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And God Created Woman (French: Et Dieu... créa la femme) is a 1956 French romantic drama film directed by Roger Vadim in his directorial debut and starring Brigitte Bardot. Though not her first film, it is widely recognized as the vehicle that launched Bardot into the public spotlight and immediately created her "sex kitten" persona, making her an overnight sensation.

 

When the film was released in the United States by Kingsley-International Pictures in 1957, it pushed the boundaries of the representation of sexuality in American cinema, and most available prints of the film were heavily edited to conform with the Hays Code censorial standards.[citation needed] Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich credited it for "breaking French cinema out of U.S. art houses and into the mainstream and thereby inadvertently also paving the way for the takeover in France of the New Wave filmmakers."[5]

 

A poorly-received English-language remake, also titled And God Created Woman, was directed by Vadim and released in 1988.

 

Plot

Juliette is an 18-year-old orphan in Saint-Tropez, France,[6][7] with a high level of sexual energy. She makes no effort to restrain her natural sensuality – lying nude in her yard, habitually kicking her shoes off and stalking about barefoot, and disregarding many societal conventions and the opinions of others. This behavior causes a stir and attracts the attention of most of the men around her.

 

Her first suitor is the much older and wealthy Eric Carradine. He wants to build a new casino in Saint-Tropez, but his plans are blocked by a small shipyard on the stretch of land which he needs for the development; the shipyard is owned by the Tardieu family.

 

Antoine, the eldest of the three Tardieu brothers, returns home for the weekend to hear Carradine's proposal and Juliette is waiting for him to take her away with him. His intentions are short-term, and he spurns her by leaving Saint-Tropez without her.

  

U.S theatrical advertisement, 9 April 1958

Tiring of her outrageous behavior, Juliette's guardians threaten to send her back to the orphanage, which will confine her until she is 21. To keep her in town, Carradine pleads unsuccessfully with Antoine to marry her. His infatuated and naive younger brother Michel sees his opportunity and proposes marriage to Juliette. Despite her love for Antoine, she accepts.

 

When Antoine is contracted to return home and work for Carradine, Juliette's behavior becomes increasingly disrespectful of her husband. In a huff, she takes one of the family's boats. When it develops engine trouble, she has to be saved by Antoine. While they are washed up together on a wild beach, she seduces him.

 

Juliette begins acting bizarrely. She takes to her bed, claiming to have a fever. She tells Christian, the youngest Tardieu brother, that she had sex with Antoine on the beach. When Madame Tardieu, mother of the three boys, hears about it, she tells Michel that he has to dump Juliette promptly. Michel goes to their room to talk with Juliette, but she has gone off to the Bar des Amis to drink and dance.

 

Michel tries to go looking for her, but Antoine locks him inside, telling him to forget her. Michel fights his brother for the key and heads out after Juliette.

 

Eric has been alerted that Juliette is making a spectacle of herself and comes to the bar to collect her. Juliette refuses to leave with him. Michel arrives but Juliette refuses to talk with him and continues her improvised and sexually suggestive dancing. When she ignores Michel's order to stop, Michel shoots at her. Eric steps in and is slightly wounded. Antoine offers to drive Eric to a doctor and they leave. Michel angrily slaps Juliette four times. She only smiles at him with satisfaction that she has provoked him to this behavior. En route to the doctor, Eric tells Antoine that he is going to reassign him to work elsewhere to put some distance between him and Michel and Juliette. He says: "That girl was made to destroy men". In the final scene, Michel and Juliette walk home together, hand in hand.

 

Cast

Brigitte Bardot as Juliette Hardy

Curd Jürgens as Éric Carradine

Jean-Louis Trintignant as Michel Tardieu

Marie Glory as Mme. Tardieu

Georges Poujouly as Christian Tardieu

Christian Marquand as Antoine Tardieu

Jane Marken as Madame Morin

Jean Tissier as M. Vigier-Lefranc

Isabelle Corey as Lucienne

Jacqueline Ventura as Mme Vigier-Lefranc

Jacques Ciron as The Secretary of Éric

Paul Faivre as M. Morin

Jany Mourey as The Orphanage Representative

Philippe Grenier as Perri

Jean Lefebvre as The Man who wanted to dance

Leopoldo Francés as The Dancer

Jean Toscano as René

Production

By the mid-1950s Roger Vadim was an established screenwriter and had written several movies starring his then wife Brigitte Bardot. Producer Raoul Levy wanted Vadim to write and direct a film starring Bardot, and suggested he adapt the book The Little Genius by Maurice Garçon. Vadim disliked the book and came up with a new story, one based on a trial of a woman who had been the mistress of three different brothers, and who killed one of them. Vadim was particularly taken with the attitude of the woman towards her lovers, the jury and the police. Levy liked Vadim's idea and obtained finance.[8]

 

Levy succeeded in raising finance from Columbia, who would provide color and CinemaScope provided Curd Jurgens was given a role. The parts of the brothers had already been cast so Vadim rewrote the script in two days to expand the part of an arms dealer so it could be offered to Jurgens.[8]

 

Reception

Box office

The film was a big hit in France, one of the ten most popular films at the British box-office in its year of release[9] and the biggest foreign-language film ever in the United States at the time.[10] The film earned $4 million in the U.S. (grossing $12 million), and a further $21 million around the globe.[2][3]

 

The film was extremely popular in Kansas City, where it played for a year at the Kimo Theatre, grossing over $100,000, a record for Kansas City at the time.[11] In Europe, this movie smashed attendance records from Norway to the Middle East.[12] It earned for France over $8 million, more than France's biggest export — "the Renault Dauphine".[13]

 

In the United States the film was released by Kingsley-International, a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures as Columbia was forbidden to release a film with nudity and adult themes. The Catholic Legion of Decency gave it a "C" for "Condemned" rating. A Columbia spokesman stated that the film would have received twice as many bookings with a less restrictive "B" rating, but would only have done half the business.[14] Variety reported that in spite of the rating, the film broke "local records at the Paris Theatre, N.Y., and at other houses where it has played", and noted that "In Fitchburg, Mass., it actually outgrossed Ten Commandments."[15]

 

Author Peter Lev describes the film's impact in America:

 

And God Created Woman's impact on the film industry was significant. New Bardot films were eagerly snapped up by distributors, and old Bardot films were released or re-released. Prices for distribution rights to foreign films escalated overall.[16]

 

Critical response

When the film was released in the United States, Bosley Crowther, the film critic for The New York Times, found Brigitte Bardot attractive but the film lacking and was not able to recommend it. He wrote: "Bardot moves herself in a fashion that fully accentuates her charms. She is undeniably a creation of superlative craftsmanship. But that's the extent of the transcendence, for there is nothing sublime about the script of this completely single-minded little picture. ...We can't recommend this little item as a sample of the best in Gallic films. It is clumsily put together and rather bizarrely played. There is nothing more than sultry fervor in the performance of Mlle. Bardot, and Christian Marquand and Jean-Louis Trintignant are mainly heavy-breathers as her men".[17]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_God_Created_Woman_(1956_film)

 

Film critic Dennis Schwartz wrote: "The breezy erotic drama was laced with some thinly textured sad moments that hardly resonated as serious drama. But as slight as the story was it was always lively and easy to take on the eyes, adding up to hardly anything more than a bunch of snapshots of Bardot posturing as a sex kitten in various stages of undress. The public loved it and it became a big box-office smash, and paved the way for a spate of sexy films to follow. What was more disturbing than its dullish dialogue and flaunting of Bardot as a sex object, was that underneath its call for liberation was a reactionary and sexist view of sex."[18]

 

Rotten Tomatoes reports a 69% approval rating based on 13 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10.[19]

 

Censorship

When released in the United States, the film was condemned by the National Legion of Decency.[20]

 

Police made attempts to suppress its screening in the U.S.[21][22]

 

Saint-Tropez (/ˌsæn troʊˈpeɪ, - trəˈ-/ SAN troh-PAY, - trə-,[4][5] French: [sɛ̃ tʁɔpe]; Provençal: Sant Tropetz [san(t) tʀuˈpes]) is a commune in the Var department and the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Southern France. It is 68 kilometres (42 miles) west of Nice and 100 kilometres (62 miles) east of Marseille, on the French Riviera, of which it is one of the best-known towns. In 2018, Saint-Tropez had a population of 4,103. The adjacent narrow body of water is the Gulf of Saint-Tropez (French: Golfe de Saint-Tropez), stretching to Sainte-Maxime to the north under the Massif des Maures.

 

Saint-Tropez was a military stronghold and fishing village until the beginning of the 20th century. It was the first town on its coast to be liberated during World War II as part of Operation Dragoon. After the war, it became an internationally known seaside resort, renowned principally because of the influx of artists of the French New Wave in cinema and the Yé-yé movement in music. It later became a resort for the European and American jet set and tourists.

 

History

 

Aerial view of Saint-Tropez, with Pampelonne beach in background and the citadel and the port in the foreground

 

Citadel of Saint-Tropez

 

Map of Saint-Tropez (c. 1680)

In 599 BC, the Phocaeans from Ionia founded Massilia (present-day Marseille) and established other coastal mooring sites in the area. Through the writings of Roman historian and military commander Pliny the Elder, it was found that Saint-Tropez was known in ancient times as Athenopolis and that it belonged to the Massilians.[6] In 31 BC, the Romans invaded the region. Their citizens built many opulent villas in the area, including one known as the "Villa des Platanes" (Villa of the Plane Trees). The closest settlement to Saint-Tropez in antiquity is attested as Heraclea-Caccabaria, today Cavalaire-sur-Mer, situated on the southern end of the peninsula, while the gulf of Saint-Tropez was called sinus Sambracitanus, which likely survives in the settlement name of Les Issambres.[7]

 

The town owes its current name to the early Christian martyr Saint Torpes. Legend tells of his decapitation at Pisa during Nero's reign, with his body placed in a rotten boat along with a rooster and a dog. The body purportedly landed at the present-day location of the town of Saint-Tropez.[8][9][10]

 

Toward the end of the ninth century, long after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, pirates and privateers began a hundred years of attacks and sackings. In the tenth century, the village of La Garde-Freinet was founded 15 km (9 mi) to the north of Saint-Tropez. From 890 to 972, Saint-Tropez and its surroundings became an Arab Muslim colony dominated by the nearby Saracenic settlement of Fraxinet;[11][12] in 940, Saint-Tropez was controlled by Nasr ibn Ahmad.[12] From 961 to 963, Adalbert, son of Berengar, the pretender to the throne of Lombardy who was pursued by Otto I, hid at Saint-Tropez.[12] In 972, the Muslims of Saint-Tropez held Maïeul, the abbot of Cluny, for ransom.[12]

 

In 976, William I, Count of Provence, Lord of Grimaud, began attacking the Muslims, and in 980 he built a tower where the Suffren tower now stands. In 1079 and 1218, Papal bulls mentioned the existence of a manor at Saint-Tropez.

  

Saint-Tropez "le vieux port" (the old port)

From 1436, Count René I (the "good King René") tried to repopulate Provence. He created the Barony of Grimaud and appealed to the Genoan Raphael de Garezzio, a wealthy gentleman who had sent a fleet of caravels carrying 60 Genoese families to the area. In return, Count René promised to exempt the citizens from taxation. On 14 February 1470, Jean de Cossa, Baron of Grimaud and Grand Seneschal of Provence, agreed that the Genoan could build city walls and two large towers, which still stand: one tower is at the end of the Grand Môle and the other is at the entrance to the Ponche.

 

The city became a small republic with its own fleet and army and was administered by two consuls and 12 elected councillors. In 1558, the city's captain Honorat Coste was empowered to protect the city. The captain led a militia and mercenaries who successfully resisted attacks by the Turks and Spanish, succored Fréjus and Antibes and helped the Archbishop of Bordeaux regain control of the Lérins Islands.

 

In 1577, the daughter of the Marquis Lord of Castellane, Genevieve de Castilla, married Jean-Baptiste de Suffren, Marquis de Saint-Cannet, Baron de La Môle, and advisor to the parliament of Provence. The lordship of Saint-Tropez became the prerogative of the De Suffren family. One of the most notable members of this family was the later vice-admiral Pierre André de Suffren de Saint-Tropez (1729–1788), veteran of the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War.

 

In September 1615, Saint-Tropez was visited by a delegation led by the Japanese samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga that was on its way to Rome but was forced by weather to stop in the town. This may have been the first contact between the French and the Japanese.

  

Bust of Saint-Tropez during the Bravades

The local noblemen were responsible for raising an army that repulsed a fleet of Spanish galleons on 15 June 1637; Les Bravades des Espagnols, a local religious and military celebration, commemorates this victory of the Tropezian militia.[13] Count René's promise in 1436 to not tax the citizens of Saint-Tropez was honored until 1672, when Louis XIV abrogated it as he imposed French control.

 

The Gulf of Saint-Tropez was known as the Gulf of Grimaud until the end of the 19th century.

 

During the 1920s, Saint-Tropez attracted famous figures from the fashion world such as Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli. During World War II, the landing on 15 August 1944 began the Allied invasion of southern France, Operation Dragoon. In the 1950s, Saint-Tropez became internationally renowned as the setting for such films as And God Created Woman, which starred French actress Brigitte Bardot.

 

In May 1965, an Aérospatiale Super Frelon pre-production aircraft crashed in the gulf, killing its pilot.

 

On 4 March 1970, the French submarine Eurydice, with its home port as Saint-Tropez, disappeared in the Mediterranean with 57 crew aboard after a mysterious explosion.

 

The motto of Saint-Tropez is Ad usque fidelis, Latin for "faithful to the end". After the Dark Age of plundering the French Riviera, Raphaël de Garesio landed in Saint-Tropez on 14 February 1470, with 22 men, simple peasants or sailors who had left the overcrowded Italian Riviera. They rebuilt and repopulated the area, and in exchange were granted by a representative of the "good king", Jean de Cossa, Baron of Grimaud and Seneschal of Provence, various privileges, including some previously reserved exclusively for lords, such as exemptions from taxes status and the right to bear arms. About ten years later, a great wall with towers stood watch to protect the new houses from sea and land attack; some 60 families formed the new community. On 19 July 1479, the new Home Act was signed, "the rebirth charter of Saint-Tropez".[14]

 

Climate

Saint-Tropez has a hot-summer mediterranean climate with mild winters and hot summers, although daytime temperatures are somewhat moderated by its coastal position.

 

Climate data for Saint-Tropez

MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDecYear

Mean daily maximum °C (°F)12.1

(53.8)12.6

(54.7)14.3

(57.7)16.5

(61.7)19.7

(67.5)23.4

(74.1)27.0

(80.6)27.3

(81.1)24.3

(75.7)20.2

(68.4)15.6

(60.1)13.0

(55.4)18.8

(65.8)

Daily mean °C (°F)9.3

(48.7)9.6

(49.3)11.0

(51.8)13.2

(55.8)16.3

(61.3)20.0

(68.0)23.3

(73.9)23.4

(74.1)20.8

(69.4)17.1

(62.8)12.8

(55.0)10.3

(50.5)15.6

(60.1)

Mean daily minimum °C (°F)6.5

(43.7)6.6

(43.9)7.8

(46.0)9.8

(49.6)13.0

(55.4)16.5

(61.7)19.5

(67.1)17.3

(63.1)14.1

(57.4)9.9

(49.8)7.5

(45.5)6.0

(42.8)12.3

(54.1)

Average precipitation mm (inches)82.4

(3.24)82.8

(3.26)64.7

(2.55)53.2

(2.09)40.1

(1.58)25.7

(1.01)15.5

(0.61)27.8

(1.09)57.0

(2.24)104.9

(4.13)85.7

(3.37)72.2

(2.84)711.8

(28.02)

Mean monthly sunshine hours147.8148.9203.2252.1234.9280.6310.3355.5319.5247.0201.5145.52,748.1

Source: Climatologie mensuelle à la station de Cap Camarat.[15]

Economy

 

The Hôtel Byblos is a Grand Hotel built in the mid-1960s.

The main economic resource of Saint-Tropez is tourism. The city is well known for the Hôtel Byblos and for Les Caves du Roy, a member of the Leading Hotels of the World; its 1967 inauguration featuring Brigitte Bardot and Gunter Sachs was an international event.

 

Beaches

 

Tropezian Tahiti beach in 2011

Tropezian beaches are located along the coast in the Baie de Pampelonne, which lies south of Saint-Tropez and east of Ramatuelle. Pampelonne offers a collection of beaches along its five-kilometre shore. Each beach is around 30 metres wide with its own beach hut and private or public tanning area.

 

Many of the beaches offer windsurfing, sailing and canoeing equipment for rent, while others offer motorized water sports, such as power boats, jet bikes, water skiing and scuba diving. Some of the beaches are naturist beaches. There are also many exclusive beach clubs that are popular among wealthy people from around the world.

 

Toplessness and nudity

Saint-Tropez's Tahiti Beach, which had been popularised in the film And God Created Woman featuring Brigitte Bardot, emerged as a clothing-optional destination,[16] but the mayor of Saint-Tropez ordered police to ban toplessness and to watch over the beach via helicopter.[17] The "clothing fights" between the gendarmerie and nudists become the main topic of a famous French comedy film series, Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez (The Troops of St. Tropez) featuring Louis de Funès. In the end, the nudist side prevailed.[18] Topless sunbathing is now the norm for both men and women from Pampelonne beaches to yachts in the centre of Saint-Tropez port.[19] The Tahiti beach is now clothing-optional, but nudists often head to private nudist beaches, such as that in Cap d'Agde.[20]

 

Port

 

Saint Tropez Port view

 

Aerial view of Saint-Tropez

The port was widely used during the 18th century; in 1789 it was visited by 80 ships. Saint-Tropez's shipyards built tartanes and three-masted ships that could carry 1,000 to 12,200 barrels. The town was the site of various associated trades, including fishing, cork, wine and wood. The town had a school of hydrography. In 1860, the flagship of the merchant navy, named The Queen of the Angels (La Reine des Anges, a three-masted ship of 740 barrels capacity), was built at Saint-Tropez.

 

Its role as a commercial port declined, and it is now primarily a tourist spot and a base for many well-known sail regattas. There is fast boat transportation with Les Bateaux Verts to Sainte-Maxime on the other side of the bay and to Port Grimaud, Marines de Cogolin, Les Issambres and St-Aygulf.

 

Events

Les Bravades de Saint-Tropez

Les Bravades de Saint-Tropez is an annual celebration held in the middle of May when people of the town celebrate their patron saint, Torpes of Pisa, and their military achievements. One of the oldest traditions of Provence, it has been held for more than 450 years since the citizens of Saint-Tropez were first given special permission to form a militia to protect the town from the Barbary pirates. During the three-day celebration, the various militias in costumes of the time fire their muskets into the air at traditional stops, march to the sound of bands and parade St. Torpes's bust. The townspeople also attend a mass wearing traditional Provençal costume.

 

Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez

 

Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez

Each year, at the end of September, a regatta is held in the bay of Saint-Tropez (Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez). Many yachts are entered, some as long as 50 metres. Many tourists come to the location for this event, or as a stop on their trip to Cannes, Marseille or Nice.

 

Traditional dishes

The Tarte tropézienne is a traditional cake invented by a Polish confectioner who had set up shop in Saint-Tropez in the mid-1950s, and made famous by actress Brigitte Bardot.[21]

 

Demographics

Historical population

YearPop.±% p.a.

17933,629—

18003,156−1.98%

18063,319+0.84%

18213,360+0.08%

18313,736+1.07%

18363,637−0.54%

18413,538−0.55%

18463,647+0.61%

18513,595−0.29%

18563,640+0.25%

18613,558−0.45%

18663,739+1.00%

18723,532−0.94%

18763,531−0.01%

18813,545+0.08%

18863,636+0.51%

18913,533−0.57%

18963,599+0.37%

YearPop.±% p.a.

19013,704+0.58%

19063,708+0.02%

19113,704−0.02%

19213,842+0.37%

19264,324+2.39%

19314,589+1.20%

19364,102−2.22%

19464,161+0.14%

19544,925+2.13%

19625,668+1.77%

19686,130+1.31%

19755,427−1.73%

19826,213+1.95%

19905,754−0.95%

19995,444−0.61%

20075,640+0.44%

20124,452−4.62%

20174,352−0.45%

 

Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.

Source: EHESS[22] and INSEE[23]

Infrastructure

Transport to and from Saint-Tropez

By sea

  

Saint-Tropez marina

The 800-berth port with two marinas hosts boats, including ferries. In the summer season, there is a ferry service between St-Tropez and Nice, Sainte-Maxime, Cannes, Saint-Raphaël.[24] Private yachts may also be chartered.

 

By air

 

There is no airport in Saint-Tropez, but there is a charter service to and from clubs, the town and Tropezian beaches by helicopter.[25] The nearest airport is La Môle – Saint-Tropez Airport located in La Môle, 15 km (9 mi) (8 NM) southwest of Saint-Tropez.[26] Other main airports are Nice Côte d'Azur Airport located approximately 95 kilometers and Toulon–Hyères Airport located approximately 52 kilomters from Saint-Tropez.[27] Marseille Provence Airport is located approximately 158 kilometres from Saint-Tropez.[28]

 

By land

 

There is no rail station in Saint-Tropez. The nearest station is Saint-Raphaël-Valescure, located in Saint-Raphaël (39 km (24 mi) from Saint-Tropez), which also offers a boat service to Saint-Tropez.[29] There is also direct bus service to Saint-Tropez, and the rail station is connected with bus station.[30][31]

 

There is a bus station in Saint-Tropez called the Gare routière de Saint-Tropez, located in Place Blanqui.[32] It is operated by Var department transport division Varlib [fr], which employs other transport companies to operate routes.

 

There are taxi services, including from Nice airport to Saint-Tropez, but they are expensive because of the long distances and the area's wealth.[31]

 

In the tourist season, traffic problems may be expected on roads to Saint-Tropez,[33] so the fastest way to travel is by scooter or bike. There is no direct highway to the village. There are three main roads to Saint-Tropez:

 

Via the A8 (E80) with the sign "Draguignan, Le Muy-Golfe de Saint-Tropez" – RD 25 Sainte-Maxime, 19 km (12 mi) -> on the former RN 98 – 12 km (7 mi).

A57 with the sign "The Cannet des Maures" -> DR 558, 24 km (15 mi) Grimaud until then by the RD 61 – 9 km (6 mi) through the famous intersection of La Foux.

Near the sea, the former RN 98 connects to Toulon-La Valette-du-Var, Saint-Raphaël, Cannes, Nice, Monaco, DR 93, called "Beach Road", with destinations to Pampelonne, Ramatuelle and La Croix – Valmer.

Town transport

Public transport in Saint-Tropez includes minibuses, providing shuttle service between town and Pampelonne beaches.[27]

 

Other means of transport include scooters, cars, bicycles and taxis.[34] There are also helicopter services[35] and boat trips.[36]

 

Because of traffic and short distances, walking is an obvious choice for trips around town and to the Tropezian beaches.[37]

 

Culture, education and sport

 

Paul Signac, Leaving the port of Saint-Tropez, 1901

 

A panoramic view of Saint-Tropez by Paul Leduc [fr] (1876–1943)

 

Paintings Galerie Ivan

The town has health facilities, a cinema, a library, an outdoor center and a recreation center for youth.[38]

 

Schools include: École maternelle (kindergarten – preschool) – l'Escouleto, écoles primaires (primary schools – primary education): Louis Blanc and Les Lauriers, collège d'enseignement secondaire (secondary school, high school – secondary education) – Moulin Blanc.[39][40]

 

There are more than 1,000 students distributed among kindergartens, primary schools and one high school.[41] In 2011, there were 275 students in high school and 51 people employed there, of whom 23 were teachers.[42]

 

Art

Saint-Tropez plays a major role in the history of modern art. Paul Signac discovered this light-filled place that inspired painters such as Matisse, Pierre Bonnard and Albert Marquet to come to Saint-Tropez. The painting styles of pointillism and fauvism emerged in Saint-Tropez. Saint-Tropez was also attractive for the next generation of painters: Bernard Buffet, David Hockney, Massimo Campigli and Donald Sultan lived and worked there. Today, Stefan Szczesny continues this tradition.

 

The contemporary artist Philippe Shangti imagined the design of Le Quai and L'Opera, restaurants located on the port of Saint-Tropez where he also exhibits his art collections. Centered on a specific theme, he always denounces different problems affecting society with provocative artworks.[43]

 

International relations

See also: List of twin towns and sister cities in France

Saint-Tropez is twinned with:

 

Vittoriosa, Malta[44][45]

Famous persons connected with Saint-Tropez

Saint Torpes of Pisa

Saint Torpes of Pisa

 

Portrait of Hasekura Tsunenaga

Portrait of Hasekura Tsunenaga

 

Statue of Admiral de Suffren de Saint-Tropez

Statue of Admiral de Suffren de Saint-Tropez

 

Brigitte Bardot at Saint-Tropez, 1963

Brigitte Bardot at Saint-Tropez, 1963

 

Louis de Funès during filming

Louis de Funès during filming

The most famous persons connected with Saint-Tropez include the semi-legendary martyr who gave his name to the town, Saint Torpes of Pisa; Hasekura Tsunenaga, probably the first Japanese in Europe, who landed in Saint-Tropez in 1615; a hero of the American Revolutionary War, Admiral Pierre André de Suffren de Saint-Tropez; the icon of modern Saint-Tropez, Brigitte Bardot, who started the clothes-optional revolution and still lives in the Saint-Tropez area;[46] Louis de Funès, who played the character of the gendarme (police officer) in the French comedy film series Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez and also helped establish the international image of Saint-Tropez as both a quiet town and a modern jet-set holiday target.[47]

 

In popular culture

The English rock band Pink Floyd wrote a song "San Tropez" after the town. Saint-Tropez was also mentioned in David Gates's 1978 hit "Took the Last Train", Kraftwerk's "Tour de France", Aerosmith's "Permanent Vacation", Taylor Swift's "The Man", and Beyoncé's "Energy". Rappers including Diddy, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, J. Cole, and Post Malone refer to the city in some of their songs as a favorite vacation destination, usually reached by yacht. DJ Antoine wrote a song "Welcome to St. Tropez". The Tony Award-winning Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles is set in a drag night club in St. Tropez. Furthermore, Bulgarian singer azis wrote a song named "Сен Тропе"(Sen Trope). Also, Romanian singer Florin Salam wrote the song (Saint Tropez). Saint Tropez was also mentioned in Army of Lovers' song "My Army of Lovers." Their song "La Plage De Saint Tropez" was also dedicated to this town.

 

Gallery

Aerial view of the Cital of Saint-Tropez, France

Aerial view of the Cital of Saint-Tropez, France

 

Cannons of the Citadel

Cannons of the Citadel

 

Tour Jarlier

Tour Jarlier

 

Aerial view of the old town and the old port of Saint-Tropez, France

Aerial view of the old town and the old port of Saint-Tropez, France

 

Luxury boats

Luxury boats

 

Sailboats

Sailboats

 

Aerial view of Pampelonne Beach, Saint-Tropez

Aerial view of Pampelonne Beach, Saint-Tropez

 

Harbour promenade with cafes

Harbour promenade with cafes

 

Aerial view of vineyards in Saint-Tropez, France

Aerial view of vineyards in Saint-Tropez, France

 

Old gendarmerie station; popular spot for photographs[48] (cf. Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez)

Old gendarmerie station; popular spot for photographs[48] (cf. Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez)

 

Aerial view of the old town of Saint-Tropez, France

Aerial view of the old town of Saint-Tropez, France

 

Tarte tropézienne (tropezian pie)

Tarte tropézienne (tropezian pie)

 

The main gate to Citadel

The main gate to Citadel

 

Top-down aerial of the old town of Saint-Tropez, France

Top-down aerial of the old town of Saint-Tropez, France

 

Aerial view of the cemetery of Saint-Tropez, France

Aerial view of the cemetery of Saint-Tropez, France

List of media connected with Saint-Tropez

Non-exhaustive filmography

 

Saint-Tropez, devoir de vacances [fr] (short film, 1952)

Et Dieu... créa la femme (1956)

Bonjour Tristesse (1958)

Une fille pour l'été [fr] (1960)

Saint-Tropez Blues [fr] (1960)

Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez (1964) and its sequels Le Gendarme à New York (1965), Le Gendarme se marie (1968), Le Gendarme en balade (1970), Le Gendarme et les Extra-terrestres (1979) and finally Le Gendarme et les Gendarmettes (1982)[49][50]

La Collectionneuse (1967)

La Chamade (1968)

Les Biches (1968)

La Piscine (1969)

Le Viager (1972)

La Cage aux Folles (1978)

Le Coup du parapluie (1980)

Le Beau Monde [fr] (1981)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Tropez

Paul Signac(1863 - 1935)

Watercolour and black crayon on paper

26.4 x 35.9 cm

www.christies.com/lotfinder/drawings-watercolors/paul-sig...

 

Estimate : £ 12,000 - £ 18,000

 

Christie's

Impressionist & Modern Works on Paper

London, 3 Feb 2016

Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 4.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com.

 

Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter. Together with Georges Seurat, Signac developed the Pointillism style. He was a passionate sailor, bringing back watercolor sketches of ports and nature from his travels, then turning them into large studio canvases with mosaic-like squares of color. He abandoned the short brushstrokes and intuitive dabs of color of the impressionists for a more exact scientific approach to applying dots with the intention to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye. We have digitally enhanced some of his landscapes and seascapes, both from sketches and paintings into high resolution quality. They are free to download and use under the CC0 license.

 

Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: https://www.rawpixel.com/board/1328402/paul-signac-artworks-i-high-resolution-cc0-paintings-sketches?sort=curated&mode=shop&page=1

 

Cross' early works, portraits and still lifes, were in the dark colors of realism, but after meeting with Claude Monet in 1883, he painted in the brighter colors of Impressionism. He went on to become one of the principal exponents of Neo-Impressionism. He began his Pointillist period after spending time with Paul Signac in 1904. His later works are Fauvist, perhaps influenced by his acquaintance with Henri Matisse.

Paul Signac (1863 – 1935) was a French neo-impressionist painter who, working with Georges Seurat, helped develop the pointillist style.

Paul Signac, French, 1863-1935

 

Les Andelys, Côte d'Aval, 1886

 

Oil on canvas

23 5/8 x 36 1/4 in. (60 x 92 cm)

Inscribed lower right: P. Signac. 86

 

This view of the harbor of Les Andelys, a village on the Seine River near Giverny, is part of a series of 10 works that Paul Signac made in the summer and early fall of 1886. It was the first series he painted using the all-over dots and dashes of strong color that were the hallmark of the Neo-Impressionist group centered around his friend Georges Seurat.

 

www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/122130

 

- - - - - - -

 

Book: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

Art Institute of Chicago. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in The Art Institute of Chicago. Art Institute of Chicago, 2000, p. 122.

 

Paul Signac dabbled with Impressionism early in his career, but in 1884 he saw the work of Georges Seurat at the first Salon des indépendants (an exhibition forum that Signac had cofounded as an alternative to the official Salon). That year Seurat exhibited Bathers at Asnières (1884; London, National Gallery), a painting that reveals the beginnings of his "scientific" technique, according to which colors are divided from one another in order to enhance their optical effect. Signac’s encounter with Neo-Impressionism proved decisive for his subsequent career; he soon adopted Seurat’s method, and a mutually rewarding exchange ensued between the two artists.

 

The largest and most technically refined of a series of landscapes that Signac painted in the summer of 1886, Les Andelys, Côte d’Aval depicts a placid, sun-drenched village nestled along the winding bank of the Seine, near Rouen. Seurat’s work provided a model for the innovative spatial recession seen here: Signac established insistent connections between compositional elements such as a cropped boat in the lower-left corner; its anchor, which leads the viewer’s eye to the middle ground; and the unpopulated, toylike village in the distance, dominated by a church steeple at the right. Signac’s abbreviated, discrete strokes also seem to echo those of his colleague, for example in the patchwork hillside. But in the sky, he began with a more broadly brushed underlayer, suggesting that he had not fully relinquished the intuitive approach to color and handling so central to Impressionism.

 

Signac published an important and influential tract on Neo-Impressionism in 1891 and is widely regarded as the central disseminator of the group’s aesthetic theories. Among the artists whom he persuaded to experiment with the style were Camille Pissarro and Vincent van Gogh.

Paul Signac

French, 1863-1935

14 Rue La Fontaine in Auteuil, better known as Castel Beranger was designed by Hector Guimard and built 1897-98. This art nouveau building won the then prestigious City of Paris Facade competition in 1899, establishing Guimard's fame. The building contains 36 apartments with the structure using stone, pale pink bricks, wood, cast iron, steel, ceramics and glazed stoneware. Guimard also designed much of the interior details including the original carpets, wall papers and door handles. Artist Paul Signac proclaimed Guimard as a genius and chose to live here. However, the building did not please everyone and it was referred to in one quarters as Castel Deranger (as in deranged) rather than Beranger!

Portrait de Félix Fénéon par Paul Signac (1863–1935)

Le titre complet de la peinture est ''Sur l'émail d'un fond rythmique de mesures et d'angles, de tons et de teintes, portrait de M. Félix Fénéon en 1890, Opus 217''.

 

Etre moderne : le MoMA

à Paris, exposition de la Fondation Louis-Vuitton du 11 octobre 2017 au 5 mars 2018.

From the Museum label:

 

Along with Impressionist painters Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro pursued the theme of snow throughout his career, producing nearly 100 snow paintings. In 1879 France experienced an extraordinarily severe winter, which Pissarro explored in this and other works painted at his home in Pontoise, 30 miles west of Paris along the Seine River. In "rabbit Warren, snow covers the ground, houses and vegetation in a frothy coat that results from the artist's vigorous brushwork. Throughout, small spots of color in the chimneys, greenish shrubs and clothing of the man at right punctuate what is otherwise a predominately yellowish white and uninhabited fragment of nature,

 

From www.artic.edu/artexplorer/search.php?tab=2&resource=486:

 

Pissarro, primarily a landscape painter, was a driving force behind the impressionist group shows. Slightly older than the other members of the circle, he made many of the arrangements, reconciled disputes among painters, and contributed a number of canvases to all eight impressionist exhibitions.

 

Born in the West Indies, Pissarro worked mainly in Pontoise, a suburb of Paris. He was obliged to help run the family business during early adulthood, teaching himself to paint in his spare time. Although Pissarro's work was accepted to the Salon in 1859 and again in the later 1860s, he became embittered with the academic system. He in turn developed an impressionist style characterized by loose brushwork and a concern for reflected light.

 

By 1880 Pissarro began working in a new style: a thick application of paint in small crosshatched strokes. Five years later he met Paul Signac and Georges Seurat, and was impressed with their unique method. In 1886 Pissarro adopted a neo-impressionist style characterized by discrete touches of unmixed pigments that were often densely applied to form a complex web of color. However, he eventually found the meticulous technique too limiting and abandoned it in 1891.

 

Pissarro's political beliefs inclined toward anarchism. His paintings of peasants working in gardens or fields reflected his belief in the essential dignity of the laboring class. As anti-anarchist sentiments reached a climax in the 1890s, Pissarro went into exile in Belgium.

The Postcard

 

A postally unused carte postale published by Photochrome S.I.C.A. of 98, Av. St.-Lambert, Nice (A.-M.). The card has a divided back.

 

Juan-les-Pins

 

Juan-les-Pins is a town, health resort and spa in the commune of Antibes, in the Alpes-Maritimes, in south-eastern France, on the Côte d'Azur. It is situated between Nice and Cannes, 13 kilometres (8 mi) from Nice Côte d'Azur Airport.

 

It is a major holiday destination popular with the international jet-set, with casino, nightclubs and beaches, which are made of fine grained sand, and are not straight, but instead are cut with small inlets.

 

History of Juan-les-Pins

 

Situated west of the town of Antibes on the western slope of the ridge, halfway to the old fishery village of Golfe-Juan (where Napoleon landed in 1815), it was an area with many stone pine trees (pins in French).

 

The inhabitants of Antibes used to go there for a promenade, for a picnic in the shadow of the trees, or to collect fallen tree branches and cones for their stoves.

 

The village was given the name Juan-les-Pins on the 12th. March 1882. The spelling Juan, used instead of the customary French spelling, Jean, derives from the local Occitan dialect. Other names discussed for the town included Héliopolis, Antibes-les-Pins and Albany-les-Pins (after the Duke of Albany, the fourth son of Queen Victoria).

 

The following year, 1883, it was decided to build a railway station in Juan-les-Pins on the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée line that had been there since 1863.

 

In 1926, the famous hotel Le Provençal was opened, and received guests like Charlie Chaplin, Lilian Harvey, Jack L. Warner and Man Ray.

 

Ray Charles' hand impression can be seen on the Boulevard Edouard Baudoin, Juan les Pins. He was there for the Jazz à Juan Festival.

 

Cultural References to Juan-les-Pins

 

Peter Sarstedt famously mentions Juan-les-Pins in his 1969 UK number one hit, 'Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)' - a verbal portrait of a girl who becomes a member of the Euro jet-set. The song mentions that the girl spends her summer vacations in Juan-les-Pins.

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald mentions Juan les Pins in 'Tender is the Night'.

 

Juan-les-Pins is prominent in Sartre's 'The Reprieve', the second volume of his 'Roads to Freedom' trilogy.

 

The area is also the home of Lanny Budd, the protagonist in eleven Upton Sinclair novels.

 

In Charles R. Jackson's novel 'The Lost Weekend', the main character, Don Birnam, mentions a holiday in Juan-les-Pins.

 

In Alan Furst's novel 'Kingdom of Shadows', protagonist Nicholas Morath, his Argentine girlfriend Cara, and assorted friends spend early June 1938 in Juan-les-Pins.

 

Near the end of Donna Tartt's 'The Goldfinch', the protagonist travels to many 'exotic places,' such as Juan-Les-Pins, to rectify his wrongdoings.

 

Camille Aubray's fictional novel 'Cooking for Picasso' takes place in Juan-les-Pins.

 

'Golfe Juan' is the name of a pointillist painting done by Paul Signac, a French neo-impressionist, in 1896.

Musée d’Orsay - RF 1957 12

 

Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

29 March-29 July 2018

 

Paul Victor Jules Signac (1863-1935), French artist - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Signac

Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 4.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com.

 

Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter. Together with Georges Seurat, Signac developed the Pointillism style. He was a passionate sailor, bringing back watercolor sketches of ports and nature from his travels, then turning them into large studio canvases with mosaic-like squares of color. He abandoned the short brushstrokes and intuitive dabs of color of the impressionists for a more exact scientific approach to applying dots with the intention to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye. We have digitally enhanced some of his landscapes and seascapes, both from sketches and paintings into high resolution quality. They are free to download and use under the CC0 license.

 

Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: https://www.rawpixel.com/board/1328402/paul-signac-artworks-i-high-resolution-cc0-paintings-sketches?sort=curated&mode=shop&page=1

 

A facebook contact alerted me to this specialist supplier of fine art laser-cut jigsaws based in Latvia. I have not tried them yet, but this is my short list from which to choose my first order.

www.facebook.com/groups/155962972366641/posts/64543643008...

 

puzzlesprint.com/puzzles-shop/?fbclid=IwAR0zBOXuJAMAnYN4I...

 

They have more than 250 images, offered at:

250pc, 24x34cm, £41.87;

500pc, 34x48cm, £75.37

750pc, 40x57cm, £88.31

1000pc, 48x68cm, £114.20

The cut appears to be a randomish strip cut with earlet knobs and no whimsies. I don’t know if all the cuts are identical for each size. They say they are cut from 3mm plywood. They offer discounts for buying two or three jigsaws.

Artworks are very much late 19thC - first quarter of 20thC, French modern art.

 

Top Row:

Paul Signac – Notre Dame de la Garde (La Bonne Mere)

Seurat – The Models BOUGHT

Seurat -Circus Sideshow

Degas – Two Dancers

 

Middle Row:

Henri Edmond Cross – Landscape

Pissarro – Piette’s House at Montfoucault

Monet – Banks of the Seine, Vetheil

Gaugin – The Large Tree

 

Bottow Row:

Cezanne – Auvers, Panoramic View

Winslow Homer – Girl Picking Apple Blossoms

Franz Marc – Caliban from the Tempest

Franz Marc – Two Cats, Blue & Yellow

Eglise romane Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-Signac ; commune de Signac, département de la Haute-Garonne, région Midi-Pyrénées, France

 

Ce modeste édifice roman, à vaisseau unique terminé en abside en cul-de-four, est typique de la montagne commingeoise. Le portail de l’église fin du XIIème siècle ou début du XIIIème siècle permet de prendre conscience de l’influence régionale qu’a eu l’atelier de sculpteur de l’église de Saint-Béat. On est ici en présence d’une oeuvre d’art local, malhabile mais touchante : le sculpteur, avec ses moyens, a tenté de reproduire le tympan sculpté de Saint-Béat, réalisé au début du XIIème siècle. On retrouve, notamment, le cloisonnement des espaces : le Christ est isolé du symbole des quatre évangélistes par des baguettes sommaires remplaçant les colonnes boursouflées qui font la particularité du tympan de Saint-Béat.

 

(extrait de : www.festival-du-comminges.com/eglise-saint-jean-baptiste-...)

 

Coordonnées GPS : N42°54.325’ ; E0°37.641’

 

1905. Oli sobre tela. 73,5 x 92,1 cm. Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH. 1952.78. Obra exposada: Galeria 35.

Dynamic 1890 pointillist portrait of Fénéon by Paul Signac, inspired by music, color, design, and philosophy. Originally owned by Félix Fénéon, and now in MoMA’s collection.

Installation view “Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde – From Signac to Matisse and Beyond”

Museum of Modern Art

New York, New York

August 27 – January 2, 2021

1905–6

Oil on canvas

35 x 45 3/4 in. (88.9 x 116.2 cm)

 

Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde (La Bonne-Mère), Marseilles - Paul Signac

 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

www.metmuseum.org

 

1000 Fifth Avenue. New York, New York 10028 USA

Mykola Hlushchenko "Still life with a Glass Jar and a Bottle"

Paris 1920/30

Fauvism | Oil and Gouache on Paper | 11.69 x 16.53 inch

The Reverse View of The Painting

 

The famous Ukrainian artist and intelligence agent Mykola Glushchenko reported to Stalin of Hitler’s preparations for war against the Soviet Union as far back as June, 1940

 

szru.gov.ua/index_en/index.html?p=1039.html

 

Today the early paintings of the master’s brush cost tens of thousands of dollars

 

Before the Great Patriotic War the outstanding Ukrainian painter, the People’s Artist of the USSR, the winner of Taras Shevchenko State Award Mykola Hlushchenko lived in Berlin and Paris, double-jobbed as an artist and intelligence agent for as long as a dozen years. In the lifetime of Mykola Glushchenko none of his friends and colleagues knew that he worked in intelligence. He was one of those who had informed the Soviet government of the impending attack of Nazi Germany. As you know, ignoring this information resulted in the tragedy for the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

 

It was Oleksandr Dovzhenko who helped Gluschenko to obtain a passport of a citizen of the USSR

 

In the early 1940s, the Soviet intelligence has set Glushchenko, the artists of world renown and experienced intelligence agent, the task to organize an exhibiting of the German Fine Arts in Moscow and the USSR Exhibition of Folk Art in Berlin. At this time the German counterintelligence carefully kept watch over all Soviet citizens who came to the country, suspecting almost everyone of being a Kremlin spy. Sending Glushchenko to Germany, chiefs of the Soviet intelligence hoped that the famous artist will not be “taken care of tightly”, and this plan has worked out. Both exhibitions were a great success. In Berlin for days on end Gluschenko was talking with the representatives of German intellectuals, officials of the Ministry of Culture, compatriots. Once a man named Zacharias drew came near him and said the conventional phrase: “I bring greetings from Victor.” It was a password. Glushchenko answered: “He also asked me to say hello to you before leaving.” The artist has obtained valuable political and military intelligence and sent it to the Center.

 

A fact sheet signed by the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs was urgently prepared for Stalin and Molotov. As the fact sheet noted, the intelligence agent Yarema, who was sent to Berlin, has got information from the management of the Ukrainian Research Institute working under the Ministry of Propaganda of Germany on the Hitler’s preparation for war against the Soviet Union. In particular, this institution in an atmosphere of secrecy by order of the Goebbels’ department published German to Ukrainian dictionaries for the infantry, pilots; large dictionary of military topographic, economic and political Ukrainian terms, pocket dictionaries and detailed topographic maps covering the entire Ukraine were preparing to be published. The fact sheet also quoted head of the institute research department professor Kusel, who, referring to conversations in person with senior representatives of the German government, declared that the war would surely be. This document was dated June 10, 1940. At the same time, as noted by researchers of the Soviet intelligence activities, the legendary Richard Sorge radioed from Japan of a possible German attack against the Soviet Union five months later – on November, 18, 1940. Then, a week before the onset of war, Sorge uncovered the exact date – June, 22.

 

… Mykola Glushchenko was born in Novomoskovsk, Ekaterinoslav province (now Dnipropetrovsk region), on 17 September, 1901. In 1918 he graduated from the Commercial College in Yuzovka (Donetsk). Even then, he showed his talent for drawing, acquisitive mind, judiciousness, which pointed him out among his peers. Soon Gluschenko was deployed into the Volunteer Army under Denikin’s command. After some time, he blew in Poland with the remnants of the White Guard units. There he has got to internment camps, and then fled to Germany.

 

In Berlin, Mykola graduated from a private art school and then from the College of Fine Arts. His extraordinary abilities were noticed by influential representatives of the Ukrainian emigration. During his studies, the young artist was financially supported by Hetman Skoropadsky, former representative of the UNR in Berlin professor Smal-Stocki, writer Volodymyr Vynnychenko. At the same time, Oleksandr Dovzhenko, who worked at that time at the Soviet consulate in Berlin, helped Gluschenko to get a passport of the USSR.

 

After studying at the College of Fine Arts, Mykola moved to Paris. He gained his living by painting and after a while he was able to open his own art studio visiting by the Parisians, tourists, former compatriots. Soon, when the artist’s exhibitions of paintings successfully started, the studio has become a meeting place of intellectuals, government officials, leaders of the White émigré, and representatives of Ukrainian organizations abroad. The Austro-Hungarian Archduke Wilhelm von Habsburg – nephew of former Emperor Franz Josef of Austria – was a frequent visitor to the studio. During those coffee-meetings, where the latest developments in the arts, politics were discussed, forecasts for the future were expressed, discussions on various topics were held, Glushchenko was always in the high light. That was the very time during that period when the intelligence agent under the pseudonym Yarema started to send very valuable intelligence from Paris to Moscow. Only a few at the Center and at Paris residency of the Soviet foreign intelligence knew that it was Mykola Glushchenko, who worked under codename.

 

The artist helped the Soviet intelligence to get the secret drawings of two hundred five types of military equipment

 

One day a respectable and prosperous businessman Andre Mirabeau from Belgium, who previously was often in Paris, appeared in the studio, but this time upon the recommendation of mutual friends he decided to get acquainted with the talented artist. Almost immediately they have experienced close friendship, as the businessman had a fine taste in pictures and even tried to draw. For Gluschenko he was of interest as a valuable source of information: Mirabeau run around industrialists, military men, managers of financial institutions, diplomats from France, Germany, Belgium, England and other countries, was engaged in engineering and manufacturing development, including military one.

 

Close and targeted contacts with Mirabeau allowed Gluschenko to obtain the very important piece of intelligence. The archival materials run thus: “… he carried out a number of complex tasks for acquiring defense-relared scientific and technical information. As a result, the Soviet intelligence has got two hundred five drawings of military equipment types, such as aircraft engines for the fighters.”

 

Once Gluschenko’s artistic talent has been of service to him in his intelligence related activities: it was necessary to make portrait sketches during the trial of Petliura’s murderer Samuel Shvartsbad. For some reason the Center needed images of Shvartsbad and his lawyer Torres. Gluschenko dealt with a task relatively easy. These pencil drawings have survived to this day. In addition, by order of Stalin Gluschenko executed works at the Soviet Embassy in France commissions – he painted portraits of Romain Rolland, Michel Cachin, Henri Barbusse, president of the society “France-USSR” Paul Signac and other prominent representatives of the French intellectuals. Gluschenko’s popularity as an artist grew day by day. At the exhibitions his paintings were exhibited next to the works of Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso. Glushchenko himself was personally acquainted with Louis Aragon, the Gluschenko’s studio has been visited by Mayakovsky and Bunin.

 

The reports of the Paris residency to Moscow disclose, that Gluschenko requested permission to return to the homeland. In one of them it is reported that: “Yarema explicitly asked to allow him to return to Ukraine. We are trying to prove that he has to stay in Paris for another year for completion of important intelligence tasks. He is extremely dissatisfied, says that he would not stand more than two months.” Ultimately, Glushchenko worked in France for another year.

 

On July, 1936 the artist and his family returned to the Soviet Union. In Moscow he with his wife and a child were allocated a room in a communal area of nine square meters. However, he took no notice of it, enjoyed life and was organizing the exhibition of his paintings in Kyiv.

Soon, a secret report came from Kyiv to NKVD: “According to Agathon, artist Glushchenko, who secretly contacted with members of the Ukrainian national-fascist organization of artists, came to Kiev. These contacts were covered by the exhibition of paintings, which was organized by him. Agathon has learned that Ukrainian fascist underground liaises with foreign Ukrainian counterrevolutionary groups through Gluschenko. In Moscow Gluschenko should establish contacts with the Russian anti-Soviet groups, as well as with the Trotskyites. He has their addresses and places of secret meeting. We continue the study of Gluschenko’s counter-revolutionary contacts. Captain of State Security Rahlis.”

 

However, as it turned out, in Kyiv they did not know that Glushchenko worked in the intelligence, just wanted to earn points for exposing the “enemies of the people”. Fortunately, the artist did not get into the mills of repressions. There is an inscription on the fabricated report opposite the Agathon’s codename: “Shot for a provocateur.”

 

Some fine art experts close to Glushchenko argue that allegedly in the 1920s, during his studies at the Berlin College of Fine Arts, Hitler himself took drawing lessons from him a couple of times. However, no documentary proof of evidence was found in the archives. But another episode from the life of Mykola Petrovich is absolutely authentic.

 

During the final day of the Soviet exhibition in Berlin, which was overseen by Glushchenko, it was attended by the top rung of the Third Reich, headed by the Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. On behalf of the Fuhrer he thanked everyone for good exhibition organization, some artists were awarded with diplomas and valuable gifts, and then, adressing Glushchenko, he said that Hitler appreciated his talent and considered him to be one of the best landscape painters of Europe and in memory of Glushchenko’s staying in Berlin gave him an album with his own watercolor paintings. After returning to Moscow Gluschenko handed this album over to the leadership of the intelligence. Soon Stalin himself wished to have a look at it. Only over one and a half years Hitler’s paintings were returned to Gluschenko. He kept them with him throughout his life, and in 1977, after his death, his wife, according to the testimony of art collector and close Gluschenkos’ friend Reznikov, allegedly gave the album for review to the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. Then it would seem to be of interest of someone from the leadership of the Council of Ministers. In any case, only one copy of the entire album of Hitler’s watercolors has survived to this very day.

 

The war put an end to Gluschenko’s intelligence activities. Later he had dealt only with creativity. However, under the pressure of leading and guiding role of the Communist Party he had to create works in the style of socialist realism. His paintings “The Execution of the Spanish revolutionaries”, “Lenin near the Communards’ Wall,” “Death of Civil War Hero Vasil Bozhenko”, “Defense of Moscow”, “Bukrinsky Bridgehead” and others appeared, but some of them were lost during the war. Shortly before his death, he selected 250 works, executed in 1950, intending to burn them. He said his wife, that he does not want them to be gambled on. The pictures were later found in the attic of his workshop, and the Ministry of Culture transferred them for storage to the museum, but without the right to be displayed in exhibitions.

 

According to colleagues and friends close to Glushchenko he strictly adhered to the daily routine. During the week and on weekends he was already in the studio at 9:00, at exactly 19.00 he sat at the dining table, at 22.00 he went to bed. Every Monday on his way to the studio he came to say hello to the Ministry of Culture staff. At the same time the latest issue of “L’Humanite” always looked out of his tweed jacket pocket.

 

In the last years of his life Mykola Glushchenko complained of poor hearing, but often had the use of it during fine art auctions. When asked, for example, whether he would sell canvas for 300 rubles, Gluschenko asked again: “At what price? 500? – You can have it”. Today every work of the Gluschenko’s brush is estimated at more than $ 5,000, and his early works in the style of impressionism are ten times more expensive.

 

Olexandr Skrypnyk,

 

the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine Press Office (“Facty”, 30.05.2005)

 

Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine. © 2004 - 2018

All rights reserved.

 

1889. Oli sobre tela. 33,3 x 46,4 cm. Museu de Belles Arts de Boston, Boston. 1980.367. Obra exposada: Galeria 253.

Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 4.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com.

 

Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter. Together with Georges Seurat, Signac developed the Pointillism style. He was a passionate sailor, bringing back watercolor sketches of ports and nature from his travels, then turning them into large studio canvases with mosaic-like squares of color. He abandoned the short brushstrokes and intuitive dabs of color of the impressionists for a more exact scientific approach to applying dots with the intention to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye. We have digitally enhanced some of his landscapes and seascapes, both from sketches and paintings into high resolution quality. They are free to download and use under the CC0 license.

 

Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: https://www.rawpixel.com/board/1328402/paul-signac-artworks-i-high-resolution-cc0-paintings-sketches?sort=curated&mode=shop&page=1

 

Vincent van Gogh - Wheat field with reaper (F618)

 

Vincent van Gogh - Weizenfeld mit Sensenmann

 

The Van Gogh Museum (Dutch pronunciation: [vɑŋˈɣɔx mʏˌzeːjʏm]) is a Dutch art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, close to the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw. The museum opened on 2 June 1973, and its buildings were designed by Gerrit Rietveld and Kisho Kurokawa.

 

The museum contains the largest collection of Van Gogh's paintings and drawings in the world. In 2017, the museum had 2.3 million visitors and was the most-visited museum in the Netherlands, and the 23rd-most-visited art museum in the world. In 2019, the Van Gogh Museum launched the Meet Vincent Van Gogh Experience, a technology-driven "immersive exhibition" on Van Gogh's life and works, which has toured globally.

 

History

 

Unsold works

 

Upon Vincent van Gogh's death in 1890, his work not sold fell into the possession of his brother Theo. Theo died six months after Vincent, leaving the work in the possession of his widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. Selling many of Vincent's paintings with the ambition of spreading knowledge of his artwork, Johanna maintained a private collection of his works. The collection was inherited by her son Vincent Willem van Gogh in 1925, eventually loaned to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where it was displayed for many years, and was transferred to the state-initiated Vincent van Gogh Foundation in 1962. In the years following her husband’s death, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger organized exhibitions of Vincent van Gogh's work in the Netherlands and abroad, significantly contributing to his posthumous recognition.

 

Dedicated museum

 

Design for a Van Gogh Museum was commissioned by the Dutch government in 1963 to Dutch architect and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld. Rietveld died a year later, and the building was not completed until 1973, when the museum opened its doors. In 1998 and 1999, the building was renovated by the Dutch architect Martien van Goor, and an exhibition wing by the Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa was added. In late 2012, the museum was closed for renovations for six months. During this period, 75 works from the collection were shown in the H'ART Museum.

 

On 9 September 2013, the museum unveiled a long-lost Van Gogh painting that spent years in a Norwegian attic believed to be by another painter. It is the first full-size canvas by him discovered since 1928. Sunset at Montmajour depicts trees, bushes and sky, painted with Van Gogh's familiar thick brush strokes. It can be dated to the exact day it was painted because he described it in a letter to his brother, Theo, and said he painted it the previous day 4 July 1888.

 

Art thefts

 

In 1991, twenty paintings were stolen from the museum, among them Van Gogh's early painting The Potato Eaters. Although the thieves escaped from the building, 35 minutes later all stolen paintings were recovered from an abandoned car. Three paintings – Wheatfield with Crows, Still Life with Bible, and Still Life with Fruit – were severely torn during the theft. Four men, including two museum guards, were convicted for the theft and given six or seven-year sentences. It is considered to be the largest art theft in the Netherlands since the Second World War.

 

In 2002, two paintings were stolen from the museum, Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen and View of the Sea at Scheveningen. Two Dutchmen were convicted for the theft to four-and-a-half-year sentences, but the paintings were not immediately recovered. The museum offered a reward of €100,000 for information leading to the recovery of the paintings. The FBI Art Crime Team listed the robbery on their Top Ten Art Crimes list, and estimates the combined value of the paintings at US$30 million. In September 2016, both paintings were discovered by the Guardia di Finanza in Castellammare di Stabia, Italy in a villa belonging to the Camorra drug trafficker Raffaele Imperiale. The two artworks were found in a "relatively good state", according to the Van Gogh Museum.

 

Buildings

 

The museum is situated at the Museumplein in Amsterdam-Zuid, on the Paulus Potterstraat 7, between the Stedelijk Museum and the Rijksmuseum, and consists of two buildings, the Rietveld building, designed by Gerrit Rietveld, and the Kurokawa wing, designed by Kisho Kurokawa. Museum offices are housed on Stadhouderskade 55 in Amsterdam-Zuid. Depending on the season, sunflowers are displayed outside the entrance to the museum.

 

Rietveld building

 

The Rietveld building is the main structure and houses the permanent collection. It has a rectangular floor plan and is four stories high. On the ground floor are a shop, a café, and an introductory exhibition. The first floor shows the works of Van Gogh grouped chronologically. The second floor gives information about the restoration of paintings and has a space for minor temporary exhibitions. The third floor shows paintings of Van Gogh's contemporaries in relationship to the work of Van Gogh himself.

 

Kurokawa wing

 

The Kurokawa wing is used for major temporary exhibitions. It has an oval floor plan and is three stories high. The entrance to the Kurokawa wing is via a tunnel from the Rietveld building.

 

Collection

 

Works by Vincent van Gogh

 

The museum houses the largest Van Gogh collection in the world, with 200 paintings, 400 drawings, and 700 letters by the artist.

 

The main exhibition chronicles the various phases of Van Gogh's artistic life.

 

His selected works from Nuenen (1880–1885):

Avenue of Poplars in Autumn (1884)

The Potato Eaters (1885)

 

His selected works from Antwerp (1886):

Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette (1886)

 

His selected works from Paris (1886–1888):

Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin (1887)

Wheat Field with a Lark (1887)

View of Paris from Vincent's Room in the Rue Lepic (1887)

 

His selected works from Arles (1888–1889):

The Zouave (1888)

Bedroom in Arles (1888)

The Yellow House (1888)

Sunflowers (1889)

 

His selected works from Saint-Rémy (1889–1890):

Almond Blossoms (1890)

 

And his selected works from Auvers-sur-Oise (1890):

Wheatfield with Crows (1890)

The permanent collection also includes nine of the artist's self-portraits and some of his earliest paintings dating back to 1882.

 

A newly discovered work has temporarily gone on display. Van Gogh created three unknown sketches of peasants, which were then used as a single bookmark. Stylistically, they can be dated to autumn 1881.

 

Works by contemporaries

 

The museum also features notable artworks by Van Gogh's contemporaries in the Impressionist and post-Impressionist movements and holds extensive exhibitions on various subjects from 19th Century art history.

 

The museum has sculptures by Auguste Rodin and Jules Dalou, and paintings by John Russell, Émile Bernard, Maurice Denis, Kees van Dongen, Paul Gauguin, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Odilon Redon, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

 

Meet Vincent Van Gogh Experience

 

The Van Gogh Museum manages an official Meet Vincent Van Gogh Experience, described as a travelling "3D immersive exhibition" using technology and computer audio-visual techniques to cover the story of Van Gogh's life through images of his works. The first "experience" was in 2016 in Beijing, and it has since been toured globally to Europe, Asia and North America.

 

The Meet Van Gogh Experience does not present original artworks, as they are too fragile to travel. The "experience" was designed in collaboration with the London-based museum design consultancy, Event Communications (who designed Titanic Belfast), and it won a 2017 THEA award in the category of Immersive Museum Exhibit: Touring.

 

Visitors

 

The Van Gogh Museum, which is a national museum (Dutch: rijksmuseum), is a foundation (Dutch: stichting).

 

Axel Rüger, who had been the museum director since 2006, left the museum in 2019 to become secretary and chief executive of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The Van Gogh Museum announced that Managing Director Adriaan Dönszelmann would act as general director until a new director is appointed.

 

Since 2000, the museum had between 1.2 and 1.9 million visitors per year. From 2010 to 2012, it was the most visited museum in the Netherlands. In 2015, the museum had 1.9 million visitors, it was the 2nd most visited museum in the Netherlands, after the Rijksmuseum, and the 31st most visited art museum in the world.

 

The Van Gogh Museum is a member of the national Museumvereniging (Museum Association).

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Reaper (French: faucheur, lit. 'reaper'), Wheat Field with Reaper, or Wheat Field with Reaper and Sun is the title given to each of a series of three oil-on-canvas paintings by Vincent van Gogh of a man reaping a wheat field under a bright early-morning sun. To the artist, the reaper represented death and "humanity would be the wheat being reaped". However, Van Gogh did not consider the work to be sad but "almost smiling" and taking "place in broad daylight with a sun that floods everything with a light of fine gold".

 

The first painting (F617), which is thickly impastoed, was started in June 1889. Work on the piece resumed in early September after the artist suffered a mental breakdown from which it took him several weeks to recover. Van Gogh then created two more stylized versions (F618 and F619) in early and late September 1889. He referred to the paintings as simply faucheur, 'reaper', and said that the first was done from nature as a study, while the second, similarly sized version was "the final painting" completed in his studio. He came to prefer the original, and intended the third smaller version as a keepsake for his mother or one of his sisters.

 

Background

 

In May 1889, Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), a Dutch painter, moved to the Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, to commit himself at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a psychiatric asylum which was previously a monastery. This presented Van Gogh with a completely different landscape from which to draw inspiration. While Saint-Remy was only 25 kilometres (16 miles) from Arles, his previous residence, it lies below the low massifs of the Alpilles in contrast to the vast plains of Arles.

 

Van Gogh's bedroom window framed a view of an agrarian landscape that became the focus of the artist's work. A wheat field was located below his window encircled by a wall and hills in the background. The artist made at least 14 paintings and just as many sketches of the scene.

 

Composition

 

First painting (F617)

 

Van Gogh began painting Reaper (F617) in late June 1889. He first mentions the painting in a 25 June 1889 letter to his brother Theo van Gogh where he describes it as "a wheatfield, very yellow and very bright, perhaps the brightest canvas [he has] done". He writes that it was among 12 paintings on which he was currently working. The painting is mentioned again in a 2 July 1889 letter:

 

The latest one begun is the wheatfield where there's a little reaper and a big sun. The canvas is all yellow with the exception of the wall and the background of purplish hills.

 

In the painting measuring 73 cm × 92 cm (29 in × 36 in), the reaper is depicted with just a few brushstrokes of blue in swirling yellow wheat that leaves an outline of the figure in green. His sickle is only a single brushstroke and barely visible.

 

With the 2 July letter, Van Gogh included around ten sketches of the paintings he was working on at the time, including a sketch (F1546) of this painting. The painting appears to have been mostly completed by then.[6] However, Van Gogh was making further changes to the work while he described it in more detail in a later letter to his brother written on 4–5 September 1889:

 

I'm struggling with a canvas begun a few days before my indisposition. A reaper, the study is all yellow, terribly thickly impasted, but the subject was beautiful and simple. I then saw in this reaper – a vague figure struggling like a devil in the full heat of the day to reach the end of his toil – I then saw the image of death in it, in this sense that humanity would be the wheat being reaped. So if you like it's the opposite of that Sower I tried before. But in this death [there is] nothing sad, it takes place in broad daylight with a sun that floods everything with a light of fine gold. Good, here I am again, however I'm not letting go, and I'm trying again on a new canvas.

 

Before writing the letter quoted above, the artist had suffered a severe mental breakdown. In July 1889, he was confined in the asylum for six weeks and was only permitted to paint again in late August. While writing the 4–5 September letter, he touched up the first painting, which he described as a "study", and began working on a new version.

 

Second painting (F618)

 

Van Gogh appears to have completed the second painting in a single day and taking breaks to write the letter on 4–5 September 1889. In a later part of the letter, he announces: "Phew – the reaper is finished, I think it will be one that you'll place in your home".

 

He initially preferred this version over the earlier study. He described it as:

 

[A]n image of death as the great Book of Nature speaks to us about it – but what I sought is the "almost smiling". It's all yellow except for a line of violet hills – a pale, blond yellow. I myself find that funny, that I saw it like that through the iron bars of a cell.

 

The "almost smiling" is a reference to an expression used by Théophile Silvestre to describe the death of Eugène Delacroix. Silvestre's eulogy of Delacroix had made an impression on Van Gogh according to a letter he wrote in 15 August 1885 to the painter Anthon van Rappard. Van Gogh also quoted the eulogy in other letters.

 

There were significant differences between this second painting and version started earlier in the summer. This version was less yellow, with a sky that is more greenish in color, and the Sun was more conical and higher in the sky. He added a small tree near the left edge of the painting along the hills in the background and removed the pile of sheaves from the foreground. Van Gogh eventually came to believe the original painting created from nature was better than the replica which he had intended as "the final painting". The second painting, at 73.2 cm × 92.7 cm (28.8 in × 36.5 in), was almost the same size as the first. Both the first and second version of the painting were still drying on 19 September 1889 and he was not able to include them in the batch he shipped to Theo on that date. The paintings were eventually included in the batch he sent on 28 September, by which time he had completed a third version of the painting.

 

Third painting (F619)

 

In late September 1889, Van Gogh painted reduced versions of several of his earlier works, including a replica of the Reaper similar to the one he made earlier that month, smaller versions of Wheat Field with Cypresses and Bedroom in Arles, and what he called "a little portrait of me", Self-Portrait Without Beard. In particular, he wrote on 6 September 1889: "I really want to redo the reaper one more time for Mother, if not I'll make her another painting for her birthday". This third version of the painting, also known as The Wheatfield behind Saint Paul's Hospital with a Reaper, or La moisson, 'the harvest', was smaller at 59.5 cm × 72.5 cm (23.4 in × 28.5 in). The painting was completed and drying by 28 September and, in December 1889, was sent to Theo along with several other small replicas.

 

Provenance

 

Van Gogh died about a year after creating the paintings. His brother, Theo, died a few months later and the two later paintings came to the possession of Theo's widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger (later Johanna Cohen Gosschalk-Bonger). The original study was in 1890 either gifted to Paul Gauguin or traded in exchange with the French artist. In 1899, the painting was acquired by Ambroise Vollard from Gauguin's art dealer Georges Chaudet. The piece was then acquired by the art collector Émile Schuffenecker who passed it down to Amédée Schuffenecker, who in turn sold it to Helene Kröller-Müller in April 1912. It has since been in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum.

 

Van Gogh-Bonger and her son loaned the second painting to museums in Amsterdam. In 1909, she loaned the piece to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. After her death in 1925, her son continued to loan the piece to the Rijksmuseum. On 22 October 1931, the painting was loaned to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Ownership of the painting was transferred to the Vincent van Gogh Foundation on 10 July 1962 and eleven days later an agreement was reached between the foundation and the State of Netherlands for the preservation and management of the painting as part of a new Van Gogh Museum. While the new museum was built, the painting remained at Stedelijk Museum until 2 June 1973 when it was placed on permanent loan to the Van Gogh Museum.

 

While Van Gogh intended the third and smaller version of this painting as a gift for either his mother or one of his sisters, it is not known if the painting ever reached them. In May 1902, Van Gogh-Bonger sold the third painting to the German art dealer Paul Cassirer, and it became the first work by Van Gogh to be held by a German museum. The same year, art collector Karl Ernst Osthaus of the Museum Folkwang acquired the painting for his collection in Hagen, Germany. Since 1922, it has been a part of the museum's collection in Essen.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Das Van Gogh Museum ist ein Kunstmuseum am Museumplein im Amsterdamer Stadtteil Oud-Zuid, Stadtbezirk Amsterdam-Zuid, das am 2. Juni 1973 eröffnet wurde. Es beherbergt die größte Sammlung mit Werken des niederländischen Malers Vincent van Gogh. Seit dem 1. Mai 2013 ist das Museum nach Umbau und einem vorübergehenden Umzug in ein anderes Gebäude wieder zugänglich. 2016 hatte das Haus 2.076.526 Besucher und gehört damit zu den meistbesuchten Kunstmuseen der Welt.

 

Geschichte

 

Als van Gogh 1890 mit 37 Jahren starb, hinterließ er mit etwa 900 Gemälden und 1.100 Zeichnungen ein umfangreiches Werk. Hiervon hatte er nur wenig verkauft und einige Arbeiten an Freunde verschenkt. Seinen Nachlass erbte sein jüngerer Bruder, der Kunsthändler Theo van Gogh. Dieser hatte neben den Werken von Vincent auch Arbeiten von Künstlern wie Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Léon Lhermitte und Jean-François Millet gesammelt. Nachdem Theo bereits ein Jahr nach seinem Bruder verstarb, verwaltete seine Witwe Johanna van Gogh-Bonger das Erbe. Sie kehrte in die Niederlande zurück und organisierte erste Ausstellungen mit Werken Vincent van Goghs und trug wesentlich dazu bei, den Künstler einer größeren Öffentlichkeit bekannt zu machen. 1905 fand die erste große Ausstellung im Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam statt, während sich das Rijksmuseum geweigert hatte, Leihgaben mit van Goghs Werken anzunehmen. Da van Gogh häufig mehrere Versionen des gleichen Themas gemalt hatte, konnte Johanna van Gogh einzelne Bilder der Sammlung verkaufen, ohne den Gesamteindruck wesentlich zu schmälern. Sie war es auch, die frühzeitig die Veröffentlichung der Briefe Vincent van Goghs in mehreren Sprachen vorantrieb. Nach ihrem Tod 1925 erbte ihr Sohn, der Ingenieur Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890–1978) die Sammlung. Er stellte verschiedenen Museen Werke als Leihgabe zur Verfügung, bevor er 1960 die Vincent van Gogh Stiftung gründete und ihr die Sammlung übergab. Zunächst gelangten die Bilder als Dauerausstellung ins Amsterdamer Stedelijk Museum, bevor 1973 das Van Gogh Museum eröffnet werden konnte.

 

1991 war das Van Gogh Museum Schauplatz eines aufsehenerregenden Kunstraubs, bei dem 20 Gemälde im Wert von mehreren Hundert Millionen Euro entwendet wurden. Dank einer Reifenpanne des Fluchtfahrzeugs konnten die Gemälde aber kurz nach der Entdeckung des Raubs von der Polizei sichergestellt werden. 2002 wurden bei einem Einbruch die Van-Gogh-Gemälde Stürmische See bei Scheveningen und Die Reformierte Kirche in Nuenen gestohlen, sie wurden 2016 wieder aufgefunden. Die im Haus eines neapolitanischen Drogenbarons sichergestellten Malereien konnten erst mit Zustimmung der Italienischen Justiz im Januar 2017 nach Amsterdam zurückkehren.

 

Gebäude

 

Das Museum besteht aus zwei Gebäuden. Der ursprüngliche Bau geht auf einen Entwurf von Gerrit Rietveld zurück. Nach seinem Tod im Jahr 1964 wurde der Bau von seinen Partnern J. van Dillen und J. van Tricht fortgeführt und nach Fertigstellung am 2. Juni 1973 eingeweiht. In diesem Gebäude ist heute die ständige Sammlung untergebracht. 1999 wurde ein Ergänzungsbau für Sonderausstellungen eingeweiht, der vom japanischen Architekten Kishō Kurokawa in Form einer Ellipse entworfen wurde. 2015 wurde der Ausstellungsbau durch einen neuen, großflächig verglasten Eingangsbereich ergänzt, dessen Entwurf ebenfalls aus dem Büro des 2007 verstorbenen Kurokawa stammt. Beide Gebäude sind durch einen unterirdischen Übergang miteinander verbunden.

 

Sammlung

 

Das Museum besitzt über 200 Gemälde Vincent van Goghs aus allen Schaffensperioden und 400 seiner Zeichnungen. Zu den ausgestellten Hauptwerken gehören Die Kartoffelesser, Das Schlafzimmer in Arles und eine Version der Sonnenblumen. Außerdem bewahrt das Museum den Großteil der Briefe Vincent van Goghs auf. Auch findet sich in der Sammlung die Suizidwaffe van Goghs, eine verrostete Lefaucheux à broche. Die von Theo van Gogh begonnene Sammlung mit Werken anderer Künstler des 19. Jahrhunderts wurde mit Stiftungsgeldern kontinuierlich ausgebaut, sodass das Museum heute auch Werke von Alma-Tadema, Bernard, Boulanger, Breton, Caillebotte, Courbet, Couture, Daubigny, Denis, Gauguin, Israëls, Jongkind, Manet, Mauve, Millet, Monet, Munch, Pissarro, Puvis de Chavannes, Redon, Seurat, Signac, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Dongen und von Stuck besitzt.

 

(Wikipedia)

On the coldest day ever, a visit to see the best art ever, Metropolitan Museum, New York, February 2016.

Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 4.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com.

 

Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter. Together with Georges Seurat, Signac developed the Pointillism style. He was a passionate sailor, bringing back watercolor sketches of ports and nature from his travels, then turning them into large studio canvases with mosaic-like squares of color. He abandoned the short brushstrokes and intuitive dabs of color of the impressionists for a more exact scientific approach to applying dots with the intention to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye. We have digitally enhanced some of his landscapes and seascapes, both from sketches and paintings into high resolution quality. They are free to download and use under the CC0 license.

 

Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: https://www.rawpixel.com/board/1328402/paul-signac-artworks-i-high-resolution-cc0-paintings-sketches?sort=curated&mode=shop&page=1

 

(Mevrouw Henri Van de Velde Sethe)

Théo (Théophile) van Rysselberghe (23 November 1862, - 14 December 1926), was a Belgian neo-impressionist painter, who played a pivotal role in the European art scene at the turn of the century.He discovered the pointillist technique when he saw Georges Seurat's La Grande Jatte at the eighth impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1886. This shook him up completely. Together with Henry Van de Velde, Georges Lemmen, Xavier Mellery, Willy Schlobach and Alfred William Finch and Anna Boch he "imported" this style to Belgium. Seurat was invited to the next salon of Les XX in Brussels in 1887. But there his La Grande Jatte was heavily criticized by the art critics as "incomprehensible gibberish applied to the noble art of painting".

 

Théo van Rysselberghe abandoned realism and became an adept of pointillism. This brought him sometimes in heavy conflict with James Ensor. In 1887 van Rysselberghe already experimented with this style, as can be seen in his Madame Oscar Ghysbrecht (1887) and Madame Edmond Picard (1887). While staying in summer 1887 a few weeks with Eugène Boch (brother of Anna Boch) in Batignolles, near Paris, he met several painters from the Parisian scene such as Sisley, Signac, Degas and especially Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He appreciated especially the talent of Toulouse-Lautrec. His portrait Pierre-Marie Olin (1887) closely resembles the style of Toulouse-Lautrec of that time. He managed to invite several of them, including Signac, Forain, and Toulouse-Lautrec to the next exhibition of Les XX.

  

The Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Antwerp (Dutch: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten van Antwerpen), founded in 1810, houses a collection of paintings, sculptures and drawings from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries. This collection is representative of the artistic production and the taste of art enthusiasts in Antwerp, Belgium and the Northern and Southern Netherlands since the fifteenth century.

  

The neoclassical building housing the collection is one of the primary landmarks of the Zuid district of Antwerp, and stands in gardens bounded by the Leopold de Waalplaats, the Schildersstraat, the Plaatsnijdersstraat, and the Beeldhouwersstraat. It was completed in 1894.

 

Paul Victor Jules Signac (11 de noviembre de 1863 - 15 de agosto de 1935) fue un pintor neoimpresionista francés famoso por su desarrollo de la técnica puntillista junto a Georges Seurat.

Femme à l'ombrelle

1893, huile sur toile

81 x 65 cm

 

Paul Signac

(1863-1935)

 

Musée d'Orsay

[ This photograph was Identify the Painter (13) ]

 

Pierre Bonnard

French, 1867-1947

Detail from: View of The Old Port, Saint-Tropez, 1911

Oil on canvas

Signed (lower left): Bonnard

In 1911, Bonnard made three separate trips to Saint-Tropez, on the Mediterranean coast of France, which was still a small fishing port. He probably painted this work during his second visit in the summer, when he stayed with his friend the artist Paul Signac. The old port, with its narrow streets, is seen from the place de la Mairie through an opening between two shuttered buildings facing the quay. Several figures are discernible in the street: the forms of all but the central one, cast in purple shadow, are diffused by the light.

 

Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982

1984.433.1

 

From the placard: Metropolitan Museum of Art

   

Femmes au puits

1892

195 x 131 cm

 

Paul Signac

(1863-1935)

 

Musée d'Orsay

Paul Signac(1863 - 1935)

Watercolor, gouache and pencil on paper laid down on paper

19 x 25.1 cm

www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/impressionis...

 

Estimate : 60,000 - 80,000 USD

Sold : 62,500 USD

 

Sotheby's

Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale

New York, 6 Nov 2015

On the coldest day ever, a visit to see the best art ever, Metropolitan Museum, New York, February 2016.

1905-1906. Oli sobre tela. 88,9 x 116,2 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nova York. 55.220.1. Obra exposada: Gallery 825.

 

Imatge d’accés obert (Open Access, CC0), cortesia de The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Saint-Tropez (provenzalisch Sant Tropetz) ist ein kleiner Hafenort im französischen Département Var. Er befindet sich an der Côte d’Azur, am östlichen Fuß des Massif des Maures. Das damalige Fischerdorf zog schon gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts zahlreiche Künstler wie Paul Signac, Henri Matisse und Pierre Bonnard an, deren Werke heute in dem neben dem Hafen gelegenen Musée de l'Annonciade zu bewundern sind. Der Aufschwung Saint-Tropez begann in den 1950er Jahren, als sich der Ort zu einem Treffpunkt von Künstlern und der High Society entwickelte. Unter Stammgästen wird der Ort auch nur kurz Saint Trop' genannt, von Einheimischen scherzhaft auch Sans trop d' pèse (nicht allzu sehr ins Gewicht fallend). Saint-Tropez ist berühmt für seinen großen Yachthafen und die Baie de Pampelonne, den größten Sandstrand der Côte d´Azur, der allerdings überwiegend auf dem Territorium der Nachbargemeinde Ramatuelle liegt. Viele prominente Europäer verbringen ihren Urlaub in Saint-Tropez, unter anderem in den – wiederum zu Ramatuelle gehörenden – berühmten Strandclubs Tahiti Plage, Club 55, Nikki Beach und Aqua Club. Den vielen reichen Urlaubern stehen in Saint-Tropez zahlreiche teure Restaurants und Boutiquen zur Verfügung.

 

Die Ortschaft wird von einer 1592 entstandenen Zitadelle („La Citadelle“) überragt, von der man einen schönen Ausblick hat. Sie beherbergt ein Museum für Seefahrts- und Ortsgeschichte. St. Tropez hat zwar weniger als 6.000 Einwohner, über das Jahr verteilt sind jedoch etwa fünf Millionen Besucher dort.

 

In Deutschland ist Saint-Tropez vor allem durch Gunter Sachs und Brigitte Bardot sowie durch die Gendarmerie-Filme mit Louis de Funès bekannt geworden.

L'œuvre définitive (400X300 cm) a été donnée par la veuve de Paul Signac à la mairie de Montreuil où elle se trouve aujourd'hui...

Paul Signac - Rotterdam La Meuse, 1906 at Kunsthaus Zürich - Zurich Switzerland

On the coldest day ever, a visit to see the best art ever, Metropolitan Museum, New York, February 2016.

Henri Matisse's Luxe, calme et volupté (Luxury, Calm and Pleasure) was painted in the summer of 1904 at Paul Signac.

 

The Musée d'Orsay (The Orsay Museum), housed in the former railway station, the Gare d'Orsay, holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography, and is probably best known for its extensive collection of impressionist masterpieces by popular painters such as Monet and Renoir. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986.

Large Coqui, a 2004 bronze sculpture by Tom Otterness is on display outside the Marlborough Gallery, at 40 West 57th Street..

 

Founded in London in 1946, Marlborough Gallery is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading contemporary art dealers. Initially embracing a new generation of post-World War II artists including Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and Ben Nicholson, the gallery was soon selling masterpieces of the late 19th century including bronzes by Edgar Degas and paintings by Mary Cassatt, Paul Signac, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Auguste Renoir. By the late 1950s and early 1960s Marlborough held a string of prime exhibitions related to Expressionism and the modern German tradition. In 1960 an exhibition of new paintings by Francis Bacon proved sensational and was followed in 1961 Henry Moore’s important exhibition of stone and wood carvings. That same year saw an exhibition of work by Jackson Pollock and in 1964 an extraordinary exhibition of paintings, watercolors and drawings by Egon Schiele was held in London for the first time. During the 1970s and 1980s, Marlborough staged some of London’s most remarkable exhibition by such artist as Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Lynn Chadwick, Lucian Freud, Babara Hepworth, R.B. Kitaj, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Victor Pasmore, John Piper and Graham Sutherland. Important exhibitions were held of work by Jacques Lipchitz and René Magritte in 1978; and the innovative Schwitters in Exile show of 1981 that reshaped opinion of the late work of this artist.

 

This four-day spring festival of fresh floral arrangements and fine art highlights the talents of more than 150 floral artists whose interpretations are on view next to the works of art that inspired them. This one of a kind experience fills the museum with floral fragrance and features lectures, demonstrations, special events, and free docent tours of the displays. Since 1984, Art in Bloom has been our most popular fundraiser and largest volunteer effort.

 

Paul Signac 1863 - 1935

Antibes, Gewitter

Antibes, Storm, 1919

Albertina - Sammlung Batliner

 

About the exhibition Monet to Picasso:

The presentation "Monet to Picasso. The Batliner Collection"

"Monet to Picasso" provides an informative overview of one of the most exciting chapters in the history of art: the turn from figurative to abstract art.

On the basis of approximately 250 works, the continuous progression from Impressionism to Modernism is clearly depicted. By fortunate interlocking of the Batliner Collection with collections of the Albertina, supplemented by the Forberg Collection, emerged extensive ensembles of works of groundbreaking artists that make it possible to give an overall view about the various "isms" of modern times. The focus of this presentation is the Batliner Collection, which was passed by the Foundation Herbert and Rita Batliner in May 2007 to the Albertina.

The bow of the exhibition begins with the French Impressionism with outstanding late works by Monet ("Water Lily Pond") and Degas ("Two Dancers"), the Post-Impressionism (Toulouse-Lautrec and Cézanne), Fauvism (Matisse) and Neo-Impressionism.

An important step on the way to abstraction represents the Cubism which is represented brilliantly with Braque and Picasso. The surrealism of Ernst, Miró, Klee and Magritte is represented as well as the Russian avant-garde with Lissitzky and Malevich.

The arc concludes with examples of Abstract Expressionism, represented by works by Appel, Rothko and Newman and the New Realism of Yves Klein.

For the first time, a permanent exhibition collection of classical modernism as a unit of paintings and graphics: 2008, the Albertina was extended by 2,000 m2. This offered the possibility of creating a permanent viewing collection of this generous new arrival. This permanent exhibition collection shows mainly the classic modernism of the Batliner Collection, a unique enrichment in its importance and generosity of the museums in the Austrian capital Vienna.

"The Batliner Collection enjoys since many years an excellent reputation among connoisseurs and museums."

(Prof. Dr. Werner Spies)

For the first time, masters of classical modernism can now be presented in Vienna. It has always been an aspiration of the Albertina and its director Klaus Albrecht Schröder to represent art from the perspective of the drawing integrally and discipline-crossingly. Graphics and art on canvas can not be seen isolated. Drawings and graphics are not intended as a special event for specialists, but as an art form among others. This concept has been well received by the visitors. Through the holistic presentation of art, the Albertina could reach completely new audiences: in the four years alone since its reopening in 2003, counted the Albertina more than three million visitors, many of them being for the first time in the house.

 

Über die Ausstellung Monet bis Picasso:

Die Präsentation „MONET bis PICASSO. Die Sammlung BATLINER“

„Monet bis Picasso“ bietet einen informativen Überblick über eines der spannendsten Kapitel in der Kunstgeschichte: die Wende von der figurativen zur abstrakten Kunst.

Anhand von ca. 250 Werken kann das kontinuierliche Fortschreiten vom Impressionismus zur Moderne anschaulich nachvollzogen werden. Durch die glückliche Verzahnung der Sammlung Batliner mit Beständen der Albertina, ergänzt durch die Sammlung Forberg, kamen umfassende Werkblöcke bahnbrechender Künstler zustande, die es ermöglichen, eine Zusammenschau über die vielfältigen „Ismen“ der Moderne zu geben. Im Zentrum dieser Präsentation steht die Sammlung Batliner, die von der Stiftung Herbert und Rita Batliner im Mai 2007 der Albertina übergeben wurde.

Der Bogen der Ausstellung setzt an beim französischen Impressionismus mit herausragenden Alterswerken von Monet („Seerosenteich“) und Degas („Zwei Tänzerinnen“), dem Postimpressionismus (Toulouse-Lautrec und Cézanne), Fauvismus (Matisse) und Neo-Impressionismus.

Einen wichtigen Schritt auf dem Weg zur Abstraktion stellt der Kubismus dar, der mit Braque und Picasso fulminant vertreten ist. Der Surrealismus eines Ernst, Miró, Klee und Magritte ist ebenso vertreten wie die russische Avantgarde mit Lissitzky und Malewitsch.

Der Bogen schließt mit Beispielen des Abstrakten Expressionismus, vertreten durch Werke von Appel, Rothko und Newman, und dem Neuen Realismus eines Ives Klein.

Erstmals eine permanente Schausammlung der klassischen Moderne als Einheit von Gemälde und Grafik: 2008 wird die Albertina um 2.000 m2 erweitert. Dadurch bietet sich die Möglichkeit, eine ständige Schausammlung dieses großzügigen Neuzugangs einzurichten. Diese permanente Schausammlung wird vor allem die klassische Moderne der Sammlung Batliner zeigen, eine in ihrer Bedeutung und Großzügigkeit einzigartige Bereicherung der Museen in der Bundeshauptstadt Wien.

„Die Sammlung Batliner genießt seit vielen Jahren höchstes Ansehen bei Kennern und Museen.“

(Prof. Dr. Werner Spies)

Erstmals können nun in Wien die Meister der klassischen Moderne präsentiert werden. Immer schon war es ein Bestreben der Albertina und ihres Direktors Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Kunst aus dem Blickwinkel der Zeichnung ganzheitlich und gattungsübergreifend darzustellen. Grafik und Kunst auf Leinwand können nicht isoliert betrachtet werden. Zeichnung und Grafik sind nicht als Spezialveranstaltung für Spezialisten gedacht, sondern als eine Kunstform unter anderen. Dieses Konzept wurde auch von den Besucher positiv aufgenommen. Durch die ganzheitliche Präsentation von Kunst konnte die Albertina völlig neue Besucherschichten erreichen: Allein in den vier Jahren seit der Wiedereröffnung 2003 zählte die Albertina über drei Millionen Besucher, viele davon waren zum ersten Mal im Haus.

www.wien-konkret.at/kultur/museum/albertina/ausstellung-m..

Aquarelle, 1923.

 

Le premier pont suspendu, constitué d'une seule arche et mesurant 163 m, a été construit en 1852, mais suivant le sort d'autres ponts sur la Seine, est détruit en 1870 préventivement devant l'avance prussienne. Il est suivi en 1873 d'un pont en pierre d'environ 180 m, remplacé en 1920 d'un nouveau pont sur la forme ancienne de l'ancien pont suspendu, mais qui sera détruit en 1940 et remplacé par un autre pont routier suspendu après la seconde guerre mondiale (cf. wikipédia).

1889. Oli sobre tela. 46,4 x 65,1 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nova York. 1976.201.19. Obra exposada: Galeria 825.

 

Imatge d’accés obert (Open Access, CC0), cortesia de The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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