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ART “4” “2”-DAY 31 January

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DEATHS: 1891 MEISSONIER — 1635 DUYSTER

^ Died on 31 January 1891: Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, French Academic painter specialized in historical scenes, sculptor, and illustrator, born on 21 February 1815.
— Although he was briefly a student of Jules Potier [1796–1865] and Léon Cogniet, Meissonier was mainly self-taught and gained experience by designing wood-engravings for book illustrations. These included Léon Curmer’s celebrated edition of J.-H. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie (1838), the series Les Français peints par eux-mêmes (1840–1842) and Louis de Chevigné’s Les Contes rémois (1858). Such images, typically measuring 6x9cm and composed of still-life motifs (books or drapery cascading from a chest, intricately arranged and exhaustively detailed), helped form the style for which Meissonier became famous as a painter.
— 1830s Earning a livelihood as a book illustrator with Tony Johannot _ 1834 Salon debut _ 1838 Marries Jenny Steinheil _ 1859 Commissioned to paint the Battle of Solferino _ 1861 Elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts _ 1870s Serves as president of the Institut de France _ 1870s Serves as president of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts _ 1888 Jenny dies in June _ 1889 Is the first artist to receive the Grand Cross of the Légion d'Honneur _ 1890 Marries Mlle Bezançon

— Meissonier was born at Lyon. From his schooldays he showed a taste for painting, to which some early sketches, dated 1823, bear witness. After being placed with a druggist, he obtained leave from his parents to become an artist, and, owing to the recommendation of a painter named Jules Potier, himself a second class Prix de Rome, he was admitted to Leon Cogniet's studio. He paid short visits to Rome and to Switzerland, and exhibited in the Salon of 1831 a picture then called Les Bourgeois Flamands (Dutch Burghers) but also known as The Visit to the Burgomaster, subsequently purchased by Sir Richard Wallace, in whose collection (at Hertford House, London) it is, with fifteen other examples of this painter. It was the first attempt in France in the particular genre which was destined to make Meissonier famous for microscopic painting, miniature in oils. Working hard for daily bread at illustrations for the publishers — Curmer, Hetze and Duboclier — he also exhibited at the Salon of 1836 the Chess Player and the Errand Boy. After some not very happy attempts at religious painting, he returned, under the influence of Chenavard, to the class of work he was born to excel in, and exhibited with much success the Game of Chess (1841), the Young Man playing the Cello (1842), The Painter in his Studio (1843), The Guard Room, the Young Man looking at Drawings, the Game of Piquet (1845), and the Game of Bowls — works which show the finish and certainty of his technique, and assured his success. After his Soldiers (1848) he began A Day in June, which was never finished, and exhibited A Smoker (1849) and Bravos (Les Bravi, 5852). In 1855 he touched the highest mark of his achievement with The Gamblers and The Quarrel (La Rixe), which was presented by Napoleon III, to the English Court. His triumph was sustained at the Salon of 1857, when he exhibited nine pictures, and drawings; among them the Young Man of the Time of the Regency, The Painter, The Shoeing Smith, The Musician, and A Reading at Diderot’s. To the Salon of 1861 he sent The Emperor at Solferino, A Shoeing Smith, A Musician, A Painter, and M. Louis Fould; to that of 1864 another version of The Emperor at Solferino, and 1814. He subsequently exhibited A Gamblers’ Quarrel (1865), and Desaix and the Army of the Rhine (1867). Meissonier worked with elaborate care and a scrupulous observation of nature. Some of his works, as for instance his 1807, remained ten years in course of execution. To the great Exhibition of 5878 he contributed sixteen pictures: the portrait of Alexandre Dumas which had been seen at the Salon of 1877, Cuirassiers of 1805, A Venetian Painter, Moreau and his Staff before Hobenlinden, a Portrait of a Lady the Road to La Salice, The Two Friends, The Outpost of the Grand Guard, A Scout, and Dictating his Memoirs. Thenceforward he exhibited less in the Salons, and sent his work to smaller exhibitions. Being chosen president of the Great National Exhibition in 1883, he was represented there by such works as The Pioneer, The Army of the Rhine, The Arrival of the Guests, and Saint Mark. On the 24th of May 1884 an exhibition was opened at the Petit Gallery of Meissonier’s collected works, including 146 examples. As president of the jury on painting at the Exhibition of 1889 he contributed some new pictures. In the following year the New Salon was formed (the National Society of Fine Arts), and Meissonier was-president. He exhibited there in 1890 his picture 1807; a1so in 1891, shortly after his death, his Barricade was displayed there. A less well-known class of work than his painting is a series of etchings: The Last Supper, The Skill of Vuillaume the Lute Player, The Little Smoker, The Old Smoker, the Preparations for a Duel, Anglers, Troopers,’ The Reporting Sergeant, and Polichinelle, in the Hertford House collection. He also tried lithography, but the prints are now scarcely to be found.
Of all the painters of the century. Meissonier was one of the most fortunate in the matter of payments. His Cuirassiers, now in the late duc d’Aumale’s collection at Chantilly, was bought from the artist for £10,000 sold at Brussels for £11'000, and finally resold for £16'000 Besides his genre portraits, he painted some others: those of Doctor Lefevre, of Chenavard, of Vanderbilt,’ of Doctor Guyon, and of Stanford. He also collaborated with the painter Français in a picture of The Park at St Cloud.
In 1838 Meissonier married the sister of M. Steinbeil, a painter Meissonier was attached by Napoleon III to the imperial staff, and accompanied him during the campaign in Italy and at the beginning of the war in 1870. During the siege of Paris in 1871 he was colonel of a marching regiment. In 1840 he was awarded a third-class medal, a second-class medal in 1841 first-class medals in 1843 and 1844 and medals of honor at the great exhibitions. In 1846 he was appointed knight of the Legion of Honor and promoted to the higher grades in 1856, 1867 (June 29), and 1880 (July 12), receiving the Grand Cross in 1889 (Oct. 29). He nevertheless cherished certain ambitions which remained unfulfilled. He hoped to become a professor at the École des Beaux Art, but the appointment he desired was never given to him.
— The students of Meissonier included Édouard Détaille, Daniel Ridgway Knight, Herman Frederik Carel ten Kate, Enrique Mélida y Alinari.

— LINKS
— Self-Portrait (1889, 68kb) — Self-Portrait Along Route de La Salice, Antibes (1868, 14x26cm)
— The Ruins of the Tuileries Palace after the Commune of 1871 (1877, 135x95 cm _ ZOOM)
— The Sergeant's Portrait (1874, 73x62cm) — The Halt (1870)
— Le Siège de Paris (1870) — Le Général Desaix et le Paysan (1867)
— La Campagne de France (1861) — Dimanche à Poissy (1850, 23x30cm)
— La Barricade (31x23cm) — The Sign Painter 60x45cm) _ detail
— The Card Players (1872, 40x30cm)
— The End of the Game of Cards (1856, 22x18cm)
— At the Relay Station
— Joueurs d'Échecs — Iena — The Lovers of Painting
— The Reader in White — Le Guide (1883, 119x88cm)
— Un Homme d'Armes et son Cheval (65x54cm)
— Alexandre Dumas fils (1877 62x42cm)

— 1814 (1862, 32x24cm) [shown here >] _ After accompanying the French army in the Austro-Italian War of 1859, Meissonier abandoned the small Dutch 17th-century genre subjects for which he had become known and turned with even greater success to depicting events in the career of Napoléon I. In this small painting commissioned by the subject's nephew, Prince Napoléon, the emperor is portrayed in a forbidding landscape just after his last, hard-won victory in the 1814 French campaign, which was fought at Arcis-sur-Aube, near Troyes: 23'000 French troops withstood the onslaught of 90'000 Austrians, but were unable to capitalize on their victory.

^ Died on 31 January 1635: Willem Corneliszoon Duyster, Dutch painter of genre scenes and portraits born in 1599. — [Why a Y in his name? you ask. Simple: without it, he'd be a Duster, buster, without any luster, and that wouldn't pass muster.]
— Duyster was active mainly in his native Amsterdam. Most of his paintings depict soldiers, sometimes in action, but more usually drinking, gaming, or wooing. His delicate skill at painting textiles, his ability to characterize individuals, and his power to express subtle psychological relationships between them, suggest that if he had not been carried off by the plague in his mid 30s he might well have rivalled Terborch.

— LINKS
— Carnival Buffoons (1625; 600x780pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1820pix)
— Soldiers beside a Fireplace (1632) _ During the second quarter of the 17th century a group of artists began to specialize in painting the life of soldiers. Scenes of plunder and battle were depicted but the ancient battle of sexes, where the field of action was a room in an inn or a barrack, and in which the outcome of the struggle is not much in doubt, was more frequently represented. Other popular subjects were soldiers drinking, smoking and gambling at cards or tric-trac, activities that contemporary predicants and moralists condemned as vices that endanger salvation. But it is doubtful if the painters of these scenes and their clients viewed them as pictorial reminders of the perils of sin and the inexorable need to lead a virtuous life. Pictures of the life of off-duty soldiers were called by the Dutch 'cortegaardjes' a corruption of the French term 'corps de garde'. The better ones show little movement or overt action. Painters of them had a special feeling for tonal values and their pictures take on a certain still-life quality. In their half-dark interiors the light glitters over uniforms, and a fine subdued play of colors, mostly broken and harmonized by delicate half-tones, betrays the Dutch gift for intimate pictorial qualities and a subtle rendering of textures. Some even anticipate the achievement of the high society painters of the following generation, when well-to-do burghers rather than soldiers and their friends became the favoured subject of genre painters. Specialists in this category worked in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Delft, but seldom in Haarlem. The leading ones in Amsterdam were Willem Duyster and Pieter Codde. What sets Duyster's rare pictures apart from those made by his contemporaries is his distinct chiaroscuro and the refinement of his colors. He was also better able than any of them to convey the fascinating visual drama which can take place when people do little more than confront each other. It is difficult to think of a painter of his time who surpasses his penetrating characterization of the personalities of the men gathered round a fireplace in the modest nocturnal scene in the Soldiers beside a Fireplace. There are other versions of the same. Duyster's approach is always original. His cortegaardjes and small pictures of dignified full-length single figures seen against dark backgrounds served as one of the points of departure for Terborch's great accomplishment in these branch of painting.
— The Marauders

Died on a 31 January:

1977 Henri-Victor Wolvens (or Wolvenspergens), Belgian artist born on 06 June 1896.

^ 1960 Auguste Herbin, French painter born on 29 April 1882. — {I bet his mother cherished her Herbin much more than Herbin her bin}— He studied drawing at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Lille, from 1898 to 1901, when he settled in Paris. The initial influence of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism visible in paintings that he sent to the Salon des Indépendants in 1906 gradually gave way to an involvement with Cubism after his move in 1909 to the Bateau-Lavoir studios, where he met Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris; he was also encouraged by his friendship with Wilhelm Uhde. His work was exhibited in the same room as that of Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes and Fernand Léger in the Salon des Indépendants of 1910, and in 1912 he participated in the influential Section d’Or exhibition. After producing his first abstract paintings in 1917, Herbin came to the attention of Léonce Rosenberg who, after World War I, made him part of the group centred on his Gallerie de l’Effort Moderne and exhibited his work there on several occasions in 1918 and 1921. Herbin’s radical reliefs of simple geometric forms in painted wood, such as Colored Wood Relief (1921), challenged not only the status of the easel painting but also traditional figure–ground relationships. The incomprehension that greeted these reliefs and related furniture designs, even from those critics most favorably disposed towards Cubism, was such that until 1926 or 1927 he followed Rosenberg’s advice to return to a representational style. Herbin himself later disowned landscapes, still-lifes and genre scenes of this period, such as Bowls Players (1923), in which the objects were depicted as schematized volumes. — Composition (1953, 47x32cm).

1914 René Pierre Charles Princeteau, French artist born in 1843 or 1844.

1904 Luc Raphaël Ponson, French artist born on 12 May 1835. — [Pensons où sont Ponson et son pont... ou est-ce qu'il n'a peint point de pont?]\

1894 Gourlay Steell, Scottish artist, whose Steell-life was first seen on 22 March 1819. — {He had a will of Steell}\

1669 Anthony van Ravesteyn, Dutch artist born in 1580.

Born on a 31 January:

^ 1881 Max Hermann Pechstein, German Expressionist painter and printmaker who died on 25 (19?) June 1955. — Painter and printmaker who was a leading member of the group of German Expressionist artists known as Die Brücke. Best known for his paintings of nudes and landscapes. He was apprenticed as a decorator in Zwickau from 1896 to 1900, when he moved to Dresden to enrol at the Kunstgewerbeschule, where he met the architect Wilhelm Kreis and the painter Otto Gussmann [1869–1926] and obtained decorative commissions. He continued his studies from 1902 until 1906 as Gussmann’s student at the Dresden Kunstakademie. Through Kreis, Pechstein was introduced to Erich Heckel in 1906 and was invited by him to join Die Brücke, a group founded in the previous year that was quickly to become a major force in the rise of German Expressionism. The founders of the group were all architecture students, leaving Pechstein as the only member to have received formal academic training as a painter. He remained closely involved with the group until 1910, drawing and painting in the studios of Heckel and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Dresden and also working communally with them en plein-air; together with Heckel and Kirchner, for example, he spent some weeks during summer 1910 painting naked bathers at the Moritzburg lakes near Dresden. Paintings produced by Pechstein at this time, such as Girl in Red at a Table (1910), are very close in style to work by other Brücke artists and are among the most important paintings of the group’s communal period. — LINKS — Selbstbildnis mit Pinsel und Pfeife (1926; 600x496pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1157pix) — Bathers (1917, 51x55cm; half-size) — Flute Playing in the Country (1908, 36x46cm)

1878 Pio Semeghini, Italian painter who died on 11 March 1964. Having studied sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence and in Modena (1897–8), he moved to Paris (1899), where he began to paint under the influence of Impressionism and, subsequently, Fauvism. In 1912 he met Gino Rossi, whose circle he joined in Burano on his return to Italy (1914); their coloristic experiments, together with those of Umberto Maggioli [1886–1919] and Luigi Scopinich [1885–1959], were championed by the avant-garde Ca’ Pesaro association (active 1908–1820) headed by Nino Barbantini [1885–1952]. Semeghini underpinned his heightened color with a solid geometry to capture the fall of light on the urban fabric (e.g. The Enchanted House, 1913). His work changed following an important retrospective at the Ca’ Pesaro in 1919 and participation in the Mostra dei dissidenti di Ca’ Pesaro (1920). He introduced figure studies influenced by Quattrocento frescoes and simplified his cityscapes (e.g. S Giorgio, Venice, 1927), painting on panel which often remained exposed. Under financial pressure, Semeghini moved to Monza to teach at the Scuola di Nudo (1930–39), where he encouraged the ‘chiarismo lombardo’ of Gian Filippo Usellini (1903–71). After returning to Venice in 1938 he won the Premio Bergamo in 1939 for his cityscapes. He settled in Verona in 1942, but illness subsequently restricted him to producing figures and still-lifes (e.g. Still-life, 1948)

1824 Willem Vester, Dutch artist who died in July 1871.

1736 Vincent Janszoon van der Vinne, Dutch artist who died on 15 January 1811. He and his brother Jan Janszoon van der Vinne [1734-1805] seem to have been the last of some 10 artists which the Haarlem Mennonite van der Vinne family produced during the 17th and 18th centuries. Vincent and Jan were sons of Jan Laurenszoon van der Vinne [1699–1753], and nephews of Vincent Laurenszoon van der Vinne II [1686–1742] and of Jacob Laurenszoon van der Vinne [23 Jun 1688 – 17 Jan 1737]. They were the grandsons of Laurens Vincentszoon van der Vinne [1658–1729], and the grandnephews of Jan Vincentszoon van der Vinne “des Nageoires” [03 Feb 1663 – 01 Mar 1721] and of Izaak Vincentszoon van der Vinne [1665–1740]. And they were the great-grandsons of Vincent Laurenszoon van der Vinne I [11 Oct 1628 – 26 July 1702]. — {If any of them vas really a vinne, vhy isn't there any sample of his vork in the vorld vide veb?}

^ 1735 T. Kettle, British painter, active in India, who died in July 1786 in Aleppo, Syria. — {OK, OK, so the first name is Tilly.} {He is not known to have painted A Fine Kettle of Fish or any other still-life} — He received a varied training at Shipley’s, St Martin’s Lane, and the Duke of Richmond’s Academies. One of his teachers was Charles Lennox. Kettle then painted portraits, reminiscent of Reynolds’s, in Oxford and the Midlands. His most ambitious portrait, stylistically similar to the work of Francis Cotes, is Lady Frances Harpur and her Son Henry (1767). Kettle went to India in 1768, probably at the suggestion of Admiral Sir Samuel Cornish, who sat for him with Thomas Parry and Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Kempenfeldt in the same year. — LINKS — Lord Charles Spencer-Churchill [1740-1820] (75x62cm) — Rear-Admiral Richard Kempenfelt [1718 – Aug 1782] (1782, 244x152cm; 1103x700pix, 116kb) _ A full-length portrait facing to left in flag officer's undress uniform, circa 1774-83. A fighting sword is by his left side and he leans on a long telescope that rests on his left foot. Painted in the year of the sitter's death, it may have been done posthumously. The beach on which he stands is littered with naval stores and in the left background are two first-rates, the nearer probably the Victory, 100 guns, with a blue ensign and a Union at the mizzen, apparently to distinguish him from the rear-admiral of the blue when at sea without the fleet admiral commanding-in-chief. At the end of 1781 Kempenfelt was sent in the Victory, the fleet flagship, with a squadron to intercept an important French convoy which was sailing to reinforce their holdings in the West Indies. Although Kempenfelt found the French escort much stronger than his force, it had been carelessly placed ahead and to leeward of the convoy. He was therefore able to rout the merchantmen undisturbed, taking fifteen and destroying four. The rest were scattered and almost all the survivors returned to Brest. After Howe assumed command in 1782, Kempenfelt shifted to the Royal George, 100 guns, as a junior flag officer and he was drowned in her when she sank at anchor at Spithead in August, together with over 800 other people. Kempenfelt was also the inventor of a numeral signal code that helped to revolutionize naval tactics. — Mrs. Yates as Mandane in The Orphan of China (1765, 192x129cm) _ Mary Ann Yates is shown in the role that raised her to eminence as a tragic actress, that of the Chinese princess, Mandane, in Arthur Murphy's adaptation of Voltaire's play L'Orphelin de la Chine. She performed the part many times between 1759 and 1767. The actress was admired for her majestic manner and deportment, which the artist has captured here. This is one of the first examples of Kettle's Grand Manner, modelled on that of Reynolds.Perhaps to escape Reynolds's dominance of London society portraiture, Kettle went to India in 1769, one of the first serious painters to do so. He built up a flourishing portrait practice there but never recaptured his early success when he returned to Europe in 1776.

Happened on a 31 January:
^ 2003 The US Food and Drug Administration determines that Prussian blue (ferric hexacyanoferrate) [sample >] swallowed in a 500-mg capsule, can reduce by half the time the body takes to eliminate radioactive cesium and thallium, which might be used in a radiation-spreading bomb. Prussian blue is the first modern, artificially manufactured color. It was first made by the colormaker Diesbach of Berlin in about 1704. Diesbach accidentally formed the blue pigment when experimenting with the oxidation of iron. Dutch painter Simon Eikenlenberg wrote on the knowledge of Prussian blue in his Notes on Paint and Painting in 1722. By 1724 the manufacturing process of the pigment had spread to England and appeared in an artists' manual by Woodard. In The Handmaid to the Artists, Dossie quoted the preparation of Prussian blue in its entirety in 1764. The pigment has been extremely popular until 1970 when it was largely replaced by another pigment, phthaloryanine blue. Prussian blue has been used by Pablo Picasso [1881-1973], Christen Købke [1810-1848], Albert Bierstadt [1830-1902], Giovanni Antonio Canal [1697-1768], Antoine Watteau [1684-1721], William Hogarth [1697-1764], Thomas Bardwell [1704 – 09 Sep 1767], and William Blake [1757-1827], just to name a few. The original name of the pigment came from its use as a dye in the Prussian Army uniforms. The generic name is iron blue. Iron blue has a variety of hues due to the different processes of manufacture. Some of its commonly used names include Hamburg Blue, Paris Blue, bronze blue, celestial blue, cyanine, Haarlem blue, oriental blue, and potash blue. The chemical formula is Fe[Fe³+Fe²+(CN)₆]₃.

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