painting of the month

Dream Book -- Alice Pike Barney, painted ca. 1900

tissot 180

A mini-exhibit in honor of the elegant work of French artist James Tissot, born 180 years ago in Nantes, on October 15, 1836 (d. 1902).

Pictured

Self-Portrait -- 1865 
A Passing Storm -- 1876

Young Ladies Looking at Japanese Objects -- 1869

The Thames -- 1867

Mary Magdalene Before Her Conversion -- ca. 1886-1894

sibling poetry

In honor of National Poetry Month, just a quick artistic spotlight on the Victorian brother and sister poetic pair of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) and Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894).  D.G. Rossetti is well-known for both his paintings and his poetry, and he was a founding member of the rebellious and prolifically creative Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  Christina's poetry is highly regarded in England and beyond, and she was also her brother's model in his 1848/49 painting The Girlhood of Mary Virgin.  The pictured portraits of Rossetti were done by fellow artists William Holman Hunt and George Frederic Watts, while the portraits of Christina Rossetti were done by Dante Gabriel.

Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti at 22 Years of Age -- William Holman Hunt

Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti -- George Frederic Watts (ca. 1871)

 

Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;

I am also call'd No-more, Too-late, Farewell;

Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell

Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;

Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen

Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell

Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,

Of ultimate things unutter'd the frail screen . . . .

The House of Life: 97.  A Superscription (excerpt) -- D.G. Rossetti

 

Somewhere or other there must surely be

The face not seen, the voice not heard,

The heart that not yet—never yet—ah me!

Made answer to my word.

Somewhere or other, may be near or far;

Past land and sea, clean out of sight;

Beyond the wandering moon, beyond the star

That tracks her night by night.

Somewhere or other, may be far or near;

With just a wall, a hedge, between;

With just the last leaves of the dying year

Fallen on a turf grown green.

Somewhere or Other -- Christina Rossetti

purple majesty

 

Pictured

Purple Haze -- William Trost Richards (1864)

The Purple Dress -- William Glackens (ca. 1910)

Model in a Purple Hat -- Edouard Vuillard (1912)

Purple Petunias -- Georgia O'Keeffe (1925)

Purple Mountains -- Emil Nolde (ca. 1935)

march

In like a lion, out like a lamb...or sometimes vice versa.

Pictured

Study of a Lion -- Rosa Bonheur (Private collection)

Lion Drinking -- Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1897 (Private collection)  

Lion and Lioness -- George Stubbs, 1771 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Blue Lamb -- Franz Marc, 1913 (Private collection)

Sheep and Lambs -- Richard Ansdell, 1874 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool UK)

The Pretty Baa-Lambs -- Ford Madox Brown, 1852 (Ashmolean Museum - University of Oxford  UK)

painting of the month

Mars and Venus -- Mabel Frances Layng (circa 1918),
Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery, U.K.

wild strokes and tinny figures

To many such in this country modern art is still a closed book; its point of view is so different from that of the art they have been brought up with, that they refuse to have anything to do with it. Whereas, if they only took the trouble to find out something of the point of view of the modern artist, they would discover new beauties they little suspected ... If anybody looks at a picture by Claude Monet from the point of view of a Raphael, he will see nothing but a meaningless jargon of wild paint-strokes. And if anybody looks at a Raphael from the point of view of a Claude Monet, he will, no doubt, only see hard, tinny figures in a setting devoid of any of the lovely atmosphere that always envelops form seen in nature. So wide apart are some of the points of view in painting.  -- The Practice and Science of Drawing (Harold Speed, 1913)


Pictured:  Allegory (The Knight's Dream)  -- Raphael (circa 1504), National Gallery - London; and Irises -- Claude Monet (circa 1914), National Gallery - London

year of the monkey

The Chinese Zodiac has circled around to the clever and crafty Monkey again...and though I doubt that these artworthy subjects actually calmed down enough to pose for any of the works below, it seems like once you do put a monkey in a painting, you've really got something unique going on.

Pictured:  The Little Monkey -- Franc Marc (1912); Flowers and Fruit of the Mangosteen, and a Singapore Monkey -- Marianne North (1876); Still Life with Monkey and a Guitar -- Antoine Vollon (1864); The Merry Jesters -- Henri Rousseau (1906); The Monkey Painter -- Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1833); Feast of Monkeys -- Jan Brueghel the Elder (1621)


(all images courtesy of www.the-athenaeum.org)

benton and pollock

This is a reposting of a Suite101 article I wrote a couple years ago, just making note of Jackson Pollock's birthday today and who and where he was before he became Jack the Dripper:

In 1930, future Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock was a causeless rebel from Wyoming, with some inclination towards art but no real focus to pursue it. He soon went along with his two older brothers to New York, however, enrolling at the Art Students League to take courses with Thomas Hart Benton. Benton was another American art force in the making who would lead the 1930s Regionalist Triumvirate, a trio which included Benton, Grant Wood of American Gothic fame, and John Steuart Curry.

Benton, Wood and Curry turned to the culture and landscape of the Midwest for subject matter, much of which was projected onto imposing, semi-epic murals. They sought to shift the focus of American art away from Eurocentric or even East Coast preferences, and to show how the everyday farm girl or preacher or working man were worthy of appreciation. As Benton himself declared, "The Great Plains have a releasing effect...I like their endlessness." Regionalist work was sometimes praised as exciting and organic, yet at other times the school was called reactionary or exaggerated. The swaggering Benton tended to be the most dynamic of the group, and his career would be marked with conflict against what he perceived to be the art elite.

While Tom Benton had a bit of a macho hothead reputation, he was often attentive and caring toward his students. In the case of the Pollock Brothers, all were readily welcomed by Benton and his Italian wife Rita, a support base which included free spaghetti dinners and an open door policy at the Benton's apartment. Jackson, in need of both paternal and artistic guidance, immediately bonded with Benton. In the classroom, Benton came across as a strong-willed yet perceptive instructor who stressed direct experience, hard work and the significance of composition and design in his teachings.

Benton's initial influence on the youngest Pollock was more emotional than immediate. Firstly and perhaps most importantly, Benton urged Jackson to think of himself as a serious artist and not just a floundering wannabe. Also, Benton's style had a unique muscle and energy that lent itself to the abstracted pulse of Pollock's later canvases of chaos.

Benton's earlier travels across the country inspired Pollock's own sojourn across Depression-era America, hitchhiking and taking odd jobs. Pollock posed for Benton as well, providing a lean and wiry figure for works like Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley. There was clearly a father-son rapport between the pair, but despite calling him a "damned fool" for drowning his talent, Benton was never able to stop Pollock from drinking. Pollock also reportedly became too fond of earthy and free-spirited Rita Benton, brooding about how he wanted to marry her himself but how she would never leave Tom.

In 1935, Benton had had enough of New York and was ready to take a position at the Kansas City Art Institute. He and Rita headed west while Pollock moved into their apartment, although the place was never the same without the couple's vibrant presence. Pollock visited the Bentons in Missouri not long after, but by that point he was drinking so heavily that he had to enter a clinic and undergo professional treatment. Back in Manhattan, drying out slowly, Pollock began to drift away from Benton, explore Jungian therapy and ultimately took on his cooler and more cryptic "Jack the Dripper" identity.

By the mid-1940s, Pollock was married to Lee Krasner and had become a burgeoning force on the art scene. Benton, on the other hand, was considered to be a Regionalist throwback, relegated to the Midwest and no longer nationally prominent. Benton had been on the cover of Time in 1934; by 1947 Pollock was heralded by the same magazine as "the most powerful painter in America." Still, while it seems likely that Benton would have followed the same life path without ever meeting Jackson, without Benton, America might not have boasted of that same powerful Pollock as one of its own.

Upon hearing of Pollock's fatal car crash in 1956, Benton was deeply saddened-too much so to even attend Pollock's funeral. Willem de Kooning made a special trip to Benton's summer home in Martha's Vineyard to tell Benton in person, and the Bentons then showed De Kooning how Rita had saved all of Pollock's many press clippings. Pollock had also kept in touch with Benton, generally when he was depressed or had gotten particularly drunk and reminiscent--and no matter what the hour or how inebriated the conversation, it seemed that Benton was always willing to pick up the phone.

Sources
 
Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock -- Henry Adams (Bloomsbury Press, 2009)

American Visions: The Epic History of Art In America -- Robert Hughes (Knopf Publishing, 1999)

painting of the month

The Passing Train -- Marianne Stokes (1890)

snow day

 

 

 

Pictured:  Approaching Snowstorm -- Tom Thomson (1915); After the Snowstorm -- Jonas Lie (1908); A Snowy Monday -- Lilla Cabot Perry (1926); The Magpie -- Claude Monet (1869);  Snow -- Hayami Gyoshū (1929)