View allAll Photos Tagged Signac
Musée Cantini, musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille.
Il abrite une des plus belles collections d'art du XX s. en France... Matisse, Signac, Ubac, Monory, etc. et tant d'autres...
Toulouse Lautrec Impressionist Painting Young Girl & Eros - Adolphe c.1882
Attributed to Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) After William Bouguereau
Approx: Size 47" tall x 35.25" wide (without the frame) - 62.75" tall x 51" wide (with Frame)
History
William Bouguereau was France's most popular painter of the late 1800s. A leader of the Academic School,
Bouguereau specialized in carefully detailed mythological and genre scenes, and was particularly noted for his tender
portrayals of children. "The Abduction of Psyche" (1895) is probably his best-known work. Today many critics dismiss
his style as kitsch and do not look kindly on his harmful opposition to new creative trends; but his exquisite craftsmanship
is undeniable. Bouguereau completed over 800 paintings, many of them life-sized. Adolphe William Bouguereau (he
never used his first name) was born in La Rochelle, France. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and won the Prix de
Rome in 1850. In 1868 he built a lavish studio in Montparnasse and helped make that area the foremost artists' quarter
in Paris. Around this time he also began a liason with one of his students, American painter Elizabeth Gardner;
Bouguereau's mother opposed the relationship and the couple did not marry until her death in 1896. As comparatively
obscure as he is these days, it's difficult to imagine what a star Bouguereau was in the art world of his era. He worked
hard to fufil his many commissions and his paintings were so sought after, and fetched such high prices, that he once
boasted, "I lose five francs every time I pee". Engraved reproductions of his works sold in the millions. Along with wealth
and fame came many honors, including election to the Institute of France and being named a Grand Officer of the Legion
of Honor. Reactionary in visual tastes, Bouguereau believed art should idealize beauty and turned up his nose at
anything that even remotely deviated from this dictum. As President of the Society of French Artists from 1881, he
oversaw the selection of the thousands of paintings shown annually at the Paris Salon, the only real avenue to success
for aspiring Gallic painters and sculptors. For decades he used this position to hinder the press and public from
discovering the revolutionary changes that were taking place in French painting, including Impressionism, Realism,
Pointillism, and the singular efforts of Paul Gaugin, Henri Rousseau, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Paul Cezanne, who
submitted canvases to that venue every year only to have them rejected, finally gave up and declared, "I don't stand a
chance in Monsieur Bouguereau's Salon". Rival salons sprang up in Paris to combat Bouguereau's conservatism, but he
remained powerful and influential until his death at 79. (bio by: Bobb Edwards)
In 1882, Lautrec moved from Albi to Paris, where he studied art in the ateliers of two academic painters, Léon Bonnat
(1833–1922) and Fernand Cormon (1845–1924), who also taught Émile Bernard (1868–1941) and Vincent van Gogh
(1853–1890). Lautrec soon began painting en plein air in the manner of the Impressionists, and often posed sitters in the
Montmartre garden of his neighbor, Père Forest, a retired photographer. One of his favorite models was a prostitute
nicknamed La Casque d'Or (Golden Helmet), seen in the painting The Streetwalker (2003.20.13). Lautrec used peinture
à l'essence, or oil thinned with turpentine, on cardboard, rendering visible his loose, sketchy brushwork. The
transposition of this creature of the night to the bright light of day—her pallid complexion and artificial hair color clash with
the naturalistic setting—signals Lautrec's fascination with sordid and dissolute subjects. Later in his career, he would
devote an entire series of prints, called Elles, to life inside a brothel (1984.1203.166).
The most notable painting from the Harris collection was the early Toulouse-Lautrec painting "La blanchisseuse" (1886-
87), a young laundress with copper-colored hair and a pearly white blouse. Its optimistic presale estimate of $20 million
to $25 million turned out to be justified, as the painting sold for $22.4 million to a phone bidder. The price was a record
for a work by the artist sold at auction, $6 million more than the previous highest price.
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) was a French artist of the late 19th Century, most closely associated with the
Symbolists, but with a unique, distinctive style of his own. His depictions of Parisian night life and society -- vivid, candid,
energetic and unflattering -- are instantly recognizable, and typify that place and period in the minds of many. The
painter's own life has become a legend that has inspired many romanticized interpretations.
Henri-Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa was born on November 24, 1864, in the town of Albi, in the south of
France. He was the first child and heir of Alphonse Charlers Jean Marie (1838-1913), Count of Toulouse, and his wife
Marie Marquette Zoe Adele Tapie de Celeyran (1841-1930). Count Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec was an avid
sportsman and hunter, with a penchant for flamboyant outfits. Marie de Celeyran, by contrast, was very reserved and shy,
and doted on her first child. Young Henri was probably first introduced to painting through his uncles, several of whom
were amateur artists. He received his first tutelage in art from Rene Princeteau, a well-known sports-painter and a friend
of his father's.
Much of Henri's early childhood was spent in the Chateau de Celeyran, his mother's familial home, near the
Mediterranean town of Narbonne, where he spent much time drawing and painting the life and landscape of the estate. In
1868, his parents separated; Henri would live mostly with his mother. In 1872, he was enrolled in the prestigious Lycee
Fontanes in Paris, but he left the school only three short years later, in 1875, due to health reasons. Together with his
mother, he moved back to the south of France, and its gentler climate.
In 1878, Henri broke his left thigh as he was getting up out of a chair. Bed-ridden, he spent his time reading, drawing and
painting. A year later and just barely recovered from his first injury, he broke his other thigh whilst taking a walk with his
mother. The growth of his legs was stunted forever, and he never grew taller than 5 feet. There is much speculation about
the causes of the painter's medical condition. From the evidence we have today, it is probable that he suffered from
brittle bone disease (osteogenesis imperfecta), a genetic disorder that prevents bones and connective tissues from
developing properly. Osteogenesis imperfecta was not uncommon among the European aristocracy, and this would
explain Henri's physical frailty and other symptoms. Be that as it may, his illness was never identified during his lifetime,
and nothing his mother and his doctors undertook would help.
Meanwhile, Henri continued to pursue art. By 1880, he had produced as many as two and a half thousand works, in a
variety of techniques. Encouraged by his uncle Charles and by Princeteau, he eventually managed to convince his
mother to allow him to return to Paris to study art. In 1881, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec set up residence in Princeteau's
Paris studio.
In 1882, the young artist was accepted into the studio of the famous painter and art teacher Leon Bonnat. However,
Bonnat took an immediate dislike to Toulouse-Lautrec, who, already then, had something of a caustic personality. The
two did not get along well, and after Bonnat became a professor at the Paris Academy of Art, Lautrec quit his studio and
began to study, instead, under Fernand Cormon. Cormon was a talented artist in his own right, and an enthusiastic
teacher, and his workshop attracted many young painters who would later be among the shapers of the art world.
Under Cormon, Toulouse-Lautrec explored many styles and techniques. He received a firm grounding in academic
painting, but Cormon also encouraged his students to explore Impressionism and contemporary directions in art. Two of
the painter's works from this period are the Artist's Mother (1883) and the Young Routy at Celeyran (1883).
In 1883, Lautrec had his first romantic liaison with Marie Charlet, a 17-year-old model. The painter would have many
affairs over the course of his rather brief life. All of them would be with women far below his station, and none of them
were very long-lasting. Although the artist immersed himself in the life of the lower classes -- the cabarets, the dance
halls and the brothels -- he always retained an aristocratic aloofness and a sense of his own superiority. He was not
attempting to become part of that life: he was rather an unprejudiced observer; a doctor or a scientist, trying to dissect it
and give it life, in his art.
Lautrec moved into the Montmartre district in 1884. Here, he met Edgar Degas, whom he came to admire. He soon
began to frequent the district's cabarets, including the Elysee-Montmartre, the Moulin de la Galette and the Mirliton, run
by Artistide Bruant, where he displayed his works. That year, he also had his first exhibition at the Pau.
In 1886, Lautrec met Vincent Van Gogh at Cormon's studio, where the Dutch painter had come to study. They quickly
became friends, though Lautrec left the studio only a few months later, his education there concluded. This was also the
year when he met Suzanne Valadon, who modelled for him, and they began a relationship. It didn't last long; two years
later, Valadon attempted suicide and the couple broke up. See The Laundress, which is one of the artist's depiction of
his mistress.
By this point, Lautrec's art was beginning to attract greater notice. In 1887, he participated in an exhibition in Toulouse,
where he assumed a false name, in order to distance himself from his father, the Count of Toulouse. In Paris, he
exhibited together with Van Gogh. He was invited to send some of his work to the les Vingt ("The Twenty") exhibition,
taking place early in 1888, in Brussels. At the same exhibition, two years later, Lautrec had a fierce argument with the
painter Henry de Groux over the inclusion of Van Gogh's work, and challenged the Belgian to a duel. The duel never took
place, but it shows the friendship Lautrec and Van Gogh shared. Van Gogh stayed with Lautrec in Paris, not long before
his suicide in 1890. See Toulouse-Lautrec's portrait of Vincent Van Gogh.
In 1889, Lautrec participated in the Salon des Independants for the first time. He would become a frequent contributor to
the Salon's exhibitions. He spent the summer on France's Atlantic coast, yachting. This year saw the opening of the
cabaret Moulin Rouge in the Montmartre; Lautrec immediately became a regular, and would often show his work at the
establishment. In modern popular culture, the name Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is inseparably linked to the Moulin Rouge,
and it is true that some of his most iconic work was made there, including his notorious Moulin Rouge poster of 1891 (La
Goulue), Valentin "the Boneless" Training the New Girls (1890), and others.
Though Lautrec is most famous for his depictions of Parisian night-life, he was a man of constantly-evolving interests,
both artistically and otherwise. Around 1893, moved away from the cabarets and took an interest in literature and
theater. He made his first engraving in 1891, and his later works include many lithographs, such as Les Ambassadeurs:
Aristide Bruant (1892), May Milton (1895), The Jockey (1899), and others. In 1893, he took part in an exhibition devoted
to painters and engravers. That year was important as well, because he had his first solo exhibition at the gallery of
Maurice Joyant. In this, he was part of a modern trend for the celebration of individual artistic achievement. Prior to the
late 19th Century, exhibitions had always been collective, featuring numerous artists.
Lautrec spent a lot of the time between 1894 and 1897 travelling. He visited London, Madrid and Toledo in Spain,
Brussels, Haarlem and Amsterdam. In England, the painter became acquainted with Whistler and Oscar Wilde, both of
whom he saw as role models -- the former for his art, the latter for his lifestyle. In Spain, he took inspiration from the old
masters: Velasquez, Goya and El Greco. In Holland, he studied Rembrandt, Bruegel and Hals. In Brussels, in 1895 and
again in 1897, he took part in exhibitions organized by the group La Libre Esthetique (The Free Aesthetic), the
successors to les Vingt, where his work was exhibited side-by-side with that of Cezanne, Signac, Gauguin and Van
Gogh.
His lifestyle, ever erratic, was becoming increasingly so as a result of his drinking, which was rapidly spiralling out of
control. In 1894, on a whim, he moved into one of the brothels he frequented and lived there for some time. Some works
painted from his experience there include Rue de Moulins (1894), Prostitutes Around a Dinner Table (1894), Two
Friends (1894-95), In 1896, at a private exhibition in the gallery of Joyant, he got into altercation with no less a
personage than the former King of Serbia, Milan Obrenovic, whom he called an ignorant "pig farmer". By this time, he
was descending into outright alcoholism. In 1897, he had an attack of delirium tremens, while on summer vacation at
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. His artistic output decreased sharply, as most of his days were spent in various states of
intoxication. His health deteriorated sharply. In 1899, he was confined to a mental hospital, attracting jabs from the press.
He died on September 9th, 1901, at the age of 36, at one of his beloved mother's homes in Malrome. His last two
paintings were "Admiral Viaud" and "An Examination at the Faculty of Medicine".
Biography by Yuri Mataev
Bibliography:
Court Painter to the Wicked. The Life and Work of Toulouse-Lautrec by Jean Bouret. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. NY 1968
Toulouse_Lautrec. A Life. by Julia Frey Viking. 1994
Nightlife of Paris. The Art of Toulouse-Lautrec by Patrick O'Connor. Universe, NY.1991
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec by Herhard Gruitrooy. 1996.
Toulouse-Lautrec by Philippe Huisman and M.G. Dortu. Chartwell Books, Inc.1971
Toulouse-Lautrec His Complete Lithographs and Drypoints by Jean Adhemar. Harry N.Abrams, Inc. NY
Toulouse-Lautrec: The Complete Graphic Works by Gotz Adriani. Thames & Hudson, 1988.
H. de Toulouse-Lautrec: One Hundred Ten Unpublished Drawings by Arthur William Heintzelman, Edouard Julien, M.
Roland O. Heintzelman. French & European Pubns, 1955.
Toulouse Lautrec Impressionist Painting Young Girl & Eros - Adolphe c.1882
Attributed to Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) After William Bouguereau
Approx: Size 47" tall x 35.25" wide (without the frame) - 62.75" tall x 51" wide (with Frame)
History
William Bouguereau was France's most popular painter of the late 1800s. A leader of the Academic School,
Bouguereau specialized in carefully detailed mythological and genre scenes, and was particularly noted for his tender
portrayals of children. "The Abduction of Psyche" (1895) is probably his best-known work. Today many critics dismiss
his style as kitsch and do not look kindly on his harmful opposition to new creative trends; but his exquisite craftsmanship
is undeniable. Bouguereau completed over 800 paintings, many of them life-sized. Adolphe William Bouguereau (he
never used his first name) was born in La Rochelle, France. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and won the Prix de
Rome in 1850. In 1868 he built a lavish studio in Montparnasse and helped make that area the foremost artists' quarter
in Paris. Around this time he also began a liason with one of his students, American painter Elizabeth Gardner;
Bouguereau's mother opposed the relationship and the couple did not marry until her death in 1896. As comparatively
obscure as he is these days, it's difficult to imagine what a star Bouguereau was in the art world of his era. He worked
hard to fufil his many commissions and his paintings were so sought after, and fetched such high prices, that he once
boasted, "I lose five francs every time I pee". Engraved reproductions of his works sold in the millions. Along with wealth
and fame came many honors, including election to the Institute of France and being named a Grand Officer of the Legion
of Honor. Reactionary in visual tastes, Bouguereau believed art should idealize beauty and turned up his nose at
anything that even remotely deviated from this dictum. As President of the Society of French Artists from 1881, he
oversaw the selection of the thousands of paintings shown annually at the Paris Salon, the only real avenue to success
for aspiring Gallic painters and sculptors. For decades he used this position to hinder the press and public from
discovering the revolutionary changes that were taking place in French painting, including Impressionism, Realism,
Pointillism, and the singular efforts of Paul Gaugin, Henri Rousseau, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Paul Cezanne, who
submitted canvases to that venue every year only to have them rejected, finally gave up and declared, "I don't stand a
chance in Monsieur Bouguereau's Salon". Rival salons sprang up in Paris to combat Bouguereau's conservatism, but he
remained powerful and influential until his death at 79. (bio by: Bobb Edwards)
In 1882, Lautrec moved from Albi to Paris, where he studied art in the ateliers of two academic painters, Léon Bonnat
(1833–1922) and Fernand Cormon (1845–1924), who also taught Émile Bernard (1868–1941) and Vincent van Gogh
(1853–1890). Lautrec soon began painting en plein air in the manner of the Impressionists, and often posed sitters in the
Montmartre garden of his neighbor, Père Forest, a retired photographer. One of his favorite models was a prostitute
nicknamed La Casque d'Or (Golden Helmet), seen in the painting The Streetwalker (2003.20.13). Lautrec used peinture
à l'essence, or oil thinned with turpentine, on cardboard, rendering visible his loose, sketchy brushwork. The
transposition of this creature of the night to the bright light of day—her pallid complexion and artificial hair color clash with
the naturalistic setting—signals Lautrec's fascination with sordid and dissolute subjects. Later in his career, he would
devote an entire series of prints, called Elles, to life inside a brothel (1984.1203.166).
The most notable painting from the Harris collection was the early Toulouse-Lautrec painting "La blanchisseuse" (1886-
87), a young laundress with copper-colored hair and a pearly white blouse. Its optimistic presale estimate of $20 million
to $25 million turned out to be justified, as the painting sold for $22.4 million to a phone bidder. The price was a record
for a work by the artist sold at auction, $6 million more than the previous highest price.
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) was a French artist of the late 19th Century, most closely associated with the
Symbolists, but with a unique, distinctive style of his own. His depictions of Parisian night life and society -- vivid, candid,
energetic and unflattering -- are instantly recognizable, and typify that place and period in the minds of many. The
painter's own life has become a legend that has inspired many romanticized interpretations.
Henri-Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa was born on November 24, 1864, in the town of Albi, in the south of
France. He was the first child and heir of Alphonse Charlers Jean Marie (1838-1913), Count of Toulouse, and his wife
Marie Marquette Zoe Adele Tapie de Celeyran (1841-1930). Count Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec was an avid
sportsman and hunter, with a penchant for flamboyant outfits. Marie de Celeyran, by contrast, was very reserved and shy,
and doted on her first child. Young Henri was probably first introduced to painting through his uncles, several of whom
were amateur artists. He received his first tutelage in art from Rene Princeteau, a well-known sports-painter and a friend
of his father's.
Much of Henri's early childhood was spent in the Chateau de Celeyran, his mother's familial home, near the
Mediterranean town of Narbonne, where he spent much time drawing and painting the life and landscape of the estate. In
1868, his parents separated; Henri would live mostly with his mother. In 1872, he was enrolled in the prestigious Lycee
Fontanes in Paris, but he left the school only three short years later, in 1875, due to health reasons. Together with his
mother, he moved back to the south of France, and its gentler climate.
In 1878, Henri broke his left thigh as he was getting up out of a chair. Bed-ridden, he spent his time reading, drawing and
painting. A year later and just barely recovered from his first injury, he broke his other thigh whilst taking a walk with his
mother. The growth of his legs was stunted forever, and he never grew taller than 5 feet. There is much speculation about
the causes of the painter's medical condition. From the evidence we have today, it is probable that he suffered from
brittle bone disease (osteogenesis imperfecta), a genetic disorder that prevents bones and connective tissues from
developing properly. Osteogenesis imperfecta was not uncommon among the European aristocracy, and this would
explain Henri's physical frailty and other symptoms. Be that as it may, his illness was never identified during his lifetime,
and nothing his mother and his doctors undertook would help.
Meanwhile, Henri continued to pursue art. By 1880, he had produced as many as two and a half thousand works, in a
variety of techniques. Encouraged by his uncle Charles and by Princeteau, he eventually managed to convince his
mother to allow him to return to Paris to study art. In 1881, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec set up residence in Princeteau's
Paris studio.
In 1882, the young artist was accepted into the studio of the famous painter and art teacher Leon Bonnat. However,
Bonnat took an immediate dislike to Toulouse-Lautrec, who, already then, had something of a caustic personality. The
two did not get along well, and after Bonnat became a professor at the Paris Academy of Art, Lautrec quit his studio and
began to study, instead, under Fernand Cormon. Cormon was a talented artist in his own right, and an enthusiastic
teacher, and his workshop attracted many young painters who would later be among the shapers of the art world.
Under Cormon, Toulouse-Lautrec explored many styles and techniques. He received a firm grounding in academic
painting, but Cormon also encouraged his students to explore Impressionism and contemporary directions in art. Two of
the painter's works from this period are the Artist's Mother (1883) and the Young Routy at Celeyran (1883).
In 1883, Lautrec had his first romantic liaison with Marie Charlet, a 17-year-old model. The painter would have many
affairs over the course of his rather brief life. All of them would be with women far below his station, and none of them
were very long-lasting. Although the artist immersed himself in the life of the lower classes -- the cabarets, the dance
halls and the brothels -- he always retained an aristocratic aloofness and a sense of his own superiority. He was not
attempting to become part of that life: he was rather an unprejudiced observer; a doctor or a scientist, trying to dissect it
and give it life, in his art.
Lautrec moved into the Montmartre district in 1884. Here, he met Edgar Degas, whom he came to admire. He soon
began to frequent the district's cabarets, including the Elysee-Montmartre, the Moulin de la Galette and the Mirliton, run
by Artistide Bruant, where he displayed his works. That year, he also had his first exhibition at the Pau.
In 1886, Lautrec met Vincent Van Gogh at Cormon's studio, where the Dutch painter had come to study. They quickly
became friends, though Lautrec left the studio only a few months later, his education there concluded. This was also the
year when he met Suzanne Valadon, who modelled for him, and they began a relationship. It didn't last long; two years
later, Valadon attempted suicide and the couple broke up. See The Laundress, which is one of the artist's depiction of
his mistress.
By this point, Lautrec's art was beginning to attract greater notice. In 1887, he participated in an exhibition in Toulouse,
where he assumed a false name, in order to distance himself from his father, the Count of Toulouse. In Paris, he
exhibited together with Van Gogh. He was invited to send some of his work to the les Vingt ("The Twenty") exhibition,
taking place early in 1888, in Brussels. At the same exhibition, two years later, Lautrec had a fierce argument with the
painter Henry de Groux over the inclusion of Van Gogh's work, and challenged the Belgian to a duel. The duel never took
place, but it shows the friendship Lautrec and Van Gogh shared. Van Gogh stayed with Lautrec in Paris, not long before
his suicide in 1890. See Toulouse-Lautrec's portrait of Vincent Van Gogh.
In 1889, Lautrec participated in the Salon des Independants for the first time. He would become a frequent contributor to
the Salon's exhibitions. He spent the summer on France's Atlantic coast, yachting. This year saw the opening of the
cabaret Moulin Rouge in the Montmartre; Lautrec immediately became a regular, and would often show his work at the
establishment. In modern popular culture, the name Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is inseparably linked to the Moulin Rouge,
and it is true that some of his most iconic work was made there, including his notorious Moulin Rouge poster of 1891 (La
Goulue), Valentin "the Boneless" Training the New Girls (1890), and others.
Though Lautrec is most famous for his depictions of Parisian night-life, he was a man of constantly-evolving interests,
both artistically and otherwise. Around 1893, moved away from the cabarets and took an interest in literature and
theater. He made his first engraving in 1891, and his later works include many lithographs, such as Les Ambassadeurs:
Aristide Bruant (1892), May Milton (1895), The Jockey (1899), and others. In 1893, he took part in an exhibition devoted
to painters and engravers. That year was important as well, because he had his first solo exhibition at the gallery of
Maurice Joyant. In this, he was part of a modern trend for the celebration of individual artistic achievement. Prior to the
late 19th Century, exhibitions had always been collective, featuring numerous artists.
Lautrec spent a lot of the time between 1894 and 1897 travelling. He visited London, Madrid and Toledo in Spain,
Brussels, Haarlem and Amsterdam. In England, the painter became acquainted with Whistler and Oscar Wilde, both of
whom he saw as role models -- the former for his art, the latter for his lifestyle. In Spain, he took inspiration from the old
masters: Velasquez, Goya and El Greco. In Holland, he studied Rembrandt, Bruegel and Hals. In Brussels, in 1895 and
again in 1897, he took part in exhibitions organized by the group La Libre Esthetique (The Free Aesthetic), the
successors to les Vingt, where his work was exhibited side-by-side with that of Cezanne, Signac, Gauguin and Van
Gogh.
His lifestyle, ever erratic, was becoming increasingly so as a result of his drinking, which was rapidly spiralling out of
control. In 1894, on a whim, he moved into one of the brothels he frequented and lived there for some time. Some works
painted from his experience there include Rue de Moulins (1894), Prostitutes Around a Dinner Table (1894), Two
Friends (1894-95), In 1896, at a private exhibition in the gallery of Joyant, he got into altercation with no less a
personage than the former King of Serbia, Milan Obrenovic, whom he called an ignorant "pig farmer". By this time, he
was descending into outright alcoholism. In 1897, he had an attack of delirium tremens, while on summer vacation at
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. His artistic output decreased sharply, as most of his days were spent in various states of
intoxication. His health deteriorated sharply. In 1899, he was confined to a mental hospital, attracting jabs from the press.
He died on September 9th, 1901, at the age of 36, at one of his beloved mother's homes in Malrome. His last two
paintings were "Admiral Viaud" and "An Examination at the Faculty of Medicine".
Biography by Yuri Mataev
Bibliography:
Court Painter to the Wicked. The Life and Work of Toulouse-Lautrec by Jean Bouret. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. NY 1968
Toulouse_Lautrec. A Life. by Julia Frey Viking. 1994
Nightlife of Paris. The Art of Toulouse-Lautrec by Patrick O'Connor. Universe, NY.1991
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec by Herhard Gruitrooy. 1996.
Toulouse-Lautrec by Philippe Huisman and M.G. Dortu. Chartwell Books, Inc.1971
Toulouse-Lautrec His Complete Lithographs and Drypoints by Jean Adhemar. Harry N.Abrams, Inc. NY
Toulouse-Lautrec: The Complete Graphic Works by Gotz Adriani. Thames & Hudson, 1988.
H. de Toulouse-Lautrec: One Hundred Ten Unpublished Drawings by Arthur William Heintzelman, Edouard Julien, M.
Roland O. Heintzelman. French & European Pubns, 1955.
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
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
Henri-Edmond Cross (Delacroix), Douai 1856 – Saint-Clair 1910
Nachmittag im Garten - Afternoon in the garden - Detail (1904/05)
Städel, Frankfurt
Henri-Edmond Cross gilt als einer der bedeutendsten Vertreter des französischen Neoimpressionismus. Zusammen mit Paul Signac, seinem Freund und Künstlerkollegen, entdeckt er die Côte d’Azur für die Malerei. Seine Gemälde vermitteln deutlich die Wertschätzung der Farbe als einem autonomen Gestaltungsmittel in Richtung der Abstraktion. Das Bild „Nachmittag im Garten“ zeigt eine lichtdurchflutete Gartenidylle an der Riviera, in der man inmitten eines Blumenmeeres gut einen sonnenwarmen Nachmittag verträumen kann.
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
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
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
GRONINGER MUSEUM
Groningen
the Netherlands
The realisation of the present-day Groninger Museum had a lengthy and intensive history before a start was actually made on the spectacular design that still evokes much discussion on modern museum architecture. After years of formulating plans and drawing up sketches, after endless discussions and consultations, the ultimate design by the Italian Alessandro Mendini and the three guest architects Philippe Starck, Michele de Lucchi, and Coop Himmelb(l)au was completed in 1994.
HISTORY IMPULSE
The direct opportunity for this large-scale building project arrived on 28 September 1987 when the N.V. Nederlandse Gas Unie donated 25 million guilders (approx. 11.5 million Euro) for the construction of a new Groninger Museum. This was a godsend to the Museum. The old premises on the Praediniussingel, which had accommodated the Groningen Museum for exactly 100 years, had become far too small. The donation, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Gas Company (in 1988), was greeted with delight. This was the beginning of a project that would last 7 years and would finally be rounded off with the opening of the new Groningen Museum by Queen Beatrix on 29 October 1994.
LOCATION
Having examined all kinds of possible locations, a preparatory committee finally decided in favour of the ‘Zwaaikom’, a broader part of the Verbindings Canal on the southern edge of the inner city. It is a historical location, adjoining the stately 19th-century avenues with the mansions that were built on the site of the old city fortifications. The Verbindings Canal, linking other waterways as the name suggests, occupies the place where the city moat once lay. The main railway station and a ribbon of office blocks dating from the last few decades line the other side of the water. It is a unique location, connecting the station area to the inner city.
Mendini
The decision to appoint Alessandro Mendini, an Italian designer/architect whose work also appears in the Groningen Museum collection, was taken almost immediately. The spirit of the 1980s, a period that is strongly represented in the collection of Modern Art, radiates from his work. With regard to the new building, his vision and working method found a perfect match in the ideas of Frans Haks, the erstwhile Director of the Museum. There was one element in particular that was certain: it had to be an extraordinary building, both inviting and accessible – the Museum’s visiting card.
Mendini, born in 1931, is a versatile man. Besides being an architect, he is also a designer, artist, theorist, and poet. In 1988, the Groninger Museum presented a large-scale retrospective of his activities in which his multifaceted artistry was expressed. Mendini also publishes a great deal, writing columns in international magazines, thus reinforcing his reputation as a theorist of new design.
STARTING POINTS
In 1987, the point of departure for the new Museum was the nature and the character of the various collections that constitute the Groninger Museum: Archaeology and History of Groningen; Applied Art, with the collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain as an important subcollection; Traditional Painting (from approx. 1500 to 1950); and Modern Art (from 1950 until the present). These four completely different collections form the identity of the Museum and, as such, should all be visible in the building, each in its own domain. At the same time, the new building had to be a archetype of developments in art and architecture in the 1980s. As a result, initiating a co-operative effort by various architects and/or designers seemed to be a logical step, so that diverse perspectives could be combined and the separate collections could be appropriately expressed.
DEMANDS AND DESIRES
Mendini was bound by a number of demands from the Municipality. A direct link between the station and the inner city (a bridge for pedestrians and cyclists) had to be included in the design, inland shipping had to be able to pass through the canal, and one had to be able to see the one shore from the other (the so-called ‘transparency’ of the design). Taking these requirements into account, there followed a lengthy planning process in which all kinds of ideas and designs were investigated. The definitive design was approved in November 1990. However, due to an appeal to the Council of State lodged by opponents of the Groninger Museum, it took until April 1992 before construction could actually begin.
MENDINI’S PHILOSOPHY
DESIGN
To what principles does Mendini adhere in this kind of design? He believes that the use of decoration is deeply rooted in humankind and, accordingly, decoration must be the starting point of design. Functionalists dismiss decoration because it draws attention away from the true issue, the function of the building. Their work is sober, with full attention being given to the efficiency of the design. This leads to impersonal mass production, according to opponents. In Mendini’s opinion, people no longer want mass products. People are individuals and need something personal rather than the anonymity of the functional environment. ‘Everyone is different,’ says Mendini, ‘so why shouldn’t an object also be different?’
NO ESTABLISHED NORM
Mendini’s work has a number of striking features. Mendini rejects traditional hierarchies (such as painting being on a higher level than applied art, for example) and a historical division into time and place. In his view, art-historical styles, exotic cultures and kitsch are all equally important.
INTERACTION OF DISCIPLINES
This standpoint gives rise to a second characteristic feature of his work, the interweaving of disciplines. Mendini holds the opinion that there are no boundaries between the various activities in which he is engaged. Theatre, painting, sculpture, architecture, and science can all be used freely and interchangeably. He thinks that any distinction between these disciplines is nonsense. He also believes that everything has already been conceived and applied. As a result, the only way of acting is to employ things in new combinations – it is merely a matter of redesign. Existing designs are subsequently given a new decoration, often originating in a different discipline. Painting is a particularly important source of decoration.
CO-OPERATION
A third distinctive feature of Mendini’s work consists of co-operation with others. He works with contemporary artists, architects and designers in creating furniture, objects, clothes, décors, paintings, theatre performances, ceramics, and jewellery. The yearning to transgress the boundaries of the traditional disciplines tends to mean that Mendini is more engaged as a director and deviser of ideas than as an executor.
DIRECTOR
One of the joint efforts in which Mendini acted as a supervisor was the creation of the series of tea and coffee services for Alessi. In 1980-83, eleven silver tea services were created by the Italian firm Alessi in a very limited edition. Mendini commissioned ten of the most important modern architects, each of whom designed one of the sets. They included Hans Hollein (who also designed the Abteiberg Museum in Mönchengladbach) and Aldo Rossi (the architect of the new Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht). The assignment was to design a service in which the teapot, milk jug and sugar pot were small buildings on a plaza. Thus arose a series of eleven tea services that belong to
both the history of tea and coffee sets and also to modern design and architecture. In fact, the service project can be regarded as a precursor of the Groninger Museum. Since the beginning of 2002, the Groninger Museum has owned a complete series of these currently famous sets.
A later project by Alessi encompassed 100 porcelain vases. Mendini designed the basic shape and 99 artists and designers from all over the world added decoration. The Groninger Museum has work by many of these artists in its collection. In another project, 33 mirrors for the Glas Company, Mendini supplied the decoration and different designers repeatedly determined the form. The decoration here is a Signac motif, borrowed from a pointillist painting by Paul Signac (end 19th century). This motif, first applied to Proust’s chair (1979) recurs in all kinds of variations in the Interno di un Interno installation, and again in a Swatch watch (Lots of Dots, 1991), the staircase of the Groninger Museum, and on the exterior of the east pavilions. All the above-mentioned designs by Mendini and the guest designers are part of the Groninger Museum collection.
GUEST ARCHITECTS
A number of guest architects were invited to design sections, pavilions, of the new Museum: the Italian designer Michele de Lucchi, Philippe Starck from Paris, and, at a rather late date, the Coop Himmelb(l)au group which has offices in Vienna and Los Angeles. There was also co-operation with Dutch architects and designers, such as the Groningen architects’ office Team 4 (project architect), Albert Geertjes and Geert Koster.
THE BUILDING
Mendini’s basic design consists of three separate, simple and austere building units lying longitudinally in the Verbindings Canal, connected by passageways. These passageways also serve as bridges. A sky-blue lift bridge for cyclists and pedestrians traverses the complex. It not only links the two shores, it is also a section of the route between the station and the inner city. Thus, the Museum has become an entrance gate to the centre.
Each building block has several sections: pavilions that are superposed or juxtaposed. Each pavilion has its own special function and, consistent with this, its own shape, colour and material.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN OUTSIDE AND IN
The exterior gives a direct indication that this is a building presenting various forms of art and design. The bridge, marked by a blue, arched gate, also conceals a surprise. When the bridge has been lifted to allow ships to pass, a work of art by Wim Delvoye can be seen on the underside. Magnified Delftware tiles, with apparently 17th-century emblems, refer to the collections of applied art and traditional painting. In contrast, the form is completely modern. The games depicted are not genuine representations but are cartoons thought up by Delvoye and the tiles are actually large stickers.
A sculpture by Mendini graces the centre of the piazza, in front of the entrance. It is an autonomous work, a sofa and also a guide: the ground plan of the Museum is expressed in a vertical form, thus producing a hominoid figure. Looking from the doorway, the red neon ceiling by François Morellet can be seen in the entrance hall. The oval lines of this artwork, specially created for this location, continue the lines of the exterior architecture.
THE CENTRAL PAVILION
The first eye-catcher is, of course, the gold-coloured central tower, which is over 30 metres tall. This tower accommodates the repositories and also the entrance to the Museum. In Mendini’s opinion, the repository, often muffled away in cellars or inconspicuous auxiliary buildings, is the heart of a museum, the treasure chamber in which the most valuable possession, the Museum collection, is kept. For this reason, it has been given a central position and a gold-coloured laminate coating. The tower dazzles in the sunshine and no longer resembles a ship but evokes notions of a church. Mutually identical blocks flank the tower. One is clad in pink concrete slabs, the other in pastel green. The repetition of the squares emphasises the symmetry: laminate, concrete slabs,
small square mosaic stones, and the office windows on the upper floors.
The green part on the south side has large windows. This section accommodates the café-restaurant with its splendid view of the water and passing ships.
THE ENTRANCE HALL
The entrance hall was radically renewed in 2002. On the left-hand side is a large counter with cash registers and a plasma information screen, showing prices and information on current exhibitions. Adjoining this is the entrance to the Museum shop. On the right-hand section of the hall are two smaller counters with screens that provide information on activities in the Museum and cultural-historical information on Groningen, furnished by the Tourist Information Office. The entrance to the café-restaurant lies between these two information points. The hall is open public space and entrance during opening hours is free. The renovation has made the hall more of a meeting place and an information area.
THE CENTRAL STAIRWAY
The spiral stairway is the actual entrance to the Museum and its treasures and is also the central point of orientation. Furthermore, it is also an autonomous work of art. The characteristics of Mendini’s work are again expressed here. The visitor must descend rather than climb the staircase as in almost all other museums (to the ‘higher’ arts). The mosaic stones, applied by Italian craftsmen, are reminiscent of Byzantine mosaics from Ravenna, while the form of the spiral stairway recalls Moorish structures.
Via the stairway, the visitor enters the passages to the exhibition pavilions. Oval exhibition areas, supporting small plazas on the outside, lie between the central section and the exhibition pavilions.
The semicircular windows in the passageways evoke the ambience of a cloister. The dominant colour of the windows, light blue, refers to the water outside and is reflected in the exterior coating where capricious water channels have been applied to the material.
WEST SECTION
West of the central section are two pavilions, one above the other. The lower one, a square slightly tapering towards the top, was originally constructed to house the Archaeology and History of the Town and Province of Groningen collection. This is clearly evident on the exterior of the building: it is clad in red brick, traditionally the most common building material in Groningen. Furthermore, it gives the impression of a fort and calls to mind the roundels of the strongholds that were constructed on this site in the middle of the 17th century. Two lions from the collection, which originated from the Farnsum estate house, guard the fort.
This layout has been consigned to the annals of Groningen history since 1998. The historical layout could no longer satisfy expectations. The recently renovated pavilion currently bears the name ‘Beringer-Hazewinkel Ploeg pavilion’, referring to its new content: a safe home for the Groningen artists’ association De Ploeg and other North European Expressionists. The pavilion was also called after the family Beringer-Hazewinkel that funded the pavilion. The new layout was also made by the Italian Michele de Lucchi (1951), who designed the original pavilion.
BERINGER-HAZEWINKEL PLOEG PAVILION
The Beringer-Hazewinkel Ploeg pavilion consists of a central part, presenting objects from Groningen cultural history, and six rooms for temporary exhibitions of De Ploeg and other expressionists, three on either side, with a connecting zone behind the central area. Through a window, the visitor can gain a glimpse of the Villa Heymans, now a part of Groningen’s architectural history, designed by Berlage and built in the same red brick as the De Ploeg pavilion. Berlage was also the first to formulate a plan to connect the central station with the inner city and, as such, anticipated the function of the present Museum. A striking feature is the vividly coloured walls of the exhibition areas, whose intensity is reinforced by the application of coloured light.
STARCK PAVILION
Above the brick section lies a circular pavilion displaying objects in the Applied Art category. The exterior is clad with aluminium plates upon which vase shapes can be seen in the embossment. Thus, here is also a direct reference to the contents. The building was designed by the French designer Philippe Starck (1949), in close conjunction with Albert Geertjes.
Starck created an illuminated circular showcase for this area, entirely girdling the diagonal interior wall. This showcase presents the internationally renowned collection of porcelain from the Far East, in which the emphasis lies on East-West relations. With the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam, the Princessehof in Leeuwarden and the Gemeente Museum in The Hague, the Groninger Museum has one of the richest collections of Asian ceramics.
The round hall is divided by means of winding curtains. Exceptional arrangements are presented in the spaces that are thus created, where the visitor can concentrate on the porcelain or on other user items such as furniture and Japanese lacquer ware.
The method of presentation is attuned to the nature and special features of the objects. Large artificial fissures have been applied to the concrete floors and walls, resembling the craquelé of porcelain. The lift is bell-shaped and thus refers to applied art and also to Starck’s own designs, such as the cheese rasp/container Mister MeuMeu, dating from 1992, which is a stylised cow’s head. Starck combines form and content in a light-hearted and humorous way. On opening, one of the horns of Mister MeuMeu turns out to be a spoon. A playful element in the applied art pavilion is the aquarium filled with porcelain. It contains some of the famous collection of 'Geldermalsen porcelain', Chinese porcelain from the middle of the 18th century which lay at the bottom of the South China Sea for centuries after the wreck of the VOC ship ‘De Geldermalsen’. Many important pieces were donated to the Groninger Museum after the porcelain had been recovered by Captain Michael Hatcher in 1986. These pieces have again ‘put to sea’ in this pavilion.
The curtains, the splendidly designed showcases, and the remarkable lighting effects collectively produce elegant and alluring spaces that do full justice to the objects. In addition, the curtains have a useful soundproofing effect. A visit to this pavilion resembles a voyage of discovery with all kinds of surprising effects.
The theatrical layout by Philippe Starck is exceptional and original, and commands the attention of the visitor. It is an excellent example of the latest ideas on exhibition layout, where traditional methods of display in a neutral area alternate with exciting arrangements that fire the imagination.
EAST SECTION
MENDINI PAVILIONS
‘Classical’ museum architecture is also represented in the Museum, on the east side of the complex. The lower pavilion (Mendini 0), which is trapeziform, consists of two storeys and was designed entirely – both the interior and the exterior – by Mendini. The pointillist Signac motif on the exterior refers to the interior containing the visual arts. The seven consecutive halls on the ground floor are devoted to temporary exhibitions. Expositions of all kinds and composition are presented here, as long as they fit in with the policy and collection of the Groninger Museum. Recent exhibitions have included Jozef Israëls (1999), Anton Corbijn (2000), ‘Hell and Heaven, the Middle Ages in the North’ by Peter Greenaway (2001), and Ilja Repin (2002).
The spaces on the first floor (Mendini 1) display ever-changing selections from the Museum’s own collection, including objects at the interface of art, architecture and design (Pattern and Decoration, Memphis, Mendini) and, since the end of the 1990s, a sizeable collection of fashion and of staged and documentary photographs. Art from the Museums abundant historical collection is also regularly shown.
CLASSICAL LAYOUT
The largest rectangular area is situated in the middle of the square ground plan, with smaller areas
surrounding it. These, too, are rectangular and differ in size. The various dimensions are necessary because all kinds of art, large and small, must be able to be shown here. The areas are austere and simple and, as a result, have a rather classical appearance. The broad portals, whose metal framing becomes wider towards the bottom, accentuate this. Mendini did not apply the enfilade system, frequently deployed in many museums in the 19th century, in which the portals of consecutive areas lie in line. The further décor of the areas on the ground floor, used for the temporary exhibitions, is dependent on the type of exhibition organised. The colours of the walls, and even of the floors and ceilings, are repeatedly altered.
On the first floor, used for the presentation of Modern Visual Art, each space has its own particular colour, following a colour scheme developed by the Dutch artist Peter Struycken.
Just as in the west pavilions, where ‘traditional’ art objects are displayed in a renewed environment, the classical areas here on the first floor contrast with the modern, often innovative art presented. In Mendini 0, a refuge has been installed where the visitor can relax and look out of the window. As with the other pavilions, there is no daylight here. Mendini 1 accommodates a print gallery, constructed with financial support from the Beringer-Hazewinkel Foundation.
COOP HIMMELB(L)AU PAVILION
The vide with the broad staircase connects the two floors of the Mendini pavilion. The staircase also takes the visitor to the top pavilion, the much-discussed section of the Museum. It was designed by the architects Wolfgang Prix (Vienna, 1942) and the Pole Helmut Swiczinsky (1944), jointly known as Coop Himmelb(l)au. ‘It was as if a bomb had exploded’, said one city resident when the design was published. The capricious pavilion contrasts markedly with the rest of the building, designed by Mendini, with its austere and simple forms.
The first impression of the Coop Himmelb(l)au pavilion is one of randomness and chaos. The structure is comprised of large, double-walled steel plates that alternate with hardened glass at the points where they do not quite meet. The plates, to which the first sketch and a photograph of the design have been applied using tar, are topsy-turvy and even hang over the pavilion underneath at some points.
DECONSTRUCTIVISM
The design is a typical example of the most recent architectural movement, Deconstructivism, in which all architectural traditions are thrown overboard. Traditional constructive elements, such as the wall, floor, window or ceiling, have been torn out of their normal coherence. Thus, a wall can also be a ceiling and a window a floor. According to Prix, the spaces that are created in this way are a result of force fields and movement. ‘Many of the techniques that we use originate from art, such as the adherence to the first sketch and automatic drawing,’ he says. ‘We wish to make use of the subconscious and develop new forms from there. We want to try to bring emotion back into architecture.’
He does not take established values and norms as his starting point but prefers to seize the spirit of the times: fragmentation, chaos, contrast, movement. Another example of deconstructivist architecture is the glass pavilion by Bernard Tschumi at the Hereplein, near the Museum, designed in 19.. for the What a Wonderful World exhibition – music videos in architecture.
Three exhibition areas have been created within the pavilion, separated by indentations and recesses. The walls are made of steel and glass so that daylight can enter at unexpected places. This also contrasts with Mendini’s closed realm. Coop Himmelb(l)au aims to generate ’open architecture', an interaction between inside and out, so that the visitor is regularly surprised by sudden glimpses of the outside world. Paths at different levels ensure that the visitor can view the artworks from all sides: at ground level or from the gantry that cuts through the exhibition area a few metres above the floor. The original idea was to display paintings from the 16th-19th centuries here, to emphasise the contrast. Later, the pavilion came to be used primarily for three-dimensional work, such as exhibitions of the work of the British artist Mark Grinnigen and the American Rona Pondick. The areas here are extremely suitable for large receptions. Even dance parties are held here
occasionally at festive openings. The whole Coop Himmelb(l)au pavilion is a three-dimensional artwork, resting on the pedestal formed by the Mendini volume clad in colourful laminate.
THE MUSEUM AS A WORK OF ART
The new Groninger Museum is not merely a shell to accommodate art, it is a work of art in itself – a principle that is increasingly being applied in modern (museum) architecture elsewhere. In fact, the Museum itself is the most valuable item in the Groninger Museum collection of art. It is a work of art at the heart of the city, traversed by public areas where passers-by are directly confronted by all kinds of artwork. Could it be more inviting?
Source: www.groningermuseum.nl
Photo © Eddy Westveer
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20131027_EW46113
Vincent van Gogh, Groot-Zundert 1853 - Auvers-sur-Oise 1890
Place St. Pierre, Paris - Square St. Pierre, Paris (1887)
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn., USA
Während seiner Pariser Zeit befasste sich Vincent van Gogh auch mit den Werken der Künstler des Pointillismus, wie Georges Seurat, Paul Signac usw. In dieser Zeit entstand das Gemälde des Place St. Pierre.
Engraving from Chevreul’s 1861 illustrated color-theory book
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
Toulouse Lautrec Impressionist Painting Young Girl & Eros - Adolphe c.1882
Attributed to Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) After William Bouguereau
Approx: Size 47" tall x 35.25" wide (without the frame) - 62.75" tall x 51" wide (with Frame)
History
William Bouguereau was France's most popular painter of the late 1800s. A leader of the Academic School,
Bouguereau specialized in carefully detailed mythological and genre scenes, and was particularly noted for his tender
portrayals of children. "The Abduction of Psyche" (1895) is probably his best-known work. Today many critics dismiss
his style as kitsch and do not look kindly on his harmful opposition to new creative trends; but his exquisite craftsmanship
is undeniable. Bouguereau completed over 800 paintings, many of them life-sized. Adolphe William Bouguereau (he
never used his first name) was born in La Rochelle, France. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and won the Prix de
Rome in 1850. In 1868 he built a lavish studio in Montparnasse and helped make that area the foremost artists' quarter
in Paris. Around this time he also began a liason with one of his students, American painter Elizabeth Gardner;
Bouguereau's mother opposed the relationship and the couple did not marry until her death in 1896. As comparatively
obscure as he is these days, it's difficult to imagine what a star Bouguereau was in the art world of his era. He worked
hard to fufil his many commissions and his paintings were so sought after, and fetched such high prices, that he once
boasted, "I lose five francs every time I pee". Engraved reproductions of his works sold in the millions. Along with wealth
and fame came many honors, including election to the Institute of France and being named a Grand Officer of the Legion
of Honor. Reactionary in visual tastes, Bouguereau believed art should idealize beauty and turned up his nose at
anything that even remotely deviated from this dictum. As President of the Society of French Artists from 1881, he
oversaw the selection of the thousands of paintings shown annually at the Paris Salon, the only real avenue to success
for aspiring Gallic painters and sculptors. For decades he used this position to hinder the press and public from
discovering the revolutionary changes that were taking place in French painting, including Impressionism, Realism,
Pointillism, and the singular efforts of Paul Gaugin, Henri Rousseau, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Paul Cezanne, who
submitted canvases to that venue every year only to have them rejected, finally gave up and declared, "I don't stand a
chance in Monsieur Bouguereau's Salon". Rival salons sprang up in Paris to combat Bouguereau's conservatism, but he
remained powerful and influential until his death at 79. (bio by: Bobb Edwards)
In 1882, Lautrec moved from Albi to Paris, where he studied art in the ateliers of two academic painters, Léon Bonnat
(1833–1922) and Fernand Cormon (1845–1924), who also taught Émile Bernard (1868–1941) and Vincent van Gogh
(1853–1890). Lautrec soon began painting en plein air in the manner of the Impressionists, and often posed sitters in the
Montmartre garden of his neighbor, Père Forest, a retired photographer. One of his favorite models was a prostitute
nicknamed La Casque d'Or (Golden Helmet), seen in the painting The Streetwalker (2003.20.13). Lautrec used peinture
à l'essence, or oil thinned with turpentine, on cardboard, rendering visible his loose, sketchy brushwork. The
transposition of this creature of the night to the bright light of day—her pallid complexion and artificial hair color clash with
the naturalistic setting—signals Lautrec's fascination with sordid and dissolute subjects. Later in his career, he would
devote an entire series of prints, called Elles, to life inside a brothel (1984.1203.166).
The most notable painting from the Harris collection was the early Toulouse-Lautrec painting "La blanchisseuse" (1886-
87), a young laundress with copper-colored hair and a pearly white blouse. Its optimistic presale estimate of $20 million
to $25 million turned out to be justified, as the painting sold for $22.4 million to a phone bidder. The price was a record
for a work by the artist sold at auction, $6 million more than the previous highest price.
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) was a French artist of the late 19th Century, most closely associated with the
Symbolists, but with a unique, distinctive style of his own. His depictions of Parisian night life and society -- vivid, candid,
energetic and unflattering -- are instantly recognizable, and typify that place and period in the minds of many. The
painter's own life has become a legend that has inspired many romanticized interpretations.
Henri-Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa was born on November 24, 1864, in the town of Albi, in the south of
France. He was the first child and heir of Alphonse Charlers Jean Marie (1838-1913), Count of Toulouse, and his wife
Marie Marquette Zoe Adele Tapie de Celeyran (1841-1930). Count Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec was an avid
sportsman and hunter, with a penchant for flamboyant outfits. Marie de Celeyran, by contrast, was very reserved and shy,
and doted on her first child. Young Henri was probably first introduced to painting through his uncles, several of whom
were amateur artists. He received his first tutelage in art from Rene Princeteau, a well-known sports-painter and a friend
of his father's.
Much of Henri's early childhood was spent in the Chateau de Celeyran, his mother's familial home, near the
Mediterranean town of Narbonne, where he spent much time drawing and painting the life and landscape of the estate. In
1868, his parents separated; Henri would live mostly with his mother. In 1872, he was enrolled in the prestigious Lycee
Fontanes in Paris, but he left the school only three short years later, in 1875, due to health reasons. Together with his
mother, he moved back to the south of France, and its gentler climate.
In 1878, Henri broke his left thigh as he was getting up out of a chair. Bed-ridden, he spent his time reading, drawing and
painting. A year later and just barely recovered from his first injury, he broke his other thigh whilst taking a walk with his
mother. The growth of his legs was stunted forever, and he never grew taller than 5 feet. There is much speculation about
the causes of the painter's medical condition. From the evidence we have today, it is probable that he suffered from
brittle bone disease (osteogenesis imperfecta), a genetic disorder that prevents bones and connective tissues from
developing properly. Osteogenesis imperfecta was not uncommon among the European aristocracy, and this would
explain Henri's physical frailty and other symptoms. Be that as it may, his illness was never identified during his lifetime,
and nothing his mother and his doctors undertook would help.
Meanwhile, Henri continued to pursue art. By 1880, he had produced as many as two and a half thousand works, in a
variety of techniques. Encouraged by his uncle Charles and by Princeteau, he eventually managed to convince his
mother to allow him to return to Paris to study art. In 1881, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec set up residence in Princeteau's
Paris studio.
In 1882, the young artist was accepted into the studio of the famous painter and art teacher Leon Bonnat. However,
Bonnat took an immediate dislike to Toulouse-Lautrec, who, already then, had something of a caustic personality. The
two did not get along well, and after Bonnat became a professor at the Paris Academy of Art, Lautrec quit his studio and
began to study, instead, under Fernand Cormon. Cormon was a talented artist in his own right, and an enthusiastic
teacher, and his workshop attracted many young painters who would later be among the shapers of the art world.
Under Cormon, Toulouse-Lautrec explored many styles and techniques. He received a firm grounding in academic
painting, but Cormon also encouraged his students to explore Impressionism and contemporary directions in art. Two of
the painter's works from this period are the Artist's Mother (1883) and the Young Routy at Celeyran (1883).
In 1883, Lautrec had his first romantic liaison with Marie Charlet, a 17-year-old model. The painter would have many
affairs over the course of his rather brief life. All of them would be with women far below his station, and none of them
were very long-lasting. Although the artist immersed himself in the life of the lower classes -- the cabarets, the dance
halls and the brothels -- he always retained an aristocratic aloofness and a sense of his own superiority. He was not
attempting to become part of that life: he was rather an unprejudiced observer; a doctor or a scientist, trying to dissect it
and give it life, in his art.
Lautrec moved into the Montmartre district in 1884. Here, he met Edgar Degas, whom he came to admire. He soon
began to frequent the district's cabarets, including the Elysee-Montmartre, the Moulin de la Galette and the Mirliton, run
by Artistide Bruant, where he displayed his works. That year, he also had his first exhibition at the Pau.
In 1886, Lautrec met Vincent Van Gogh at Cormon's studio, where the Dutch painter had come to study. They quickly
became friends, though Lautrec left the studio only a few months later, his education there concluded. This was also the
year when he met Suzanne Valadon, who modelled for him, and they began a relationship. It didn't last long; two years
later, Valadon attempted suicide and the couple broke up. See The Laundress, which is one of the artist's depiction of
his mistress.
By this point, Lautrec's art was beginning to attract greater notice. In 1887, he participated in an exhibition in Toulouse,
where he assumed a false name, in order to distance himself from his father, the Count of Toulouse. In Paris, he
exhibited together with Van Gogh. He was invited to send some of his work to the les Vingt ("The Twenty") exhibition,
taking place early in 1888, in Brussels. At the same exhibition, two years later, Lautrec had a fierce argument with the
painter Henry de Groux over the inclusion of Van Gogh's work, and challenged the Belgian to a duel. The duel never took
place, but it shows the friendship Lautrec and Van Gogh shared. Van Gogh stayed with Lautrec in Paris, not long before
his suicide in 1890. See Toulouse-Lautrec's portrait of Vincent Van Gogh.
In 1889, Lautrec participated in the Salon des Independants for the first time. He would become a frequent contributor to
the Salon's exhibitions. He spent the summer on France's Atlantic coast, yachting. This year saw the opening of the
cabaret Moulin Rouge in the Montmartre; Lautrec immediately became a regular, and would often show his work at the
establishment. In modern popular culture, the name Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is inseparably linked to the Moulin Rouge,
and it is true that some of his most iconic work was made there, including his notorious Moulin Rouge poster of 1891 (La
Goulue), Valentin "the Boneless" Training the New Girls (1890), and others.
Though Lautrec is most famous for his depictions of Parisian night-life, he was a man of constantly-evolving interests,
both artistically and otherwise. Around 1893, moved away from the cabarets and took an interest in literature and
theater. He made his first engraving in 1891, and his later works include many lithographs, such as Les Ambassadeurs:
Aristide Bruant (1892), May Milton (1895), The Jockey (1899), and others. In 1893, he took part in an exhibition devoted
to painters and engravers. That year was important as well, because he had his first solo exhibition at the gallery of
Maurice Joyant. In this, he was part of a modern trend for the celebration of individual artistic achievement. Prior to the
late 19th Century, exhibitions had always been collective, featuring numerous artists.
Lautrec spent a lot of the time between 1894 and 1897 travelling. He visited London, Madrid and Toledo in Spain,
Brussels, Haarlem and Amsterdam. In England, the painter became acquainted with Whistler and Oscar Wilde, both of
whom he saw as role models -- the former for his art, the latter for his lifestyle. In Spain, he took inspiration from the old
masters: Velasquez, Goya and El Greco. In Holland, he studied Rembrandt, Bruegel and Hals. In Brussels, in 1895 and
again in 1897, he took part in exhibitions organized by the group La Libre Esthetique (The Free Aesthetic), the
successors to les Vingt, where his work was exhibited side-by-side with that of Cezanne, Signac, Gauguin and Van
Gogh.
His lifestyle, ever erratic, was becoming increasingly so as a result of his drinking, which was rapidly spiralling out of
control. In 1894, on a whim, he moved into one of the brothels he frequented and lived there for some time. Some works
painted from his experience there include Rue de Moulins (1894), Prostitutes Around a Dinner Table (1894), Two
Friends (1894-95), In 1896, at a private exhibition in the gallery of Joyant, he got into altercation with no less a
personage than the former King of Serbia, Milan Obrenovic, whom he called an ignorant "pig farmer". By this time, he
was descending into outright alcoholism. In 1897, he had an attack of delirium tremens, while on summer vacation at
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. His artistic output decreased sharply, as most of his days were spent in various states of
intoxication. His health deteriorated sharply. In 1899, he was confined to a mental hospital, attracting jabs from the press.
He died on September 9th, 1901, at the age of 36, at one of his beloved mother's homes in Malrome. His last two
paintings were "Admiral Viaud" and "An Examination at the Faculty of Medicine".
Biography by Yuri Mataev
Bibliography:
Court Painter to the Wicked. The Life and Work of Toulouse-Lautrec by Jean Bouret. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. NY 1968
Toulouse_Lautrec. A Life. by Julia Frey Viking. 1994
Nightlife of Paris. The Art of Toulouse-Lautrec by Patrick O'Connor. Universe, NY.1991
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec by Herhard Gruitrooy. 1996.
Toulouse-Lautrec by Philippe Huisman and M.G. Dortu. Chartwell Books, Inc.1971
Toulouse-Lautrec His Complete Lithographs and Drypoints by Jean Adhemar. Harry N.Abrams, Inc. NY
Toulouse-Lautrec: The Complete Graphic Works by Gotz Adriani. Thames & Hudson, 1988.
H. de Toulouse-Lautrec: One Hundred Ten Unpublished Drawings by Arthur William Heintzelman, Edouard Julien, M.
Roland O. Heintzelman. French & European Pubns, 1955.
Ölgemälde, kopiert nach: Paul Signac, Lady on the Terrace, Kopie, Öl auf Leinwand, Maße: ca. 73 x 92 cm, Endpreis (ohne Rahmen, als gerollte Leinwand, inkl. Versand innerhalb Deutschlands): 410 Euro
- oder gerahmt auf Keilrahmen: 490 Euro.
Der Versand innerhalb Deutschlands ist in den hier angegebenen Preisen inklusive. Preise inkl. 19% MwSt.
Mehr unter: falschemeister.de/.
© Annette Berger
Paul Signac（1863 - 1935）
Gouache, watercolor and charcoal on paper laid down on card
20.3 x 30.4 cm
Estimate : $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
Price Realized : $ 25,000
Christie's
Impressionist & Modern Works on Paper
New York, 13 Nov 2015
On the coldest day ever, a visit to see the best art ever, Metropolitan Museum, New York, February 2016.
The Yellow House used to be on the grassy area in the photograph.
Vincent Van Gogh's period in Arles.
From Wikipedia: Arles (February 1888 – May 1889)
Van Gogh arrived on 21 February 1888, at the railroad station in Arles, crossed Place Lamartine, entered the city through the Porte de la Cavalerie, and took quarters a few steps further, at the Hôtel-Restaurant Carrel, 30 Rue Cavalerie. He had ideas of founding a Utopian art colony. His companion for two months was the Danish artist, Christian Mourier-Petersen. In March, he painted local landscapes, using a gridded "perspective frame." Three of his pictures were shown at the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. In April he was visited by the American painter, Dodge MacKnight, who was resident in Fontvieille nearby.
On 1 May he signed a lease for 15 francs a month to rent the four rooms in the right hand side of the "Yellow House" (so called because its outside walls were yellow) at No. 2 Place Lamartine. The house was unfurnished and had been uninhabited for some time so he was not able to move in straight away. He had been staying at the Hôtel Restaurant Carrel in the Rue de la Cavalerie, just inside the medieval gate to the city, with the old Roman Arena in view. The rate charged by the hotel was 5 francs a week, which Van Gogh regarded as excessive. He disputed the price, and took the case to the local arbitrator who awarded him a twelve franc reduction on his total bill. On 7 May he moved out of the Hôtel Carrel, and moved into the Café de la Gare. He became friends with the proprietors, Joseph and Marie Ginoux. Although the Yellow House had to be furnished before he could fully move in, Van Gogh was able to use it as a studio. His major project at this time was a series of paintings intended to form the décoration for the Yellow House.
In June he visited Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. He gave drawing lessons to a Zouave second lieutenant, Paul-Eugène Milliet, who also became a companion. MacKnight introduced him to Eugène Boch, a Belgian painter, who stayed at times in Fontvieille (they exchanged visits in July). Gauguin agreed to join him in Arles. In August he painted sunflowers; Boch visited again. On 8 September, upon advice from his friend the station's postal supervisor Joseph Roulin, he bought two beds, and he finally spent the first night in the still sparsely furnished Yellow House on 17 September.
On 23 October Gauguin eventually arrived in Arles, after repeated requests from Van Gogh. During November they painted together. Uncharacteristically, Van Gogh painted some pictures from memory, deferring to Gauguin's ideas in this. Their first joint outdoor painting exercise was conducted at the picturesque Alyscamps. It was in November that Van Gogh painted The Red Vineyard.
In December the two artists visited Montpellier and viewed works by Courbet and Delacroix in the Museé Fabre. However, their relationship was deteriorating badly. They quarrelled fiercely about art. Van Gogh felt an increasing fear that Gauguin was going to desert him, and what he described as a situation of "excessive tension" reached a crisis point on 23 December 1888, when Van Gogh stalked Gauguin with a razor and then cut off the lower part of his own left ear lobe, which he wrapped in newspaper and gave to a prostitute named Rachel in the local brothel, asking her to "keep this object carefully." Gauguin left Arles and did not see Van Gogh again. Van Gogh was hospitalised and in a critical state for a few days. He was immediately visited by Theo (whom Gauguin had notified), as well as Madame Ginoux and frequently by Roulin. In January 1889 Van Gogh returned to the "Yellow House", but spent the following month between hospital and home, suffering from hallucinations and paranoia that he was being poisoned. In March the police closed his house, after a petition by thirty townspeople, who called him fou roux ("the redheaded madman"). Signac visited him in hospital and Van Gogh was allowed home in his company. In April he moved into rooms owned by Dr. Rey, after floods damaged paintings in his own home. On 17 April Theo married Johanna Bonger in Amsterdam.
Saint-Tropez 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 Urlauber 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. Saint-Tropez hat nur 5275 Einwohner (Stand 1. Januar 2008), 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.
Quelle: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Toulouse Lautrec Impressionist Painting Young Girl & Eros - Adolphe c.1882
Attributed to Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) After William Bouguereau
Approx: Size 47" tall x 35.25" wide (without the frame) - 62.75" tall x 51" wide (with Frame)
History
William Bouguereau was France's most popular painter of the late 1800s. A leader of the Academic School,
Bouguereau specialized in carefully detailed mythological and genre scenes, and was particularly noted for his tender
portrayals of children. "The Abduction of Psyche" (1895) is probably his best-known work. Today many critics dismiss
his style as kitsch and do not look kindly on his harmful opposition to new creative trends; but his exquisite craftsmanship
is undeniable. Bouguereau completed over 800 paintings, many of them life-sized. Adolphe William Bouguereau (he
never used his first name) was born in La Rochelle, France. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and won the Prix de
Rome in 1850. In 1868 he built a lavish studio in Montparnasse and helped make that area the foremost artists' quarter
in Paris. Around this time he also began a liason with one of his students, American painter Elizabeth Gardner;
Bouguereau's mother opposed the relationship and the couple did not marry until her death in 1896. As comparatively
obscure as he is these days, it's difficult to imagine what a star Bouguereau was in the art world of his era. He worked
hard to fufil his many commissions and his paintings were so sought after, and fetched such high prices, that he once
boasted, "I lose five francs every time I pee". Engraved reproductions of his works sold in the millions. Along with wealth
and fame came many honors, including election to the Institute of France and being named a Grand Officer of the Legion
of Honor. Reactionary in visual tastes, Bouguereau believed art should idealize beauty and turned up his nose at
anything that even remotely deviated from this dictum. As President of the Society of French Artists from 1881, he
oversaw the selection of the thousands of paintings shown annually at the Paris Salon, the only real avenue to success
for aspiring Gallic painters and sculptors. For decades he used this position to hinder the press and public from
discovering the revolutionary changes that were taking place in French painting, including Impressionism, Realism,
Pointillism, and the singular efforts of Paul Gaugin, Henri Rousseau, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Paul Cezanne, who
submitted canvases to that venue every year only to have them rejected, finally gave up and declared, "I don't stand a
chance in Monsieur Bouguereau's Salon". Rival salons sprang up in Paris to combat Bouguereau's conservatism, but he
remained powerful and influential until his death at 79. (bio by: Bobb Edwards)
In 1882, Lautrec moved from Albi to Paris, where he studied art in the ateliers of two academic painters, Léon Bonnat
(1833–1922) and Fernand Cormon (1845–1924), who also taught Émile Bernard (1868–1941) and Vincent van Gogh
(1853–1890). Lautrec soon began painting en plein air in the manner of the Impressionists, and often posed sitters in the
Montmartre garden of his neighbor, Père Forest, a retired photographer. One of his favorite models was a prostitute
nicknamed La Casque d'Or (Golden Helmet), seen in the painting The Streetwalker (2003.20.13). Lautrec used peinture
à l'essence, or oil thinned with turpentine, on cardboard, rendering visible his loose, sketchy brushwork. The
transposition of this creature of the night to the bright light of day—her pallid complexion and artificial hair color clash with
the naturalistic setting—signals Lautrec's fascination with sordid and dissolute subjects. Later in his career, he would
devote an entire series of prints, called Elles, to life inside a brothel (1984.1203.166).
The most notable painting from the Harris collection was the early Toulouse-Lautrec painting "La blanchisseuse" (1886-
87), a young laundress with copper-colored hair and a pearly white blouse. Its optimistic presale estimate of $20 million
to $25 million turned out to be justified, as the painting sold for $22.4 million to a phone bidder. The price was a record
for a work by the artist sold at auction, $6 million more than the previous highest price.
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) was a French artist of the late 19th Century, most closely associated with the
Symbolists, but with a unique, distinctive style of his own. His depictions of Parisian night life and society -- vivid, candid,
energetic and unflattering -- are instantly recognizable, and typify that place and period in the minds of many. The
painter's own life has become a legend that has inspired many romanticized interpretations.
Henri-Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa was born on November 24, 1864, in the town of Albi, in the south of
France. He was the first child and heir of Alphonse Charlers Jean Marie (1838-1913), Count of Toulouse, and his wife
Marie Marquette Zoe Adele Tapie de Celeyran (1841-1930). Count Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec was an avid
sportsman and hunter, with a penchant for flamboyant outfits. Marie de Celeyran, by contrast, was very reserved and shy,
and doted on her first child. Young Henri was probably first introduced to painting through his uncles, several of whom
were amateur artists. He received his first tutelage in art from Rene Princeteau, a well-known sports-painter and a friend
of his father's.
Much of Henri's early childhood was spent in the Chateau de Celeyran, his mother's familial home, near the
Mediterranean town of Narbonne, where he spent much time drawing and painting the life and landscape of the estate. In
1868, his parents separated; Henri would live mostly with his mother. In 1872, he was enrolled in the prestigious Lycee
Fontanes in Paris, but he left the school only three short years later, in 1875, due to health reasons. Together with his
mother, he moved back to the south of France, and its gentler climate.
In 1878, Henri broke his left thigh as he was getting up out of a chair. Bed-ridden, he spent his time reading, drawing and
painting. A year later and just barely recovered from his first injury, he broke his other thigh whilst taking a walk with his
mother. The growth of his legs was stunted forever, and he never grew taller than 5 feet. There is much speculation about
the causes of the painter's medical condition. From the evidence we have today, it is probable that he suffered from
brittle bone disease (osteogenesis imperfecta), a genetic disorder that prevents bones and connective tissues from
developing properly. Osteogenesis imperfecta was not uncommon among the European aristocracy, and this would
explain Henri's physical frailty and other symptoms. Be that as it may, his illness was never identified during his lifetime,
and nothing his mother and his doctors undertook would help.
Meanwhile, Henri continued to pursue art. By 1880, he had produced as many as two and a half thousand works, in a
variety of techniques. Encouraged by his uncle Charles and by Princeteau, he eventually managed to convince his
mother to allow him to return to Paris to study art. In 1881, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec set up residence in Princeteau's
Paris studio.
In 1882, the young artist was accepted into the studio of the famous painter and art teacher Leon Bonnat. However,
Bonnat took an immediate dislike to Toulouse-Lautrec, who, already then, had something of a caustic personality. The
two did not get along well, and after Bonnat became a professor at the Paris Academy of Art, Lautrec quit his studio and
began to study, instead, under Fernand Cormon. Cormon was a talented artist in his own right, and an enthusiastic
teacher, and his workshop attracted many young painters who would later be among the shapers of the art world.
Under Cormon, Toulouse-Lautrec explored many styles and techniques. He received a firm grounding in academic
painting, but Cormon also encouraged his students to explore Impressionism and contemporary directions in art. Two of
the painter's works from this period are the Artist's Mother (1883) and the Young Routy at Celeyran (1883).
In 1883, Lautrec had his first romantic liaison with Marie Charlet, a 17-year-old model. The painter would have many
affairs over the course of his rather brief life. All of them would be with women far below his station, and none of them
were very long-lasting. Although the artist immersed himself in the life of the lower classes -- the cabarets, the dance
halls and the brothels -- he always retained an aristocratic aloofness and a sense of his own superiority. He was not
attempting to become part of that life: he was rather an unprejudiced observer; a doctor or a scientist, trying to dissect it
and give it life, in his art.
Lautrec moved into the Montmartre district in 1884. Here, he met Edgar Degas, whom he came to admire. He soon
began to frequent the district's cabarets, including the Elysee-Montmartre, the Moulin de la Galette and the Mirliton, run
by Artistide Bruant, where he displayed his works. That year, he also had his first exhibition at the Pau.
In 1886, Lautrec met Vincent Van Gogh at Cormon's studio, where the Dutch painter had come to study. They quickly
became friends, though Lautrec left the studio only a few months later, his education there concluded. This was also the
year when he met Suzanne Valadon, who modelled for him, and they began a relationship. It didn't last long; two years
later, Valadon attempted suicide and the couple broke up. See The Laundress, which is one of the artist's depiction of
his mistress.
By this point, Lautrec's art was beginning to attract greater notice. In 1887, he participated in an exhibition in Toulouse,
where he assumed a false name, in order to distance himself from his father, the Count of Toulouse. In Paris, he
exhibited together with Van Gogh. He was invited to send some of his work to the les Vingt ("The Twenty") exhibition,
taking place early in 1888, in Brussels. At the same exhibition, two years later, Lautrec had a fierce argument with the
painter Henry de Groux over the inclusion of Van Gogh's work, and challenged the Belgian to a duel. The duel never took
place, but it shows the friendship Lautrec and Van Gogh shared. Van Gogh stayed with Lautrec in Paris, not long before
his suicide in 1890. See Toulouse-Lautrec's portrait of Vincent Van Gogh.
In 1889, Lautrec participated in the Salon des Independants for the first time. He would become a frequent contributor to
the Salon's exhibitions. He spent the summer on France's Atlantic coast, yachting. This year saw the opening of the
cabaret Moulin Rouge in the Montmartre; Lautrec immediately became a regular, and would often show his work at the
establishment. In modern popular culture, the name Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is inseparably linked to the Moulin Rouge,
and it is true that some of his most iconic work was made there, including his notorious Moulin Rouge poster of 1891 (La
Goulue), Valentin "the Boneless" Training the New Girls (1890), and others.
Though Lautrec is most famous for his depictions of Parisian night-life, he was a man of constantly-evolving interests,
both artistically and otherwise. Around 1893, moved away from the cabarets and took an interest in literature and
theater. He made his first engraving in 1891, and his later works include many lithographs, such as Les Ambassadeurs:
Aristide Bruant (1892), May Milton (1895), The Jockey (1899), and others. In 1893, he took part in an exhibition devoted
to painters and engravers. That year was important as well, because he had his first solo exhibition at the gallery of
Maurice Joyant. In this, he was part of a modern trend for the celebration of individual artistic achievement. Prior to the
late 19th Century, exhibitions had always been collective, featuring numerous artists.
Lautrec spent a lot of the time between 1894 and 1897 travelling. He visited London, Madrid and Toledo in Spain,
Brussels, Haarlem and Amsterdam. In England, the painter became acquainted with Whistler and Oscar Wilde, both of
whom he saw as role models -- the former for his art, the latter for his lifestyle. In Spain, he took inspiration from the old
masters: Velasquez, Goya and El Greco. In Holland, he studied Rembrandt, Bruegel and Hals. In Brussels, in 1895 and
again in 1897, he took part in exhibitions organized by the group La Libre Esthetique (The Free Aesthetic), the
successors to les Vingt, where his work was exhibited side-by-side with that of Cezanne, Signac, Gauguin and Van
Gogh.
His lifestyle, ever erratic, was becoming increasingly so as a result of his drinking, which was rapidly spiralling out of
control. In 1894, on a whim, he moved into one of the brothels he frequented and lived there for some time. Some works
painted from his experience there include Rue de Moulins (1894), Prostitutes Around a Dinner Table (1894), Two
Friends (1894-95), In 1896, at a private exhibition in the gallery of Joyant, he got into altercation with no less a
personage than the former King of Serbia, Milan Obrenovic, whom he called an ignorant "pig farmer". By this time, he
was descending into outright alcoholism. In 1897, he had an attack of delirium tremens, while on summer vacation at
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. His artistic output decreased sharply, as most of his days were spent in various states of
intoxication. His health deteriorated sharply. In 1899, he was confined to a mental hospital, attracting jabs from the press.
He died on September 9th, 1901, at the age of 36, at one of his beloved mother's homes in Malrome. His last two
paintings were "Admiral Viaud" and "An Examination at the Faculty of Medicine".
Biography by Yuri Mataev
Bibliography:
Court Painter to the Wicked. The Life and Work of Toulouse-Lautrec by Jean Bouret. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. NY 1968
Toulouse_Lautrec. A Life. by Julia Frey Viking. 1994
Nightlife of Paris. The Art of Toulouse-Lautrec by Patrick O'Connor. Universe, NY.1991
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec by Herhard Gruitrooy. 1996.
Toulouse-Lautrec by Philippe Huisman and M.G. Dortu. Chartwell Books, Inc.1971
Toulouse-Lautrec His Complete Lithographs and Drypoints by Jean Adhemar. Harry N.Abrams, Inc. NY
Toulouse-Lautrec: The Complete Graphic Works by Gotz Adriani. Thames & Hudson, 1988.
H. de Toulouse-Lautrec: One Hundred Ten Unpublished Drawings by Arthur William Heintzelman, Edouard Julien, M.
Roland O. Heintzelman. French & European Pubns, 1955.
Toulouse Lautrec Impressionist Painting Young Girl & Eros - Adolphe c.1882
Attributed to Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) After William Bouguereau
Approx: Size 47" tall x 35.25" wide (without the frame) - 62.75" tall x 51" wide (with Frame)
History
William Bouguereau was France's most popular painter of the late 1800s. A leader of the Academic School,
Bouguereau specialized in carefully detailed mythological and genre scenes, and was particularly noted for his tender
portrayals of children. "The Abduction of Psyche" (1895) is probably his best-known work. Today many critics dismiss
his style as kitsch and do not look kindly on his harmful opposition to new creative trends; but his exquisite craftsmanship
is undeniable. Bouguereau completed over 800 paintings, many of them life-sized. Adolphe William Bouguereau (he
never used his first name) was born in La Rochelle, France. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and won the Prix de
Rome in 1850. In 1868 he built a lavish studio in Montparnasse and helped make that area the foremost artists' quarter
in Paris. Around this time he also began a liason with one of his students, American painter Elizabeth Gardner;
Bouguereau's mother opposed the relationship and the couple did not marry until her death in 1896. As comparatively
obscure as he is these days, it's difficult to imagine what a star Bouguereau was in the art world of his era. He worked
hard to fufil his many commissions and his paintings were so sought after, and fetched such high prices, that he once
boasted, "I lose five francs every time I pee". Engraved reproductions of his works sold in the millions. Along with wealth
and fame came many honors, including election to the Institute of France and being named a Grand Officer of the Legion
of Honor. Reactionary in visual tastes, Bouguereau believed art should idealize beauty and turned up his nose at
anything that even remotely deviated from this dictum. As President of the Society of French Artists from 1881, he
oversaw the selection of the thousands of paintings shown annually at the Paris Salon, the only real avenue to success
for aspiring Gallic painters and sculptors. For decades he used this position to hinder the press and public from
discovering the revolutionary changes that were taking place in French painting, including Impressionism, Realism,
Pointillism, and the singular efforts of Paul Gaugin, Henri Rousseau, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Paul Cezanne, who
submitted canvases to that venue every year only to have them rejected, finally gave up and declared, "I don't stand a
chance in Monsieur Bouguereau's Salon". Rival salons sprang up in Paris to combat Bouguereau's conservatism, but he
remained powerful and influential until his death at 79. (bio by: Bobb Edwards)
In 1882, Lautrec moved from Albi to Paris, where he studied art in the ateliers of two academic painters, Léon Bonnat
(1833–1922) and Fernand Cormon (1845–1924), who also taught Émile Bernard (1868–1941) and Vincent van Gogh
(1853–1890). Lautrec soon began painting en plein air in the manner of the Impressionists, and often posed sitters in the
Montmartre garden of his neighbor, Père Forest, a retired photographer. One of his favorite models was a prostitute
nicknamed La Casque d'Or (Golden Helmet), seen in the painting The Streetwalker (2003.20.13). Lautrec used peinture
à l'essence, or oil thinned with turpentine, on cardboard, rendering visible his loose, sketchy brushwork. The
transposition of this creature of the night to the bright light of day—her pallid complexion and artificial hair color clash with
the naturalistic setting—signals Lautrec's fascination with sordid and dissolute subjects. Later in his career, he would
devote an entire series of prints, called Elles, to life inside a brothel (1984.1203.166).
The most notable painting from the Harris collection was the early Toulouse-Lautrec painting "La blanchisseuse" (1886-
87), a young laundress with copper-colored hair and a pearly white blouse. Its optimistic presale estimate of $20 million
to $25 million turned out to be justified, as the painting sold for $22.4 million to a phone bidder. The price was a record
for a work by the artist sold at auction, $6 million more than the previous highest price.
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) was a French artist of the late 19th Century, most closely associated with the
Symbolists, but with a unique, distinctive style of his own. His depictions of Parisian night life and society -- vivid, candid,
energetic and unflattering -- are instantly recognizable, and typify that place and period in the minds of many. The
painter's own life has become a legend that has inspired many romanticized interpretations.
Henri-Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa was born on November 24, 1864, in the town of Albi, in the south of
France. He was the first child and heir of Alphonse Charlers Jean Marie (1838-1913), Count of Toulouse, and his wife
Marie Marquette Zoe Adele Tapie de Celeyran (1841-1930). Count Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec was an avid
sportsman and hunter, with a penchant for flamboyant outfits. Marie de Celeyran, by contrast, was very reserved and shy,
and doted on her first child. Young Henri was probably first introduced to painting through his uncles, several of whom
were amateur artists. He received his first tutelage in art from Rene Princeteau, a well-known sports-painter and a friend
of his father's.
Much of Henri's early childhood was spent in the Chateau de Celeyran, his mother's familial home, near the
Mediterranean town of Narbonne, where he spent much time drawing and painting the life and landscape of the estate. In
1868, his parents separated; Henri would live mostly with his mother. In 1872, he was enrolled in the prestigious Lycee
Fontanes in Paris, but he left the school only three short years later, in 1875, due to health reasons. Together with his
mother, he moved back to the south of France, and its gentler climate.
In 1878, Henri broke his left thigh as he was getting up out of a chair. Bed-ridden, he spent his time reading, drawing and
painting. A year later and just barely recovered from his first injury, he broke his other thigh whilst taking a walk with his
mother. The growth of his legs was stunted forever, and he never grew taller than 5 feet. There is much speculation about
the causes of the painter's medical condition. From the evidence we have today, it is probable that he suffered from
brittle bone disease (osteogenesis imperfecta), a genetic disorder that prevents bones and connective tissues from
developing properly. Osteogenesis imperfecta was not uncommon among the European aristocracy, and this would
explain Henri's physical frailty and other symptoms. Be that as it may, his illness was never identified during his lifetime,
and nothing his mother and his doctors undertook would help.
Meanwhile, Henri continued to pursue art. By 1880, he had produced as many as two and a half thousand works, in a
variety of techniques. Encouraged by his uncle Charles and by Princeteau, he eventually managed to convince his
mother to allow him to return to Paris to study art. In 1881, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec set up residence in Princeteau's
Paris studio.
In 1882, the young artist was accepted into the studio of the famous painter and art teacher Leon Bonnat. However,
Bonnat took an immediate dislike to Toulouse-Lautrec, who, already then, had something of a caustic personality. The
two did not get along well, and after Bonnat became a professor at the Paris Academy of Art, Lautrec quit his studio and
began to study, instead, under Fernand Cormon. Cormon was a talented artist in his own right, and an enthusiastic
teacher, and his workshop attracted many young painters who would later be among the shapers of the art world.
Under Cormon, Toulouse-Lautrec explored many styles and techniques. He received a firm grounding in academic
painting, but Cormon also encouraged his students to explore Impressionism and contemporary directions in art. Two of
the painter's works from this period are the Artist's Mother (1883) and the Young Routy at Celeyran (1883).
In 1883, Lautrec had his first romantic liaison with Marie Charlet, a 17-year-old model. The painter would have many
affairs over the course of his rather brief life. All of them would be with women far below his station, and none of them
were very long-lasting. Although the artist immersed himself in the life of the lower classes -- the cabarets, the dance
halls and the brothels -- he always retained an aristocratic aloofness and a sense of his own superiority. He was not
attempting to become part of that life: he was rather an unprejudiced observer; a doctor or a scientist, trying to dissect it
and give it life, in his art.
Lautrec moved into the Montmartre district in 1884. Here, he met Edgar Degas, whom he came to admire. He soon
began to frequent the district's cabarets, including the Elysee-Montmartre, the Moulin de la Galette and the Mirliton, run
by Artistide Bruant, where he displayed his works. That year, he also had his first exhibition at the Pau.
In 1886, Lautrec met Vincent Van Gogh at Cormon's studio, where the Dutch painter had come to study. They quickly
became friends, though Lautrec left the studio only a few months later, his education there concluded. This was also the
year when he met Suzanne Valadon, who modelled for him, and they began a relationship. It didn't last long; two years
later, Valadon attempted suicide and the couple broke up. See The Laundress, which is one of the artist's depiction of
his mistress.
By this point, Lautrec's art was beginning to attract greater notice. In 1887, he participated in an exhibition in Toulouse,
where he assumed a false name, in order to distance himself from his father, the Count of Toulouse. In Paris, he
exhibited together with Van Gogh. He was invited to send some of his work to the les Vingt ("The Twenty") exhibition,
taking place early in 1888, in Brussels. At the same exhibition, two years later, Lautrec had a fierce argument with the
painter Henry de Groux over the inclusion of Van Gogh's work, and challenged the Belgian to a duel. The duel never took
place, but it shows the friendship Lautrec and Van Gogh shared. Van Gogh stayed with Lautrec in Paris, not long before
his suicide in 1890. See Toulouse-Lautrec's portrait of Vincent Van Gogh.
In 1889, Lautrec participated in the Salon des Independants for the first time. He would become a frequent contributor to
the Salon's exhibitions. He spent the summer on France's Atlantic coast, yachting. This year saw the opening of the
cabaret Moulin Rouge in the Montmartre; Lautrec immediately became a regular, and would often show his work at the
establishment. In modern popular culture, the name Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is inseparably linked to the Moulin Rouge,
and it is true that some of his most iconic work was made there, including his notorious Moulin Rouge poster of 1891 (La
Goulue), Valentin "the Boneless" Training the New Girls (1890), and others.
Though Lautrec is most famous for his depictions of Parisian night-life, he was a man of constantly-evolving interests,
both artistically and otherwise. Around 1893, moved away from the cabarets and took an interest in literature and
theater. He made his first engraving in 1891, and his later works include many lithographs, such as Les Ambassadeurs:
Aristide Bruant (1892), May Milton (1895), The Jockey (1899), and others. In 1893, he took part in an exhibition devoted
to painters and engravers. That year was important as well, because he had his first solo exhibition at the gallery of
Maurice Joyant. In this, he was part of a modern trend for the celebration of individual artistic achievement. Prior to the
late 19th Century, exhibitions had always been collective, featuring numerous artists.
Lautrec spent a lot of the time between 1894 and 1897 travelling. He visited London, Madrid and Toledo in Spain,
Brussels, Haarlem and Amsterdam. In England, the painter became acquainted with Whistler and Oscar Wilde, both of
whom he saw as role models -- the former for his art, the latter for his lifestyle. In Spain, he took inspiration from the old
masters: Velasquez, Goya and El Greco. In Holland, he studied Rembrandt, Bruegel and Hals. In Brussels, in 1895 and
again in 1897, he took part in exhibitions organized by the group La Libre Esthetique (The Free Aesthetic), the
successors to les Vingt, where his work was exhibited side-by-side with that of Cezanne, Signac, Gauguin and Van
Gogh.
His lifestyle, ever erratic, was becoming increasingly so as a result of his drinking, which was rapidly spiralling out of
control. In 1894, on a whim, he moved into one of the brothels he frequented and lived there for some time. Some works
painted from his experience there include Rue de Moulins (1894), Prostitutes Around a Dinner Table (1894), Two
Friends (1894-95), In 1896, at a private exhibition in the gallery of Joyant, he got into altercation with no less a
personage than the former King of Serbia, Milan Obrenovic, whom he called an ignorant "pig farmer". By this time, he
was descending into outright alcoholism. In 1897, he had an attack of delirium tremens, while on summer vacation at
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. His artistic output decreased sharply, as most of his days were spent in various states of
intoxication. His health deteriorated sharply. In 1899, he was confined to a mental hospital, attracting jabs from the press.
He died on September 9th, 1901, at the age of 36, at one of his beloved mother's homes in Malrome. His last two
paintings were "Admiral Viaud" and "An Examination at the Faculty of Medicine".
Biography by Yuri Mataev
Bibliography:
Court Painter to the Wicked. The Life and Work of Toulouse-Lautrec by Jean Bouret. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. NY 1968
Toulouse_Lautrec. A Life. by Julia Frey Viking. 1994
Nightlife of Paris. The Art of Toulouse-Lautrec by Patrick O'Connor. Universe, NY.1991
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec by Herhard Gruitrooy. 1996.
Toulouse-Lautrec by Philippe Huisman and M.G. Dortu. Chartwell Books, Inc.1971
Toulouse-Lautrec His Complete Lithographs and Drypoints by Jean Adhemar. Harry N.Abrams, Inc. NY
Toulouse-Lautrec: The Complete Graphic Works by Gotz Adriani. Thames & Hudson, 1988.
H. de Toulouse-Lautrec: One Hundred Ten Unpublished Drawings by Arthur William Heintzelman, Edouard Julien, M.
Roland O. Heintzelman. French & European Pubns, 1955.
Veintiséis cuadros de Henry Matisse, Claude Monet, Paul Signac, Gauguin, Alfred Sisley, Ramón Casas, Anglada i Camarasa….
Varvara Stepánova es la única mujer entre tanto genio
Ölgemälde, kopiert nach: Paul Signac, Port of Concarneau, Kopie, Öl auf Leinwand, Maße: ca. 73 x 54 cm, Endpreis (ohne Rahmen, als gerollte Leinwand, inkl. Versand innerhalb Deutschlands): 270 Euro
- oder gerahmt auf Keilrahmen: 320 Euro.
Der Versand innerhalb Deutschlands ist in den hier angegebenen Preisen inklusive. Preise inkl. 19% MwSt.
Mehr unter: falschemeister.de/.
© Annette Berger
Toulouse Lautrec Impressionist Painting Young Girl & Eros - Adolphe c.1882
Attributed to Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) After William Bouguereau
Approx: Size 47" tall x 35.25" wide (without the frame) - 62.75" tall x 51" wide (with Frame)
History
William Bouguereau was France's most popular painter of the late 1800s. A leader of the Academic School,
Bouguereau specialized in carefully detailed mythological and genre scenes, and was particularly noted for his tender
portrayals of children. "The Abduction of Psyche" (1895) is probably his best-known work. Today many critics dismiss
his style as kitsch and do not look kindly on his harmful opposition to new creative trends; but his exquisite craftsmanship
is undeniable. Bouguereau completed over 800 paintings, many of them life-sized. Adolphe William Bouguereau (he
never used his first name) was born in La Rochelle, France. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and won the Prix de
Rome in 1850. In 1868 he built a lavish studio in Montparnasse and helped make that area the foremost artists' quarter
in Paris. Around this time he also began a liason with one of his students, American painter Elizabeth Gardner;
Bouguereau's mother opposed the relationship and the couple did not marry until her death in 1896. As comparatively
obscure as he is these days, it's difficult to imagine what a star Bouguereau was in the art world of his era. He worked
hard to fufil his many commissions and his paintings were so sought after, and fetched such high prices, that he once
boasted, "I lose five francs every time I pee". Engraved reproductions of his works sold in the millions. Along with wealth
and fame came many honors, including election to the Institute of France and being named a Grand Officer of the Legion
of Honor. Reactionary in visual tastes, Bouguereau believed art should idealize beauty and turned up his nose at
anything that even remotely deviated from this dictum. As President of the Society of French Artists from 1881, he
oversaw the selection of the thousands of paintings shown annually at the Paris Salon, the only real avenue to success
for aspiring Gallic painters and sculptors. For decades he used this position to hinder the press and public from
discovering the revolutionary changes that were taking place in French painting, including Impressionism, Realism,
Pointillism, and the singular efforts of Paul Gaugin, Henri Rousseau, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Paul Cezanne, who
submitted canvases to that venue every year only to have them rejected, finally gave up and declared, "I don't stand a
chance in Monsieur Bouguereau's Salon". Rival salons sprang up in Paris to combat Bouguereau's conservatism, but he
remained powerful and influential until his death at 79. (bio by: Bobb Edwards)
In 1882, Lautrec moved from Albi to Paris, where he studied art in the ateliers of two academic painters, Léon Bonnat
(1833–1922) and Fernand Cormon (1845–1924), who also taught Émile Bernard (1868–1941) and Vincent van Gogh
(1853–1890). Lautrec soon began painting en plein air in the manner of the Impressionists, and often posed sitters in the
Montmartre garden of his neighbor, Père Forest, a retired photographer. One of his favorite models was a prostitute
nicknamed La Casque d'Or (Golden Helmet), seen in the painting The Streetwalker (2003.20.13). Lautrec used peinture
à l'essence, or oil thinned with turpentine, on cardboard, rendering visible his loose, sketchy brushwork. The
transposition of this creature of the night to the bright light of day—her pallid complexion and artificial hair color clash with
the naturalistic setting—signals Lautrec's fascination with sordid and dissolute subjects. Later in his career, he would
devote an entire series of prints, called Elles, to life inside a brothel (1984.1203.166).
The most notable painting from the Harris collection was the early Toulouse-Lautrec painting "La blanchisseuse" (1886-
87), a young laundress with copper-colored hair and a pearly white blouse. Its optimistic presale estimate of $20 million
to $25 million turned out to be justified, as the painting sold for $22.4 million to a phone bidder. The price was a record
for a work by the artist sold at auction, $6 million more than the previous highest price.
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) was a French artist of the late 19th Century, most closely associated with the
Symbolists, but with a unique, distinctive style of his own. His depictions of Parisian night life and society -- vivid, candid,
energetic and unflattering -- are instantly recognizable, and typify that place and period in the minds of many. The
painter's own life has become a legend that has inspired many romanticized interpretations.
Henri-Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa was born on November 24, 1864, in the town of Albi, in the south of
France. He was the first child and heir of Alphonse Charlers Jean Marie (1838-1913), Count of Toulouse, and his wife
Marie Marquette Zoe Adele Tapie de Celeyran (1841-1930). Count Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec was an avid
sportsman and hunter, with a penchant for flamboyant outfits. Marie de Celeyran, by contrast, was very reserved and shy,
and doted on her first child. Young Henri was probably first introduced to painting through his uncles, several of whom
were amateur artists. He received his first tutelage in art from Rene Princeteau, a well-known sports-painter and a friend
of his father's.
Much of Henri's early childhood was spent in the Chateau de Celeyran, his mother's familial home, near the
Mediterranean town of Narbonne, where he spent much time drawing and painting the life and landscape of the estate. In
1868, his parents separated; Henri would live mostly with his mother. In 1872, he was enrolled in the prestigious Lycee
Fontanes in Paris, but he left the school only three short years later, in 1875, due to health reasons. Together with his
mother, he moved back to the south of France, and its gentler climate.
In 1878, Henri broke his left thigh as he was getting up out of a chair. Bed-ridden, he spent his time reading, drawing and
painting. A year later and just barely recovered from his first injury, he broke his other thigh whilst taking a walk with his
mother. The growth of his legs was stunted forever, and he never grew taller than 5 feet. There is much speculation about
the causes of the painter's medical condition. From the evidence we have today, it is probable that he suffered from
brittle bone disease (osteogenesis imperfecta), a genetic disorder that prevents bones and connective tissues from
developing properly. Osteogenesis imperfecta was not uncommon among the European aristocracy, and this would
explain Henri's physical frailty and other symptoms. Be that as it may, his illness was never identified during his lifetime,
and nothing his mother and his doctors undertook would help.
Meanwhile, Henri continued to pursue art. By 1880, he had produced as many as two and a half thousand works, in a
variety of techniques. Encouraged by his uncle Charles and by Princeteau, he eventually managed to convince his
mother to allow him to return to Paris to study art. In 1881, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec set up residence in Princeteau's
Paris studio.
In 1882, the young artist was accepted into the studio of the famous painter and art teacher Leon Bonnat. However,
Bonnat took an immediate dislike to Toulouse-Lautrec, who, already then, had something of a caustic personality. The
two did not get along well, and after Bonnat became a professor at the Paris Academy of Art, Lautrec quit his studio and
began to study, instead, under Fernand Cormon. Cormon was a talented artist in his own right, and an enthusiastic
teacher, and his workshop attracted many young painters who would later be among the shapers of the art world.
Under Cormon, Toulouse-Lautrec explored many styles and techniques. He received a firm grounding in academic
painting, but Cormon also encouraged his students to explore Impressionism and contemporary directions in art. Two of
the painter's works from this period are the Artist's Mother (1883) and the Young Routy at Celeyran (1883).
In 1883, Lautrec had his first romantic liaison with Marie Charlet, a 17-year-old model. The painter would have many
affairs over the course of his rather brief life. All of them would be with women far below his station, and none of them
were very long-lasting. Although the artist immersed himself in the life of the lower classes -- the cabarets, the dance
halls and the brothels -- he always retained an aristocratic aloofness and a sense of his own superiority. He was not
attempting to become part of that life: he was rather an unprejudiced observer; a doctor or a scientist, trying to dissect it
and give it life, in his art.
Lautrec moved into the Montmartre district in 1884. Here, he met Edgar Degas, whom he came to admire. He soon
began to frequent the district's cabarets, including the Elysee-Montmartre, the Moulin de la Galette and the Mirliton, run
by Artistide Bruant, where he displayed his works. That year, he also had his first exhibition at the Pau.
In 1886, Lautrec met Vincent Van Gogh at Cormon's studio, where the Dutch painter had come to study. They quickly
became friends, though Lautrec left the studio only a few months later, his education there concluded. This was also the
year when he met Suzanne Valadon, who modelled for him, and they began a relationship. It didn't last long; two years
later, Valadon attempted suicide and the couple broke up. See The Laundress, which is one of the artist's depiction of
his mistress.
By this point, Lautrec's art was beginning to attract greater notice. In 1887, he participated in an exhibition in Toulouse,
where he assumed a false name, in order to distance himself from his father, the Count of Toulouse. In Paris, he
exhibited together with Van Gogh. He was invited to send some of his work to the les Vingt ("The Twenty") exhibition,
taking place early in 1888, in Brussels. At the same exhibition, two years later, Lautrec had a fierce argument with the
painter Henry de Groux over the inclusion of Van Gogh's work, and challenged the Belgian to a duel. The duel never took
place, but it shows the friendship Lautrec and Van Gogh shared. Van Gogh stayed with Lautrec in Paris, not long before
his suicide in 1890. See Toulouse-Lautrec's portrait of Vincent Van Gogh.
In 1889, Lautrec participated in the Salon des Independants for the first time. He would become a frequent contributor to
the Salon's exhibitions. He spent the summer on France's Atlantic coast, yachting. This year saw the opening of the
cabaret Moulin Rouge in the Montmartre; Lautrec immediately became a regular, and would often show his work at the
establishment. In modern popular culture, the name Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is inseparably linked to the Moulin Rouge,
and it is true that some of his most iconic work was made there, including his notorious Moulin Rouge poster of 1891 (La
Goulue), Valentin "the Boneless" Training the New Girls (1890), and others.
Though Lautrec is most famous for his depictions of Parisian night-life, he was a man of constantly-evolving interests,
both artistically and otherwise. Around 1893, moved away from the cabarets and took an interest in literature and
theater. He made his first engraving in 1891, and his later works include many lithographs, such as Les Ambassadeurs:
Aristide Bruant (1892), May Milton (1895), The Jockey (1899), and others. In 1893, he took part in an exhibition devoted
to painters and engravers. That year was important as well, because he had his first solo exhibition at the gallery of
Maurice Joyant. In this, he was part of a modern trend for the celebration of individual artistic achievement. Prior to the
late 19th Century, exhibitions had always been collective, featuring numerous artists.
Lautrec spent a lot of the time between 1894 and 1897 travelling. He visited London, Madrid and Toledo in Spain,
Brussels, Haarlem and Amsterdam. In England, the painter became acquainted with Whistler and Oscar Wilde, both of
whom he saw as role models -- the former for his art, the latter for his lifestyle. In Spain, he took inspiration from the old
masters: Velasquez, Goya and El Greco. In Holland, he studied Rembrandt, Bruegel and Hals. In Brussels, in 1895 and
again in 1897, he took part in exhibitions organized by the group La Libre Esthetique (The Free Aesthetic), the
successors to les Vingt, where his work was exhibited side-by-side with that of Cezanne, Signac, Gauguin and Van
Gogh.
His lifestyle, ever erratic, was becoming increasingly so as a result of his drinking, which was rapidly spiralling out of
control. In 1894, on a whim, he moved into one of the brothels he frequented and lived there for some time. Some works
painted from his experience there include Rue de Moulins (1894), Prostitutes Around a Dinner Table (1894), Two
Friends (1894-95), In 1896, at a private exhibition in the gallery of Joyant, he got into altercation with no less a
personage than the former King of Serbia, Milan Obrenovic, whom he called an ignorant "pig farmer". By this time, he
was descending into outright alcoholism. In 1897, he had an attack of delirium tremens, while on summer vacation at
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. His artistic output decreased sharply, as most of his days were spent in various states of
intoxication. His health deteriorated sharply. In 1899, he was confined to a mental hospital, attracting jabs from the press.
He died on September 9th, 1901, at the age of 36, at one of his beloved mother's homes in Malrome. His last two
paintings were "Admiral Viaud" and "An Examination at the Faculty of Medicine".
Biography by Yuri Mataev
Bibliography:
Court Painter to the Wicked. The Life and Work of Toulouse-Lautrec by Jean Bouret. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. NY 1968
Toulouse_Lautrec. A Life. by Julia Frey Viking. 1994
Nightlife of Paris. The Art of Toulouse-Lautrec by Patrick O'Connor. Universe, NY.1991
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec by Herhard Gruitrooy. 1996.
Toulouse-Lautrec by Philippe Huisman and M.G. Dortu. Chartwell Books, Inc.1971
Toulouse-Lautrec His Complete Lithographs and Drypoints by Jean Adhemar. Harry N.Abrams, Inc. NY
Toulouse-Lautrec: The Complete Graphic Works by Gotz Adriani. Thames & Hudson, 1988.
H. de Toulouse-Lautrec: One Hundred Ten Unpublished Drawings by Arthur William Heintzelman, Edouard Julien, M.
Roland O. Heintzelman. French & European Pubns, 1955.
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
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’
© Ben Heine || Facebook || Twitter || www.benheine.com
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For more information about my art: info@benheine.com
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A Dystopia of Color Education in a Utopia of Color Experience
By Christopher Willard
Possibilities for color explorations in art are probably more ubiquitous now than any other time since mid-century when a brief, but intense, focus on the aesthetic side of color arose with the 1963 publication of Josef Albers' Interaction of Color. The heyday was short. Technology picked up color study on a serious level and because of that we now have the glowing phosphors of television and computer screens, metallic paints, fractals with their repeating color sequences, holograms, and four color process printing. When intertwined with the cesia, or visual signs, of flicker, sparkle, gloss, lustre, iridescence, luminosity, and filmic haze, such color experiences are greatly broadened. Our contemporary conceptions of color are further augmented by that chronic parasite called advertising that links color to desire for everything from the prismatic sparkle of a diamond to the amber glow of a beer.
Yet, beyond such semantic conditioning, associations based solely upon color are apt to suggest odd contradictions such as an adult bashing of a rounded purple dinosaur but an adult affinity for rounded purple cars.
All of these areas have provided grounds for artistic explorations. Students who have grown up familiar with digital media are quick to use such tools for making art. Likewise, the ease in which materials such as interference colors and flourescents can be obtained certainly influences the range of pigments and effects artists can now use. Further the contradictions embedded in color semantics, problems with warm and cool colors or fruitless attempts at categorizing feelings by colors, or the difficulties in naming colors certainly suggest possibilities for exploring relationships between color and language.
In light of such a deluge of color experience one might think academic interest in color would be at an all time high. Yet, indications suggest an appalling lack of regard for color in contemporary art education. I first became aware of such a shift when I witnessed a major school's revamping of the undergraduate foundation wherein a major color figure taught, basically by eliminating color courses. But this was not a lone incident. A number of past conferences at the College Art Association, the annual major conference of the United States and Canada, showed me the ease with which messiahs of departments facing budget crunches chose to eliminate their color courses. Color information was outright dismissed or lumped into general design overviews as though best learned through osmosis. As an analogy, I cannot imagine art schools jettisoning all drawing classes and praying, I guess, that these skills will be picked up in design courses.
A recent study was undertaken to compare secondary education color courses in Japan with those of the United States. Following two months of scrutiny, the researchers found so few discreet color courses in American colleges of art that the project was abandoned.
The continued reliance by artists upon on non-iconic art, by which a work's syntactic qualities such as color are highlighted, would seem to necessitate color education. But lacking this foundation, students allured by color are apt to find themselves in a wasteland where initial studio experiments and forays into books are no assurance of understanding and clarity. Further difficulties arise for art students as the distinctions between art, physics, psychology, psychophysics, chemistry, and philosophy blur when investigating color. Available texts can appear and sometimes are contradictory, misleading, and infrequently downright incorrect, as with a recent best seller that said Seurat would juxtapose yellow and blue dots that would mix optically to a green brighter than any found in a tube of paint -- something completely impossible.
Colors and color diagrams said to be reproducible from three colors are trickily reproduced with four process colors, or in the case of one popular book, 7 carefully chosen process colors to guarantee saturated hues throughout the entire color wheel. Further muddying up the water are camps polarized over the true primary colors: cyan, yellow, magenta for printing processes and transparent painting media; red, yellow, blue for painting and other media that operate with opaque pigments, red, green, and blue relating to our tri-chromatic retinal processing that forms the basis for inventions like color televisions, and yellow, blue, red, green, describing our post retinal coding of colors, called the opponent process which was discovered in part by paying particular attention to perceptual oddities such as afterimages and contrast effects, all of which must appear confusing to art students who lack a foundation in color theory.
In presenting this dichotomy between color experience and academic bias I offer to you a dystopia of color education in a utopia of color experience, and this condition is what I see as off-putting, off-key, and indeed, off-color. In this realm where virtually every seen experience enters us through color channels and is interpreted by us as color information, it seems particularly pertinent to ask why color has apparently lost its meaning in undergraduate and in particular graduate programs.
A questioning of the reasons for the disdain of color study begins by re-examining that manna titled Interaction of Color upon which students were fed more and less frequently up into the 1980's. With a pack of color aid in hand (a set of around 300 silkscreened papers) students would start on page one and diligently work their way through most of the book's exercises. By the end of the semester, each had, like everyone else, little studies that attempted to replicate the effects illustrated in the book. Artists would later stand in front of their own art wondering what relevance simultaneous contrast could possibly have to their messy painting, or digital art. Of course everyone saw that one color appeared to change a bit when surrounded by another color, but so what.
And worse, the method taught many artists that color was limited, apparently, to hard edge and optical configurations and everyone knew those styles were generally unaccepted.
On the other hand it seems simplistic to pin the blame on Albers because his work was ground-breaking, for its breadth as well as its focus. It is true his work did provide the foundation which sparked some artists to further study. But the translation of his ideas into classroom assignments often carried the dangerous scent of the pre-solved answer that turned off many more who couldn't make the connection to their own works. These artists often went on to set departmental policies that reflected their particular biases.
I recognize that I to a certain degree I am recalling the arguments that contrast color and design as debated by the Rubenists, who said color cannot be relegated to simple principles, such as design as argued by the Poussinists, because of the infinitely changeable quality of nature, and by Delacroix who argued for the transforming aspects of color rather than the importance of local colors as championed by Ingres. Such a polarizing of color in art has continued almost unremittently. Examples may be found in the transpositions of deconstruction and semiotics to visual art from text based art. The result was that artists were seduced into believing that all aspects of art must be accountable to text based criteria. So color, a quale so ephemeral and changeable as to be mostly impossible to cram into such an expedient, was quickly dismissed as irrelevant.
Still, I believe the root of the problem is greater than I've so far outlined. In the same way a writer has to find one's voice with words, the artist must find his or her palette with color. An educator, no matter how good, cannot choose the particular array of colors that will prove meaningful to the artist.
The obvious question prods at the necessity of formal color education at all. Grammar doesn't guarantee a Melville nor color mixing a Signac. And for artists, color, like any element of the creative process, can be learned in a variety of ways whether from experience, practice, exercises, texts, or copying.
The artist who never studies color can become a sort of facile and respected artist. Yet it is difficult to articulate the difference between an artist who uses color to create a cohesive color statement and the artist who uses color in a superficial and conventional manner. Succinctly said, the artist lacking in color knowledge lacks possibilities. Color education can demonstrate the remarkable heights some artists have attained using color and can challenge students to aspire to those peaks. Only by the closest of study will young artists begin to understand the wondrous chromatic contrasts of Cezanne, the intensification of edge conditions by Vermeer, the literal depictions of simultaneous contrast by Signac, or the vibratory, floating haze of the Seurat.
If educators can break free of the strangle-hold of the contemporary bias against color, the Alber's post-Bauhausian revival, often viewed as only a brief bright comet, might instead be seen it as a preliminary foundation upon which we can construct methods more appropriate to contemporary experience.
A pedagogical goal then is to create course assignments, combined with a method of teaching, that spark imaginations toward broad and meaningful investigations of color, presented in a way that does not diminish its multifarious and mysterious character.
Note, I am not talking about standards and rules for color usage. I am suggesting a median position incorporating basics and the fact that requirements which color education for art students must meet today have changed. I also stress that any theoretical approach in an artistic program must be grounded in practical exercises, for indeed color is a perceptual event wherein more questions are raised or answers pursued by doing and looking than by reading.
Students who come to my color classes often take for granted much of today's color, for example the bleaching effects of the rapid color presentations on music videos, or the neon colors often found in chainstore clothing. By presenting color from the point of their own world view, the jump to genuine interest in color is facilitated. Yet, although the mode of color presentation has changed due technological advances, and there are those who say color seems to be different today than from what it used to be, these advances remain adequately described by existing theory.
I often ask students to undertake projects by locating an effect of color in which they are particularly interested and to create a form that highlights or a theory that describes their concern. From xerox technicians who want to better understand the overlapping pigments to photographers who wish to predict the characteristics of dyes, to lighting designers who know additive mixture but wish to somehow find their own sense of color order, to visual artists who wish to utilize variations of contrast and assimilation, each describes an urgent need for color education.
In finality it is necessary that students come away from a color course retaining the aesthetic and scientific fundamentals of color, utilizing such knowledge when necessary, filtering out aspects pertinent to their own investigations, and knowing where to find more information should their requirements shift. In this way the artist may begin to master this tool for creating visual structures.
In his book Elementary Color of 1895, Milton Bradley celebrated the observation that:
"A few years ago it might well have been thought necessary to preface a treatise on the subject with arguments to prove that color is a legitimate object for school instruction, but today this is not a question with thoughtful educators whether considered from the practical, industrial or aesthetic standpoint."1
Bradley believed technological inventions would continually invigorate color education. He wrote this at a time when a basis for trichromatic theory was a hundred years old; a theory of the opponent process nearly fifty years old; it came only a few years before the major three-dimensional color order models of Munsell and Ostwald that were to further spark the impetus toward more exacting color quantification. Now a hundred years hence we find Bradley's predictions did not in finality describe a utopia where color understanding and color usage in art find unity.
Reference 1. M. Bradley, Elementary Color, Milton Bradley Co., Springfield MA, 1895, p.8.
Christopher Willard ©
----------------------
--> This study appeared on colormatters.com : www.colormatters.com
--> Christopher Willard can be reached at cwillard@mindspring.com
----------------------
--> I also recommend this great article by Carlos Cruz-Diez : "Reflections on Color" : www.coleccioncisneros.org/st_writ.asp?ID=13&Type=2
Toulouse Lautrec Impressionist Painting Young Girl & Eros - Adolphe c.1882
Attributed to Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) After William Bouguereau
Approx: Size 47" tall x 35.25" wide (without the frame) - 62.75" tall x 51" wide (with Frame)
History
William Bouguereau was France's most popular painter of the late 1800s. A leader of the Academic School,
Bouguereau specialized in carefully detailed mythological and genre scenes, and was particularly noted for his tender
portrayals of children. "The Abduction of Psyche" (1895) is probably his best-known work. Today many critics dismiss
his style as kitsch and do not look kindly on his harmful opposition to new creative trends; but his exquisite craftsmanship
is undeniable. Bouguereau completed over 800 paintings, many of them life-sized. Adolphe William Bouguereau (he
never used his first name) was born in La Rochelle, France. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and won the Prix de
Rome in 1850. In 1868 he built a lavish studio in Montparnasse and helped make that area the foremost artists' quarter
in Paris. Around this time he also began a liason with one of his students, American painter Elizabeth Gardner;
Bouguereau's mother opposed the relationship and the couple did not marry until her death in 1896. As comparatively
obscure as he is these days, it's difficult to imagine what a star Bouguereau was in the art world of his era. He worked
hard to fufil his many commissions and his paintings were so sought after, and fetched such high prices, that he once
boasted, "I lose five francs every time I pee". Engraved reproductions of his works sold in the millions. Along with wealth
and fame came many honors, including election to the Institute of France and being named a Grand Officer of the Legion
of Honor. Reactionary in visual tastes, Bouguereau believed art should idealize beauty and turned up his nose at
anything that even remotely deviated from this dictum. As President of the Society of French Artists from 1881, he
oversaw the selection of the thousands of paintings shown annually at the Paris Salon, the only real avenue to success
for aspiring Gallic painters and sculptors. For decades he used this position to hinder the press and public from
discovering the revolutionary changes that were taking place in French painting, including Impressionism, Realism,
Pointillism, and the singular efforts of Paul Gaugin, Henri Rousseau, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Paul Cezanne, who
submitted canvases to that venue every year only to have them rejected, finally gave up and declared, "I don't stand a
chance in Monsieur Bouguereau's Salon". Rival salons sprang up in Paris to combat Bouguereau's conservatism, but he
remained powerful and influential until his death at 79. (bio by: Bobb Edwards)
In 1882, Lautrec moved from Albi to Paris, where he studied art in the ateliers of two academic painters, Léon Bonnat
(1833–1922) and Fernand Cormon (1845–1924), who also taught Émile Bernard (1868–1941) and Vincent van Gogh
(1853–1890). Lautrec soon began painting en plein air in the manner of the Impressionists, and often posed sitters in the
Montmartre garden of his neighbor, Père Forest, a retired photographer. One of his favorite models was a prostitute
nicknamed La Casque d'Or (Golden Helmet), seen in the painting The Streetwalker (2003.20.13). Lautrec used peinture
à l'essence, or oil thinned with turpentine, on cardboard, rendering visible his loose, sketchy brushwork. The
transposition of this creature of the night to the bright light of day—her pallid complexion and artificial hair color clash with
the naturalistic setting—signals Lautrec's fascination with sordid and dissolute subjects. Later in his career, he would
devote an entire series of prints, called Elles, to life inside a brothel (1984.1203.166).
The most notable painting from the Harris collection was the early Toulouse-Lautrec painting "La blanchisseuse" (1886-
87), a young laundress with copper-colored hair and a pearly white blouse. Its optimistic presale estimate of $20 million
to $25 million turned out to be justified, as the painting sold for $22.4 million to a phone bidder. The price was a record
for a work by the artist sold at auction, $6 million more than the previous highest price.
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) was a French artist of the late 19th Century, most closely associated with the
Symbolists, but with a unique, distinctive style of his own. His depictions of Parisian night life and society -- vivid, candid,
energetic and unflattering -- are instantly recognizable, and typify that place and period in the minds of many. The
painter's own life has become a legend that has inspired many romanticized interpretations.
Henri-Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa was born on November 24, 1864, in the town of Albi, in the south of
France. He was the first child and heir of Alphonse Charlers Jean Marie (1838-1913), Count of Toulouse, and his wife
Marie Marquette Zoe Adele Tapie de Celeyran (1841-1930). Count Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec was an avid
sportsman and hunter, with a penchant for flamboyant outfits. Marie de Celeyran, by contrast, was very reserved and shy,
and doted on her first child. Young Henri was probably first introduced to painting through his uncles, several of whom
were amateur artists. He received his first tutelage in art from Rene Princeteau, a well-known sports-painter and a friend
of his father's.
Much of Henri's early childhood was spent in the Chateau de Celeyran, his mother's familial home, near the
Mediterranean town of Narbonne, where he spent much time drawing and painting the life and landscape of the estate. In
1868, his parents separated; Henri would live mostly with his mother. In 1872, he was enrolled in the prestigious Lycee
Fontanes in Paris, but he left the school only three short years later, in 1875, due to health reasons. Together with his
mother, he moved back to the south of France, and its gentler climate.
In 1878, Henri broke his left thigh as he was getting up out of a chair. Bed-ridden, he spent his time reading, drawing and
painting. A year later and just barely recovered from his first injury, he broke his other thigh whilst taking a walk with his
mother. The growth of his legs was stunted forever, and he never grew taller than 5 feet. There is much speculation about
the causes of the painter's medical condition. From the evidence we have today, it is probable that he suffered from
brittle bone disease (osteogenesis imperfecta), a genetic disorder that prevents bones and connective tissues from
developing properly. Osteogenesis imperfecta was not uncommon among the European aristocracy, and this would
explain Henri's physical frailty and other symptoms. Be that as it may, his illness was never identified during his lifetime,
and nothing his mother and his doctors undertook would help.
Meanwhile, Henri continued to pursue art. By 1880, he had produced as many as two and a half thousand works, in a
variety of techniques. Encouraged by his uncle Charles and by Princeteau, he eventually managed to convince his
mother to allow him to return to Paris to study art. In 1881, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec set up residence in Princeteau's
Paris studio.
In 1882, the young artist was accepted into the studio of the famous painter and art teacher Leon Bonnat. However,
Bonnat took an immediate dislike to Toulouse-Lautrec, who, already then, had something of a caustic personality. The
two did not get along well, and after Bonnat became a professor at the Paris Academy of Art, Lautrec quit his studio and
began to study, instead, under Fernand Cormon. Cormon was a talented artist in his own right, and an enthusiastic
teacher, and his workshop attracted many young painters who would later be among the shapers of the art world.
Under Cormon, Toulouse-Lautrec explored many styles and techniques. He received a firm grounding in academic
painting, but Cormon also encouraged his students to explore Impressionism and contemporary directions in art. Two of
the painter's works from this period are the Artist's Mother (1883) and the Young Routy at Celeyran (1883).
In 1883, Lautrec had his first romantic liaison with Marie Charlet, a 17-year-old model. The painter would have many
affairs over the course of his rather brief life. All of them would be with women far below his station, and none of them
were very long-lasting. Although the artist immersed himself in the life of the lower classes -- the cabarets, the dance
halls and the brothels -- he always retained an aristocratic aloofness and a sense of his own superiority. He was not
attempting to become part of that life: he was rather an unprejudiced observer; a doctor or a scientist, trying to dissect it
and give it life, in his art.
Lautrec moved into the Montmartre district in 1884. Here, he met Edgar Degas, whom he came to admire. He soon
began to frequent the district's cabarets, including the Elysee-Montmartre, the Moulin de la Galette and the Mirliton, run
by Artistide Bruant, where he displayed his works. That year, he also had his first exhibition at the Pau.
In 1886, Lautrec met Vincent Van Gogh at Cormon's studio, where the Dutch painter had come to study. They quickly
became friends, though Lautrec left the studio only a few months later, his education there concluded. This was also the
year when he met Suzanne Valadon, who modelled for him, and they began a relationship. It didn't last long; two years
later, Valadon attempted suicide and the couple broke up. See The Laundress, which is one of the artist's depiction of
his mistress.
By this point, Lautrec's art was beginning to attract greater notice. In 1887, he participated in an exhibition in Toulouse,
where he assumed a false name, in order to distance himself from his father, the Count of Toulouse. In Paris, he
exhibited together with Van Gogh. He was invited to send some of his work to the les Vingt ("The Twenty") exhibition,
taking place early in 1888, in Brussels. At the same exhibition, two years later, Lautrec had a fierce argument with the
painter Henry de Groux over the inclusion of Van Gogh's work, and challenged the Belgian to a duel. The duel never took
place, but it shows the friendship Lautrec and Van Gogh shared. Van Gogh stayed with Lautrec in Paris, not long before
his suicide in 1890. See Toulouse-Lautrec's portrait of Vincent Van Gogh.
In 1889, Lautrec participated in the Salon des Independants for the first time. He would become a frequent contributor to
the Salon's exhibitions. He spent the summer on France's Atlantic coast, yachting. This year saw the opening of the
cabaret Moulin Rouge in the Montmartre; Lautrec immediately became a regular, and would often show his work at the
establishment. In modern popular culture, the name Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is inseparably linked to the Moulin Rouge,
and it is true that some of his most iconic work was made there, including his notorious Moulin Rouge poster of 1891 (La
Goulue), Valentin "the Boneless" Training the New Girls (1890), and others.
Though Lautrec is most famous for his depictions of Parisian night-life, he was a man of constantly-evolving interests,
both artistically and otherwise. Around 1893, moved away from the cabarets and took an interest in literature and
theater. He made his first engraving in 1891, and his later works include many lithographs, such as Les Ambassadeurs:
Aristide Bruant (1892), May Milton (1895), The Jockey (1899), and others. In 1893, he took part in an exhibition devoted
to painters and engravers. That year was important as well, because he had his first solo exhibition at the gallery of
Maurice Joyant. In this, he was part of a modern trend for the celebration of individual artistic achievement. Prior to the
late 19th Century, exhibitions had always been collective, featuring numerous artists.
Lautrec spent a lot of the time between 1894 and 1897 travelling. He visited London, Madrid and Toledo in Spain,
Brussels, Haarlem and Amsterdam. In England, the painter became acquainted with Whistler and Oscar Wilde, both of
whom he saw as role models -- the former for his art, the latter for his lifestyle. In Spain, he took inspiration from the old
masters: Velasquez, Goya and El Greco. In Holland, he studied Rembrandt, Bruegel and Hals. In Brussels, in 1895 and
again in 1897, he took part in exhibitions organized by the group La Libre Esthetique (The Free Aesthetic), the
successors to les Vingt, where his work was exhibited side-by-side with that of Cezanne, Signac, Gauguin and Van
Gogh.
His lifestyle, ever erratic, was becoming increasingly so as a result of his drinking, which was rapidly spiralling out of
control. In 1894, on a whim, he moved into one of the brothels he frequented and lived there for some time. Some works
painted from his experience there include Rue de Moulins (1894), Prostitutes Around a Dinner Table (1894), Two
Friends (1894-95), In 1896, at a private exhibition in the gallery of Joyant, he got into altercation with no less a
personage than the former King of Serbia, Milan Obrenovic, whom he called an ignorant "pig farmer". By this time, he
was descending into outright alcoholism. In 1897, he had an attack of delirium tremens, while on summer vacation at
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. His artistic output decreased sharply, as most of his days were spent in various states of
intoxication. His health deteriorated sharply. In 1899, he was confined to a mental hospital, attracting jabs from the press.
He died on September 9th, 1901, at the age of 36, at one of his beloved mother's homes in Malrome. His last two
paintings were "Admiral Viaud" and "An Examination at the Faculty of Medicine".
Biography by Yuri Mataev
Bibliography:
Court Painter to the Wicked. The Life and Work of Toulouse-Lautrec by Jean Bouret. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. NY 1968
Toulouse_Lautrec. A Life. by Julia Frey Viking. 1994
Nightlife of Paris. The Art of Toulouse-Lautrec by Patrick O'Connor. Universe, NY.1991
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec by Herhard Gruitrooy. 1996.
Toulouse-Lautrec by Philippe Huisman and M.G. Dortu. Chartwell Books, Inc.1971
Toulouse-Lautrec His Complete Lithographs and Drypoints by Jean Adhemar. Harry N.Abrams, Inc. NY
Toulouse-Lautrec: The Complete Graphic Works by Gotz Adriani. Thames & Hudson, 1988.
H. de Toulouse-Lautrec: One Hundred Ten Unpublished Drawings by Arthur William Heintzelman, Edouard Julien, M.
Roland O. Heintzelman. French & European Pubns, 1955.
Toulouse Lautrec Impressionist Painting Young Girl & Eros - Adolphe c.1882
Attributed to Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) After William Bouguereau
Approx: Size 47" tall x 35.25" wide (without the frame) - 62.75" tall x 51" wide (with Frame)
History
William Bouguereau was France's most popular painter of the late 1800s. A leader of the Academic School,
Bouguereau specialized in carefully detailed mythological and genre scenes, and was particularly noted for his tender
portrayals of children. "The Abduction of Psyche" (1895) is probably his best-known work. Today many critics dismiss
his style as kitsch and do not look kindly on his harmful opposition to new creative trends; but his exquisite craftsmanship
is undeniable. Bouguereau completed over 800 paintings, many of them life-sized. Adolphe William Bouguereau (he
never used his first name) was born in La Rochelle, France. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and won the Prix de
Rome in 1850. In 1868 he built a lavish studio in Montparnasse and helped make that area the foremost artists' quarter
in Paris. Around this time he also began a liason with one of his students, American painter Elizabeth Gardner;
Bouguereau's mother opposed the relationship and the couple did not marry until her death in 1896. As comparatively
obscure as he is these days, it's difficult to imagine what a star Bouguereau was in the art world of his era. He worked
hard to fufil his many commissions and his paintings were so sought after, and fetched such high prices, that he once
boasted, "I lose five francs every time I pee". Engraved reproductions of his works sold in the millions. Along with wealth
and fame came many honors, including election to the Institute of France and being named a Grand Officer of the Legion
of Honor. Reactionary in visual tastes, Bouguereau believed art should idealize beauty and turned up his nose at
anything that even remotely deviated from this dictum. As President of the Society of French Artists from 1881, he
oversaw the selection of the thousands of paintings shown annually at the Paris Salon, the only real avenue to success
for aspiring Gallic painters and sculptors. For decades he used this position to hinder the press and public from
discovering the revolutionary changes that were taking place in French painting, including Impressionism, Realism,
Pointillism, and the singular efforts of Paul Gaugin, Henri Rousseau, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Paul Cezanne, who
submitted canvases to that venue every year only to have them rejected, finally gave up and declared, "I don't stand a
chance in Monsieur Bouguereau's Salon". Rival salons sprang up in Paris to combat Bouguereau's conservatism, but he
remained powerful and influential until his death at 79. (bio by: Bobb Edwards)
In 1882, Lautrec moved from Albi to Paris, where he studied art in the ateliers of two academic painters, Léon Bonnat
(1833–1922) and Fernand Cormon (1845–1924), who also taught Émile Bernard (1868–1941) and Vincent van Gogh
(1853–1890). Lautrec soon began painting en plein air in the manner of the Impressionists, and often posed sitters in the
Montmartre garden of his neighbor, Père Forest, a retired photographer. One of his favorite models was a prostitute
nicknamed La Casque d'Or (Golden Helmet), seen in the painting The Streetwalker (2003.20.13). Lautrec used peinture
à l'essence, or oil thinned with turpentine, on cardboard, rendering visible his loose, sketchy brushwork. The
transposition of this creature of the night to the bright light of day—her pallid complexion and artificial hair color clash with
the naturalistic setting—signals Lautrec's fascination with sordid and dissolute subjects. Later in his career, he would
devote an entire series of prints, called Elles, to life inside a brothel (1984.1203.166).
The most notable painting from the Harris collection was the early Toulouse-Lautrec painting "La blanchisseuse" (1886-
87), a young laundress with copper-colored hair and a pearly white blouse. Its optimistic presale estimate of $20 million
to $25 million turned out to be justified, as the painting sold for $22.4 million to a phone bidder. The price was a record
for a work by the artist sold at auction, $6 million more than the previous highest price.
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) was a French artist of the late 19th Century, most closely associated with the
Symbolists, but with a unique, distinctive style of his own. His depictions of Parisian night life and society -- vivid, candid,
energetic and unflattering -- are instantly recognizable, and typify that place and period in the minds of many. The
painter's own life has become a legend that has inspired many romanticized interpretations.
Henri-Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa was born on November 24, 1864, in the town of Albi, in the south of
France. He was the first child and heir of Alphonse Charlers Jean Marie (1838-1913), Count of Toulouse, and his wife
Marie Marquette Zoe Adele Tapie de Celeyran (1841-1930). Count Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec was an avid
sportsman and hunter, with a penchant for flamboyant outfits. Marie de Celeyran, by contrast, was very reserved and shy,
and doted on her first child. Young Henri was probably first introduced to painting through his uncles, several of whom
were amateur artists. He received his first tutelage in art from Rene Princeteau, a well-known sports-painter and a friend
of his father's.
Much of Henri's early childhood was spent in the Chateau de Celeyran, his mother's familial home, near the
Mediterranean town of Narbonne, where he spent much time drawing and painting the life and landscape of the estate. In
1868, his parents separated; Henri would live mostly with his mother. In 1872, he was enrolled in the prestigious Lycee
Fontanes in Paris, but he left the school only three short years later, in 1875, due to health reasons. Together with his
mother, he moved back to the south of France, and its gentler climate.
In 1878, Henri broke his left thigh as he was getting up out of a chair. Bed-ridden, he spent his time reading, drawing and
painting. A year later and just barely recovered from his first injury, he broke his other thigh whilst taking a walk with his
mother. The growth of his legs was stunted forever, and he never grew taller than 5 feet. There is much speculation about
the causes of the painter's medical condition. From the evidence we have today, it is probable that he suffered from
brittle bone disease (osteogenesis imperfecta), a genetic disorder that prevents bones and connective tissues from
developing properly. Osteogenesis imperfecta was not uncommon among the European aristocracy, and this would
explain Henri's physical frailty and other symptoms. Be that as it may, his illness was never identified during his lifetime,
and nothing his mother and his doctors undertook would help.
Meanwhile, Henri continued to pursue art. By 1880, he had produced as many as two and a half thousand works, in a
variety of techniques. Encouraged by his uncle Charles and by Princeteau, he eventually managed to convince his
mother to allow him to return to Paris to study art. In 1881, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec set up residence in Princeteau's
Paris studio.
In 1882, the young artist was accepted into the studio of the famous painter and art teacher Leon Bonnat. However,
Bonnat took an immediate dislike to Toulouse-Lautrec, who, already then, had something of a caustic personality. The
two did not get along well, and after Bonnat became a professor at the Paris Academy of Art, Lautrec quit his studio and
began to study, instead, under Fernand Cormon. Cormon was a talented artist in his own right, and an enthusiastic
teacher, and his workshop attracted many young painters who would later be among the shapers of the art world.
Under Cormon, Toulouse-Lautrec explored many styles and techniques. He received a firm grounding in academic
painting, but Cormon also encouraged his students to explore Impressionism and contemporary directions in art. Two of
the painter's works from this period are the Artist's Mother (1883) and the Young Routy at Celeyran (1883).
In 1883, Lautrec had his first romantic liaison with Marie Charlet, a 17-year-old model. The painter would have many
affairs over the course of his rather brief life. All of them would be with women far below his station, and none of them
were very long-lasting. Although the artist immersed himself in the life of the lower classes -- the cabarets, the dance
halls and the brothels -- he always retained an aristocratic aloofness and a sense of his own superiority. He was not
attempting to become part of that life: he was rather an unprejudiced observer; a doctor or a scientist, trying to dissect it
and give it life, in his art.
Lautrec moved into the Montmartre district in 1884. Here, he met Edgar Degas, whom he came to admire. He soon
began to frequent the district's cabarets, including the Elysee-Montmartre, the Moulin de la Galette and the Mirliton, run
by Artistide Bruant, where he displayed his works. That year, he also had his first exhibition at the Pau.
In 1886, Lautrec met Vincent Van Gogh at Cormon's studio, where the Dutch painter had come to study. They quickly
became friends, though Lautrec left the studio only a few months later, his education there concluded. This was also the
year when he met Suzanne Valadon, who modelled for him, and they began a relationship. It didn't last long; two years
later, Valadon attempted suicide and the couple broke up. See The Laundress, which is one of the artist's depiction of
his mistress.
By this point, Lautrec's art was beginning to attract greater notice. In 1887, he participated in an exhibition in Toulouse,
where he assumed a false name, in order to distance himself from his father, the Count of Toulouse. In Paris, he
exhibited together with Van Gogh. He was invited to send some of his work to the les Vingt ("The Twenty") exhibition,
taking place early in 1888, in Brussels. At the same exhibition, two years later, Lautrec had a fierce argument with the
painter Henry de Groux over the inclusion of Van Gogh's work, and challenged the Belgian to a duel. The duel never took
place, but it shows the friendship Lautrec and Van Gogh shared. Van Gogh stayed with Lautrec in Paris, not long before
his suicide in 1890. See Toulouse-Lautrec's portrait of Vincent Van Gogh.
In 1889, Lautrec participated in the Salon des Independants for the first time. He would become a frequent contributor to
the Salon's exhibitions. He spent the summer on France's Atlantic coast, yachting. This year saw the opening of the
cabaret Moulin Rouge in the Montmartre; Lautrec immediately became a regular, and would often show his work at the
establishment. In modern popular culture, the name Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is inseparably linked to the Moulin Rouge,
and it is true that some of his most iconic work was made there, including his notorious Moulin Rouge poster of 1891 (La
Goulue), Valentin "the Boneless" Training the New Girls (1890), and others.
Though Lautrec is most famous for his depictions of Parisian night-life, he was a man of constantly-evolving interests,
both artistically and otherwise. Around 1893, moved away from the cabarets and took an interest in literature and
theater. He made his first engraving in 1891, and his later works include many lithographs, such as Les Ambassadeurs:
Aristide Bruant (1892), May Milton (1895), The Jockey (1899), and others. In 1893, he took part in an exhibition devoted
to painters and engravers. That year was important as well, because he had his first solo exhibition at the gallery of
Maurice Joyant. In this, he was part of a modern trend for the celebration of individual artistic achievement. Prior to the
late 19th Century, exhibitions had always been collective, featuring numerous artists.
Lautrec spent a lot of the time between 1894 and 1897 travelling. He visited London, Madrid and Toledo in Spain,
Brussels, Haarlem and Amsterdam. In England, the painter became acquainted with Whistler and Oscar Wilde, both of
whom he saw as role models -- the former for his art, the latter for his lifestyle. In Spain, he took inspiration from the old
masters: Velasquez, Goya and El Greco. In Holland, he studied Rembrandt, Bruegel and Hals. In Brussels, in 1895 and
again in 1897, he took part in exhibitions organized by the group La Libre Esthetique (The Free Aesthetic), the
successors to les Vingt, where his work was exhibited side-by-side with that of Cezanne, Signac, Gauguin and Van
Gogh.
His lifestyle, ever erratic, was becoming increasingly so as a result of his drinking, which was rapidly spiralling out of
control. In 1894, on a whim, he moved into one of the brothels he frequented and lived there for some time. Some works
painted from his experience there include Rue de Moulins (1894), Prostitutes Around a Dinner Table (1894), Two
Friends (1894-95), In 1896, at a private exhibition in the gallery of Joyant, he got into altercation with no less a
personage than the former King of Serbia, Milan Obrenovic, whom he called an ignorant "pig farmer". By this time, he
was descending into outright alcoholism. In 1897, he had an attack of delirium tremens, while on summer vacation at
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. His artistic output decreased sharply, as most of his days were spent in various states of
intoxication. His health deteriorated sharply. In 1899, he was confined to a mental hospital, attracting jabs from the press.
He died on September 9th, 1901, at the age of 36, at one of his beloved mother's homes in Malrome. His last two
paintings were "Admiral Viaud" and "An Examination at the Faculty of Medicine".
Biography by Yuri Mataev
Bibliography:
Court Painter to the Wicked. The Life and Work of Toulouse-Lautrec by Jean Bouret. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. NY 1968
Toulouse_Lautrec. A Life. by Julia Frey Viking. 1994
Nightlife of Paris. The Art of Toulouse-Lautrec by Patrick O'Connor. Universe, NY.1991
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec by Herhard Gruitrooy. 1996.
Toulouse-Lautrec by Philippe Huisman and M.G. Dortu. Chartwell Books, Inc.1971
Toulouse-Lautrec His Complete Lithographs and Drypoints by Jean Adhemar. Harry N.Abrams, Inc. NY
Toulouse-Lautrec: The Complete Graphic Works by Gotz Adriani. Thames & Hudson, 1988.
H. de Toulouse-Lautrec: One Hundred Ten Unpublished Drawings by Arthur William Heintzelman, Edouard Julien, M.
Roland O. Heintzelman. French & European Pubns, 1955.
Avenue Gambetta 24/01/2025 20h09
Avenue Gambetta at night. Taken in between the métro stations Saint-Fargeau and Pelleport.
Avenue Gambetta
Avenue Gambetta is a 2,280 meters long street in the 20ème arrondissement in the quartier Saint-Fargeau. Named after Léon Gambetta (1838-1882), politician, member of the government of national defense in 1870, Chairman and member of the 20th arrondissement.
Tree-lined avenue Gambetta is formed by four different axes. It starts up-Auguste Métivier at and altidtude of 54 meters, where it rises on the hill of Ménilmontant to the northeast, along the Square Samuel-de-Champlain, towards the place Martin-Nadaud. The avenue is moving then due east and reached the Place Gambetta (87 m). There, the avenue turnes to the northeast, along the town hall of the 20ème arrondissement, Square Edouard Vaillant and Tenon Hospital, and reached Paul Signac places (99 m) and Saint-Fargeau (108 m) where it undergoes its final misalignment. After passing behind the administrative Turrets Centre, headquarters of the DGSE, it borders the Olympic pool Georges-Vallerey and the Square du Docteur-Variot and ends Porte des Lilas to 116 m altitude.
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
High Resolution:
The original Ukrainian signature of the artist: M Глущенко
(Enlarged fragment: The Front View of the Painting)
A knight of mystery and paintbrush
Iryna Hakh
September 17 marks the 115th birthday of Mykola Hlushchenko, a Ukrainian painter and a soviet spy.
“Your religion, Nikolai Petrovich, your most precious and ‘sacred’ thing is material interests… I’m writing to you in Russian. I do that because deep in my heart I don’t see you as a real Ukrainian. You refer to yourself as Ukrainian not as a member of an oppressed community would, but only when and where it fits you.”
A fragment of Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s letter to Hlushchenko from the 1920s
Mykola Hlushchenko is one of the brightest figures in the history of Ukrainian painting of the 20th century, the people’s artist of the USSR and the holder of the Taras Shevchenko Award. Virtually all Ukrainian guidebooks open their entries on Hlushchenko with these phrases. A God-given artist, an unsurpassed colorist, master of the landscape whose brush created over 10,000 works of art.
The past decades, however, revealed another unexpected aspect to the life of the well-known painter. In the 1990s, documents were published pointing to the fact that he was a soviet spy under the code name “Yarema”. He worked in the West successfully, handed over valuable materials about the Third Reich’s preparations for the attack against the Soviet Union to his bosses, obtained secret designs of 250 kinds of weapons, including engines for fighter jets, briefed Moscow on the activities of the leaders of "anti-Soviet nationalistic centers", reported about sentiments amongst the political and artistic elites of France and Germany, and more.
The fans of Hlushchenko’s legacy as an artist struggle to put together this side of his life and his extremely interesting creative activity during his lifetime.
In the 1920s, at an early age, Hlushchenko lived and studied in Germany and received material assistance from Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky and Roman Smal-Stotsky, Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) Ambassador in Berlin. In 1922, Hlushchenko met Oleksandr Dovzhenko who at that time served as Secretary of the USSR Consulate in Berlin. “He [Dovzhenko – Auth.] met with Ukrainian students of the Berlin Academy of Arts and visited them every night. Then, after he managed to resign from the consulate and to receive a scholarship from the Ukrainian SSR People’s Commissariat, Dovzhenko joined the private art school by Professor Kampf.” One of these evening classes played a significant role in Hlushchenko’s future, his wife later recalled. “I studied at Prof. Kampf’s private studio. Mykola Petrovych [Hlushchenko – Transl.] often replaced him for evening classes. That’s where Hlushchenko painted the portraits of Oleksandr Petrovych [Dovzhenko] and his wife Varvara Semenivna,” she recalls. The portraits were lost. The only remaining thing was a black and white photograph of Dovzhenko by Hlushchenko.
According to historians of art, it was his conversations with Dovzhenko that inspired Hlushchenko to apply for soviet citizenship. He learned that his application was approved in 1923 and gave a self-portrait to Dovzhenko as a gift, with an inscription on the backside saying “Now I know who I am.” We don’t know what the 22-year old artist meant in his address to the Ukrainian colleague, and historic documents don’t reveal anything about it.
According to other sources, Hlushchenko did not receive soviet citizenship in 1923. He then moved to Paris in 1924, so he may have had too little time to go through the citizenship procedure. In 1925, however, the USSR trade representative in France commissioned the design of the soviet pavilion from Hlushchenko at the Lyon Fair. A year later, Hlushchenko had his personal exhibition at Société des Artistes Indépendants, a landmark event in his life as an artist. It was only after this that Hlushchenko reapplied for soviet citizenship and received a USSR passport in 1927.
It was then that, at the end of the 1920s, representatives of soviet foreign intelligence noticed him: a successful young artist who so strongly wanted to be a citizen of the Soviet Union, fully met the criteria of a person who could collaborate with the soviet intelligence. Fluent in French and German and with contacts in Germany and France, he had the necessary freedom and motivation to move around Europe, meanwhile fulfilling the tasks of his new bosses. An art studio at the Volunteers Street in Paris was a popular spot for the local intelligentsia to get together and discuss both art, and politics. Hlushchenko’s talents and contacts thus made him invaluable for the respective soviet authorities.
The first test task came soon: Hlushchenko was required to attend the trial of Samuel Schwartzbard, the murderer of Symon Petliura (Paris, October 18, 1927). Along with all the materials collected from that trial and newspaper reports of it, the headquarters in Moscow received illustrations where artist drew the portraits of the people involved. That put Hlushchenko in the list of “promising” agents of soviet special services.
In the 1920s and 1930s, he had many exhibitions around Europe; shows in famous galleries; the recognition as a promising representative of the young generation of artists, and praise from critics. As a result, his exhibition activity skyrocketed. Hlushchenko was displayed in the best locations around Moscow, Paris, Bucharest and Prague. In those years, many well-known individuals visited the artist in his studio. These included Vasyl Vyshyvany (Archduke Wilhelm von Habsburg), a colonel with the Ukrainian Riflemen; Dmytro Andriyevsky, an engineer and a leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists; Ivan Bunin, a Russian Nobel Prize-winning writer. Hlushchenko was in close contact with the Ukrainian artists who worked or studied in Paris, including Perfetsky, Turyn, Perebyinis, Khmeliuk and Hordynsky.
By the early 1930s, he comes the closest to his Motherland: “After I returned from Lviv to Paris in 1930, I began to organize the exhibition of Paris artists in Lviv. Hlushchenko and Perebyinis helped me a lot with this. They suggested that I display a few pieces by French and Italian painters of the Paris School. It was in the early 1930s that the artist managed to get as close as possible to the Motherland: "After returning from Lviv to Paris in 1930, I began to organize an exhibition of" Parisians "in Lviv. This helped me a lot Hlushchenko and Perebyinis. It was they who submitted the idea of publishing several works of French and Italian artists from the "Paris School". Of course, we couldn’t even think of having the paintings by the genius artists like Picasso, Derain, Chagall or Modigliani. But the witty Hlushchenko somehow got their drawings, engravings or lithographies”, wrote Sviatoslav Hordynskyi, the author of the history of the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists in Lviv, the capital of Halychyna. Together with Hordynskyi and Perebyinis, Hlushchenko was a co-author of the Paris Group’s first exhibition in Lviv.
This organization started working at a Lviv museum with the First Exhibition of the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists Featuring French, Italian and Belgian Artists in 1931. The organizers of this huge art project wanted to present the works by a young generation of Ukrainian artists living and working in Paris, and to show the West European painting culture of the early 20th century alongside the artists from Halychyna.
The opening of the show started a new page in the history of Ukrainian art of the first half of the 20th century. The show at the National Museum of Lviv was hugely successful. “Sviatoslav Hordynskyi, Hlushchenko and Perebyinis deserve warm appreciation for organizing the participants from Paris for the show of the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists in March and April,” Ilarion Svencicki, the museum director, said to the press. “The organizers have made is possible for four thousand visitors to see the living trends in the art of Ukrainian painters in the context of contemporary art in the West. These exhibitions will remain for many years a real accomplishment of the National Museum’s cultural work. The guests had an opportunity to see contemporary accomplishments of Ukrainian art and compare them to the eternal values of the past epochs. Therefore, the Museum administration is willing to provide space for similar retrospective, comprehensive, individual and comparable shows in the future.”
As a member of the Paris Group, Hlushchenko was actively involved in the organization of the First Exhibition, as well as further work of the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists. He displayed his works in collective exhibitions of the Association that took place annually in Lviv between 1931 and 1935, and was praised by art critics as “elegant, simple, authentic and sincere.”
Members of the Association, too, appreciated Hlushchenko’s work. In 1934, it published a presentable and solid monograph of his art in Ukrainian and French. The hardback book with the portrait of the well-known Parisian artist of Ukrainian original was complete with 32 illustrations and a color lithography insert. “This monograph, first in the series of such planned publications, tries to briefly and competently introduce the wider audience of art lovers to the life and art of this interesting painter…. Halychyna has not yet had an art monograph that would cover the art of individual painters in such light and beautiful form. So we should warmly greet the appearance of art monographs on our book market,” the introduction by P. Kovzhun and S. Hordynskyi said.
The following year, Hlushchenko had his personal exhibition in Lviv. He had been negotiating it with Ilarion Svencicky since 1933. He displayed nearly a hundred of his works, including paintings and drawings. His artistic work got critical acclaim in the press, with an accent on the links between Lviv and Paris art. Colleagues praised him too. V. Lasovsky wrote with admiration: “Hlushchenko’s art is the cause of sentiment, love for color, the first impression and the negation of reason in favor of a more sophisticated color palette, in favor of the general tone of the texture that would underline the quality of the paint rather than convey the material structure of the object painted.”
This personal show was successful both artistically and financially. Many works were bought by the fans of Hlushchenko’s art right from display, and some works made it into the collection of the National Museum.
Despite this huge success, the admiration of the Lviv audience and of his fellow artists, Hlushchenko never joined the massive exhibition for the 20th anniversary of the National Museum in Lviv that involved all members of the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists. His works were absent from the following annual exhibitions of the Association that took place in Lviv up until 1939.
In 1936, the Hlushchenko family moved to Moscow. The famous artist whose works were displayed alongside France’s top impressionists ended up in a room of 9 sq m in a communal flat. The following year, the family managed to move to Kyiv.
Ever since, Hlushchenko worked and lived in the Soviet Union, displaying his works in the galleries of soviet cities, including Kyiv, Moscow, Odesa and Kharkiv – once again, to the admiration of the audience and open floors from any well-known museums and halls.
In 1940, Hlushchenko is sent to Berlin where the exhibition of soviet decorative art was to take place. IT is hard to say now why the artists agreed to join yet another task from the intelligence. But he did fulfill it and received a gift at the exhibition – an album of watercolor paintings by Adolf Hitler which he handed over to Stalin after his return back to the Soviet Union. Hlushchenko continued to display his works during the war in the galleries of Moscow (1941, 1942, 1943) and Kyiv (1944).
After 1944, Hlushchenko lived in Kyiv. His studio was on the uppermost floor of the Moscow Building at Khreshchatyk, the main street of Kyiv. He was accepted as member of the Union of Soviet Artists of Ukraine that same year.
After the war, Hlushchenko worked and displayed his art a lot in the capitals of the Soviet Union republics. As one of the Soviet Union’s top artists, he represented art intelligentsia in exhibitions in Poland (1954), Great Britain (1966), Canada (1968), Germany (1971) and Japan (1971). His trip to Belgium in 1958 was allowed. Such approvals of participation in international exhibitions in the Soviet Union were only granted to the artists who were super loyal and favored by those in power, and represented zero threat to the ideological propaganda of socialist soviet art in “hostile” capitalist states.
In 1976, Hlushchenko was awarded the title of the People’s Artist of the Soviet Union. During his lifetime, he saw the publication of several albums with his works and many articles about his accomplishments in art – although many facts of his biography were silenced while his life abroad in the interwar period was presented from a perspective that fit the overall narrative. Hlushchenko lived a beautiful wealthy life of a soviet artist who worked a lot, was in touch with the Communist Party elite and travelled abroad for exhibitions. He was admired by fellow artists. The Soviet Union was proud of him.
On October 31, 1977, Hlushchenko died and was buried at the Baikove Cemetery in Kyiv.
Who was painter Mykola Hlushchenko in reality? He was probably the only person who could actually answer that question. He personally valued his early period while describing the later stage as forced celebration of soviet life. Shortly before his death, Hlushchenko selected 250 paintings created in the 1950s and asked his wife to burn them. That request was never fulfilled: the paintings were found at his studio after his death and handed over to the Ministry of Culture for preservation without the right to display them.
In 1971, Hlushchenko visited Lviv (his first show there took place in 1957) with a personal exhibition that turned out to be the last one in his lifetime in the city. Handsome, fit, joyful and loud, Hlushchenko entered the museum with a group of Lviv Oblast Executive Committee employees and people from the Ministry of Culture. He saw a museum employee by the entrance to the main hall where his exhibition was to open officially and stopped:
- Do you recognize me?, Hlushchenko asked the elderly man. The man turned his head and looked into the direction from which the familiar voice came with the eyes that were almost blind.
– Oh, that’s Mr. Hlushchenko, Mr. Flunt replied with a typical accent on the letter e in the name. Yaroslav Flunt was a long-time employee of the National Museum in Lviv, and a fighter with the Ukrainian Riflemen who lost his eyesight in the Liberation Struggle. Ilarion Svencicky employed him. This elderly man was personally acquainted with Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and an eyewitness of remarkable events in the development of Ukrainian art in the early 20th century. He surely remembered those good days when young French artists of Ukrainian origin had triumphantly presented their works at the museum back in the 1930s. He remembered that joyful and carefree Hlushchenko who delivered the works of Picasso, Derain, Chagall and Modigliani through the border from France, without proper documentation.
Everyone noticed tears in Hlushchenko’s eyes at that moment.
17.09.2016
© 2018 zbruc.eu
Translated by © Anna Korbut
Reprint and any other use of materials published on the website is allowed with a reference/hyperlink to zbruc.eu.
Igor Bugaenko. Mykola Hlushchenko: Biographical sketch
en.uartlib.org/mykola-hlushchenko-best-picture-not-create...
Mykola Hlushchenko: My best picture has not been created yet
Jan 22, 2015 | © Library of Ukrainian Art
For many connoisseurs the one-man retrospective of the noted Ukrainian artist Mykola Hlushchenko, mounted in September 1971 to mark his 70th jubilee, held quite a few surprises. This was especially so as regards Hlushchenko’s productions of the last few years. Those who admired the exhibits were impressed by their telling expressiveness, vivacity of color, and a fresh and original apprehension of the world around us. The show covered fifty years in the career of the artist, and every one of the canvases was a distinctive page in his biography.
One of his earliest creations, a self-portrait painted at the age of twenty-two, is done in Italian Renaissance-derived style. Its wide range of soft pastel browns, as well as the conventional architectural background and the well-modeled features of the face emanate an unusual tranquillity. And only the tense expression of the young man’s eyes distorts the inner classical balance of the portrait, revealing the true identity and thoughts of the person it represents.
When Mykola Hlushchenko was five years old, his father died. Together with his mother, he moved from his native town of Novomoskovsk to the Ukrainian village of Borisovka in Kursk Province. There he experienced the first excitement of a would-be artist while watching the local icon painters at work. The urge to paint has never left him since then. He attended classes in drawing at a commercial school in Yuzovka (now Donetsk) and was especially fond of Repin and Vasil-kivsky. The copying of paintings and scenery pieces for workers’ clubs were Hlushchenko’s first independent steps in his career as an artist.
Then followed the hard days of confinement in a prisoners-of-war camp in Poland, from which he made a daring escape to Germany. Jobless, hungry, deprived of decent lodgings, Hlushchenko nonetheless pursued his career, studying at the private studio of Hans Baluschek in Berlin.
The different schools and trends in art, which alternately coexisted with or negated and influenced each other in those days, left his artistic individuality unscathed. His best paintings he did then had a new quality of a distinction which was not drowned in the kaleidoscope of prevalent artistic inventions.
During his studies at the Berlin Academy Hlushchenko fell under the spell of symbolism which dominated the German art of the time. He had a special fondness of the famous Swedish artist Anders Zorn, whose work, realistic as it was, bore some definite marks of impressionism. This is evident in the refined feeling of plastic form, opulent brushwork and conceptual unrestrained in Hlushchenko’s pictures.
His quest for different forms of plastic imagery took him to the museums, galleries and exhibitions in Berlin, where he found many interesting works by his contemporaries and masters of the past. As an advocate of realism he was attracted by the severity and clarity of the canvases of the German and Flemish Renaissance (Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Jan van Eyk, and Lucas Cranach the Elder). Hlushchenko endeavored to convey the innermost motives of his soul, and for him the image of man and the eternal theme of feminine beauty seemed to be the best vehicles of expression in this respect.
Reviewing Hlushchenko’s entries in the 1924 exhibition at the Kasper Art Gallery in Berlin, the critics noted the high culture and technical perfection of his canvases. This success opened to him the doors of the exhibition of the Neue Sachlichkeit group, which featured works by German, French, Swiss and Italian artists (in Jstern, Dresden, and Erfurt).
In 1925, Hlushchenko moved to Paris. From here the lame of Courbet, Millet, Corot, the impressionists Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, and Matisse, Picasso, Léger, Derain and Rouault spread throughout the world. Without these names the history of world art would be incomplete. “The vitality of Paris, the play of color and the illustrious achievements of the impressionists captured me,” he would later recall.
Heated disputes, criticism of the reactionary dogmas of academism whose advocates were already in a spiritual impasse but still dominated the official salons, attendances of the famous salons of Tuileries and those of the “Indépendants,” visits to dozens of private galleries and improvised shows — these were the main interests of the young artist in Paris. The rapidly changing tastes of the time notwithstanding, Hlushchenko’s personality was not lost in the colorful crowd of artists from Montmartre and Montparnasse. Apart from the works by formalistic experimentalists, which were devoid of deep content and figurative idiom, the Parisian exhibitions also displayed canvases whose subjects were closely related to life, and among them were Hlushchenko’s productions — fresh and distinct in their own right.
His compositions Les Joueurs de cartes, Les Joueurs d’échecs, La Procession, and Un Couple d’amoureux were exhibited in the Salon d’automne, Salon des Indépendants, and the Salon des Tuileries. They bore yet marks of severity and certain asceticism typical of the Berlin school. But his subsequent works — Femme assise and Femme à sa toilette — are imbued with a vitality sustained by a laconic and expressive draughtsmanship. During the Parisian period Hlushchenko also took an active part in public life. He popularized the economic and cultural achievements of the Soviet Union. In 1925, he designed the Soviet exhibition at the Lyon Fair. As chief artist of the USSR trade-industrial exhibitions, he took an active part in organizing the Soviet departments at expos held in Brussels, Milan, Paris and Marseille. Due to his efforts, a number of shows of Soviet artists were organized in Paris, such as the widely spoken about exhibition of Petr Konchalovsky.
Hlushchenko’s achievements in composition, drawing, and psychological treatment, and his broadened spiritual horizons were especially clearly projected in his portraits of the 1930s — those of Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, Paul Signac, and Victor Margueritte. The portrait of Henri Barbusse. in particular, produces an unforgettable impression by its dramatism and exceptional authenticity. The inner world of the subiect. a passionate fighter against fascism, is happily conveyed through original expedients which are skillfully made use of. The portrait is rightfully recognized as one of the best in the Soviet Ukrainian visual arts of the prewar period.
From 1925 to 1936 Hlushchenko’s one-man shows were mounted in many cities of Europe — in Paris. Berlin, Ostend, Milan, Stockholm, Rome, as well as in the USA.
As the political atmosphere changed for the worse, Hlushchenko could not stand aloof of the problems agitating the public mind of the world. During a visit to Spain in 1934 he did the painting Execution of Revolutionary, which he barely managed to slip through the customs.
At all stages of his career Hlushchenko’s creations have been distinguished for their telling civic message which corresponded to the best features of the art of socialist realism.
In 1936 Hlushchenko returned to his homeland.
At the outbreak of the Second World War he resided in Moscow. The press often carried his poignant graphic works indicting the crimes of the German fascists. His series Defense of Moscow is highly patriotic and revealing. Hlushchenko frequently visited the frontline and reproduced his impressions in Death of General Dovator, in the Wake of the Enemy. These and some other of his works, particularly a number of landscapes permeated with love of Russian nature, were displayed at the artist’s one-man exhibition held in Moscow in 1943.
Ukrainian art-lovers also took great interest in Hlushchenko’s creative work. The exhibition of his pictrures organized in the Kiev House of Writers drew the attention of many prominent figures in Ukrainian culture and arts.
After the liberation of Kiev, in 1944, Hlushchenko moved to Ukraine. Since then his art is closely related to his country of birth. Its colorful natural beauties and the poesy of creativity of Soviet man are the underlying sources of his inspiration. Thematically, Hlushchenko’s landscapes range from intimately lyrical to epic and monumental pieces, e. g. the pictorially refined Birches in March, the spacious Fields of a Collective Farm, the fresh Morning by the Sea, the solemnly restrained and dramatic Vishgorod Bridgehead, the elegiac Autumn in Kiev, and the grand Ukraine. In his sketches and studies he has skilfully captured the changeableness of nature and the ecstasy man derives from his immediate contact with it.
Hlushchenko’s temperament has made him one of the most traveled artists in Ukraine. For him the studio is only a temporary place of creation, where he transplants his impressions onto the canvas to be admired at exhibitions invariably following his many travels throughout the Soviet Union and abroad.
In the 1960s, as many critics have noted, Hlushchenko’s artistic conceptions suddenly took on a new form. His brushwork became broad and vigorous and his colors pure, and there appeared a marked decorativeness in his paintings.
At first sight, this was something of a surprise to many of his admirers. But on closer inspection of his previous works one would hardly leave unnoticed those subtle elements which led to such a change, viz. his keen sensitivity to the surrounding environment, unexceptionable feci in it of rhythm, and fondness of decorative folk art. His palette became richer and his choice of color freer. He sees the world in constant movement to which he subordinates both form and color. However, the decorativeness which results therefrom only enhances the feeling of harmony.
When we look at Hlushchenko’s beautiful still-lifes with flowers, we perceive them as something live and not as something created by the sheer fantasy of the artist. His works are a happy combination of fantasy and reality, e.g. Still-life (1971). with its dynamic red, yellow and lilac colors; Still-life in Blue (1971), a dreamily sensitive and bright canvas; and The Dance (1967), conveying the expressive movements of a Hutsul dance. He does not merely contemplate nature, but reproduces its eternal process of renovation. His pictures are results not of stratagem, but of spontaneity. Yet there is no trace of superficiality in them, for he is a man of exceptional talent, great experience and profound erudition in his craft.
Hlushchenko excels in many mediums. After visiting the places connected with Lenin’s life and revolutionary activities abroad (England, Italy, France, Switzerland, Sweden, and Czechoslovakia) he made a series of drawings in colored felt-pointed pens, pastels, and monotypes which are as consummate as his picturesque oils. His water colors merit the same praise.
Advanced in years as he is, Hlushchenko’s youthful energy is more than admirable. His pictures vividly reflect the wisdom of immense experience, the maturity of chiseled craftsmanship and unfading talent which until now has retained its freshness, strength and the daring of an innovator’s searchings. Says the artist: “My best picture has not been created yet. I am still seeking that fire-bird which evades my grasp.”
Igor Bugaenko,1973
Copyright © Library Of Ukrainian Art
1905. Oli sobre tela. 129,5 x 162,6 cm. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk. 77.344. Obra exposada: Galeria 217.
Subject and Model
The sitter is Berthe Roblès (1862–1942), a distant cousin of Camille Pissarro who became Signac’s wife on 7 November 1892. This portrait is the last of a series of intimate studies of his close family and friends, and it remains one of the rare finished figurative works in his Neo-Impressionist oeuvre.
Composition and Technique
Signac presents Berthe in profile under her parasol, applying countless pure pigment dots of complementary hues—greens set against oranges, reds against purples. The canvas deliberately avoids illusionistic depth, emphasizing a two-dimensional decorative surface. Arabesques in the sleeves, the parasol’s ribs, and details such as a stylized flower or tassel reinforce its hieratic, emblematic quality.
Provenance
The painting was held in the collection of Dr. Charles Cachin until 1989, when it was given to the French state under usufruct. It entered the Musée d’Orsay that same year as part of the national collection.
Significance
“Woman with a Parasol” showcases Signac’s mastery of pointillist theory and his shift from capturing fleeting light effects toward composing harmonious chromatic planes. By blending the Impressionist subject of outdoor leisure with a rigorously flat, decorative approach, Signac charts a distinctive path within Neo-Impressionism.
Huile sur toile, 24 x 32 cm, juillet-août 1905, Bridgestone Art, Tokyo.
Cette vue de Collioure ancrant l'art de Matisse dans la perception du réel, avec ses verts acides et ses roses aigres évoquant l'atmosphère d'un jour de tempête, nous éloigne des méticuleux calculs pointillistes. Durant l'été 1905 Matisse écrit à Signac : "C'était la première fois de ma vie que j'étais content... mes choses ne sont peut-être pas très importantes mais elles ont le mérite d'exprimer mes sensations". Auparavant le tableau était la représentation d'un motif. Il s'agissait d'un circuit court soumis au contrôle de l'attention et de l'observation du peintre. Le tableau était une fenêtre ouverte sur le monde et l'encadrait. Désormais le circuit est plus long, l'oeuvre est achevée non plus quand elle semble reproduire l'objet, mais lorsque le peintre se sent déchargé de son émotion. Le tableau n'est plus seulement la fenêtre ouverte sur le monde, mais aussii l'homme derrière la fenêtre (cf. kerdonis.fr).
On the coldest day ever, a visit to see the best art ever, Metropolitan Museum, New York, February 2016.
"Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice".
This painting reminded me of the great work that my Flickr friend, Roger does. Signac used dashes of paint to create paintings, while Roger uses dots.
The Postcard
A postally unused carte postale that was published by CAP of Strasbourg. The image is a glossy real photograph, and 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.