Rage can be a dangerous political tool.

© Manuel Bruque/EPA, via Shutterstock

Rage can be a dangerous political tool.

The unknown is the most difficult thing for the brain to navigate.

Biden takes aim at a neurotoxin all around us that impedes brain development.

A century ago today, 12 October, the Spanish painter Antonio Muñoz Degrain (1840–1924) died in Málaga, Spain. Although now largely forgotten outside his native country, he was an accomplished artist and achieved international recognition. Of the relatively few of his works that remain accessible, there are several that are striking and individual.

He was born in Valencia, Spain, and started his studies at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos there, before abandoning them and travelling to Rome, where he largely taught himself. He then returned to Spain, where he started exhibiting his landscapes in 1862.

Muñoz Degrain’s early Landscape of El Pardo as the Fog Clears from 1866 is set in El Pardo Mountain Reserve, the hunting grounds of the Spanish royal family, where one of its rangers is taking his horse to water. The mountain in the background is Guadarrama, which is surprisingly alpine and rugged. His style is detailed realist, perhaps a little behind the times.

He developed his skills as a narrative painter with a series of commissioned historical works, including a painting of Queen Isabella with Christopher Columbus, for which he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III.

In 1880, he started painting a series showing the climax of William Shakespeare’s play Othello. The first, Othello and Desdemona shows Othello entering Desdemona’s bedchamber to find her asleep.

Muñoz Degrain returned to Rome in 1882 on a two-year fellowship.

In 1888, he appears to been commissioned to depict The Conversion of Recaredo for the Palace of the Spanish Senate in Madrid. This shows Reccared I (c 559-601) abandoning Arianism and converting to Catholicism during the Third Council of Toledo in 589. This was organised by Saint Leander but convened in the name of Reccared, the Visigothic King of Hispania and Septimania. The king had already renounced Arianism in January 587, and his public confession was read aloud at the council, which marked the start of his new Catholic kingdom.

The details of jewellery and costume in this painting are extraordinary.

Ten years later, he was appointed chair of landscape painting at the prestigious Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, where he became its director in 1901.

Over this period, his landscape paintings had grown steadily more painterly, although this view of the Port of Bilbao from 1900 remains in the earth colours of Barbizon rather than the bright hues of Impressionism.

In Washerwomen just three years later, he has become full Impressionist, with profuse visible brushstrokes and higher chroma.

A few years on, between 1905-10, his Seascape View of Palma de Mallorca is almost Fauvist, with a rich range of textures.

Muñoz Degrain’s view of the Alhambra from Albaicin District from 1914 is remarkable for the rhythm established by the poplar trees around its base, which become an integral part of the fortified ridge.

Finally, his undated View of the Alhambra is one of my favourite paintings of this motif, for its intriguing foreground details, and the poplars lit as white-hot pokers in the fiery light of sunset.

Muñoz Degrain died in Málaga on 12 October 1924, at the age of eighty-three.

Reference

Wikipedia.

Pulasan made landfall near the Chinese megacity, days after it was hit by its strongest typhoon in decades, bringing flood and landslide risks.

At least four people died and thousands were evacuated after Yagi, one of the strongest storms to hit northern Vietnam, brought powerful winds and torrential rains.

Yagi, one of 2024’s strongest storms, hit the southern Chinese island of Hainan on Friday. It is forecast to make landfall in Vietnam on Saturday.

The storm has killed at least 13 people in the Philippines and is forecast to be the strongest to hit Hainan Province in a decade.

As lawyers rose to prominence in life during the nineteenth century, two artists in particular targeted them with their scathing satire: Honoré Daumier and Jean-Louis Forain.

For the satirical eye of Honoré Daumier, Three Lawyers (1855-57) meeting was the gathering of an elite who were out to help themselves, rather than the unfortunate people they purported to represent. Their heads tipped back and clutching thick bundles of papers, Daumier had less respect of them than they had for themselves.

In his undated Two Lawyers Conversing, you can be sure that they’re up to no good, except for themselves.

Jean-Louis Forain was a successful painter, caricaturist and political satirist in the late nineteenth century, who had long admired Daumier’s work. When Forain turned his attention to justice and the law after about 1902, he went beyond Daumier’s biting images of lawyers by entering the courtroom itself.

Forain’s The Court from about 1902-03 is one of the first of his series of courtroom views, and most neutral in its approach. In the foreground, a lawyer discusses the case with a woman, who is bent forward to hear his whispering. In the distance the court appears detached, perhaps disinterested, the judges sat behind large piles of papers, under a large painting of the crucifixion. The artist sold this work to Edgar Degas.

By the time that Forain painted this Trial Scene from 1904, his satire had come to the surface. The court here is so completely disinterested in the case before it that its judge is incapable of remaining awake, and the jurors at the left are hardly attentive either.

A young woman stands out in Forain’s Scene at the Tribunal (1906), as a lawyer turns and scowls disapprovingly at her.

Two women are shown in his Scene of the Tribunal from 1910, a lawyer talking to them as the court appears oblivious to their presence.

Legal Assistance (c 1900-12) shows an ordinary family man, cradling his young child in his arms as he presents a paper to a barrister or judge (wearing his short cylindrical hat). This painting was bought by Henri Rouart, an industrialist who was a good patron of the arts, as well as a fine amateur painter himself.

Sadly only available in this monochrome image, Forain’s undated painting of Recess of the Court is his most scathing. The judge leans back, fast asleep, as chaos takes hold in the court. Laywers are talking among themselves, and furniture is being moved around. Where is justice?

It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that a growing interest in contemporary courts, and well-publicised trials, made them more popular in paintings. As few people ever see the inside of a courtroom, one of the first tasks of artists was to reveal what they looked like.

Thomas Rowlandson and Augustus Pugin’s painting of The Old Bailey, Known Also as the Central Criminal Court from 1808, here seen in an aquatint, is a good topographic view of this most famous English court. The presiding judge sits under a Damoclean sword of justice at the left, and the twelve men of the jury are to the right of centre. At the far right stands the accused, in front of whom is a large collection of witnesses ready to testify.

That was, and remains, an exceptional court. More typical of the type of court that ordinary citizens might encounter is Adolph Tidemand’s Scene before a Magistrate in the Country (before 1858), seen here in a lithograph. Set somewhere in rural Norway, the bench of magistrates sits at the right in more cramped and modest surroundings. Its justice may have been rougher, but the experience was far less daunting, and less overwhelmed by lawyers.

Ferdinand Brütt’s Before the Judges from 1903 shows the end of an era in the courtroom, as an official lights the candles in its chandelier, and its three judges sit hearing the case being put to them.

Some vegetables cost more than they have in five years. Top Chinese officials have made a point of showing that they’re doing something about it.

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