Tag Archives: Barbizon School

Carl Larsson: Crayfishing and October

31 Tuesday Jul 2012

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It is the last day in July.  Some of you enjoyed Ett Hem, so I thought I would close the month by sending you pictures that belong to Carl Larsson’s Ett Hem collection.

The picture featured above is entitled Crayfishing (1897) and the picture to your left, October (1883).

Carl Larsson had been influenced by the Barbizon painters plein air (out in the open) school.  Both these pictures depict life outdoors.

Source: Carl Larsson
© Micheline Walker
31 July 2012
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The Hague School: Hendrik Willem Mesdag

11 Friday May 2012

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Pink in the Breakers, by Mesdag (23 February 1831 – 10 July 1915)

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)                             
Preparations for Departure, Mesdag

The Art of Hendrik Willem Mesdag

When I discovered the work of Dutch marine painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag, I caught a tiny glimpse of all things infinite.  Look at the yellow and mauve hues of the sky in the picture to your left.  If I lived near a marina, I would produce paintings of tall ships and sailboats.  Mesdag’s paintings therefore speak to me.  They are immensely evocative. 

My ancestors crossed the ocean in sail boats to settle on the North-American continent.  

(please click on the pictures to enlarge them) 
Beethoven: Sonatas for Cello and Piano, Rostropovich & Richter 
(also click on the title to hear the music)
 

Hendrik Willem Mesdag was born in Groningen, the Netherlands.  He was the son of banker Klaas Mesdag and his wife Johanna Wilhelmina van Giffen.  Hendrik Willem’s father was an amateur painter and encouraged his son to persevere in his artistic endeavours.

Mesdag married Sina van Houten (also an artist) in 1856 and, after the couple inherited a fortune from Sina’s family, Mesdag was able to go to Brussels and study art under Willem Roelofs who would later join the Hague School (described below).

In 1868, the Mesdags moved to The Hague, which allowed Mesdag to paint his seascapes with sailboats, a vanishing world.  In 1870, Mesdag won a gold medal for The Breakers of the North Sea at the Paris Salon, the official art exhibition of the Paris Académie des Beaux-Arts.  Between 1748–1890, the Paris Salon was “the greatest annual or biannual art event in the Western world.” (Wikipedia)

The Hague School

Mesdag is associated with The Hague School and was also a member of the Pulchri [beauty] Studio, an art society of which he was elected chairman in 1889.  Members of the Hague School were painters who, following members of the plein air (outdoors) Barbizon School, Corot for instance, painted their surroundings: landcapes, seascapes, farm animals (cows, sheep, etc.).  They painted their world, yet a world we can identify as well as identify with, and which can therefore be especially evocative.

Critic, Jacob van Santen Kolff, who coined the term The Hague School, spoke of “a new way of seeing and depicting things” and of an “intent to convey mood, [where] tone takes precedence over color.”  Hague School artists had a preference for the consummately dramatic ‘bad weather’ effects, and for a “gray mood.”  Many enjoyed using dark colours, which is, in fact, a characteristic of the The Hague School. (Wikipedia)

It is true that an approaching storm is quite literally breathtaking.  We wait for what is about to happen and, if what happens is not destructive, nature is refreshed and acquires an intoxicating smell.  There is, in the world of art, a love of approaching storms and of storms.  They are a drama and they have a resolution.  This could be said of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, “The Pastoral.”  As for Mesdag, a marine painter, his moods are contained in seascapes and sailboats.

Members of the Hague School 

Members of the Hague School, also called the Romantic period in Dutch painting, were active between 1860-1890 and its representatives include Mesdag’s teacher Willem Roelofs (1822-1897), mentioned above, Israëls, Jozef (1824-1911) who was from Groningen, Gerard Bilders (1838-1865),  Gerard’s father Johannes Warnardus Bilders (1811-1890),  Paul Gabriël 1828- 1903), Jacob Maris (1837-1899), Anton Mauve (1838-1888), and several other artists.  All are listed in the Wikipedia entry on the Hague School. 

Wikipedia is very generous.  Its Hague School entry provides us with the name of all its members and each name is a link, which affords us the privilege of spending several hours visiting various “art galleries,” private collections and sites featuring works for sale or sold in art auctions.

Realism and Naturalism

Not all members of the Hague School chose to depict the sea.  They in fact depicted a variety of motifs or “subjects,” but all painted familiar scenes, or what they saw or their vision of what they saw.  They therefore produced landscapes, seascapes, paintings of farm animals and other subjects.  They were chroniclers and shared a common umbrella in the fine arts: Realism and Naturalism.  However, it was first and foremost a Dutch school. 

Looking at the works of the Hague School, one thinks first of the Dutch masters, such as Vermeer.  Second we think of earlier artists, the Limbourg brothers, miniaturists who decorated Jean de France’s book of Hours, Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.  But let us return to Mesdag and witness the whims of fashion. 

The Scheveningen Panorama

According to Wikipedia, “[i]n 1880 [Mesdag] received a commission from a Belgian company to paint a panorama giving a view over the village of Scheveningen on the North Sea coast near The Hague.”  However, Mesdag bought his own Panorama at an auction when the buyers’ company crumbled.  Suddenly, realism and naturalism had gone out of fashion.   

Carl Larsson’s Midvinterblot

Hendrik Willem Mesdag’s Scheveningen Panorama seems to have suffered the same fate as Carl Larsson’s Midvinterblot, a rejection of realistic and naturalistic art.  Abstract art can be extremely beautiful, but there is nothing wrong with Leonardo da’ Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.”

The Museum Mesdag

In 1903, Mesdag and Sina gave their house at Laan van Meerdervoort and their collection of works of art to the Netherlands. They had acquired many works of art, including Japanese art.  Laan van Meerdervoort is now the Museum Mesdag.

There is a sense in which this story is its own conclusion. Fashions change, but the Pendulum swings back.  More importantly,there are works the beauty of which can never be Diminished. This discussion is not over.

 

The return of the fishing fleet on Scheveningen Beach, by Mesdag

(Photo credit: artnet.com)
Micheline Walker©
May 11, 2012
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Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

05 Saturday May 2012

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  Nantes

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (July 17, 1796 – February 22, 1875) was the leading member of the plein air Barbizon school.  

 

Woman with a Pearl, by Corot

I so love the colours he uses. Look at the water in Nantes.  He has created a patch of light by using a greenish blue with mauve hues.  It matches the sky.  Also note the serene ambiance and the discreet place he has given the little boat. 

Among paintings, few have the monochrome quality of Corot’s “Woman with a Pearl.” And few portraits depict so beautiful a woman as Corot’s lady.  It may be that Corot saw the beauty of this woman’s soul and let it shape her face.

I hope you have a lovely weekend, filled with beauty.  

Brahms Symphony No.3 Poco Allegretto
(please click on the title to hear the music)
 
Micheline Walker©
May 5, 2012
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Chiaroscuro, or dark & light

19 Thursday Apr 2012

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Chiaroscuro

The Man with the Golden Helmet

The Man with the Golden Helmet, by Rembrandt von Rijn (15 July 1606 – 15 July 1606), housed in the Berlin National Museum  

In my post on Barbizon school artist, Charles Jacque, I mentioned not only the Golden section in a rather cavalier fashion, but I also mentioned chiaroscuro somewhat off-handedly. 

Rembrandt Harmenszoon von Rijn’s “Man with the Golden Helmet,” 1560-1665, housed in the Berlin National Museum, is a good example of the use of chiaroscuro or dark and light.  It is also a good example of the use of the Golden section.

According to Wikipedia “[c]hiaroscuro originated during the Renaissance as drawing on coloured paper, where the artist worked from the paper’s base tone towards light using white gouache, and towards dark using ink, bodycolour (a color that lasts) or watercolour.

By and large, we no longer use coloured paper.  We use pale, usually white, paper.  However, the above description is particularly interesting in that it gives the impression that the light area has been dug out of darkness.  In the case of Charles Jacque‘s Marie, the dark areas are carved out of a white background. It is a process akin to making a cameo, or the reverse.

Let us return to Wikipedia to read that “[t]hese in turn drew on traditions in illuminated manuscripts, going back to late Roman Imperial manuscripts on purple-dyed vellum (from vélin or calfskin).”

However, more simply defined, chiaroscuro refers to the contrast between light areas and dark areas, as in Charles Jacque’s “Marie.”  Marie seems to emerge, as though dug out from the white background.  In most drawings and coloured paintings, the pale area seems nearer than the dark area. However, if only one part of the painting is lit (see El Greco), that is the part we see.  
 
                                                    
Sacred and Profane Love, 1602–1603 
Giovanni Baglione (1566 – 30 December 1643)    

El Greco (1541 – 7 April 1614)
Allegory, Boy Lighting Candle in Company of Ape and Fool
 
19 Mendelssohn Lieder ohne Worte, Op.53 – No. 1. Andante con moto in A flat 
(please click on the title to hear the music)
 
April 19, 2012 
 
 
 

A Barbizon School Artist: Charles Jacque

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

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Marie, Etching on China, by Charles Jacque (1813-1894)

This is an etching executed by Charles Jacque, one of the “plein air” (outdoors) group of artists who called themselves the Barbizon School.  

This etching is a particularly successful work of art.  I love the dark areas and marvel at the manner they are consistent with the Greek Golden Section.  By the same token, I also love Jacque’s use of chiaroscuro (clair-obscur).  Look at the play of light defining Marie’s hair and the sleeve of her dress. 

Moreover, it had not occurred to me that one could use china to produce etchings.  China is fragile, but why not?  

An engraver & a Beast Artist

Charles-Emile Jacque (23 May 1813 – 7 May 1894) served in the military for seven years and, during that time, he engraved maps.  For those engravings, Jacques probably used copper.  So he is known as both a painter and an engraver, but as a painter, he is a beast artist, un peintre animalier. 

He joined members of the Barbizon School when he fled to Fontainebleau to escape an epidemics of cholera devastating Paris.  The days of cholera were very much like the days of the plague.  One had to avoid contamination, so flight was the only option.  But it was not an option available to all.

Portraits 

Jacque is also one of the Barbizon artists who painted “plein air” reality, but also painted portraits, as did Camille Corot.

The influence of Dutch Masters  

Charles Baudelaire, the author of Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of evil) noticed in Jacque’s works the characteristics of the Old Masters (Dutch).  This is not surprising since Jacque had made several engravings based on the works of Dutch Master Adriaen van Ostade.  Adriaen van Ostade (c. 1610 – 1685) was a “Dutch Golden Age painter of genre works.” (Wikipedia).

Genre Works & making a living   

“Genre works” depict scenes and events of every day life.  Such was the aim of members of the Barbizon School, in their paintings and other renderings of landscapes and farm animals.   However, to make a living, Jacque also illustrated books.  Illustrating books is an artist’s way of putting bread on the table.  There are other ways.  As a boy, Auguste Renoir, who was born in Limoges to a poor family, painted porcelain.

As for Jacque, he was an illustrator.  Among other works, he illustrated the Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Goldsmith; the Works of Shakespeare; and Ancient and Modern Versailles, by Alexandre de Laborde.  If sufficient creativity is afforded an illustrator, illustrating books can be a particularly satisfying way of making a living . 

But just imagine the pleasure of combining writing and illustrating, as was the case with William Blake.  Blake did not have to please an employer which gave him freedom and gave the world powerful images.

a terrible moment   

Charles Jacque’s most horrible moment must have been the execution of his son Lucien, a communard.  Twenty-thousand communards were executed during what is called the bloody week, la semaine sanglante: May 22 to 28, 1871.  France had been attacked by Germany (1871), so the communards were governing Paris, la commune. 

But Jacques survived until 1894.  He had other children.  And, of immense importance, he had his art. 

        

Etchings by Charles Jacque

18 Mendelssohn Lieder ohne Worte, Op.38 – No. 6. Andante con moto in A flat ‘Duetto’
(please click on the title to hear the music)
 
 
April 18, 2012 
 
 

The Barbizon’s School: “plein air”

17 Tuesday Apr 2012

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Les Glaneuses (Gleaners), by Jean-François Millet (1857, Musée d’Orsay)

You probably remember that after studying in Norway, Carl Larsson spent two years with the plein air French group of artists who called their outdoors group the Barbizon School.

So what is the Barbizon School? 

  • First, Barbizon is or was a village near idyllic Fontainebleau.
  • As for the artists constituting the Barbizon School, who are named below, they were active from approximately 1830 to 1870.
  • The group has affinities with the predominantly English Arts and Crafts movement. 
  • However, unlike the works of Arts and Crafts movement artists, décor is not a main interest of this group.  They are painting the outdoors.  But Millet made a painting of William Morris.  These artists did not work in isolation. 
  • One coud say that the Barbizon School is also associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, or the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  In both cases, we are dealing with representational artists, but the Barbizon artists were plein air artists, at least to begin with, and their reality was not as idealistic as that of the Pre-Raphaelites. 

However, the group has its antecedents in the works of John Constable (11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) and it has its common denominator: realism, ranging from an idealized and ethereal rendering of reality to a rugged depiction of that same reality. Moreover, as mentioned above, in its early stage, the group was a plein air group. Their reality was nature in its diversity.  So, initially, authorities were shocked by content of certain works.  Corot, maybe, but cows!

 
For instance, the school incorporates Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot‘s (1796 – 1875)
fairylike portrayal of nature.
 
  
 
Souvenir de Mortefontaine (1864).
(please click on the picture to enlarge it)
 

In fact, when first introduced to the Barbizon school, France’s Director of Fine Arts quickly pronounced that

[t]his is the painting of men who don’t change their linen, who want to intrude themselves upon gentlemen; this art offends and disgusts me. [i]

 

Indeed, Constant Troyon, who is also a member of the group, choses a subject that is elemental.  We are looking at cows.  There is nothing ethereal about cows.  Yet, Troyon’s painting is beautiful.  

 
The Ford, by Constant Troyon
(please click on the picture to enlarge it)
  
 

 

The leaders of the Barbizon School were Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet, and Charles-François Daubigny; other members included Jules Dupré, Constant Troyon, Charles Jacque, Narcisse Virgilio Diaz, Pierre Emmanuel Damoye, Charles Olivier de Penne, Henri Harpignies,  (1812–1880), Albert Charpin, Félix Ziem, François-Louis Français, Emile van Marcke, and Alexandre Defaux.

 

This post is no more than a general introduction to a movement and it lists the names of artists connected with the movement.  For the time being, that suffices.

Yet, I will let one of my former teachers formulate a conclusion.  Alan Gowans writes that members of the Barbizon School “continued to behave in the same docile way as those painters who were merely concerned with making the world more Beautiful.” [ii]

 
Les Glaneuses, etching, after 1857
(click on the picture to enlarge it)
To which I would add that neither a movement nor an objective, in our case realism, define an artist’s works.  Reality is subjective.  There are affinities between the Arts and Crafts Movement, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Barbizon school and Carl Larsson.  However, although they enjoy rubbing elbows and share similar goals, artists differ from one another. 
 
      
 
17 Mendelssohn Lieder ohne Worte, Op.38 – No. 5. Agitato in A minor ‘Appassionata’

_________________________

[i] Alan Gowans, The Restless Art, A History of Painting 1760-1960 (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1966), p. 159.

[ii] Alan Gowans, op. cit., p. 162.                      

Carl Larsson: Ett Hem

09 Monday Apr 2012

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— Blomsterfönstret (Windowsill with Flowers), 1894 -1898
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Look at this beautiful room.  There are flowers on the windowsill.  A young girl is watering the flowers.  To the left, we find the essential day bed.  The carpeting seems hand-woven and is almost identical to French-Canadian “catalognes.”  The wooden floor is made of wide planks.  They were still available in those days.  The little stage is just right for children and makes a delightful side table for the person lying on the day bed.   The furniture is colored and the day bed, covered with striped fabric: blue stripes. 

In my eyes, Carlsson’s paintings of his family and home are his masterpieces.  I love the details suggesting the daily life of a family.  For instance, I see the little white cat in the kitchen, the wool on a small dining-table, a young pianist at the piano. Carl and Karin Larsson loved their home and made it their jewell.  They made it Ett Hem (A home).

Carl Larsson

Carl Larsson (May 28, 1853 – January 22, 1919) was born in Stockholm to a very poor family.  But his artistic talents were recognized in time for him to be trained at the “principskola” of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts where success as a student gave him confidence and led to employment.  For instance, he was, among other things, an illustrator.

Larsson, the illustrator

Working as an illustrator left an imprint on Carl Larsson’s art.  Many artists do not let us see the sketch, or the lines, from which emerges the finished work of art.  But Larsson leaves in the lines which links him to the Arts and Crafts Movement.  The Arts and Crafts Movement, a mainly British movement, included such artists as Walter Crane, an illustrator.  Its membership also included the very prominent William Morris, its chief member.  The Arts and Crafts Movement is sometimes associated with Pre-Raphaelite artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, John Ruskin, an artist and theorist, except that the Pre-Raphaelites went beyond realism.  They reached for a utopia.  As for Carl Larsson’s art, it is representational but very much alive.  In fact, it constitutes a compelling chronicle of a dream come true: a home!

 

Mammas och småflickornas rum (Mamma's and the small girls' room), 1897 (please click on the picture to enlarge it)

Definition
It is neither right nor wrong to show the sketches from which a painting emerges.  Carl Larrson’s does so in a discreet manner and to the advantage of his art.  It is characterized by definition, definition in its most fundamental acceptation.  This style may be a matter of temperament, but it could also be a matter of choice. 

Influences

Larsson’s art also reflects exposure to the Barbizon School, a French movement particularly well represented by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.  In fact, having spent two years with the ‘plein-air’ Barbizon disciples, Larsson founded a colony of Swedish artists working in France.  Among members of the group was Karin Bergöö, an artist and Carl Larsson’s future wife.  She and Carl had eight children. 

When he met and married Karin, Larsson left behind abject poverty to enter a world that gave him not a castle but the home he had not had as a child and which would be home not only to his family, but also to those among us who, as I have already expressed, require an occasional refuge.  Lilla Hyttnäs is both alive and livable.

Lathörnan (Cosy Corner), 1894   

There is so much to say about Carl Larsson, but let the images speak for themselves.  I will confine this blog to Carl Larsson’s paintings of Lilla Hyttnäs, in Sundborn, a house given to Karin and Carl by Karin’s father and which expresses the very essence of home.

* * *

Let us listen to Carl Larsson tell us about his feelings when he first visited Lilla Hyttnäs:

While I was here, I experienced an indescribably delightful feeling of seclusion from the hustle and bustle of the world, which I have only experienced once before (and that was in a village in the French countryside).

Inspired & Inspirational

Carl Larsson was influenced by other artists only to become one of the most influential artists of his time and ours.

Carl Larsson Paintings 
(please click to see the video and to enlarge small pictures)