Daily Art Fixx

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Rembrandt van Rijn: 1606-1669

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The Anatomy Lecture of Dr. Nicolaes - Rembrandt van RijnEven among the credible sources, facts and dates about Rembrandt van Rijn’s life are varied. Much of the existing information about Rembrandt originates from a 350-word essay published in 1641 by Jan Orlers’ guidebook to Leiden. Some research supports Orlers’ work while others contradict it. No personal letters remain and from the few professional ones, our knowledge of Rembrandt, one of the world’s most famous artists, remains incomplete. Included in this summary are details that appear to be consistent across texts.

Son of a prosperous miller, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born in Leiden on July 15, 1606. He attended Leiden Latin School from 1615-19 and was enrolled at Leiden University in 1620.  He then left the university to study with the Leiden artist Jacob van Swanenburgh.

In 1624, Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam to apprentice with the leading history painter in the Netherlands, Pieter Lastman, whose colourful style and narrative approach would be an influence on Rembrandt’s work throughout his life. Rembrandt returned to Leiden six months later and established his own studio.

Rembrandt moved back to Amsterdam permanently in 1631 and partnered with art dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh to capitalize on the growing market for history paintings and portraits. Rembrandt was interested in stories from the Old and New Testaments and preferred painting realistic emotion and narrative detail. He quickly became one of the most sought after portrait painters (individual and group) in the Netherlands, introducing more animation, expression and dramatic contrasts of light and dark. During this time, many students came to the van Uylenburgh Academy to study Rembrandt’s style of painting.

In 1634, Rembrandt married van Uylenburgh’s niece, Saskia. At the height of his career in 1639 he bought a large house on the Sint-Anthonisbreestraat that he borrowed heavily to acquire. The artist also liked to spend money, purchasing art and other objects that were beyond his means, a habit that would eventually catch up with him.

In 1642, Saskia died after the third birth and death of another one of their children, leaving Rembrandt to care for their son Titus. Following the complicated end to his common-law relationship with Titus’s nurse, Geertje Dircks, Rembrandt met Hendrickje Stoffels who would be his lifelong companion, and with whom he had his daughter, Cornelia.

By the late 1640s, Rembrandt was receiving fewer portrait commissions and his failed investments resulted in financial strain for the artist. Rembrandt remained well known, but his vigorous, broad brushwork and glowing palette differed from the prevailing taste in the Netherlands for a smooth, elegant style of painting.

This was also a period filled with personal difficulties, including his declaration of insolvency in 1656 and the sale of his house and collections in 1657 and 1658. Rembrandt moved to a smaller house on the Rozengracht in the Jordaan area of Amsterdam, where he continued fulfilling commissions for portraits and other works.

Beyond painting, Rembrandt created about 300 etchings and drypoints. His work as a printmaker ran alongside his career as a painter. He was a great innovator in this medium, often using traditional materials in unconventional ways. His impact on printmaking is still reflected in etchings produced today.

Rembrandt outlived both Hendrickje, who died in 1663, and Titus, who died in 1668. Rembrandt died on October 4, 1669 at the age of 63. With no money for a tombstone, he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Westerkerk, in Amsterdam.

Sources: Getty Museum, Met Museum, Met Museum(2),Wikipedia

DAF Group Feature: Vol. 162

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Your Weekly Mixx! DAF’s Weekly Mixx is a selection of nine contemporary artworks and/or art related videos chosen from artist and gallery submissions and from our own search for new and interesting works. This week, we feature Clara Drummond, Hopare, Stephanie Buer, Terence Koh, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Mohammad Zaza, massju, Leisa Rich and the video Human Sound Objects, an interactive installation in which every participant becomes an object in an ever-evolving soundscape – by Giori Politi, Doron Assayas Terre and Eran Hilleli for the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, 2016.

Visit the Submissions page for information on how to have your art featured in the Weekly Mixx.

Father’s Day: Portrait of the Artist’s Father

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Happy Father’s Day all you dads out there!  In honour of this special day, DAF presents a selection of well known portraits of artist’s fathers.  Throughout history, artists have painted their fathers for numerous reasons; “as a tribute, to capture a memorable face, to work through conflicting emotions, as a family legacy, or the simple availability of a model.”

Have a great day everyone!

 

Sources: Wikipedia, National Portrait Gallery

Egon Schiele: 1890-1918

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Born on June 12, 1890, in Tulln, Austria Egon Schiele was a major figure of the Austrian Expressionist movement.

Schiele began drawing as a child and in 1906, at the age of sixteen, attended the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. During these years, he was strongly influenced by Gustav Klimt and the Vienna Secession artists whose style emphasized flowing line and ornamentation. Schiele and Klimt had met in 1907 and Klimt was supportive of the young artist. He introduced Schiele to his own models and patrons, and helped him find work. He also included Schiele in the 1909 Internationale Kunstchau Exhibition of foreign and Austrian artists.

In 1909, Schiele became dissatisfied with the academy’s conservatism and formed the Neukünstler (New Artists) Group with other dropouts from the Academy. Free from the confines of the Academy’s conventions, Schiele began to explore the human form and human sexuality in his work. At the time, many found the explicitness of his works ugly and disturbing. Through 1913, Schiele created his best known works – drawings of female models, either nude or semi-nude in oddly foreshortened poses.

In 1915, Schiele married Edith Harms, was drafted into the military and assigned to various posts outside Vienna. Creating portraits of Edith, Schiele adapted a more naturalistic approach which he also used in the increasing number of portrait commissions he had begun to receive.

“Draughtsmanship played a significant role in Schiele’s art. Although he produced few original prints, he made numerous independent drawings, in which he used pencil or chalk, and occasionally charcoal or ink, to create a sharply defined outline that he then filled in with watercolour or gouache.  Schiele was shy and introspective, but obsessive in the pursuit of his art and in his contemplation of mortality, which provoked the confessional and compassionate tone of his work.”

In 1918, Schiele was invited to show a large exhibition of his work at the Viennese Seccession. Just as he had begun to achieve commercial success, both Schiele and his wife contracted the Spanish flu. Edith, who was six months pregnant, died on October 28, 1918. Schiele died three days later on October 31, 1918 at the age of 28.

Though Schiele’s career was short, he was extremely prolific. He created over three hundred oil paintings and several thousand works on paper. His work has inspired the work of later artists, especially in Austria, making him a major figure in 20th-century art.

Sources: MoMA,  Met Museum, Wikipedia

DAF Group Feature: Vol. 158

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Your Weekly Mixx – Enjoy! DAF’s Weekly Mixx is a selection of nine contemporary artworks and/or art related videos chosen from artist and gallery submissions and from our own search for new and interesting works. Visit the Submissions page for information on how to have your art featured in the Weekly Mixx.

J. M. W. Turner: 1775–1851 – “The Painter of Light”

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Self-Portrait c.1799 by Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851One of the most favourited English Romantic artists, Joseph Mallord William Turner’s wide body of work ranges from topography to atmospheric storms and includes watercolours, oils and engravings. Known as “the painter of light”, his use of brilliant colours became the main characteristic in his landscapes and seascapes. Considered a controversial figure in his day, Turner is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to a status rivaling history painting.

J. M. W. Turner is believed to have been born on April, 23,  1775 near Covent Garden in London, UK. His father, William Turner, was a barber and wig maker. His mother, Mary Marshall, came from a family of butchers. His younger sister, Mary Ann, was born in September 1778, but died in August 1783.

In 1785, due to his mother’s mental illness, Turner stayed with his uncle Joseph Mallord William Marshall. He entered the Royal Academy Schools (still operating today as the Royal Academy of Art) at the age of 14, received additional training outside the Academy, and worked as a colourist and copyist with English painter Thomas Girtin.

Turner was inspired by 17th-century Dutch artists including Willem van der Velde, and by the Italianate landscapes of Claude Lorrain and Richard Wilson. He exhibited watercolours at the Royal Academy from 1790, and oils from 1796. He continued to practice watercolour throughout his life and was considered the greatest watercolourist of his time.

Turner’s first exhibited paintings were of English monuments and landscapes.  In search of topographical material in the late seventeen-nineties, he discovered the sea which left a lasting impression on him.  He would sketch rapidly, recording the sensations of travelling over the ocean, to work on in oils later in his studio.

Turner was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in 1799 and Academician in 1802, and was recognised as a prodigy who promised to be the outstanding painter of his generation. Already a prosperous artist, he opened a gallery in 1804 on the corner of Harley Street and Queen Anne Street. Among early exhibits were large watercolours as well as smaller paintings of English landscapes. During this time, Walter Fawkes and George O’Brien Wyndham, the 3rd Earl of Egremont, became avid collectors (as well as friends) of Turner.

Turner was not universally loved. At the Royal Academy he was known to be pushy or rude, and at times insulted his colleagues. Turner and other artists associated with him were dubbed ‘white painters’ because of their use of luminous, sometimes pale tones. British art patron Sir George Beaumont, particularly denounced Turner’s works. Beaumont’s and other’s criticism made little impact and Turner grew accustomed to and even courted controversy. When Turner exhibited Mercury and Argus in 1836, the reviews were generally hostile. However, the art critic John Ruskin, championed Turner’s work.  Ruskin continually praised Turner’s work as being “truth to nature.”

From the mid-1790s, Turner traveled widely during which time he filled hundreds of sketchbooks with his visual records of England, Scotland, Wales, Belgium, France, Holland, Italy, the Rhineland, Switzerland and elsewhere. He maintained this routine for much of his life—touring in summer and working in the studio in the winter months.

Turner was a very private man and never married. For a few years, starting in 1799, he was the companion of Sarah Danby. She had two daughters, Evelina and Georgiana, who are widely recognised as Turner’s. A recent theory suggests however that they were his father’s children—his half-sisters.

Turner was very close to his father William and lived with him for some years. William was his son’s assistant, grinding pigments and preparing and varnishing canvases. His death in 1829 had a profound effect on Turner after which he experienced periods of depression.

In 1833, Turner met the widow Sophia Booth at her boarding house on the Thames River. Booth and Turner lived together at her house in Chelsea, keeping their relationship a secret for 18 years.

J. M. W. Turner died in the house of  Sophia Booth on December 19, 1851. He is buried in St Paul’s Cathedral. His last exhibition at the Royal Academy was in 1850.

Turner was an extremely prolific artist and  produced more than 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolours, and 30,000 paper works in his lifetime. Turner left an estate valued at the equivalent of 10 million dollars in today’s currency – with instructions to establish a charity for poor artists. Members of his family contested his will, however, and this wish was never realized. In the final settlement, the British nation received the entire contents of the artist’s studio, including 100 finished oils, 182 unfinished oils and oil sketches, 300 sketchbooks and 30,000 drawings and watercolours. They are now housed at Tate Britain in London.

On April 22, 2016 (the day before Turner’s alleged birthday), the Bank of England unveiled a new £20 bank note that will feature his 1799 self portrait and painting The Fighting Temeraire. The artist was chosen from a list of public nominations – the first time the Bank has asked who should appear on a specific banknote.  (BBC)

For an in-depth biography of J. M. W. Turner, visit the Tate Britain website.

Watch an excerpt  from the National Gallery Britain’s documentary chronicling the rise of Turner

Sources: Tate, AGO, Wikipedia, National Gallery UK (images),

DAF Group Feature: Vol. 152

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Your Weekly Mixx – Enjoy! DAF’s Weekly Mixx is a selection of nine contemporary artworks and/or art related videos chosen from artist and gallery submissions and from our own search for new and interesting works. Visit the Submissions page for information on how to have your art featured in the Weekly Mixx.

Raphael: 1483-1520

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Born in Urbino, Italy on April 6 (or March 28) 1483, Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino aka Raphael was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. Though his career was short,  Raphael produced works of “extraordinary refinement” that would have a great influence on European painting. Along with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, Raphael was a member of the trinity of the great masters of the Renaissance.

Raphael first trained with his father Giovanni Santi, who was a court painter. After his father’s death in 1494, he traveled extensively and worked with several masters including the dominant Umbrian painter Pietro Perugino. From about 1500, Raphael became an independent master  and worked throughout central Italy where he became known as a portraitist and painter of Madonnas.

In 1508, Raphael moved to Rome to work on Pope Julius II’s papal apartments. “Raphael’s frescoes there and the  Stanza d’Eliodoro and dell’Incendio, along with Michelangelo’s work in the nearby Sistine Chapel, represent the finest examples of High Renaissance art. “

Raphael’s commissions increased in Rome and he was dependent on teams of assistants to assist in the completion of his projects. He was a superior draftsmen and used drawings extensively  to refine his poses and compositions, apparently to a greater extent than most other painters.

After the achitect Donato Bramante’s death in 1514, Raphael was named architect of  St Peter’s Basilica. Most of his work there was altered or demolished after his death and the acceptance of Michelangelo’s design, but a few drawings have survived. Raphael designed several other buildings, and for a short time was the most important architect in Rome, working for a small circle around the Papacy.

The Vatican projects took most of Raphael’s  time. “Among Raphael’s most famous works are the frescos that are painted on the walls of Julius II’s own rooms in the Vatican Palace, known as the Stanze. The paintings in the Stanza della Segnatura and the Stanza d’Eliodoro were created by Raphael himself, whilst the Stanza dell’Incendio was designed by Raphael and painted by his assistants.”

Another important papal commission was the “Raphael Cartoons”, a series of 10 cartoons, of which seven survive, for tapestries with scenes of the lives of Saint Paul and Saint Peter, for the Sistine Chapel. The cartoons were sent to Brussels to be woven in the workshop of Pier van Aelst. It is possible that Raphael saw the finished series before his death which were most likely completed in 1520.

At the age of 37, Raphael died on his birthday, April 6, 1520, after a short illness. He was buried in the Pantheon.   His two main assistants, Giulio Romano and Gianfrancesco Penni, inherited his studio and completed the outstanding contracts.

“Raphael was highly admired by his contemporaries, although his influence on artistic style in his own century was less than that of Michelangelo. Mannerism, beginning at the time of his death, and later the Baroque, took art “in a direction totally opposed” to Raphael’s qualities with Raphael’s death, classic art – the High Renaissance – subsided.”

 

Sources: J. Paul Getty Museum, National Gallery London, Athenaeum (images), Wikipedia

HR Giger: Biomechanics

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Born on February 5, 1940 in Chur, Switzerland, Hans Rudolf “Ruedi” Giger (HR Giger) was a surrealist painter, sculptor, and set designer. Giger’s fascination with all things surreal and macabre began at a young age and this led to an interest in expressing himself through visual arts. Following high school, Giger studied architecture and industrial design at Zurich’s School of Applied Arts.

In 1966 Giger worked as an interior designer and completed some early paintings. In 1968 he began working full time as an artist and a filmmaker. The following year his first posters were published and he had his first exhibitions outside of Zurich.

“Giger’s most distinctive stylistic innovation is the representation of human bodies and machines in a cold, interconnected relationship, described as “biomechanical”. His paintings often display fetishistic sexual imagery.”

Meticulously detailed, Giger’s paintings are usually produced in large formats and then  reworked. Giger’s popular art book, Necronominicon, caught the eye of director Ridley Scott who was looking for a creature for his soon to be produced film Alien. Giger’s designs for the film earned him an Academy Award in 1980.

Giger began work on The H.R. Giger Museum in the mid 1990s in the fortress structure of the Château St. Germain, a medieval castle in Gruyere, Switzerland. The museum holds Giger’s personal collection of art from around the world, as well as a substantial collection of his own paintings and sculptures.

Aside from the Alien movies, Giger has worked on numerous films including Dune, Poltergeist II, Species, and others. He has worked with  recording artists including Blondie, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Korn, and has created signature models for Ibanez Guitars. His work in interior design includes  the HRGigerMuseum and the Giger Bars in Switzerland. Giger’s work has been exhibited in galleries around the world.

H.R. Giger, passed away in May 2014 at the age of 74.

For more information about HR Giger, visit one of his official websites: HRGiger.com, Giger.com, or HRGigerMuseum.com.

Sources: System 75 (images), Giger.com, Wikipedia, HRGigerMuseum.com, HRGiger.com

Canada Day: Canadian Art

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Happy Canada Day all you Canucks and friends of Canucks out there! In celebration of Canada’s National Day, DAF presents another collection of work from well known (and not so well known) Canadian artists.  If you have any suggestions for next year, feel free to email info@dailyartfixx.com.