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DEATHS: 1858 SCHEFFER — 1938 KIRCHNER 1859 COX 
BIRTHS: 1564 HEINZ — 1636 DELAFOSSE — 1594 POUSSIN
^Born on 15 June 1564: Joseph Heinz (or Heintz) Jr., Swiss painter who died on 15 October 1609.
Heinz artist— {There is absolutely no truth to the story that his ghost haunted Heinz Company executive meetings until they reluctantly agreed to gradually introduce a whole palette of colors for their ketchup, so that kids could develop their talents by playing with their food artistically, for example decorating hamburgers not only in tomato red, but also in Blastin' Green, Funky Purple, pink, orange, teal, Stellar Blue, etc., or any mixture thereof.}
— At the end of the 16th century the court of Emperor Rudolph II in Prague was one of the most important art and cultural centers of Europe. The Emperor gathered together important artists: painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, who developed a characteristic style as important as that of the Fontainebleau school flowered at the same period in France. One component of the Rudolphean style was the painting of the Flemish Spranger, another the German Hans von Aachen, and the third the Swiss Joseph Heintz. Heintz was in Rome between 1583 and 1587 and was a student of Hans von Aachen whom he followed to Prague. He was perhaps the best colorist in Prague and he exerted an influence on the older painter in the Emperor's court.
— Heintz received his early training from a painter and from his father, an architect-mason. From 1584 to around 1591, Heintz was in Italy, where he joined a circle of German and Netherlandish artists in Rome. He also studied ancient art and copied paintings by Renaissance artists such as Raphael, Michelangelo, and Polidoro da Caravaggio [1515-1565]. In 1587 he traveled to Florence and Venice, absorbing the styles of Tintoretto, Titian, and Paolo Veronese. In 1591 Emperor Rudolf II summoned Heintz to Prague, naming him "portraitist and court painter" and ennobling him in 1602. Heintz continued to visit and work in both countries, drawing and copying Italian works of art while serving as Rudolf's art agent and making his own pictures. Heintz's paintings included religious images, portraits, and, following the emperor's taste, erotic mythological themes. Agitated figures, shallow depth, and a cool-toned, colorful palette characterize his very personal style. Heintz spent his later career primarily as an architect, mainly in Augsburg and Prague. He designed the east facade of Augsburg's new customs house, basing his architectural forms on his father's ideas and on contemporary architecture in Rome, Venice, and Lombardy.

LINKS
Adonis Parting from Venus (40x31cm; 930x702pix, 129kb)
Diana and Acteon (1596, 40x49cm, 839x1030pix, 120kb)
The Fall of Phaethon (1596, 123x67cm; 1239x680pix, 128kb) _ Phaethon (Greek meaning “Shining,” or “Radiant”), in Greek mythology, was the son of Helios, the sun god, and a woman or nymph variously identified as Clymene, Prote, or Rhode. Taunted with illegitimacy, Phaethon appealed to his father, who swore to prove his paternity by giving him whatever he wanted. Phaethon asked to be allowed to drive the chariot of the sun through the heavens for a single day. Helios, bound by his oath, had to let him make the attempt. Phaethon was to control the horses of the sun chariot, which came too near to the earth and began to scorch it. To prevent further damage, Zeus hurled a thunderbolt at Phaethon, who fell to the earth at the mouth of the Eridanus (later named the Po).
The Abduction of Proserpina (1605, 63x94cm; 750x1158pix, 124kb)
 
^ Died on 15 June 1858: Ary Scheffer, Dutch French Academic painter, sculptor, and lithographer, born on 10 February 1795.
— He received his earliest training in the studio of his parents, German Johann-Bernhard Scheffer [1764–1809] and Dutch Cornelia Scheffer [1769–1839], who were both artists, as was his brother Henri Scheffer [1798–1862]. He then attended the Amsterdam Teeken-Academie (1806–1809). At the first Exhibition of Living Masters in Amsterdam in 1808 he showed Hannibal Swearing to Avenge the Death of his Brother Hasdrubal, a predominantly monochrome and loosely executed painting, which reveals his familiarity with the Dutch pictorial tradition. After his father's death the family moved to Paris in 1809, where he was trained in 1810 by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon and at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1811 by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. Scheffer exhibited at the Salon from 1812. His early work was Neoclassical in style (e.g. Hannibal Swearing to Avenge his Son's Death, 1810) but by 1814 he had introduced color and drama into his work (e.g. Orpheus and Eurydice , 1814). He was highly popular in Paris during the 1830s for his sentimental merging of a highly finished technique and Romantic subject-matter. He worked in a range of genres from portraiture to exotic and literary themes (e.g. Leonora, 1828). He was a supporter of Greek independence, an enthusiast for English and German literature and a friend of Gautier, and therefore could be seen as representing the acceptable face of Romanticism.
— Ary Scheffer was born at Dort in the Netherlands. After the early death of his father, a poor painter, Ary was taken to Paris and placed in the studio of Guérin by his mother, a woman of great energy and character. The moment at which Scheffer left Guérin coincided with the beginning of the Romantic movement. He had little sympathy with the direction given to it by its most prominent representatives, Sigalon, Delacroix, and Géricault, and made various tentative efforts, Gaston de Foix (1824), Suliot Women (1827), before he found his own path. Immediately after the exhibition of the last-named work he turned to Byron and Goethe, selecting from Faust a long series of subjects which had an extraordinary vogue. These include Margaret at her Wheel; Faust Doubting; Margaret at the Sabbat; Margaret Leaving Church; the Garden Walk; and perhaps the most popular of all, Margaret at the Well. The two Migrions appeared in 1836; and Francesca da Rimini, which is Scheffer’s best work, belongs to the same period. He now turned to religious subjects: Christus Consolator (1836) was followed by Christus Remunerator, The Shepherds Led by the Star (1837), The Magi Laying Down their Crowns, Christ in the Garden of Olives, Christ bearing his Cross, Christ Buried (1845), Saints Augustine and Monica (1846), after which he ceased to exhibit, but, shut up in his studio, continued to produce much which was first seen by the outer world after his death, including The Sorrows of the Earth, and The Angel Announcing the Resurrection, which he had left unfinished. Amongst his numerous portraits those of La Fayette, Béranger, Lamartine and Marie Amélie were the most noteworthy.
      His brother Henri Scheffer [27 Sep 1798–] was also a painter.
— Scheffer's students included Thomas Armstrong, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, Gustave Colin, Louis-Joseph-Auguste Coutan, Louis-Joseph Gallait, Charles Landelle, Claudius-Marcel Popelin, Charles Verlat, and ... [take a deep breath] ... Marie-Christine-Caroline-Adélaïde-Françoise-Léopoldine de Bourbon princesse d'Orléans et duchesse de Württemberg.

LINKS
Self-portrait
La Mort de Géricault (1824, 36x46cm; 840x1034pix, 138kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1728pix, 721kb, and admire the network of aging cracks in the paint) _ The death of Géricault [26 Sep 1791 – 26 Jan 1824] at the age of thirty-three came about as a result of an infection following a riding accident, but the circumstances were never satisfactorily explained, and Géricault was thought to have neglected various ailments from which he was already suffering, and even to have attempted suicide. He had struggled to win artistic recognition, and there seemed a tragic inevitability about his end. It was fitting that the Salon of 1824 - often called the 'Romantic' Salon for including so many icons of the movement - should also have contained the moving memorial to Géricault painted by Ary Scheffer. Mourned by his friends, the painter lies on his deathbed in his small room in the rue des Martyrs, his favorite sketches and pictures on the wall above - indeed a martyr to art.
The Ghosts of Paolo and Francesca Appear to Dante and Virgil (1835, 167x234cm; 814x1208pix, 98kb) _ The painting illustrates a famous episode from the fifth canto of Dante's Inferno, in which Dante and Virgil see Paolo and Francesca condemned to the darkness of Hell with the souls of the lustful. This is the prime version of a composition Scheffer repeated several times (the first in 1822) and it has a frame which he specially devised to suit the subject.
— almost identical The Ghosts of Paolo and Francesca Appear to Dante and Virgil (1855, 171x239cm; 770x1141pix, 96kb)
Sérénade sur la Terrasse du Château d'Arenenburg (600x833pix _ ZOOM not recommended to cracked and very blurry 1400x1943pix, 547kb)
Margaret at the Fountain (1852)
The Souliot Women (1827, 248x354cm) {en français ce n'est PAS Les femmes du soûlaud}
Faust and Marguerite in the Garden (1846, 218x135cm)
Saint Augustin et sa Mère Monique (1855, 145x110cm)
Francesca da Rimini (1835)
Mme. Frederick Kent (1847, 119x74cm)
Macbeth et les Sorcières (65x81cm)
 
^ Born on 15 June 1636: Charles de La Fosse (or de Lafosse, Delafosse), French Baroque era painter who died on 13 December 1716. He studied under Charles Le Brun and was an uncle of Antoine Pesne.
— De La Fosse's decorative historical and allegorical murals, while continuing a variant of the stately French Baroque manner of the 17th century, began to develop a lighter, more brightly colored style that presaged the Rococo painting of the 18th century. The greatest influence on La Fosse's painting was the work of his teacher, Charles Le Brun, the dictator of artistic matters in France during the reign of King Louis XIV. La Fosse was also impressed with the works of the 16th-century Italians Francesco Primaticcio (whose visible work was all in France), Titian, and Paolo Veronese, which he studied during his five-year stay in Rome and Venice (from 1658). In 1689-91 La Fosse decorated Montagu House in London. His greatest work was the decoration of the cupola of the Church of Les Invalides in Paris (1705), while the Sacrifice of Iphigenia and The Sunrise are his most important works in the style of Charles Le Brun. More significant to later artists, however, are his smaller works, such as The Finding of Moses (1680), remarkable for their use of light and their fresh color sense. He became a member of the Royal Academy in 1673 and was named chancellor in 1715.

LINKS
The Finding of Moses (1680, 125x110cm; 880x766pix, 106kb) _ After the reorganization of the Paris Academy in 1661 by Louis XIV (whose aim was to control all the artistic activity in France) a controversy occurred among the members that was to dominate artistic attitudes for the rest of the century. This was what has been described as the 'battle of styles', the conflict over whether Rubens or Poussin was a suitable model to follow. Poussin's art from his mature period was an ideal model for an academic teacher because his pictures followed such a precise sequence of rules in the placing of figures and in facial expressions. On the other hand, the sensuality of Rubens, both in form and color, was an ideal model to imitate when painting on a grand scale was required, especially for a palace decoration. The sides were never reconciled in theory: the views of the Rubenists and the Poussinists were too opposed; but a surprising number of painters combined the characteristics of both sources, to produce a hybrid art that set the standard for the rest of the century. One of the earliest and best of the painters involved in the battle of styles was Charles de La Fosse whose style already looks forward to the 18th century. La Fosse's color is Rubensian, but his compositions are classically inspired. Few painters of the time had La Fosse's energy, and his most important achievement was the decoration of the interior of the dome of Les Invalides in Paris toward the end of his career in the 1690s. The Finding of Moses is remarkable for its use of light and fresh color sense.
The Temptation of Christ (152kb)
L'Adoration par les mages (1715, 427x447cm; 732x768pix, 66kb) _ Cette vaste composition, marquée par le souvenir de Véronèse et de Rubens, a été peinte pour le décor du choeur de Notre-Dame, réalisé entre 1715 et 1717. L'ensemble comprenait encore une Nativité par de la Fosse, et d'autres scènes de la vie de la Vierge, par Claude-Guy Hallé, Jean Jouvenet, Louis de Boulogne, Antoine Coypel.
 
^ Died on 15 June 1938: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, German Expressionist painter and sculptor, commits suicide after destroying much of his artwork, despondent over what the Nazis were doing. He was born on 06 May 1880.
— Kirchner entered the Technische Hochschule (Technical College) in Dresden in 1901 to study architecture. In 1903-1904 he studied painting in Munich, attending art classes at the school of Wilhelm von Debschitz and Hermann Obrist. His visits to the museums and exhibitions in Munich and a short stay in Nuremberg, where he saw Albrecht Dürer's original woodblocks, made him decide to become a painter. After his return to Dresden he formed Die Brücke on 07 June 1905, with his new friends Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Theirs was a polemical program, calling on all youth to fight for greater artistic freedom against the older, well-established powers.
      In November 1905 Die Brücke exhibited their work (watercolors, drawings, and woodcuts) for the first time as a group. They worked together in rented storefront studios and sought other artistic companions as well as supporters, called "passive members." Emil Nolde joined the group for a short time; among the other artists who joined were Cuno Amiet, Axel Gallen-Kallela, Otto Mueller, and Max Pechstein.
      The idealism and enthusiasm of Kirchner and the other young Brucke artists can be measured by their extraordinary production. The rapid development of their personal styles was partly a result of their frenetic activity, including life drawing and painting at the Moritzburg lakes near Dresden, at the island of Fehmarn, and in their studios, as well as the production of woodcuts, lithographs, and an incredible number of drawings. In his search for an increasingly simplified form of expression, Kirchner was strongly influenced, as were his colleagues, by the art of the Oceanic and African peoples. When the group relocated to Berlin in 1910-11, Kirchner 's response to the confrontation with the metropolis resulted in the bold works that epitomize the hectic life in Berlin.
      Die Brücke continued to exhibit as a group in the major German cities (Berlin, Darmstadt, Dresden, Dusseldorf, Hamburg and Leipzig) and in traveling exhibitions to smaller communities. The group's fifth annual graphics portfolio (1910) was devoted to Kirchner's work. In 1912 Die Brücke was invited to participate in the Sonderbund Exhibition in Cologne, where Heckel, Kirchner, and Schmidt-Rottluff were also commissioned to create a chapel. In that year they also exhibited in Moscow and Prague, at the second Blaue Reiter (Blue rider) show in Munich, and in Berlin at the Galerie Gurlitt. Kirchner was regarded as the leader of the group, but when in 1913 it was suggested that he compose a history of Die Brücke, the others took offense at his egocentric account, and the group broke up.
      At the outbreak of the First World War Kirchner volunteered for the army, but he could not stand the discipline and constant subordination. He suffered a nervous breakdown and was temporarily furloughed and moved to a sanatorium, where he was able to complete several important paintings and the color woodcuts to illustrate Chamisso's story of Peter Schlemihl (1916). A growing dependency on Veronal (sleeping pills), morphine and alcohol did not hinder him from painting frescoes for the Konigstein Sanatorium and a number of other works.
      In 1917 Kirchner moved to Switzerland, where he was supported by the collector Dr. Carl Hagemann, the architect Henri van de Velde, and the family of his physician, Dr. Spengler. He slowly recovered, while continuing to work on paintings and woodcuts. His works were exhibited in Switzerland and Germany. In 1921 he had fifty works on view at the Kronprinzenpalais (Nationalgalerie) in Berlin, which were praised by critics and established his reputation as the leading Expressionist. In 1925-26 he made his first long trip back to Germany. He stayed for a while in Dresden with his biographer, Will Grohmann, and visited the dancer Mary Wigman. His intense work on paintings, woodcuts, and sculpture expanded to include designs for the weaver Lise Guyer and, more importantly, for the decoration of the great hall of the Museum Folkwang in Essen: work never to be completed, since the Nazis seized the museum in 1933.
      From 1936 onward Kirchner was increasingly disturbed by news of the Nazis' attack on modern art, occupation of Austria, and ban on the exhibition of his work in Germany. The stress of these circumstances and the onset of illness led him to destroy all of his woodblocks and some of his sculpture and to burn many of his other works.

LINKS
Selbstbildnis mit Hut (1905; 600x349pix _ ZOOM to 1400x814pix _ ZOOM+ to 3400x1976pix; 1153kb)
Selbstbildnis mit Pfeife (1905; 600x1084pix, 248kb _ ZOOM to 1400x2530pix, 921kb)
Selbstporträt (1906; 600x281pix, 85kb _ ZOOM to 1400x655pix; 238kb)
Selbstbildnis als Soldat (1915, 69 x 61 cm; 765x667pix, 127kb) _ Painted in 1915, this self-portrait documents the artist's fear that the war would destroy his creative powers and in a broader sense symbolizes the reactions of the artists of his generation who suffered the kind of physical and mental damage Kirchner envisaged in this painting. A photo of Kirchner in his studio, wearing a soldier's uniform probably dates from 1915, when he volunteered to serve as a driver in the artillery in order to avoid being drafted for less desirable duties. The photograph shows him confident and relaxed, standing at ease and holding a cigarette in his right hand. Soon after this moment, however, Kirchner was declared unfit for service (due to general weakness and lung problems) and was sent to recuperate in Halle on the Saale. He painted the Self-Portrait as a Soldier during this reprieve; a "metaphorical autobiography," it reveals his unshakeable, almost pathological, fear of the effects of war on himself as an artist and a human being. In the Oberlin painting Kirchner depicts himself in the uniform of the Mansfelder Feldartillerieregiment Nr. 75 in Halle/Saale. His face is drawn, a cigarette hangs loosely from between his lips, and his eyes remain unseeing and empty, without pupils and with the iris reflecting the blue of his uniform. The lost right hand and bloody stump stand for a terrible litany of losses: of his ability to paint, and of his creativity, artistic vision, and inspiration. In a larger sense, Kirchner also expresses anxiety for his potency and manhood. There is little compositional connection between the artist and the nude woman seen behind him; earlier self-portraits, on the other hand -- the Self-Portrait at Dawn, a lithograph of 1906, or Self-Portrait with Model, an oil painting of 1907 -- are dominated by an erotic tension between the model and the artist. In those works the artist paints confidently while smoking a pipe. In the Oberlin self-portrait, the model and canvas function as quotations from a past that had become completely irrelevant in the face of the artist's mutilation. Another important self-portrait from this period, The Drinker, was painted in 1915 in Kirchner's Berlin studio, before he was sent to Halle. This self-portrait conveys Kirchner's despair about his situation, a despair that turned into horror in the Oberlin painting. On the intervention of his commanding officer, Hans Fehr, a former lay member of Die Brücke and a friend of Emil Nolde, Kirchner was sent to a sanatorium at Königstein in Taunus, where he spent 1916. The artist's weakened condition, exacerbated by alcoholism and drug abuse, failed to improve, and in 1917 Kirchner was sent to Davos for further treatment. He later was moved to the Staffelalp in Davos/Frauenkirch, where he created numerous woodcuts, portraits, and landscapes. In October of 1917 he began to suffer from paralysis of the hands and feet, for which he sought a cure in Kreutzlingen in Switzerland. Kirchner's nightmarish vision in the Oberlin self-portrait seems eerily prescient of this condition. Stylistically, the Oberlin self-portrait is comparable to Kirchner's Berlin street scenes of 1913-15, in which he employed a similarly "primitive" and sculptural manner with broken, angular lines and short crosshatched brushstrokes, indicative of his increasing interest in woodcuts. In 1919, after Kirchner settled in Frauenkirch near Davos, his style became calmer and more monumental in keeping with his new subject matter, the alpine landscape and its inhabitants. Kirchner continued to work productively after his retreat to Davos. Yet the fears expressed in the Oberlin self-portrait were realized to the extent that his mental and physical health were shattered and, in order to be able to work, he remained a recluse. Kirchner's experiences in the war certainly hastened his untimely death.
Kopf des Malers (Selbstbildnis) (1925; 600x492pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1148pix)
Selbstbildnis (1914; 600x420pix _ ZOOM to 1400x980pix)
Self-Portrait with Model (917x598pix, 88kb)
Selbstbildnis (Doppelbildnis mit Erna) (1915; 600x455pix _ ZOOM to 1340x1062pix, 384kb)
Drei Künstler: Hermann Scherer, Kirchner, Paul Camenisch (1926; 600x492pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1148pix)
A Group of Artists: Otto Mueller, Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff (871x630pix; 80kb)
Seated Girl (Fränzi Fehrmann) (1920, 81x91cm; 806x911pix, 600kb _ ZOOM to 1239x1400pix, 1452kb _ ZOOM+ to 1903x2151pix, 2998kb)
Dance Training (1920, 119x89cm; 1194x871pix, 882kb _ ZOOM to 2369x1728pix, 2952kb) _ The many nudes (here improbably including the aspiring dancer, but not the trainer) in Kirchner's works reflect his interest in sexual freedom and the contemporary cults of nudity and athleticism. He also frequently used the dance atelier to symbolize his own studio, a communal workshop for members of Die Brücke. By combining nude figures with studio settings, Kirchner evoked the frank spontaneity and bohemian sensuality so admired by all the Brücke painters.
Modern Bohemia (1924, 165x125cm; 982x1278pix, 1073kb _ ZOOM to 1774x2308pix, 3020kb) _ In 1906, Kirchner co-founded the Dresden expressionist group known as Die Brucke, an avant-garde movement that investigated the realities and fantasies of a life lived with freedom, intensity, and eroticism. Modern and non-western arts were the means of their exploration, with study of the nude at the center of their practice. Kirchner brings all these elements together in Modern Bohemia, a depiction of his lodgings in Switzerland, to express the ideal creative environment. The forms of artist, author, nude, and female spectator are united with those of Caucasian carpets and sculptural objects inspired by tribal art in a complex balance of form, pattern and color. The artist's modulation of color intensity and placement of horizontal and vertical brushstrokes evoke a woven surface effect that firmly places this painting in what is known as Kirchner's "tapestry" period. This painting was confiscated by the Nazis shortly before or after the 30 June 1937 decree by Joseph Goebbels against Entartete Kunst. Am 30. Juni 1937 liess Goebbels per Dekret Werke der «entarteten» Kunst, die entweder «das deutsche Gefühl beleidigen oder die natürliche Form zerstören oder verstümmeln oder sich durch fehlendes angemessenes handwerkliches oder künstlerisches Können auszeichnen», beschlagnahmen. In der propagandistischen Wanderausstellung «Entartete Kunst» wurden die wichtigsten Maler der Moderne aufs schändlichste diffamiert. Die systematische Plünderung der eigenen Museen wurde bis 1938 fortgesetzt. Nach Möglichkeit wurden die Werke ins Ausland verkauft.
Artistin – Marcella (1910; 600x448pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1045pix)
Zirkusreiterin (1912; 600x505pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1179pix _ ZOOM+ not recommended to 1707x1437pix, 3290kb, except for those who are interested in the weave of the canvas) _ Compare Le Cirque (1891; 1100x903pix, 425kb) by Seurat
Bern with Belltower (1935, 71x81cm; 705x804pix, 243kb _ ZOOM to 1156x1318pix _ ZOOM+ to 1895x2161pix, 2877kb)
View of Dresden: Schlossplatz (1926, 120x150cm; 785x1000pix, 588kb _ ZOOM to 1186x1511pix _ ZOOM+ to 1793x2284pix, 2722kb)
Girl Under a Japanese Parasol (1909, 92x80cm; 950x844pix)
Two Women in the Street (1045x788pix)

59 prints at FAMSF
—(060614)
^ Born on 15 June 1594: Nicolas Poussin, French Baroque painter and etcher who died on 19 November 1665. His classicism influenced generations of French painters, including David, Delacroix, and Cézanne.
—       Nicolas Poussin, the greatest French artist of the 17th century, is considered one of the founders of the European classicism, the movement in art, based on antique and Renaissance heritage.
      Poussin was born in Les-Andelys, Normandy. The son of an impoverished family, Poussin received some early professional training at home. In 1612 Poussin left for Paris, where he entered the workshop of the mannerist painter J. Lallemald. The training was reinforced by independent study of mainly Italian art in the Royal Collections. By the end of 1610s Poussin became authoritative master, the evidence of this are his commissions for decoration for the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, and the big altarpiece Assumption of Virgin. Unfortunately from the works of the first Paris period (1612-1623) only drawings on Ovid’s Metamorphoses survived.
      In 1623 the artist came to Italy, first to Venice, where he enriched his French training with the sensuous splendor of Venetian painting. And in 1624 he came to Rome, where he stayed all his life, except for his trip to Paris in 1640-42. Poussin’s new friends in Rome were mainly classical scholars, who played the main role in turning Poussin into a philosopher, erudite and intellectual. The 1620s in Italy were for Poussin the years of intensive learning, and active creative work. Within four years he achieved a young painter’s highest aim, he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for a chapel in St. Peter’s Cathedral Martyrdom of St. Erasmus (1628-29). At that period he acquired the dynamic style already dominant in Europe, the style that we now know as Baroque. It was at this time that he produced the most baroque of all his pictures, the altarpiece The Virgin of the Pillar Appearing to St. James the Greater, which was ordered for a church in the Spanish Netherlands. Eventually this work reached not the town of Valenciennes but the collection of Cardinal Richelieu and finally came to Louis XIII and to the Louvre. Poussin was evidently frustrated and disappointed by his lack of success in the intensely competitive field of baroque altarpiece painting. He never attempted this style again.
      After a short crisis he chose the more restrained and intellectual direction of development, which appealed to the learned tastes of his Roman friends. In 1629 Poussin married his landlord’s daughter. The first Roman period (1624-30) on the whole is characterized by mythological themes, with sweet love, poetical inspiration, carefree happiness in harmony with nature.
      In the next decade history became the main subject of Poussin’s work. The artist is attracted by the situations, in which moral qualities of people reveal themselves. In pictures of 1630s the compositions are complex and compound with many characters, they remind the classical tragedy on stage. Poussin used a special box and wax figures: first he built his compositions, then started to draw preliminary sketches, and only then painted. The best-known works of the period are – The Rescue of Pyrrhus (1634), The Noble Deed of Scipio (1640). The very popular in his time were the so-called bacchanal series, commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu. One of them, which survived, is Triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite (1634). Those paintings were supposed to decorate the cardinal’s palace, and this fact indicates that the interest to Poussin in France grew. In the second half of 1630s the young artists in Paris chose to follow Poussin’s style in historical genre. The King’s officials wanted to return the artist to France. Poussin did not hurry back. He came to France only in 1840, after they had passed him the King’s threat. In Paris Poussin was immediately appointed the person in charge of all art works in King’s palaces. This caused the violent jealousy on the part of other court artists; Vouet headed the opposition.
For about two years Poussin painted altarpieces, canvases for Richelieu and supervised the decorative works in the Big Gallery in Louvre. Surrounded by hatred and jealousy, Poussin did not finish the work and fled to Rome. His artistic and moral ideals stood in conflict with those of monarch.
      In his late Roman period (1642-65) Poussin continued to work mainly in historical genre. The most important work of that period is the series Seasons (1660-64).
      Poussin’s work influenced the further development of European painting. His authoritative interpretations of ancient history and Greek and Roman mythology left their mark on European art down to the 19th century.
— Poussin's students included Charles Le Brun.

Poussin was a leader of pictorial classicism in the Baroque period. Except for two years as court painter to Louis XIII, he spent his entire career in Rome. His paintings of scenes from the Bible and from Greco-Roman antiquity influenced generations of French painters, including Jacques-Louis David, J.-A.-D. Ingres, and Paul Cézanne.
Childhood and early travels
Poussin was born in a small hamlet on the Seine River, the son of small farmers. He was educated at the nearby town of Les Andelys, and he apparently did not show any interest in the arts until the painter Quentin Varin visited the village in 1612 to produce several paintings for the Church of Le Grand Andely. Poussin's interest in the arts was awakened, and he decided to become a painter. As this was impossible in Les Andelys, he left his home, going first to Rouen and then to Paris to find a suitable teacher. His poverty and ignorance made this search very difficult. He found no satisfactory master and studied at different times under several minor painters. During this period Poussin endured great hardships and had to return to his paternal home, where he arrived ill and humiliated.
Recovering after a year, Poussin again set out for Paris, not only to continue his studies but also to pursue another aim. While previously in Paris, he had been exposed to the art of the Italian High Renaissance through reproductions of Raphael's paintings. These engravings, according to his biographer Giovanni Battista Passeri, inspired him to go to Rome, which was then the center of the European art world. But only in 1624 was Poussin successful in reaching Rome, with the help of Giambattista Marino, the Italian court poet to Marie de Médicis.
First Roman period
Marino commissioned Poussin to make a series of mythological drawings illustrating Ovid's Metamorphoses. Poussin meanwhile experimented with various painting styles then current in Rome, an important influence being that of the Bolognese painter Domenichino. Poussin's culminating work of this period was a large altarpiece for St. Peter's representing the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus (1629). But it was a comparative failure with the artistic community in Rome, and Poussin never again tried to compete with the Italian masters of the Baroque style on their own ground. Thereafter he would paint only for private patrons and would confine his work to formats rarely larger than five feet in length.
Between Poussin's arrival in Rome in 1624 and his departure for France in 1640 he came to know many of Rome's most influential people, among them Cassiano dal Pozzo, secretary to Cardinal Barberini, whose rich collection of ancient Roman artifacts had a decisive influence upon Poussin's art. Through Pozzo, who became Poussin's patron, the French painter became a fervent admirer of ancient Roman civilization. From about 1629 to 1633 Poussin took his themes from classical mythology and from Torquato Tasso, and his painterly style became more romantic and poetic under the influence of such Venetian masters as Titian. Such examples of his work at this time as The Arcadian Shepherds (1629) and Rinaldo and Armida (c. 1629) have sensuous, glowing colors and manage to communicate a true feeling for pagan antiquity.
In the mid-1630s Poussin began deliberately to turn toward Raphael and Roman antiquity for his inspiration and to evolve the purely classical idiom that he was to retain for the rest of his life. He also began painting religious themes once more. He began with stories that offered a good pageant, such as The Worship of the Golden Calf (1636) and The Rape of the Sabine Women (1637). He went on to choose incidents of deeper moral significance in which human reactions to a given situation constitute the main interest. The most important works that exemplify this phase are those in the series of Seven Sacraments painted in 1634-42 for Pozzo. While other artists painted in the style of the Roman Baroque, Poussin tried in these works to fashion a style marked by classical clarity and monumentality. This style was inspired by Roman pre-Christian architecture and Latin books on moral conduct, as well as by the nobility and greatness of Raphael's works, which, as he believed, had renewed the spirit of antiquity.
Painter to Louis XIII
Between 1638 and 1639 Poussin's achievements in Rome attracted the attention of the French court. Louis XIII's powerful minister Cardinal Richelieu tried to persuade Poussin to return to France. Eventually Poussin reluctantly acceded to this request, journeying to Paris in 1640. Though received with great honors, Poussin nevertheless soon found himself in trouble with the ministers of the king as well as with the French artists, whom he met with the utmost arrogance. He was offered commissions for kinds of work he was not used to nor really qualified to execute, including altarpieces and the decoration of the Grande Gallerie of the Louvre palace. What he produced did not elicit the praise he expected, so he left Paris in defeat in 1642 and returned to Rome. Unfortunately he did not live to see his own style of painting accepted and eventually glorified by the French Academy in the late 17th century.
Second Roman period
Many of Poussin's paintings on religious and ancient Roman subjects done in the 1640s and '50s are concerned with moments of crisis or difficult moral choice, and his heroes are those who reject vice and the pleasures of the senses in favor of virtue and the dictates of reason - e.g., Coriolanus, Scipio, Phocion, and Diogenes. Poussin's painterly style was consciously calculated to express such a mood of austere rectitude: such solemn religious works as Holy Family on the Steps (1648) exhibit only a few figures, painted in harsh colors against the severest possible background. In the landscapes Poussin began painting at this time, such as Landscape with the Body of Phocion Carried out of Athens (1648) and Landscape with Polyphemus (1649), the disorder of nature is reduced to the order of geometry, and the forms of trees and shrubs are made to approach the condition of architecture. The composition in these paintings is worked out very carefully and has an unusual clarity of structure.
Poussin's health declined from 1660 onward, and early in 1665 he ceased to paint. He died that year and was buried in San Lorenzo in Lucina, his Roman parish church.
Assessment
Poussin believed in reason as the guiding principle of art, yet his figures are never merely cold or lifeless. They may resemble figures used by Raphael or ancient Roman sculptures in their poses, but they retain a strange and unmistakable vitality of their own. Even in Poussin's late period, when all movement, including gesture and facial expression, had been reduced to a minimum, his forms harmoniously combine vitality with intellectual order.

LINKS
Self-Portrait (1649; 78x65cm; 1000x843pix, 94kb) _ This is an earlier version of the 1650 self-portrait. Poussin had done the earlier version to replace a disappointing portrait of himself which his Parisian patrons commissioned from a Roman artist. The most conspicuous motif of the earlier self-portrait is the "memento mori". The artist present himself before a sepulchral monument — anticipating his own — flanked by putti; the expression on his face is almost cheerful. Viewed from a distance he appears to be smiling, while his head, inclined slightly to one side, suggest a melancholic mood. Cheerfulness in the face of death demonstrated the composure of the Stoics, a philosophy for which Poussin had some sympathy.
Self-Portrait (1650; 94x78cm; 697x911pix, 100kb) _ In this self-portrait the artist, wearing a dark green gown and with a stole thrown over his shoulders, is shown in a slightly different pose than in the 1649 version: posture is erect, his head turned to present an almost full-face view. His facial expression is more solemn, but also less decided. Instead of funeral symbolism, the setting is the artist's studio, lent strangely abstract quality by a staggered arrangement of three framed canvases, one behind the other, whose quadratic structure is echoed by the dark doorframe behind them. It is apparent that the canvas nearest to us is empty, except for a painted inscription. At the left on the second canvas there is a woman in front of a landscape, wearing a diadem with an eye; a man's hands are reaching out to hold her shoulders. This has been interpreted as an allegory: painting crowned as the greatest of arts. A tiny but highly significant detail is the ring Poussin is wearing on the little finger of his right hand, which rests on a fastened portfolio. The stone is cut in a four-sided pyramid. As an emblematic motif, this symbolized the Stoic notion of Constantia, or stability and strength of character.
–- The Holy Family with Ten Figures (1650, 84x109cm)
–- Apollon et les Muses (1639, 125x197cm)
–- Adoration du Veau d'Or (1634, 154x214cm) _ How Nicolas Poussin the son of a Norman farmer became Nicolas Poussin 'painter-philosopher' in Rome, with 'a mind...as it were naturalised in antiquity', is one of the great triumphs of pertinacity over circumstance. Few artists of his importance have had such inadequate training, or found their true vocation so late. His interest in art was aroused by a minor itinerant painter working in a local church in Les Andelys. In the same year, 1611-1612, Poussin left home for Paris. After years of hardship, and two unsuccessful attempts to reach Rome, he attracted favourable attention in 1622 with six paintings for the Jesuits. In 1624 he finally settled in Rome, firmly intent on emulating Raphael and ancient sculpture.
      Poussin's early period in Italy was barely easier than his years in Paris. As well as Raphael, engravings, statuary and a famous ancient wall-painting then in a princely collection, he studied Domenichino and Guido Reni and discovered Titian, whose Bacchus and Ariadne among other mythological scenes had just been brought to Rome from Ferrara. Not until he was about 35 did Poussin find his own voice, and patrons to heed it. From about 1630, with the exception of an unhappy interlude in Paris working for the king in 1640-2, he mainly painted smallish canvases for private collectors. Out of his very limitations, he created a new kind of art: the domestic 'history painting' with full-length but small-scale figures, for the edification and delight of the few. Seldom has a painter been more intense, more serious and, in the event, more influential.
      The Adoration of the Golden Calf was originally paired with The Crossing of the Red Sea. Both illustrate episodes from Exodus in the Old Testament; this painting relates to chapter 32. In the wilderness of Sinai the children of Israel, disheartened by Moses' long absence, asked Aaron to make them gods to lead them. Having collected all their gold earrings, Aaron melted them down into the shape of a calf, which they worshipped. In the background on the left Moses and Joshua come down from Mount Sinai with the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Hearing singing and seeing 'the calf and the dancing...Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.' The tall bearded figure in white is Aaron still 'making proclamation' of a feast to the false god.
      Poussin is said to have made little figures of clay to use as models, and the story is confirmed by the dancers in the foreground. They are a mirror image of a pagan group of nymphs and satyrs carousing in Poussin's earlier Bacchanalian Revel (1633, 100x143cm). Within a majestic landscape painted in the bold colors Poussin learned from Titian, before a huge golden idol more bull than calf (and many earrings' worth), these Israelite revellers give homage to the potency of Poussin's vision of antiquity. As on a sculpted relief or painted Greek vase, figures are shown in suspended animation, heightened gestures or movements isolated from those of their neighbours, so that the effect of the whole is at one and the same time violent and static.
–- Enlèvement des Sabines (1635, 155x210cm) _ Although Poussin spent almost the whole of his working life in Rome, he was the greatest as well as the most influential painter of 17th-century France. His authoritative interpretations of ancient history and Greek and Roman mythology left their mark on European art down to the time of David and Ingres. Here he shows Romulus, ruler of the newly founded city of Rome, giving a prearranged signal with his cloak for the Roman soldiers to carry off the Sabine women to become their wives, thereby establishing themselves permanently in their new home. The Sabine men, who had come unarmed to what they thought would be a religious celebration, are put to flight. The subject enabled Poussin to display to the full his unsurpassed archaeological knowledge and his mastery of dramatic interpretation.
The Abduction of the Sabine Women (1638, 159x206cm; 682x907pix, 128kb
; _ ZOOMable) _ This is the second version of the subject by Poussin the first being in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The principal figures are somewhat less dramatic and better clothed than those in the first version, and the architectural background is more developed.
–- Boaz et Ruth
–- Jésus et la Femme Adultère
–- Jésus Guérissant l'Aveugle
The Adoration by the Shepherds (98x74cm; _ ZOOMable)
The Death of Germanicus (1627, 148x198cm) _ detail (_ ZOOMable) _ The first important commission Poussin received was from Cardinal Francesco Barberini at the end of 1626, for The Death of Germanicus. The picture was completed early in 1628 and immediately became famous. The subject was inspired by the Annals of Tacitus. This was the first of the deathbed scenes that Poussin was to favor throughout his life. The figures are arranged in a frieze-like composition which was almost certainly derived from the arrangement of figures on classical sarcophagi. Already, too, there is a preoccupation with classical antiquity and its intensely moral approach to life. In his pictures Poussin was to become obsessed by morality, and with man facing the supreme trial: how to face death with equanimity.
— The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus (320x186cm; _ ZOOMable)
The Massacre of the Innocents (147x171cm; _ ZOOMable)
The Plague of Ashdod (148x198cm) _ detail (_ ZOOMable)
The Triumph of David (1627, 117x146cm) _ detail (_ ZOOMable)
The Triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite (1634, 115x147cm; 717x926pix) _ detail 1 _ detail 2
–- Bacchanale Before a Temple (75x101cm, copy; 484x659pix, 35kb _ ZOOM _ ZOOM+)
Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake (1648, 119x199cm; 670x1101pix, 93kb)
—(060614)

Died on a 15 June:

>2003 Enrico Baj [31 Oct 1924–], Italian anarchist painter and sculptor.
La Profetessa (1972; 3321x2249pix, 1105kb)
Red Eye Special (1967; 1500x1294pix, 346kb)
— The Funeral of the Anarchist Pinelli (1972)
— Guernica _ inspired by
      _ Guernica (1078x2325pix, 4kb) by Picasso [25 Oct 1881 – 08 Apr 1973].
— Apocalypse —(090614)

^ 1915 Eugene Fredrik Jansson, Swedish painter, born on 18 March 1862.
Ring Gymnast No. 2 (1912, 190x200cm) _ The extraordinary position of the figure (hanging at a slant, head down, with one hand, its arm behind the back, from a gym ring) creates an abstract composition in this large painting based on sketches of sailors working out in a Stockholm bathhouse. By his use of thinly brushed paint applied directly from the tube and by outlining the figure in blue, Jansson further abstracts the dramatic presentation of the foreshortened arching figure in an athletic pose that seems to defy gravity.

1901 Josep Lluís Pellicer i Fenyé (= José Luis Pellicer y Feñer) [12 May 1842–], Catalan genre painter, caricaturist, illustrator, and draftsman. —(090614)

1859 David Cox I, British painter born (full coverage) on 29 April 1783.

^ 1784 Michel Barthélémy Ollivier (or Olivier), French painter born in 1712. He served his apprenticeship with Carle Vanloo before going to Spain in 1734 with van Loo’s nephew, Louis-Michel, who was appointed court painter to King Philip V that year. Ollivier returned to France in 1763 and joined the Académie de Saint Luc, Paris, where he exhibited a portrait of his wife in 1764. In 1766 he was approved (agréé) by the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, and he became the official painter of Louis François I, Prince of Conti [1716–1776]. His four major surviving works were painted for this new patron: Afternoon Tea at the Temple (1776); Feast Given to the Prince of Brunswick–Lüneburg at l’Isle-Adam (1766), Stag Caught in the Water in front of the Château of l’Isle-Adam, and Supper of the Prince of Conti. The first three of these pictures were shown at the Salon of 1777, as was Telemachus and Mentor. In 1769 and 1771 he showed two versions of The Death of Cleopatra; in 1767 he exhibited a Massacre of the Innocents; and to the Salon de la Correspondance of 1782 he submitted a picture of Henri IV and the Duke of Sully. Apart from these history paintings, Ollivier regularly exhibited portraits and attractive, finely colored conversations espagnoles — exotic, two-figure genre pieces. The main features of his style are his felicitous and effective choice of warm color harmonies and his meticulous and delicate brushwork.
Thé à l'anglaise servi dans le Salon des Quatre-Glaces au Palais du Temple à Paris (Jun 1776; 439x576pix, 32kb) _ It is at the residence of Prince Louis-François de Conti, cousin of Louis XV and Grand Prieur du Temple. The 10-year-old at the clavecin is Mozart [27 Jan 1756 – 05 Dec 1791], who stayed in Paris from 10 May 1766 to 09 July 1766 during this particular visit. The opera singer Pierre Jélyotte [13 Apr 1713 – 11 Sep 1797] is playing the guitar (see portraits of Jélyotte).


Born on a 15 June:


^ 1903 Victor Brauner, Moldavian painter, sculptor, and draftsman, active in France, who died (main coverage) on 12 March 1966. —(080613)

>1838 Carl Kundmann, Viennese sculptor who died on 09 Jun 1919.

^ >1805 Anton Winterlin (or Winterle), Swiss painter who died on 30 March 1894. — {I find on the internet not much artwork by Winterlin, and none at all by Springlin or Summerlin. As for Fallin, he may have been a drill sergeant.}
–- Blick vom Hasliberg auf die Hochalpen (752x1100pix, 56kb)
Blick gegen Brunnen und Seelisberg mit Urirotstock (1878)
Landschaft in Berner Oberland (1851)
Look for the high nightmares of the Hasliberg (376x550pix, 58kb) —(080613)


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