seen in some of the writings by him that I have in my possession. (Gert Rudolf-Flick. Masters & Pupils: The Artistic Succession from Perugino to Manet, 1480-1880. London: Hogarth Arts, 2008. p. 111)

Regular visits to the countryside where paintings and drawings were made directly from nature. For studies in perspective and architecture, the Carracci relied on Sebastiano Serglio's Libri di Architectura (a pdf of books three and four can be found online here) and trips to local churches and notable homes, guided by Agostino and local professors.

When in 1595 Annibale and Agostino were commissioned to paint the palace of Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, they left the Academia to the management of their cousin Ludovico. Some information is available on the Academia during this period, and it is evident that the brothers were the main force of Desidorosi and, without them, it did not have the same energy or longevity. The academy, while carried on by Ludovico and, then other students, never again attracted the same attention or produced the same quality of artists.

After seeing The Raft of the Medusa by  Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798-1863) Théodore Géricault (French, 1791-1824), a friend recorded Picasso saying: "That bastard! He was good."

The exhibition, Picasso: Challenging the Past, currently on show at the National Gallery in London, is a well-documented testament to the artist's admiration for artists that he made posthumous collaborators in his work, among them Goya, Velázquez, Poussin, Ingres, and El Greco.

Lest visitors think that Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) had betrayed or diluted his innovative impulses, the introductory paragraph to the exhibition--boldly written on the wall near the entry--states "he certainly was not a slave to the canon." Thus, a confusing tone was set, turning up throughout the exhibition, that simultaneously attempted to admire Picasso's admiration for "traditional" artists while, in some cases, denying them admiration.

An example was the exhibition's treatment of Ingres. Making a comparison between the National Gallery's Portrait of Madame Paul-Sigisbert Moitessier by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (French, 1780-1867) to Picasso's Nude Woman in a Red Armchair, the exhibition claimed that Ingres, like Picasso "idealized eroticism," and that "the more one looks at Ingres, the less plausible his work seems." According to the film accompanying the exhibition, Ingres' arms and fingers appear to have no bones, and figures seem dramatically out of distortion, as if they were anticipating Picasso's work. It seemed like revisionism. (See my previous post on Ingres' careful attention to the human figure.) It was as though Ingres could not be appreciated on his own terms, but only on Picasso's.

Seeing Picasso's works, I don't necessarily think that he would have shared this perspective. There is no denying the copious amounts of time he spent reworking Diego Velázquez's (Spanish, 1599-1660) Las Meninas or the Rape of the Sabines by Nicolas Poussin (French, 1594-1665). This is what makes Picasso great: his simultaneous departure from and use of classical themes. As I walked through the exhibition I was remineded of F. Scott Fitzgerald's comment: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Despite the startling variety of his output--one piece reflects his classical training, another is nearly completely abstract, a work full of color, and another nearly void of spectrum--Picasso confidently comes across in each painting.

The exhibition seemed organized for those who already love and acknowledge Picasso as part of the canon. As such, it was, at first, difficult for me--someone who still struggles to relate to his works--to approach. However, the more I looked directly at the works, the more approachable they became. Despite the exhibition's sometimes revisionist treatment of "the canon," it was an ideal primer to his oeuvre.  Deciphering Picasso's translation of Las Meninas by Velázquez, for example, kept me occupied for at least 30 minutes and provided numerous insights into Picasso's pictoral devices.  It was a Rosetta Stone for Picasso.

A mentor of mine is fond of saying that "art is very personal." Personally, Picasso is a shock to my natural inclinations. However, I admire his genius and, with the help of this exhibition, found myself thinking: "That bastard! He was good."