(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
It was not till the Great Exhibition at Paris in 1867 that Millet came into his own, and his opportunity came then because his friend Théodore Rousseau was President of the Jury. In this exhibition Millet was represented by ‘The Angelus’ ‘The Gleaners’, and seven other important paintings. He was awarded a first class medal for the collection, and in the following year was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. He was now at the height of his fame, but the honors and fortune which followed came too late to be enjoyed. The artist was deeply smitten by the death of Rousseau in December 1867, and his own health began to fail in 1870. During the disasterous Franco-Prussian war he retired to Cherbourg, where his work was interrupted by frequent illnesses. When he returned to Paris, the new Republican Government gave Millet a commission in 1874 to paint a set of decorative panels of ‘The Four Seasons’ for the Panthéon, but though he at once began charcoal sketches for these subjects he was never able to execute the paintings. Throughout the autumn his health declined, and surrounded by his devoted family he died on the 20th January 1875.
Closely associated with Millet, whom he accompanied to Barbizon, was Charles Jacque (1813-94), who, though less poweful than Troyon, was one of the best animal painters of his time. He excelled in painting flocks of sheep in the open or on the edge of a forest. The painting of peasant life, inaugurated by Millet, was continued by Bastien Lepage (1848-84) and the still more popular Jules Breton (1827-1906), who, though weaker in drawing and less rich in color, reaped where Millet had sown. Associated with Diaz, and still more fantastic than this painter in the exotic pictures of his earlier years, was Adolphe Monticelli (1824-86). Born at Marseilles, Monticelli brought the warmth of Southern coloring and imagination to Barbizon: he was the most romantic of the romantic landscape painters, and his canvases loaded with rich pigment, from which radiant fairy-like figures emerge and seem to quiver with life, are magical masterpieces of jewel-like color.
Belonging to a slightly later generation, but encouraged in his youth by Corot, Daubigny, and Millet, the exquisite sea painter Eugene Boudin (1825-98) is a link between the Barbizon School and the Impressionists. Boudin was born at Honfleur, where his father was a sea-captain, and during his early years he assisted Troyon by painting the skies in some of his pictures. This was a department of painting in which Boudin excelled, and his rendering of the clouds and the blue vault of heaven excited the keen admiration of Corot, who hailed his young contemporary as ‘the monarch of the sky.’ Boudin spent the greater part of his life in the neighborhood of his birthplace, and never tired of painting the shipping, shores, and harbor scenes of this part of the Normandy coast. His paintings are pitched in a slightly higher key of color than those of Corot and Daubigny, and the prevalence of luminous pearly greys in his work have caused his paintings—together with similar paintings of similar subjects of his slightly older contemporary, the Dutchman Bartholde Jongkind—to be known as la peinture gris, i.e the ‘grey’ school of painting. ‘The Harbor of Trouville’ in the National Gallery is a beautiful example of Boudin’s delicate realism and of his sensitive feeling for the wind in the sky and the light on the water.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Internet Jewelers
I found the article A Boy's Best Friend via Economist (March 21, 2008) http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10881758 interesting + insightful + I think it's the signs of the time that traditional jewelers will be squeezed, one way or another by the internet jewelers + expect to see more modified business models via internet selling jewelry worldwide.
Useful link:
www.bluenile.com
Useful link:
www.bluenile.com
School Of Design Innovation
I think James Dyson's design school in Bath, U.K will be a unique concept + inspire the next generation of inventors and engineers + with leading industrial giants like Rolls-Royce, Airbus and Williams Formula One as partners in the project, I believe the work experience and mentoring to students by the experts will be priceless.
Useful link:
www.dysonschool.com
Useful link:
www.dysonschool.com
Howard Hodgkin
Howard Hodgkin is a British painter + printmaker + his style is spontaneous with bright colors and bold forms, sort of semi-abstract, emotional + natural!
Useful link:
www.howardhodgkin.org.uk
Useful link:
www.howardhodgkin.org.uk
Becoming Self Aware
I found Mark Goulston's How to Deal With Anxious People extremely useful + I liked it.
Useful link:
http://conversationstarter.hbsp.com
Useful link:
http://conversationstarter.hbsp.com
Certifigate: Rallying Support For Closure
Total internal reflections of Chaim Even Zohar on Gemological Institute of America’s (GIA) complex Certifigate scandal + the ongoing and evolving story + diamond industry concerns + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
The Pasha Of Egypt
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
The Stellar Cut Brilliant, octagonal in outline and with eightfold symmetry, is reported to have weighed 40 ct (about 41 metric ct). In 1848 it was acquired by Ibrahim Pasha, the great Egyptian general and Viceroy of Egypt to the Turkish Sultan.
The Stellar Cut Brilliant, octagonal in outline and with eightfold symmetry, is reported to have weighed 40 ct (about 41 metric ct). In 1848 it was acquired by Ibrahim Pasha, the great Egyptian general and Viceroy of Egypt to the Turkish Sultan.
The Romantic Movement In France
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
3
The great struggle for liberty and truth in art, begun by the Romantics and landscape painters already mentioned, was carried a stage further by Jean Francois Millet (1814-75), who was the first to paint the peasant, not as a sort of ‘stage property’ in a landscape, but as he truly lived and moved. Millet came of peasant stock, and during his boyhood worked hard in the fields with his father, whose home was in the hamlet of Gruchy, near Cherbourg. When he was eighteen, his father, recognizing the lad’s talent, allowed him to study art in Cherbourg, but as the eldest son he returned to manage the farm on his father’s death in 1835. His heart, however, was still in his art, and seeing this his mother and grandmother heroically determined not to allow him to sacrifice himself, but soon persuaded him to return to Cherbourg. There his talent was recognized by the Municipality, who gave him a grant of forty pounds, and with this he went to Paris in 1836 and entered the studio of historical painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856). During the next twelve years, spent partly in Paris and partly in Normandy, Millet experienced nothing but trouble, he married in 1841, and his wife died in 1844; at the end of 1845 he married again, and found a devoted and courageous helpmate in his second wife.
At this period of his life Millet chiefly painted portraits and small pictures of classical or mythological subjects, and already his color—in which he was considerably influenced by Correggio—began to attract attention and the admiration of other artists. He became friendly with Diaz, and through Diaz got to know Rousseau and others. In 1847 his picture ‘Œdipus taken from the Tree’ was favorably noticed in the Salon by Théophile Gautier, who prophesied that the painter would become famous, and in the following year Millet’s picture of a peasant woman was given a place of honor in the best room at the Salon. It looked as if the painter was on the point of achieving a popular success, for he had also been finding a ready sale for small pictures of nude figures, which he painted with great skill. But about this time he accidentally overheard somebody speaking of him as ‘Millet, who paints nothing but naked women,’ and this chance remark so upset him that he then and there determined never again to paint the nude. Already town life and town manners were distasteful to him; he longed for country air to breathe and the peasant people whom he knew and loved to paint.
In 1849 he decided to change his manner of life, and with his wife and babies he removed to Barbizon, where Rousseau and Diaz were already settled. In this peaceful village Millet made his home, and found his true vocation in chronicling in a series of noble paintings the dignity of peasant labor. To the Salon of 1850 he sent his unforgettable picture of ‘The Sower’, a work of epic grandeur which seems to symbolize the Present preparing the Future in the guise of an agricultural labourer fulfilling his common task. During the next ten years Millet painted some of his greatest pictures, ‘The Gleaners’ in 1857, ‘The Angelus’ in 1859, but all this time Millet was harassed by money difficulties, and with a growing and increasing family he had a hard struggle for mere existence. His new pictures were not popular; not only did they fail to find purchasers, but they were often attacked because many of them were thought to be ‘socialistic’ and ‘The Gleaners’ was particularly abused on its first appearance as a work expressing subversive political principles. Millet and his family might have starved at this time, but for the good deeds stealthily done by his more fortunate comrades. In 1855 Rousseau secretly bought one of his pictures for £160, and Troyon also bought several of Millet’s works, pretending that he was acting for an American collector who had no real existence. By this tactful generoisity Millet was prevented from ever knowing how much he owed to the devotion of his friends.
The Romantic Movement In France (continued)
3
The great struggle for liberty and truth in art, begun by the Romantics and landscape painters already mentioned, was carried a stage further by Jean Francois Millet (1814-75), who was the first to paint the peasant, not as a sort of ‘stage property’ in a landscape, but as he truly lived and moved. Millet came of peasant stock, and during his boyhood worked hard in the fields with his father, whose home was in the hamlet of Gruchy, near Cherbourg. When he was eighteen, his father, recognizing the lad’s talent, allowed him to study art in Cherbourg, but as the eldest son he returned to manage the farm on his father’s death in 1835. His heart, however, was still in his art, and seeing this his mother and grandmother heroically determined not to allow him to sacrifice himself, but soon persuaded him to return to Cherbourg. There his talent was recognized by the Municipality, who gave him a grant of forty pounds, and with this he went to Paris in 1836 and entered the studio of historical painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856). During the next twelve years, spent partly in Paris and partly in Normandy, Millet experienced nothing but trouble, he married in 1841, and his wife died in 1844; at the end of 1845 he married again, and found a devoted and courageous helpmate in his second wife.
At this period of his life Millet chiefly painted portraits and small pictures of classical or mythological subjects, and already his color—in which he was considerably influenced by Correggio—began to attract attention and the admiration of other artists. He became friendly with Diaz, and through Diaz got to know Rousseau and others. In 1847 his picture ‘Œdipus taken from the Tree’ was favorably noticed in the Salon by Théophile Gautier, who prophesied that the painter would become famous, and in the following year Millet’s picture of a peasant woman was given a place of honor in the best room at the Salon. It looked as if the painter was on the point of achieving a popular success, for he had also been finding a ready sale for small pictures of nude figures, which he painted with great skill. But about this time he accidentally overheard somebody speaking of him as ‘Millet, who paints nothing but naked women,’ and this chance remark so upset him that he then and there determined never again to paint the nude. Already town life and town manners were distasteful to him; he longed for country air to breathe and the peasant people whom he knew and loved to paint.
In 1849 he decided to change his manner of life, and with his wife and babies he removed to Barbizon, where Rousseau and Diaz were already settled. In this peaceful village Millet made his home, and found his true vocation in chronicling in a series of noble paintings the dignity of peasant labor. To the Salon of 1850 he sent his unforgettable picture of ‘The Sower’, a work of epic grandeur which seems to symbolize the Present preparing the Future in the guise of an agricultural labourer fulfilling his common task. During the next ten years Millet painted some of his greatest pictures, ‘The Gleaners’ in 1857, ‘The Angelus’ in 1859, but all this time Millet was harassed by money difficulties, and with a growing and increasing family he had a hard struggle for mere existence. His new pictures were not popular; not only did they fail to find purchasers, but they were often attacked because many of them were thought to be ‘socialistic’ and ‘The Gleaners’ was particularly abused on its first appearance as a work expressing subversive political principles. Millet and his family might have starved at this time, but for the good deeds stealthily done by his more fortunate comrades. In 1855 Rousseau secretly bought one of his pictures for £160, and Troyon also bought several of Millet’s works, pretending that he was acting for an American collector who had no real existence. By this tactful generoisity Millet was prevented from ever knowing how much he owed to the devotion of his friends.
The Romantic Movement In France (continued)
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