The Gallery of Claude Monet

The Woman in the Green Dress 1866

Le dejeuner sur l'herbe,1865-1866 Jardin à Sainte-Adresse 1867

Madame Monet in a Japanese Costume 1875

Lavacourt: Sunshine and Snow 1879-1880

Claude Monet biography

Oscar-Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris. He spent his childhood in the Normandy coastal town of Le Havre, where his father prospered as a grocer and ship chandler. In 1860 Monet met the landscape artist Eugène Boudin, who introduced him to plein-air painting, and he began to produce increasingly ambitious and naturalistic work.

In 1859 Monet moved to Paris, where he attended the Académie Suisse beginning in 1860. He returned to Le Havre in 1862 and worked in the plein-air mode alongside Boudin and Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind. In 1862 he returned to Paris to enroll in the studio of Charles Gleyre, where his fellow students included Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley. Despite some success in 1865, when two of his works were exhibited at the Salon, by 1867 financial difficulties forced Monet to return to his family in Le Havre, leaving his pregnant companion, Camille-Léonie Doncieux, in Paris, where she gave birth to their first son, Jean.

The couple were married in 1870; soon after, in response to the Franco-Prussian War, they left for London. There Monet met Paul Durand-Ruel, who would later become his gallerist and a champion of Impressionism. After returning to France at the end of 1871 Monet and his family settled in Argenteuil.

In 1874, having banded together with other artists to form the Société Anonyme des Artistes, Monet submitted his painting Impression, Sunrise (1872, Musée Marmottan, Paris) to the group's first exhibition. The work caused a sensation, and gave a name to the burgeoning movement, when the critic Louis Leroy lampooned the group as “impressionists,” a term the artists themselves soon adopted without satirical inflection.

In 1878, with financial troubles looming and his wife gravely ill, the Monets embarked on an unorthodox joint household arrangement in Vétheuil with the family of former patron Ernest Hoschedé. After Camille’s death, Monet and Alice Hoschedé continued to live together, waiting until Ernest Hoschedé died before marrying in 1892. Monet continued to exhibit with the Impressionists on an irregular basis, choosing also to show his work at the Salon in 1880, in a solo exhibition at Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris in 1883, and at several of Georges Petit’s Expositions Internationales de Peinture. In 1889 Galerie Georges Petit staged a major retrospective of his work, showing 145 paintings. Two years later Durand-Ruel mounted an exhibition of Monet's first series paintings, Grainstacks, which were met with great critical acclaim. The artist continued his exploration of series in his paintings of poplars and of the Rouen Cathedral, documenting in a succession of canvases subtle shifts in light or focus.

By 1890 Monet was financially secure enough to purchase a house at Giverny, later adding adjacent land and installing both the water-lily garden and Japanese bridge, which he would later famously paint in series. Between 1899 and 1901 he made three trips to London to paint views of the Thames River. Over the next decade he completed more series studies of the lily garden at Giverny, which he continued to enlarge. Alice’s death in 1911 was succeeded by that of his elder son in 1914. The following year Monet began work on an expansive new garden studio, in which he would fabricate his Grandes-Décorations, the large-scale water-lily series that would occupy him until his death. He made plans to turn a large number of these works over to the state to be housed in specially built galleries in the Paris Orangerie. The installation of twenty-two paintings opened to the public in May 1927, five months after his death, at the age of eighty-six.

Biography

Rosa Bonheur French Animal Painter1822 - 1899

Rosa (Marie Rosalie) Bonheur was born March 16th 1822 in Bordeaux, France. She is widely acclaimed as an animal painter and was influenced by the work of the English artist, Landseer.
Rosa Bonheur was one of the most renowned animal painters in history. Her earliest training was received from her father, a minor landscape painter, who encouraged her interest in art in general and in animals as her

The Horse Fair exclusive subject. He allowed her to keep a veritable menagerie in their home, including a sheep that is reported to have lived on the balcony of their sixth-floor Parisian apartment.
Bonheur's unconventional lifestyle contributed to the myth that surrounded her during her lifetime. She smoked cigarettes in public, rode astride, and wore her hair short. To study the anatomy of animals, Bonheur visited the slaughterhouse; for this work, she favored men's attire and was required to obtain an official authorization from the police to dress in trousers and a smock.
While radical in her personal life, Bonheur was artistically conservative. Henri Cain would later recall that she "was not only an exceedingly intelligent artist, but a very conscientious and hard-working one....She believed in honesty in art and ever desired to keep very close to nature." Bonheur's reputation grew steadily in the 1840's; she exhibited her animal paintings and sculptures at the Paris Salon regularly from 1841 to 1853. The Salons tended to support traditional styles, and most artists still sought to exhibit at the annual shows, as it was the primary way for their work to be seen by the public. In 1845 Bonheur won a third prize and in 1848 a gold medal.
Because of this recognition from official sources, she was then awarded a commission from the French government to produce a painting on the subject of plowing. Plowing in Nivernais, exhibited at the Salon of 1849, firmly established her career in France. Bonheur later won international acclaim with her life size painting The Horse Fair exhibited at the 1853 Salon.
Bonheur's popularity in England was assured after two versions of The Horse Fair were exhibited there, and Queen Victoria ordered a private viewing of the original at Windsor Castle. The artist's chief source of revenue in the 1860s and 1870s came from sales in England rather than from her native France. In 1894 she was the first woman to receive the Grand Cross of the French Legion of Honor.
Sheep by the Sea illustrates Bonheur's lifelong interest in portraying farm animals in a straightforward manner, reinforcing her commitment to direct observation from nature. She has captured the essence of a flock of domestic sheep--calm, undisturbed, and complacent--settled in a meadow on the edge of a body of water.
The Horse Fair (1835-55) and Weaning the Calves (1887) are both in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

The Abduction of Psyche

The Abduction of Psyche by

Adolphe-William Bouguereau

Title The Abduction of Psyche
Artist Adolphe-William Bouguereau

Date 1895

The painting The Abduction of Psyche (which is also known by the French title Le ravissement de Psych้) is one of artist William Bouguereau's most recognizable and famous works. The Abduction of Psyche was inspired by an episode from Classical mythology, and Bouguereau was certainly not the first to be fascinated by the legend. Indeed, the tale of Psyche and Cupid (or Eros, if you prefer the Greek name for Cupid) has appealed to many painters and poets over the centuries. But the way in which the artist has depicted his version of the myth is what makes this particular image so memorable.

In this painting, the beautiful woman Psyche is being carried by her immortal lover Cupid. Bouguereau biographer Fronia E. Wissman writes poetically of this piece: "...she [Psyche] is literally being transported by love." And this, in essence, is what the image represents. Psyche seems lost in a blissful reverie. She is being embraced by the handsome god of love, who, with his elegant wings and idealized features, seems custom made to drive young women into a frenzy of admiration and desire. The two figures almost seem as one in this work, and together their bodies form a lyrical arrangement. Floating draperies - delicate lilac for Psyche and muted blue-grey for Cupid - complete the composition and give the painting a subtle but sophisticated diagonal emphasis.

Biography of Adolphe-William Bouguereau (1825-1905)

As a young man, Bouguereau put himself through the Ecole des Beaux-Arts by keeping books for a wine merchant and coloring lithographic labels for a local grocer. In his spare time, late in the evening, he created drawings from memory. This diligence and discipline resulted in an extrordinarily productive artistic life. Bouguereau produced more than seven hundred finished works and achieved a remarkable level of public acclaim and financial success. He never forgot his difficult early days, however; working secretly, he assisted young artists who were struggling as he had to pursue an artistic career in the face of financial difficulties.

Like many painters of the second half of the 19th century, Bouguereau made a careful study of form and technique and steeped himself in classical sculpture and painting. True to his serious and industrious nature, he worked deliberately and industriously: before beginning a painting he would master the history of his subject and complete numerous sketches.

The tenderness with which he portrayed children and domestic scenes, his technical skill and passion for the classics, and his love of rich color are hallmarks of Bouguereau's exquisite paintings.

Painting of Vincent van Gogh

Starry Night

Painting, Oil on Canvas Saint-Rémy, France: June, 1889The museum of Modern Art New York, New York, United States of America, North America F: 612, JH: 1731

Sun Flower

The Potato Eaters

Painting, Oil on Canvas
Nuenen, The Netherlands: April, 1885
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Europe F: 82, JH: 764





Vincent van Gogh: Biography


Birth Year : 1853
Death Year : 1890
Country : Netherlands

Vincent van Gogh, for whom color was the chief symbol of expression, was born in Groot-Zundert, Holland. The son of a pastor, brought up in a religious and cultured atmosphere, Vincent was highly emotional and lacked self-confidence. Between 1860 and 1880, when he finally decided to become an artist, van Gogh had had two unsuitable and unhappy romances and had worked unsuccessfully as a clerk in a bookstore, an art salesman, and a preacher in the Borinage (a dreary mining district in Belgium), where he was dismissed for overzealousness. He remained in Belgium to study art, determined to give happiness by creating beauty. The works of his early Dutch period are somber-toned, sharply lit, genre paintings of which the most famous is "The Potato Eaters" (1885). In that year van Gogh went to Antwerp where he discovered the works of Rubens and purchased many Japanese prints.

In 1886 he went to Paris to join his brother Théo, the manager of Goupil's gallery. In Paris, van Gogh studied with Cormon, inevitably met Pissarrso,Monet, and Gauguin , and began to lighten his very dark palette and to paint in the short brushstrokes of the Impressionists. His nervous temperament made him a difficult companion and night-long discussions combined with painting all day undermined his health. He decided to go south to Arles where he hoped his friends would join him and help found a school of art. Gauguin did join him but with disastrous results. In a fit of epilepsy, van Gogh pursued his friend with an open razor, was stopped by Gauguin , but ended up cutting a portion of his ear lobe off. Van Gogh then began to alternate between fits of madness and lucidity and was sent to the asylum in Saint-Remy for treatment.

In May of 1890, he seemed much better and went to live in Auvers-sur-Oise under the watchful eye of Dr. Gachet. Two months later he was dead, having shot himself "for the good of all." During his brief career he had sold one painting. Van Gogh's finest works were produced in less than three years in a technique that grew more and more impassioned in brushstroke, in symbolic and intense color, in surface tension, and in the movement and vibration of form and line. Van Gogh's inimitable fusion of form and content is powerful; dramatic, lyrically rhythmic, imaginative, and emotional, for the artist was completely absorbed in the effort to explain either his struggle against madness or his comprehension of the spiritual essence of man and nature.

The Sacrament of the Last Supper

The Sacrament of the Last Supper, c.1955
Salvador Dali

Artist: Salvador Dali

Artist's Lifespan: 1904-1989

Title: The Sacrament of the Last SupperDate: 1955

Location of Origin: United States

Medium: Oil in cavas

Original Size: 5 ft 5 5/8 in x 8 ft 9 1/8 in

Style: Surrealism

Genre: Jesus Chris

Location: National Gallery of Art, Washington

Description

Twelve pentagons and twelve apostles, as Dalí said: “…communion must be symmetric.” "The Sacrament of the Last Supper" was painted using oil on canvas, in 1955. An art collector called Chester Dale commissioned the painting . Whilst he was enormously pleased with the painting, some crictics viewed it as a mediocre rendering of a much-used subject. The subject is Christ's Last Supper, which has been painted by many artists over the centuries. Amongst these renditions is a version by one of Dali's favorite artists, Leonardo da Vinci. Like the Leonardo version, Dali's "The Sacrament of the Last Supper" shows Christ sitting centrally at a table with the disciples around him and in the background, windows look on to a landscape, in Dali's case it is that of a bay near his home of Port Lligat. The figure of Christ is transparent, and above him the arms and chest of a man appear in the sky, suggesting that he is already ascending to heaven. An aspect of the painting that caused controversy was the fact that Christ was given Gala's features. Dali had already portrayed Gala as the Madonna in several earlier paintings, and in 1958 he was to show the image of Gala looking down on Christ as he ascends to Heaven, in the painting "The Ascension of Christ."

Biography of Salvador Dali

Dalí, Salvador (1904-89): Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer. After passing through phases of Cubism, Futurism and Metaphysical painting, he joined the Surrealists in 1929 and his talent for self-publicity rapidly made him the most famous representative of the movement. Throughout his life he cultivated eccentricity and exhibitionism (one of his most famous acts was appearing in a diving suit at the opening of the London Surrealist exhibition in 1936), claiming that this was the source of his creative energy. He took over the Surrealist theory of automatism but transformed it into a more positive method which he named `critical paranoia'. According to this theory one should cultivate genuine delusion as in clinical paranoia while remaining residually aware at the back of one's mind that the control of the reason and will has been deliberately suspended. He claimed that this method should be used not only in artistic and poetical creation but also in the affairs of daily life. His paintings employed a meticulous academic technique that was contradicted by the unreal `dream' space he depicted and by the strangely hallucinatory characters of his imagery. He described his pictures as `hand-painted dream photographs' and had certain favorite and recurring images, such as the human figure with half-open drawers protruding from it, burning giraffes, and watches bent and flowing as if made from melting wax (The Persistence of Memory, MOMA, New York; 1931).

In 1937 Dalí visited Italy and adopted a more traditional style; this together with his political views (he was a supporter of General Franco) led Breton to expel him from the Surrealist ranks. He moved to the USA in 1940 and remained there until 1955. During this time he devoted himself largely to self-publicity; his paintings were often on religious themes (The Crucifixion of St John of the Cross, Glasgow Art Gallery, 1951), although sexual subjects and pictures centring on his wife Gala were also continuing preoccupations. In 1955 he returned to Spain and in old age became a recluse.

Apart from painting, Dalí's output included sculpture, book illustration, jewellery design, and work for the theatre. In collaboration with the director Luis Buñuel he also made the first Surrealist films---Un chien andalou (1929) and L'Age d'or (1930)---and he contributed a dream sequence to Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945). He also wrote a novel, Hidden Faces (1944) and several volumes of flamboyant autobiography. Although he is undoubtedly one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, his status is controversial; many critics consider that he did little if anything of consequence after his classic Surrealist works of the 1930s. There are museums devoted to Dalí's work in Figueras, his home town in Spain, and in St Petersburg in Florida.

1904: Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí was born on May, 11th in Figueras, Catalonia, Spain.

1917: He started to visit the School of Art. First paintings.

1918: First small exhibition in the Theatre.

1921-25: Went to Academy of Arts in Madrid. Conflicts with his teachers.

1925: First stand-alone exibition of Dalí at the Galery of Dalmau.

1926-28: Early explorations of the Surrealism. Dalí in Cadaqués 1927

1929: Gala went into his life. Joined the group of Surrealists in 1930 Gala 1927, and Dalí 1929

1934-37: Dalí had his paranoid-critic-epoch. Dalí and Gala in 1937

1941-44: "Avida Dollars" in America.

1945-49: Dalí the Classic. Dalí and his Daddy in Cadaqués 1948

1950-65: His mystic period. He wrote several books (The secret life of Salvador Dalí).

1963-78: Dalí the Divine - Dalí and the Science.

1979-83: Theory of Disaster.

1982: Gala died.

1989: Dalí, Jan. 23th, died.

The Birth of Venus Sandro Botticelli, c. 1482–1486

The Birth of Venus Sandro Botticelli, c. 1482–1486

Bioraphy of Sandro Botticelli

"Italian painter. Botticelli was Florentine and extremely successful at the peak of his career, with a highly individual and graceful style founded on the rhythmic capabilities of outline. With the emergence of the High Renaissance style at the turn of the 16th century, he fell out of fashion, died in obscurity and was only returned to his position as one of the best-loved quattrocento painters through the interest of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites. His nickname "Botticelli" means "little barrel" and was originally bestowed on his older brother. For some reason the name was passed on to, and adopted by, the younger painter brother.

"Botticelli's early years are obscure, but he seems to have been trained in the studio of Filippo Lippi whose style informs his earliest dated work, the Fortitude panel (1470, Florence, Uffizi). This was commissioned to be one of a series of seven, the others having been executed by Piero Pollaiuolo. A stylistic affinity here also with Pollaiuolo is perhaps due to the patrons' requirements for unity within the series (certainly it is never evident again). Many of Botticelli's paintings are undated, but an Adoration of the Magi (Florence, Uffizi) has been dated by modern scholarship to c1475. This is important because it provides evidence of Botticelli having already secured the patronage of the Medici whose portraits (according to Vasari) appear in the picture. So well did this work establish Botticelli's reputation that in 1481-82 he was commissioned to join Perugino, Ghiarlandio and Rosselli (the most celebrated painters of the day) to paint frescoes for the Sistine Chapel. Botticelli's two most famous paintings were painted around this time, possibly for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. Russian Venus by Boris Kustodiev

They are the Primavera (c1478) and the Birth of the venus (c1483), both in the Uffizi. These are mythologies, not of the capricious Ovidian sort, but, it has been suggested, ones that embody the moral and metaphysical Neoplatonic ideas that were then fashionable in the Medici circles. Pure visual poetry, they are stylistically the quintessence of Botticelli: there is a deliberate denial of rational spatial construction and no attempt to model solid-looking figures; instead the figures float on the forward plane of the picture against a decorative landscape backdrop, and form, defined by outline, is willfully modified to imbue that outline with expressive power.

That Botticelli could work in more than one manner at a time (perhaps, like the Fortitude, adapting it for the context) is shown in his fresco of St.Augustine in his studies painted in 1480 for the Florentine church of the Ognissanti and in rivalry with Ghirlandaio's nearby St. Jerome (both still in situ). Here Botticelli's style is more monumental, with a close attention to naturalistic detail. His workshop in these years was highly successful, one of its most lucrative lines being panels depicting the Madonna and Child, perhaps the most beautiful of which is the tondo of the Madonna of the Magnificant (c1485, Florence, Uffizi). Like his master Lippi, before him, Botticelli has created his own instantly recognizable type of feminine beauty, used for Madonnas and Venuses alike. His most remarkable painting is also the only one that is signed, the Mytic Nativity (1500, London, National Gallery). It is deliberately archaic with hieratic differences in scale (the Virgin and Child dwarfing the other figures) and carries a cryptic inscription (partly erased) forecasting the end of the present troubled world and the beginning of a new order. Many of his works datable to this period seem to be imbued with the same spiritual tension (which some scholars have attributed to Botticelli's association with the hellfire preacher Savonarola, although such an association has not been substantiated). During his last decade his style must have appeared absolutely out of date and he seems to have done very little work. Without doubt the High Renaissance style obscured his achievement and, despite his earlier success, he had no followers of any merit. His most important pupil was the son of his own master, Filippino Lippi."

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINSLANDER'S PEAK

by Albert Bierstadt 1830-1902

Biography of Albert Bierstadt

Albert Bierstadt (BEER stat) was born in Prussia, which was a large German state. (This land today is in Germany, Poland, and Russia.) He came to America with his parents when he was two years old.

As he grew up, he taught himself to paint. Then he decided to go to Dusseldorf, Germany to study with a group of artists. They toured Europe. Bierstadt first started painting landscapes in Europe, then he came to America.

He painted the magnificent scenes in Yosemite. When people saw the paintings, they wanted to go there and see it for themselves. As a result, so many people went to Yosemite, that the land was no longer unspoiled, and Bierstadt went elsewhere to paint.

In 1859 the artist made a trip to the Colorado and Wyoming territories with Frederick Lander, who was in charge of a government survey expedition. He was inspired to paint this beautiful scene of the Rocky Mountains. Indians are encamped in the valley. This is a large painting; six feet high and ten feet long.

After Colonel Lander died in the Civil War, Bierstadt named the highest peak in the painting Lander's Peak. The painting sold for $25,000 in 1865. That was a lot of money in those days. Later, it is said, he bought it back and either gave it to his brother or sold it to him.

In 1867 he married, and he and his new bride went to London. There he met with Queen Victoria. His wife, Rosalie, needed to live in a warm climate for health reasons. She lived in Nassau, and her husband began to paint the tropics of Nassau as a result of his stays there.He died suddenly in 1902 and people seemed to forget his work until the 1960's. People became more interested in preserving our national lands, and his paintings began to be shown again.