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DEATHS: 1997 DE KOONING — 1896 RICHMOND  
BIRTHS: 1591 HALS — 1601 CANO — 1864 RUSSELL — 1593 DE LA TOUR — 1847 RYDER  
^ Born on 19 March 1591: Dirk Hals, Dutch painter who died on 17 May 1656, brother of Frans Hals. Dirk Hals studied under Abraham Bloemaert.
— Dirk Hals was born and died in Haarlem. He was the younger brother of Frans Hals; who was probably also his first teacher. But the painters who influenced Dirck were Esaias van de Velde and Willem Buytewech. Apart from a few small portraits, he devoted himself exclusively to the painting of conversation pieces — the cheerful life of prosperous burghers in their houses, gardens, or public places. Dirck was not interested in the serious side of life; in his work he depicted people in conversation or while flirting, making music and dancing, eating and drinking. His interiors are hardly worked out, all the emphasis is put on fashionable dress and colorful representation. He succeeded in rendering people’s high spirits through facial expression, costly dress, posture and loose grouping.

— LINKS
— The Merry Company (42x77cm) — another Merry Company (45x67cm) _ Dirk Hals was apprenticed to his older brother Frans. Yet while Frans Hals specialized in portraiture, Dirk Hals concentrated primarily on genre paintings and conversation pieces in the manner of Esasias van de Velde and Willem Pieterszoon Buytewech. From the 1620s onwards, he frequently had the figures in his paintings added by his own specialist, Dirck van Deelen. He preferred a courtly setting and noble society, whereas his several versions of the Merry Company follows in the tradition of the brothel painting and the tale of the prodigal son. The bed on the left in the background, and the body language of the couples leave us in little doubt as to the situation. At the same time, however, this is also a “five senses” scene: not only is the sense of touch satisfied, but there is also music and singing, smoking and drinking, while the eyes feast on an empty jug or a bodice. The interior also gives us an idea of how paintings were displayed in Holland at the time. They have been hung on a shabby wall without any evident system: a landscape, a marine painting, a portrait. It is clear that paintings had by now become objects to be taken for granted. Some might be cheaper or more expensive, better or worse painted than others, but they were no longer laden with iconographic significance.
— A Party at Table (1626, 28x39cm) _ This type of elegant interior with a group of well-dressed people enjoying themselves around a table is known as a "merry company". Such examples derive from representations of biblical subjects, for example, The Prodigal Son Feasting, and were often engraved with moralizing verses which condemned foolish behavior. In the left background is a map; on the wall to the right is a painting representing the Betrayal of Christ.
— Seated Man Smoking a Pipe
— La Fête Champêtre (1627, 78x137) _ A party is taking place in idyllic parkland near a villa. The guests are wearing festive clothes and having a merry time eating, drinking, making music and flirting. Dirck Hals portrayed the various figures in great detail. He borrowed two of them — a woman and a dog — from Willem Buytewech. This outdoor party scene is not based on reality, but recalls the garden of love, a popular late medieval theme.
— Garden Party (1620) _ In the background a fountain with Bacchus can be seen. Dirck Hals often used this theme. Subjects and setting varied, but the message remained the same: warning against lightheartedness and an encouragement of modesty.
— Amusing Party in the Open Air (1621, 34x61cm) _ detail _ Hals was one of the two brothers of Frans Hals, the first great Dutch painter of the 17th century. He painted mostly charming interior scenes. This rather theatrical scene represents the easy-flowing and sparkling style of Dirck Hals. Dirck Hals tried to emulate the fresh and casual style of his brother Frans, particularly in his spectacular way of painting, splendid clothes made of expensive fabrics. The colors are almost too vivid, like the early genre paintings. In this picture the festive party, seen against a background of columns and draperies on the left, seems to be momentarily frozen into a tableau in which the participants pose to welcome a new arrival — the spectator.
— Musicale (1623, 43x47cm) — Seated Woman with a Letter (1633) — Merry Party in a Tavern (1628, 28x36cm) — Banquet Scene in a Renaissance Hall (1628)
^ Born on 19 March 1601: Alonso Cano, Granada Spanish sculptor, painter, draftsman, and (rarely) architect, who died on 03 September 1667.
— He was an artist of rare versatility in 17th-century Spain. While he is also known for his drawings, only about 60 of these are definitely attributable to him, despite the many extant sketches with the name ‘Cano’ added by later hands. Unlike most of his Spanish contemporaries, such as Zurbarán or Velázquez, whose artistic styles did not outlive them, Cano’s artistic legacy is measured in part by the number of artists who were trained in his workshop and went on to become important masters in their own right: the painters Pedro Atanasio Bocanegra, Juan de Sevilla [1643–1695] and, more distantly, José Risueño, and the sculptors Pedro de Mena and José de Mora, who began by following Cano’s models and then continued to produce polychrome sculpture in a distinctive style typical of Granada. Sebastián de Herrera and Juan Niño de Guevara were also students of Cano.
— Cano was sometimes called “the Spanish Michelangelo” because of the diversity of his talents. He was born and died in Granada, Spain, and worked there and in Seville and Madrid. His movements were partly dictated by his tempestuous character, for more than once he fled or was expelled from the city he was working in (once for the suspected murder of his wife). In spite of his violent temperament, his work tends to be serene and often sweet.
      He studied painting in Seville under Pacheco (Velázquez was his fellow-student) and sculpture with Montáñez, and stayed in the city from 1614 to 1638, when he moved to Madrid to become painter to the Count-Duke Olivares and was employed by Philip IV to restore pictures in the royal collection. Thus he became acquainted with the work of the 16th-century Venetian masters, whose influence is apparent in his later paintings; they are much softer in technique than his earlier pictures, which are strongly lit in the manner of Zurbarán.
      From 1652 he worked mainly in Granada, where he designed the façade of the cathedral (1667), one of the boldest and most original works of Spanish Baroque architecture. He was ordained a priest in 1658, as this was necessary for him to further his career at Granada Cathedral. The cathedral has several of Cano's works in painting and sculpture, including a polychrome wooden statue of the Immaculate Conception (1655) that is sometimes considered his masterpiece.

— LINKS
— The Vision of Saint John (1635; 108kb) — St. John the Evangelist with the Poisoned Cup (89kb)
— St. Bernard & the Virgin (114kb) — St. James the Major (58kb)
— The Dead Christ Supported by an Angel (1652; 58kb)
— The Dead Christ Supported by an Angel (1649, 178x121cm)
—The Miracle at the Well (1647, 216x149cm) — Eve (1666)
— Immaculate Conception (1648) — Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos (1648, 218x153cm)
— Descent into Limbo (1640) _ From 1640 on, Cano's technique became increasingly pictorial, that is to say, increasingly Baroque, acquiring some of the subtleties he had previously ignored. Perhaps his most important painting is the Descent into Limbo, a strange, rather illustrative composition, anecdotal in the movement imparted to the figures, but including one of the rare, and one of the most beautiful female nudes in Spanish art.
— Mary (1648, 49x43cm) _ Probably a fragment of a larger painting. There are two somewhat similar representations of Mary by Cano, both are darker than this intimate picture painted with devotion.
— Noli me Tangere (1640, 142x110cm) _ Cano was a painter, sculptor and architect and worked for varying periods in nearly every large town in Spain — Madrid, Seville, Valencia and Toledo. His oeuvre is very rich, though more restricted in range than that of Velázquez or Murillo, for he painted almost exclusively religious subjects, keeping strictly to the accepted ecclesiastical tradition. Cano never went to Italy but was strongly influenced by the Italian masterpieces in the Spanish royal collection. The composition of Noli me Tangere owes much to the inspiration of Correggio's 1525 painting of the same subject, which was in Madrid at that time, and the coloring shows the influence of Venetian masters, especially Titian.
 _ Other paintings of Noli me Tangere, by:
— Titian — Giotto di Bondone _ another by Giotto di Bondone — Fra Angelico — Agnolo Bronzino
— Maurice Denis — Giovanni Battista Franco — Hans Holbein Jr. — Andrea Mantegna
— Anton Raphael Mengs — Nicolas Poussin — Tilman Riemenschneider
— Giovanni Francesco Rustici — Pontormo (after Michelangelo)
Russell paintingBorn on 19 March 1864: Charles Marion Russell, US painter and sculptor specialized in the US West, who died on 24 October 1926.
— In 1880 he left his upper-class home in Saint-Louis for Montana Territory. He worked briefly on a sheep ranch, spent two years as a hunter’s and trapper’s assistant and then became a cowboy. During his considerable spare daytime hours he painted, sketched and modelled small animal figures in clay (e.g. Antelope, 1915). Although he painted a few exceptional oils and watercolors prior to 1900, the vast majority of his best work was done in the last two decades of his life. Typically the subject-matter centers around cowboy life (e.g. Wagon Boss, 1909) and the Plains Indians, for whom he had great respect. The luminous Piegans (1918), with its depiction of the Plains Indians, is a reminder of the vastness of the US West. Russell’s sense of humor and empathy for his subject-matter radiates from his paintings as pleasingly as do the clear colors of the high country. His bronze sculptures (e.g. Buffalo Hunt, 1905) depict the same dramatic and tension-packed themes as his paintings.

— Near the turn of the century, the Indian Wars were ending and the transition to reservation life was in progress throughout the Plains region. As the West of Russell's youth yielded to encroaching civilization, his artistic vision evolved away from stern realism toward a more poetic and romantic style. The image of a single mounted warrior was a format Russell employed frequently and it clearly manifested his nostalgic sentiments. Throughout his artistic career, he did paintings depicting a single mounted Indian, from every tribe with which he came in contact. Russell's thorough knowledge of Amerindian culture led him to execute more than thirty individual paintings of Amerindians from some fifteen distinct tribes. These included the Arapaho, Assiniboin, Blackfoot, Blood, Cheyenne, Cree, Crow, Flathead, Kutenai, Nez Perce, Pawnee, Piegan, and Sioux.
      A comparison of Russell's single figure studies, before and after the turn of the century, reveals a steady increase in his technical expertise. By 1905, his handling of human and equine form had reached its peak, mostly because of his exposure to the New York art world in late 1903-1904. The simple horse and rider compositions over the next ten years reveal Russell's flourishing sophistication as a draftsman and colorist. These new skills would also be apparent in the carefully worked, multi-figured paintings of the next decade.
      While critics may not have taken Russell's art too seriously at one time, they found the artist fascinating. He received attention from New York's professional illustrators who, charmed by his frank manner and droll humor, welcomed him into their ranks. Russell stoutly insisted upon his right to be himself. He dressed as he pleased — in cowboy boots and Stetson, with a woven sash to hold up his pants and he believed, keep his stomach small. His talk which was guarded and laconic when around strangers, flowed among friends, who regarded him as a master storyteller and delighted in his dry wit just as readers of his illustrated letters still do.
      1887-1899 were formative years for Russell and his most experimental period in subject matter; he borrowed Remington subjects, compositions and figures as he worked out his own approach and defined his own turf. The Indian fighting army was Remington's, but Russell claimed the open range cowboy, the old-time Plains Indian and western wildlife. They were his West.
      He elaborated setting in his paintings. Montana was home to him and he cherished the landmarks that identified specific locales — the Judith Basin, the Great Falls area, Glacier Park. One critic for The St. Louis Star said "Mr. Russell paints the landscape with as much fidelity as he does his figures…he gives a graphic description of the country which creates the rugged, boisterous, fun loving, life-loving, jolly men of the plains…" Those who champion Russell continue to refer to his authenticity rather than his artistry. Russell offered the "speaking details dear to any lover of western life."
      He worked hard to satisfy the demand for authenticity but recognized, as he wrote a friend about his Indian paintings, that he had "always studied the wild man from his picture side."
      Russell disclaimed any interest in "teckneque", mocked highfalutin artsy talk, and doubted that there was anymore to Impressionism than a desire to hide "bum drawin." But his own painting in the 1920's exhibits a bolder use of color and a painterly looseness that indicates an evolution (similar to Remington's evolution) away from the linear and the literal toward an appreciation of light and the way we feel what we see.
      The core of his work is a sustained elegy in which time stands still. His images of the "onley real American", proud Indian men and women riding across the land they owned, of cowboys in their careless youth free never to grow old, and wild animals, buttes and rivers, and the rolling plains, will be there for generations to come. Through his art Russell speaks to us in the present voice, and what he says constitutes his claim to greatness.

—      According to family lore, Charlie Russell displayed an aptitude for art from a young age, reportedly drawing pictures and modeling in wax when he was a small child. At 16 years old, Russell's parents sent him to Montana under the care of a sheepherder. The independent young man struck out on his own soon after, finding work as a cowboy in the booming Montana ranching industry. During long, often tedious days watching over cattle on the open range, Russell sketched the scenes around him. In the winter, when many cowboys were unemployed, Russell lived in various frontier towns and painted pictures to pay for his food and lodging.
     Friends said that Russell also began carrying modeling clay with him during this time, making small sculptures during his spare moments. Russell likely would have continued as an itinerant cowboy and amateur artist for the rest of his life had he not met a young woman named Mary Cooper. In 1896, the couple married, and Russell's new wife began to guide him toward a serious career in art. Russell found there was a growing market, especially among wealthy East Coast residents, for images of the disappearing US frontier.
another Russell painting      By 1920, he was making frequent trips to New York to paint western pictures for an increasing number of supportive patrons. Russell rarely painted or sculpted from models or from life, relying on memory to recreate scenes from the life he had experienced. He had no real art training and little interest in the formal aesthetics of art.
     Though critics often ignored or derided his work, the public loved it. Initially, Russell's paintings and sculptures documented his early life as a cowboy, but later in his career, he also began to depict scenes from the lives of American Indians and historical figures. Many of his later paintings express Russell's melancholy attachment to the unspoiled West and his dislike of the "progress" that had plowed under the Great Plains and fenced in the open range. Russell spent his final years in Great Falls, Montana, where he continued to paint until his death.

— Like Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell was born to moderate wealth. Born in Saint-Louis, Missouri, Charley Russel[ spent his early boyhood in the Oak Hill suburb, in a half-century-old estate strongly reminiscent of a colonial Virginia plantation. The Russell family operated the most extensive coal mines in the region. Later, Russell's father became the president of the Parker-Russell Mining and Manufacturing Company, which built a large plant to convert fire clay into tile and brick, gas works, and rolling mills. It was the largest company of its kind in the US. Charley's family tried hard to educate him and resisted his urge to go west, but he did not like school and had heard too many tales from men who had been clear up to Fort Benton, and his longing was not to be resisted. Through all his years of drifting, Russell never lost his air of being to the manner born, no matter how disreputable his outward appearance might be.
     Russell first came to Montana in early March 1880 with a dream of becoming a real cowboy. He was so captivated with the West he chose to stay and fulfill his childhood fantasy. During those first years in Montana, Russell received great encouragement from Jake Hoover, a mountain man who befriended him and took him under his wing. Hoover often shared his cabin with the young Charlie, sometimes providing food and shelter for months at a time. This friendship allowed Russell to experience the ways of the frontier life he would later portray so vividly in his paintings.
      In 1882 Charlie landed a job as a wrangler on a cattle drive. He wrangled for eleven years, and while he was not known for being a good roper or rider, Russell established a local reputation as the affable (some said bone lazy) cowboy who loved to draw and knew how to tell a great story. As a self-taught artist, his sketches were crude but reflected an observant eye, a feel for animal and human anatomy, a sense of humor and a flair for portraying action — all hallmarks of Russell's mature art.
      Throughout his years on the range, he witnessed the changing of the West. He saw the bitter winter of 1886-1887 end the cattleman's dominion on the northern plains. The days of free grass and unfenced range were ending and, for Russell, the cowboy life was over by 1893.
      Prior to Russell's marriage to Nancy Cooper, in 1896, only a few of his works had been reproduced nationally. Although he was unsure of his ability to earn a living with his art, Nancy Russell recognized her husband's talent and promise, and provided the business sense and drive that eventually made her unambitious husband one of America's most popular artists.
      Success did not come easily for the Russells. Montana offered few opportunities for art sales, which eventually led them to New York where contact was established with other artists interested in Western themes. At the very time Frederic Remington was getting out of illustration to concentrate on painting, Russell secured illustrating assignments and began to gain exposure through exhibitions and press coverage.
      His emergence in the big time art world came in 1911 with a one man show at a New York gallery, followed three years later by an exhibition in London. Charles Russell felt deeply the passing of the West, the most evident theme of his art. This sense of loss touched him with an emotional immediacy. He was haunted by youthful fantasies, memories of what once was and by the evidence of change that surrounded him as an everyday reality. His work reflected the public demand for authenticity, but also the soul of a romantic.
— More biographical information:
Great Falls (MT) Chamber of Commerce / Charles M. Russell, Legacy / Frye Art Museum

— LINKS
— Self-Portrait on horseback (1906; 429x301pix, 38kb)
— Charles M. Russell and His Friends (1922, 107x206cm)
— The Signal Fire (1897, 81x111cm; 671x1051pix, 451kb _ ZOOM to 1006x1576pix, 1218kb _ ZOOM+ to 1617x2533pix)
— The Death Song of Lone Wolf (1901, 58x90cm; 724x1086pix, 542kb _ ZOOM to 1086x1629pix, 1282kb _ ZOOM+ to 1629x2514pix)
— Spearing a Buffalo (47x77cm; ; 650x1086pix, 513kb_ ZOOM to 975x1629pix, 1248kb _ ZOOM+ to 1565x2616pix)
— Buffalo Hunt (1897, 47x72cm; 693x1086pix, 496kb _ ZOOM to 1040x1629pix, 1111kb _ ZOOM+ to 1617x2533pix)
— Antelope (1894, 51x84cm; ; 648x1086pix, 446kb _ ZOOM to 972x1029pix, 1056kb _ ZOOM+ to 1563x2620pix)
— Indian Rider (56x46cm)
— The Challenge (56x81cm)
— Return of the Horse Thieves (1900; 106kb)
— Red Man on the Plains (1901; 538x1000pix, 112kb)
— Meat's not Meat Till It's in the Pan (1915, 59x89cm)
— Illustrations from Indian Old Man Stories (1920):_ [Amerindian up in tree attacks eagle's nest] (800x559pix, 101kb) _ [Riverscape with Heron] (800x537pix, 113kb) _ [Return of the Squaw] (800x559pix, 94kb)
— A Quiet Day in Utica (1907, 61x92cm; 441x673pix; 216kb gif)
— Man Killer (1911; 423x306pix, 17kb)
— War Council on the Plains (314x450pix, 24kb)
— 101 images at the Athenaeum
^ Died on 19 March 1997: Willem de Kooning, 92, in East Hampton, NY, Dutch US Abstract Expressionist painter born on 24 April 1904, husband of Elaine Fried de Kooning [12 Mar 1920 – 01 Feb 1989]
— De Kooning is one of the greatest Abstract Expressionist painters of the post-World War II period, his dominance rivaled perhaps only by Jackson Pollock. Remembered for his large canvases as well as the controversial melding of both abstract and figurative imagery, de Kooning lived much longer than his contemporaries, many of whom had untimely deaths. The group of painters that would be identified as the New York School was made up of de Kooning and contemporaries such as Arshile Gorky [15 Apr 1904 – 21 Jul 1948] and Edgar Denby, and they helped to establish New York City’s reputation as a center for artistic activity.
      Although his work appears spontaneous, de Kooning often spent many months on a single piece, repeatedly painting over completed sections and occasionally pressing newspaper onto the drying canvas. Friend and New Yorker critic Harold Rosenberg first used the term “Action painting” to refer to de Kooning’s violent slashes of color and the shifting foreground and background typical of his abstract work. “Painting isn’t just the visual thing that reaches your retina,” the artist once said, “it’s what’s behind it. I’m not interested in ‘abstracting’ or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way because I can keep putting more and more things in — drama, anger, pain, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas about space. Through your eyes it again becomes an emotion or an idea. It doesn’t matter if it’s different from mine as long as it comes from the painting which has its own integrity and intensity.”
      Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam, Holland. Both of his parents were involved in the sale of alcohol, his father as a distributor, and his mother as the proprietor of a bar. De Kooning’s parents separated when he was five, and after a brief period in which he lived with his father (with whom he was very close), his mother demanded that he live with her. The future painter’s artistic talents were evident even in childhood, and at the age of 12 he left school to apprentice with Jan and Jaap Giding, the proprietors of a large commercial art firm. When de Kooning had completed his training in traditional arts and crafts, the Gidings assisted him in enrolling in the Academie Voor Beeldende Kunsten en Technische Wetenschapen, where he attended evening classes for the next eight years (1916-1924). De Kooning graduated from the Academy in 1924, having received certification as both an artist and craftsperson. As a young man, de Kooning became familiar with the work of Walt Whitman, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Piet Mondrian. He also admired a group of Dutch abstract artists known as DeStijl, who counted Theo Van Doesburg and Mondrian among their ranks, and whose work he had first encountered while working for the art director of a Rotterdam department store from 1920-1923.
      De Kooning entered the United States in 1926 as a stowaway (he would not become a citizen of the U.S. until 1961), in the hope of becoming a commercial illustrator. Despite his complete unfamiliarity with the English language, he was able to find work as a freelance commercial artist and housepainter. De Kooning settled in Hoboken, New Jersey, an area with a sizable Dutch population. The following year, he moved to New York City, where he developed friendships with artists including Edward Denby, Stuart Davis, and Arshile Gorky. He shared a studio with Gorky, who, along with Pablo Picasso, came to be a major influence on the painter’s early work. In 1935, de Kooning found full-time employment through the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, and in 1939 was commissioned by the New York World’s Fair to create a mural for the Hall of Pharmacy that he entitled Medicine. During this period, he also painted a series of portraits of men that included Self-Portrait with Imaginary Brother (1938), Two Men Standing (1938), and Glazier (1940).
      In 1942, de Kooning met the painter Jackson Pollock, with whom he formed the Club, an artists’ group that met primarily at 39 East 8th Street. Many of the Abstract Expressionists also gathered at the Cedar Bar, where they socialized with artists and intellectuals such as the poet and art critic Frank O’Hara and painters Joan Mitchell and Hans Hofmann. De Kooning married fellow painter Elaine Marie Fried in December of 1942. Over the years, he and his wife often lived in separate homes for extended periods of time, but as he grew older, Elaine spent more time at his house in East Hampton, Long Island. Elaine de Kooning was a respected Abstract Expressionist artist and critic in her own right, most notable for her portraits. She painted two portraits of US President John F. Kennedy, and taught at universities such as Yale and Carnegie Mellon. Work on abstract black and white oil paintings, considered by some to be Willem de Kooning’s finest work, began in 1946; most of these works employed less expensive commercial paints made from enamel. One of these was Attic (1949). Another, Excavation (1950), was one of the first large-scale paintings of the period, and was credited with cementing Abstract Expressionism’s role as the most important form of its time.
      The 1940s were years of great success for de Kooning. His first one-man show took place in 1948 at New York’s Charles Egan Gallery and was a critical success. It featured 10 abstract paintings, the majority of which had been rendered in black and white. Around this time, influential art critic Clement Greenberg named de Kooning one of the most important painters of the 20th century. In June 1950, he was among six American artists (and, along with Jackson Pollock and Arshile Gorky, one of three Abstract Expressionist painters) chosen by the Museum of Modern Art’s Alfred H. Barr for exhibition in the 25th Venice Biennale in Italy. The following April marked his second one-man show; that year he also received, for Excavation, the $2000 Logan Medal and Purchase Prize from The Art Institute of Chicago’s 60th Annual Survey of American Painting. De Kooning was also among the artists chosen by the Museum of Modern Art to represent the United States at the 27th Biennale International in Venice, Italy.
      In March 1953, the Sidney Janis Gallery presented an exhibit of de Kooning’s work that featured six large oil paintings and several pastel sketches of a seated woman. The Woman series marked a move toward figurative representation, an approach that had been rejected by most other artists and thinkers associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement. The Museum of Modern Art bought the US works from the Venice exhibition for display in the New York museum’s 27th Biennale in 1954. The show focused on the work of Ben Shahn and de Kooning, and 27 of de Kooning’s paintings and drawings were available for view at the exhibit.
      In the late 1950s, de Kooning painted a number of large landscapes depicting quick impressions of urban scenes and highways, including Gotham News (1956), Backyard on 10th Street (1956), and Montauk Highway (1958). The painter moved in 1961 to East Hampton, Long Island, which was a favored locale among painters of the period. There, he began work on a glass-walled studio that was not fully completed until 1969. In the mid-1960s, with works such as Clam Diggers (1964) and Singing Woman (1965), he returned to the subject of women, this time placing the female figure in abstract landscapes. De Kooning would revisit this subject matter throughout his career.
      De Kooning’s later work focused on an extended examination of color and light, and he produced many untitled works that featured women and marine creatures, often employing unmixed colors. By the 1980s, a decade in which he completed over 300 pieces, his work took on a simpler form, emphasizing abstract orange, blue, and red lines that leapt from a canvas painted white. In this later work, de Kooning turned away from the influence of Picasso and began to look more toward the colorful silhouettes of late Matisse.
      Although he had been a hard drinker for much of his life, de Kooning abstained from alcohol in his later years. As he aged, the artist also suffered from the short-term memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease; fortunately, the disease did not affect his technical ability. Of de Kooning’s generation of painters, he was one of the few to survive to old age: Arshile Gorky and Mark Rothko committed suicide in 1948 and 1970, respectively, Jackson Pollock died in a car crash in 1956, and Franz Kline succumbed to a heart attack in 1962. De Kooning would not pass away until 1997, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s.
      Willem de Kooning’s work, vibrant and sometimes aggressive, continues to inspire generations of painters. Through their choice of residence and lifestyle, he and the other members of the New York School of painting helped to establish New York City as a center for artistic activity. DeKooning’s particular use of gestural painting ensured that he will be remembered as one of the most original and startling artists of the 20th century.
— In 1963, after more than four decades in New York City, Willem De Kooning moved permanently to Springs, on the far end of Long Island. The expansive landscape, with its North Atlantic light, low-lying dunes, surrounding water, and deep-green foliage and fields, reminded the artist of his native Holland. From the time he settled in Springs at the age of fifty-nine, de Kooning embarked on a body of work often thought to rival that of Monet in its fresh momentum. The reference points of his art, landscape, figure, and gestural abstraction, meld seamlessly together. Working exclusively during daylight hours in a large, open studio with floor-to-ceiling windows, de Kooning immersed himself in the subtleties of the steely gray-green landscape and luxuriated in the quality of the light and colors there. In contrast to his heroic and often turbulent earlier canvases, these late paintings reflect his joyous response to nature. Nature, for him, is at once edenic yet soulful; the transience of the pleasures he celebrates is always keenly present.

— LINKS
— (xXxBAD tiglink>>>Blood and the Torso) — (xXxBAD tiglink>>>Wall next to the suicide bombing)
— Woman 1 (1952; 600x452pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1055pix, 551kb) _ De Kooning described the figurative motif of this painting not as a representation but as a thing slapped on the canvas, liberating him from formal anxieties. Woman I "did one thing for me: it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationships, light, because that [motif] was the one thing I wanted to get hold of. I thought I might as well stick to the idea that it's got two eyes, a nose and mouth and neck."
      Eyes as big as grenades, teeth grinning violently, huge limbs, mountainous breasts - this "woman" is exaggeratedly, absurdly physical and at the same time not there at all, a spewed monster of fantasy, a crude graffito that took two anguished years to paint. Pink legs stick out of a red and yellow white-flecked inferno of skirt, the white clouds of the bosom float in de Kooning's mind as apocalyptically remote as the bride that hangs above the bachelors in Duchamp's Large Glass.
      This is a ballad of sexual frustration. If you had to visualise de Kooning's relationship to the woman, you would picture him trying to make polite conversation, or ignoring her sitting across from him on the subway, while desire pounded his brain.
      It is a comic painting, in contrast to the tragic vision of a Rothko or late Pollock, but it would be missing the point to see it as "figurative" in the British sense; on the contrary, it opens up new areas of erotic, everyday life to abstract art. Compare it with Bacon or Freud and you see how remote this painting is from the melancholy of traditional figuration. There is no body here. The woman is a woman in the painter's mind - a fabulation of colour and brushwork, with the splattered, pushed, released paint telling us unequivocally that it is a furiously sexual vision.
      Despite the fierce heterosexuality of Woman I , the artists who first followed de Kooning into this new space between abstraction and the real world dealt in sexual ambiguity - Rauschenberg's Combines with their louche brushwork and dangled images and Twombly's savagely eroticised paintings such as Bay of Naples (1961). Closer in spirit to de Kooning's lusty cartoon are Oldenburg's fantasies of mass-produced consumables inflated, sexualised. The giant lipstick he mounted on caterpillar tracks might belong to de Kooning's Woman 1.
— Night (1948, 58x71cm; 880x1120pix, 793kb _ ZOOM to 1794x2283pix) _ The forms of Night are rich with suggestion. Some vaguely resemble human anatomy, while others recall architecture. These ambiguous shapes seem to float and jostle on the picture's surface. Night belongs to a series of abstract black-and-white paintings, inspired by de Kooning's late-night walks in New York, that express the spirit and texture of the modern metropolis. The broken brushwork and areas of scraping and reworking suggest the nervous energy of urban life, or the inner turmoil of the artist. De Kooning was one of the most emotionally expressive Abstract Expressionists and an important influence on younger gestural painters.
— Untitled, 1985 (196x223cm) (Two Dancers) _ De Kooning returned again and again to the image of woman. The idyllic bacchanals of Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, and Rubens were inspirations for him. In contrast to the aggressive femme fatales who peer at the viewer in his 1950s canvases, however, his late women are earthy (and at times ironically caricatured) sun-drenched nymphs cavorting amid the seaside landscape. De Kooning’s canvases of the 1980s are concise. The flow of his gesture is closely related to the economic line of his drawings rather than to the material mass of brushstrokes. In Untitled, 1985, the calligraphy simultaneously evokes windswept organic forms and two women (seen from front and back), arms interlocked and legs in dancelike attitude. The swaying movement recalls Matisse’s bucolic masterpiece The Dance, whose unbridled view of female sensuality, observed from a distance as if at a performance, de Kooning shares. With the artist’s advancing age, voluptuousness also takes on a redemptive edge; he said, “I think of woman as being light, soaring upward instead of heavily attached to the ground.”
^ Born (or baptized? or both??) on 19 March 1593: Georges de La Tour, French painter of religious and genre subjects, best known for his night scenes of dark interiors illuminated by candlelight. He died on 30 January 1652.
— La Tour was born in Vic, a small town in the duchy of Lorraine. The evidence of his work suggests that he was influenced by the Italian master Caravaggio, known for his dramatic lighting effects, and by the Dutch masters Hendrick Terbrugghen and Gerrit van Honthorst, leaders of the tenebroso (shadowy) style. La Tour's night scenes are often lit by a single emphatic light source, such as a torch or candle. He was particularly effective in exploiting the resulting strong contrasts of light and shadow for expressive effect, as in Saint Sebastian Attended by St. Irene (1649), where the striking colors of the picture are vividly dramatized by the strong light of a large candle. La Tour's daylight scenes most often depict religious subjects and exhibit exquisite attention to detail. His paintings throughout his career are characterized by balanced composition, simplified volumetric shapes, and a precise, uncluttered realism. His solemn simplicity reflected the classicism of 17th century art but had little in common with the emerging baroque style, and his work was forgotten after his death in 1652; his reputation was not revived until the 20th century.
— The son of a baker in the independent province of Lorraine, Georges de la Tour is first mentioned in documents in 1616, when he was still living in Vic. By 1620 he had established himself in Lunéville and hired his first apprentice. He made a visit to Paris in 1639, the same year he was named peintre ordinaire du roi to Louis XIII. While little is known about La Tour's life or artistic training, he may have been in Rome from 1610 to 1616 and may also have gone to the Netherlands. Famous in his lifetime, La Tour's reputation fell into oblivion after his death. His work was rediscovered in the twentieth century. Scholarly opinion remains divided over the chronology of his oeuvre, but La Tour's important position as a dramatist of humble reality is universally acknowledged today.
— Georges de La Tour was born at Vic-sur-Seuille, Lorraine, the son of a baker. Most probably, the artist's early education took place in Vic and then, certainly, at the duchy's capital, Nancy. There is a good chance that the young painter traveled to Italy, a trip that was in fashion at the time with most people and with his young peers in Lorraine. It was not uncommon for whole groups of his Lorraine co-citizens to take off for Italy, and other artists, such as Jacques Callot, may well have taken him along there. In any case, one letter mentions him as a student of the Guide's, that is Guido Reni. This discreet reference has served some art historians as grounds for assuming that perhaps La Tour did go to Italy and that, once there, perhaps he spent some time in Guido Reni's workshop and that - again perhaps - he discovered authentic Caravaggism during his short stay in Rome. Other art historians, however, totally deny such a stay and maintain that La Tour never left Lorraine.
      De la Tour married Diane Le Nerf on 02 July 1617. Very shortly thereafter they left Vic for his Diane's city of origin, Lunéville. There he began making a reputation for himself and even obtained his first commissions. In no time at all he became a man of some wealth and, true to his Lorraine origins, he knew just how and where to invest his new savings. He ran a strict household: the couple's house staff complained about how poorly one ate at the La Tour table. The general gist is that he was of an uncommonly rapacious nature. He died a rich man, of a parapleurisy that seems to have felled eight persons merely in his own household, let alone over 8000 in the city of Lunéville as a whole.
      De la Tour's contemporaries portray him as a basically unpleasant person — haughty, sharp-tongued, self-assured, unbearably self-sufficient, stingy, and violent beyond measure. Strangely, this depiction, except for the stinginess, comes close to fitting Caravaggio. Thus the two painters the most strongly focused on depicting the sacred and the Christian message in all its beauty were both rather despicable. Caravaggio was despicable and La Tour probably even more so, and both produced extraordinary art transcending their true nature. La Tour was proud to boast the title of "painter to the King". But historians have found no traces of any interest shown by the old Louis XIII or the young Louis XIV in his work. Was La Tour perhaps inclined to mendacity as well?
—      Georges de La Tour est le héros du plus mystérieux roman de l'histoire de l'art. Peintre à succès sous Louis XIII, tombé dans l'oubli dès sa mort, en 1652, Georges de La Tour n'a longtemps existé que dans quelques actes d'état civil, papiers notariés et autres inventaires après décès. Peintre sans tableaux, on a souvent attribué ses oeuvres à Vélasquez, Zurbaran, aux frères Le Nain, jusqu'à ce qu'un érudit allemand, Hermann Voss, le ressuscite en 1915 en rapprochant trois toiles mystérieuses, conservées dans des musées français et «donnant à voir, cadrés à mi-corps, des figures subtilement éclairées par la lumière d'une chandelle...» Il s'agissait du Nouveau-né, anonyme étiqueté Le Nain, qui avait déjà enthousiasmé Taine et même Maurice Denis. D'un Reniement de saint Pierre et d'un Vieillard endormi, aujourd'hui baptisé L'ange apparaissant à Saint Joseph, accrochés à Nantes et dans lequel Mérimée et Stendhal, un siècle plus tôt, avaient vu la patte de Vélasquez. Les deux tableaux nantais étaient signés G. de La Tour, mais personne n'était capable d'identifier l'auteur.
      Peu à peu, on trouve des La Tour dans les lieux les plus fous. Dans les réserves poussiéreuses des musées, les greniers de châteaux, les églises de campagne, les chapelles désaffectées... Anonymes, dans les salles à manger familiales, les arrière-boutiques d'antiquaires, les successions modestes... Dans la Sarthe, en Bretagne, à Limoges, en Suisse. Les oeuvres sont fascinantes - ce mélange étrange du primitif et du sophistiqué.
      Georges de La Tour est aujourd'hui définitivement immortel, considéré comme l'un des plus grands artistes de tous les temps, maître du clair-obscur et roi de la nuit. Nous ne connaissions qu'une quarantaine de tableaux sur les cinq cents probables.
      Il naît dans l'évêché de Metz en 1593, à Vic-sur-Seille, grosse bourgade agricole où l'on parle français. Sa mère, déjà veuve avec deux enfants, a du bien. Son père est un boulanger prospère qui possède des terres, des vignes, des rentes, «des bagues et des habillements». A Vic, ville relais entre l'Empire et la Lorraine - à l'époque, heureux duché indépendant -, l'existence est animée. Capitale des évêques de Metz, c'est une place forte catholique. L'évêque, fils préféré du duc Charles III, entretient au château une maison princière, fréquentée par les intellectuels, les artistes qui travaillent pour lui. Nancy est plus brillante, mais Vic tient son rang. A la fin du XVIe siècle, l'Eglise, celle de la Contre-Réforme, est en pleine reconquête des âmes égarées dans le protestantisme ou la superstition. La jeunesse de La Tour voit s'affirmer le réveil religieux qui soulève la Lorraine.
     Le 20 octobre 1616, on le retrouve parrain dans l'acte de baptême d'une petite Marguerite Fontaine. Il a 23 ans. En 1617, le jeune La Tour est assez introduit pour pouvoir épouser Diane Le Nerf, qui a déjà coiffé sainte Catherine, mais dont le père, noble argentier du duc de Lorraine, est l'un des hommes les plus riches de Lunéville, allié à toute l'aristocratie du pays. En même temps qu'une carrière de peintre il voit s'ouvrir à lui une carrière sociale. La Tour est ambitieux. Il quitte Vic pour Lunéville plutôt que pour Nancy, où trop d'artistes lui font concurrence. Et obtient du duc de Lorraine des lettres d'exemption qui lui accordent des privilèges voisins de ceux de la noblesse. Lunéville va permettre au fils du boulanger de mener la vie d'un seigneur. Il va développer peu à peu cette oeuvre étrange, profondément imprégnée de préceptes pieux, mystique et sensuelle, un univers de tension contenue dans lequel les cris, les passions, les douleurs, l'amour sont intérieurs, et l'anecdote, fixée dans l'éternité: une peinture du silence, de l'immobilité, brossée sans dessin préalable, d'un pinceau précis et rapide.
      Une oeuvre à la chronologie impossible: seuls deux tableaux sont datés. 1645 pour Les larmes de saint Pierre et 1650 (le dernier?) pour Le Reniement. Une vingtaine d'autres sont à peu près signés. Tout le reste n'est que suppositions. Même les titres sont pures déductions. On a longtemps cru que les tableaux «diurnes», clairs, stylisés, réalistes, aux alliances subtiles de couleur (Rixe, La diseuse de bonne aventure, Le Tricheur), appartenaient à la première période, tandis que les «nocturnes» à la manière brune dataient de la fin. Mais la découverte, en 1970 à Lvov (URSS), de L'argent versé, un nocturne éclairé à la chandelle dont les personnages ont la violence des oeuvres du début, est venu bouleverser les connaissances. On pense aujourd'hui que La Tour a systématiquement et habilement alterné les deux manières.
      Innovant non dans le choix des sujets mais dans leur traitement, l'Evangile selon La Tour, c'est l'histoire de l'Homme, de la naissance à la mort, mais racontée de deux façons: soit avec des personnages saisis à mi-corps dans un cadrage serré, plans très cinématographiques éclairés par une lumière latérale qui en découpe les contours. Soit, au contraire, en pied, isolés sur fond neutre, sans profondeur, tableaux intemporels dont on ne situe ni le lieu, ni l'heure, ni le temps. la Tour a bien compris la leçon du Caravage. Ses «Apôtres», sans auréole, sont des paysans aux traits rudes, aux grossiers vêtements d'étoffe usée ou de vieux cuir. Corps fatigués, veines saillantes, chairs ramollies, mains calleuses aux doigts épais - le regard du peintre est impitoyable. Les vielleurs sont très âgés, aveugles, avec la bouche ouverte des morts. Mais le ruban du tableau de Nantes est «une coulée de miel et de vieux rose». Les mangeurs de pois sont présentés dans une lumière glaciale qui accentue les rides et la détresse, compensée pourtant par la superbe tache rouge d'un vêtement. De même, dans Rixe de musiciens, longtemps attribuée au Caravage, les cinq têtes placées au même niveau, présentées en frise, sont peintes avec une froide brutalité. Visages avinés, longs doigts tordus, ils sont laids et ridicules.
      Décorateur virtuose, La Tour se fait aussi styliste: raffinement des vêtements, ramage des broderies, moelleux des tissus dans La diseuse de bonne aventure. Variété des bijoux, des coiffures et des turbans, découpes «haute couture» pour les rubans du pourpoint dans les deux exemplaires du Tricheur, dont l'élégance perverse a les attraits du diable.
      On croirait qu'il dispose d'abord des figures géométriques qu'il habille ensuite au gré de ses sujets, dans un «éclairage de cave». Voir Job dont la femme courbe la tête et le dos pour entrer dans le tableau. La Tour lui raccourcit le buste, accentuant ainsi la stature monumentale du personnage, qui n'est plus qu'une immense tache rouge, comme s'il avait horreur du vide.
      Entre-temps, il s'est spécialisé dans les «nuits». Louis XIII, en visite à Nancy, reçoit en cadeau un Saint Sébastien, patron des archers, «d'un goût si parfait qu'il fit ôter de sa chambre tous les autres tableaux pour n'y laisser que celui-là... La toile a disparu, mais on lui connaît une dizaine de copies. En 1639, La Tour est repéré à Paris, où un paiement de 1000 livres lui est fait pour «affaires concernant le service de Sa Majesté». Nommé «peintre ordinaire du roy», il loge au Louvre. Ses clients: Richelieu, le surintendant des Finances Bullion, l'ami Le Nôtre, le collectionneur Jean-Baptiste de Bretagne... C'est la gloire. Il est riche. Et odieux. Affairiste. Rapace. Opportuniste (il a, dès 1636, fait allégeance au roi de France). Il a le sang chaud, la bastonnade facile. Dur aux humbles (il roue de coups un laboureur surpris dans ses champs). Arrogant (il reçoit à coups de pied un sergent venu réclamer un impôt qu'il refuse de payer). Bref, il accumule les litiges et doit dédommager ses victimes. Il est même dénoncé au duc de Lorraine dans une supplique comme «quelqu'un qui se rend odieux au peuple par la quantité de chiens qu'il nourrit, tant lévriers qu'épagneuls, comme s'il était seigneur du lieu, pousse les lévriers dans les grains, les gâte et les foule».
      Peut-on être à la fois grand peintre et méchant homme? Il semble que oui. Car il continue son oeuvre. Des cadeaux commandés par Lunéville pour le gouverneur La Ferté, qui représente le roi de France. Surtout des tableaux de chevalet pour clients fortunés. D'où, peut-être, son goût des séries. Comme plus tard Cézanne ou Mondrian, il revient sans cesse sur le motif, se borne à quelques thèmes qu'il reprend, répète, modifie à peine, les conduisant toile après toile vers la perfection. On ne connaît que cinq «Madeleine», mais peut-être en a-t-il peint une vingtaine. Il progresse, le pinceau à la main, avec chaque fois des trouvailles de mise en scène: une nature morte pour la Madeleine à la veilleuse, le reflet du crâne dans la Madeleine au miroir, celui de la bougie dans la Madeleine aux deux flammes, la plus proche du Caravage: vêtements encore élégants, bijoux à terre, mélancolique, elle a compris que le luxe, le plaisir sont vanités. Et que seul le sacrifice la conduira à la paix. Dans toutes ces nuits, la flamme troue l'obscurité brune. «Je suis la lumière et la vie», disait le Christ. Eclairage inventé. Quand donc une torche a-t-elle dispensé, s'interrogeait Malraux, une lumière aussi sereine et fondue? Peu importe. Le rayonnement des chandelles caresse les visages, fige les corps dans une immobilité intemporelle.
      La Tour fuit le geste, ignore l'anecdote et fixe dans la contemplation un monde à l'arrêt. Ce faisant, il peint le silence. Et la nuit. Fragilité de l'homme, incertitude du destin, méditation sur la souffrance, sont les thèmes qui soutiennent les deux Saint Sébastien soigné par Irène (à la torche)... Eclairage frisant, cadrage serré, composition verticale, vêtements architecturés. Mais on ne voit que les mains. Main tendre d'Irène qui tâte le pouls du blessé, mains ouvertes de la servante, jointes en prière pour la sublime dame en bleu, protectrices pour la femme en larmes. «C'est pour moi l'un de ses plus beaux tableaux, avoue Thuillier, une oeuvre impossible à imaginer. Il nous montre le destin qui s'accomplit. Sébastien n'est pas mort. C'est un héros blessé. Les femmes sont là pour le soigner. Cherchez dans Rembrandt, il n'y a pas cela...»
      Modernité des cadrages, archaïsme bidimensionnel des figures, géométrie des rythmes, cette peinture austère correspond aux perplexités de l'art du XXe siècle. Chardin, Cézanne, Mondrian, ont tenu à leur façon le discours mystique de La Tour, s'efforçant de marquer la préséance de l'immuable, de l'éternel, sur l'éphémère activité humaine. «La Tour ne gesticule jamais, écrit Malraux. En un temps de frénésie, il ignore le mouvement, créant en quelque sorte des statues nocturnes, surgies de la terre endormie. Aucun peintre ne suggère ce vaste et mystérieux silence. La Tour est le seul interprète de la part sereine des ténèbres.» Plus stoïcien que religieux, ni athée ni croyant, l'esprit le plus «déniaisé» de son temps n'a pas encore livré la moitié de ses secrets. On ne lui connaît aucun portrait, ni paysage, pas d'univers, ni ciel, ni mer, ni horizon, même pas de chevaux, rien qui rappelle la nature, le décor de la vie. A part quelques rares animaux, dont une mouche en trompe-l'oeil, le coq de saint Pierre, le chien du vielleur, la tête d'agneau dans L'adoration par les bergers.

— LINKS
— Un Vieux (1619, 91x60cm; 3/8 size _ ZOOM to 3/4 size, 636kb)
— Une Vieille (1619, 91x60cm; 3/8 size _ ZOOM to 3/4 size, 636kb)
— Le Jeune Chanteur (1650, 67x50cm, 1/4 size _ ZOOM to half~size _ ZOOM++ not recommended to full size, 520kb, unless you want to examine closely the dense network of crack lines in the aging paint)
— Penitent Saint Jerome (1630, 152x109cm)
— Saint Jerome Reading (1622, 62x55cm; 949x705pix, 111kb) with the help of a magnifying glass. _ Charles II seems to have acquired this painting in 1662. At that time it was listed as 'St. Jerome wth [sic] spectacles of the manner of Albrecht Dürer'; it was not until 1939 that it was recognized by Kenneth Clark as 'a very bad de la Tour'. Saint Jerome reading is now regularly discussed in the literature on the artist, whose popularity has risen dramatically in recent years. Having been born in Lorraine where he passed most of his life, de la Tour's style reveals a commingling of Italian and Northern Caravaggesque influences which suggest, but do not necessarily prove, visits to Rome and the Netherlands. However, his style remains determinedly individual and was equally the product of local influences. He was a man of independent means and was appointed Peintre Ordinaire du Roi in Paris in 1639. There is a limited number of signed or dated works in the artist's small oeuvre and only approximate indications (some controversial) for the development of his style.
      Saint Jerome Reading may be compared with the series of Apostles, usually regarded as early works although not all autograph. The figures of Saint James the Less, Saint Philip and Saint Paul are particularly relevant. Also significant is a variant Saint Jerome reading, a copy after a lost painting by de la Tour, which is a more sophisticated composition with the figure seen from above and numerous objects comprising a still-life in the foreground. A date of about 1621-23 has been suggested for all of these works, which herald the influence of Caravaggio. Even allowing for the worn surface of the present painting, the chief characteristics of de la Tour's art can be discerned: the naturalistic rendering of hair and skin, the love of genre details such as the spectacles, the splash of saturated color for the cardinal's robe and, above all, the mysterious light that illuminates the figure so powerfully. As a painter Georges de la Tour lifts the art of scientific observation onto a poetic level. It is not quite certain, for instance, to what degree the intense luminosity renders the paper transparent, but it helps to define the distance between the viewer and Saint Jerome in the picture space while providing a bright focal point on a vertical axis. The concentration that characterizes Saint Jerome gradually envelops the viewer to the extent that the internal act of reading becomes synonymous with the external discipline of looking. The painting was cleaned and restored in 1972.
— Saint Thomas (1630, 69x61cm; 1004x875pix, 119kb) _ This is one of La Tour's 'daylight' masterpieces. The bold, simplified modeling is combined here with a psychological analysis of rare subtlety. The refined sable and slate-grey coloring distinguishes the work from some other La Tours where red predominate.
— The Payment of Dues (1634, 99x152cm) _ An important early picture of La Tour is the surviving Payment of Dues, only identified in 1972, even though it has been in the museum at Lvov since at least the early nineteenth century. (Formerly the painting was attributed to Honthorst.) The picture was cleaned soon after its debut in Paris at the time of the La Tour exhibition in 1972, and a date was revealed. This date, thought to be 1634, has caused a great deal of controversy. If 1634 is correct, a drastic reassessment of La Tour's stylistic development must be made. The early pictures of saints remain from the 1620s, and then in the early 1630s La Tour moves towards his second phase, basically a Le Clerc-influenced period. The swaying figures and flickering lighting of the Payment of Dues are especially reminiscent of Le Clerc's Concert at Schleissheim. There is a certain ambiguity — often present in La Tour — in the subject, which appears to have been little studied. At first sight it is a simple peasant scene of the rich extracting money, ruthlessly, from the poor, but it could be a depiction of the Calling of Matthew (the tax collector). It was recognized as a de La Tour in 1970 when the signature was found.
— Cheater with the Ace of Clubs (600x980pix, 235kb _ ZOOM to 1400x2288pix, 812kb)
— Cheater with the Ace of Diamond (1640, 106x146cm; 651x898pix, 81kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1955pix, 600kb) _ almost identical to the preceeding. The scene shows a strong influence of Caravaggio.
— Fortune Teller (1635, 102x124cm; 860x1052pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1706pix, 635kb) _ Georges de La Tour depicted a Caravaggesque genre scene popular in the first half of the 17th century: a young cavalier (the prodigal son) robbed by three women.
— Magdalen of Night Light (1635, 128x94cm) _ Magdalen was the object of great devotion in France and La Tour painted several pictures representing her. Georges de La Tour was successful during his lifetime, however he remains somewhat mysterious. A journey to Italy during his youth before he settled at Lunéville, may explain his Caravaggism. Without much imagination, he has very personal color. effects; a fine red often recurs in the nocturnal atmosphere of his pictures, in which the long candle, often seen in transparency, lights up thick, voluntarily geometrical volumes, in the melancholy resigned loneliness of his models.
— The Penitent Magdalen (1643, 133x102cm) _ An artist of great brilliance and originality, Georges de La Tour was from the duchy of Lorraine in northeastern France. Early in his career he gained knowledge of contemporary Caravaggesque painting with its emphasis on realism and dramatic effects of light and dark. This picture shows Mary Magdalen in a dark room at the dramatic moment of her conversion, her features lit by a candle flame that imparts a hauntingly spiritual quality to the work. The elaborate silver mirror, the pearls on the table, and the jewels on the floor symbolize luxury, which she has cast aside. In their place she clasps a skull, a common symbol of mortality.
— Job Mocked by his Wife (1636, 145x97cm _ ZOOM to 1400x970pix) _ There was a change in La Tour's style from the morbidity and mystery of such pictures as the penitent Magdalen contemplating a skull and a monk watching over his dead or dying companion, to works of a much calmer and more distilled air. The transitional pictures, also datable to the 1630s, are Job Mocked by his Wife and the so-called Woman with the Flea. The composition of the Job is immediately striking. There is the same flickering movement that is found in the Payment of Dues, even though there are only two figures. It is derived from Bellange's etching of The Annunciation, an unexpected source, especially when it is considered that The Annunciation by Caravaggio was already in the ducal collection at Nancy by 1616 (this much-damaged picture is now accepted by most authorities as authentic). No influence on La Tour is discernible in the Caravaggio, although it is virtually certain that he knew it. The subject is a rare one, and La Tour has introduced a special pathos into Job's sufferings. Although its composition is a complex amalgam of the Bellange Annunciation, the mood of the Job is entirely original. La Tour has concentrated on a dialogue between the unfortunate Job and his ill-tempered wife, and has allowed us a glimpse of a rarely painted subject, a husband tormented by his wife. Her cruel mockery of him comes over with great force as Job sits helplessly contemplating his sores (the potsherd he uses to scrape them is on the ground). The spectator is forced to realize that this painter's genius lies chiefly in his ability to observe the human condition; his skill in painting candlelight is only part of the brilliance. Such a depiction of the complex relationship between two people is rare indeed in French art of the period, and in his maturity La Tour was to develop the concept of dialogue between people to ever-increasing heights of subtlety.
— Woman Catching Fleas (1635) _ La Tour, as with Rembrandt and Velázquez, made the most creative use of the lessons of Caravaggism. This painting combines chiaroscuro and candlelight with an uncompromising realism, and achieves a surprising intimacy of feeling. This painting is enigmatic in both composition and subject-matter. It strikes an uneasy note because of its stark simplicity, which has usually been interpreted as a genre scene of low life — a woman crushing a flea between her fingernails — but no authentic La Tour depicts such an obviously banal theme without a deeper meaning. The only symbol in the picture is the solitary candle burning on the chair, and it is surely not too speculative to suggest that the picture might represent the pregnant Virgin, isolated by Joseph when he discovers that she is with child, the candle thus symbolizing the forthcoming Christ as the Light of the World.
— Saint Sebastian Attended by Saint Irene (1649, 167x130cm) _ There is a group of painting attributed to Georges de La Tour depicting Saint Sebastian and Saint Irene. Part of them is a horizontal composition where the model of one of the figures is a familiar La Tour type. Most of the versions are curiously incompetent, only three of them having pretensions to quality. The upright versions of the same subject are more celebrated. The composition is monumental, as if the painting were depicting a sculptured tableau. One composition is especially moving, with the mourning figure in a blue cowl (in another version the cowl is black) looking as if she were taken from a piece of Burgundian tomb sculpture. Recent observations on the possible dating of the costumes have left little doubt that the picture is rather later than the artist's lifetime. Étienne de La Tour, the son of the artist was suggested (but not accepted) as the possible author. Étienne de La Tour is actually documented as being required to continue his father's style, should the latter die inopportunely, and it is likely that he continued long into the 1660s and even the 1670s, painting ever-weaker versions of his father's work which eventually became mockeries of his father's genius.
— Saint Sebastian Attended by Saint Irene (another one, 1641, 160x129cm) _ It is one of the typical paintings of the artist showing strong contrasts of light and shadow.
— Le Songe de Saint Joseph (1640, 93x81cm _ ZOOM to 1400x1250pix _ detail _ De la Tour's mature pictures form a close-knit group which must date from the years immediately before and after 1640. None of them is documented, although some of them are signed. The most typical and one of the best preserved of them is the so-called Dream of Joseph, which in many respects forms a microcosm of La Tour's art and the problems which surround it, in terms of both history and the interpretation of the subject. As recently as 1913 it was attributed to Rembrandt, although the picture was clearly signed La Tour in the top right-hand corner. It is interesting that an illustrious name should have been sought for so magical a picture, and the subject, even now, is as elusive as was the former difficulty of attribution. A youth in biblical costume is making a beckoning or announcing gesture before an old man who has fallen asleep reading a book. The traditional interpretation is that it is a Dream of Joseph, even though Joseph is normally shown as a carpenter (as he is in another La Tour picture). The youth is hardly the angel Gabriel either, coming to warn Joseph to flee to Egypt in order to escape the impending massacre of all children in Bethlehem by Herod's soldiers. A possible explanation for this enigmatic picture is that it depicts the moment when the young Samuel, having been, he thinks, summoned by the elderly priest Eli, finds him asleep. This surprises Samuel, who at that instant realizes that it is God's voice calling him. If this interpretation of the subject is correct, La Tour has with characteristic subtlety and understatement shown the exact moment when the youth Samuel arrives before the sleeping old man, with a 'here I am' gesture. Samuel's pose is unforgettable. All attempts at the naturalism with which La Tour is so wrongly credited have been abandoned, leaving a Mannerist twisting of the fingers and the caprice of shielding most of the candle flame. Above all, there is an exquisite stillness, which pervades not only this picture but also the other all-too-few masterpieces from this period.
— Christ in the Carpenter's Shop (1645, 137x101cm) _ On the same deep level as in the Job, in a similar vein but more complex in composition, is the Christ in the Carpenter's Shop. As in the Job, one of the figures is arched over the top of the canvas, and again the attention to mood is shown in the minute observation of the effects of light in certain areas, especially that of the translucency of the child's hand silhouetted against the candle, revealing even the dirt in the fingernails. As usual, La Tour tells the Bible story in the simplest of terms. Only items essential for identifying the subject, in this case the paraphernalia of the carpenter's shop, are included. The picture can exist on the level of a genre scene without religious overtones, and its realism makes it one of the greatest genre paintings of the seventeenth century, rivaling Velázquez's Water Seller of Seville and Rembrandt's Jewish Bride (the latter has also been interpreted as a religious or mythological subject).
     The Counter Reformation regenerated the previously somewhat neglected Joseph as a cult figure. He became the object of writings and paintings. The topic fit in quite naturally with the times, and was no mark of originality. It was in fact interwoven into the very fabric of contemporary preoccupations, already quite devoted to the Savior's childhood. Here a young child helps his father, a carpenter. The old man, bent low over his chore, is facing the child, who stands motionless and whose face is bathed in light. With the flame he carries to illuminate the adult's work, he is actually shedding light on himself. This light makes him unreal, and the unrealistic transparency of his hand heightens the supernatural effect. A simple workshop scene has been transformed into a divine event: commonplace reality is transfigured into by the lighting. Once again, moreover, the staging of only two persons serves as a masterful device. Joseph, leaning heavily on his drill, together with the flame and the child's leg, describe a set of verticals allowing the eye to travel back and forth from top to bottom of the painting. But the light attracts us, drawing us from father to Son. And it is the luminous presence of the Son, standing attentively straight, that provides the scene with its definitive stability. La Tour's extraordinary technical prowess comes through for instance in the detail of the Saint's head (500x331pix, 16kb), in the mastery of his craggy face, or in the beard, which boasts artistic liberty that far surpasses the painstaking realism of the 17th century. With the slightest stretch of imagination, one finds traces of the masters to come - the light touch of a Corot or the suggestive flick of a brush of a Turner. _ detail _ The attention to mood is shown in the minute observation of the effects of light in certain areas, especially that of the translucency of the child's hand silhouetted against the candle, revealing even the dirt in the fingernails.
_ Compare Christ in the House of His Parents (The Carpenter's Shop) (1850, 86x140cm; 802x1265pix, 153kb _ ZOOM to 1603x2530pix, 477kb) by Millais [08 Jun 1829 – 13 Aug 1896] _ also this anonymous poster showing toddler Jesus in the carpenter shop (747x570pix, 102kb).
— Adoration by the Shepherds (1644, 107x131cm) _ This picture marks the beginning of La Tour's last phase. The change in La Tour's art in these last years is so great that it has to be seen in terms of a decline and a rapid increase in studio participation. The Adoration by the Shepherds is one of the most frequently painted subjects in western art, but La Tour is unique in the realism of his treatment: the shepherds are entirely convincing.
— The Newborn (1645, 76x91cm) _ The subject is ambiguous because the spectator is uncertain whether it is a simple genre scene or whether it represents the Virgin, Saint Anne and the Christ Child. By common consent La Tour's best picture is The Newborn At first sight this now-famous work seems starkly simple, a refinement of the already-familiar mannerisms and abbreviations, and only close inspection of the relatively small-scale picture reveals its complexity. The technique is almost pointillist: the intense red of the mother's dress is achieved by minute dots of color of varying hue, and the same is true of the lilac garment of the servant (or Saint Anne, if the subject is the Christ Child). The whole surface is thus the product of an intensely concentrated effort, and a large amount of detail is concealed in the stark simplicity of the forms. The collar of the mother's dress is elaborately decorated, and the profiles are painted with an exceptional delicacy of line. A total calm pervades the picture, in which the faces have been described as almost Buddha-like in their serenity. The sentiments which characterize almost all the rest of seventeenth-century painting are avoided, and this picture alone justifies La Tour's reputation. Just as Vermeeer's View of Delft is exceptional, even for Vermeer, so the Newborn rises above all the conventions of its time. _ detail _ The profiles are painted with an exceptional delicacy of line.
— The Hurdy-gurdy Player (1636, 162x105m) _ The attribution to Georges de La Tour is dubious.
— Rixe de Musiciens (1625; 600x1028pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2400pix)
— Les Mangeurs de Pois (1625; 600x731pix, 193kb)

Died on a 19 March:

^ 1918 Edward William Stott, British artist born in 1859. — {All weigh Stott from what he always taught.}— LINKS

^ 1862 Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow, German painter, teacher, and writer, born on 06 September 1788. — {were shadows prominent in his pictures?}— Son of sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow [20 May 1764 – 27 Jan 1850]. — Wilhelm Schadow studied at the Berlin Akademie from 1805 and in 1806 showed paintings at the annual Akademie exhibition. Under his teacher, Friedrich Georg Weitsch, he quickly became a skilled portrait painter, and by 1810 he was commissioned to paint portraits of members of the Prussian royal family and of the Empress of Austria. Influenced by the English artist John Flaxman, Schadow developed an emphasis on outline. In 1810 Schadow went with his brother, sculptor Ridolfo Schadow [09 Jun 1786 – 31 Jan 1822] to Rome, where in 1813 he became a member of the Lukasbrüder and, in 1814, a Catholic. In 1815–1817 he took part, with Peter von Cornelius, Friedrich Overbeck and Philipp Veit, in the commission for frescoes of the Story of Joseph for a room in the Casa Bartholdy. In his continuing interest in portraits, Schadow differed from his colleagues. Following the example of Gottlieb Schick and similarly inspired by Raphael, Schadow developed a poetic style of portraiture. In 1819 he returned to Berlin in order to help Karl Friedrich Schinkel with the decoration of the Schauspielhaus. He took over the running of a studio and won a high degree of respect as a painter and teacher. Schadow’s decorative painting was often combined with an idealistic and intellectual element, as in Poetry (1825), a winged figure standing on clouds over a coastal landscape writing the names of poets on a tablet while gazing upwards.
— The year after Peter Cornelius [23 Sep 1783 – 06 Mar 1867] left Düsseldorf, Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow took his place as director of the Düsseldorf Academy of Painting. He had been with Cornelius at Rome among those who gathered around Overbeck [1789-1869], and while at Rome had become a Catholic. In 1819 he was appointed professor in the Academy of Berlin. He was a capable and popular teacher, and a large number of students followed him to Düsseldorf, where he went in 1826 and where he had great success. He was more in harmony with the artists of the Rhine than his predecessors at Düsseldorf had been. He laid stress on realism, color, and a sober moderation, all based upon a thorough technique, whereby his school gained many friends at home and abroad. After the founding of the Art Association in 1829 the graceful, animated pictures of the Düsseldorf school, which appealed either to Christian devotion or everyday taste, and were greatly admired by the friends of the school, found acceptance in all directions.
     Schadow did not at first take up the ideal fresco, as did the masters at Munich, but devoted himself to oil-painting; nor did he attempt great historical subjects, but the more modest forms of art. In addition to devotional pictures, Schadow and his students gave their attention to portraits, landscape, and genre pictures. His principles differed from those of Cornelius, without his advancing, however, to those maintained today. In his opinion, the value of a picture rested upon form, color, and poetic conception. The student must first learn to draw, especially after plaster copies of antiques, and not until after this was he to learn to draw from nature, and to make studies of drapery and color after old paintings. After the student had been thoroughly grounded he was not to neglect drawing from nature or the model, at first under the strict supervision of a teacher, and then later to work independently.
     Schadow held fast to the principle of the Romantic school, that more weight should be placed upon the conception than the form. He had much skill in arousing interest both in his students and the general public. For his own work he chose religious painting and some of his paintings of this kind fully meet the aims of art and of edification; among these are Ascension of the Virgin, The Wise and Foolish Virgins. Other good pictures are Christ on the Mount of Olives, Christ with the Disciples at Emmaus, the Pieta, The Queen of Heaven, The Blessed Virgin as Intercessor. Among his best creations also are: The Four Evangelists, Paradise, Purgatory,Hell.
     During his lifetime his portraits, for example those of brother artists, were greatly admired. It should, however, be remarked that Schadow, notwithstanding his study from nature, never fully overcame the weakness of the Romantic school, and although he was three times in Italy, where he studied the masters, he exhibited less original force than a graceful talent. Regularity and logic are natural to him rather than depth of content in the drawing and color Immermann, at a later date, when he had abandoned Romanticism, judged harshly the characteristics impressed by Schadow upon the Düsseldorf school. These criticisms, however, generally overlook the fact that Schadow's religious feeling, which remained as an inheritance to the Düsseldorf school, maintained the claims of art while meeting the justified demands of life and popular taste, and, finally, that the self-contained emphasis placed upon realism deserved the undoubted success it obtained. It was natural than in the course of time other elements also made themselves felt in the school, but these were only in part the signs of an advance.
     Schadow was also an author, although not one of preeminent importance. He laid down his opinions concerning training in art in several treatises and in the novel Der moderne Vasari (1854). He resigned his position of the academy after thirty-three years' service. His students were distinguished by the honorable positions they received. His portrait by his brother-in-law and student Bendemann [03 Dec 1811 – 27 Dec 1889] is in the Düsseldorf Academy.
— The students of Schadow included Eduard Bendemann, Anselm Feuerbach, Carl Friedrich Lessing, Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, Adolf Schrödter, Carl Ferdinand Sohn, Johann Baptist Sonderland.
— Bildnis einer Römerin (1831, 70x59cm; 743x581pix, 39kb)

1677 (burial) Anthonie van Borssom (or Boresom, Borssum), Dutch painter and draftsman baptized as an infant on 02 January 1631. — {Does his artwork bore some people? Is that why I cannot find any example of it on the internet?} — There are no surviving documents to support the common assumption that he was a pupil of Rembrandt, although some of his drawings show the influence of Rembrandt’s landscape etchings of the 1640s (Bartsch: Catalogue raisonné, 1880, nos 222–8, 232). These compositions always followed a particular formula: water in the foreground, a farm, windmill or ramshackle barn among trees in the middle ground and, to one side, a distant view of buildings below a low skyline. Various landscapes with windmills bearing the signature AVBorssom have these characteristics (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.; Dresden, Kupferstichkab.; Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst.). Van Borssom’s practice of applying pale watercolour washes to his drawings made them popular with collectors and imitators, especially in the 18th century. Although these drawings sometimes represent recognizable buildings, they are not intended to be topographical, unlike his drawings of churches, castles and city gates, which he must have made during a trip through Utrecht, Gelderland and the Lower Rhine area, including views of Naarden, Maartensdijk (see fig.), Soest, Oosterbeek, Hoog-Elten and Cleves.


Born on a 19 March:

^ 1908 Michael Rothenstein, English painter, maker of reliefs, lithographer, and designer, who died 06 July 1993, son of William Rothenstein [29 Jan 1872 – 14 Feb 1945]. Michael Rothenstein is the author of Looking at Paintings (1947) and Linocuts and Woodcuts (1962). — LINKS — The Crucifixion (1937, 102x76cm) _ This is one of several Biblical scenes in modern dress which Rothenstein painted at that time, perhaps under the influence of Stanley Spencer. The elongated limbs and expressive faces of the figures are reminiscent of El Greco [1541-1614]. From the late 1930s onwards, for a number of artists, the theme of the Crucifixion increased in significance as a metaphor for human cruelty. It was fully exploited in the aftermath of the Holocaust by artists such as Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland.— The Cat (1983 color woodcut, 61x92cm; 401x600pix, 129kb) — Untitled (Purple, Red and Green) (1959, 56x86cm)

1891 Joseph Sima, French artist who died on 24 July 1971.

1862 Ruggero Panerai, Italian artist who died on 26 October 1923.

1843 Joseph Wopfner, Austrian artist who died on 23 July 1927.

1807 Louis Pierre Verwée, Belgian provincial painter of romantic genre scenes, who died in November 1877. He was a student of Eugène Verboeckhoven and the father of Alfred Jacques Verwée [23 May 1838 – 15 Sep 1895].

1803 Felice Schiavoni, Italian artist who died on 30 January 1881. [He was “felice” happy, no doubt, not to be one of the “schiavi” slaves, but one of the “schiavoni” Slavs from the eastern Adriatic coast. But he probably would not be felice to know that I found none of his artwork shown on the Internet.] [Strange coincidence or typo? Same birthday and deathday as Georges de La Tour, though over 200 years apart. I have verified de la Tour's dates in other sources, I find none for Schiavoni.]

1803 Christine Marie Lovmand, Danish artist who died on 10 April 1872.

^ 1775 Ramsay Richard Reinagle, British painter who died on 17 November 1862. He was trained by his father Philip Reinagle [1749 – 27 Nov 1833] and first exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, in 1788. He then visited to Italy, where he was in Rome in 1796, and later Holland to study the Dutch masters. After returning to London, he worked for a period with the panorama painter Robert Barker [1739–1806] before going into partnership with Barker’s eldest son, Thomas Edward Barker [1769–1847], with whom he exhibited panoramas of Italian, Spanish, and French land- and cityscapes in a rival establishment in London until 1816, when it was sold. During this period he continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy, becoming an ARA in 1814 and an RA in 1823. He also showed works at the Society of Painters in Watercolours, of which he became a member in 1806 and was President from 1808–1812. Although he painted a number of portraits, he specialized in landscapes of Italy and England, an example of the latter being the watercolour Loughbrigg Mountain and River Brathy, near Ambleside—Sunset (1808). He was also adept at copying the Old Masters, and he is said to have been employed by various picture dealers for restoration work, sometimes of a dubious nature. In 1848 he exhibited as his own a landscape by a young artist named J. W. Yarnold at the Royal Academy, which he had only slightly altered. His deception discovered, he was forced to resign his diploma as a Royal Academician, yet he continued to exhibit there until 1857 and in his impoverished old age received an Academy pension. Three engravings after his drawings appeared in William Bernard Cooke’s The Thames (1811), and others were included in John Tillotson’s Album of Scottish Scenery (1860). He also wrote the ‘scientific and explanatory notices’ for J. M. W. Turner’s Views in Sussex (1819). He was the father and teacher of marine painter George Philip Reinagle [1802 – 06 Dec 1835]. — LINKS

1769 Jacques François José Schwebach Desfontaines, French artist who died on 10 December 1823.

^ 1712 (1711?) (or 05 Mar?) Carl Gustav Pilo, Swedish painter who died on 02 March 1792 (or 02 Feb 1793?). His father, Olof Pijhlou [1668–1753], was an artist. Pilo may have visited Vienna and Germany, and it is probable that he studied at the Drawing Academy established in Stockholm in 1735. From 1737 he was engaged as a portrait painter by members of the southern Swedish aristocracy (e.g. Baron Malte Ramel). About 1740 he settled in Copenhagen, where he swiftly rose to a position of importance: following the enthusiastic reception of his portrait of Louise of England, the wife of the future Frederick V , he was appointed court painter in 1745 and drawing-master to Crown Prince Christian (later Christian VII) in 1759. Pilo was appointed professor at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen in 1748 and for the next two decades was recognized as the foremost portrait painter in Denmark. — Carl Gustaf Pilo was one of the 18th century Swedish artists who left Sweden to make their fortune abroad. He moved to Denmark in 1741, becoming painter to the Danish Court. He also became a professor at the Danish Academy of Fine Arts. His prolific output in Denmark consisted mainly of portraits. Gustav III's coup d'état in 1772 turned the Danes against Sweden, and Pilo had to leave Denmark. He settled in his childhood town of Nyköping — His students included Peder Als, Per Krafft, Lorens Pasch. — LINKS — Kirjailija Adam Lenkiewitz (75x61cm)

1681 Hendrik van Limborch (or Limborgh), Dutch artist who died on 03 February 1759.

1627 Alexander (Alart) Coosemans, Flemish artist who died on 28 August 1689.


Happened on a 19 March:

2003 Scientific Examination of Art: Modern Techniques in Conservation and Analysis, a colloquium of the US National Academy of Sciences, opens at 18:00 in Washington DC, bringing together scientists and conservators, and will fully occupy the next two days.

^ 1863 In the evening a crowd on London Bridge celebrates the marriage that day of Princess Alexandra Oldenburg of Denmark [01 Dec 1844 – 20 Nov 1925] to the future Edward VII [09 Nov 1841 – 06 May 1910]. Painter William Holman Hunt [02 Apr 1827 – 07 Sep 1910] is present, of which he later writes:
     “The display made many buildings, by daylight dingy with city smoke, fairy-like and gorgeous. Temple Bar was enlivened by hangings of gold and silver tissue and London Bridge was hung with masts, crimson banners surmounting the Danish insignia of the Elephant; tripod braziers and groups of statuary made up the show of welcome to the Princess on the spot full of memories of Danish exploits of ancient times, and the whole was illuminated by an effulgence of light. Being fascinated by the picturesque scene, I made sketches of it in my notebook, and the next day I recorded them with color on a canvas. When I had completed this, the Hogarthian humour that I had seen tempted me to introduce the crowd; but to do this at all adequately, grew to be a heavy undertaking.”
     He titles the painting London Bridge on the Night of the Marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales (1863, 65x98cm)

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