Beatrix Potter Archives – Daily Art Fixx

Beatrix Potter: 1866-1943

July 28, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Born on July 28, 1866 in South Kensington in London, England, Beatrix Potter is best known for her illustrated children’s books. She was an author, illustrator, mycologist, farmer, and conservationist. Potter came from a wealthy family and although her father was a barrister, he devoted much of his time to his passions of art and photography. He and Beatrix’s mother Helen were socially active associating with many writers, artists, and politicians.

Potter had a lonely childhood and was educated at home by a governess. By the age of eight, she was filling sketchbooks with drawings of animals and plants and her artistic endeavors were encouraged, especially by her father.

In her teens, Potter spent most of her time studying, and painting and sketching. “Although she got her Art Student’s Certificate for drawing, Beatrix reached the age of 21 having had little real education. Like many adult daughters of the rich, she was appointed ‘household supervisor’ – a role that left her with enough time to indulge her interest in the natural sciences.”

In her 20s, Potter developed into a talented naturalist, made studies of plants and animals at the Cromwell Road museums, and learned how to draw with her eye to a microscope. She began to focus more on drawing and painting and began to earn a small income from her illustrations. She had also begun to write illustrated letters to the children of her former governess, Annie Moore. Peter Rabbit was born in a letter she wrote in September 1893 to Annie’s son, Noel.

Six publishers rejected “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” before Potter decided to publish her own edition of the story. Having seen the edition, publisher Frederick Warne decided to publish Peter Rabbit, and within a year had to produce six editions to meet demand. “This success marked the start of a life-long relationship between Beatrix and Warne who proposed marriage in 1905. ” Although she accepted him – defying her parents, who saw that being a ‘trade’, a publisher was an unthinkable match for their daughter – Norman unexpectedly died less than a month later of a blood disorder.”

Potter continued writing and produced one or two new books each year for the next eight years. In 1909, she met and befriended a local solicitor, William Heelis. After a period of having to battle her parents’ objections to her relationship Beatrix married William in 1913.

After her marriage, Potter dedicated herself to the role of lady farmer and became an expert in breeding Herdwick sheep. From 1920, and due to failing eyesight, Potter did less and less creative work and her books had to be pieced together from sketches and drawings done years earlier. Her last major work, “The Tale of Little Pig Robinson”, was published in 1930.

In the final part of her life, Potter concentrated on her other passion – conservation which was inspired by her friendship with Canon Rawnsley, one of the founder members of the National Trust. “Her expanding estate, funded by revenue from book sales, gave her the opportunity to fulfil an ambition to preserve not only part of the Lake District’s unique landscape but the area’s traditional farming methods.”

Beatrix Potter died on December 22, 1943. She left 14 farms and over 4,000 acres to the National Trust, land that it still owns and protects against development today.

She wrote and illustrated a total of 28 books, including the 23 Tales, the ‘little books’ that have been translated into more than 35 languages and have sold over 100 million copies. Her stories have been retold in various formats including a ballet, films, and in animation.

Sources: V&A Museum, BibliOdyssey

Beatrix Potter’s love of animals may have meant that she would have appreciated this little pair of owls.

Art-e-Facts: 5 Random Art Facts XIV

August 19, 2010 By Wendy Campbell

1. Giclée is the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using ink-jet printing. The word “giclée” is derived from the French language word “le gicleur” meaning “nozzle”, or more specifically “gicler” meaning “to squirt, spurt, or spray”. It was coined in 1991 by printmaker Jack Duganne to represent any inkjet-based digital print used as fine art. The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on Iris printers in a process invented in the early 1990s but has since come to mean any high quality ink-jet print and is often used in galleries and print shops to denote such prints.

2. Found Art is art created from the undisguised, but often modified, use of objects that are not normally considered art. Marcel Duchamp coined the term “readymade” to describe his found art in 1915. Since then, found object art has been prevalent in the Dada, Surrealist, and Pop Art movements to name a few. The meaning of found art has expanded over time and now, numerous categories have been defined including assemblage, appropriation, collage, and even Internet based found images that are reworked with computer graphic tools to form new works of art.

3. Six publishers rejected Beatrix Potter’s “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” before she decided to publish her own edition of the story. Having seen the edition, publisher Frederick Warne decided to publish Peter Rabbit, and within a year had already had to produce six editions to meet demand. During her career, Potter wrote and illustrated a total of 28 books, including the 23 Tales, the ‘little books’ that have been translated into more than 35 languages and sold over 100 million copies. Her stories have been retold in numerous formats including a ballet, films, and in animation.

4. Throughout his life, Rembrandt van Rijn was plagued with money problems. 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 1656, the artist declared bankruptcy and had to sell his house and collections in 1657 – 1658. Upon his death in 1669, there was no money for a tombstone. Rembrandt was buried in an unmarked grave in the Westerkerk, in Amsterdam.

5. Encaustic Painting, also known as hot wax painting, involves using heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added. The liquid/paste is then applied to a surface and metal tools and special brushes are used to shape the paint before it cools. Today, tools such as heat lamps, heat guns, and other methods of applying heat allow artists to extend the amount of time they have to work with the material. This technique was notably used in the Fayum mummy portraits from Egypt around 100-300 AD, in the Blachernitissa and other early icons, as well as in many works of 20th-century American artists, including Jasper Johns.

Sources: Wikipedia (giclee), DAF, Wikipedia (found art), DAF (Beatrix Potter), DAF (Rembrandt), Wikipedia, Poetic Mind, (Encaustics)

5 Women Artists You Should Know: Vol. 4

January 30, 2010 By Wendy Campbell

1. Beatrix Potter – July 28, 1866- December 22, 1943 – Born in South Kensington in London, England, Potter is best known for her illustrated children’s books. She was an author, illustrator, mycologist, farmer, and conservationist. In her 20s, Beatrix developed into a talented naturalist. She studied plants and animals at the Cromwell Road museums and learned how to draw with her eye to a microscope.

In her thirties, Potter published the highly successful children’s book, “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”. She began writing and illustrating children’s books full time and became financially independent of her parents

Potter died on 22 December 1943, and left almost all of her property to the National Trust. She wrote and illustrated a total of 28 books, including the 23 Tales, the ‘little books’ that have been translated into more than 35 languages and sold over 100million copies. Her stories have been retold in various formats including a ballet, films, and in animation.

2. Kiki Smith – Born on January 18, 1954, in Nuremberg, Germany and raised in South Orange, New Jersey, Smith studied at the Hartford Art School in Connecticut from 1974 – 1976. “Since 1980, Smith has produced a variety of work including sculpture, prints, installations and others that have been admired for having a highly developed, yet sometimes unsettling, sense of intimacy in her works’ timely political and social provocations. These traits have brought her critical success.”

The Kitchen in New York hosted Smith’s first solo exhibition in 1982. She has exhibited annually from 1982 at the Fawbush Gallery in New York. In 1990, Smith received significant acclaim for her exhibition in the Projects Room at the Museum of Modern Art. “By manipulating everyday materials such as glass, ceramic, fabric and paper, Smith’s work examined the dichotomy between the psychological and physiological power of the body.”

Smith has also had major solo showings at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva (1990), Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts (1992), Whitechapel Art Gallery in London (1995), Museum of Modern Art in New York (2003), and Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2006).

In 2009 Smith was awarded the Brooklyn Museum Women In The Arts Award. She currently lives and works in New York.

3. Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun – April 16, 1755 – March 20, 1842 – Born in Paris, France, Vigée-Le Brun is recognized as one of Europe’s foremost portrait painters of the eighteenth century.

At the age of 15, Vigée-Lebrun was earning enough money from her portrait painting to support herself, her widowed mother, and her younger brother. For a decade she was Marie Antoinette’s favorite painter. European aristocrats, actors, and writers were also her patrons and she was elected a member of the art academies in 10 cities.

Vigée-Lebrun married Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun, a painter and art dealer who helped her gain access to the art world. In 1783, Marie Antoinette appointed her a member of Paris’s Royal Academy. As one of only four female academicians, Vigée-Lebrun enjoyed a high artistic, social, and political profile.

With the onset of the French Revolution Vigée-Lebrun fled France with her nine year old daughter. For the next 12 years she was commissioned to create portraits of the most celebrated residents of Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Berlin. Vigée-Lebrun returned permanently to France in 1809.

Scholars estimate that Vigée-Lebrun produced more than 600 paintings. Her memoirs were published in 1835-37 and have been translated and reprinted numerous times.

4. Judith Leyster – July 28, 1609– February 10, 1660 – Born in Haarlem, Netherlands, Leyster was a Dutch Golden Age painter. She was one of three significant women artists of this period. Little is known of Leyster’s early training but the degree of professional success she achieved was remarkable for a female artist of her time. By 1633 she was the first woman admitted to the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke and in 1635 she is recorded as having three students.

“Stylistically, much of Leyster’s work resembles that of Frans Hals. She favored the same types of subjects and compositions, notably energetic genre scenes depicting one or two figures, often children, engaging in some kind of merrymaking. In addition to these compositions, Leyster also painted still lifes.”

In 1636 Leyster married fellow artist Jan Miense Molenaer, and moved to Amsterdam, where the couple lived until 1648. She painted very little after her marriage. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the early works of Leyster and her husband, as they often shared studio props and models, and may have worked on each other’s pictures.

5. Remedios Varo – December 16, 1908-October 8, 1963 – Born in Anglés, near Girona, Spain, Remedios Varo is often overlooked as an important surrealist painter. Varo studied art in Madrid and moved several times between Paris and Spain where she met and exhibited with other leading Surrealist artists. In 1941, Varo and her husband Benjamin Péret fled the Nazi occupation in Paris and moved to Mexico City where many other Surrealists had sought exile. Her first solo exhibition in Mexico at the Galería Diana in 1955 was a great success and earned her international recognition.

Varo’s palette consisted mainly of somber oranges, light browns, shadowy grays and greens. Her paintings were carefully drawn, and depicted stories or mystic legends. She often painted heroines engaged in alchemical activities. Varo was influenced by artists such as Francisco Goya, El Greco, Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, Braque, pre-Columbian art, and the writing of André Breton. She also borrowed from Romanesque Catalan frescoes and medieval architecture, mixed nature and technology, and combined reality and fantasy to create paintings that defied time and space. Varo was also influenced by a variety of mystic and hermetic traditions. She was interested in the ideas of C. G. Jung and the theories of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, Helena Blavatsky, Meister Eckhart, and the Sufis. She was also fascinated with the legend of the Holy Grail, sacred geometry, alchemy and the I-Ching. She saw in each of these an avenue to self-knowledge and the transformation of consciousness.

Sources: DAF-Varos, Wikipedia-Potter, V&A Museum-Potter, Wikipedia-Vigée-Le Brun, National Museum of Women in the Arts, MoMA – Smith, Wikipedia-Smith, Wikipedia – Leyster, National Gallery of Art – Leyster