Art Sunday; My favourite figure paintnigs.

This is an idea I formed after saying I liked one of the paintings on Nemos site so much that I would happily hang it on my wall. I started thinking about which, of the hundreds of paintings we have all shown and seen here, would I be happy to hang on my wall and look at every day. I started out wanting ten, but the list grew and grew and now I’ve divided them into subject matter, and these are the figure paintings I would have on my wall. Next week I’ll show the seascapes I would love to hang on my wall. Not surprisingly, most of these are from Scottish painters, but that’s probably because these are the paintings and artists I am most familiar with and the ones I automatically think of as my favourites. I have shown most of these before and I’m sorry there is so little ‘new’ here, but I think its nice to sort out the ‘favourites’ and put them all together. In chronological order, oldest first, they are;  

1. From the collection at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery; Princess Elizabeth 1635-1650 and Princess Anne 1637-1640, by Sir Anthony van Dyck.  
This is an oil study for the painting ‘The Five Eldest children of Charles 1’, and shows two year old Elizabeth and baby Anne. Neither child survived into adulthood, they both suffered tuberculosis and Anne died as an infant. Elizabeth survived until her teens when she died, partly as a result of being imprisoned during the civil war and partly as a result of ill health. The painting for which the study was made showed the children of Charles 1 and Henrietta Maria and is still held by the Royal family. I find this one of the most sensitively drawn child portraits ever produced. These children lived and died in the seventeenth century but they could be any child living today.


2. Now held in The Beit Collection, Russborough, Co. Wicklow, Sir Henry  Raeburn 1792; Portrait of Sir John and Lady Clerk of Penicuik. I’ve already written a blog on this man here
http://forgetmenot525.multiply.com/journal/item/158/Art_Sunday_henry_Raeburn
This was Raeburn's first picture to be exhibited in London, being shown at Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery in 1792. The background is the estate at Penicuik, and the landscape that inspired Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd. I’ve loved this painting from the first time I set eyes on it. I’ve not seen the original and if I ever visit Ireland, this is something I would make a point of seeing. This man was one of the greatest Scottish portrait painters who ever lived and to me, this painting could not be any where other than Scotland, Scotland has a light all of its own, a quality of light not experienced any where else, and he captures it perfectly here.
Sir John was a patron of the arts and the old mansion house became a meeting place for others including Allan Ramsay. Sadly, the new mansion house built by Sir James during the 1760s was gutted by fire in 1899 and is now a ruin. Sir Robert Clerk is continuing the tradition of his forebears by pursuing a programme of improvements to the estate. More of that here

http://www.eskvalleytrust.org/penestate.html

Work is being carried out at present to make the outward structure of the building secure, offering the opportunity to create work experience and training in the use of traditional building methods. After the fire, the stables and courtyard were converted into the family home and garden and remain so today. I think the loss of this great house is a sad loss to Scotlands architectural heritage.


3. The Hinds Daughter, 1883, by Sir James Guthrie, I’ve written about James Guthrie here
http://forgetmenot525.multiply.com/journal/item/613/Art_Sunday_Sir_james_Guthrie
A Hind is an old Scottish word for ‘farm servant’ or agricultural worker and this is a painting of one of the workers daughters cutting cabbages.  
( list of old Scottish occupations here)
http://www.scotsfamily.com/occupations.htm
I’ve always liked this painting because, again, to me this could only be Scotland. If I left my house and travelled a couple of miles into the country I would see vegetable gardens and/or fields  full of cabbages that looked just like this.The tawny light would be the same, the old white outbuildings would be the same, the wooden fences, rickety and broken are still there, the earth is the same rich reddy brown and the sky the same pale grey. James Guthrie was one of the original ‘Glasgow Boys’ who changed the face of painting, design and architecture in the northern hemisphere.


4. "Child With A Dove" 1901. (also known as "Child Holding a Dove") is one of Pablo Picasso's most easily recognizable paintings and one of my few favourites from a non Scottish artist.  Standing next to her ball, a child holds a white dove to her chest. I included this in my recent blog on Picassos ‘blue period’
http://forgetmenot525.multiply.com/journal/item/744/Art_Sunday_Picassos_Blue_paintings._
Although she is in white and her ball is full of colour there is an overall feeling of ‘blue’ to the image. This was the very first of what became known as his ‘blue period’ paintings. He uses the innocence of child a with the universal symbol of hope, in the form of the dove and creates a painting that crosses language and culture boundaries to portray an universal image of innocence and hope for the world.  
All of Picasso's paintings are described in terms of a series of overlapping periods. In this his "blue period" (1901-4), he depicted the world of the poor. Predominantly in tones of blue, these melancholy paintings (such as The Old Guitarist, 1903; Art Inst. of Chicago) are among the most popular art works of the century. I first came across this image on a card when I was a child. I knew nothing of art but I think the symbolism of innocence and hope touched me even at that young age. I kept the card for years, I had it pinned to my wall. I think this image is maybe one of the first to initiate my lifelong love or art. Maybe without this image, I would never have become so interested in the art world. Oh how sad that would have been.



5. Anna Pavlova, 1910,  by Sir John Lavery, on permanent exhibition at Kelvingrove Gallery Glasgow. This is one I am fortunate enough to have stood in front of and admired.  I wrote about it here.
http://forgetmenot525.multiply.com/journal/item/188/Art_Sunday_John_Lavery_and_Anna_Pavlova
If you are ever fortunate enough to stand in front of this apinting you will see why I have chosen it. The scarlet shouts at you across the room and as you approach the painting, it’s almost as if she is there and about to leap from the wall, a truly remarkable painting.


6. The Orange Blind, 1928, by Frances Cadell, one of a group of Scottish artists known as ‘The Colourists’. I wrote quite a long blog about this painting here.
http://forgetmenot525.multiply.com/journal/item/55/Art_Sunday_Drinking

This is more of an ‘interior’ painting than a figure painting, but this is another of my favourites that I’ve been fortunate enough to actually stand in front of at the Kelvingrove gallery in Glasgow. To stand in front of this is truly mesmerizing. The composition is perfect, the blast of orange is wonderful, the whole scene glows with reflected light and I just love the way the side of the piano is lit up by the light coming through the blind. It’s a painting of social commentary, showing a particular class of person and a particular type of interior.

Next week; ...........my favourite seascapes.

Art Sunday; John Lavery and Anna Pavlova

Last week I showed a little of my visit to the Kelvingrove in Glasgow. I didn’t talk in depth about any of the exhibits; last week was just a general overview of a very small part of Kelvingrove. This week I’m going to concentrate on one of the most beautiful paintings in the permanent exhibition. John Lavery’s portrait of Anna Pavlova.

 

SIR JOHN LAVERY 
(1856 - 1941) painter 
Born Belfast

please take a look at his paintings here;

http://forgetmenot525.multiply.com/photos/album/193/John_Lavery_paintings

His exact date of birth remains uncertain but he was born the was the son of an impoverished publican sometime in 1856. His father was drowned when he was three, and his mother died soon after. He was sent to relatives in Scotland and apprenticed to a painter-photographer in Glasgow at seventeen. After studying at the Glasgow School of Art he set up as an independent artist at twenty-three. He then studied in London and Paris.  John Lavery was an Irish artist but because of his close connections with the Glasgow school of art and his association with other Glasgow artists he is often thought of as a Scottish Artist of the Glasgow school.

His first success came with the showing of his ‘Tennis Par’ at the Royal Academy, London, in 1886; it was very much admired and acquired for the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. This established him as a respected international artist and led the way for serious commissions. Two years after the Tennis party he received a commission to paint the state visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow Exhibition. This painting led to social connections with the rich and famous and these vital social connections led to many more prestigious commissions.

 He was one of the most celebrated artists of his own time. His list of achievements and awards is impressive on any ones standards.  He was knighted in 1918, elected a member of the RA in 1921, followed by member ship of the RHA, Royal Scottish Academy, and the academies of Rome, Antwerp, Milan, Brussels, and Stockholm. He received honorary degrees from QUB and TCD and was made a freeman of Belfast and Dublin. At eighty-four he published his autobiography, The Life of a Painter (1940). He died at Rosenarra House, Kilkenny, 10 January 1941.

The one painting of his that I have seen and admired is of course the portrait of Anne Pavlova on permanent exhibition at Kelvingrove in Glasgow.  

 

Anna Pavlova

her photographs are here;

http://forgetmenot525.multiply.com/photos/album/194/Anna_Pavlova

Anna Pavlova (1882-1931) was possibly the most famous ballerina of all time. She was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on January 31, 1882, the only child of a very, very poor Russian family. It is documented that she was frail due to her premature birth and constantly suffered one illness after another throughout her childhood. But, somehow, from this poor, weak, frail, child grew a dancer who often gave 9 or 10 performances a week for a period lasting more than 20 years.

Anna first saw the Ballet when she was just 8 years old. She was taken by her mother, as a special treat, to see the Imperial Ballet perform Sleeping Beauty and, it is said, was utterly captivated by the ballet from that moment. She fell in love with the music (Tchaikovsky), the dance, the costume, the atmosphere of the theatre, every thing that surrounded the world of ballet. At 8 she was too young to be admitted to the strict Imperial Theater School, at the Czar's court in St. Petersburg, she had to wait another two years until she was 10n years old to apply. When she did apply she was one of 8 chosen fro over 100 applicants. 

She trained for 7 years and then, at the age of 17, joined the Imperial Ballet. Within 7 years she was the company's prima ballerina. Her dancing was unique, the traditional technique taught in the Ballet school was not her strongest attribute, and many have said that technically she was a weak dancer. Her strength lie in her ability to translate the story of the ballet to the audience and to act out any given part, she had grace, beauty, elegance, empathy for her character and a unique ability to translate emotion in to dance. Audiences loved her, she was a phenomenon. The role she made her own was ‘the Dying Swan’. There is a very interesting quote from Beaumont, an Englsh ballet critic who said of this performance

‘’  The emotion transferred was so over-powering that it seemed a mockery to applaud when the dance came to an end, our souls had soared into empyrean with the passing of the swan; only when the silence was broken could we feel that they had returned to our bodies.’’

This particular solo, one of the best known in the history of ballet, was created for her by Michel Fokine, one of Pavlova's fellow pupils at the Imperial Theater School. He was a young choreographer who  attempted to break with the classical form of ballet practised at that time.

 

 

By 1907  she was on her way to establishing her solo touring career, a career that lasted twenty years and took her all over the world. From this point onwards she lived a large part of her life on trains and in hotels. Toward the end of this period she compromised by omitting  difficult sections of the dance and performing only the less demanding sections. In order to improve her balance and conserve stamina she developed a shoe which became the forerunner to all modern ballet shoes. At the time the conservatives among the ballet world accused her of cheating, but no modern ballerina would attempt toe-work without its equivalent.

 

In 1931 she contracted pleurisy. She reportedly refused treatment out of fear that the treatment (surgery) would leave her unable to dance.

 

 

The Dying Swan

By Alfred Lord Tennyson

I.

The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air,
Which had built up everywhere
An under-roof of doleful gray.
With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,
And loudly did lament.
It was the middle of the day.
Ever the weary wind went on,
And took the reed-tops as it went.

II.

Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will,
And far thro' the marish green and still
The tangled water-courses slept,
Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

III.

The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear
The warble was low, and full and clear;
And floating about the under-sky,
Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole
Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear;
But anon her awful jubilant voice,
With a music strange and manifold,
Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold;
As when a mighty people rejoice
With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold,
And the tumult of their acclaim is roll'd
Thro' the open gates of the city afar,
To the shepherd who watcheth the evening star.
And the creeping mosses and clambering weeds,
And the willow-branches hoar and dank,
And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds,
And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank,
And the silvery marish-flowers that throng
The desolate creeks and pools among,
Were flooded over with eddying song.

Art Sunday, John Lavery, illustrations

SIR JOHN LAVERY
(1856 - 1941) painter
Born Belfast