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Born on 19 January 1867: Jean
Delville, Belgian Symbolist
painter, decorative artist, and writer who died in 1953. — Delville studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, with Jean-François Portaels and the Belgian painter Joseph Stallaert (1825–1903). Among his fellow students were Eugène Laermans, Victor Rousseau and Victor Horta. From 1887 he exhibited at L'Essor, where in 1888 Mother , which depicts a woman writhing in labor, caused a scandal. Although his drawings of the metallurgists working in the Cockerill factories near Charleroi were naturalistic, from 1887 he veered towards Symbolism: the drawing of Tristan and Isolde (1887), in its lyrical fusion of the two bodies, reveals the influence of Richard Wagner. Circle of the Passions (1889), inspired by Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia, was burnt in about 1914; only drawings remain. Jef Lambeaux copied it for his relief Human Passions (1897). Delville became associated with Joséphin Péladan, went to live in Paris and exhibited at the Salons de la Rose+Croix, created there by Péladan (1892–5). A devoted disciple of Péladan, he had his tragedies performed in Brussels and in 1895 painted his portrait. He exhibited Dead Orpheus (1893), an idealized head, floating on his lyre towards reincarnation, and Angel of Splendor (1894), a painting of great subtlety Distanced from Les XX, Delville was an active polemicist for modern art. In 1892 he broke with L'Essor and created Pour l'Art, regrouping the Idealists to which Émile Fabry belonged (1892–5). In his preface to the first catalogue 1892), Delville declared that no work could truly be called art if it did not combine three absolutes: spiritual beauty, plastic beauty, and technical beauty. These qualities are apparent in his most famous portrait, Mme Stuart Merrill (1892), a medium with a halo of red hair, and averted eyes, whose white face is laid on a book stamped with a triangle. In 1894 Delville founded the Coopérative Artistique and organized a pension fund for it and the building of artists' housing. In 1894 he won the Prix de Rome. He founded the Salon d'Art Idéaliste (1896–8) and showed there the Treasures of Satan (1895) and Plato's Academy (1898), his masterpiece, where, in an ideal landscape, languorous androgynes are grouped around Plato to form a very rhythmical composition. Its ambiguity aroused some reservations, but the overall impression was of serene beauty. Delville taught at Glasgow School of Art from 1900 to 1906, briefly became its director and then assumed the same post at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, until 1937. In 1900 he published La Mission de l'art, in which he defended a messianic ideal and the redemptive quality of idealist art. Spiritual Love (1900), a nude couple rising in unison into Art Nouveau scrolls, and Man–God (1903) accord with his theories. Over a period of many years Delville worked on a decorative scheme for the Palais de Justice in Brussels: Justice down the Ages, commissioned in 1911, destroyed in 1944, and replaced by large sketches, then The Troops (1924) and the Spirit of Conquest. In 1914 his family went into voluntary exile in England. Delville founded the League of Patriots there and published Belgian Art in Exile; he created a masonic lodge, spoke at Hyde Park Corner and waged a polemic against the avant-garde. He became an ardent proselyte of Krishnamurti and painted portraits of English personalities such as the educator John Russell. Back in Brussels, he created the Groupe d'Art Monumental, which in 1924 executed the mosaics for the Arcade du Cinquantenaire there. — LINKS — Self portrait at the age of 20 (1887) — Self-Portrait — The Fruit of our Labors — Tristan et Yseult (1887, 44x75cm) — Portrait de Madame Stuart Merrill, Mysteriosa (1892, 35x28cm) — The School of Plato (1897) _ detail — Mangod (1903, 500x500cm) — The Swan Girl (1929, 36x26cm) — Orpheus (1893) _ The model was the artist's wife. The severed head of Orpheus is combined with the poet's lyre, and the trophy is set amid waves and seashells. — The End of a Reign (1893, 86x53cm) _ An executioner's hand grasps the head, severed but still crowned, of a Byzantine empress, while the background suggests a building such as a mosque. — L'Ange des Splendeurs (1894, 128x146cm) — Portrait of the Grand Master of the Rosicrucians wearing a Surplice (1894, 112x242cm) _ See also Alexander Séon's Portrait of Joséphin Péladan. — Satan's Treasures (1895, 258x268cm) _ Delville believed in a divine fluid, reincarnation, dangerous telepathic forces, invultuation and ecstasy. These convictions guided his hand in Satan's Treasures, in which luxurious bodies lie sleeping among the seaweed and coral as Satan, with a dancer's agility, bestrides and takes possession of them. — The Oracle at Dodona (1896, 118x170cm) _ Dodona was the oldest of the Pagan Greek oracles, located in the mountains of northern Greece. Read more at Goddesses.org. — Prometheus (1907, 500x250cm) _ In Greek mythology Prometheus was a Titan and a god of fire. Throughout history, Prometheus has symbolized unyielding strength that resists oppression. — Dante Drinking the Waters of the Lethe (1919, 142x179cm) — The Women of Eleusis (1931, 110x140cm) _ The Sanctuary of Eleusis was used from Mycenaean times through the Roman period and was famous throughout the Greek and Roman worlds. It was destroyed by barbarians and Christians in the 4th century A.D. The Eleusinian Mysteries were the principal religious mysteries of ancient Greece. The secret rites, which celebrated the abduction of Persephone and her return to her mother Demeter symbolized the annual cycle of death and rebirth in nature, as well as the immortality of the soul. Dionysus was also honored at the festival. |
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Born on 19 January 1839: Paul
Cézanne, French painter who died on 22 October 1906.
— Malgré l'opposition de son père qui aimerait le voir lui succéder à la tête de la banque qu'il a fondée, Cézanne se consacrera à la peinture. Il fut un certain temps attiré vers la lumière des Impressionnistes, mais il s'en détachera . Paul Cézanne, celui dont on a dit " Il y a des sérénités passionnées " ce qui illustre bien son art. Il réconcilie les tendances antagonistes du romantisme et du classicisme et se révèle donc comme l’un des peintres qui a le plus influencé l’art contemporain. — Cézanne was born and died in Aix-en-Provence. He was groomed from an early age to assume his father's position at the family bank. Rejecting both a financial career and the legal studies he pursued at university, however, he left the south of France in 1861 to join his longtime friend Émile Zola in Paris and to launch his artistic training. He failed the entrance examination for the École des Beaux-Arts, but he frequented classes at the Académie Suisse and came to know artists in the impressionist circle such as Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet. Cézanne's early paintings, worked in a dark and foreboding style and dominated by sexually charged images of death and violence, received hostile critical reaction. He contributed in 1863 to the Salon des Refusés and, in 1874, to the first impressionist exhibition, where he sold La Maison du Pendu. Under the guidance of Pissarro, his early work gave way to an impressionist phase, but he quickly developed his signature style based on a blend of intense observation and architectonic compositional relationships that proved highly influential for twentieth-century formalist art. Cézanne divided his time between Paris and Provence but settled permanently in Aix in 1899. A large exhibition organized by Vollard in 1895 and a posthumous retrospective in 1907 brought belated recognition. — Paul Cézanne was born into a family of Italian origin in Cesana Forinese. His father had established a felt hat business in Aix-en-Provence and later became a banker. In 1859 he bought a country house on the outskirts of Aix, the Jas de Bouffan, which was to be frequently represented in Cézanne’s paintings. Between 1852 and 1859 Paul Cézanne studied at the Collège Bourbon and it was there that he formed a friendship with Émile Zola, with whom he shared an interest in literature. In 1856 Cézanne began to attend the evening drawing courses of Joseph-Marc Gibert at the Aix Museum. From 1859 to 1861 he studied law at Aix, entered his father’s bank. By April 1861 his father had finally yielded to Cézanne’s desire to make a career in art and allowed him to go to Paris to study at the Académie Suisse. In Paris Cézanne frequented the Louvre, met Pissarro and Guillaumin and, later on, Monet, Sisley, Bazille and Renoir. In September of the same year he was refused admission to the École des Beaux-Arts and went back to Aix, to the great relief of his father, who offered him a position in his bank. But in November 1862 Paul Cézanne went back to Paris and took up painting again. During his so called “dark” or “romantic” period (1862-70) Paul Cézanne often visited Paris; he met with Édouard Manet and the future Impressionists, and tried to be accepted at the Salon. The Franco-Prussian War drove him to L’Estaque near Marseilles. Paul Cézanne’s “Impressionist” period (1873-79) is connected with his staying at Pontoise and Auvers-sur-Oise in 1872, 1873, 1874, 1877 and 1881; he worked with Pissarro and exhibited with the Impressionists in 1874 and in 1877. The canvases produced at L’Estaque (1880-83) and at Gardanne (1885-88) are usually referred to Paul Cézanne’s “constructive” period. In 1886 after his father’s death, Cézanne married Hortense Fiquet, with whom he had a secret liaison since 1870. She is said to have looked after the finished canvases, which Cézanne never took care to keep and abandoned as soon as he completed the painting. The same year Cézanne quarelled with Zola over the novel L’Oeuvre, in which the central figure, an unsuccessful and unbalanced painter, was identified with Cézanne. In 1887, after a long break, Cézanne participated in the exhibition of “Les XX” at Brussels. Towards the beginning of Paul Cézanne’s “synthetic” period (1890-1906) the younger generations of artists started to take an interest in him. His first one-man show was held in the Vollard Gallery in 1895. During these years the artist seldom visited Paris — his longest stays there took place in 1895, 1899 and 1904 — and produced many versions of canvases depicting Mount Sainte-Victoire, smokers, card-players and bathers, and painted still lifes and portraits. By 1901 Cézanne had become recognized. He often met with young artists who admired his work – Denis, Bonnard and Vuillard. In 1901 Denis painted Hommage à Cézanne. The future Fauvist Charles Camoin sought his advice, and in 1904 he was visited by Émile Bernard, an artist of the Pont-Aven school, with whom Cézanne corresponded extensively, expounding his views on art. In 1904 his paintings were shown for the first time at the Autumn Salon in Paris; and a year after his death, in 1907, a retrospective exhibition of his works was held there. ^ — Paul Cézanne, often called the father of modern art, strove to develop an ideal synthesis of naturalistic representation, personal expression, and abstract pictorial order. Among the artists of his time, Cézanne perhaps has had the most profound effect on the art of the 20th century. He was the greatest single influence on both the French artist Henri Matisse, who admired his color, and the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, who developed Cézanne's planar compositional structure into the cubist style. During the greater part of his own lifetime, however, Cézanne was largely ignored, and he worked in isolation. He mistrusted critics, had few friends, and, until 1895, exhibited only occasionally. He was alienated even from his family, who found his behavior peculiar and failed to appreciate his revolutionary art. Early Life and Work Cézanne was born in the southern French town of Aix-en-Provence, January 19, 1839, the son of a wealthy banker. His boyhood companion was émile Zola, who later gained fame as a novelist and man of letters. As did Zola, Cézanne developed artistic interests at an early age, much to the dismay of his father. In 1862, after a number of bitter family disputes, the aspiring artist was given a small allowance and sent to study art in Paris, where Zola had already gone. From the start he was drawn to the more radical elements of the Parisian art world. He especially admired the romantic painter Eugène Delacroix and, among the younger masters, Gustave Courbet and the notorious Édouard Manet, who exhibited realist paintings that were shocking in both style and subject matter to most of their contemporaries. Influence of the Impressionists Many of Cézanne's early works were painted in dark tones applied with heavy, fluid pigment, suggesting the moody, romantic expressionism of previous generations. Just as Zola pursued his interest in the realist novel, however, Cézanne also gradually developed a commitment to the representation of contemporary life, painting the world he observed without concern for thematic idealization or stylistic affectation. The most significant influence on the work of his early maturity proved to be Camille Pissarro, an older but as yet unrecognized painter who lived with his large family in a rural area outside Paris. Pissarro not only provided the moral encouragement that the insecure Cézanne required, but he also introduced him to the new impressionist technique for rendering outdoor light. Along with the painters Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and a few others, Pissarro had developed a painting style that involved working outdoors (en plein air) rapidly and on a reduced scale, employing small touches of pure color, generally without the use of preparatory sketches or linear outlines. In such a manner Pissarro and the others hoped to capture the most transient natural effects as well as their own passing emotional states as the artists stood before nature. Under Pissarro's tutelage, and within a very short time during 1872-73, Cézanne shifted from dark tones to bright hues and began to concentrate on scenes of farmland and rural villages. Return to Aix Although he seemed less technically accomplished than the other impressionists, Cézanne was accepted by the group and exhibited with them in 1874 and 1877. In general the impressionists did not have much commercial success, and Cézanne's works received the harshest critical commentary. He drifted away from many of his Parisian contacts during the late 1870s and '80s and spent much of his time in his native Aix. After 1882, he did not work closely again with Pissarro. In 1886, Cézanne became embittered over what he took to be thinly disguised references to his own failures in one of Zola's novels. As a result he broke off relations with his oldest supporter. In the same year, he inherited his father's wealth and finally, at the age of 47, became financially independent, but socially he remained quite isolated. |
| Cézanne's
Use of Color This isolation and Cézanne's concentration and singleness of purpose may account for the remarkable development he sustained during the 1880s and '90s. In this period he continued to paint studies from nature in brilliant impressionist colors, but he gradually simplified his application of the paint to the point where he seemed able to define volumetric forms with juxtaposed strokes of pure color. Critics eventually argued that Cézanne had discovered a means of rendering both nature's light and nature's form with a single application of color. He seemed to be reintroducing a formal structure that the impressionists had abandoned, without sacrificing the sense of brilliant illumination they had achieved. Cézanne himself spoke of “modulating” with color rather than “modeling” with dark and light. By this he meant that he would replace an artificial convention of representation (modeling) with a more expressive system (modulating) that was closer still to nature, or, as the artist himself said, “parallel to nature.” For Cézanne, the answer to all the technical problems of impressionism lay in a use of color both more orderly and more expressive than that of his fellow impressionists. Cézanne's goal was, in his own mind, never fully attained. He left most of his works unfinished and destroyed many others. He complained of his failure at rendering the human figure, and indeed the great figural works of his last years—such as Les Grandes Baigneuses (1906)—reveal curious distortions that seem to have been dictated by the rigor of the system of color modulation he imposed on his own representations. The succeeding generation of painters, however, eventually came to be receptive to nearly all of Cézanne's idiosyncrasies. Cézanne's heirs felt that the naturalistic painting of impressionism had become formularized, and a new and original style, however difficult it might be, was needed to return a sense of sincerity and commitment to modern art. Significance of Cézanne's Work For many years Cézanne was known only to his old impressionist colleagues and to a few younger radical postimpressionist artists, including the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and the French painter Paul Gauguin. In 1895, however, Ambroise Vollard, an ambitious Paris art dealer, arranged a show of Cézanne's works and over the next few years promoted them successfully. By 1904, Cézanne was featured in a major official exhibition, and by the time of his death he had attained the status of a legendary figure. During his last years many younger artists traveled to Aix to observe him at work and to receive any words of wisdom he might offer. Both his style and his theory remained mysterious and cryptic; he seemed to some a naive primitive, while to others he was a sophisticated master of technical procedure. The intensity of his color, coupled with the apparent rigor of his compositional organization, signaled to most that, despite the artist's own frequent despair, he had synthesized the basic expressive and representational elements of painting in a highly original manner. ^ — LINKS — Self-Portrait. (1885) — Self-Portrait at Easel — Self-Portrait. (1876) — Self-Portrait. (1881) — Self-Portrait (1882) _ Self-Portrait (1880) _ Self-Portrait (1880) _ Self-Portrait (graphite, 1882) _ Self-Portrait (1876) _ Self-portrait (1881) _ Self-Portrait (1885) _ Self Portrait _ Self-Portrait in a Casquette (1872) _ Self-Portrait with a Casquette (1875) _ Self-Portrait with Palette (1887) _ Self-Portrait with Palette (1884) _ Self-Portrait on a Rose Background (1877) _ Self-Portrait with Rose Background (1875) _ Self-Portrait with Soft Hat (1894) — Maison Maria with a View of Château Noir (65 x 81 cm) _ Paul 's art challenged both the Romantic and neoclassical styles of painting popular during the 19th century as well as the newer, more radical style embodied by Impressionism. Termed a Post-Impressionist, 's later works, such as Maison Maria with a View of Château Noir, reveal the divided nature of his painting: the work's brushstrokes and muted, broken colors betoken Impressionism. But the work also diverges from the movement's emphasis on objectivity and surface. Maison Maria exhibits the compositional characteristics -- for instance, the imbalance of the house and the painting's depiction of deep space -- that are unique to . Known as misanthropic and somewhat reclusive, moved with his wife and son to Provence in 1870. In 1874, he relocated temporarily to Paris, where the Impressionist movement was taking hold. exhibited at the first Impressionist show during this year and again at the third, in 1877. Of all the paintings, which were almost universally denounced by critics and the public, 's received the soundest lashing. A split with the Impressionists led back to Provence, where he developed the mature style which would become his signature, and which Maison Maria embodies. — Portrait of the Artist's Father (1866, 198x119cm) _ One of the most important works of his early years is the portrait of his formidable father. It is one of 's “palette-knife pictures”, painted in short sessions between 1865 and 1866. Their realistic content and solid style reveal 's admiration for Gustave Courbet. Here we see a craggy, unyielding man of business, a solid mass of manhood, bodily succint from the top of his black beret to the tips of his heavy shoes. The uncompromising verticals of the massive chair are echoed by the door, and the edges of the small still life by on the wall just behind: everything corresponds to the absolute verticals of the edges of the canvas itself, further accentuating the air of certainty about the portrait. Thick hands hold a newspaper--though has replaced his father's conservative newspaper with the liberal L'Evénement, which published articles by his childhood friend, Emile Zola. His father devours the paper, sitting tensely upright in the elongated armchair. Yet it is a curiously tender portrait too. seems to see his father as somehow unfulfilled: for all his size he does not fully occupy the chair, and neither does he see the still life on the wall behind him, which we recognize as being one of his son's. We do not see his eyes-- only the ironical mouth and his great frame, partly hidden behind the paper. was in his twenties when he painted The Artist's Father. Wonderful though it is, with its blacks and greys and umbers, it does not fully indicate the profundity of his developing genius. Yet even in this early work, 's grasp of form and solid pictorial structures which came to dominate his mature style are already essential components. His overriding concern with form and structure set him apart from the Impressionists from the start, and he was to maintain this solitary position, carving out his unique pictorial language. — The Abduction (1867, 90x116cm) _ Abduction, rape, and murder: these are themes that tormented . Abduction (c. 1867, 90 x 117 cm (35 x 46 in)), an early work full of dark miseries, is impressive largely for its turgid force, held barely under his control. These figure paintings are the most difficult to enter into: they are sinister, with passion in turmoil just beneath the surface. 's late studies of the human body are most rewarding, his figures often depicted as bathers merging with the landscape in a sunlit lightness. This became a favorite theme for and he made a whole series of pictures on the subject. This mature work is dictated by an objectivity that is profoundly moving for all its seeming emotional detachment. |
| — The special
attraction of still life to was the
ability, to some extent, to control the structure. He brooded over his apples,
jugs, tables, and curtains, arranging them with infinite variety. Still
Life with Apples and Peaches (1905) glows with a romantic energy,
as hugely present at Mont Sainte-Victoire. Here too is a mountain, and here
too sanctity and victory: the fruits lie on the table with an active power
that is not just seen but experienced. The jug bulges, not with any contents,
but with its own weight of being. The curtain swags gloriously, while the
great waterfall of the napkin absorbs and radiates light onto the table
on which all this life is earthed. — Still
Life (1890) _ Still
Life (1887) _ Still
Life (1900) _ Still
Life _ Still
Life (1894) _ Still
Life: Apples, Bottle and Chairback (1906) _ Still
life with a Curtain (1895) _ Still
Life with a Skull (1907) _ Still
Life with Apples (1894) _ Still
Life with Apples _ Still
Life with Apples (1890) _ Still-Life
with Apples (1890) _ Still
Life with Apples (1898) _ Still
Life with Apples, a Bottle, and a Milk Pot (1906) _ Still
Life with Apples, a Bottle, and a Milk Pot Still
Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses Still
Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses (1890) _ Still
Life with Apples and Oranges (1907) _ Still
Life with Apples and Pears (1887) _ Still
Life with Basket of Apples _ Still
Life with Carafe, Sugar Bowl, Bottle, Pomegranates, and Watermelon (1906)
_ Still
Life with Commode (1887) _ Still
Life with Compotier (1882) _ Still
Life with Curtain and Flowered Pitcher (1899) _ Still
Life with Drapery (1899) _ Still
Life with Flower Curtain and Fruit _ Still
Life with Flower Holder (1905) _ Still
Life with Flowers and Fruit (1890) _ Still
Life with Fruit (1882) _ Still
Life with Fruit, Pitcher and Fruit-Vase (1894) _ Still
Life with Green Melon (1906) _ Still
Life with Jar, Cup, and Apples (1877) _ Still
Life with Kettle (1869) _ Still
Life with Onions (1907) _ Still
Life with Onions and Bottle (1907) _ Still
Life with Peaches and Pears (1890) _ Still
Life with Peppermint Bottle (1894) _ Still
Life with Peppermint Bottle (1894) _ Still
Life with Plaster Cupid (1895) _ Still
Life with Plate of Cherries (1887) _ Still
Life with Skull (1907) _ Still
Life with Soup Tureen (1877) _ Still
Life with Water Jug (1893) _ Still
Life with Water Jug (1893) _ Still
Life with Watermelon and Pomegranates (1906) — From 1872, under Pissarro's influence, painted the rich Impressionist effects of light on different surfaces and even exhibited at the first Impressionist show. But he maintained his concern for solidity and structure throughout, and abandoned Impressionism in 1877. In Le Château Noir, does not respond to the flickering light as an Impressionist might; he draws that flicker from deep within the substance of every structure in the painting. Each form has a true solidity, an absolute of internal power that is never diminished for the sake of another part of the composition. — The Murder (1870) _ is best known for his monumental landscape paintings. The Murder is one of 's early paintings, an unusually dramatic piece which conveys the brutality of the act. The murderer is lifting his hand ready to give the final strike while his collaborator is using all the force of her heavy and rounded body to keep the victim down. Please click on the image for an enlarged version The body of the victim has almost disappeared, only its outline head and arms are distinct under the ferocious force of the two murderers. The murderers have no faces, but the victim's is contorted with pain. is not concerned with the identities of the murderers; they could be anybody. presents the act as one of anonymous violence; their crime is given no explanation. The threatening sky, the suggestion of a riverbank where the body will be thrown, and the desolate surrounding space all contribute to the menacing nature of the scene. — La Maison du Pendu — Bathers (1875) _ Bathers (1900) _ Bathers (1891) _ The Bathers (1905) _ Bathers (1892) _ The Bathers _ Bathers at Rest (1876) _ Les Grandes Baigneuses _ Big Bathers (1905) _ Five Bathers (1887) _ Five Bathers (1877) _ The Large Bathers (1898) _ Large Bathers (1906) _ Large Bathers (1905) _ The Large Bathers (1905) _ Large Bathers (detail) (1906) _ Large Bathers (1906) _ Three Bathers (1877) — The Bay from L'Estaque (1886) — L'Estaque, (1885) _ View of L'Estaque (31x48cm) _ Cézanne has often been described as the supreme master of watercolor painting. Although his works often look unfinished, this View of L'Estaque does not have the empty, insubstantial feel of many of his other pictures. In a letter to the painter Camille Pissarro (1831-1903) of 02 July 1876, Cézanne remarked that 'the silhouettes you see here are not only black and white, but also blue, red, brown and violet'. He was fascinated by observations of this kind and evidently tried to capture the same effect in this painting by using all the colors he mentions. The pale blue above the roofs is not sky but the Mediterranean. This is easier to see in an oil version of the same view made in 1885 (previous link). The rooftops in that painting are depicted in the very same way. — Landscape at Aix (Mont Sainte-Victoire) (1905) — Landscape near Aix, the Plain of the Arc River (1895) — Pine Tree near Aix (1895) — Blue Landscape (1906) — Landscape in Provence (1875) — Landscape near Paris (1876) — Landscape with Poplars |
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