Category Archives: Art

Art

The Book of Kells (c.800)

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The Book of Kells, held in Dublin’s Trin­i­ty Col­lege Library, is an illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script Gospel book in Latin, con­tain­ing the four Gospels of the New Tes­ta­ment. It was cre­at­ed in a Colum­ban monastery in Ire­land around 800 AD, and it’s a mas­ter­work of West­ern cal­lig­ra­phy. It rep­re­sents the pin­na­cle of insu­lar illu­mi­na­tion (“insu­lar” deriv­ing from insu­la, the Latin for “island” and refer­ring to post-Roman art of Britain and Ire­land). It is also wide­ly regard­ed as Ire­land’s finest nation­al trea­sure, and although I haven’t yet made it past the pubs of Dublin to view it, it’s def­i­nite­ly on the list.

The illus­tra­tions and orna­men­ta­tion of the Book of Kells are exquis­ite. The dec­o­ra­tion com­bines tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian iconog­ra­phy with ornate, swirling motifs. There are fig­ures of humans, ani­mals, myth­i­cal beasts, along with Celtic knots and inter­lac­ing pat­terns in vibrant colours, all scribed onto leaves of high-qual­i­ty calf vel­lum with iron gall ink (the stan­dard ink used in Europe, made from iron salts and tan­nic acid extract­ed from oak galls) and colours derived from a wide range of sub­stances import­ed from dis­tant lands.

The man­u­script takes its name from the Abbey of Kells, in Coun­ty Meath, which was its home for cen­turies. Its exact place of ori­gin is uncer­tain, although it is wide­ly thought to have been start­ed at Iona and then lat­er com­plet­ed in the scrip­to­ri­um at Kells itself. Regard­less, it’s true to say that the Colum­ban monks respon­si­ble for its cre­ation had skills in cal­lig­ra­phy honed to a remark­able degree.

Art

John Thornton’s Great East Window at York Minster (1408)

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The last time my fam­i­ly and I vis­it­ed York, we wan­dered out­side York Min­ster but our indige­nous fru­gal­i­ty (being our­selves of York­shire soil) baulked at the then-recent­ly intro­duced admis­sion fee of £10 to go inside. If you too vis­it York and find your­self in sim­i­lar fru­gal mode, let me advise you to take a hold of your­self, with an option­al shake, and remind your­self nev­er to put filthy lucre ahead of artis­tic splen­dour. For York Min­ster, as well as in itself being one of the great goth­ic cathe­drals of north­ern Europe, and thus replete with the resplen­dent archi­tec­tur­al beau­ty for which such cathe­drals are known, con­tains also the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in the world, includ­ing the sub­ject of today’s blog, the Great East Win­dow.

Some call it England’s Sis­tine Chapel, and indeed, had it been done in paint, instead of in glass, it might well be con­sid­ered a rival to Michelangelo’s mas­ter­piece in Rome. How­ev­er, stained glass has always fall­en on the wrong side of that divid­ing line between fine and applied art, and thus it is seen pri­mar­i­ly as a craft. Let’s not fall for that one. The great east win­dow in York Min­ster is one of the tri­umphant achieve­ments of the Mid­dle Ages: 1,690sqft of art­ful­ly exe­cut­ed stained glass, recount­ing the sto­ry of the world from Cre­ation to Apoc­a­lypse.

It was in 1405 that John Thorn­ton of Coven­try was com­mis­sioned to glaze the east end of the Lady Chapel. A copy of Thornton’s con­tract for the win­dow sur­vives, spec­i­fy­ing that he was to draw all the car­toons, and paint a large num­ber of the indi­vid­ual pan­els. For all this Thorn­ton was paid a total of £56, and con­tract­ed to com­plete the job inside three years. For doing so, Thorn­ton received a £10 bonus, and proud­ly put the date of com­ple­tion – 1408 – at the very apex of the win­dow.

Doubt­less Thorn­ton had behind him a team of glaziers, hired local­ly or brought with him from Coven­try, but the paint­ing on the glass would pri­mar­i­ly have been his. It was Thornton’s task too to turn the commissioner’s high­ly the­o­log­i­cal and pre­cise con­cept into a work of art. And this he self-evi­dent­ly did.

While much medieval glass is dom­i­nat­ed by reds and blues, John Thorn­ton had a pen­chant for yel­low as his base colour. In addi­tion, the paint­ing in Thornton’s faces had greater real­ism (and metic­u­lous­ly drawn hair) than his rivals. The typ­i­cal Thorn­ton face is sen­si­tive, with eyes down-turned, a small mouth and a some­what promi­nent nose. What Thorn­ton was pio­neer­ing in his glass­work was the Euro­pean style – new to Eng­land – known as Inter­na­tion­al Goth­ic. It is ele­gant­ly stylised work; for sure, the York com­mis­sion­ers were buy­ing cut­ting edge art, and, of course, good glass can’t be made with­out a cut­ting edge.

Art

William Harnett’s The Old Violin (1886)

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William Har­nett (1848–1892) was an Irish-Amer­i­can painter of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, whose fame may not have with­stood the pas­sage of time very well but who nonethe­less was respon­si­ble for some excel­lent work in the trompe l’œil still life genre. Trompe l’œil, mean­ing “deceive the eye” in French, is a style of paint­ing that seeks to cre­ate a high­ly real­is­tic, three-dimen­sion­al depic­tion of objects, using per­spec­ti­val illu­sion­ism.

The Old Vio­lin is one of Har­net­t’s most famous paint­ings and a superb exam­ple of paint­ed real­ism. The sub­ject is decep­tive­ly sim­ple; a vio­lin, ren­dered in actu­al size, a sheet of music, a small news­pa­per clip­ping, and a blue enve­lope are shown against a back­ground formed by a green and rusty-hinged wood­en door. It cre­at­ed a sen­sa­tion when first exhib­it­ed at the Cincin­nati Indus­tri­al Expo­si­tion in 1886, where view­ers were enthralled by the tech­ni­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty of the pic­ture. A local news­pa­per report­ed that “a police­man stands by it con­stant­ly, lest peo­ple reach over and attempt to see if the news­pa­per clip­ping is gen­uine by tear­ing it off”.

Along with oth­er Har­nett pic­tures that con­vinc­ing­ly tricked view­ers’ per­cep­tions, The Old Vio­lin aroused con­sid­er­able con­tem­po­rary debate about the aes­thet­ics of imi­ta­tive art­work. The genre is hard­ly unprece­dent­ed, how­ev­er – there’s a great lit­tle sto­ry in Greek myth about the 5th cen­tu­ry BC con­test between painters Zeux­is and Par­rha­sius. The con­test was to deter­mine which of the two was the most real­is­tic painter. When Zeux­is unveiled his paint­ing of grapes, they appeared so real that birds flew down to peck at them. But when Par­rha­sius, whose paint­ing was con­cealed behind a cur­tain, asked Zeux­is to pull aside that cur­tain, the cur­tain itself turned out to be a paint­ed illu­sion, and Par­rha­sius won the con­test.

Back to The Old Vio­lin…note how every ele­ment of grain and worn area of the vio­lin is repro­duced in impec­ca­ble detail. The age of the vio­lin is clear­ly key; as Har­nett him­self said: “As a rule, new things do not paint well; I want my mod­els to have the mel­low­ing effect of age”. Well said!

The paint­ing is cur­rent­ly held in the Nation­al Gallery of Art, Wash­ing­ton DC, and, although there is no longer a need for it to be guard­ed from touch by a less cred­u­lous audi­ence of mod­ern times, I for one will pay my regards to this charm­ing still life should I ever be pass­ing through Wash­ing­ton.

 

 

Art

Sir James Guthrie’s A Hind’s Daughter (1883)

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Dur­ing a work vis­it to Scot­land some years ago, I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it Edinburgh’s Nation­al Gallery of Scot­land. It has some excel­lent art­works and is well worth an afternoon’s tar­ri­ance. It hous­es the sub­ject of today’s blog, Sir James Guthrie’s A Hind’s Daugh­ter.

The Glas­gow School was a cir­cle of influ­en­tial artists and design­ers that began to coa­lesce in Glas­gow in the 1870s, and flour­ished from the 1890s to around 1910. Dubbed the Glas­gow Boys, these men had a pas­sion for real­ism and nat­u­ral­ism, as well as a dis­taste for the Edin­burgh ori­ent­ed Scot­tish art estab­lish­ment, which they viewed as oppres­sive (cf. the Impres­sion­ists). Dri­ven and moti­vat­ed by nat­u­ral­is­tic ideals, they embraced change, cre­at­ed mas­ter­pieces, and became Scot­tish icons in the process.

James, lat­er Sir James, Guthrie was one of the lead­ing lights of the Glas­gow Boys. He focused on the life and land­scape of rur­al Scot­land for his oeu­vre; the land and its inhab­i­tants pro­vid­ed a rich resource for Guthrie and none typ­i­fies his art­works of this peri­od more than A Hind’s Daugh­ter (a hind being a skilled farm labour­er). The small girl has just straight­ened up after cut­ting a cab­bage and looks direct­ly and arrest­ing­ly at the view­er, as if she has just spot­ted you. It’s a quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Scot­tish scene, with girl and land­scape inex­tri­ca­bly merged.

Guthrie paint­ed the pic­ture in the Berwick­shire vil­lage of Cock­burnspath. The warm earth colours and dis­tinc­tive square brush strokes demon­strate the influ­ence of French real­ist painters such as Jules Bastien-Lep­age, who sim­i­lar­ly sought inspi­ra­tion from the peas­ant farm­ers of rur­al France. I love it.

 

 

Sir James Guthrie
Art

Niccolò dell’Arca’s Lamentation of Christ (between 1463 and 1490)

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Nic­colò dell’Arca (c. 1435–1440 – 1494) was an Ital­ian Ear­ly Renais­sance sculp­tor, about which lit­tle is known except for his pos­ses­sion of a sub­lime skill in the art of sculp­ture.

His Com­pianto sul Cristo mor­to (the Mourn­ing, or Lamen­ta­tion, of Christ) is a life-size group of six sep­a­rate ter­ra­cot­ta fig­ures lament­ing in a semi­cir­cle around the dead Christ, in the Sanc­tu­ary of San­ta Maria del­la Vita in Bologna. Lamen­ta­tions were com­mon­ly depict­ed in Renais­sance Europe, it being the thir­teenth of the Sta­tions of the Cross. Here, the pain of Jesus’s friends, as he is tak­en down from the cross, could not have been expressed with more intense pathos. Sor­row digs into their faces, for­ev­er frozen in anguish.

More than 600 years after they were made, these frag­ile, now colour­less ter­ra­cot­ta stat­ues con­tin­ue to move and sur­prise vis­i­tors to the church who often don’t know about the church’s prized but untrum­pet­ed pos­ses­sion. It’s a uni­ver­sal and time­less grief the fig­ures express. The only peace­ful fig­ure of course is that of Christ who looks serene­ly asleep on a dec­o­ra­tive scal­loped cov­er­let. Each of the oth­er fig­ures’ dra­mat­ic pathos is inten­si­fied by the real­ism of the facial details.

It’s uncom­fort­able view­ing, of course, due to the nature of the scene, but you know these Renais­sance artists; they had a remark­able capac­i­ty for depict­ing pain and suf­fer­ing, all part and par­cel of the con­cepts embod­ied in the Chris­t­ian reli­gion. The anguish is stark, but the cause of the anguish becomes the focus for the Renais­sance view­er: the dead Christ and the impli­ca­tions of that death for mankind. Check out the image details to ful­ly appre­ci­ate Del­l’Ar­ca’s arti­san­ship.

 

Art

Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid (c. 1658)

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Johannes Ver­meer is right­ly con­sid­ered one of the great­est painters of the Dutch Gold­en Age, but it wasn’t always so. Although mod­est­ly recog­nised in his life­time in Delft and The Hague, he quick­ly slipped into obscu­ri­ty after his death, and it remained that way for near­ly two cen­turies, until his redis­cov­ery in the 19th cen­tu­ry by French art crit­ic, Théophile Thoré-Bürg­er, who was so impressed when he came across Vermeer’s View of Delft that he spent years seek­ing out oth­er paint­ings by this vir­tu­al­ly unknown artist. Today, Vermeer’s paint­ings are of course laud­ed as mas­ter­pieces and worth mega-mil­lions; should you ever come across his paint­ing The Con­cert, which was stolen in 1990 and remains miss­ing, do grab it — it’s worth about $200M.

Although “launched” by a cityscape and par­tic­u­lar­ly famous for a tron­ie (Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring), Ver­meer paint­ed most­ly domes­tic inte­ri­ors. As his biog­ra­ph­er put it: “Almost all his paint­ings are appar­ent­ly set in two small­ish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same fur­ni­ture and dec­o­ra­tions in var­i­ous arrange­ments and they often por­tray the same peo­ple, most­ly women”.

A prime exam­ple is today’s choice, The Milk­maid, paint­ed around 1658 and show­ing a domes­tic kitchen maid, suit­ably attired and pour­ing milk into an earth­en­ware pot (and thus pos­si­bly mak­ing bread pud­ding, judg­ing by the amount of bread on the table). Vermeer’s care­ful design (there were sev­er­al revi­sions) result­ed in a mas­ter­piece of light and shad­ow, colour, con­tours, and shape. He restricts his palette main­ly to the pri­ma­ry colours of red, blue, and yel­low, and the pig­ments are rich and vibrant — Ver­meer is known to have used only the very best, and most expen­sive, pig­ments. Above all, the skill of the artist has wrought a remark­ably real­is­tic scene, with quirky but authen­tic fea­tures such as the foot warmer, low­er right, and the hang­ing bas­ket, upper right.

Art

Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942)

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If I ever get to Chica­go, one of the first things on my list will be to see the icon­ic mas­ter­piece of Amer­i­can art that is Edward Hopper’s oil on can­vas, Nighthawks, housed at the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go. It has been there ever since the Insti­tute bought the piece from the artist, for the sum of $3000, just a few months after its com­ple­tion in 1942.

The pic­ture shows a late-night, sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed down­town din­er, some­where in New York. Many peo­ple have spec­u­lat­ed and tried to work out where the din­er actu­al­ly was but it is far more like­ly to be a com­pos­ite of var­i­ous joints from around the artist’s home patch of Green­wich Vil­lage, Man­hat­tan, cob­bled togeth­er in Hopper’s imag­i­na­tion.

Hop­per and his wife Jo kept metic­u­lous notes about his work, and they pro­vide a rare glimpse into this oft-uncon­sid­ered aspect of the artist’s life: the plan­ning and thought behind a planned work. This excerpt, in Jo’s hand­writ­ing, describes Nighthawks:

“Night + bril­liant inte­ri­or of cheap restau­rant. Bright items: cher­ry wood counter + tops of sur­round­ing stools; light on met­al tanks at rear right; bril­liant streak of jade green tiles 3/4 across canvas–at base of glass of win­dow curv­ing at cor­ner. Light walls, dull yel­low ocre [sic] door into kitchen right.

Very good look­ing blond boy in white (coat, cap) inside counter. Girl in red blouse, brown hair eat­ing sand­wich. Man night hawk (beak) in dark suit, steel grey hat, black band, blue shirt (clean) hold­ing cig­a­rette. Oth­er fig­ure dark sin­is­ter back–at left. Light side walk out­side pale green­ish. Dark­ish red brick hous­es oppo­site. Sign across top of restau­rant, dark–Phillies 5c cig­ar. Pic­ture of cig­ar. Out­side of shop dark, green. Note: bit of bright ceil­ing inside shop against dark of out­side street–at edge of stretch of top of win­dow”

The pic­ture was clear­ly not thrown togeth­er, and indeed for all this atten­tion to detail, the fin­ished art­work adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It exudes a sense of lone­li­ness, of sep­a­ra­tion, of eery silence and thus dis­qui­et. Who are these peo­ple? What sto­ries of qui­et des­per­a­tion (since we some­how sus­pect that the pro­tag­o­nists are not of a hap­py and sta­ble dis­po­si­tion) have brought them to this late-night ren­dezvous? Nighthawks allows the viewer’s imag­i­na­tion to fill in the blanks.

 

Edward Hop­per 1941
Art

Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece (1432)

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Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ado­ra­tion of the Mys­tic Lamb of 1432, bet­ter known as the Ghent Altar­piece, ranks among the most sig­nif­i­cant works of art in Europe. Housed at Saint Bavo’s Cathe­dral in Ghent, Bel­gium, this large and com­plex altar­piece has suf­fered a var­ied his­to­ry over the cen­turies, hav­ing been dis­man­tled, stolen, dam­aged, reassem­bled, recov­ered, cleaned, and restored sev­er­al times over. Thank good­ness that it is cur­rent­ly in good and safe con­di­tion, and open for view­ing by the pub­lic, at St Bavo’s.

I stum­bled across this great work of art on a TV pro­gramme just days before I was due to take a week­end break in Brus­sels. It seemed too serendip­i­tous not to arrange the short side-trip to Ghent, and thus I have been for­tu­nate to view this piece up close and per­son­al.

The van Eyck broth­ers, and Jan in par­tic­u­lar, were sig­nif­i­cant artists of the North­ern Renais­sance, oper­at­ing out of Bruges and leav­ing to pos­ter­i­ty such var­ied works as the Arnolfi­ni por­trait, the illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script known as the Turin-Milan Hours, and this great altar­piece in Ghent.

Jan van Eyck, the younger and more famous of the two broth­ers, was a mas­ter of nat­u­ral­is­tic detail. He pays as much atten­tion to earth­ly beau­ty as he does to the reli­gious themes in the altar­piece. The folds of the clothes, the jew­els, the foun­tain, the flow­ers and veg­e­ta­tion, the church­es and land­scape in the back­ground – all reveal a sys­tem­at­ic and dis­crim­i­nat­ing study of the nat­ur­al world.

Com­pare with the ear­li­er, “flat­ter” Inter­na­tion­al Goth­ic art of the 14th cen­tu­ry. Although artists like Duc­cio and Simone Mar­ti­ni had begun to explore depth, per­spec­tive, and space, van Eyck takes it to a whole new lev­el and we recog­nise, for the first time, an unques­tion­able real­ism in the fin­ished art­work.

See here for the whole altar­piece and below that for a selec­tion of some of the won­der­ful details.

 

 

Art

Michelangelo’s Pietà (1499)

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The Vir­gin Mary has fea­tured prodi­gious­ly in Chris­t­ian art for many cen­turies. There are numer­ous gen­res of her depic­tion includ­ing the famil­iar Madon­na and Child, and the Madon­na Enthroned, the Ador­ing Madon­na, the Madon­na of Humil­i­ty, and sev­er­al oth­ers.  One such, the Pietà (Ital­ian for “pity” or “mer­cy”), is a sub­ject that depicts the sor­row­ing Vir­gin Mary cradling the dead Jesus, and is most often found in sculp­ture. Today’s sub­ject is the Pietà of Michelan­ge­lo, com­plet­ed in 1499 and resid­ing in St Peter’s Basil­i­ca, Vat­i­can City.

There is no doubt­ing the sub­lime genius that cre­at­ed this piece. Carved from a sin­gle block of Car­rara mar­ble, Michelan­ge­lo cre­at­ed, with con­sum­mate skill, a coher­ent and mov­ing piece of art incor­po­rat­ing both Clas­si­cal and Renais­sance ten­den­cies.

The fig­ures are delib­er­ate­ly out of pro­por­tion owing to the dif­fi­cul­ty of depict­ing an adult man cra­dled full-length in a woman’s lap. When design­ing Mary’s mea­sure­ments, Michelan­ge­lo could not impose real­is­tic pro­por­tions and have her cra­dle her adult son as he envi­sioned, so he had to make her body over­sized. To ame­lio­rate this com­pro­mise on her form, Michelan­ge­lo carved out cas­cad­ing sheets of drap­ing gar­ments, cam­ou­flag­ing her true full­ness. The result is a tri­umph of form; observe the mon­u­men­tal drap­ery, the youth­ful face of Mary, the anatom­i­cal treat­ment of Christ’s elon­gat­ed body…

Michelan­ge­lo was 24 when he com­plet­ed this sculp­ture, and his fame became assured long before he com­plet­ed his oth­er mas­ter­pieces such as his David (com­plet­ed 1504) and the Sis­tine Chapel ceil­ing (com­plet­ed 1512)

 

Michelan­gelo’s Pietà
Art

Ilya Repin’s Barge-haulers on the Volga (Volga Boatmen) (1873)

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Just as in France where paint­ing and sculp­ture were con­trolled and influ­enced by the Salon, in 19th cen­tu­ry Rus­sia, the equiv­a­lent was the Impe­r­i­al Acad­e­my of Arts in St. Peters­burg. And just as in France, where the Impres­sion­ists rebelled against the con­ser­vatism of the Salon, in Rus­sia a group of artists who became known as the Pered­vizh­ni­ki (Itin­er­ants or Wan­der­ers) rebelled against the Academy’s clas­si­cal ten­den­cies. Instead of the mytho­log­i­cal theme pro­posed for the annu­al paint­ing com­pe­ti­tion in 1863 (“The entrance of Odin into Val­hal­la”), the Pered­vizh­ni­ki were far more inter­est­ed in explor­ing themes of real life in Rus­sia: the Russ­ian peas­antry, the Russ­ian land­scape, the Russ­ian cler­gy. Thus, the Itin­er­ants broke away, cre­at­ed their own group, and paint­ed as they pleased.

A lead­ing mem­ber of the Pered­vizh­ni­ki was Ilya Repin (1844–1930), and here we look at his sub­lime mas­ter­piece, the Vol­ga Boat­men. Repin takes the phys­i­cal labour and fatigue of the com­mon man as his sub­ject, and it’s hard to imag­ine a more phys­i­cal­ly demand­ing and oppres­sive labour than that car­ried out by burlaks, the men (and women) who hauled barges along the riv­er Vol­ga.

The eleven fig­ures in the group have been called metaphors for Rus­sia itself, and there is alle­go­ry aplen­ty for art schol­ars, but the piece is pow­er­ful enough on a straight­for­ward read­ing: Life for the down­trod­den is tough; and there is no hope…

…or is there? In the mid­dle of the dark and beat­en-down fig­ures of the haulers, a young man has lift­ed his head and is star­ing off out of the pic­ture. His is the only vis­age to be illu­mi­nat­ed. The mean­ing is clear: he is rais­ing his head in an act of defi­ance, a sym­bol of hope and the promise of a bet­ter future.  With the ben­e­fit of hind­sight it might even be seen as a fore­shad­ow­ing of the Rev­o­lu­tion that would free the pro­le­tari­at near­ly fifty years lat­er.

For a lit­tle extra atmos­phere, you may care to lis­ten to the 1936 record­ing of Russ­ian opera singer Feodor Chali­apin singing the dirgy folk song, Song of the Vol­ga Boat­men?

Repin, Self-por­trait