Japonisme, japonaiserie and chinoiserie

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Mark Mitchell

Victor Fontaine (1837-84), Guéridon fleuri

The collecting of oriental works of art is an activity with a relatively long history in Britain. Chinese and Japanese artefacts had been eagerly acquired by English connoisseurs from the 17th century onwards: see, for example, the porcelain, and the lacquered cabinets, screens, tables and tea services in the collections of the National Trust, including those of Ham House, Richmond; Saltram, Devon; and Petworth, West Sussex.

 17th century Japanese lacquered cabinet, Ham House, Richmond. Photo by John Hammond, ©National Trust

Most Japanese items only reached Britain via the Netherlands, since general trade between Japan and Europe was severely restricted for around 200 years from the mid-17th century. After c. 1641 only a few Dutch traders were admitted beyond the iron curtain which fell, and they were quarantined on a small island called Deshima, in Nagasaki Bay. In 1854 this period of isolation was ended by the Convention of Kanagawa, and merchant ships from the West were allowed into Japanese ports.

Chinese K’ang Xsi famille noire vase, late 17th – early 18th century, Polesden Lacey. ©National Trust

The English East India Company achieved trading terms with China from 1672, but from 1700 was restricted to trading through Canton. China, rather like Japan, only opened its ports to general European trade following the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, a settlement which happily coincided with the exhibition, off Hyde Park Corner in London, of a collection of Chinese objects belonging to an American, Nathan Dunn, who had – unusually for the time – lived in China for twelve years.

‘The Chinese Collection, Hyde Park Corner’, from The Illustrated London News, 1842

 This exhibition was enthusiastically received, although Japanese works of art were not similarly displayed in London until twenty years later, in the World Fair of 1862 (the Great London Exposition). Here The Times noted that,

‘Japan will … be splendidly represented … from …rare lacker ware, straw basket, and bamboo work down to the massive quadrangular coins of the realm…. Their wonderful egg-shell porcelain – the astonishment and envy of all European manufacturers – will be amply represented…’ (The Times, 29 March 1862).

 The Japanese stand at the London World Fair, 1862

 However, these wonders were not an official display under the auspices of the Japanese shogunate, but had been collected together by Sir Rutherford Alcock, the British Consul in Japan; it was not until after the revolution of 1868 that the Japanese participated of their own volition in international exhibitions.  This long hiatus in relations between West and East, which finished a decade earlier for China, accounts for the presence of Chinese plates in Owen Jones’s influential The grammar of ornament, 1856, and the absence of any Japanese equivalent. It was during the 1850s, however, that oriental goods of all sorts began to enter the European markets, and an enthusiasm for Japanese and Chinese objects began to pervade society.

 Artists were affected in differing ways by these new currents of style. Many had attended the international exhibition of 1862, and many more haunted the shops specializing in oriental objets d’art and bric-a-brac which sprang up in Leiden, The Hague, London and Paris (e.g. La Porte Chinoise, Paris, established in 1862). But whilst some, like Whistler and Degas, studied the works of art they found, and were influenced by the compositional elements and asymmetry of Japanese prints and painted screens (japonisme), others made collections of objects which they imported wholesale into their work, with no attempt to adapt their painting conventions to such exotic and alien artefacts (japonaiserie).

 James Tissot, Young women looking at Japanese articles, 1869, Cincinnati Museum of Art

James Jacques Tissot (1836-1902), the friend of Manet, Degas and Whistler, was an early and dedicated collector of Japanese art, who by the late 1860s had amassed a sizable collection in his house in Paris. It forms the subject and background of works such as Young women looking at Japanese articles, where there is no attempt to interpret the objects in question, or to modulate his compositions by their exotic influence.  The young women remain resolutely Parisian, as does the interior in which they stand; the screens, cabinets, fabrics and bibelots themselves are arranged as if they were as western as their setting. 

 Claude Monet, Camille in Japanese costume (La japonaise), 1876, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Monet’s picture of his wife, posed in a red kimono against a background of fans, is equally a western painting with Japanese accessories, which makes no concessions to the latter, and in which his wife remains as wholly French as do Tissot’s models. A great many paintings of this type were produced in the second half of the 19th century; oriental objects in more or less greater numbers thronged the interiors of British Edwardian and French 2eme Empire houses, without being integrated with them and without affecting the traditional western compositions in which they were assembled. 

 Charles Bale (fl.1866-92), Still life of pears, apples, grapes and a Chinese jar

They appeared in still life paintings in much the same way; – sometimes the reference might be a single Chinese vase or a ginger jar, smuggled quietly into a still life, a stand-in for the traditional wine glass or pewter pot; sometimes, as with Monet’s painting of Camille, there was a plethora of accessories which could have been replaced by Spanish or Russian versions without inherently altering the composition. For a large number of artists, japonaiserie and chinoiserie were just fashionable gimmicks to enhance the appeal of their work to their clients.

 (left) Edgar Degas, Woman ironing, c.1882-86, Reading Public Museum & Art Gallery, Reading, Pennsylvania; (right) Utamaro, A woman in a summer kimono washing clothes, from Shiboruto Korekushon o chushin to shita Ukiyo-e ten [An Ukiyoe exhibition from the Siebold collection] Tokyo: Otsuka Kogeisha, 1976, plate 185.

Degas, on the other hand, was markedly influenced by the structure of the Japanese prints in which he was interested; many of his paintings of ballerinas, horse races and laundresses employ similar tricks of cut-off figures, asymmetric compositions, strong diagonal emphases and expanses of empty space. This is the true art of japonisme.

 JAM Whistler, Variations in pink & grey: Chelsea, 1871-72, Freer & Sackler Galleries

 Whistler’s work was also affected by these compositional elements; his earlier paintings – such as La princesse du pays de la porcelaine (1863-65) – use Japanese props and European models within Victorian settings, but as he studied the prints he collected more closely, he began to admit their influence to his own paintings in ways which reveal that he had digested aspects of Japanese vision which were at odds with post Renaissance conventions.

Fanny Fleury (1848-1905), Woman reading

Gradually this acceptance of unfamiliar rules became as intrinsic to artists of the Aesthetic and Post-Impressionist movements as the overt use of oriental objects in their pictures. Fanny Fleury had been taught by Carolus Duran, the friend of Manet, and she was touched by the radicalism of the Impressionist circle. Whilst much of her work can appear romanticized and conservative, paintings such as Woman reading reveal, in a softened form, many of Degas’s japoniste elements. Whilst it includes a kimono and an arrangement of chrysanthemums, it also features an asymmetric composition set on the diagonal and an ‘aesthetic’ harmony of tone and colour.

Olle Hjortzberg, Still life with Chinese porcelain, 1946

A work as late as this Swedish post-war still life (sold), whilst ostensibly a confection of oriental props and a work of outright japonaiserie, is in fact based on ideas which would have seemed extremely and disturbingly radical to artists in the mid-19th century. The raised viewpoint, tilted perspective, lack of an internal ‘horizon’, and composition arranged within the diagonal top of the canvas are all borrowings from the Japanese prints collected so avidly by Degas, Whistler and their peers.

 Joseph De Belder, Still life with arum lilies

This is equally true of a far more complex painting – De Belder’s intricate arrangement of nested spaces and cut-off objects, which may owe something to Whistler’s orchestration of looking-glasses and reflected space in his Harmony of green and rose (1860-61, Freer & Sackler Galleries), and also to Degas’s Place de la Concorde (below). The lilies in the front of the painting, rearing up in their truncated vase before the white stretches of damask tablecloth, occupy exactly the same position as the Viscount and his daughters before the open spaces of the Place de la Concorde.  Both are paintings which could not have been made before the resumption of trade with Japan; the extraordinarily radical composition of the De Belder, which wittily includes Japanese and Chinese porcelain, a doll, a print and a fan, manages to encompass japonaiserie, chinoiserie and japonisme with a striking and virtuoso flourish.

 Degas, Viscount Lepic & his daughters crossing the Place de la Concorde, 1875, State Hermitage Museum


 

 

 

 

Posted in 19th Century, 20th Century, Figure paintings, Paintings of interiors | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Compleat Angler

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Mark Mitchell

Catherine Wood, The Compleat Angler, exh. R.A 1910

 Catherine Morris Wood was born in Islington in 1857, one of three sisters, to a London barrister and a Scottish mother.  In 1879 she won a scholarship to the Royal Female School of Art (since incorporated into what is now Central St Martins). She was talented and prolific, exhibiting at the Royal Academy from 1880, when she was 23, and continuing to show her work there for more than forty years. She also exhibited at the New English Art Club, the Royal Society of British Artists, and the Walker Galleries, and was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Oils, the RBA, Suffolk Street, and the Society of Women Artists (previously, until 1872, the Society of Lady Artists).

 At an exhibition by the last-named, her skill caught the eye of Walter Sickert, who reviewed ‘The exhibition of Lady Artists in the Drawing-room Gallery of the Egyptian Hall’ for an article, ‘The Lady Artists’ in the New York Herald, 27 March 1889. Having excoriated the usual ‘same strips of canvas or paper painted by people who ought never to paint’, he picks out ‘ ‘Strawberries and Cherries,’ by Catherine N. [sic] Wood, [which] is just about as perfect as they make them. No. 211 reminds me in its smart juiciness of Mr Ludovici’s flower-pictures’ (see Walter Sickert: The complete writings on art, ed. Anna Gruetzner Robins, 2000, pp. 22-25).

 In 1892, at the age of 35, Catherine Wood married the watercolourist Richard Henry Wright of Hampshire, and they lived together at 2 Harcourt Buildings in the Inner Temple (destroyed during the Blitz, and rebuilt in the 1950s). 

R.H. Wright, Durham Cathedral from the River Wear, 1889, watercolour, Bonhams, 6 June 2006

 Wright painted primarily architectural and landscape subjects, many of them set in Europe and Egypt, whereas Catherine specialized in still life, flowerpieces and genre subjects. This complementary aspect of their marriage is summed-up in the catalogue of the 1910 Royal Academy exhibition, in which Catherine’s entries were two oils, The Complete Angler (probably the present painting) and Granny’s love-letters, and her husband’s was a watercolour entitled The Lotos-land. However, the same year finds her painting The font in the Baptistery, Siena, so her marriage evidently inspired her to broaden her scope (she also painted The Arch of Titus, Rome, undated; A church interior of 1892 – possibly executed on her honeymoon; A matador; and An Alpine village, amongst others). Manchester City Art Gallery possesses a Wood oil painting, The church of St Etienne, of 1911. Her husband died in 1930, and Catherine herself may have followed him in 1939, after which she can no longer be traced.

Catherine Wood, A vase of blossom, s. & d. 1937, Skinners Auction, 14 November 2008

As well as the 19th century’s approved subjects for female painters – roses, flower vases, fruit, interiors of rooms, etc. – Catherine also produced what might be termed ‘male’ subjects. Male artists created still life oil paintings that depicted subjects such as; gamepieces, pipes, books, papers, food etc. During this period male artists certainly dominated the art market; therefore this use of ‘masculine’ subject matter could potentially have made Catherine’s work much more attractive to the art market at the time.

Catherine Wood, Still life of books & papers on a desk, Christie’s New York, 15 Feb. 1995

This may have been a deliberately commercial decision, in order to make her work more saleable to the wealthier members of society, or possibly a consequence of growing up with a sporting father. The present painting, sometimes known as The fly-fisherman’s work bench, but possibly identical with The Complete Angler of the same year, 1910, is an instance of this. The subject is interesting, as it was only in Catherine’s painting lifetime that it was rendered respectable (in an academic sense) by the publication in 1886 of F.M. Halford’s Floating flies and how to dress them, with 90 hand-coloured engravings ‘of the most killing patterns’. This was one of the earlier books of its kind, and the first edition was almost completely sold out before its actual publication.

 Plate V, Halford’s Floating flies…, 1886

This book had an immediate and global influence, kick-starting the sport in France and becoming widely available in America (along with Halford’s actual flies) by 1888. It also elevated the tied fly to the realm of art through its delicate and beautifully-coloured illustrations.

 Catherine Wood may have been aware, not only of Halford’s book, but of artists such as Henry Leonidas Rolfe. Rolfe (1823-81) exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1847-74, as well as at Suffolk Street and the British Institution, his paintings being mainly still life subjects of dead fish and of fishing tackle. His work was also produced as a series of lithographs, published in 1856 by William Tegg of Cheapside.

Henry Leonidas Rolfe, The day’s catch, Pocock Fine Art, Fort Lauderdale

Rolfe was an angler himself, as was his elder brother Alexander (1814-75), a painter and photographer; the two Rolfes were part of a painting dynasty, members of the first family of eight children of the painter William Edmund Rolfe. One of their sisters, Catherine, was also an artist, and their brother-in-law was John Herring junr., with whom Alexander sometimes collaborated.

Alexander Frederick Rolfe, Trout fishing, date & location unknown

Henry Rolfe specialized in piscine still life paintings, whilst Alexander’s angling works tend to be more landscape in character – although Alexander painted his younger brother pursuing his hobby: Limner of scaly subjects, 1850 (? ex-Piscatorial Society). The present painting by Catherine Wood might function as the ‘before’ stage to Henry Rolfe’s ‘after’ arrangements: the preparation for angling, with the making of a book of flies and filling of a fishing creel, followed by the result: the open book of flies, rod, hip flask, pipe, and captured fish.

 Catherine Wood, The Compleat Angler, exh. R.A 1910, and H. L. Rolfe, Salmon on the riverbank, 1855, Sotheby’s Glasgow, 11Dec.1996

In general, paintings of fish by themselves are a more common manifestation of this particular genre. A sub-branch of the gamepiece, the still life with dead fish had been relatively popular in the Netherlands during the 17th century, modulating into the genre of market-paintings, comprising large, virtuoso representations of vegetables, bread and other displays of food, often arranged on market stalls.

Johannes Fabritius (1636-93), Still life with fish, eels and fishing nets, Sotheby’s New York, 27 May 2004

This still life by Johannes Fabritius anticipates Catherine Wood and Henry Rolfe in the angling paraphernalia which is, unusually, included along with the fish. Here it is the paraphernalia of sea fishing, with buoys, floats, nets, lobster pots and killing implements which surround and give context to the shining scaly confusion of sea life, establishing it as an aspect of nature which is controlled and harvested by Man.

 By the 19th century there was a small group of painters of various nationalities, such as the Rolfes and, for example, Henry Jervis Alfred (fl.1855), who specialized in fish paintings; however, these usually comprised arrangements of the fish either within a landscape or on a table.

Henry Jervis Alfred (fl.1855), Still life with fish,  Hartleys Auctioneers, 6 Dec. 2009

Edouard Manet, Still life with fish, 1864, Art Institute of Chicago

They might be accompanied in the one case by riverbank plants and in the other by kitchen equipment, but the accoutrements of angling were rarely depicted. For example, in this still life by Edouard Manet, the fish are portrayed with oysters, a lemon and knife, and a copper fish kettle, which are included mainly for the sensuous contrast of coral red and yellow with the monochromes of the fish. Henry Rolfe’s careful still life accessories of nets, flasks, rods, pouches, etc., are sufficiently unusual to be noted; but Catherine Wood’s painting, with all the carded silks, feathers, scissors, twists of wire – not to mention the books, creel, reel, and the portrait in the background of Izaak Walton, is extraordinarily rare and eye-catching.

Catherine Wood, engraving of Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler, detail; and engraving of Izaak Walton after the portrait by Jacob Huysmans, National Portrait Gallery

The engraving is probably the early 19th century version by George Maile after the painting of Walton by Jacob Huysmans, c.1672, and it is complemented by the bottle-green book lying on its side, behind the album of tied flies and immediately below the portrait.

Catherine Wood, The Compleat Angler with detail of Izaak Walton’s book; spine of a copy of the 1808 edition

This may possibly be a copy of the 100th edition of Walton’s The Compleat Angler, issued in 1888. The painting is in effect an homage to the two men whose books most informed the sport of fly fishing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; Izaak Walton and F.M. Halford, and as such it is a unique and evocative work.

Catherine Wood’s sisters seem to have been equally talented as their elder sibling; Emily was a medical student in 1891, whilst Ursula followed her elder sister into the arts, exhibiting at least 16 works in the Royal Academy (where she may have trained). She specialized in landscapes and genre subjects, showing A wet day paradise at the Royal Academy in 1911, whilst Catherine, equally characteristically, exhibited The dusty past.

Posted in 19th Century, still life | Leave a comment

The art of the dance

Posted on January 10, 2014 by Mark Mitchell

Robert Duckworth Greenham, Tango Final of British Championship, Blackpool, 1969, s. & d. 1970

Robert Greenham’s painting of this dancing competition can safely be called an eye-catcher. The viewpoint is defined by the velvet sill curving across the lower right-hand corner as being from above, from a box or gallery in the ballroom; this enables the cluster of dancers to be clearly seen, and their movements to be separately visible. At the same time, the composition stretches upwards over the canvas in a formal pattern, caught between the curve of the sill at the bottom and the sweep of a lower barrier at the top. Within this space the opposition of dark male and pastel female figures takes on an almost abstract repetitive quality, which is further reinforced by the echoing shapes of their shadows. Its unique composition emphasizes the movement of each dancing couple making it one of the most lively figure paintings for sale within our collection. This patterning of light and dark, colour and monochrome, gives the painting the feeling of a flat and ornamental piece of decorative art, like a tapestry or a wallpaper design, and creates a dynamic tension with the simultaneous sense of three-dimensional bodies in rapid movement.

William Morris, ‘Cray’ furnishing fabric, 1885

An important element of the mechanics which control these opposites, and which give depth and importance to the painting, is the use of costume to express both the inherent swing of the dance and the stylized flatness of the decorative pattern. Greenham uses the vast diaphanous net petticoats of the 1960s as though they were repeating flowers in a piece of printed fabric – much as William Morris used them: for example in ‘Cray’, which intersperses large blowsy paeony heads with twining branches on a dark ground.

 Degas, Le foyer de la danse à l’Opéra de la rue Le Peletier, 1872, Musée d’Orsay

At the same time, he also uses them as adjuncts of the dancing figures, just as Degas did in his innumerable paintings of the Opéra ballet, where the ballerinas’ flower-like skirts articulate the space of the ballroom and create a sense of movement.

Greenham was interested in film, cinema stills and studio photographs – such as those by Cecil Beaton for Vogue, one of which inspired his portrait of Martita Hunt (post-1943, National Portrait Gallery). The interpretation of a three-dimensional space containing moving figures as a two-dimensional, frozen image, often in black-&-white, seems to have stimulated his ability to simplify and clarify his own compositions; these photographs could be used as tools, not to copy or imitate, but to learn the manipulation of form and design in order to attain the most satisfying composition. In the case of the painting above, the photo which sparked his imagination may have been a related scene taken by Cartier-Bresson ten years earlier.

 Henri Cartier-Bresson, Queen Charlotte’s Ball, 1959. Christie’s Sale, 26 November 2010

The viewpoint is similar; the opposition of slender, black-clad male figures and women in pale, full-skirted gowns is the same; and the implication that light might be used to enhance both the sense of space and the ornamental pattern is also vestigially present. Greenham has taken these features, applied them to a real-life event sometime later, and has remade his sources as a complex and layered work of art.

He has also rationalized the scene as Cartier-Bresson has recorded it: the latter is a striking and beautiful photograph, but it has all the messiness and arbitrariness of real life, whereas Greenham’s interpretation is far more lucid and simplified. Here, his interest in film may also have been at play, since his careful disposition of the swirling skirts across the canvas has much in common with Busby Berkeley’s disciplined choreography in musical films of the 1930s and ’40s.

Gold Diggers of 1933

The Shadow Waltz

The elevated viewpoint chosen for the painting, whilst echoing that in Cartier-Bresson’s photo, also reflects the viewpoint employed in films such as Vincente Minnelli’s Madame Bovary, where the complex patterns of the dance are deployed across the ballroom and seen from above, allowing reference to be implied to the social hierarchies of the novel. 

 Emma Bovary catches sight of herself in a looking-glass in the ballroom scene of Vincente Minnelli’s Madame Bovary, 1949

Greenham’s vision of the dance, then, eye-catching as it already appears at first glance, covers a depth of compositional sophistication, and a network of connections to other contemporary art forms.

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Empty chambers, crowded with life

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

Belgian or French School, Sunlight on the table, 1909

Paintings of interior scenes go back in date as far as figure and still life subjects, as they were a necessary part of the background of each; but a whole furnished yet unoccupied room is something different – a subject of interest all by itself. The empty interior has been spasmodically popular at various points, but it reached the peak of a wave of fashion during the 19th and 20th centuries.

 Villa Farnesina, Rome, c. 20 BC

The earliest approximation of what came to be the empty interior painting is found in Roman art.  Pompeiian wall frescoes include architectural trompe l’oeils and faux niches, which could be considered as partly on the way to the representation of an interior scene. They might include columns, windows and doors giving onto landscapes, steps, balustrades and daïses, pieces of fictive furniture, statues and framed paintings, and are untenanted (except for what might be seen through the windows or in the paintings).

 Antonello da Messina, St Jerome in his study, c.1475, NG

After this, however, the empty interior drops away; rooms become the background for biblical and other scenes – St Jerome in his study, the Virgin and saints in a church, the Annunciation in Mary’s bedroom, etc. During the Renaissance these interiors become realistic enough in their space, architecture and furnishings to tell us a great deal about daily domestic life in that particular time and place; and – when they appear in mythological, history and portrait paintings as well – the information about secular homes and their contents grows even more detailed.  They are still settings, however: stage sets for the subjects of the paintings, rather than having any importance in their own right. There is always at least one figure, and often the articles and furniture around him or her (although frequently realistic) will have some iconographical bearing on this figure’s story.

 Samuel van Hoogstraten, View of an interior, or The slippers, between 1654 & 1662, Musée du Louvre

It’s not until the 17th century that we see rooms which are completely unoccupied – although in the case of this extraordinarily resonant scene by Van Hoogstraten, the inhabitants of the house are hardly invisible at all, such is the impression of personality  here. The corridor with its enfilade of doors, through which we can see into the sun-filled room at the end, appears to tell us of the owners’ prosperity and also about the work which is done here by the servants, through the broom propped by the hanging apron.

However, the objects which furnish a Dutch painting can never be taken solely on their own overt appearance – a broom is often the symbol of a love affair without a wedding: a ‘common-law marriage’. That this might be the meaning here is reinforced by the discarded slippers (mules, with no backs) – one of the prime erotic motifs for the Netherlandish artist. Thus a scene which seems at first to juxtapose the hard-working servant who cleans the house with her wealthy mistress, now turns into a warning: the ‘mistress’ may be so in terms of erotic love, as well as of property.  The picture we see on the wall opposite us appears, at first glance, to show a young woman at a prie-dieu, in pious contemplation; but it is a conflation of two paintings by Gerard ter Borch – a woman seen from the back in a bedroom, regarding herself in a small looking-glass, and the same woman in identical dress and pose, reading a (love?) letter whilst the messenger stands by.  The messages in these two paintings are respectively of vanity, possibly with immoral ends, and of illicit love, conveyed by a young boy who is a stand-in for Cupid. Meanwhile, on the table beneath this fictive Ter Borch stands an extinguished candle, pointing to the passing of time and the shortness of life; whilst the book may be an abandoned prayer book. In short, this empty interior may be full of warning for the young unmarried woman or bride (she should not let the keys to her virtue out of her hands, for one misstep in her slippers and she will be on a slippery slope of vice); it may equally be the story of a woman who has already fallen, and whose stolen love will shorten her present prosperous life, and lead her into ruin.

 

 Marianne Rush, An upper gallery, 18th century, watercolour, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Library, from The Library Time Machine, by David Walker

The eighteenth century seems not to have cared very much for deserted rooms; its offspring preferred their houses thronged with merrymaking crowds, decorously peopled with a few family members, or forming the appropriate background for the portrait of a scholar, a collector, or a matriarch. The psychological or allegorical messages of the empty room gave way to the information conveyed by possessions or furnishings on the individuals or groups portrayed within those rooms. Amongst the few unoccupied interiors of this century are those recorded in strange, surreal watercolours by Marianne Rush, who died in 1814 and whose work belongs to the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Library. These are particularly empty rooms: almost aggressively so, they emphasize the richness of the interior decoration by the enhanced perspective and desolate lack of paintings, objects or furniture.

 Marianne Rush, Inside the Rotunda at Ranelagh, 18th century, watercolour, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Library, from The Library Time Machine, by David Walker

This feeling is perhaps most marked in the painting of the Rotunda from the pleasure gardens at Ranelagh; although the benches remain in the centre, the conspicuous absence of any human at all in such a public space (one designed for enjoyment and celebration) combines with the cool blue tones of the scene to suggest something more akin to a mortuary chapel in a crypt.

Mrs Rush’s watercolours are in the van of a gathering army of painted interiors. During the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th, palaces, aristocratic apartments, hunting lodges, villas, and then middle-class homes, artists’ studios, and later hotels would all be memorialized by professional and amateur artists alike, and more often than not in a state of uninhabited splendour.

 William Henry Pyne, The Queen’s State Bedchamber, Windsor Castle, from Pyne’s Royal Residences, 1819

William Pyne’s work on the British monarch’s palaces, Pyne’s Royal Residences, published in three volumes in 1819, and illustrating the empty interiors of Windsor Castle, Hampton Court, Kensington Palace, St James’s Palace, Buckingham House (as it then was) and Carlton House (later demolished), must have given a fillip to this growth in the depiction of interiors for their own sake. Pyne had employed leading artists of the day to execute the original watercolours (100 of them), as well as engravers to reproduce the designs and hand-colour the results. These interiors are not the palpably deserted though opulent settings depicted by Marianne Rush, nor the psychologically teeming, vivid interior of Hoogstraten; they are rich, warm, furnished and magnificent – merely drawing breath before the next ingress of monarch, courtiers or servants.  The intent was to exhibit to George III’s subjects, the majority of whom would never see them in the flesh, the splendour of the royal palaces as an expression of Britain’s increasing power and prosperity in the world.

Fonthill Abbey: The Grand Drawing-room, from John Rutter’s Delineations of Fonthill Abbey (1823)

Possibly Pyne’s work may have influenced books which illustrated equally palatial buildings; for instance, John Rutter’s Delineations of Fonthill Abbey, which came out four years later. This was published with the intention of functioning as a guide-book, and was thus even more neutral than Pyne’s Royal Residences. There is no symbol, allegory or psychological insight lurking here – in fact, this view of the drawing-room feels strangely modern in its clean representation of an architectural space and its contents, neither lonely and deserted, nor overflowing with an unwanted mood or presence. The Gothic revival style loses all its inherited resonances of haunted monastery and mediaeval keep when presented tidily in graphic black-&-white.

Leopold Zielcke, A Biedermeier ‘Zimmerbild’ or chamber painting, Berlin, c.1825; from Biedermeier: Die Erfindung der Einfachheit (The Invention of Simplicity); exhibition catalogue, Hatje Cantz Verlag Ostfildern

The nineteenth century, as it progressed, saw a steady rise in the number of paintings of interiors, and an accompanying widening in the type of home portrayed – from royal and aristocratic, to middle-class and mercantile. This German bourgeois study, with its simple, comfortable furniture, well-lighted urban outlook, stenciled frieze and embroidered bell-pull, has much more in common with Van Hoogstraten’s View of an interior than with Pyne’s regal chambers, or even with Rutter’s Fonthill drawing-room. Not that there is a moral warning encoded in the sunny yellow walls and curtains; merely that there is a sense that the owner of the room has walked out briefly to meet a friend or have a coffee, leaving his chair angled away from his desk and the morning’s newspaper folded on the plush tablecloth. Light floods the next door room as well – probably the drawing-room – and a decanter and glass bear witness to recent occupation there, too. Perhaps this is one of the greatest charms of the empty interior; the sense that it has only just been vacated, and the owner has left us, the spectators, to make ourselves at home in his room until he returns.

Friedrich Wilhelm Klose, The Etruscan Room at Potsdam, 1840

This manner of portraying the interior in a way which was less distancing began to influence the depiction even of the grander salon; the Etruscan room in the palace at Potsdam, Berlin, the Royal Prussian residence, seems at first to have little in common with the Biedermeier study, but the angle at which it is shown, with the sofa on a slant and partly cut off, creates the impression that we are again within the room – guests of the Prussian king, invited to sit on that inviting sofa, to enjoy the sunlight flooding through the windows and the views out into the town, to study the antique vases and the NeoClassical decorative scheme. We might then observe that the warm golden tones of the walls, the geometric patterning of the floor, and the airily draped curtains are very similar in both paintings; and that perhaps Klose’s picture has leant indefinably nearer to Zielcke’s vision, and away from the feeling of the room as it was first installed in 1805.

 John Singer Sargent, My dining room, c.1885, Smith College of Art, Northampton, Mass.

By the later 19th century, the middle-class home had become, in many instances, even more relaxed, and definitely more cluttered. John Singer Sargent’s dining-room has lost all pretensions to exclusiveness; the spectator has not only been invited in, wandered around and examined the china and all the paintings, but has probably been entertained to lunch, and has just risen to light a cigarette. The sense of recent presence is again almost palpable in the rumpled napkins and hastily pushed-in chair, just as the evocation of light on the still life of the table indicates the daily ebb and flow of sunshine, life, and activity. The feeling that that life has been carefully designed and possibly slightly censored, as in the Biedermeier study, has been lost in the general squashing of furniture into a small room, objects onto the dresser, pictures onto the walls, and hospitality onto the table. This feeling is enhanced by the painterly brevity of description here, as compared with Zielcke’s pristine delineation of immaculate decoration and furniture, all highly finished and accurately installed in its exact position (save the evocatively angled chair).

 Gustave Caillebotte, Interior of a studio, c.1872, Private Collection

Caillebotte’s studio is even more casually cluttered and bohemian, with its tumble of drapery, basin and broom, stacked canvases, coffee pot and bowl warming on the stove, and props gathered on every surface.  It has its own decorative harmony of colour, but this seems accidental or adjusted by the painter rather than consciously aimed. The artist has swept his room and gone out; we are at liberty to enter and look around, but not particularly thought of or regarded.  We can see some of the tools of the trade that is practiced here, but perhaps not so much of the personality of the owner as in Van Hoogstraten’s interior, or Sargent’s.

 Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior with the artist’s easel, 1910, Statens Museum for Kunst, Denmark

Another thirty years, and we come to Vilhelm Hammershøi. Hammershøi’s interiors are the reverse of Sargent’s dining-room and Caillebotte’s studio; spare, simply furnished, monchrome, filled with a vast quietness and simplicity. The artist who works in these rooms seems to manage his art with the minimum of fuss and props: an easel, a drawing board and a chair; no box of colours, no rags or brushes, no draperies or coloured vases to dress up his subjects. This is a study of space, light and geometry, complex in its various levels, yet rigorously controlled. And yet this ascetically minimal interior seems no more deserted than Sargent’s: the door standing open and the chair at a slight angle indicate that someone has been here recently, and may shortly return.  There is life here, although it is contemplative and silent, and the sunlight itself seems diffused and muted.

 Vilhelm Hammershøi, Sunbeams, or Sunshine dust motes dancing in the sunbeams, 1900, Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen

Even where bright light is the subject of the painting, it sneaks aslant into the empty interior, making the room seem even emptier and veiling the view through the window so that we are shut in and contained. Hammershøi’s interiors are strikingly 18th century in their bareness – no carpets, no coloured paintwork, no curtains, no patterned upholstery. The room above seems to be in a house from which the family has recently moved, leaving behind the ghost of the spectator and a few dead flies on the window-sill. We imagine the artist’s palette which has been used (the absent palette from the interior with the easel): a white plate with a very few subdued colours and a lot of white – little else; nothing to spill and mark the white walls or the charcoal floor. On the other hand, the lack of objects and the open doors, the sense of more empty chambers and of quiet presences, gives an aura of significance to these deserted rooms, leaving them charged with an air of imminence.

 Edward Hopper, Sun in an empty room, 1963, Private collection

It’s a short jump from Hammershøi to another master of light falling in an empty room: half a century later Edward Hopper uses the same motif, although with rather more colour and with more sense of an outside world beyond this contained calm. Hopper’s single figures in rooms are often lonely and slightly melancholic, absorbed in activity, but isolated; here, the room is almost more empty that Hammershøi’s, if possible, and yet the emptiness is peaceful and contented.

Adolf Heinrich Hansen (1859-1925), Interior in Overførstegaarden, Collection Mark Mitchell

The magic of mood generated by all these unoccupied spaces is extraordinarily engaging and compelling: we are allowed into the domestic or the intimate areas of other lives, and see their familiar surroundings as though we were their friends or colleagues. We also sense something more of them, if we are lucky: some empathetic engagement with their occupations or with the kinds of lives lived in these resurrected interiors. The best of these paintings are fraught with significance, and provide windows for us onto other souls like our own.

We have a vast range of original paintings for sale within our collection so that you can celebrate the magnificence of phenomenal artists and intricate compositions in your home or your gallery space. The moods created and the painting techniques used are truly exquisite and wonderfully unique. As specialist fine art dealers in London we have a passion for this style of art and are dedicated to keeping it alive in the contemporary art world.

Franz Pitner,  A bourgeois drawing-room, s.& d. 1850, Collection Mark Mitchell

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Why do we like naïve art?

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

Late 19th-early 20th century American School, Still life with fish, after William Merritt Chase (1849-1916)

The Association of British Naïve Artists publishes quite a long introduction to the history of naïve art on its website, reiterating the qualities of innocence, childlikeness and naturalness in the style or genre of painting which has come to be known as naïve.  In the course of this, it makes some statements which might perhaps be challenged; for instance, that ‘Cave men, Aboriginals, Bedouins and desert monks expressed their observations in pure unadulterated fashion, almost like that of a child’, or that ‘The professional has to master a technique in order to free himself yet the innocent is born free’.

 Horse from the caves of Lascaux

Shetland pony

If you start to look seriously at, for instance, cave paintings, you rapidly become aware that these are produced by artists who were very far from children in their ability to represent animals, and that a great deal of technique had been mastered before these anatomically very convincing horses, deer and bison appeared on the walls. If anything, the painters had to be extremely sophisticated in order to produce an accurate picture for their peers, who were looking with art-historically untutored eyes at animals they knew very well, because they saw them every day.

Bison from the caves of Altamira

 American bison

Tawaraya Sotatsu, fl. early 17th century; Cow (detail), Kyoto National Museum

These Paleolithic paintings, which date from 16,500 – 12,000 BC, have far more in common with the intellectual refinement and fluid dexterity of Japanese screen painting than they have with the work of an ‘innocent’ who has not tried to ‘master a technique’. And when it comes to drawing and painting, children are actually ‘innocent’, not only of technique, but of the power to see their subject.  They aren’t used to looking at things properly before they draw them, so they draw what they know (or think) is there, rather than what they see. In the sense that they don’t know the rules of perspective – or the way to represent volume, foreshortening and anatomy on a two-dimensional surface – their vision is innocent and unadulterated; but it’s a purely solipsistic vision, it’s not observation.

From Children’s paintings from Georgia

Moreover, children’s art is not pure and unadulterated: it does operate according to rules.  They aren’t the sort of rules which allow you to produce three-dimensional effects on a flat piece of paper: they’re the rules of shorthand – semiotics or hieroglyphs, where one thing stands for another. So, a band of blue right at the top of the painting stands for the sky; a yellow disc stands for the sun, and a triangular shape is a roof.

 From the 38th International Children’s Exhibition of Fine Art Lidice 2010

Similarly, an animal is an amorphously-shaped blob with legs, neck and tail of various lengths and large ears. That’s a very long way from a naturalistic bison with its hump, facial details, horns, chest folds, knees, hooves, musculature and rump all fluently drawn, in the right place and in proportion.

19th century British School,  Polled heifer, Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading

If we compare one of the 18th and 19th century paintings of farm and domestic animals, which usually jump to mind when the words ‘naïve art’ are mentioned, with the Altamira bison, it can be seen that knowing the rules of adult art doesn’t guarantee sophistication. The differences between the Victorian cow and the Paleolithic bison illustrated here are the differences between technically-accomplished and officially naïve paintings, and ‘childlike’ or ‘innocent vision’ has nothing to do with the case. The cow has been observed, unlike the child’s horse/ dog/ rabbit/ interchangeable mammal. All its characteristic features are there, many of them quite convincingly painted: it has general cow-like articulation and nicely-depicted hooves. But the general proportions, plasticity and integration with the setting are all wildly askew. It’s not terribly well-drawn; however, it’s not very badly done either – it’s somewhere between, in an area that we tend to find rather endearing.

 20th century American School, The Athlete, Museum of Bad Art

 This, in comparison, is bad art – officially stunningly awful, from the Museum of Bad Art – by someone who hasn’t observed (or has only superficially observed), and can’t draw what he/she has observed. This is not naïve, and definitely not endearing, and few people, apart from the perpetrator’s mother, would want it on their walls. Bad drawing, though, is not the sole preserve of bad artists:

 Detail of Pope’s hands

Yes, I know who drew these, and how many millions they’re worth; but the fact is, whatever Bacon could do, he couldn’t draw hands, and is always either leaving them out, hiding them, painting bunchy boneless fists, or giving in and letting us see his weakness. His sophistication and darkness is so much at the other extreme of the scale from naïve art, however, that it’s practically creeping up on it from the other direction.

‘Valentine’ cavalry trooper, c.1820, Denzil Grant Antiques, Bury St Edmunds

The Athlete is worlds apart from this cavalry trooper of c.1820 – here, the artist can’t draw hands, either, but the rest of it has a degree of competence, elegance and observation which pushes it over the border of bad drawing, and into attractive, desirable, naïve art.

 William Wheldon, The Nicholson family, 1856, Debenham Antiques, Suffolk

Possibly this is also true of the rather frightening Nicholson family, painted by one of their relatives, a William Wheldon; he was actually quite good at leaves, although his flowers leave a lot to be desired – but his sense of space can’t be examined too closely (what are the parents standing on? where are the lower parts of their bodies?). Nothing about this work is childlike or innocent; it’s full of observation – there’s just a disjunction between what’s been observed and how it has been expressed in paint.

Wm Merritt Chase, Still life (Fish from the Adriatic), c.1907-14, Chrysler Museum of Art

And this is what’s at work in our Still life with fish. The unknown painter has almost certainly been looking at similar compositions by an accomplished still life painter: very possibly the American artist, William Merritt Chase.  Chase (1849-1916) was born in Indiana, studied in New York, Munich and Italy, and returned to New York to teach. He painted portraits of many of the more notable of his contemporaries, as well as landscapes en plein air, and still life subjects. In the latter he often sets the shine of glazed or metal vessels against the texture of wood or cloth, and just as frequently introduces an group of dead fish into the composition. He captures the sheen and opalescent colours of the fish against dark grounds, which also set off the metal and porcelain dishes, and emphasize the classic nature of the genre and its bonds with works by Chardin, Melendez and Claesz. These works were very popular and sold for large sums, causing Chase to fret that he would go down in history as a ‘painter of fish’.

William Merritt Chase, Still life with fish, c.1908, Metropolitan Museum, New York

Many students passed through his New York classes and Long Island summer schools, and it is possible that the painter of this particular still life (below) was one of the more temporary of these students. This is a naïve version of a William Merritt Chase painting; neither ‘natural’, untutored nor childlike, it has passages of good painting, such as the red fish and the crab, whilst other areas have a much less sure grip of perspective and their placing in space. The uncertain drawing of the chased silver salt cellar, for example, and the tendency of some of the fish to be sited in a different space from the table-top, in combination with the beautifully-observed fish in the middle-ground, right, propel this work from a uniformly mediocre work into a much more interesting and thoroughly attractive genre, which can only be called ‘naïve’.

Late 19th-early 20th century American School, Still life with fish, after William Merritt Chase (1849-1916)


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The Mirror of Venus

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

 Stephen Rose, The mirror of Venus, 2012

This is one of the most colourful and decorative still life paintings within our collection – at once a still life which seems purely representational, and a work which veers towards abstraction. – at once a still life which seems purely representational, and a work which veers towards abstraction. But is it just an observational study of forms, volumes and effects: just a composition of coloured shapes? Is there more to it than a group of glass scent bottles on a reflecting table? Why is it called The mirror of Venus?

Mirror of Hathor, c.1479-25 BC, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

‘Mirror’ actually means ‘reflection’ – it doesn’t mean the object, which is properly called a looking-glass; and the theme of Venus and her reflection is a very ancient one in art. Hathor, goddess of love, joy and beauty, is associated in ancient Egyptian art and the decorative arts with all the appurtenances of beauty – ornamental cosmetic jars and pots, palettes and looking-glasses. She is also known as ‘Lady of Malachite’ and ‘Lady of Turquoise’, semi-precious stones which were ground to make an equivalent to eye-shadow.  When this was applied to the skin, the user was in some sense taking on or absorbing the goddess’s being: becoming her reflection or mirror. Hathor, often appearing as a cow or part cow, was therefore a very suitable emblem to decorate a hand glass, as in this example; she is usually shown with a woman’s head and cow’s ears, whilst the solar disc she carries on her head conveniently becomes the actual looking-glass (made of polished silver or bronze).

 Bronze looking-glass cover, Hellenistic style, 4th century AD, Musée du Louvre

 In Greek mythology Hathor’s equivalent was Aphrodite, who was born from the sea; and thus her watery element very conveniently became the substance which reflected the goddess and her beauty. On this cover for a looking-glass (above) she is shown, either twice or with one of her handmaids, doing her hair with the help of a bowl of water and a hand-glass, and so getting double the reflection. Sympathetic magic (as it were) might help the human owner of this object to believe that Aphrodite would inspire her own process of beautification, and perhaps even inhabit her, so that she too would become a reflection of the goddess.

 Aphrodite & Eros, 1st century AD, the House of Apollo, Pompeii

In this Pompeiian fresco of Aphrodite and Eros, the goddess is ready, enthroned in her expertly-arranged dishabille, while Eros holds up a looking-glass for her to see her own perfection. In other versions of this subject she holds the glass and is surrounded by a train of erotes or infant cupids; Rabun Taylor points out in The moral mirror of Roman art (2008, p. 45) that, ‘Venus… receives an…  injunction from her retinue of erotes…: “look into the mirror; remember you are  a goddess” .  In a sense, a part of Venus resided in every woman’s mirror. Her task was to liberate the goddess – to make Venus part of herself…’

 School of Fontainebleau, Venus at her toilet, c.1550, Musée du Louvre

By the time this mid-16th century painting was executed, by an artist of the Fontainebleau School, the image of Aphrodite enthroned, regarding her own perfection, had become conflated with the image of her preparing herself to conquer. The container of water is now her bath; it contains her, reflects her beauty, and is the element from which she is made. Because this is a scene in which the goddess is beautifying herself, more props are creeping into the painting: as well as the bronze and gold water pitcher and the looking-glass, Venus has pearls and precious stones bound into her hair, and Eros – or Cupid- is bringing her a bottle of scent.

 Peter Paul Rubens, Venus before the looking-glass, 1614-15, Liechtenstein Collection

Rubens’s Venus before the looking-glass is another version of the subject; now, however, instead of Venus holding up the glass for a private view of herself, Cupid is supporting the glass, through which the goddess stares straight into the spectator’s eyes; – or, as Taylor says, ‘The public Venus, validated by her mirror, is as frank and confident as Manet’s Olympia… [she] provides an almost Ovidian brand of female empowerment within a patriarchal… society.’ She also glories in the precious gems which adorn her – the bracelet and earrings covered in great glowing pearls, which are also emblems of Venus.

Francesco Albani , The toilet of Venus, 1621-33, Musée du Louvre

Another treatment of this was commissioned in the early 17th century by Ferdinand Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua; it shows Venus being prepared by the Graces to meet her lover Adonis. On a cloud above her, her chariot awaits, drawn by swans and tended by erotes.  The goddess is seated beside the sea from which she was born, and which will form a vast mirror for her beauty when she rides out in her chariot; a smaller looking-glass is held by another cupid, and the nearby fountain provides both reflection of her charms and water for her bath.

 Lo specchio di Venere, Island of Pantelleria, Sicily

The idea of Venus’s birth from the water, her bath as part of a divine beautification, and the reflection of her beauty on earth come together in the naming of various lakes across the world.  These are often lakes formed in the craters of extinct volcanoes; they are usually very deep and extremely placid, unruffled by currents or tides, and sheltered from winds by the rim of the crater. This one in Italy is a typical example: Lo specchio di Venere, the mirror of Venus: a heart-shaped lake in Pantelleria, which reflects the tranquil sky and also (with luck) the face of the goddess of beauty and love.

Edward Burne-Jones, The mirror of Venus, 1898, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian

Burne-Jones adapted the idea of this calm, flat lake in a rocky landscape for the setting of his painting, The mirror of Venus.  The goddess is no longer bathing, preparing herself for conquest or sitting enthroned; instead she forms the focal point of a frieze of her handmaidens, as they kneel around the lake, using it to mirror their own beauty and that of Venus herself. She, however, no longer needs to look at her own reflection, just as she no longer needs the props of earlier paintings – the pearls, the golden pitchers and baths and scent flagons. This is a purely decorative and aesthetic celebration of the beautiful, expressed through an harmonious arrangement of composition, colour and line; so that the subject and the manner of painting it become one.

Georges Seurat, Young woman powdering herself, 1890, Courtauld Gallery

Seurat’s painting of his mistress at her toilet, from the same decade as Burne-Jone’s work, takes the opposite route. Instead of removing all the props and narrative from the subject, he transforms the goddess into an ordinary young Frenchwoman of the 1890s, seated at her dressing-table, preparing herself for conquest. She does not need erotes or any other sign of divinity; she reflects the goddess merely by copying the divine toilet. The looking-glass held up by numerous cupids through the history of art becomes part of a small, curvaceous Art Nouveau object, which also holds her scent bottles. Another looking-glass hangs on the back wall and reflects a vase of roses, which symbolize the woman’s power in love; it takes the form of a triptych, like a small mediaeval altarpiece – the only hint in the painting at a divine connection.

Pablo Picasso, The dressing-table, 1910

In Picasso’s Cubist work, The dressing-table, even Venus (or her echo in a human woman) has all but vanished.  The only sign of her is a vague reflection in the looking-glass (here, of Picasso’s mistress, Fernande Olivier). Instead, the dressing-table itself stands in for the goddess and her toilette, and the things posed on the table, including a scent flaçon and a toothbrush in a glass, take the place of her attendants and support the theme.

 Stephen Rose, The mirror of Venus, 2012

Stephen Rose’s painting, The mirror of Venus, carries on this process of stripping away and leaving fewer and fewer objects to indicate the subject of the painting. Here is a vanitas from which Venus herself has now completely disappeared; it evokes the toilet of the goddess without the need for her or any other actors, and from which even the props have been successively leached away.  The looking-glass has become the mirrored top of the dressing-table – at least, this is what we assume; there is no definition or boundary within the canvas, and the painting conjures up an infinite space where only a brightly reflective surface beneath the scent bottles can be taken for granted.  Because of the lack of boundaries, however, the connection back to the illimitable sea from which Aphrodite was born, and to the wide, tranquil lakes known as the mirror of Venus, is very plain: the mirror-like table-top may also be a sheet of reflecting water. The scent bottles, all by themselves, tell us what the subject is, and their variety and number hint at the capriciouness of the goddess. This is a very modern mythology. The mirror of Venus is one of the most unique still life paintings for sale within our collection thanks to Stephen Rose’s use of alternative subject matter, interesting composition and use of bright, decorative colours.

 

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Terry Watts: art, nature and the Romantic

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

The Romantic movement in art grew out of an increased interest in the sublime and in picturesque notions of nature in the late 18th century. Before that, anything beyond the walls of the estate or garden had been regarded as wild, uncivilized and dangerous; now every educated person wished to travel through empty landscapes and feel the power and sublimity of the natural world. This desire fed into a reaction against industrialization in the early 19th century, and a further reaction against the order and reason implicit in the 18th century Age of Enlightenment (an age which was seen as having led to the French revolution).  Artists wanted to portray nature, not as a place of tranquillity, ordered and ruled by man, but as a locus of terrifying and elemental forces which mirrored the passion and tumult of the human spirit.  Even in landscapes which appeared serene and welcoming, the artist saw the expression of mood and emotion, reflected from the individual experiencing it.

Terry Watts, Winter afternoon: Lyme Regis

 Caspar David Friedrich, Monk on the seashore, 1808-10, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Watts is a contemporary British painter working in the Romantic landscape tradition of, for instance, the German artist Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).

You may from a distance think that he is a photographer of fashionably lonely and open countryside or coastal areas, but move in closer and you can seen that he is carefully composing and crafting paintings of the living English landscape. And he is not copying them from photos; instead he starts with an actual topographical location, with which he blends elements from other scenes in order to achieve a distanced and more spiritual response. The time of day, the weather, and the viewpoint all become part of the emotional truth of the chosen place.

Terry Watts, Brightening later: Dorset-Hampshire border

Caspar David Friedrich, Evening, 1824, Kunsthalle, Mannheim

Like Friedrich, Watts is attempting, through the contemplation of nature, to convey the meaning and sublimity of the landscape.  He specializes in panoramic scenes, often with a low horizon and enhanced perspective (as Van Gogh composed his landscapes), which emphasize the vastness of his skies, and endow the immense piles and vistas of the cloudscapes with a visionary significance.

Caspar David Friedrich, The great enclosure, c.1832, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

 Terry Watts, Rising Tide: the estuary of the Medway, Kent

Watts trained at Camberwell and Hammersmith Colleges of Art, and is a member of the Royal Society of British Artists. He also exhibits at the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, the Royal Society of Marine Artists, the Royal Society of Birmingham Artists, and at provincial galleries throughout Britain. Works by Watts can be found in public, private and corporate collections in Britain, France, the Netherlands and the USA.

Terry Watts, Wire across the field

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George Weissbort

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

George Weissbort, Self portrait with beard, 1973

George Weissbort, whose work we are delighted to present in our gallery, sadly died during the summer, aged 85.  A charming man, his knowledge of the Old Masters was informed by hours (literally hours) of studying them closely, and reflecting on aspects such as their tonal construction, the quality of the line, and the ‘negative spaces’ around and between objects.

 George Weissbort, Forest clearing, Vienna

He was born in Belgium in 1928, but his parents brought him and his younger brother to London in 1935. He began to draw seriously at the age of twelve, and although he was first drawn to the excitement of abstract expressionism, contact with Arthur Segal in Oxford during the war reaffirmed his natural bent towards realism.  After the war he attended the Central School of Art & Design (now Central St Martin’s), and was taught by Ruskin Spear and Rodrigo Moynihan.  Bernard Meninsky, who taught life drawing at the Central School, also introduced him to study of the Old Masters. His tastes moved back in time from the work of Cézanne and Matisse to Corot, Chardin, Vermeer, Velasquez, Holbein, Titian and Piero della Francesca, amongst others.

Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors, 1533, National Gallery, London

As he states in one of his essays, at one point ‘Jean de Dinteville’s dagger tassel in the National Gallery’s The Ambassadors was my favourite passage-ground in all European painting’. He was capable of remaining patiently in front of such a detail for long periods – or even for days – minutely observing the methods by which his preferred artists achieved their results. He was equally interested in another branch of the process, and experimented with his own pigments and media, grinding his colours and mixing oils in varying quantities. His approach to art, in other words, was as close as possible to that of a 15th century painter in a Renaissance workshop, and the results provided an island of intellectual integrity amongst the furore of contemporary art.

George Weissbort, Still life with onion plaits, wooden cheese box, fruit & a bottle, s.& d. 1957

His obituary in The Independent quotes Brian Sewell, a friend, as saying of him that Weissbort ‘painted the right pictures at the wrong time’. His appeal was to those who understood his models and influences; he could be described as a painter’s painter, and the same obituary quotes Paula Rego describing him as ‘a truly honest artist who knows so much about painting’.

 

George Weissbort, In the studio: a break for Pepsi, s.& d. 1979

His friend John French made a short film about him, just before his death; this can be seen on YouTube: it penetrates the crowded room where he painted, watches him at work, and also features his cousin, the collector Daniel Wargon, discussing Weissbort’s life, his approach to painting, his success in Paris in the 1960s, and his feeling of disenfranchisement from the obsessions of modern art. As Weissbort himself said,

‘Real art’ is very difficult to appreciate… ‘contemporary art’ is very easy.

 George Weissbort, The rooftops of Ostend, s.& d. 1965

George Weissbort ( b. 1928; d. 9th July 2013)

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LAPADA Fair

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

So here I am, Excitingly, packing up my Art Collection for the LAPADA Fair in Berkeley Square… I have prepared a Map (so as not to get lost on the way), as it’s at least – ooh, Several Hundred Yards away from the Gallery, and I do not wish want to tire my Trusty Steed. I have also made several copies of the Map (or, at least, my Private Secretary has done so), and given them to the Carter’s Men, who will be following behind with my precious Paintings safely swathed in linen and sacking.

The Way to Berkeley Square from Avery Row: the Map courtesy of MapCo.net

I have shown at nine Fairs so far, but this is my first Appearance at LAPADA (or the London and Provincial Antique Dealerf’ Afsociation, as it is more familiarly known). I am a Member of this August Body (obviously, not a Provincial one, but of course they are very welcoming to those who have travelled to the Capital from as far away as Hertfordshire and even Cumberland). Those who are venturing here from more Rural Parts will find themselves very much at home, since Berkeley Square is a very Green Place, and large Trees obtrude themselves into the pavilions of the Fair, striking up through the Canvas Ceilings in a most picturesque Fashion.

 A  Berkeley Tree

I have prepared in my usual Meticulous Manner by having my Joiner construct a small model of my Booth to one-tenth of the scale. He has also produced small Facsimiles of the Paintings, which I have hung upon the model until satisfied that I have lighted upon the most Harmonious and Aesthetically Pleasing arrangement. I have also examined minutely the spectrum of paint colours supplied by Master Dulux, and have taken advice from Messrs Robert and James Adam, whose use of Colour in decoration is Exemplary. My Joiner has also assisted me with the lighting, as one must supply one’s own candelabra, girandoles and torchères for the illumination of one’s Booth.

 

Here is a very clever Panorama of the LAPADA Fair, which you may click upon, and which seems to move in the most Entertaining Fashion.

Master Stephen Rose, The worn Leather Chair

The Paintings which I intend to exhibit in the pavilions will include works by those dashing and brilliant Artists, Messrs Stephen Rose and Terry Watts, as well as Pictures from the Hand of Master George Weissbort, who sadly departed this life earlier in the year, and is Greatly Mourned for his many talents.

Master George Weissbort, An Arrangement with a Jar of Peppers…

I invite all those of you who care for the Arts to visit me in the resort of Berkeley Square, to refresh your spirits by the contemplation (and, who knows, by the purchase) of many delightful Works in Oil Paint, Water Colour and Chalks, and to make merry in the Greenwood Pavilions.

Master Terry Watts, Wire across the field

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Artist’s Palate

Posted on September 10, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

Queen Nefetari makes an offering to Osiris, Tomb QV66, Valley of the Queens, Egypt, 1255 BC

Food and art have been linked since very early times – perhaps for different reasons, as with the striking fresoes in the Tomb of Nefetari,where the favourite queen of Rameses the Great is shown with an array of objects on three large reed mats, which she is offering to the god Osiris. As well as two large cowhides, with their tails still attached, these include legs of beef (or, possibly, goats), vase-shaped baskets full of berries, heaps of vegetables, and decorated loaves of golden bread. All these are carefully arranged, composed into patterns and depicted in vivid colours; they have a sacramental cast to them, since they are part of the tribute the Queen offers in order to progress through the afterlife. They also needed to be readily identifiable by the god, so that he recognizes the value of the offering made to him.

 

Unswept floor, Roman version of a Hellenistic mosaic, Museu Gregoriano Profano, Vatican, Rome

 Secular still life paintings of food were a feature both of ancient Greek and Roman art; here the thrust of murals, vase paintings, mosaics and easel paintings was decorative rather than sacred. Few, if any Greek paintings survive, but objects such as the mosaic Unswept floor in a the Vatican Museum, copied from an earlier Hellenistic original by the Greek Sosos of Pergamon, 2nd century BC, demonstrate a love of trompe l’oeil. Remnants of food are represented as though the white tessellated pavement were strewn with the detritus of a banquet – fish and animal bones, a wishbone, crab claws, half-eaten olives and sprays of grape stems, snail and mussel shells, pieces of fruit, crumbs, stalks and leaves – faithfully depicted in tiny pieces of stone and glass. A little mouse homes in on a fragment of food; like the rest, he is depicted from above, and casts a shadow to emphasize the ‘reality’ of this solidified memory: a sort of early installation art.

 

Still life with game birds, a dish of eggs, a wine jug & other utensils, Pompeii, from the House of Julia Felix, Archaeological Museum of Naples

The Roman frescoes which remain to us show still life arrangements which are much more conventional – to our eyes – and in fact similar to modern paintings. The branch of green peaches and leaves disposed on two levels with a glass carafe of water, from the frescoed wall of a villa in Herculaneum (Archaeological Museum of Naples), could easily be mistaken for a slightly naïve 21st century painting; the still life above, from the House of Julia Felix in Pompeii, is even more recognizable as a conscious arrangement of beautifully-shaped domestic objects. These are the daily stuff of life, bought, cooked, served in other mundane items, eaten and forgotten. But the artist has rescued them, preserving them from time, decay and hungry mouths in order to present them as a satisfying composition of curving lines, solid forms, light, shadow and colour.

Ferran Adrià, an el Bulli fish dish

The current exhibition (until 29 September 2013) at Somerset House on Ferran Adrià and his restaurant, el Bulli,   is the logical end of this ancient link between art and food, and it includes all the elements of an exhibition of paintings – the history, a display of notes, sketches and models, and the creations of the artist (seen, in this case, through film) of his masterpieces as they appear in laboratory, kitchen and restaurant.

Ferran Adrià, Fire

Adrià’s dishes are still life arrangements in themselves – created to look, on the plate, like abstract patterns, representational depictions (like Fire, above), or even like idealized paintings. The boundary between food and art blurs, indicating something of the meaning that has been given to these apparently purely decorative images through the ages. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the still life as a complete and individual object all but disappeared, popping up as background details within sacred paintings, usually for symbolic effect (although these miniature still life motifs are often very beautifully painted.)

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini marriage portrait, 1434, National Gallery, London; detail

In Van Eyck’s Arnolfini marriage portrait, the background around the couple is alive with such small still life arrangements, which summarize their lives, history and present circumstances. Even the detail of the oranges on the chest to the left – one of them put on the windowsill, to ripen in the sun – is an indication of wealth, and the position of the sitter, who can obtain these exotic luxuries.

Caravaggio, The supper at Emmaus, 1601, National Gallery, London; detail

In a sacred painting, such a detail would be even more loaded with symbolic meaning – fruit can carry many types of significance, from the pomegranate which stands for the Resurrection, to the signs of rot on an apple, which symbolize earthly transience. In the detail, above, of Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus, the basket of fruit which stands on the table in the foreground is given importance by its very position between the actors in the sacred drama beyond, and the spectator. He is meant to notice this basket and to contemplate its contents, which include – as well as the pomegranate and apples – the grapes of the Eucharist and a pear for Christ. The vine leaves are torn and spotted, and the whole arrangement poised between mortality and decay.  At the same time, the basket is balanced on the very edge of the table, so that its weight ought to cause it to fall; the spectator is intended to see that it is the power of life vested in Christ which allows the basket to remain in its unrealistic and gravity-defying position.

Ferran Adrià, an el Bulli dish with an abstract design

Still life paintings from the 19th century until today have tended to be produced as purely decorative paintings, celebrating nothing but the ephemeral objects they represent – but perhaps this in itself is symbolic. The exhibition of Ferran Adrià’s work at Somerset House is ‘an ode to the creativity, imagination, innovation, talent and teamwork’ of the staff at the restaurant: in other words, the reproduction, praise and immortalization of a transient activity, with a very short-lived result. Perhaps no still life, of paint or any other medium, is free of an inevitable association with the reverse of immortality, and we value these compositions of beautiful or interesting objects to a large extent because of the shortness of their actual lives.

Stephen Rose, The grace of tulips, 2012, collection Mark Mitchell

In this painting, the sensuous qualities of the tulips predominate – the brilliant colouring set against the glossy monochrome ground of black table top and white porcelain; the curving, swooping stems and leaves – but there are notes in the composition which summon up very different ideas… The white platter carries overtones of a surgical dish; the tulips are bound and bruised; they are deprived of water, and will soon droop and die, and the coffin-shape of the dish will become even more relevant. Just as in the basket of fruit on Caravaggio’s table, this 21st century still life is in part an elegy for the transience of life and youth.

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