Irma Stern

The Economist writes about Irma Stern, the grande dame of South African painting + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/artview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10592115

Useful link:
www.irmastern.co.za

Gold Update

Gold prices will continue to rise because three South African gold miners, Gold Fields (GFI) + Harmony (HAR) + AngloGold Ashanti (ANG) have stopped production at all of their local mines due to inadequate power supplies + global gold production fell to a ten-year low + the Chinese traders are busy buying gold for the upcoming New Year, which is in the first week of February.

Useful links:
www.goldfields.co.za
www.ashantigold.com
www.harmony.co.za

World's Greenest Countries

(via Newsweek) The Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy released its first official Environmental Performance Index + the list uses a variety of metrics, including carbon and sulfur emissions + water purity and conservation practices, to calculate an overall score for each country.

Useful links:
Yale's EPI Web site
www.epa.gov

Full Table Cuts With Blunt, Missing Or Broken Corners

(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:

A most unusual agraffe, made in 1603 by the Augsburg master goldsmith, hans Georg Beuerl, can be seen today in the Schatzkammer der Residenz, Munich. Set with 245 diamonds, this enormous jewel weighs 410 grams (just under a pound) and is 17.5 cm high. My assistant U.-J.Petterson and I were given special permission to examine this ‘War Trophy’, as it is sometimes called. We worked at night, after the museum was closed, fully equipped with polaroid camera, wax and plaster for taking prints and making models, jeweler’s tools, etc. Our first discovery was a horrifying one—several of the diamonds were missing! We stayed in the museum all night in order to prove in the morning that we had not removed them. It is astonishing to think that the absence of these stones had not previously been noticed.

The description given here is based on our study of this magnificent jewel, which represents a trophy of weapons with cuirass and helmet, set all over with diamonds. In addition, six pearls adorn the upper part. The composition is dominated by large Table Cuts of exceptionally fine make, but also contains a whole collection of different contemporary cuts, all beautifully fashioned: Star Cuts, Trihedrally Faceted Lozenges, Kites, Triangles and, last but not least, small Table Cuts which closely resemble similar modern cuts. One of the Baguettes, though only 2mm wide, is a full 12mm long. The largest of the Tables is nearly 16mm square—the same size as the famous diamond in the The Three Brethren, said in its time to be the largest diamond in Christendom. According to Lord Twining, the diamond on the trophy weighs 18ct. As a matter of interest, the diamond in the The Three Brethren, though of the same dimensions, weighed 30ct because it was a Pyramidal Point Cut whereas that in the agraffe is a Table.

The cross, worn by Marie de Medici in a portrait painted between 1612 and 1614 by Frans Pourbus the Younger (Musée du Louvre, Paris), was never documented in an inventory but, according to Bapst, besides being depicted on Marie de Medici’s coronation robe in this portrait, it also appeared in a portrait of Anne of Austria. It is quite possible that the jewel included the five Table Cut diamonds of the Great Cross owned by Francis I. The cross was apparently broken up after Anne’s death, since it is not listed in the Crown inventory of 1691. The diamonds were set in the new style, close to each other in barely visible box settings. The four triangular mirror-cut diamonds at the extremities of the cross emphasize the very regular arrangement of the square gems. The three large drop-shaped pearls appear to be of exceptional quality and add to the magnificence of the jewel.

The beautifully enamelled portable set of gold flatware (from a Renaissance cutlery set, 17.3 cm long—Grϋnes Gewölbe, Dresden) is thought to have been made in Nuremberg in about 1600. In 1724 it was given as a birthday present to King Augustus I of Poland, Elector of Saxony, by the wife of Crown Marshall Mnisczek of Warsaw. Originally there was a toothpick inserted in the handle, with the image of a kneeling princess as its knob. The spoon shown is decorated with High Table Cuts and similarly fashioned rubies.

Full Table Cuts With Blunt, Missing Or Broken Corners (continued)

Jewelers Of The Middle Ages

(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:

1. The Goldsmith-Monk

The introduction of Christianity gave a fresh impetus and spread new fields for arts. There were churches to be built and decorated. A demand arose for architects, sculptors, painters, embroiderers, glassmen, woodcarvers, goldsmiths and a host of other skilled artists and craftsmen to create a building worthy to be called the House of God. It seems fitting that the men with the widest knowledge of the work required should be the artist-monks. Many of them were traveling missionaries.

In the eleventh century there lived one of these monks known as Theophilus, who not only traveled far and wide, but thoughtfully jotted down in his notebook whatever he found of interest concerning the arts of different countries. His manuscripts, preserved in numerous ancient copies, have become invaluable as a faithful record of the methods of work employed by craftsmen who lived nine hundred years ago.

Theophilus, in his preface, charges the reader to ‘covet with greedy looks this (his) Book of Various Arts, read it thoroughly with a tenacious memory, embrace it with ardent love,’ and:

Should you carefully peruse this, you will find out whatever Greece possesses in kinds and mixtures of various colors, whatever Tuscany knows on in mosaic work, or in variety of enamel; whatever Arabia shows forth in work of fusion, ductility, or chasing; whatever Italy ornaments with gold, in diversity of vases and sculpture of gems or ivory; whatever France loves in a costly variety of windows; whatever industrious Germany approves in work of gold, silver, copper and iron, of woods and of stones.

Then follows a detailed description of the goldsmith’s workshop, his bellows, anvil, hammers and other tools, which include ‘an instrument through which wires are drawn.’

Like the jewelers of the Pharaohs, the jeweler of medieval times was expected to be goldsmith, designer, sculptor, smelter, enameler inlay-worker, and an expert in the cutting and mounting of gemstones. As you read Theophilus you are impressed anew with the versatility of the jewelry-maker of past ages.

It must be admitted, however, that although the ancient goldsmiths achieved results and the good Theophilus tells how they did it, yet their practices were at times fraught with certain customs which smack of something akin to quackery. Not that they did not themselves profoundly believe in the efficacy of such practices. They did. But a certain amount of hocus-pocus was inevitably mixed with all the learning of that day. When the twentieth century becomes ‘ancient times’ will anything like that be said of our science and learning?

We are allowed a glimpse of Theophilus’ innocent necromancy, when swelling with pride he discloses a trade secret:

Who should desire to cut with iron the rare stones—which the rulers of Rome, who formerly sustained the noble arts, much delighted in, upon gold, let him know the invention, which I with profound thought have discovered, which is very precious. I procure urinam with the fresh blood of a lusty goat, fed for a short time upon ivy, which being done, I cut the gems in the warm blood, as the author Pliny has pointed out, who wrote upon the arts, which the Roman people put to proof, and who likewise well described the virtue of stones; he who knows the powers of which favors them the more.

Concerning rock crystal, Theophilus advises the lapidary:
But should you wish to sculp crystal, take a goat of two or three years and, binding his feet, cut an opening between his breast and stomach in the position of the heart, and lay in the crystal, so that it may lie in its blood until it grows warm. Taking it out directly, cut what you please in it as long as the heat lasts, and when it has begun to grow cold and to harden, replace it again in the blood of goat....

And so on until you have completed the work of art and are ready to polish it ‘with a linen cloth’. Needless to say, there was no S.P.C.A in those days.

During the Middle Ages, although the glyptic art was saved from entire extinction—largely by the monk-craftsman—still it sank so far into oblivion that generally speaking it is said to have been lost. Indeed, so little was the art understood, that some men, even men of intelligence, supposed the engraving on an ancient gem to be the work of nature—like the pattern on a butterfly’s wing.

Many pages of Theophilus’ manuscript are given over to recipes for making glass gems and colorful enamels. He even tells how to make ornamental finger rings of colored glass, set with glass gems.

Naturally whatever art a monk practised he used for the glory of his church. Therefore the goldsmith lavished his most elaborate art on ecclesiastical jewels. But he also worked for private patrons. Both the craftsman’s and the layman’s ideas of beauty were strongly influenced by the sumptuous objects designed for religious purposes.

The very center and focusing point of art was the Church. Paintings, statues, textiles, stained glass, and jeweled metalwork—in fact the major works of almost all the artists in Christendom—gravitated toward the Church, or were related to religious ideas.

Between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries the link binding craftsman and church together was strenghtened by demands for the building and decoration of great cathedrals. The architect left space in the walls for picture windows of gorgeous jewel-like glass. Altars were profusely decorated, panels were painted and encrusted with gems, images occupied niches canopied by stone, carved with the delicate intricacy of lace. To the marvelous cathedral of Chartres came pilgrims by the thousands, bringing as offerings the richest of silks and embroideries, and splendid jewels with which to deck the images of saints or the vestments of priests, or to be set as ornament on any object used in the ritual of worship.

Certain patterns and styles of design employed for the decoration of churches were mirrored in the things of everyday life. Even the costumes of the period reflected the Gothic art. The head-dresses of women resembled architectural structures; the patterns on their gowns imitated those on stained-glass windows; and as for the jewelry, that more than anything else fell under the prevailing influence. Even the images of saints, stone canopies and all, were wrought in miniatures of gold and worn as brooches or pendants.

Jewelers Of The Middle Ages (continue)

Eighteenth Century British Portraiture

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

2

The third great English portrait-painter of the eighteenth century was George Romney, who never exhibited at the Royal Academy, and all his life was hostile to that institution and to its president, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Romney was born at Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire, in 1734, when Reynolds was a boy of eleven and Gainsborough a child of seven. He was one of eleven children, and his father was a man of many occupations—farmer, builder, cabinet-maker, and dealer—and little prosperous in anything he undertook. George Romney consequently had his education neglected: at eleven years old he was helping his father in the workshop, and there he displayed precocious ability in drawing portraits of the workmen and other people. When he was twenty he made acquaintance of a vagabond artist named Christopher Steele, who journeyed from place to place making portraits, and in 1755 this man secured Romney as his pupil and took him with him on his travels. In the following year Romney fell ill with a fever and was tenderly nursed by his landlady’s daughter, a domestic servant named Mary Abbott, and being a highly-strung romantic youth Romney married this girl in the first burst of his gratitude, and later found her utterly unsuited to be his mate. Steele meanwhile had settled at York and summoned Romney to join him there as soon as he was well enough, and since he was not earning enough to keep a wife Mrs Romney had to go back to service when her husband rejoined the man to whom he was apprenticed.

There was little good that Steele, a mediocre artist and a loose liver, could teach Romney, and their association was more profitable to the older than the younger man, and after a year or two in bondage at York, Romney managed to purchase his freedom, and he then made a home for his wife at Kendal. With this town as his headquarters, he rambled about the Lake Country painting heads at £2 2s. each and small full lengths at £6 6s., till in 1762 he had at last managed to save a hundred pounds.

Romney was now twenty eight, and he felt that if ever he was to make his fortune by his art he must seek it in London. So giving £70 to his wife, with the remaining £30 he came to the capital, where he at once competed for a prize offered by the Society of Arts for an historical picture on ‘The Death of Wolfe.’ Romney was at first awarded a prize of fifty guineas for his version of this theme, but later the judges reversed their verdict and awarded the fifty guineas to John Hamilton Mortimer (1741-79), a young friend of Richard Wilson and Reynolds, and gave Romney only a consolation prize of twenty five guineas. Romney, not unnaturally, believed this reversal of the first judgment to be the result of favoritism, and to to the end of his life he thought that it had been brought about by Reynolds, who had been actuated by fear of a rival. In 1766 Romney again gained a premium for his ‘Death of King Edward’ from the Society of Arts, to which he was now admitted a member, and henceforward he exhibited regularly at the Society’s exhibitions, but always held aloof from the Academy. In 1767 he paid a visit to his wife and two daughters at Kendal, and returning alone to London soon established himself in public favor, and in the early ‘seventies he was making over a thousand a year by his profession. He thought the time had now come when he should visit Italy, and in March 1773 he set off for that country in the company of a brother artist, Ozias Humphrey (1742-1810), who afterwards became a famous miniature-painter. At Rome, Romney separated himself from his fellow traveler and led a hermit’s life, shunning the society of his compatriots, and giving his whole time to work and study. In 1775 he made his way back to England via Venice and Parma, studying with advantage the work of Correggio in the latter city, and reaching London in the month of July. Greatly improved now in his coloring and confident in his increased knowledge and power, Romney boldly took the house and studio of Francis Cotes, R.A (1725-70), who had been one of the chief of the older portrait-painters, at 32 Cavendish Square, and there seriously entered into competition with Reynolds. Gainsborough, it will be remembered, did not come to London till 1779, so that Romney, though the younger man, was the first formidable rival that Reynolds had to endure. Charging £15 15s. for head life-size, Romney soon found himself surrounded by sitters, and Reynolds was alarmed at the way in which his practice for a time was diminished by the painter to whom he contemptuously referred as ‘the man in Cavendish Square’. Later Romney had so many commissions that he was able to put up his prices, but even so he received only about 80 guineas for the full-length portraits which now fetch many thousands of pounds when they are sold by auction at Christie’s. When Reynolds died he left a fortune of £80000 earned by his brush, and though Romney was not successful to this extent he made a good living, his income in the year 1785 being £3635.

But Romney was never a mere money-grubber, and when at the age of forty-eight he first met his most famous sitter, the dazzlingly beautiful Emma Lyon, known to history as Lady Hamilton, he was so fascinated by her extraordinary personality, that time after time he refused all kinds of wealthy sitters in order that he might continue uninterruptedly to paint the lovely Emma. In 1882 the future Lady Hamilton was a mere girl of twenty or twenty one, living under the protection of Charles Grevile, who four years later—when he was in money difficulties—heartlessly handed her over to his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, who treated her more kindly and honorably. For five years Romney painted this fascinating creature continually in a variety of characters, and though gossip soon busied itself making scandal out of their relations, there is no evidence that the painter’s affection for her was anything but platonic. Of his many paintings of her, one of the most charming, the ‘Lady Hamilton’ is in the National Portrait Gallery.

In the art of George Romney there is a peculiar feminine quality which gives an extraordinary winsomeness, almost a pathos, to his paintings of frail women. There is a paternal tenderness rather than the passion of a lover in his paintings of Emma Hamilton and of another famous beauty, Mrs Robinson, known as ‘Perdita’. Romney’s beautiful portrait of the last in the Wallace Collection was done while this gifted actress was under the protection of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV. But that royal rascal soon tired of her, and at the age of twenty four she had already been abandoned by ‘the first gentleman in Europe’. When he sent her away the Prince gave her a bond for £20000; but he never paid it, and ‘Perdita’ Robinson died in 1800, poor and paralysed.

Nobody has yet discovered who was the original of Romney’s most famous masterpiece, ‘The Parson’s Daughter’, but we may imagine that his beautiful creature, with a gentle melancholy behind her smile, was also one of the frail sisterhood to which both Lady Hamilton and Mrs Robinson belonged. The extraordinary sweetness and simplicity of Romney’s portraiture of women has the same tender reverence for the sex that we find in ‘The Vicar of Wakefield,’ and the peculiar winningness of Romney is perhaps best described by placing him as the Goldsmith of English painting.

Though he never brought his wife and family to London—where it is probable that they would have felt ill at ease in a sphere to which they were not accustomed—Romney supported them in comfort, and when after years of hard work in London his health broke down, he went back to his wife at Kendal. She received him without reproaches, and under her affectionate care the tired, worn-out genius ‘sank gently into second childhood and the grave’. He died at Kendal on November 15, 1802.

Eighteenth Century British Portraiture (continue)

Heard On The Street

Many gemstone/jewelry/art buyer (s) don't have the expertise needed to determine what something is worth + it makes sense to turn to professionals for advice + information from someone knowl­edgeable in the industry can level the information playing field.

The Facebook Facescape

I found the CNN Money.com article on the Facebook Economy (the social networking site) interesting + the article's authors provides some insights on the operating system (s) + other viewpoints on opportunities for new business models.