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Micheline's Blog

~ Art, music, books, history & current events

Micheline's Blog

Tag Archives: Exoticism

Nikolay Rymsky-Korsakov

29 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by michelinewalker in Russia, Russian Music

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

East & West, Editor to The Five, Exoticism, Musical career, Naval career, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Orchestration, Procession of the Nobles, Slavic composers, Teacher Conductor Editor

640px-Rimsky-Korsakov_by_Repin

Portrait of Nikolay Rymsky-Korsakov by Ilya Repin, 1893 (Wikiart.org)

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (18 March 1844, near Novgorod – 21 June  1908) was one of the The Five and not the least. We know him as the composer of the Russian Easter Festival Overture. 🎶 Easter is/was a very important feast in Russia. You may have seen painted Russian eggs and a few of the 50 jewelled “Imperial” eggs Fabergé created for the Tsar’s family.

Rimsky-Korsakov was/is the most scholarly member of The Five and, consequently, their editor, Mussorgsky’s editor mainly. However, although his music exemplifies The Five’s attempt to express the Slavic roots of Russia’s music, he infuses into the music of Russia the sophisticated polyphony of European music, developed over centuries. Conversely, Russian music, the music of The Five and other Russian composers, would have a very real and important impact on western music.

Nijinsky in Scheherazade by George Barbier

Nijinsky in Scheherazade (Micheline’s Blog)

Scheherazade “combines two features typical of Russian music and of Rimsky-Korsakov in particular: dazzling, colorful orchestration and an interest in the East, which figured greatly in the history of Imperial Russia, as well as orientalism in general.” (See Scheherazade, Wiki2.org.)

“American music critic and journalist Harold C. Schonberg wrote that the operas “open up a delightful new world, the world of the Russian East, the world of supernaturalism and the exotic, the world of Slavic pantheism and vanished races. Genuine poetry suffuses them, and they are scored with brilliance and resource.” (See Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Wiki2.org.)

The quotations above point to the exotic nature of the music of the Slavic composers,  The Five: the Russian East. We have heard Alexander Borodin‘s In the Steppes of Central Asia (Mongolia). 🎶 Russia reaches from Europe to the Orient. The Five used folktales, a characteristic of 19th-century music and literature. These tales, many are fairy tales, were not necessarily Russian – Scheherazade isn’t, but they were the Russian expression of tales that overrode nationalism and belonged to a very distant past, millennia. Rimsky-Korsakov put his superior knowledge of orchestration, polyphony, blending many voices (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), into the service of a local idiom.

Exoticism

Besides, although the Slavic composers attempted to express the Slavic and exotic aspects of the music of Russia, Romanticism, a 19th-century movement, was characterized by a degree of exoticism. Rimsky-Korsakov composed Capriccio Espagnol, 🎶 and Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885) wrote the poem Les Djinns, published in his 1829 collection of poems, entitled Les Orientales. Yet, Hugo also wrote The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris), published in 1831, locating France in the Middle Ages, which he considered a more genuine and national past, than the plays of Jean Racine (1639 – 1699). He also modified the alexandrine, the “noble” twelve-syllable verse borrowed from the 12th-century French Roman d’Alexandre, featuring Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia. As well, Hugo ensconced French literature into Gothic fiction, a characteristic of Romanticism.

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Rimsky-Korsakov’s birthplace in Tikhvin (Wiki2.org.)

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The Russian military clipper Almaz in New York Harbor in 1863. Rimsky-Korsakov served as a midshipman on this ship and later wrote about this cruise. (Photo and caption credit: Wiki2.org.)

A Musical Career & a Naval Career

Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 -1908) had a passion for the sea, which he had yet to see when he joined the Imperial Russian Navy. But his older brother, Voin Rimsky-Korsakov (1822 – 1871), had travelled to lands far away. Voin graduated from the School for Mathematical and Navigational Sciences in Saint Petersburg, and so would Nicolai who admired his brother. However, Nicolai would combine two careers. He would be a naval officer and a composer, and, as a musician, he would introduce the Russian East into European music. That would be his gift to classical music. As we have noted in posts about enlightened despots, Russia looked to Europe. Rimsky-Korsakov and other Russian composers, The Five, are less European than Tchaikovsky, but they composed music where east and west interact.

“Teacher, Conductor, and Editor” (Britannica)

In 1873, Rimsky-Korsakov “assumed charge of military bands as inspector and conductor. He therefore left the naval service.” (See Britannica.)

Henceforth, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov would be a teacher of composition (1 & 2) and a conductor (3 & 4):

  1. St. Petersburg Conservatory (1871 – 1908)
  2. Free Music School in St. Petersburg (1874 – 1881)
  3. Conductor of concerts at the court chapel from 1883 to 1894
  4. Chief conductor of the Russian symphony concerts between 1886 and 1900.

We have noted that Rimsky-Korsakov differed from other members of The Five, and must note it again. Rimsky-Korsakov was very interested in the study of harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration. He delved into the European tradition, a rich tradition we can trace back to the Middle Ages. That would be his gift to The Five. Polyphony unfolded over centuries of liturgical and secular (the Madrigal and songs) compositions:

“Eager to complete his own musical education, he undertook in 1873 an ambitious program of study, concentrating mainly on counterpoint and the fugue. He ended his studies in 1875 by sending 10 fugues to Tchaikovsky, who declared them impeccable.”[1] 

On 2 March 1874, Rimsky-Korsakov conducted the first performance of his Symphony No. 3. That same year, “he was appointed director of the Free Music School in St. Petersburg, a post that he held until 1881.”[2]

Rimsky-Korsakov and Slavophiles

By turning to European music, Rimsky-Kosarkok’s relationship with the four of Slavic composers became that of editor. Had he not revised and enriched Mussorgsky’s opera Khovanshchina, it may no longer be performed. We have heard at least one segment of the introduction to Khovanshchina. Dawn over the Moscow River 🎶 is magnificent. One could suspect that Rimsky-Korsakov’s editing miffed his colleagues. I doubt it. He may be best described as a big brother to brilliant composers who were less learned than he was.

Writers often need a good editor, and the same is true of musicians. Rimsky-Korsakov would not have edited Mussorgsky, had Mussorgky’s music not been the product of a genius.

We now find ourselves returning to Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes (1909 – 1929). 

“In 1889 he [Rimsky-Korsakov] led concerts of Russian music at the Paris World Exposition, and in the spring of 1907 he conducted in Paris two Russian historic concerts in connection with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.”[3]

Conclusion

Russian composers are specialists in the composition of music for ballet and for opera. Their music is “programmatic,”  in that it has a narrative. It therefore differs from “absolute music,” a non-representional form of music. Russian composers also love rhapsodies and contrasts. The programmatic pieces to which I have referred constitute Rimsky-Korsakov’s best-known compositions and they blend the Russian East and the fine polyphony of the European West. Favourites are:

  • Capriccio Espagnol (1887)
  • Russian Easter Festival, overture (1888)
  • Scheherazade (1888)

Other favourites are The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Sadko, The Snow Maiden (1882) and other folktales and tales. 

But I have selected his Procession of the Nobles as today’s choice. Rimsky-Korsakov was a member of the nobility.

RELATED ARTICLES

  • The Emancipation Reform of 1861 (23 November 2018)
  • Mussorgsky and Repin: a New Dawn (19 November 2018)
  • Mussorgsky’s Old Castle (17 November 2018)
  • Alexander Borodin, Russia’s “Five” (5 November 2018)
  • Scheherazade, or the Power of Storytelling (31 July 2012)
  • Les Ballets Russes, Vaslav Nijinsky & George Barbier (27 July 2012)

Sources and Resources

  • A translation of Victor Hugo’s Les Djinns
  • https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikolay-Rimsky-Korsakov

Love to everyone 💕
______________________________
[1] Nicolas Slonimsky and Richard Taruskin, “Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov”
Encyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikolay-Rimsky-Korsakov

[2] Loc. cit.

[3] Loc. cit.

[4] Image
Encyclopædia Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikolay-Rimsky-Korsakov/media/503882/13785

Nikolai Golovanov conducts Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Procession of the Nobles”

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, detail of a portrait by V. A. Serov; in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
H. Roger-Viollet [4]

© Micheline Walker
29 November 2018
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Alexander Borodin, Russia’s “Five”

05 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by michelinewalker in Russian Music, The Five

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Alexander Borodin, Exoticism, In the Steppes of Central Asia, Nationalism, Russia, The Five

The Slavic Composers by Ilya Repin, 1872 (WikiArt.org.)

Time flies. So I am not altogether finished a post on Sweden’s Age Liberty which began a little before Peter the Great defeated the Swedish Empire and ended in 1821 and lasted until Swedish King Gustav III‘s self-coup of 1872, which takes us to the House of Bernadotte (27 September 2018).

I’m nearly done.

I thought of writing a little in-between post introducing Alexander Borodin, one of The Five (composers), or The Mighty Handful, whose goal was to capture the very soul of Russia’s culture. They gave Russian music its idiom. The Five are Mily Balakirev (the leader),  César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin. All lived in Saint Petersburg.

Borodin is exceptional. He was a doctor and scientist. Music was not his profession, but who could tell? His lyricism is a major characteristic of Borodin’s compositions and these are numerous. In the Steppes of Central Asia has an exotic flavour. It is a tone poem, one continuous and rather short piece of music.

The piece I selected does not feature bells. It therefore differs from Modest Mussorgsky‘s Night on Bald Mountain, Une nuit sur le mont chauve, 🎶which is the very first piece of music I was introduced to. Among my early memories of the red brick house are my father’s late night gatherings with music lovers. Chauve means bald. We could see chauves-souris (bats) flying about.

So, we will not hear bells in Borodin’s In the Steppes of Central Asia (Mongolia), composed in 1880. However, a wide range in volume is typical of the music of the Five, and Borodin’s.

My main source is Wiki2.org.’s entry on Borodin’s lovely piece and my own knowledge. I have studied music, every aspect, all my life.

Love to everyone 💕

Altan Khan (1507–1582) (Wiki2.org.)

© Micheline Walker
5 November 2018
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Odalisques & Arabesques

27 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, History Painting, Middle East, Orientalism

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Arabesques, calligraphy, Claude Debussy, Exoticism, Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Madame Récamier, Odalisque, Orientalism, Stephen Malinowski

Ingres-the-turkish-bathj_pg_

The Turkish Bath, 1862, oil on canvas, diam. 108 cm, Louvre. A summation of the theme of female voluptuousness attractive to Ingres throughout his life, rendered in the circular format of earlier masters. (Caption credit: Wikipedia; Photo credit: Google images)

1024px-Jean_Auguste_Dominique_Ingres,_La_Grande_Odalisque,_1814

Grande Odalisque, 1814, oil on canvas, 91 x 162 cm, Louvre. The subject’s elongated proportions, reminiscent of 16th-century Mannerist painters, reflect Ingres’s search for the pure form of his model. (Photo and caption credit: Wikipedia)

Orientalisme

We have seen a few examples of Islamic art and Orientalisme. The paintings featured above are by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) and constitute examples of orientalisme and exoticism, paintings associated with the Orient, the Near East. Several Europeans had gone to the Crusades centuries earlier. Their destination was Jerusalem, the Holy Land. But 19th-century orientalisme is associated with Napoléon‘s military campaigns. Napoléon took his Armée d’Orient to Egypt and Syria. (See French Campaign in Egypt and Syria, Wikipedia.) Egyptology was born at that time. Deciphering the Rosetta Stone, found in 1799, was one of its first and chief achievements.

We looked at the art of Jean-Léon Gérôme who had travelled to Egypt and returned with a large supply of ‘images,’ sketches. He depicted scenes from ordinary activities, genre painting. Ingres, however, had not travelled to the orient, the Near East. His style was the same as Gérôme: academicism. Moreover, both artists specialized in historical painting. Several artists travelled to the Near East, but no Orientaliste ever entered a harem, un sérail, where women were guarded by castrated servants called eunuchs. Yet, Orientalists did paint the interior of harems and Turkish baths, favourite scenes.

“Some of the most popular Orientalist genre scenes—and the ones most influential in shaping Western aesthetics—depict harems. Probably denied entrance to authentic seraglios, male artists relied largely on hearsay and imagination, populating opulently decorated interiors with luxuriant odalisques, or female slaves or concubines (many with Western features), reclining in the nude or in Oriental dress. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) never traveled to the East, but used the harem setting to conjure an erotic ideal in his voluptuous odalisques.”[1] (Orientalisme at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

Ingres’ Grande Odalisque shows an elongated female body. Painting elongated figures is a characteristic of 16th-century mannerism. However, Ingres’ odalisque is somewhat reminiscent of the curvy linear arabesque motifs of Islamic art. Yet, it isn’t busy. La Grande Odalisque has been an inspiration to several artists, one of whom is Matisse. It otherwise ressembles Jacques-Louis David‘s (30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825) depiction of Madame Récamier, an unfinished but celebrated portrait. For information on this painting, see Madame Récamier, Louvre. You may also visit the Wikipedia site on Juliette Récamier.

1024px-Jean_Auguste_Dominique_Ingres,_La_Grande_Odalisque,_1814

David_Juliette-recamier-rmn

Madame Récamier by Jacques-Louis David, 1800 (Photo cedit: Wikipedia)


Juliette Récamier
 (4 December 1777 – 11 May 1849) was a salonnière who had married Jacques-Rose Récamier (1751 – 1830), a wealthy older man and banker, on 24 April 1793. The marriage was never consummated and rumour has it that he was her father. In 1805, Jacques-Rose sustained financial losses. (See Juliette Récamier, Wikipedia.) He and Juliette had a salon where they entertained distinguished guests, but she retired at l’Abbaye-aux-Bois. The salons survived the French Revolution. Juliette had befriended François-René de Chateaubriand  (4 September 1768 –4  July 1848), the author of Le Génie du Christianisme (1802), a literary monument that incorporated Atala and René, exotic novellas based on Chateaubriand’s stay in North America. He was an aristocrat and therefore fled France during part of the French Revolution. When Chateaubriand started to live as a recluse, Juliette Récamier was the only person he visited. He visited her every day. In David’s painting, she is leaning on a sofa now called a récamier, after her. By clicking on Madame Récamier, one can read what the Louvre has to say about this very famous painting.

800px-Turquoise_epigraphic_ornament_MBA_Lyon_A1969-333

Arabesque motif (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Arabesques

Orientalisme also includes Arabesques in music.

Arabesques, Turkish music, are composed in the Phrygian mode. This form of music was used by Claude Debussy and other composers. It was orientalisme, “in the manner of,” rather than Turkish music. I have inserted two pieces by Debussy.

There are several orientaliste painters. You will find names: Eugène Delacroix, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, Jean-Léon Gérôme, William Holman Hunt, etc. at Orientalisme, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA), in New York. Our black bashi-basouk, an irregular soldier, or mercenary (a hired soldier), is housed at the MMA, in New York.

Let me conclude by recommending you read Orientalisme and Madame Récamier.  At this point, my continuing to write about this topic would be repetitious and not as and complete and concise as the documents I have referred to. I will note, however, that interest in the Orient takes us back to Marco Polo and the above-mentioned Crusades. Moreover, Islamic art includes elegant calligraphy, Islamic calligraphy, and illuminated manuscripts.

Love to every one. ♥

RELATED ARTICLES

  • Chateaubriand’s Atala (24 April 2014)
  • On Madame de Staël (12 March 2014)
  • The Nineteenth Century in France (5 March 2014)
  • Salons and Cafés survive “la terreur” (19 February 2014)

Sources and Resources

  • Souvenirs et correspondance tirées des papiers de Madame Récamier is a Gutenberg publication [EBook #25403]
  • Various items at Internet Archive
  • Orientalisme at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
  • Madame Récamier at the Louvre
  • The Zykes-Picot Agreement

____________________

[1] Meagher, Jennifer. “Orientalism in Nineteenth-Century Art.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/euor/hd_euor.htm (October 2004)

—000—

Claude Debussy
Arabesque Nos 1 & 2
Stephen Malinowski (piano and animation)

Ingres-the-turkish-bathj_pg_

mainimage-new

Calligraphy (Christie’s)

 

© Micheline Walker
27 August 2016
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Orientalism: Mostly Gérôme

15 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, France, North Africa, Orientalism

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Academicism, Bashi-basouk, Exoticism, History Painting, Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Middle East

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A bashi-basouk by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1869 (wikiart.org)

 

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Black bashi-basouk by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1868 (MMA, NY)

There have long been war artists. In North Africa, Horace Vernet (30 June 1789 – 17 January 1863) painted the battles that led to the French conquest of Algiers which had been part of the Ottoman Empire until 1830. The French did not conquer Lebanon and Syria, their future protectorates, but these countries had belonged to the Roman/ Byzantine Empire (330-1204 and 1261-1453) that fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. After World War I, Britain and France would partition the defeated Ottoman Empire into protectorates. (See Zykes-Picot Agreement, Wikipedia.)

Exoticism and Orientalism

Vernet had painted the battles that led to the conquest of Algiers, at which point he became an Orientalist. Colonialism was Eurocentrism, but exoticism was ethnocentrism and it is a characteristic of the 19th century, expressed in several areas: the fine arts, music, and design in general.

Jean-Léon Gérôme

I have mentioned Horace Vernet, the painter of battles fought in Algeria. There were in fact many Orientalists in various fields. However, our featured artist is French painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904).

French-born Jean-Léon Gérôme is associated with Academicism. He did not join avant-garde movements. He, in fact, applied for the coveted Prix de Rome, but he failed to be selected. However, having chosen Academicism, Gérôme could show his work at the Salon, the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, held annually or bi-annually since the 17th century (1667) in Paris, held annually or bi-annually since the 17th century (1667). In 1846, he painted The Cock Fight (1846) which earned him a medal at the Salon of 1847, but, perhaps more importantly, the painting was praised by writer and critic Théophile Gautier.

Gérôme travelled to Egypt in 1856, but did not do so on an official basis. He travelled as a tourist and artist. Gérôme was a history painter. Consequently, he did paint Napoléon, although Napoléon’s campaign in Egypt and Syria (1798-1801) was a military failure. (See French campaign in Egypt and Syria, Wikipedia.)

Gérôme’s other subject matter was mythology, but in Egypt he became an Orientalist. In my last post, I featured the portrait of a black bashi-basouk. A bashi-basouk, also called delibaş, litterally a “crazy head,” was an irregular soldier in the Ottoman Army. Bashi-bazouk often chose to fight when they expected to rape and pillage. (See Bashi-basouk, Wikipedia.) As portrayed by Gérôme, bashi-basouk are colourful and seem harmless, but they committed atrocities, much as ISIL, Muslim radicals, does. One of their better-known massacres is the Batak massacre of 1876, in Bulgaria.

Basibozukchief

Bashi-bazouk chieftain by Gérôme, 1881 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Arnaut from Cairo by Gérôme, 1867 (Photo credit: wikiart.org)

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Arnaut with Two Whippet Dogs, by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1867 (wikiart.org)

Literature and Music

Gérôme did paint bashi-bazouk, but his range of oriental subject matter is wider and 19th-century exoticism straddles disciplines. It also includes Victor Hugo‘s Les Djinns, a famous and dazzling poem about invisible Arabian creatures, published in Hugo’s 1829 collection entitled Les Orientales. 

Hugo’s Les Djinns inspired composers. One is Gabriel Fauré‘s Op.12, entitled Les Djinns. Les Djinns is also a Poème Symphonique for piano and orchestra, M 45, composed in 1884 by César Franck. Hugo’s poem is splendid and can be read online in French, English and German, at Les Djinns, Op 12.

Conclusion

We’ve devoted several posts to Japonisme and have now entered Orientalisme. Gérôme’s Orient is d’un goût étranger, as in Marin Marais‘ viol pieces. (See Suitte d’un goût étranger, Wikipedia). Exoticism may depict an inner truth in an oblique way, which is one of the characteristics of works of art. Fiction is oblique.
Love to everyone. ♥

—ooo—

César Franck‘s Les Djinns
Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra (conductor Roberto Benzi)
François-Joël Thiollier (piano)
Recorded in 1995

Arnaut_smoking-large1865

Arnaut fumant (smoking), 1865 (Christie’s Images)

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15 August 2016
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Eugène Delacroix’s “Mandarin Drake”

05 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Music, Romanticism

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Animals, Delacroix's Mandarin Drake, Eugène Delacroix, Exoticism, Flowers, Philip Scott Johnson, Romanticism, versatility

 
A Mandarin Drake, by Eugene Delacroix

A Mandarin Drake, by Eugène Delacroix (Photo credit: WikiArt.org)

Eugène Delacroix (13 August 1863) is one of the most accomplished artists associated with Romanticism. He was also one of the most prolific and versatile artists of the early nineteenth-century. Hence the breadth of his influence.

His “Mandarin Drake” is a watercolour. But as an artist, Delacroix also used pen, chalk, graphite, pastels, and oil. In fact, he was a fine lithographer who illustrated various literary works by William Shakespeare, Walter Scott and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The paintings of Rubens were a source of inspiration to Delacroix. Moreover, he was a friend of Théodore Géricault (1791 -1824), and Géricault’s “spiritual heir.” (See Eugène Delacroix, Wikipedia.) Géricault completed his Raft of the Medusa, Le Radeau de la Méduse, at the age of 27, and his horses are magnificent.

Delacroix is known mainly for his “Liberty Guiding the People” (1830), a painting that captures the “genius,” or essence, of Revolutions. However, although the video at the foot of this post presents “Liberty Guiding the People” and reveals a more intense Delacroix, I have assembled works that show other and, at times, seemingly simpler facets of Delacroix’s art.

The work featured at the top of this post is one of my favourites. It shows a drake, a Mandarin drake or mallard (canard mallard, canard colvert [green neck]).

Delacroix’s subject matter also consisted of flowers and studies of flowers, simple branches. Moreover, he travelled abroad seizing a less familiar beauty. The Romantics loved the exotic.

However, the art of this “Romantic” tends to override the notion of movements, which may of course be true of most great artists.

Photo credit: WikiArt.org (all images)

Please click on the lower part of each image to see its title. The pictures may be enlarged and viewed as a video (press escape to exit). I just discovered this WordPress feature.

 

Study of Flowers, 1845-1850
Study of Flowers, 1845-1850
Two Branches with Leaves (pen, ink, watercolour)
Two Branches with Leaves (pen, ink, watercolour)
House in a Grove (Bocage)
House in a Grove (Bocage)
The Coast of Spain at Salabrena
The Coast of Spain at Salabrena
Horse (Cheval) (watercolour)
Horse (Cheval) (watercolour)

For “The Cottage in a Grove,” 1838, Delacroix used a pen, chalk, and ink. “The Coast of Spain at Salabrena” is a watercolour, dated 1832. Delacroix’s  “Study of Flowers” is a later work, executed between 1845 and 1850. “The Portrait of Turk in a Turban” (1826) was produced with pastels. For his magnificent tiger (below, 1830), Delacroix used a pencil and watercolours.

 

Portrait of a Turk in a Turban
Portrait of a Turk in a Turban
Seated Arab in Tangier, 1832
Seated Arab in Tangier, 1832

 

Tiger, 1830
Tiger, 1830

Yet, we have Willibald von Gluck at the “clavecin” composing the score of his Armide (1831). This painting is a watercolour and “European.” A clavecin is a harpsichord. However, the instrument Gluck is using resembles my grandfather’s humble spinet, a type of harpsichord.

 

Willibald von Gluck at the clavecin composing the score of his Armide
Willibald von Gluck at the clavecin composing the score of his Armide

Today is not a blogging day. But pictures are worth a thousand words, so I have used pictures to let you know that I am still blogging, but at a slower pace.

However, I should let you know that Eugène Delacroix is rumoured to be an illegitimate son of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. Talleyrand looked after the children he fathered. One was born to Madame de Flahaut and was named Charles-Joseph, comte de Flahaut. Everyone knew Charles-Joseph was Talleyrand’s son. In turn, Charles-Joseph, comte de Flahaut, became the lover of Hortense de Beauharnais (Napoleon’s stepdaughter and sister-in-law) and fathered the duc de Morny, a half-brother to Napoleon III.

Consequently, Delacroix was a protégé of the enigmatic Talleyrand (his father) and, later, a protégé of the Duc de Morny (Talleyrand’s grandson), whose brother ruled France.

My best regards to all of you.

Bouquet of Flowers, by Eugène Delacroix

Bouquet of Flowers, by Eugène Delacroix (Photo credit: WikiArts.org)

Delacroix

Frédéric Chopin
Nocturne, Opus 9 N° 2
Video by Philip Scott Johnson 
 
Chopin
Chopin, by Delacroix
 
© Micheline Walker
5 June 2014
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