In 1904, Misia Natanson, née Godebska, patron and muse of artists in Paris, was in the process of transferring her affection from her first husband Thadée Natanson to Alfred Edwards, the publishing magnate who was providing him with capital in return.

Pierre Bonnard sees a completely different figure from those in Renoir’s portraits. In Misia Natanson and Her Dog from about 1904, she’s out in the country with her dog, wearing an ornate white lace hat, more like a character from a nursery rhyme than the mistress of a newspaper magnate.

The following year, Misia married Edwards, and her circle of artists and composers benefited from new patronage with even deeper pockets. Misia and her husband had a yacht, by which I mean a large, crewed vessel, not a dinky little dinghy. In the summer of 1905, they took Bonnard, Maurice Ravel, and others on the yacht’s maiden cruise to Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

Misia, though, looks no happier in Renoir’s third portrait of Misia Sert with a Lap Dog (Young Woman with a Lap-Dog) from after her second marriage in about 1906. And the dog has changed to a toy breed, probably a Brussels Griffon.

Bonnard dedicated his painting of The House of Misia Sert (1906) to the former Misia Natanson, muse, close friend, and patron. This was made using tempera rather than oils.

He continued to keep company with Misia and her husband. Maurice Ravel dedicated two of his most beautiful compositions to her: The Swan from Histoires Naturelles, and The Waltz.

Works created for Misia extended beyond mere portraits. In Pierre Bonnard’s large painting of Pleasure or Games from 1906, one of four panels he made for Misia and Alfred Edwards’ apartment in Paris, decorative edging includes images of birds and monkeys, whose innocent playfulness is seen as being pleasurable.

In 1908, Bonnard painted at least three portraits of Misia. Gone is the illusion of the shepherdess: she now sits in a lavishly-decorated room, with what appear to be Gobelin tapestries behind her.

In Misia with a Pink Corsage, Bonnard closes in for a straight head-and-shoulders.

In Misia with Roses, she looks down at an almost unseen pet she is stroking beside her.

As could have been expected, Alfred Edwards proved unfaithful to Misia. She divorced him in 1909, by which time she was already in a relationship with the Spanish painter Josep Maria Sert (1874-1945). He had been on the periphery of the Nabis since moving to Paris in 1899.

The last portrait that I can find by Bonnard, of Misia Godebska Writing, was painted in about 1910. It’s back to head-and-shoulders, although here the artist has used a little mirror play to reveal her chignon, a feature that Bonnard seemed to like.

Misia didn’t marry Sert until 1920, by which time she was established as the cultural arbiter in Paris, and a close friend of Coco Chanel. Her husband, a friend of Salvador Dalí, specialised in murals, and strangely never appears to have painted her portrait. Instead, he spent over thirty years painting murals in the Vic Cathedral in Barcelona, and having affairs of his own. In 1927, Sert divorced Misia to marry the sculptor Isabelle Roussadana Mdivani (1906-1938), known for short as Roussy, who for a time had lived with the Serts in a ménage à trois.

The Serts had been strong supporters of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, which was based in Paris from 1909. Josep Maria Sert painted sets and designed costumes from 1914 onwards. Misia was also heavily involved, often raising money to save a production from seemingly overwhelming debts.

Léon Bakst had also been painting and designing for Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes. Diaghilev proved highly successful, and commissioned music from Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Sergei Prokofiev and other major composers of the day. Other painters who produced work for the Ballets included Vasily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Coco Chanel also created costume designs.

Misia remained close to Diaghilev, and in August 1929 she comforted him as he died in Venice of diabetes, then paid for his funeral from her own pocket.

Just before the Second World War, Roussy Sert died, and Misia and Josep Maria Sert reconciled, and sort of lived together in separate apartments in Paris. Misia’s reputation remained unblemished during the Nazi occupation of Paris, and she died there on 15 October 1950, at the age of 78.

Without Misia’s influence and support, a great deal of the painting, music, and ballet of the first half of the twentieth century simply wouldn’t have happened.

Reference

Wikipedia.

One of the myths about nineteenth and twentieth century art is that it freed itself from patronage that had bedevilled its past. What did change was that patrons of the arts were seldom royalty or nobility, although their power and influence were just the same. Between about 1895 and the late 1930s, one of the most important patrons in France was a Polish woman, born Maria Zofia Zenajda Godebska in 1872, but subsequently known as Misia Natanson, Edwards, or Sert. Her father was Cyprian Godebski, a major sculptor who was a professor at the Imperial Academy in Saint Petersburg. This weekend I tell a little of her story, with a succession of portraits by her many admirers.

Misia’s mother died shortly after the girl’s birth, so she was sent to her grandparents in Brussels. This took her from sculpture to music, as those grandparents had musical circles including Franz Liszt. She was brought up as a pianist, and when her father moved her to Paris, she studied under Gabriel Fauré.

Misia married for the first time at the age of twenty-one, to her cousin Thadée Natanson, who had socialist ideals and lived in artistic circles. The Natansons entertained Marcel Proust, Stéphane Mallarmé, André Gide and Claude Debussy. But they were closest to their painter friends: Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Odilon Redon, Paul Signac, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

It was probably Toulouse-Lautrec who first started to draw and paint Misia, as in his Portrait of Misia Natanson of 1895.

In 1895 he turned that into his Poster for “La revue blanche”, the arts magazine co-founded in 1889 by Misia’s husband, which was the platform that promoted the Nabis, including Pierre Bonnard.

Toulouse-Lautrec later painted Misia Natanson playing the piano in 1897.

The Nabis themselves painted Misia’s portraits, not just as their main patron, but in informal settings, as more of a friend and muse.

Édouard Vuillard’s Vallotton at the Natansons shows Misia watching Félix Vallotton painting in 1897, at the Natanson’s home.

Félix Vallotton provides a glimpse into her private life in his Misia at Her Dressing Table from 1898.

In his turn, Pierre Bonnard painted Misia Natanson at Breakfast in about 1899, with one of the family’s maids at work in the background.

Bonnard’s Misia at the Piano from about 1902 shows Misia doing what she loved most.

At this time, Thadée Natanson needed more capital to support his publishing and other activities. He found a source in Alfred Edwards, a publishing magnate who had founded and published the major newspaper in Paris at the time, Le Matin. Unfortunately, Edwards and Misia fell in love, and Misia became Edwards’ mistress in 1903. As Natanson wanted his capital, so Edwards wanted Misia, and that became a condition of the deal between them.

Renoir painted this and the next portrait of Misia Sert while this was being settled, in 1904. Of the two, this is the better-known, as it hangs in the National Gallery in London. I can’t help feeling that she appears unhappy here.

In this second of Renoir’s portraits of Misia from 1904, now in Tel Aviv, she is as sumptuously dressed, but her head is buried in a book.

Reference

Wikipedia.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century almost every painter painted at least one reflection, that of their own face in a self-portrait. There’s even a gallery specialising in its unique collection, the Uffizi in Florence, Italy, where they go back six hundred years to Taddeo Gaddi in 1440-50 and Filippino Lippi in 1485. This article looks at a few of the more unusual ones that didn’t make it to the Uffizi.

The most radical and impressive of Gustave Courbet’s early paintings is The Desperate Man from about 1843, in which the artist grimaces wildly at his own canvas. Augmented by his signature in bright red, it might as well have been his manifesto.

Adriaen van der Werff’s Self-portrait with the Portrait of his Wife, Margaretha van Rees, and their Daughter Maria from 1699 is an ingenious family portrait. He holds his palette and brushes with his left hand, and around his neck is a medallion awarded by his patron, the Elector Palatine. His right hand supports a portrait of his wife Margaretha van Rees (1669-1732) and their daughter Maria (1692-1731).

Lovis Corinth’s Last Self-Portrait, painted just two months before his death, is unusual in showing him with his reflection in a mirror. He is balding rapidly, his cheeks sunken, and his eyes are bloodshot and tired.

Pierre Bonnard’s unusual composition in this Interior from about 1905 doesn’t show the woman’s back in the mirror, but a chair placed deliberately in front of the mirror and Bonnard himself, not painting but sat at a table.

There’s more uncertainty as to whether Artemisia Gentileschi’s brilliant painting of the Allegory of Painting (c 1638-9) is a self-portrait. This striking angle of view can be accounted for if this was a self-portrait composed using two mirrors, one placed above and on the left of the painter, the other directly in front of her, where she is gazing so intently. If so, it was particularly ingenious because the reflection in the second mirror would have normal chirality (left and right would not be reversed).

However, it has been suggested that this isn’t a self-portrait, in which case her choice of view would have been most unusual. It’s believed to have been painted during her stay in London, possibly for King Charles I, as it appears to have passed straight into the Royal Collection, where it has remained ever since.

Clara Peeters’ still life with Flowers and Gold Cups of Honour from 1612 reveals multiple miniature self-portraits reflected in the gold cup at the right. These are shown more clearly in the detail below. To project the image of herself correctly for each of the facets I suspect she must have set up a convex mirror in the same alignment as that facet on the cup.

The most famous of all these elaborate self-portraits is surely that of Diego Velázquez in Las Meninas from about 1656-57.

Like many of his mature works, this is a portrait, but unlike any of the others it’s a group portrait of eleven people and a dog in a room in the Alcázar Palace, which is depicted faithfully, according to palace inventories of the time.

The largest figure, although out of the limelight and over to the left, is that of Velázquez himself. He looks towards the viewer, with a neutral face of concentration. His right hand holds a brush with his paint laid out on a wooden palette held by his left hand, which also clutches a bundle of other brushes. He is at work on the three metre (ten foot) high canvas in front him, which happens to be the same size as that on which he painted this work.

Two figures given a prominent and unusual place are the King and Queen, who are shown reflected in a rectangular plane mirror on the far wall. There has been dispute over whether the reflection shows the couple stood where the viewer is, or the mirror is reflecting their painted images on Velázquez’s canvas.

As the mirror is to the left of the centreline of the painting, it’s hard to see that its image of the royal couple could show them standing where the viewer is, and more likely that what appears there is part of Velázquez’s painting. However, the artist had previously been ‘creative’ in his use of reflections in the Rokeby Venus, and at least part of his body should here be obstructing a clear line of sight between what is on his canvas and the surface of the mirror.

Many humans and animals are fascinated by reflections. Whether they’re images of themselves seen in mirrors, or an inverted copy of a landscape seen on the surface of a lake, we can spend embarrassingly long periods just staring at them. For visual artists, those reflections have been a technical challenge and, for those who rise to it, an opportunity to display their painting skills. This series sets out to describe and illustrate how, from the early Renaissance to the twentieth century, masters have painted reflections.

Optical effects are one of the central themes in the Northern Renaissance, as seen in Jan van Eyck’s most famous painting The Arnolfini Wedding (or similar variations), completed in 1434. Between this newly-wed couple holding hands next to their marital bed, in the midline of the painting is a prominent circular convex mirror. The reflection is probably the first example of mirror-play in European art, as it shows a view of the room looking in the opposite direction, past the couple to another two figures, who might be the artist and another.

Look in the landscape behind Jan van Eyck’s Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, probably painted the following year, and you’ll see one of the earliest examples of the meticulously accurate depiction of reflections on water.

In some paintings, reflections are essential to their narrative. Caravaggio’s brilliant Narcissus of 1594-96 uniquely combines chiaroscuro with reflections to provide just enough visual clues to tell this myth so effectively.

The optics of reflections appear to have confounded some painters, while others have deliberately flouted physics for effect, in this case what has become known as the Venus Effect.

Although often illustrated by one of Titian’s paintings of Venus, the canonical example must be Velázquez’ Venus at Her Mirror, also known as The Toilet of Venus or the Rokeby Venus, from 1644-48. It shows the goddess Venus, whose face is blurred in a false reflection in a mirror being held by her son Cupid. The theme was common, seen in paintings by Titian and Rubens, with Venus sat upright. Giorgione and others had posed her reclining and facing the viewer, making her pose here unusual. Most other paintings of Venus set her in a landscape: here she rests on luxurious even sensuous fabrics.

No matter how convincing her face might appear in the mirror, a moment spent placing yourself in the same position confirms that the image in the mirror is wholly imaginary, and optically incorrect.

Pierre Bonnard is among the most prolific and inventive of mirror-players.

In his Woman Getting Dressed from 1906, it’s the mirror at the left that reveals the subject, who is sat beyond the right edge of the painting, getting dressed. Venus has here become a pile of discarded clothing.

As landscape painting became popular, many of the most proficient sought out locations where they could demonstrate their skills at getting them right. Others used reflections as their theme.

In the last two years of Vincent van Gogh’s life, he painted this landmark nocturne Starry Night over the Rhône (1888) with its many shimmering reflections.

Alder Trunks from 1893 is one of Laurits Andersen Ring’s finest landscapes, and has earned its place in the Danish Royal Collection. He shows these old coppiced alders almost entirely in reflection.

Théo van Rysselberghe’s eye-catching geometry in his Canal in Flanders (1894) combines radical perspective projection, intense rhythm and meticulous broken reflections.

Reflections are also used by some of the Surrealists.

Paul Nash’s Landscape from a Dream (1936-38) was inspired by Freud’s theories of the significance of dreams as reflections of the unconscious. This collection of incongruous objects is gathered on the Dorset coast, a landscape Nash associated with the praeternatural. Dominating the scene is a large framed planar mirror, almost parallel with the picture plane. Stood at the right end of the mirror is a hawk staring at its own reflection, which Nash explained is a symbol of the material world. To the left, the mirror reflects several floating spheres, referring to the soul. The reflection shows that behind the viewer is a red sun setting in a red sky, with another hawk flying high, away from the scene.

I hope you’ll join me in the reflections to come in this series.

Hokusai’s woodcuts including The Great Wave of Kanagawa from 1831 may now be most strongly associated with the vogue for Japonisme that swept across Europe in the late nineteenth century, but the prints of others were equally important. Among those were the works of Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重) (1797–1858).

It’s this print by Hiroshige, Evening Rain at Azumi-no Mori (吾嬬杜夜雨) (Edo, 1837-8), that is now thought to have been influential in Vincent van Gogh’s Rain – Auvers (1890), shown below, that he painted just a few days before his death.

Japonisme came to dominate Pierre Bonnard’s early paintings too. Probably the earliest of these is this exquisite three-panelled screen of The Stork and Four Frogs completed around 1889. To mimic the appearance of east Asian lacquerware, Bonnard painted this in distemper on red-dyed cotton fabric. Its story is, though, thoroughly European, based on the fable retold by Jean de la Fontaine of The Frogs who Demand a King.

As Europeans were enthralled by Japanese woodcuts, so more Japanese artists travelled to Europe to learn painting styles and techniques. The son of a samurai in Kagoshima (in the far south-west of Japan), Viscount Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) (Kuroda Kiyoteru) moved to Tokyo, where he first learned English, then switched to French. He went to Paris in 1884 to study law, being supported by his brother-in-law, a member of the Japanese diplomatic mission in France. However after two years there, he changed to study painting in the atelier of Raphael Collin, where he met Kume Keiichirō, also a student of Collin’s; together they explored plein air painting. In 1890 he moved to the international artists’ colony at Grez-sur-Loing, south of Paris, which had been made popular by masters such as Jules Bastien-Lepage.

In France, Hokusai’s Great Wave found greater interest with Paul Gauguin and his circle who gathered first in Pont-Aven then Le Pouldu in Brittany. Gauguin’s gouache Seaweed Gatherers I (1888-90) shows two Breton women gathering seaweed on the beach. Behind them is a huge wave, its spume formed into a claw, which could only have come from Hokusai.

In 1889, Gauguin painted two works showing Ondine in the sea among waves. The first, known now as In the Waves, or Ondine (I), also refers to Hokusai.

The Nabi sculptor, and painter from Gauguin’s school, Georges Lacombe took Hokusai’s motif forward in several of his paintings. This is his treatment of Vorhor, The Green Wave in egg tempera, showing an Atlantic swell coming into the seacliffs of Vorhor near Camaret-sur-Mer in Brittany.

Lacombe’s slightly later The Violet Wave also makes its influence abundantly clear.

In that same year, even the notorious academic artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau joined Hokusai’s crowd of admirers, in The Wave.

As Japanese artists were studying in Europe, Westerners like Helen Hyde went to Japan. She made friends with an unrelated namesake, Josephine Hyde, and in 1899 the two travelled to Japan to learn Japanese print and painting techniques. Helen Hyde was soon making woodblock prints, which she learned from the Austrian Emil Orlik who was also living in Tokyo at the time.

Interior Decoration from 1900 shows how quickly Hyde learned the technique, and her fascination for Japanese art in everyday settings.

Hyde’s New Year´s Day in Tokyo, from 1912, is grander in conception, and a carefully composed print of key elements in the Japanese New Year celebrations.

My final example was painted in 1918, at the end of the First World War, far from the mud and blood of Europe’s battlefields. Colin Campbell Cooper’s Summer (1918) is inspired by Japonisme, fortified here by the east Asian influence of California, and by Monet’s paintings of his garden at Giverny, itself based on a Japanese water garden.