Chiara C. Rizzarda's Blog, page 35

The Tomb of Sarah

Frederick George Loring was an English naval officer born in 1869, an early expert in the pioneering technology of wireless telegraphy and, incidentally, a writer. Born in the Isle of Wight as the eldest son of Admiral Sir William Loring and Frances Louisa Adams, he followed in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps and served as a sub-lieutenant on the royal yacht Victoria and Albert in 1891, but he started working as a writer much later, with his first documented exploits being as a naval correspondent for the Western Morning News and as a technical writer for accounts such as “A survey of marine radio progress, with special reference to RMS Queen Mary”, published in 1937 in the Institution of Electrical Engineers’ Journal and which he co-authored.

He wrote poetry and short stories, but “The Tomb of Sarah” is undoubtedly his most famous and acclaimed work. It appeared in the Pall Mall magazine in December 1910, thirteen years after the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and bears many markings of the classical vampire story. For reference, in the final appendix I have included the chapters of Lucy Westenra’s demise from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, as the mood has much to share with that passage.

The title of the story is interesting to analyse too: the “Tomb of Sarah” is an alternative name to the Cave of the Patriarchs, known to Jews by its Biblical name Cave of Machpelah and to Muslims as the Sanctuary of Abraham. Located in the heart of the Old City of Hebron in the West Bank, the cave is traditionally believed to be the burial site of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, as well as other biblical patriarchs and matriarchs. It’s a place of pilgrimage, and the sentence has been used metaphorically to represent the passing of time and mortality.

In the context of the tale, Sarah is an evil Countess, murdered in 1630, and she’s been resting under a church until her tomb is discovered during a renovation and has to be relocated. As you can imagine, things go very South, very fast.

Enjoy! Patrons in tier 1 get the full novel, while people in tier 2 and 3 get the downloadable file with the appendix.

And yes, this means another agent politely declined to represent my novel.

The Lost World

Easter-time rejection! Who sends a refusal on Easter morning? One of the agents I queried, apparently.

This means my Patrons receive another one of my favourite novels, digitised by yours truly: The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle.

It might seem strange to include this book in a selection that has been mostly dealing with Gothic and fairy tales, but I think its inclusion is absolutely appropriate.

The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a science fiction tale released in 1912 by Hodder & Stoughton, after a serialised publication in the Strand Magazine from April to November of the same year, illustrated by the New-Zealand-born artist Harry Rountree. It includes many elements that will be capital to later, and better-known science fiction tales such as the survival of dinosaurs in a modern world, and the conflict between humans and apes.

It revolves around an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin, and it marks the debut of the character of Professor Challenger, who will appear in other, more appropriately Gothic tales by Conan Doyle. And that’s why you need to read this before I present you with… well, you’ll see.

Meanwhile, enjoy.

 

#MermaidMonday: Sirona

Sirona was a goddess primarily venerated in East Central Gaul and along the Danubian limes. Revered as a deity of healing, she was closely linked with sacred springs, and her worship was accompanied by symbols of snakes and eggs.

In the sulphur springs of Alzey in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, there is a stone bas-relief depicting Sirona represented in a flowing gown, holding a ceremonial bowl called patera in her right hand and a sceptre in her left. The identification of this figure as Sirona is confirmed by a dedicated inscription in which she’s associated with Apollo.
A bronze statue from Mâlain in the Côte d’Or, dated to 280 CE, shows her naked to the waist and holding a snake, together with an Apollo intent on playing the lyre.
Another statue is present at the spring sanctuary of Hochscheid, where she is depicted holding a bowl of eggs and with a long snake wrapped around her lower arm, a motif reminiscent of the iconography associated with the Greek healing goddess Hygeia, daughter of Asklepios. She is attired in a long gown and adorned with a star-shaped diadem atop her head, a symbolic connection to the significance of the name Sirona, which likely meant ‘stellar’ or ‘astral’.

She’s today’s watery feature on my Patreon.

The Family of the Ghoul

Easter/time rejection! While I have two agents looking at the full manuscript, yet another one answered “thanks but no thanks”, so my Patrons get their festive story featuring spring, bunnies and butterflies.

Well, no, not really.

Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817-1875) was a prominent Russian intellectual who worked as poet, novelist, playwright, and diplomat. He ventured into historical fiction with works like Prince Silver, a novel set in the time of Ivan the Terrible, and Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, which explored a period of political turmoil in 16th-century Russia. His main contribution, as far as we’re concerned, rests however in his exploration of Gothic themes with two novellas: The Family of the Ghoul, translated in this short volume, and The Vampire, published in Saint Petersburg in 1841 under the pseudonym of Krasnorogsky.

The Family of the Ghoul was originally written in French, in 1839, during a trip to France from Frankfurt where Tolstoy was working in the Russian Embassy. It was translated into Russian by Boleslav Markevich and published in January 1884, while the original French text was printed in 1950. My translation of course comes from the French version.

The word vourdalak appears first in the words of Alexander Pushkin’s poem Wurdulac, part of the Songs of the Western Slavs cycle from the early 19th century, and it’s the distortion of words used in the slavic areas to indicate blood-sucking creatures. It’s sometimes left untranslated. Since it’s a creature who returns from the grave, I’ve decided not to use “vampire”, as many do, and I preferred the term “ghoul”.

I think the novella is simply astonishing.
Enjoy!

Harry Siddons Mowbray, “The Marriage of Persephone” (1895)

The artist of this painting was born at Alexandria, Egypt, from English parents but he spent most of his childhood in American after his father died and his mother moved closer to her family. He was adopted by his aunt after his mother died too, in a freak domestic accident. He came back to Europe in 1879, specifically to Paris, where he entered the atelier of Leon Bonnat and gained notoriety with his painting Aladdin. I’m not sure whether the painting survived, because I couldn’t find it.

He’s considered one of the Orientalists, and his “extended” cycle of the muses in the Yale University Art Gallery is absolutely stunning.

Lo and behold, the Muse of Electricity.

The work for today’s #ChthonicThursday is “The Marriage of Persephone”, and it’s a highly underrated piece.

The Marriage of Persephone

Persephone is still in her “Koré” attire, blonde and fair, and she’s accompanied by Hermes who’s looking at her hand as if he’s looking for a wedding ring. The other hand is held by a crimson-clothed Demeter, who’s holding her back and peeking above her shoulder, maybe looking for the groom (to murder him). The bride is unbothered by both.

With his other hand, Hermes pushes Eros back, and the winged cupid keeps pouring flowers on the bride.

A muse plays the lyre at their back, and the only muse Mowbtay represented with a lyre is Érato, the muse of lyric and erotic poetry (below).

We can only assume the three winged figures at the back of the retinue are the three sirens Leucosia, Parthenope and Ligeia, whom were playing with Persephone at the time she was abducted (and, according to Ovid, her mother didn’t take it well).

Mowbray had explored a different take on the subject two years earlier, in 1893, with his study Ceres and Proserpine Reunited.

Edward Coley Burne-Jones, “The Mermaid” (1882)

The Mermaid 1882 Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt 1833-1898 Bequeathed by Miss Katharine Elizabeth Lewis 1961 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00457

In 1880 Burne-Jones acquired a second home at Rottingdean, near Brighton, to which he often retreated from the bustle of London. Encouraged by his proximity to the sea, he conjured up a marine fantasy world, and between 1880 and 1890 he drew and painted a number of works on the theme of sea-nymphs or mermaids. He recalled ‘the best was a mer-wife giving her mer-baby an air bath and it is howling with misery’. These works have as their background an attractive blend of downland and seashore. This watercolour was given to the gallery by Katherine Lewis, who was the recipient of many letters from the artist, which he embellished with amusing drawings.

— Tate Gallery label

Piero della Francesca and the Saint Augustine Altarpiece (reunited)

Piero della Francesca was born in Borgo San Sepolcro, Tuscany, in 1412. This will be important later.
After spending decades honing his craft, he was hailed as both a great mathematician and an unparalleled painter, celebrated for his mastery of light and space. If we understand anything about perspective, we owe it to him. If oil painting came out of the Flemish area, we owe it to him.

Despite his travels to various Italian courts and cities like Arezzo, he maintained a deep connection to his hometown, often returning to its familiar embrace and answering when it called.
And it did call, in 1454, when an altarpiece was commissioned for the high altar of the Church of Sant’Agostino in Borgo San Sepolcro, Italy, and its commissioner had to adapt purchasing a wooden structure created and then abandoned for another altarpiece, almost thirty years earlier, for another church and the rival Franciscan order of monks.

The wooden structure was fully Gothic. Piero is the forerunner of Renaissance. An uneasy mixture, in a town legendarily founded by pilgrims carrying relics of the Holy Sepulcher, whose legacy had already been celebrated by the rivalling Resurrection Polyptych (1350) painted by the Sienese Niccolò di Segna (below).

Piero asked for eight years. It will take him fifteen years and, after I’m done with you, you’ll have no trouble imagining why.

The Political Context

I said the Franciscan and the Augustinians were rivals and I don’t have enough space to expand on it here. It’s also not particularly relevant to the content of the Altarpiece. What’s more relevant is putting it in the context of the Council of Siena.

The Council of Siena, also known as the Conciliar Movement of Siena-Pavia, took place between 1423 and 1424, and it was an attempt to reform the Catholic Church during a period known as the Western Schism. We were in the midst of a great unrest: Jan Hus, who had been pushing for reformations and had been promised safe conduct, had been burned as a heretic in Prague in 1415; John Wycliffe was promoting reformations across the English Channel (and he will later be considered one of the forerunners of Protestantism); the Aragonese Pedro de Luna had nominated himself Pope Benedict XIII in Avignon and the Church had two popes.
Pope Martin V initially planned to follow-up on the famed Council of Constance (1414-1418), and the designated seat for this follow-up was going to be Pavia. Only one problem, though: in Pavia the plague was running rampant. And, being very religious men who strongly believed in the afterlife, Bishops and Cardinals were scared shitless of dying. The council was moved to Siena, and met from April 1423 to February 1424, and it laid the foundations for negotiations with the Eastern Orthodox churches. Its proceedings were kept a secret and only one artist was allowed to enter the room, just as you only allow one in the American courtrooms. Drawings start to circulate, depicting the attires of the Oriental Churches, and Piero decides his Altarpiece will send a political message of unity.

A Broken Masterwork

As paradoxical as it might sound, the complete Altarpiece didn’t survive, and that’s at the centre of the operation carried out by the museum in Milan.

From the main order, four pieces survive: a Saint Agustine, usually at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon; a Saint Michael Archangel, usually at the National Gallery in London; a Saint John the Evangelist, usually at the Frick Collection in New York and the Frick collection is forbidden to lend its works unless it’s closed for renovation… which it currently is; a St Nicholas of Tolentino, regularly hosted at this very same museum in Milan.

From what’s now recognised as the lower order (don’t look at the Wikipedia page: that reconstruction is wrong), we only have three pieces: a Saint Monica, a Saint Agostinian, and a Crucifixion scene, all from the Frick collection. An additional piece is usually attributed to this Altarpiece, a Saint Apollonia at the National Gallery in Washington, but it’s either they couldn’t borrow it or they don’t agree with the attribution, because it isn’t in the exhibition nor do we see a space for it in the reconstruction.

Here’s a plausible reconstruction, so that we can all weep together at the thought of how many pieces are lost.What’s political about it?

Well, dedicated to the one guy who ran away disgusted when I wrote that everything is political, here we are again. Piero is very meticulous when he picks the clothing for his main four saints. Let’s see them one by one.

Saint Augustine

The host of the Altarpiece, head of the order of monks who commissioned it, it’s placed at the far left of the composition, and we know it because Piero decides to dismantle the original Gothic structure by removing the frames and creating a single, continuous scene. I can almost imagine him, a forty-two years old dude with a screwdriver, fussing and cursing at this fucking Gothic relic they had him working on.

The first choice is of course to dress him as a bishop, with a tiara and a transparent staff. His ceremonial embroidered coat is called pianeta, and Piero decides to paint a cycle within the cycle, showing us scenes from the life of the Virgin and the childhood of Christ: the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Flight to Egypt, the Presentation at the Temple, the Crucifixion and some other scenes we can’t quite see. The overcoat is decorated with a continuous branch and foliage in fashion at the time and apparently they checked with simulation software, and the decoration is indeed continuous because Piero della Francesca kicked some serious asses.

Beneath the sumptuous coats, however, the Saint wears a cassock, which he never did. Piero is conjoining ceremony and poverty, the high ranks of the church with the vows of poverty from the monastical orders. Which was bold at the time. Very bold.

Saint Nicholas from Tolentino

At the far opposite side of the composition we find San Nicola da Tolentino, in full cassock attire. He was a very recent Augustinian saint (from 1446), and he’s painted sideways because Piero didn’t like frontal, boring scenes. There’s a star, next to his eye, and legend says that a star appeared in the sky when he was born.

He’s the contemporary church, and some scholar speculate that the face was painted from life, and that it’s the abbot who commissioned the painting.

Saint John  the Evangelist

Flanking Saint Nicholas, drawing closer to the mysterious missing central scene, next up is a glorious Saint John, depicted as an elderly man and wrapped in a sumptuous red coat. He holds a heavy book (boy does that thing look heavy) and his coronet is not dissimilar to the one of the abbot next to him, but his clothing is traditional, reminiscing of how people imagined people to be dressed back in the years when Christ was walking around. Antiquity and modernity are dialoguing on the wooden panel.
The model for the face is the same he used for the face of God of his cycle in Arezzo, and he painted it all before painting the beard over it. Because the guy was insane.

Next to his feet, there’s a hint of a porphyry pedestal, and scientific investigations revealed traces of a blue, feathered wing above his head, later painted over, but more on that later.

Saint Michael the Archangel

He doesn’t look bothered, and yet he’s just done killing the snake. Saint Michael holds a semi-transparent sword and it’s strangely attired, isn’t he? He’s the missing piece between poverty and splendour, between past and present. He’s dressed like a Byzantine warrior, just when negotiations had opened between the Roman Church and the Oriental one. And if you don’t see the politics in it, you’re just trying not to see it.

Besides, his red shoes are what got me into the crowded exhibition, as I was wearing something similar.

If you look closely, you’ll see a piece of a stone basement that’s similar to the one next to the right foot of Saint John and, this time, there’s also a drape of a decorated cloth. Underneath, as Piero painted everything even when he knew he was going to cover it up, apparently there’s a foot. And traces of a pink, feathered wing above Saint Michael are even more evident than the blue one on the other side. So what was in the middle?

The missing central piece

The video in the other room will show you the scientific evidence and, with cold composure, it will give you the solution. I was lucky enough to follow the passionate explanation offered by the museum, and that’s not how it goes.

What’s standing in the middle of a composition, enthroned, with two angels at each side? Well, a Virgin Mary with Child, of course.

Except what’s left of the basement is porphyry, and Madonnas only seat on white marble.

A dark-red stone, porphyry is generally used for Emperors, and this gives us the only plausible answer: the scene was an asymmetrical coronation, with the Virgin kneeling on the left and Christ enthroned who was crowning her on the right. What’s left of this scene is two shreds of wings, a piece of cloth and two blocks of stone. The rest, you’ll have to guess.

Cézanne and Renoir

We’re taking the run-up to prepare for April 15th, when Impressionism will celebrate 150 years from its conventional birth. It was April 15th 1874 in fact, at the studio of photographer Félix Nadar in 35 Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, when the group of rascals later known as the Impressionists held their first structured exhibition. It will last for a month, until May 15th. It featured the works of around 30 independent artists, the core group including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissarro. They presented a total of 175 works. “Impression, Soleil Levant” was one of the paintings, by Monet, and gave the movement its name.
The exhibition was met with mostly negative reviews from critics, who found the works unfinished, sketchy, and lacking in conventional techniques, which was kind of the point.

Palazzo Reale in Milan marks the occasion by exhibiting fifty-two works by Renoir and Cézanne from the collections of the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, retrace their life and artistic development through their most iconic paintings, from portraits to landscapes, still lifes and scenes of high life during the belle-epoque. The exhibition is completed by a comparison between two works by Cézanne and Renoir and two paintings by Pablo Picasso.

I went to see the exhibition yesterday (on a Friday afternoon) and it was overcrowded with elderly people, which generally is a good thing. Unfortunately, impressionism always attracts a certain kind of people, for some reason, and the exhibition quickly turned into a match: who was better between Cézanne and Renoir? Was Cézanne really able to paint? Who would win in a fight? Not the soothing, calming experience I was expecting from seeing an exhibition in the middle of the afternoon between one meeting and the other, I’ll admit.
As such, you’ll forgive me if my judgment of the exhibition has been a little biased by the experience.

Paul Guillaume

The show opens with a portrait of Paul Guillaume and a room dedicated to him as a collector.

Born in Paris in 1891, Guillaume did not come from a wealthy or cultured background: he ventured into the art world as a merchant, before business went well and he could become a collector himself, and was introduced into the salons by Guillaume Apollinaire, the famed, Polish-born French poet and playwright. Guillaume soon opened his own gallery in Paris and became a key figure in supporting and exhibiting the works of avant-garde artists, and he played a crucial role in the careers of several prominent artists, including Amedeo Modigliani, whose portraits of Guillaume himself are well-known today. The portrait as at the Museo del Novecent, right across the square, but I guess Palazzo Reale and this museum hate each other, ’cause there’s not even a mention of this masterpiece in the room dedicated to Paul Guillaume.

[image error] Here’s the painting. You’ve surely seen it.

Guillaume also championed the works of Chaïm Soutine and Constantin Brâncuși, providing them with a platform and financial support, and was one of the first Parisian art dealers to organize exhibitions of African art.

His presence at the beginning of this exhibition is due to the prominence of Renoir and Cézanne’s works in his massive collection, known as the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume Collection, and amassed with the aid of his wife (later his widow) Domenica Walter. Whenever I will say that a divided painting has been reunited or restored, they did it.
The collection is currently housed at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, where many works come from.

Here’s the portrait exhibited in the show, painted by the Dutch artist and friend Kees Van Dongen.After the Tunnel: two families compared

After a charming tunnel made of stained glass, mosquito nets, wooden panels and windows meant to immerse you in the Provencal, open-air atmospheres of the works by both painters, a small room shows us the two timelines for the artists’ lives, and a couple of paintings of their families.

Cézanne married Marie-Hortense Fiquet in 1886, after they had been together for about fifteen years. The relationship was hidden from the artist’s family because she was a worker in his father’s factories and a part-time model, they had met at a Paris art school, and Cézanne was rightfully concerned that his wealthy father would object to their liaison, and the secret was kept even after the birth of their son Paul.

The paintings of her, however, aren’t the ones you expect from an artist representing her muse. She was the mother of his child, and he paints her soberly, except possibly the one where she’s nursing their child, which prompted some critics to say that his desire for his wife soon had dwindled, and indeed we have some accounts of Cézanne himself stating the same. I guess it would be excusable for a relationship to change after a couple has a son, but apparently this is not the case for artists nor for art critics. What do I know.
Over here you can find an extensive collection of portraits and paintings of Hortense.

Not included in the show, I believe this is one of the most touching paintings done by Cézanne: Hortense is nursing their son Paul.

A 2014 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art explored the subject a little more deeply, diving into letters and accounts.

Far from idealized as a woman or a beloved mate, she usually appears stiffly reserved, a dignified enigma. […] His letters to friends suggest that he regarded her as a shallow and irritating person. He excluded her from his will, leaving everything to their son. Yet he painted her repeatedly over more than 20 years. Go figure.

A photograph of Hortense.

Cézanne’s story has some similarities with Renoir’s.

Aline Victorine Charigot was a dressmaker, also a part-time model, and she had met Renoir in 1879 when she started posing for him. She was twenty, and he was nearly forty. Regardless of this, daddy’s son kept the relationship a secret for fear of disapproval even when the couple had a son, Pierre, in 1885. They eventually married in 1890, but I must say that the similarities stop here: they had two more sons, Jean (born in 1894) and Claude (born in 1901), and Aline remained a constant source of support and inspiration for Renoir throughout their marriage. She not only modelled for him but also managed his household and cared for him as his health declined in later years. Renoir’s depictions of his family and wife are of a happy, radiant nature.

The line-up

After this introduction, we reach the first room, with a line-up of works by Cézanne facing a similar line-up of paintings by Renoir.

The contrast is stark: Cézanne chases geometrical rigour, and will later say that you can paint anything if you master the representation of three primitive forms, while Renoir is researching atmospherical effects with a delicacy of both strokes and palette. The room, however, is meant to highlight their similarities in the choice of subjects, next to the difference in their style: still lives, landscapes, portraits, people bathing, and the inclusion of other people’s works in their paintings will be themes we’ll find throughout the entire exhibition.

It’s hard to pick a favourite, but here’s some of the paintings that had the strongest impression on me.

Renoir in Algeria

Renoir first visited Algeria in February 1881, returned for a second stay the following year and lingered in those areas until his health allowed him. North Africa suggested him new colours for his open-air paintings, a new kind of light, and his tendency towards the “portrait of trees”, a genre inaugurated by Camille Corot and very dear to the impressionists, was enriched with ned Mediterranean plants such as the agave and the prickly pear. This spot is on the outskirts of Algiers and there are no wild women here: the name only references a nearby café. It’s one of the first examples in which Renoir uses shades of deep blue for the shadows, in contrast with the bright colours.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Ravine of the Wild Women (Algerian Landscape)

“Painting is, above all, manual work.”
– PIerre-Auguste Renoir

A Three-part masterpiece (reunited)

It’s impossible not to fall in love with this work and its troubled history.

Paul Cézanne paints this Boat and the Bathers as a unique piece, in a very unusual format, and of course people cut it up to sell it better. It could have been an overdoor decoration for the an apartment in Paris, the residence of the collector Victor Chocquet, friend to both Cézanne and Renol, and it was restored after its purchase by the Musées Nationaux.

Click to enlarge. I mean it.

It’s similar to another couple of studies by Cézanne, in which a group of female bathers is studied next to a group of males.

Though there is no indication that these were part of a unique work as well, it’s obvious that Cézanne is interested in the duality of how men and women experience the same playful activity, bathing outdoors, and it’s refreshing to see how both groups are free of any sexualization, and treated almost as if they were equal in their enjoyment of the fresh air.
He would start painting these subjects around 1875 and never abandon them.

Indoor moments

If the outdoors is room for playful sports and for observing nature, both painters don’t shun away from painting indoors, where they choose to depict intimate moments. Two girls whispering each other secrets, two women playing the piano.

Yvonne e Christine Lerolle Playing the PianoYvonne and Christine Lerolle playing the piano

Painted in 1897, this work represents the eldest daughters of the French painter and collector Henry Lerolle, a friend of the Renoir family, and it was eventually purchased by Henri Roujon during an exhibition dedicated to the painter. Prompted by Stéphane Mallarmé, Roujon intended to establish a collection of living artists at the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris, and it’s significant how the choice fell on such a domestic scene. Time indeed had changed.

Jeunes filles au piano, a previous take on the same subject.

Like a previous Jeunes filles au piano (above), this painting treats the subject with freshness and impressionistic chromatic harmonies, abandoning the severe style of the previous decade. The theme reeks of bourgeoise optimism and appeals to the collectors of that social class: young girls are immersed in a domestic atmosphere, intent on games, reading or – as in this case – musical exercises. We have stupendous examples of the same spirit from painters of the same era here in Northern Italy.
Renoir is however more influenced by his contemporaries in Paris, such as the incredible Berthe Morisot.

Federico Faruffini, The Reader.

Renoir describes various details of the domestic environment, dwelling on the details of the golden chair and on the two paintings hanging on the wall: they have been identified as Jockeys at the Start of the Race and Group of Ballerinas, both by Degas, which must have been present in the house of Henry Lerolle.

We can even try and guess that the painting was this one.Portrait of two girls

The two girls depicted here appear in several of these works, including the version of the Girls at the Piano from the Walter-Guillaume collection and the very same one purchased by Henri Roujon for the Palais du Luxembourg. Their identification isn’t certain, as they’re protected by not being named in the title.

Gabrielle and Jean

With more certainty with can identify the subject of this other painting by Renoir.

Gabrielle was a cousin of the painter’s wife Aline, and was often employed by the couple in the care and custody of their son: she was indeed one of the painter’s favourite models and appeared in a substantial number of paintings, such as Gabrielle, Jean and a Little Girl (1895), The Artist’s Family (1896), The Child’s Breakfast (1904) and The Writing Lesson (1906).

Renoir’s The Child’s Breakfast is an incredible work when it comes to… well, pretty much everything, from the composition to the treatment of the light, to the stark contrast between the man who’s missing on the playful, domestic scene in the background, and the nanny. We can almost guess how Jean, dressed in black like his father, is almost in-between.

Born in 1894, Jean is the painter’s first son with Aline. In his early years he’s portrayed with touches that remind us of Reinassance paintings of angels, with blonde hair that’s often long and attired in what we might describe as a feminine fashion. Here he still has short, curly hair, and the couple is playing with a cow and a female figure, possibly a shepherdess, but they’re blending into the table and bathed in the light: can admire the flowers on the wallpaper, but we’re not privy to the tales the two are telling each other.

Still lives

Renoir wasn’t primarily known for still lifes, especially compared to his prolificacy in portraying figures and landscapes, but he did occasionally incorporate them into his artistic repertoire and they’re astonishing. Some art historians suggest that Renoir’s interest in still lifes increased later in his career, particularly after the onset of rheumatoid arthritis in his hands and fingers, but that’s not how we like to think about it: drawing inspiration from the French tradition of flower painting and 17th-century Dutch floral still lives, he incorporated his signature Impressionist style, characterized by loose brushstrokes, vibrant colours, and an emphasis on light and shadow play.

He can’t possibly have known them, but please compare that still life with the work of some Renaissance painters like Fede Galizia (I wrote about her here) and Giovanna Garzoni (here).

Renoir’s still lifes can be grouped into two categories: the domestic ones, often featured flowers in vibrant bouquets displayed in vases, and fruits; and the social ones, where the flowers and fruits are telling us a story of parties, and of the people they were intended for. In the last category we find this amazing bouquet, abandoned on the armchair of a salon or the opera. Who was it for? Why did she leave it there? We’ll never know.

On the other hand, Cézanne’s attention to still lives is much more than marginal, and he actively explored the genre throughout his career. Though Cézanne’s early still lifes were influenced by the work of Gustave Courbet, his depiction of fruits and everyday objects in a dark and sombre palette soon became the foundation for his later explorations of form, colour, and composition.

As Cézanne matured as an artist, his still lifes became more than just realistic depictions of objects: he began to experiment with perspective, breaking away from the traditional one-point and manipulating viewpoints to create a sense of depth and dynamism in a way that was capital for what we will call cubism. His vibrant hues and contrasting elements explored the relationships between forms, more than the relationship between everyday objects and light. A defining characteristic of Cézanne’s still lives is his emphasis on form and structure. He simplified complex shapes like fruits and vessels, reducing them to their basic geometric components – spheres, cones, and cylinders.

[image error]

An Atelier Recreated

The transition between the central section of the exhibition and the last rooms is marked by the recreation of environments that could remind us of the painters’ ateliers, in both daylight (simulated, of course) and artificial light.

It’s charming enough. Though it’s a challenge for people to understand that they can’t go inside and touch stuff.

Day…

 

…and night.Subjects Compared

The last room includes three pairs of paintings with the same subject, one by Renoir and one by Cézanne:

bathers;still lives;landscapes.

They’re all highly representative of the differences and similarities between the two friends, but the most impactful possibly is the section with the two bathers: a classical one by Renoir, influenced by Boucher’s Diana Resting after her Bath, and Cézanne’s groundbreaking composition that Picasso will love. Of course I prefer the first one.

Picasso because of reasons

The last room features a still life and a naked woman by Picasso, compared to a still life by Cézanne (we’ve seen why) and a naked woman by Renoir because, I guess, we liked it.

The Blood of the Vampire

New rejection, new book on Patreon!

Florence Marryat (1833-1899) was a British author and actress, and perhaps one of the most underrated figures in the Victorian era.

Born the daughter of famed naval captain and novelist Frederick Marryat, Florence’s life was marked by both privilege and upheaval. Her parents separated when she was young, and her education came from governesses and her father’s extensive library. In 1854, she married Thomas Ross Church and embarked to lead a life in colonial India. However, the marriage soured, and she returned to England a decade later, a single mother with three children.

Florence eventually turned to writing, and she achieved success with sensational novels that explored social issues and defied societal expectations. Her first novel, Love’s Conflict (1865), was written while her children were ill from scarlet fever, to distract herself from “sad thoughts”. Her work often challenged Victorian norms and garnered a devoted readership, and she became involved in spiritualist circles, reflecting the era’s fascination with the supernatural. In her later years, Florence remained active.  She championed writers’ rights through the Society of Authors and even ran a school of literary arts.

The novel follows the story of Harriet, the daughter of a mad scientist and a woman of mixed-race, who possesses a vampiric ability she’s unaware of: she drains the life force of those close to her. As the main character leaves her Jamaica convent and sets to Europe, danger and death spread around her, the people she loves consistently fall ill and die, and the hypocritical Victorian society connects her aura of misfortune to her racial heritage, progressively excluding her from society.

The novel explores the possibility of a scientific explanation, blurring the lines between the supernatural and the rational.

Published in 1897, it wasn’t well received: The Speaker wrote it was part of a wave of imitations triggered by Bram Stoker’s Dracula and defined Marryat an “inferior writer”. It’s still comparatively little known.

Enjoy.

#ChthonicThursday: Manea

Manea was an Etruscan goddess of the dead, of spirits and of chaos, of Oscan origin, associated with the Genetai group. Later Latin mythology incorporated her into their systems of belief, making her the mother of ghosts, of the undead, the night spirits, the Lares and the Manes. She was believed to rule the underworld with Śuri Manth.

She’s today’s feature on my Patreon.