The start of:
A Study of
Willy’s Playful
Pictures by
Anthony Browne
Jan van Eyck
1395-1441
Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter, active in
Bruges, who along with Robert Campin
(previously known only as the Master of
Flémalle) in Tournai, was the founder of the Ars
Nova (“new art”) of 15th-century northern late
Gothic painting. This style heralded the
Renaissance in northern Europe.
This period of Netherlands art is characterized
by a naturalistic style of vivid oil colors,
meticulous detail, accurately rendered textures,
and the illusion of three-dimensional space on
a two-dimensional surface.
Nine paintings by Jan are still extant,
carefully signed and dated, all between
1432 and 1439. Of these pictures, four
depict religious subjects—including the
Madonna with Canon van der Paele
(1436,Groeninge Museum, Bruges)—and
five are portraits, such as Giovanni
Arnolfini and His Wife (1434, National
Gallery, London).
The Arnolfini
Marriage
(1434) oil on panel
National Gallery,
London.
The
Madonna
of Canon
van
der Paele
(1436)
oil on panel, Musée Communal at Bruges.
Jan's contemporaries were awed by his
amazing technical skill and his precise
renderings of carefully observed detail.
These qualities explain why he was still
called the King of Painters by his
compatriots as late as the 16th century.
Sandro Botticelli
1445-1510
Sandro Botticelli, born Alessandro di
Mariano Filipepi, is considered one of
the leading painters of the Florentine
Renaissance.
He developed a highly personal style
characterized by elegant execution, a
sense of melancholy, and a strong
emphasis on line; details appear as
sumptuous still lifes.
Botticelli was born in Florence, the son
of a tanner. His nickname was derived
from Botticello (“little barrel”), either
the nickname of his elder brother or the
name of the goldsmith to whom Sandro
was first apprenticed.
Later he served an apprenticeship with
the painter Fra Filippo Lippi and also
worked with the painter and engraver
Antonio del Pollaiuolo, from whom he
gained his sense of line; he was also
influenced by Andrea del Verrocchio.
Botticelli had his own workshop by
1470. He spent almost all of his life
working for the great families of
Florence, especially the Medici family,
for whom he painted portraits.
Botticelli also painted religious
subjects, and in 1481, he was one of
several artists chosen to go to Rome
to decorate the walls of the Sistine
Chapel in the Vatican.
The Birth of Venus
(1485)
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Tempera on canvas
172.5 x 278.5 cm
Venus
(detail)
Georges Seurat
1859-1891
“Art is Harmony. Harmony is the
analogy of contrary and similar
elements of tone, of color, and of
line, considered according to their
dominants and under the influence
of light, in gay, calm, or sad
combinations . . . .
Gaiety of tone is given by the
luminous dominant; of color, by
the warm dominant; of line, by
lines above the horizontal.”
Born in Paris, Seurat was strongly
influenced in his youth by the works
of Dutch realist Rembrandt and the
Spaniard Goya.
Seurat studied art for a year at the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Lehmann,
a former pupil of Ingres.
Also influenced by the Impressionists
and Delacroix, Seurat was interested
in theories of vision and color.
Seurat's name is forever affiliated with
Pointillism, the nineteenth-century
French school of Post-Impressionism
that he founded.
By meticulously applying various
degrees of colored “dots” to the
canvas, Pointillism produced the
impression of changes in light.
Paul Gauguin mockingly described
such work as “painted fleas,” yet these
dots of color, usually applied next to a
complementary pigment (reds next to
greens, blues next to oranges), render
stunning, shimmering images.
This system of painting underlies
without dominating much of Seurat's
landscape and figure work.
“They see poetry in what I have done. No. I apply
my method, and that is all there is to it.” --Seurat
This scene, with over forty figures and their
surroundings, took the artist almost two years
to complete, during which he refused to lunch
with close friends lest they distract him from
his work.
Today it remains his best-known masterpiece
and a monument to dedication.
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande
Jatte (1884-1886) is one of only seven large
pictures executed by Seurat during his short
life.
He said of modern life that he wanted
to decipher it with the feeling of the
frieze of the Parthenon; some of the
classical quality of that sculpture is
embodied in Seurat's portrayals of the
life around him.
Seurat’s educational influences included
drawing lessons from the sculptor Justin
Lequien.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
1475-1574
Michelangelo is one of the most inspired
creators in the history of art and, with
Leonardo da Vinci, the most potent force
in the Italian High Renaissance. As a
sculptor, architect, painter, and poet, he
exerted a tremendous influence on his
contemporaries and on subsequent
Western art in general.
Michelangelo's father, a Florentine official
named Ludovico Buonarroti with
connections to the ruling Medici family,
placed his 13-year-old son in the
workshop of the painter Domenico
Ghirlandaio.
After about two years, Michelangelo
studied at the sculpture school in the
Medici gardens and shortly thereafter
was invited into the household of
Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent.
There he had an opportunity to converse with
the younger Medicis, two of whom later
became popes (Leo X and Clement VII). He
also became acquainted with such humanists
as Marsilio Ficino and the poet Angelo
Poliziano, who were frequent visitors.
Michelangelo produced at least two relief
sculptures by the time he was 16 years old,
the Battle of the Centaurs and the Madonna of
the Stairs (both 1489-92, Casa Buonarroti,
Florence), which show that he had achieved a
personal style at a very early age.
His patron Lorenzo died in 1492; two
years later Michelangelo fled Florence,
when the Medici were temporarily
expelled.
He settled for a time in Bologna,
where in 1494 and 1495 he executed
several marble statuettes for the Arca
(Shrine) di San Domenico in the
Church of San Domenico.
Michelangelo then went to Rome, where
he was able to examine many newly
unearthed classical statues and ruins.
He soon produced his first large-scale
sculpture, the over-life-size Bacchus
(1496-98, Bargello, Florence).
One of the few works of pagan rather
than Christian subject matter made by
the master, it rivaled ancient statuary,
the highest mark of admiration in
Renaissance Rome.
The high point of Michelangelo's early style
is the gigantic (4.34 m/14.24 ft) marble
David (Accademia, Florence), which he
produced between 1501 and 1504, after
returning to Florence.
The Old Testament hero is depicted by
Michelangelo as a lithe nude youth,
muscular and alert, looking off into the
distance as if sizing up the enemy Goliath,
whom he has not yet encountered.
The fiery intensity of David's facial expression is
termed terribilità, a feature characteristicof many
of Michelangelo's figures and of his own
personality.
David, Michelangelo's most famous sculpture,
became the symbol of Florence and originally
was placed in the Piazza della Signoria in front of
the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine town hall.
With this statue Michelangelo proved to his
contemporaries that he not only surpassed all
The fiery intensity of David's facial expression is
termed terribilità, a feature characteristic modern
artists, but also the Greeks and Romans, by
infusing formal beauty with powerful
expressiveness and meaning.
Michelangelo was recalled to Rome by
Pope Julius II in 1505 for two commissions.
The most important one was for the
frescoes of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Working high above the chapel floor, lying
on his back on scaffolding, Michelangelo
painted, between 1508 and 1512, some of
the finest pictorial images of all time.
On the vault of the papal chapel, he
devised an intricate system of decoration
that included nine scenes from the Book
of Genesis.
These scenes begin with God Separating Light from
Darkness and include the Creation of Adam, the
Creation of Eve, the Temptation and Fall of Adam
and Eve, and the Flood.
Centrally located, these narratives are surrounded
by alternating images of prophets and sibyls on
marble thrones, by other Old Testament subjects,
and by the ancestors of Christ.
In order to prepare for this enormous work,
Michelangelo drew numerous figure studies and
cartoons, devising scores of figure types and poses.
These awesome, mighty images, demonstrating
Michelangelo's masterly understanding of human
anatomy and movement, changed the course of
painting in the West.
Creation of Adam
(1510)
Fresco, 280 x 570 cm
Cappella Sistina, Vatican
Leonardo de Vinci
1452-1519
Leonardo da Vinci was a
Florentine artist, one of
the great masters of the
High Renaissance, who was
also celebrated as a painter,
sculpor, architect, engineer,
and scientist.
His profound love of knowledge and
research was the keynote of both his
artistic and scientific endeavors.
His innovations in the field of painting
influenced the course of Italian art for
more than a century after his death,
and his scientific studies—particularly
in the fields of anatomy, optics, and
hydraulics—anticipated many of the
developments of modern science.
Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in
the small Tuscan town of Vinci, near
Florence. He was the son of a wealthy
Florentine notary and a peasant woman.
In the mid-1460s the family settled in
Florence, where Leonardo was given the
best education that Florence, the
intellectual and artistic center of Italy,
could offer. He rapidly advanced socially
and intellectually. He was handsome,
persuasive in conversation, and a fine
musician and improviser.
About 1466 he was apprenticed as a
garzone (studio boy) to Andrea del
Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter
and sculptor of his day. In Verrocchio's
workshop Leonardo was introduced to
many activities, from the painting of
altarpieces and panel pictures to the
creation of large sculptural projects in
marble and bronze. In 1472 he was
entered in the painter's guild of Florence,
and in 1476 he is still mentioned as
Verrocchio's assistant.
About 1482 Leonardo entered the service
of the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza,
having written the duke an astonishing
letter in which he stated that he could
build portable bridges; that he knew the
techniques of constructing bombardments
and of making cannons; that he could
build ships as well as armored vehicles,
catapults, and other war machines; and
that he could execute sculpture in marble,
bronze, and clay.
He served as principal engineer in the
duke's numerous military enterprises and
was active also as an architect. In addition,
he assisted the Italian mathematician Luca
Pacioli in the celebrated work Divina
Proportione (1509).
Evidence indicates that Leonardo had
apprentices and pupils in Milan, for whom
he probably wrote the various texts later
compiled as Treatise on Painting (1651; trans
1956).
One of the most celebrated portraits ever
painted, it is also known as La Gioconda,
after the presumed name of the woman's
husband.
Leonardo seems to have had a special
affection for the picture, for he took it
with him on all of his subsequent travels.
Mona Lisa
(La Gioconda)
( c. 1503-5)
Oil on panel
77 x 53 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Jean-Francois Millet
1814-1875
French painter, etcher
and draughtsman
associated with the
Barbizon school, his
later works were
criticized for
expressing socialist
ideas.
Jean-François Millet, who settled in Barbizon
late in 1849, was born into a farming family.
Trained with an academic painter in Paris,
Millet devoted his early work to portraits and
erotic nudes. He was sensitive to the changes
brought about by the increasing urbanization
and industrialization of France, and he was
particularly inspired by the social issues raised
by the Revolution of 1848.
Thereafter he turned to scenes of peasants
laboring, endowing them with heroic form
adapted from the art of the past.
Unprecedented in French art, such works by
Millet as The Sower were particularly
controversial in the political climate of the time.
Powerful and monumental, Millet's sower strides
across a newly plowed field with energy and
resolution, scattering the seeds for a new crop;
he serves as an emblem of regeneration and of
the elemental relationship between man and
nature.
Crude in appearance, the work provoked
commentary not only on its subject matter but
also on its styles and unorthodox technique.
Political
conservatives, who
viewed the
peasants as a
potentially disruptive
social element,
attacked Millet, while
liberals praised his
ennoblement of rural
life.
The Gleaners
The Gleaners
(1857)
A nostalgia for
an existence
that was a
dying
phenomenon
eventually
made Millet's
works some
of the most
famous
images of
their day. His
paintings
were
exhibited
widely on
both sides of
the Atlantic.
Nicolas Poussin
Frida Kahlo
Winslow Homer
Edward Hopper
Antonio Polliauolo
1431(?)-1498
Pollaiuolo, surname of two Italian
artists of the Renaissance, who, as
brothers, shared a busy workshop in
Florence.
Patronized by the Medici family, the
firm produced articles of gold, bronze
sculpture, paintings, and
decorative work.
A painter, sculptor, goldsmith, and
engraver, his real name was Antonio
di Jacopo d'Antonio Benci.
A painter, Piero did three of the
paintings known as the Seven Virtues
(1469-1470, Uffizi, Florence), and
probably collaborated with Antonio on
three others.
Apollo and Daphne
Tempera on wood
30 x 20 cm
National Gallery, London
Pieter Brueghel the Elder
1525-1569
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (byname Peasant
Bruegel, also spelled Brueghel or Breughel),
the greatest Flemish painter of the 16th
century, whose landscapes and vigorous,
often witty scenes of peasant life are
particularly renowned.
He spelled his name Brueghel until 1559,
and his sons retained the "h" in the spelling
of their names.
Since Bruegel signed and dated many of
his works, his artistic evolution can be
traced from the early landscapes, in which
he shows affinity with the Flemish 16thcentury landscape tradition, to his last
works, which are Italianate.
He exerted a strong influence on painting
in the Low Countries, and through his sons
Jan and Pieter he became the ancestor of
a dynasty of painters that survived into the
18th century.
In 1551 or 1552, Bruegel set off on the
customary northern artist's journey to
Italy, probably by way of France. From
several extant paintings, drawings, and
etchings, it can be deduced that he
traveled beyond Naples to Sicily, possibly
as far as Palermo, and that in 1553 he
lived for some time in Rome,
where he worked with a celebrated
miniaturist, Giulio Clovio, an artist greatly
influenced by Michelangelo and later a
patron of the young El Greco.
The earliest surviving works, including two
drawings with Italian scenery sketched on the
southward journey and dated 1552, are
landscapes. A number of drawings of Alpine
regions, produced between 1553 and 1556,
indicate the great impact of the mountain
experience on this man from the Low Countries.
With the possible exception of a drawing of a
mountain valley by Leonardo da Vinci, the
landscapes resulting from this journey are almost
without parallel in European art for their rendering
of the overpowering grandeur of the high
mountains.
Very few of the drawings were done on
the spot, and several were done after
Bruegel's return, at an unknown date, to
Antwerp. The vast majority are free
compositions, combinations of motifs
sketched on the journey through the
Alps. Some were intended as designs for
engravings commissioned by Hiëronymus
Cock, an engraver and Antwerp's
foremost publisher of prints.
The paintings that Bruegel produced in
increasing number after his return from Italy
carried a double interest in landscape and in
subjects requiring the representation of
human figures.
All of his paintings, even those in which the
landscape appears as the dominant feature,
have some narrative content. Conversely, in
those that are primarily narrative, the
landscape setting often carries part of the
meaning. Dated paintings have survived
from each year of the period except for
1558 and 1561.
The Rotterdam Tower of Babel illustrates an
obsessive interest in rendering movement,
a characteristic of Bruegel's art.
It was a problem with which he constantly
experimented. In the Rotterdam painting,
movement is imparted to an inanimate
object, the tower seeming to be shown in
rotation.
The
Tower of
Babel
(1563)
Oil on oak
panel, 114
x 155 cm
Kunsthistori
sches
Museum,
Vienna
Raphael
Raphael was an
Italian Renaissance
painter who is
considered one of
the greatest and
most popular artists
of all time.
1483-1520
Raphael was born Raffaello Sanzio
or Raffaello Santi in Urbino on April
6,1483, and received his early
training in art from his father, the
painter Giovanni Santi.
According to many art historians, he
also studied with Timoteo Viti at
Urbino, executing under his
influence a number of works of
miniaturelike delicacy and poetic
atmosphere.
In 1504 Raphael moved to Florence, where
he studied the work of such established
painters of the time as Leonardo da Vinci,
Michelangelo, and Fra Bartolommeo,
learning their methods of representing the
play of light and shade, anatomy, and
dramatic action.
At this time he made a transition from the
typical style of the Umbrian school, with its
emphasis on perspective and rigidly
geometrical composition, to a more
animated, informal manner of painting.
St. George Fighting
the Dragon
(1504-06)
Oil on wood
28.5 x 21.5 cm
National Gallery of Art
Washington
Jan Vermeer
Dominique Ingres
1780-1867
Academic and
controlled,
Jean-AugusteDominique Ingres
was a leading
figure in the
neo-classical
movement of the
19th century.
Born in Montauban on 29 August, 1780, the
son of an unsuccessful sculptor and painter,
Ingres studied at the art academy in Toulouse
before joining the studio of Jacques-Louis David
in 1797. Ingres, who was David's best student,
began his career in obscurity.
Though he personally disliked the Academy and
avoided the Salon, Ingres has come to be identified
with its goals and viewed as an artistic conservative.
But, despite his allegiance to clear and precise form,
balanced compositions, and idealized beauty, he
shared much of the same interest in exotic and
erotic subject matter that had attracted the
Romantics.
Ingres was a sensitive and painstaking draftsman.
For him, drawing was the very heart of painting,
and he drew and redrew whatever he was to paint
until he understood all its elements and their
subtlest interrelations. Though he valued history
painting above all else, he also often produced
portraits, some of the best of which are drawings.
Ingres's outstanding evocation of place, light, and
character in these seemingly casual portrait
drawings established him as one of the most
revered draftsmen in art history.
Ingres exhibited a sensual feeling in his works
that was more often expressed in the nudes
that preoccupied him as he got older and his
style developed. His Turkish Women at the
Bath, produced at 82 years of age, is the
culmination of his portrayals of female nudes.
Even in life he was enthusiastically recognized
as one of the greatest painters in France. His
reputation was established and his works
commanded high prices. He was given the rank
of commander of the Legion of Honour in 1845.
At the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1855 he
was awarded a gold medal (as was Delacroix,
leader of the Romantic Movement).
Raphael and the
Fornarina (1814)
Fogg Art Museum at
Harvard University
Odalisque with a Slave (1842) Walters Art Gallery
Baltimore, MD
Gustave Caillebotte
1848-1894
French painter and a
generous patron of
the impressionists,
whose own works,
until recently, were
neglected.
Both a painter and
collector, Caillebotte
inherited a fortune at
the age of twenty-five,
enabling him to
dedicate himself to
painting, to give
financial help to his
impressionist friends,
and to buy many of
their works.
Photo: 1878
As an artist, Caillebotte was very
interested in the blending of water and
vegetation.
Varying the point of view in his different
works dedicated to the subject, he was
especially interested in watching the
passage of time and of the seasons in
order to study the differences in light. In
so doing, he developed the traits essential
to impressionism, through a style close to
that of Renoir and of Bazille.
Aert de Gelder
1645-1727
Also known as Arent Jansz de Gelder, Aert de
Gelder built a career practicing Rembrandt van
Rijn's style.
From 1661 to 1663 De Gelder was one of
Rembrandt's last students in Amsterdam.
He returned to his native Dordrecht in Holland,
but the experience was unforgettable.
Painting principally biblical subjects and
portraits, de Gelder retained Rembrandt's
naturalness, sympathy, and human
warmth.
Like those of his master, de Gelder's Old
Testament scenes display strong, warm
color; Oriental types and costumes; and
interest in the scenes’ human aspect.
Self-Portrait
as Greek
painter
Zeuxis.
Legend has
it that
Zeuxis died
laughing
while
painting a
funnylooking old
woman.
To vary textures, de Gelder applied paint
with his thumb, fingers, and palette
knife. He also scraped and scratched into
the wet paint with the butt end of his
brush, a technique he probably learned
fromRembrandt.
Over time, de Gelder gave Rembrandt's
palette a Rococo flavor by lightening it
and using pinks and violets.
Edouard Manet 1832-1883
French Realist/Impressionist Painter
Manet adopted a
realist approach
and contended
that design is
more important
than subject
matter.
Realism is an approach to art in which
subjects are portrayed in as straightforward
manner as possible, without idealizing them
and without following the rules of formal
theory.
The earliest Realist work began to appear in
the 18th century, as a reaction against the
excesses of Romanticism and Neoclassicism,
but the great Realist era was the mid-19th
century, as artists became disillusioned with
the Salon system and the influence of the
Academies.
It seems as if each one of the great 19th century
French painters was initially forbidden by his
respectable parents to entertain ambitions of
being an artist but won them over, or wore them
down, by failing to succeed at any of the
respectable professions they endorsed.
Manet's parents (well-educated and distinguished
middle class Parisians - his father a high official in
the Ministry of Justice, his mother the daughter of
a diplomat) were no different. But they finally
gave their consent to their son's vocation if he
studied with a respectable art teacher. He chose
Thomas Couture and worked under him for six
years.
Manet always sought to be accepted
by the Salon and refused to exhibit
with his Impressionist friends.
After touring the museums of Europe,
Manet found himself befriended by
the two most advanced Parisian
writers of the time, the novelist and
social critic Émile Zola,and the poet
and art critic Charles Baudelaire.
Through Zola and Boudelaire he was
influenced to study the works of Socrates,
whose seminar room was the streets of
Athens and who lived on the surplus of his
very wealthy friends, and Plato's Symposium,
perhaps the greatest of the dialogues,
wherein drinking and speechmaking lead to
philosophizing about the most private and
profound of all matters, love...
But this kind of high-spirited joke at the
expense of the rules and rigidity of the
Academy was the essence of the young
Manet's elegant and unconventional vision.
In the next few years, Manet produced
two works involving contemporary
female nudes with which his name will
forever be identified: The Picnic on the
Grass (Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe) (1863)
and Olympia (1865).
Nudes were a respected subject for the
academy as long as they were idealized,
and both of these works were based on
Renaissance compositions.
Picnic combines some river gods from a lost
Raphael design of The Judgment of Paris
(known from Marcantonio Raimondi's
engraving based on the work), combined with
the three seated figures from the GiorgioneTitian Concert Champêtre.
Here we see him taking his figures from the
Renaissance masters, but rather than
idealizing them he paints people he knew.
Why Manet felt the need to refer to such
complex High Renaissance templates when
painting his contemporary Paris and has never
been satisfactorily explained.
But neither contemporary audiences nor critics
knew as much as Manet about the history of
painting, and since he avoided explicit remarks
about his intentions throughout his career, the
paintings were viewed as the work of an
incompetent and ignorant artist who outraged
decency and decorum.
The blatant nudity and frank, confrontational
stare of the female model in both paintings
was an occasion for hypocritical shock among
prurient French middle class males themselves frequent patrons of just such
women.
Francisco de Goya
1746-1828
Francisco José de Goya
Y Lucientes, known as
Goya, was one of the
earliest artists to see
beneath the facade of
rationality and expose
the mind as the seat of
irrationality.
From the Spanish Rococo Era, de Goya
was a Romantic Painter and Printmaker.
The Rococo style succeeded Baroque Art
in Europe. It was centered in France, and
is generally associated with the reign of
King Louis XV (1715-1774). It is a light,
elaborate and decorative style of art.
Francisco de Goya is one of the great
Spanish masters, initially trained in the
then-current Rococo style. He gradually
developed his own distinctive style of
painting, showing the influence of
Velázquez and Rembrandt.
Goya's late works became quite dark in
mood, from his satirical caricatures to
the so-called Black Paintings such as
Saturn Devouring One of his Sons.
Rococo was eventually replaced by
Neoclassicism, which was the popular style
of the American and French revolutions.
Romanticism might best be described as
anti-Classicism, as it was a reaction against
Neoclassicism. It is a deeply-felt style which
is individualistic, beautiful, exotic, and
emotionally wrought.
Although Romanticism and
Neoclassicism were philosophically
opposed, they were the dominant
European styles for generations, and
many artists were affected to a greater
or lesser degree by both.
Artists might work in both styles at
different times or even mix the styles,
creating an intellectually Romantic work
using a Neoclassical visual style.
“Saturn Devouring one
of his Sons” depicts a
mythological themeabout the god Saturn
or Cronos- acting as
an allegorical
representation of time.
The god devours, as
time does to all that it
creates: he feared that
one of the children
born to his wife Cibele
would dethrone him.
For the bold technique of his paintings, the
haunting satire of his etchings, and his belief
that the artist's vision is more important than
tradition, Goya is often called “the first of the
moderns.” His uncompromising portrayal of his
times marks the beginning of 19th-century
realism.
A serious illness in 1792 left Goya permanently
deaf. Isolated from others by his deafness, he
became increasingly occupied with the fantasies
and inventions of his imagination and with
critical and satirical observations of mankind.
He evolved a bold, free new style close to
caricature.
The Dog
1820-1823
134 x 80 cm
Oil on plaster
remounted on
canvas
Museo del Prado,
Madrid
Caspar David Friedrich
1744-1840
Many of his pictures,
as one learns to read
them, offer views
into the distance that
are also paths
through life.
- Lawrence Gowing,
Paintings in the Louvre
This German Romantic painter was one of
the greatest exponents in European art of
the symbolic landscape.
He studied at the Academy in
Copenhagen (1794-98), and subsequently
settled in Dresden, often traveling to
other parts of Germany. Friedrich's
landscapes reflect those of northern
Germany and are beautiful renderings of
trees, hills, harbors, morning mists, and
other light effects based on a close
observation of nature.
Romanticism was an early nineteenthcentury aesthetic movement
encompassing nature, nationalism, and
spirituality. In Germany, it found perfect
expression in the music of Beethoven,
the writings of Goethe, and the art of
Caspar David Friedrich.
The transience of human existence, the
redemptive powers of nature, man at
the mercy of the elements – all are stock
themes of Romanticism.
Friedrich is often compared to his
contemporaries, the landscape painters
Turner and Constable. But his paintings
are not intended as landscapes; Friedrich
never painted from nature.
He traveled throughout northern Europe
and made detailed sketches of its terrain,
but his paintings contain elements of
different settings in wholly imagined
scenes. Friedrich actually ignores the law
of nature for aesthetic impact.
In his paintings Friedrich rarely depicts people,
except to emphasize nature's vastness. When
figures appear in his paintings, they stand with
their backs to the viewer, lost in contemplation.
Friedrich is primarily a religious artist. The
Romantic worship of nature finds literal
expression in his work, which articulates the
artist's Protestant faith through natural
symbolism.
On a sensual level, his paintings deliver a
frisson of ecstasy or horror. But they also
demand intellectual decoding.
For Friedrich, they also had personal
meaning. At 13, Friedrich fell through the
surface of a frozen lake and nearly
perished. His brother saved Friedrich's life
but drowned in the effort.
Friedrich's mother died in 1781, and a
sister ten years later.
His dark, deeply religious paintings may
reflect these childhood tragedies.
Some of Friedrich's best-known paintings
are expressions of a religious mysticism,
while other apparently nonsymbolic
paintings contain inner meanings, clues to
which are provided either by the artist's
writings or those of his literary friends.
Today, Friedrich is recognized as the
quintessential German Romantic painter.
In his lifetime, though, he achieved only
modest fame, and his talent was
cheapened by imitation.
Friedrich remained shrouded in
obscurity until the 1890s, when he
was rediscovered by the Symbolists.
In 1945, fire gutted the National
Gallery, Berlin, destroying many of his
masterpieces.
The scarcity of Friedrich's paintings
heightens their emotive power today.
Evening (1824)
Gemäldegalerie,
Dresden
“The divine is
everywhere,
even in a
grain of sand.”
Caspar David Friedrich
William Blake
1757-1827
“The man who never
alters his opinion is
like standing water,
and breeds reptiles of
the mind.”
- The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell
Blake was born in London on 28 November, 1757.
Following his seven-year apprenticeship to an
engraver (Basir), Blake attended the Royal
Academy. In 1784 he set up a printshop with James
Parker at 27 Broad Street. For the rest of his life
Blake eked out a living as an engraver and
illustrator, aided by his wife.
Blake's most popular poems are found in his Songs
of Innocence (1789), eloquent lyrics that make
fresh, direct observations. In 1794, disillusioned
with the possibility of human perfection, Blake
issued Songs of Experience. Both series of poems
take on a deeper resonance when read in
conjunction.
PIPING down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
Reeds of Innocence
by William Blake
'Pipe a song about a Lamb!'
So I piped with merry cheer.
'Piper, pipe that song again;'
So I piped: he wept to hear.
'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer!'
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.
'Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read.'
So he vanish'd from my sight;
And I pluck'd a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.
Glad Day
Painted by William Blake
(1794)
O THOU with dewy locks, who lookest down
Through the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!
TO
SPRING
By
William
Blake
The hills tell one another, and the listening
Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turn'd
Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth
And let thy holy feet visit our clime!
Come o'er the eastern hills, and let our winds
Kiss thy perfumèd garments; let us taste
Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls
Upon our lovesick land that mourns for thee.
O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour
Thy soft kisses on her bosom; and put
Thy golden crown upon her languish'd head,
Whose modest tresses are bound up for thee.
Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.
LOVE’S SECRET
By
William Blake
I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears :Ah! She did depart.
Soon after she was gone from me
A traveler came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh.
Blake illustrated Songs and other works
with designs that demand an imaginative
reading of the dialogue between word
and picture.
Most likely, he created his illustrations
by writing the words and drawing the
pictures for each poem on a copper plate;
then, by applying some liquid impervious
to acid, the text and illustration were left
in relief. Ink or a color wash was then
applied, and the printed picture was
finished by hand in watercolors.
Blake has been called a pre-romantic
because he rejected neo-classical
literary style and modes of thought.
His graphic art also defied 18thcentury conventions. Always stressing
imagination over reason, he felt that
ideal forms should be constructed not
from observations of nature but from
inner visions.
In his Prophetic Books, a
series of longer poems
written from 1789 on,
Blake created a complex
personal mythology and
invented his own
symbolic characters to
reflect his nonconformist
radical social and
political concerns.
This is the context of
Glad Day.
Henri Rousseau
Vincent Van Gogh
Special Thanks to:
Hearts-Ease.org, ©1998
Microsoft® Encarta '97
Web Gallery of Art http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/index1.html