Thursday, November 30, 2017

Later 17th-century Portraits (Tate)

Joan Carlile
Portrait of an unknown lady
ca. 1650-55
oil on canvas
Tate, London

John Hayls
Portrait of a lady and a boy, with figure of Pan
ca. 1655-59
oil on canvas
Tate, London

"Mythologising portraits of this kind were more commonly found on the Continent than in Britain.  The figure to the left is from Roman mythology, either a satyr or the god Pan, identifiable by his horns and goat's legs and by the pipes in his left hand.  Presumably symbolic of the sin of Lust, he is here a rather humorous figure being kept in his place both by the classically attired little boy who holds a bow and arrow and probably represents Cupid, and by the small dog, a symbol of faithfulness.  Pan is also being resolutely ignored by the lady herself, in the role of the goddess Venus, who leans against a rock entwined with the ivy that symbolises marital happiness.  . . .  The theme of a female sitter with a young male relative attired as Cupid was introduced to English art by the Flemish-born Sir Anthony van Dyck.  Little is known about Hayls, from whom, between 1666 and 1668, the diarist Samuel Pepys commissioned a number of portraits, of which only his own image survives (National Portrait Gallery).  He described the progress of these in his Diary.  Although sometimes described as a rival to Sir Peter Lely, Hayls seems to have attracted rather less exalted clients."

Gilbert Soest
Portrait of a gentleman with a dog, probably Sir Thomas Tipping
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Tate, London

Mary Beale
Portrait sketch in profile of the artist's son, Bartholomew Beale
ca. 1660
oil on paper
Tate, London

Peter Lely
Portrait of two ladies of the Lake family
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Tate, London

"Sir Peter Lely was born to a Dutch family in Westphalia in 1618.  He trained in Haarlem and at the beginning of the 1640s moved to England.  In London, Lely had the opportunity to see works by the recently deceased Sir Anthony van Dyck, whose portraiture had transformed the public image of Charles I's court.  With the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, Lely became principal portrait-painter at the court of Charles II.  The market for art in Britain at this period was almost entirely for portraits, and Lely increasingly concentrated on that field, absorbing the ideas of van Dyck and adapting his compositions, while lightening and brightening his own palette."

Benedetto Gennari
Portrait of Elizabeth Panton, later Lady Arundell of Wardour, as Saint Catherine
1669
oil on canvas
Tate, London

"The sitter, Elizabeth Panton, was the eldest daughter of Colonel Thomas Panton, a member of Charles II's life-guards and foot-guards.  Panton's success at gambling enabled him to buy property in Herefordshire and London's west end, where he built what is now Panton Street.  In July 1681 Elizabeth, with her mother and brother, left England, claiming health reasons but in actuality to escape the persecution they faced as Roman Catholics.  The exiled Catholic court of James II at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in France became a natural focal point for English papists abroad.  Gennari followed the Stuart court into exile in 1689, and his notebook records that this was the first work he produced from there.  Elizabeth Panton is portrayed, in a statement of her Catholicism, as St. Catherine of Alexandria, holding a martyr's palm and the spiked wheel on which, according to legend, St. Catherine's body was broken.  This theme is seen in portraits of Charles II's queen, Catherine of Braganza, some twenty-five years earlier.  It was a popular subject with English court sitters, even used by Lely in paintings of Charles's mistress, Barbara, Lady Castlemaine."  

Peter Lely
Portrait of an unknown woman
ca. 1670-75
oil on canvas
Tate, London

Peter Lely
Portrait of Elizabeth, Countess of Kildare
ca. 1679
oil on canvas
Tate, London

Godfrey Kneller
Portrait of John Banckes
1676
oil on canvas
Tate, London

Jacob Huysmans
Portrait of a lady as Diana
ca. 1674
oil on canvas
Tate, London

"Huysmans frequently painted ladies in the guise of Diana, a presentation that was seen to compliment the beauty, purity and chaste virtue of the sitter.  Two other portraits by him show sitters in exactly the same pose as here, holding hunting spears with quivers of arrows at their shoulders, and with the same sharply delineated drapery characteristic of Huysmans.  The portrait type was evidently repeated by Huysmans for various sitters, and although possibly influenced by stage costume, had no connection to a specific production.  The hounds, one in the shadow on the left, one prominently in the foreground, the nose of another jutting into the picture on the right, suggestive of Diana's hunting pack, are also studio patterns and appear in all three portraits."

John Michael Wright
Portrait of Sir Neil O'Neill
1680
oil on canvas
Tate, London

"Sir Neil O'Neill, 2nd Baronet of Killeleagh (c. 1658-1690) is depicted in a richly ornamented costume that would have identified him to contemporaries as an indigenous Irish chieftain.  He stands in an open landscape, with a mountain in the distance.  At Sir Neil's feet, lower left, lies a closely observed, though incomplete, suit of Japanese armour.  It is of a style called 'Do-Maru' meaning 'round the body'; worn during the period c. 1350-1530, it was of a type kept as gifts for eminent people.  O'Neill was an uncompromising Roman Catholic, who was to become a Captain of Dragoons in the army of the Catholic British king James II and was to die after fighting at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.  The Japanese were perceived in the West as persecutors of Catholics, so the armour may have been included in order to represent O'Neill as a defender of his faith, treading on the deflated armour of its enemies."   

Simon Du Bois
Portrait of a gentleman, probably Arthur Parsons, MD
1683
oil on canvas
Tate, London

Willem Wissing
Portrait of Henrietta and Mary Hyde
ca. 1683-85
oil on canvas
Tate, London

"This beautifully balanced work is the portrait of two very important children.  Their father was a leading politician, Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester (1642-1711), who is presumed to have commissioned the work.  Hyde's late sister Anne had been the wife of James, Duke of York, who in 1685 succeeded to the British throne as James II.  Thus, the sitters were nieces of the King.  By 1705-10 this painting was in the possession of the sitters' cousin, King James's daughter, Queen Anne, and on display at Windsor Castle."

John Riley
Portrait of James Sotheby
ca. 1690
oil on canvas
Tate, London

 all quoted passages based on notes by curators at the Tate in London

Earlier 17th-century Portraits (Tate)

Anonymous painter working in England
Portrait of a lady, called Elizabeth, Lady Tanfield
1615
oil on canvas
Tate, London

Robert Peake
Portrait of Lady Anne Pope
1615
oil on panel
Tate, London

Paul van Somer
Portrait of Lady Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent
ca. 1619
oil on panel
Tate, London

"The daughter and co-heiress of the 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, Lady Elizabeth Talbot (1581-1651) married Henry Grey, Lord Ruthven (died 1639) in 1601; he succeeded his father as 8th Earl of Kent in September 1623.  . . .  The present painting is known to have belonged to Charles I (1600-1649), the son of James and Anne, as it appears in the inventory of his collection made in about 1639.  Lady Grey had been a favoured attendant of Anne of Denmark and had walked in her funeral procession as a Countess Assistante.  The fact that she is attired in black, including wearing black jewellery in the form of expensive egg-shaped jet beads, suggests that this portrait may relate to the mourning period after the Queen's death.  Under her heart she wears a jewel  possibly a closed portrait-miniature case  with the crowned monogram AR  standing for Anna Regina.  A similar miniature case, containing the Queen's portrait and presumably given by her to another of her attendants, Lady Anne Livingston, survives in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.  The signet ring on a black ribbon round Lady Kent's wrist may also have a memorialising significance.  It is engraved with the image of a breed of dog known as a talbot  evidently a punning reference to her own maiden surname.  Her extremely low decolletage is a fashion paralleled in other Jacobean female portraits, including those of Queen Anne herself.  Such exposure, even for ladies of mature years, was evidently considered entirely acceptable, although presumably confined to an elite court circle only."

Marcus Gheeraerts II
Portrait of a woman in red
1620
oil on panel
Tate, London

Anonymous painter working in England
Portrait of Anne Wortley, later Lady Morton
ca. 1620
oil on canvas
Tate, London

"This typifies the British Jacobean portrait formula.  The subject appears full length and almost facing the viewer, standing on a rich carpet or, as here, on rush matting, flanked by lustrously painted curtains.  There may be an accompanying chair or table, but the artist shows no interest in conveying its spatial relationship to the figure.  The costume is meticulously depicted, with an almost hallucinatory clarity.  Anne Wortley's face and hands are painted in a more shadowed manner associated with Netherlandish-trained artists.  The portrait may have been produced by painters collaborating in a workshop, rather than by a single artist."

Cornelius Johnson
Portrait of an unknown lady
1629
oil on panel
Tate, London

Cornelius Johnson
Portrait of an unknown gentleman
1629
oil on panel
Tate, London

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of a lady of the Spencer family
ca. 1633-38
oil on canvas
Tate, London

"Painted during the 1630s, this is the type of full-length portrait by van Dyck that was to influence subsequent English portrait-painters from Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) to John Singer Sargent (1856-1925).  This image of a young woman in a blue satin gown was recorded at Althorp, Northants, the family seat of the Earls of Spencer, in the early eighteenth century, although knowledge of the identity of the sitter had by then been lost.  . . .  Van Dyck has had a greater impact on British portrait-painting than any other artist.  He was born and trained in Antwerp and first visited England in 1620-21, before moving to Italy where he assimilated the works of Titian and other Venetian painters.  In 1632 he returned to England and entered the service of Charles I, where he reinvented the visual imagery of the English court."   

Anonymous painter working in England
Portrait of William Style of Langley
1636
oil on canvas
Tate, London

"The costly black-and-white floor is a feature more commonly seen in Dutch paintings of this period, although it is now thought that very few such floors existed in reality.  The curious object and the Latin motto at his feet, to which Style so purposefully points with his cane, would have been easily understood by his contemporaries: Microcosmus Microcosmi non impletur Megacosmo can be translated as The microcosm (or heart) of the microcosm (or man) is not filled (even) by the megacosm (or world) – that is to say that the human heart is not sated with the whole created world, but only with its Creator.  This image of a globe within a burning heart could have been inspired by Peter Heylyn's Microcosumus: A little description of the Great World (1621).  Heylyn and Style overlapped as students at Oxford University (Heylyn matriculated in 1617 and subsequently became a high-churchman)." 

William Dobson
Portrait of the artist's wife
ca. 1635-40
oil on canvas
Tate, London

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Mary Hill, Lady Killigrew
1638
oil on canvas
Tate, London

William Dobson
Portrait of an officer
ca. 1645
oil on canvas
Tate, London

"Dobson was one of the few top-level painters of his era to have been born in Britain.  The rather Venetian freedom with which he handles paint suggests that he must have had access to Charles I's exceptional collection of Italian paintings.  This unknown officer holds a horseman's pistol in his left hand.  In his right hand is a charging-spanner, which contains priming powder and a spanner for winding up the pistol-lock.  After the outbreak of the English Civil War, Dobson spent the final part of his life in Oxford, where Charles I and his court lived in near-siege conditions."

Edward Bower
Portrait of Sir John Drake
1646
oil on canvas
Tate, London

Cornelius Johnson
Portrait of an unknown lady
1646
oil on canvas
Tate, London

 quoted passages based on notes by curators at the Tate in London

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

European Sedan Chairs

Anonymous European artist
Design for Sedan Chair
ca. 1775-80
watercolor
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous European artist
Design for Sedan Chair
ca. 1775
watercolor
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Severio della Gatta
Midwife with Baby transported to church in Sedan Chair for Christening
1827
watercolor
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Severio della Gatta
Journey by Sedan Chair with Mt Vesuvius in background
1828
watercolor
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
Mr. Winkle's Situation when the Door blew-to
1837
steel-engraving
Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Mr. Winkle jumped out of bed, wondering very much what could possibly be the matter, and hastily putting on his stockings and slippers, folded his dressing-gown round him, lighted a flat candle from the rush-light that was burning in the fireplace, and hurried downstairs.

"Here's somebody comin' at last, ma'am," said the short chairman.

"I wish I was behind him with a bradawl," muttered the long one.

"Who's there?" cried Mr. Winkle, undoing the chain.

"Don't stop to ask questions, cast-iron head," replied the long man, with great disgust, taking it for granted that the inquirer was a footman, "but open the door."

"Come, look sharp, timber eyelids," added the other encouragingly.

Mr. Winkle, being half asleep, obeyed the command mechanically, opened the door a little, and peeped out.  The first thing he saw, was the red glare of the link-boy's torch.  Startled by the sudden fear that the house might be on fire, he hastily threw the door wide open, and holding the candle above his head, stared eagerly before him, not quite certain whether what he saw was a sedan-chair or a fire engine.  At this instant there came a violent gust of wind; the light was blown out; Mr. Winkle felt himself irresistibly impelled on to the steps, and the door blew to, with a loud crash.

"Well, young man, now you have done it!" said the short chairman.

Mr. Winkle, catching sight of a lady's face at the window of the sedan, turned hastily round, plied the knocker with all his might and main, and called frantically upon the chairman to take the chair away again.

"Take it away, take it away," cried Mr. Winkle.  "Here's somebody coming out of another house; put me into the chair.  Hide me!  Do something with me!"

All this time he was shivering with cold; and every time he raised his hand to the knocker, the wind took the dressing-gown in a most unpleasant manner.

 Charles Dickens, from chapter 36 of The Pickwick Paper (1837)

Pietro Bonato after Giacomo Beys
Pope Pius VI carried over a mountain pass in a Sedan Chair
(as prisoner of Napoleon being transported to France, where he died in 1799)

ca. 1804
stipple engraving
British Museum

Carrington Bowles
The Return from a Masquerade (in a Sedan Chair) - A Morning Scene
1784
hand-colored mezzotint
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Isaac Robert Cruikshank
A Cruise to Covent Garden (in a Sedan Chair)
1806
hand-colored etching
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

George Cruikshank
Pride and Exaltation in a Sedan Chair
before 1878
engraving
Achenbach Foundation, San Francisco

Paul and Thomas Sandby
The Piazza, Covent Garden, London
 (with row of unoccupied Sedan Chairs for hire)

1770
drawing
British Museum

Charles James Grant
Satirical Print - Whig Politicians carrying Daniel O'Connell in a Sedan Chair
before 1837
wood-engraving, letterpress
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous Italian craftspeople
Sedan Chair
ca. 1750-60
carved and gilded poplar and lindenwood, gilt-bronze mounts
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Italian or French craftspeople
Sedan Chair
ca. 1750
gilt-wood, gilt-metal, painted panels
California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco

Anonymous Italian craftspeople
Sedan Chair
ca. 1750
gilt-wood, red leather, gilt-bronze
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous French craftspeople
Sedan Chair
ca. 1745-75
Painted wood, metal fittings
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) and the Criminal Attitude

Joseph Beuys
Whale Trap 
1961
oil on cardboard
Tate Gallery

Joseph Beuys
Angel Whale
1953
drawing
Tate Gallery

Joseph Beuys
Two Red Fish
1954
watercolor
Tate Gallery

"I am interested in the creativity of the criminal attitude because I recognize in it the existence of a special condition of crazy creativity.  A creativity without morals fired only by the energy of freedom and the rejection of all codes and laws.  For freedom rejects the dictated roles of the law and the imposed order and for this reason is isolated."

 Joseph Beuys (1978)

Joseph Beuys
Pregnant Woman with Swan
1959
watercolor and oil on paper
Tate Gallery

Joseph Beuys
Night in the Rafters
1974
oil on paper
Tate Gallery

Joseph Beuys
Clan
1958
oil and watercolor on paper
Tate Gallery

Joseph Beuys
Probe in the Bloodstream of the Oak
1958
collage with envelope, tempera on paper
Tate Gallery

Joseph Beuys
Weird Sister
1953-62
oil on acetate
Tate Gallery

Joseph Beuys
Felt Action
1963
oil and felt on paper
Tate Gallery

Joseph Beuys
For Brown Environment Giant Vessels
1964
oil on paper
Tate Gallery

Joseph Beuys
Brightly Lit Stag Chair
1957-71
oil on paper
Tate Gallery

Joseph Beuys
The Table
1952
watercolor on paper
Tate Gallery

Joseph Beuys
Girl Pushing against Elastic Sculpture
1961
oil on paper
Tate Gallery

Joseph Beuys
Dove Food Rainbow
1949
watercolor on card
Tate Gallery

Safe to assume that major museums have already blocked out exhibition spaces for Joseph Beuys centennial retrospectives in 2021.