pablo and georges

"Two figures stand out among the creators of Cubism--Picasso and Braque...Picasso represents the adventurous and chimerical exaggeration of Spain.  His genius is informed by an insatiable creative power.  He is full of vagaries and fantastic imaginings, but he has always been a self-critic even in his most brilliant phases of negation.  Braque, on the other hand, brought to Cubism a constructive, positive and logical element that is typically French.  Picasso denies, Braque accepts...."

From The Holiday Painter -- J. Martin-Barbaz (Emerson Books, 1961)

Pictured:  The Accordionist, Pablo Picasso (Wikimedia Commons) and Aria de Bach, Georges Braque (National Gallery of Art)

painting of the month

Still Life Composition -- Maria Blanchard, 1916/17 (Wikimedia Commons)

the queen's many faces

From its very beginning on November 2, 1755, the life of Queen Marie Antoinette was destined to become the stuff of history and legend, novel and film.  She grew up in the center of royalty, was married at age fourteen as part of a royal alliance, produced royal heirs and went about living as she had been raised -- as a royal entity.  Her 1793 execution by guillotine came as the result of revolutionary fervor, a people's rebellion fueled by contempt for monarchies and social injustice.  She was reportedly not as indifferent to the plight of her subjects as rumor would have it, and it's unlikely that she ever made any glib suggestions that peasants go eat cake or even brioche.

Still, she was high-spirited and undeniably caught up in court society, her style and beauty at first delighting the French people, then turning against her amid accusations of adultery and extravagance.  And along the way there were numerous portraits painted of Marie Antoinette as Dauphine and then Queen, notably by artist Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun as the official royal portrait painter until 1789.  Lebrun went into exile after the royal family was put under house arrest by the Garde Nationale, and Polish-born Alexandre Kucharski became the official portraitist instead.  One might think that by that point there would be no more royal portraits, but Kucharski did produce some paintings of Marie Antoinette in her last years, works rather different from Lebrun's sumptuous depictions.  The Widow Capet's final days and death came with as much dignity as she could muster, though she was said to be also quite ill with other physical ailments -- a state suggested by the Sophie Prieur portrait modeled from a Kucharski painting.  Though some were bayoneted by protestors in the heat of violence, most portraits of Queen Marie Antoinette survived the Revolution; Marie Antoinette herself, of course, did not. 


Pictured:
Queen Marie Antoinette of France -- Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun,1778
Marie Antoinette in a Muslin Dress --  Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun, 1783
Marie Antoinette with Her Children -- Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun, 1787
Marie Antoinette -- Alexandre Kucharski, ca. 1791
Queen Marie Antoinette of France in the Prison Temple, ca. 1793 -- Sophie Prieur (after Kucharski)

painting of the month

Waterfall -- Arthur Dove, 1925 (The Phillips Collection)

the lost eye

It seems that the large blue mystery eye that recently washed up on a Florida beach belonged to a swordfish, pretty callously cut from the fish itself and tossed aside but maybe that's just how the fisherman's world goes.  Still, the first thing I thought of when I saw the news item was Odilon Redon's Eye Balloon, and then Redon's Cyclops as well.  One eye alone can look so reproachful, even if it belongs to a Cyclops or a balloon or a once mighty fish.

Pictured: Swordfish eye; Eye Balloon and Cyclops (Odilon Redon, 1840-1916)

painting of the month

Lantern Parade -- Thomas Cooper Gotch, ca. 1918 (the-athenaeum.org)

random artist's birthday: william dyce

Born today in Aberdeen was 19th century Scottish painter William Dyce (September 19, 1806 - 1864).  Dyce studied at the Royal Academy and then in Rome for nine months, and he would become highly influential in arts education later in his career.  Many of his works involve religious subject matter and Pre-Raphaelite inclinations, but his scenes of daily life are also quite distinctive.  Said to be "as keen in speech as in visage," Dyce died while in the midst of an exhaustive project of frescoes at Westminster Palace.  The series involved the Legend of King Arthur and was never finished. 

Pictured:  The Garden of Gethsemane -- William Dyce, 1860 (National Museums Liverpool) and Welsh Landscape with Two Women Knitting -- William Dyce, 1864 (National Museum Cardiff)