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The best of 2024’s paintings and articles 2

By: hoakley
31 December 2024 at 20:30

The second half of 2024 celebrated the bicentenary of the French artist Eugène Boudin, who more than anyone laid the foundations of Impressionism, both in acting as the young Claude Monet’s teacher and mentor, and pioneering its changes.

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Eugène Boudin (1824–1898), The Beach at Villerville (1864), oil on canvas, 45.7 × 76.3 cm, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons.

Boudin’s The Beach at Villerville from 1864 is a wonderful example of his loose oil paintings of beach scenes on the north French coast, set under a dusk sky.

200th anniversary of Eugène Boudin: Pioneer of Impressionism 1
200th anniversary of Eugène Boudin: Pioneer of Impressionism 2

Over these six months I have tried to gather a more accurate overview of rural life and agriculture between 1500-1930, in a series titled The Real Country. This draws together insights into how those changed as cities grew and the countryside became depopulated but increasingly productive. Contemporary paintings have some fascinating stories to tell, as seen in this copy of Brueghel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus from about 1558.

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Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1526/1530–1569), Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (copy of original from c 1558), oil on canvas mounted on wood, 73.5 × 112 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Wikimedia Commons.

Although its landscape is fictitious, the ploughman in the foreground appears true to life, and his plough typical of much of Europe at that time, as shown in the detail below.

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Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1526/1530–1569), Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (copy of original from c 1558)(detail), oil on canvas mounted on wood, 73.5 × 112 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Wikimedia Commons.

At the very front of the plough is a small jockey wheel, behind which is a vertical metal blade, the coulter or skeith, whose task is to cut into the ground just ahead of the share, a wooden board that turns the surface of the earth to one side. The effect on the ground is to cut furrows into its surface and turn the soil onto ridges. When repeated five or more times over the course of the autumn and winter, this could build ridges high enough for the water to drain into the furrows, and coupled with the action of ground frost could break up even heavy clays into a tilth ready for sowing in the Spring.

Another interesting detail revealed in Brueghel’s painting is how the course of the plough curves, swinging wide to make the turn. As tracks alongside those ploughed strips changed into basic roads, and were then paved or tarmacked in the twentieth century, they retained the curved course of the plough in winding country lanes.

1 Under the plough

Later in the series, I showed examples of paintings of what are today unusual crops.

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Emile Claus (1849–1924), Flax Harvesting (1904), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, Brussels. Wikimedia Commons.

Emile Claus here shows Flax Harvesting in 1904, near his cottage in East Flanders, Belgium. Flax is a crop of particular relevance to painting, as its seeds are crushed and processed to generate linseed oil, the main drying oil used in oil paint, and the fibres of the rest of the plant are turned into linen, to form the canvases on which that paint is applied.

8 Cash and other crops

More recent paintings grant us views deep into history. The Norwegian artist Harriet Backer is little-known outside the Nordic countries, but painted several views inside country churches that merit wider exposure.

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Harriet Backer (1845–1932), Uvdal Stave Church (1909), media not known, 115 x 135 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Of the many wonderful later paintings that she made of church interiors, the finest must be Uvdal Stave Church (1909).

Stave churches were once numerous throughout Europe, but are now only common in rural Norway. Their construction is based on high internal posts (staves) giving them a characteristic tall, peaked appearance. Uvdal is a particularly good example, dating from around 1168. As with many old churches, its interior has been extensively painted and decorated, and this has been allowed to remain, unlike many painted churches in Britain which suffered removal of all such decoration.

Backer’s richly-coloured view of the interior of the church is lit from windows behind its pulpit, throwing the brightest light on the altar. The walls and ceiling are covered with images and decorations, which she sketches in, manipulating the level of detail to control their distraction. Slightly to the left of centre the main stave is decorated with rich blues, divides the canvas, but affords us the view up to the brightly lit altar. To the left of the stave a woman, dressed in her Sunday finest, sits reading outside the stalls.

Harriet Backer’s Nordic Light: to 1889
Harriet Backer’s Nordic Light: 1890-1932

I had long put off compiling a series covering the multitude of paintings of the canals of Venice, and finally published them for the period 1825-1910.

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Richard Parkes Bonington (1802–1828), Grand Canal, the Rialto in the Distance – Sunrise (1828) (242), oil on canvas, 43 x 61 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Grand Canal, the Rialto in the Distance – Sunrise (1828) is one of Richard Parkes Bonington’s finest oil paintings, made in the studio from graphite and other sketches from 1826. This painting has quite commonly been described as showing sunset, but as the view faces almost due east, must have been set in the early morning.

Canals of Venice: 1825-1870
Canals of Venice: 1875-1895
Canals of Venice: 1895-1903
Canals of Venice: 1903-1910

Another outstanding artist who is little-known outside her native country is the Canadian Emily Carr. My small selection of her paintings forms a series of five articles.

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Emily Carr (1871–1945), Dancing Sunlight (1937-40), oil on canvas, 83.5 x 60.9 cm, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, ON. The Athenaeum.

In Carr’s late Dancing Sunlight (1937-40), vortexes of brushstrokes have replaced all solid form. Trees, light, foliage, even the sky have been swept into those strokes sweeping across the canvas like a whirlwind. She had earlier been absorbed by abstract art, but had continued to represent real objects using techniques that restructured them rather than abstracting.

First totems 1892-1911
Haida 1912-1913
1914-1930
Sculptural form 1931-1936
Tombstones 1937-1945

Throughout the year I have added more themes to my compendium of articles to aid the reading of visual art. Sometimes these bring surprises, as they did in discovering one of the earliest depictions of a mermaid in European art, in a Christian religious painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder, from 1518-20.

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Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), Saint Christopher (1518-20), oil on lime, 41.9 × 7.9 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI. Wikimedia Commons.

Cranach’s Saint Christopher shows the saint with his back and legs flexed as he bears the infant Christ on his left shoulder. In the foreground is an unusual putto-mermaid with a long coiled fish tail.

170 Mermaid

Late in the year, I commemorated the centenary of the death of the German artist Hans Thoma.

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Hans Thoma (1839–1924), Wondrous Birds (1892), oil on cardboard, 92.4 × 74 cm, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC. Wikimedia Commons.

Thoma developed his own distinctive mythology, as seen in this fascinating painting of Wondrous Birds completed in 1892. The birds shown here aren’t storks or cranes, but are based on the grey heron, a common sight across much of the countryside of Europe. There are various myths and legends associated with storks and cranes, but I’m not aware of any for the heron.

Commemorating the centenary of the death of Hans Thoma: 1, to 1885
Commemorating the centenary of the death of Hans Thoma: 2, from 1886

Most recently I marked the centenary of the death of the great French painter of childhood, Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy.

geoffroydifficultparting
Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853–1924), It’s Hard to Share (date not known), oil on canvas, 60.3 x 49.6 cm, Museu Antônio Parreiras (MAP), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Wikimedia Commons.

Geoffroy’s undated painting of It’s Hard to Share shows one of the tribulations of childhood. These young boys have just emerged from a sweet shop, and the child in the centre is reluctant to share the paper cone of sweets he has just bought. His face says it all, as he looks with great suspicion at his less fortunate friend, and a dog also looks up expectantly.

Commemorating the centenary of the death of Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy, painter of childhood

Finally, over a weekend I showed some of the many paintings of the Bay (or Gulf) of Naples, a location that has been justly popular with landscape artists for well over two centuries.

The Bay of Baiae, with Apollo and the Sibyl exhibited 1823 by Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), The Bay of Baiae, with Apollo and the Sibyl (1823), oil on canvas, 145.4 x 237.5 cm, The Tate Gallery (part of the Turner Bequest 1856), London. © The Tate Gallery and Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-the-bay-of-baiae-with-apollo-and-the-sibyl-n00505

JMW Turner painted the same location and mythological theme in several of his narrative landscapes, including The Bay of Baiae, with Apollo and the Sibyl from 1823. Apollo is on the left, with his lyre, and the dark-haired Sibyl has adopted an odd kneeling position. She’s holding some sand in the palm of her right hand, asking Apollo to grant her as many years of life as there are grains. Opposite the couple, on the other side of the path, under the trees, is a white rabbit.

Paintings of the Bay of Naples: 79 CE to 1857

I leave 2024 pondering why that white rabbit?

Those in need: paintings of Christmas Eve

By: hoakley
24 December 2024 at 20:30

I’m celebrating this Christmas in three parts. Today, for Christmas Eve, I ignore the excesses of the contemporary commercial feast and consider those less fortunate. On Christmas Day I’ll show some modern depictions of the Nativity, followed on Boxing Day by those of the Adorations.

In Christian tradition, Christmas isn’t all turkey and tinsel, but centred on a poor family living temporarily in an animal shed when Mary gave birth there.

vonuhdedifficultjourney
Fritz von Uhde (1848–1911), A Difficult Journey (Transition to Bethlehem) (1890), oil on canvas, 117 × 127 cm, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

Fritz von Uhde painted one of his finest modernised religious works, A Difficult Journey, in 1890. This imagines Joseph and the pregnant Mary walking on a rough muddy track to Bethlehem, in a wintry European village. Joseph has a carpenter’s saw on his back as the tired couple move on through the dank mist.

In more northern parts of Europe and North America, this time of year can be particularly challenging.

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John Everett Millais (1829–1896), Christmas Eve (1887), oil on canvas, 157.5 x 134 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

John Everett Millais’ view of Christmas Eve from 1887 is bleak. Bare trees, barren snow with just tracks, and a few crows foraging. The lights may be lit in the house behind those trees, but out here it feels pretty grim.

Appropriately, Christmas was a time for charity, although perhaps not as ostentatious as that shown by royalty.

Carl Oesterley, Marie, Königin von Hannover, teilt ihren Untertanen Weihnachtsgaben aus, 1908 (4.57)
Carl Oesterley junior (1839-1930), Queen Marie of Hanover Giving Presents to the Poor and Needy (1908), oil, dimensions and location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

The younger Carl Oesterley captured history in his painting of Queen Marie of Hanover Giving Presents to the Poor and Needy (1908). Princess Marie of Saxe-Altenburg, as I believe she’s more properly known, lived between 1818-1907. The artist’s father, Carl Oesterley senior, had been court painter to her family, but in 1866 her father’s kingdom was annexed by Prussia. The Princess married King George V of England, and her family never relinquished the throne. Princess Marie is shown as a saintly figure, bathed in light as the poor and needy, including a sick boy in the bed behind her, worship her grace.

kossakchristmaswar
Wojciech Kossak (1856–1942), Soldiers’ Christmas (1915), oil on canvas, 82 × 72 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Seven years later, in 1915, when the whole of Europe was engulfed by the Great War, Wojciech Kossak painted this Soldiers’ Christmas. The decorations on the small Christmas tree in the foreground echo the uniforms in their greyness. In the sky, a shellburst acts as a metaphor for the guiding star which led the Magi to the infant Jesus in Bethlehem, but below that celestial light these infantry soldiers must continue to fight.

The war’s end brought the deadly flu pandemic that reached even into the most remote communities, including those hidden among the maze of fjords to the north of Bergen in western Norway.

astrupchristmaseve
Nikolai Astrup (1880–1928), Christmas Eve at Sandalstrand (1918), woodcut print on paper, 33.8 x 50.5 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

In Nikolai Astrup’s woodcut print of his family’s Christmas Eve at Sandalstrand from 1918, his wife and young son have fallen asleep exhausted, amid traditional Norwegian decorations, including a well-decked Christmas tree.

In the Norwegian capital of Oslo, then still named Kristiania, the Naturalist painter Christian Krohg saw Christmas Eve as an opportunity for redemption.

krohgseamstresschristmaseve
Christian Krohg (1852–1925), Seamstress’s Christmas Eve (1921), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø, Norway. Wikimedia Commons.

In Krohg’s Seamstress’s Christmas Eve from 1921, a young woman is in her garret bed-sit, where she has been toiling long hours at her sewing machine. An affluent couple, relatives or employers perhaps, have just arrived to give the young woman a Christmas tree, a large wicker basket of presents, and more. Maybe that young woman can still be saved from the fate brought on by her sweated labour at the sewing machine, and what was seen as her inevitable decline into prostitution.

Moralising approaches to Christmas had developed during the nineteenth century, initially in literature. A Christmas Carol wasn’t Charles Dickens’ first attempt at a Christmas story, but probably remains the most successful of any writer in the English language. Published on 19 December 1843, its first edition had completely sold out by Christmas Eve, and in its first year it was released in no less than thirteen editions.

One edition of A Christmas Carol published in 1915 was illustrated by Arthur Rackham (1867–1939), who from about 1900 onwards produced some of the finest illustrations using pen, ink and watercolour. If there is one British illustrator of that time whose work consistently demonstrates that illustration can be fine art, it must be the great Arthur Rackham.

rackham01
Arthur Rackham (1867–1939), Illustration for Edition of ‘A Christmas Carol’ (1915), pen, ink and watercolour, further details not known. Images from the British Library and others, via Wikimedia Commons.

In its most memorable scene, the ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley warns the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge that he faces a grim fate, but has one chance of redemption. He’s then visited by three further spirits who show him how.

Just over twenty years later, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables seized the opportunity to tackle similar themes.

geoffroyjeanvaljeancosette
Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853–1924), Jean Valjean and Cosette (1879-1882), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Maison de Victor Hugo, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Around 1879-1882, Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy painted this work showing a well-known scene from Les Miserables, of Jean Valjean and Cosette. This shows the hero Valjean when he arrives in Montfermeil on Christmas Eve and discovers young Cosette fetching a pail of water for her abusive guardians the Thénardiers, early in the novel. He walks with her to an inn, where he orders her a meal, and learns about her mistreatment.

It’s relevant that Les Miserables was published while Victor Hugo was in exile on the island of Guernsey, after he had openly declared Emperor Napoleon III a traitor to France, following Napoleon’s seizure of power in 1851. That leads on to my final painting, with greatest relevance to the world today.

malczewskisiberia
Jacek Malczewski (1854–1929), Christmas Eve in Siberia (1892), oil on canvas, 81 x 126 cm, Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie, Kraków, Poland. Wikimedia Commons.

In Jacek Malczewski’s Christmas Eve in Siberia from 1892, these men have been deported from their native Poland and imprisoned in the extreme cold and remoteness of Siberia. Although there’s a steaming samovar at the end of the table, they have only had soup and a wedge of bread for their seasonal feast. Following the Polish Uprising in 1863, at least 18,000 were ‘exiled’ to Siberia, many of whom never returned.

This Christmas we should all be thinking of those who, for whatever reason, can’t spend this holiday in safety and comfort with their family.

Commemorating the centenary of the death of Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy, painter of childhood

By: hoakley
15 December 2024 at 20:30

A century ago today, 15 December, the French artist Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy died in Paris. Also known by his pen name of Géo, he is one of the great painters of children and childhood in the European canon.

Geoffroy was born the son of a tailor in Marennes, on the west coast of France, half way up the Bay of Biscay. He went to study in Paris, probably at the École des Beaux Arts in about 1871, where he’s claimed to have been a pupil of Léon Bonnat and others, although Bonnat didn’t become a professor there until 1882.

He first exhibited at the Salon in 1874, when he was just 21. From 1876, he undertook commissions to illustrate books about childhood and youth for the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel (1814-86), who also published the work of Gustave Doré, and discovered the author Jules Verne. Despite this promising start, Geoffroy doesn’t seem to have achieved much artistic recognition until the mid 1880s, by which time he signed himself simply as Géo.

geoffroyjeanvaljeancosette
Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853–1924), Jean Valjean and Cosette (1879-1882), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Maison de Victor Hugo, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Around 1879-1882, Geoffroy painted this work showing a well-known scene from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, of Jean Valjean and Cosette. This shows the hero Valjean when he arrives in Montfermeil on Christmas Eve and discovers young Cosette fetching a pail of water for her abusive guardians the Thénardiers, early in the novel.

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Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853–1924), Whoever Breaks the Glass Pays for It (1881), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

He followed that with Whoever Breaks the Glass Pays for It in 1881. This shows a group of three young boys who have apparently broken a glass from a street café. The boy at the right is pointing down at the fragments of glass on the ground, and looking daggers at the other two. He is being admonished by the street vendor whose glass has been broken, and has been told that he has to pay for the damage. Geoffroy gives subtle insight into the social background in the children’s clothing: the apparently uninvolved boy at the left wears clean and fancy boots, while the one at the right who is assumed to be the miscreant wears worn and dirty clothing and footwear.

geoffroysnacktime
Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853–1924), Snack Time (1882), oil on canvas, 98 x 131 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

By 1882, Geoffroy had entered the schools where he was to be most successful and prolific; he apparently lodged above a school, with a couple of teachers. Snack Time shows the pupils outside their primary school during a break, armed with their lunchboxes and baskets. Again he tells their stories using subtle hints including their clothes. A well-dressed girl in white is being harassed by a smaller boy into surrendering some of her food. He wears rougher clothes but seems in control of the situation, as others watch on and laugh.

In 1885, he was appointed a knight in the Legion of Honour.

geoffroyvisitdayhospital
Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853-1924), Visiting Day at the Hospital (1889), oil on canvas, 120 x 95 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Geoffroy’s painted insights into the world of childhood extend to illness and the hospital. In his dazzlingly modern and clinical Visiting Day at the Hospital from 1889, the boy’s father clearly could never have afforded state-of-the-art care for his sick son. Although probably understood by the contemporary viewer, the painting doesn’t reveal to modern eyes that the boy is most probably dying of tuberculosis, an all too common problem at the time.

geoffroyinclass
Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853-1924), Primary School Class (1889), oil on canvas, 145 x 220 cm, Ministère de l’Education Nationale, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

In Primary School Class from 1889, Geoffroy shows one of the new lay teachers, introduced by the Third Republic, working diligently in the classroom with her pupils. This was clearly deemed sufficiently positive to the State as to be purchased by the French National Ministry of Education, where it still hangs.

geoffroynighthostel
Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853–1924), The Night Hostel (or, The Soup Kitchen) (1891), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Less welcomed by the State was The Night Hostel or The Soup Kitchen from 1891, showing homeless women and children being fed and sheltered in what appears to be almost a prison.

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Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853–1924), Drawing Lesson (1895), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Returning to school scenes in 1895, Geoffroy shows a Drawing Lesson in a class of older boys, who are following the classical tradition of drawing casts and appear remarkably diligent and well-behaved.

geoffroycreche
Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853–1924), The Nursery (1899), oil on canvas, 166 x 108 cm, Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul Ado Malagoli, Porto Alegre, Brazil. Wikimedia Commons.

Geoffroy’s The Nursery from 1899 is one of very few paintings showing modern approaches to the early rearing of children under the Third Republic. Hospitals developed a rigorous almost military approach to nurseries and feeding that endured well into the twentieth century, and separated mothers from their infants for much of the time.

In 1900, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, Geoffroy was awarded a gold medal, forming the peak of his career.

geoffroyinschool
Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853-1924), In School (c 1900), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

In Geoffroy’s In School from about 1900, another lay teacher in a modern Republican infants class is caring for the French men and women of the future.

geoffroybastilleday
Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853–1924), Bastille Day (c 1900), oil on canvas, 46 x 61 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Bastille Day, from the same year, shows a group of children celebrating the national day of France on 14 July. For young boys in the years before the First World War, this was becoming increasingly militaristic rather than just patriotic.

geoffroyprizesinfants
Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853–1924), Prize-Giving at an Infants School (1904), woodcut (?) by Charles Baude (1853-1935) after a painting by Geoffroy, further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

I have been unable to locate an image of Geoffroy’s painting from which Charles Baude made this print of Prize-Giving at an Infants School in 1904, but it is a fine example of the artist’s depictions of groups of young children and their social interactions.

geoffroydifficultparting
Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853–1924), It’s Hard to Share (date not known), oil on canvas, 60.3 x 49.6 cm, Museu Antônio Parreiras (MAP), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Wikimedia Commons.

This undated painting of It’s Hard to Share shows another of the tribulations of childhood. These young boys have just emerged from a sweet shop, and the child in the centre is reluctant to share the paper cone of sweets he has just bought. His face says it all, as he looks with great suspicion at his less fortunate friend, and a dog also looks up expectantly.

I have been unable to find any of Geoffroy’s later paintings, and he died in Paris in 1924, at the age of 71.

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