Think about it – you’re sitting in your kitchen, and you say to yourself, “Now that’s a beautiful basket of fruit – I’m going to paint that!”.  You might find that the way the sun is reflecting through a window is casting an interesting glow on the apples that you try to capture.  Or you’re struck by the subtle shading of apricots and plums.  And if you’re an artist like Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, or Claude Monet, it’s going result in a typically beautiful painting, but still easily identifiable as a basket of fruit.  But if you’re name is Giuseppe Arcimboldo, your wild imagination results in an entirely different result. When Giuseppe looked at vegetables, fruit or flowers, he didn’t see vegetables or fruit or flowers sitting in a basket or in a vase. He saw these things incorporated into other ordinary objects, like people.  His paintings cause you to look twice – or more, and make you really study the painting, to convince yourself that yes, that’s what you’re seeing. They’re surreal!

 Self Portrait by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, circa 1570

Some people describe his work as inspired and inventful while other consider the works grotesque. Regardless, Arcimboldo truly did pave the way for surrealistic painters such as Salvador Dali, René Magritte and Pablo Picasso.

Let’s start by showing you exactly what we’re talking about.  Look at the picture on the left below:  It’s pretty obviously intended to be the face of a person wearing a woven hat.  But the facial features are made entirely of fruit.  On the right, a relatively normal basket of fruit.  But they are the same painting, just flipped upside down.  Pretty bizarre, right?

Reversible Head with Basket of Fruit by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, circa 1590 

Reversible Basket of Fruit by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, circa 1590

Giuseppe was born in 1527 and is classified as an Italian Renaissance painter. He was a conventional court painter of portraits for three Holy Roman emperors in Vienna and Prague.  As expected of an artist of his era he produced religious work, and among other things, a series of colored drawings of exotic animals in the imperial menagerie.

With the possible exception of Hyeronimus Bosch, Arcimboldo is considered to be the most original of all Renaissance painters, a genius who, with his astonishing portraits, formed by elements such as fruits, animals or objects, seems to anticipate several 20th century avant-gardes such as surrealism.

 Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II. of Austria and his wife Infanta Maria of Spain with their children by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, circa 1563

At the age of 22, Arcimboldo joined his father, also an artist, in designing and creating stained glass works.  From there he received commissions to paint frescoes and design tapestries for Cathedrals in Spain. In 1562, he became the court painter to Ferdinand I of Vienna, and later for Maximilien II and his son Rudolph II of Prague. At this time, he was also employed as the court decorator and costume designer.  Though royal portraits of the time were intended to idealize their subjects, the Habsburgs adored Arcimboldo's inventive renderings. Their court was known for welcoming intellectuals and encouraging avant-garde art. Arcimboldo happily worked for the family for more than 25 years and would continue to accept commissions even after moving back to his homeland in Milan.

At the time that Arcimboldo was painting his nature inspired portraits the studies of botany and zoology, were in their infancy.  Artists including Leonardo da Vinci, who was a predecessor of Arcimboldo in Milan, created paintings centered around natural studies.  Arcimboldo’s composite paintings show a scientific knowledge and respect.  Each item in the composite portraits each plant, grass blade, every flower is clearly recognized. Arcimboldo’s works may be playful, but he and his contemporaries were fascinated by the beauty found in the natural world. His dedicated depiction of flora and fauna down to the finest details. 

THE FOUR SEASONS

Arcimboldo painted numerous paintings about "The four seasons." He represented the hypothetical faces of every season with the most typical element of any of them. The allegorical paintings are peppered with visual puns (Summer’s Ear is an ear of corn) as well as references to the Hapsburgs.  Earth features a lion skin, a reference to the mythological Hercules, to whom the Hapsburgs were at pains to trace their lineage. Many of the figures are crowned with tree branches, coral fragments or stag’s antlers.

The face of Spring is made of flowers, the Summer has a face of fruits and a body of wheat, while the Autumn is a curious summary of fallen leaves, fruits and mushrooms. The series ends with the Winter, arguably the most complex portrait of the entire series, in which we can find elements as "cold" and "dry" as the bark that forms the face, and others so "live" and "warm" as the leaves of the hair and the two fruits hanging on the neck. Perhaps the optimistic Arcimboldo was unable to depict the winter as a "cold" season, so he added these "kind" elements to the typical cold elements of the winter.  Winter wears a cloak monogrammed with an “M,” presumably for Maximilian, that resembles a garment the emperor actually owned.

 La Primavera (Spring) by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, circa 1563

 Summer by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, circa 1563

THE FOUR ELEMENTS

Another of his famous series of paintings included Earth, Water, Fire and Air—The Four Elements. Arcimboldo assigned to any element a face formed by the most characteristic of each of them. Nevertheless, the series possesses some elements that make it quite different, and even more interesting, than the previous one. Every face is formed by only one kind of element. The face of "The Earth" is formed exclusively by land animals, "The Air" is made of birds, and "The Water" by fish and marine animals. A special case is "The Fire” represented by several blazing elements, from the embers that form the hair to the two cannons in his chest. The nose and ear of Fire are made of fire strikers, one of the imperial family’s symbols.  These paintings are more visually rich than the works from the previous series.

 Air by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, circa 1566

 Fire by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, circa 1566

 In addition to the Seasons and the Elements, Arcimboldo also painted some famous individual portraits: for example, Flora, The Waiter, The Jurist, The Librarian and Vertumnus.

 The Jurist by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, circa 1566

 The Librarian by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, circa 1566

 The Waiter by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, circa 1574

Giuseppe Arcimboldo died at the age of 66 on the 11th of July, 1593 in Milan.

Today his work can be seen in several different museums and galleries, including: The Louvre in Paris, Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Denver Art Museum in Denver, Colorado.

Artists like Salvador Dali have cited the groundbreaking painter's composite heads as a major source of inspiration. But it was Museum of Modern Art director Alfred H. Barr's inclusion of his works in the 1930s exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism that re-introduced the world to Arcimboldo's originality and influence.  Retroactively, art historians dubbed the Renaissance Mannerist the grandfather of Surrealism.  

 FLORA by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, circa 1589

 Vertumnus, a portrait depicting Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor painted as Vertumnus, the Roman god of the seasons, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, circa 1590–91

 Arcimboldo’s works once again enjoys widespread acclaim. Vertumnus is on display in Sweden's Skokloster Castle along with The Librarian. Spring belongs to Madrid's Museo de la Real Academia de San Fernando, while the Louvre in Paris displays Autumn and Winter. Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna boasts Summer, Fire and Water. Italy's Museo Civico holds The Vegetable Bowl (also known as The Gardener), and Four Seasons in One Head calls the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. home. Spring belongs to Madrid's Museo de la Real Academia de San Fernando, while the Louvre in Paris displays Autumn and Winter. Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna boasts Summer, Fire and Water. Italy's Museo Civico holds The Vegetable Bowl (also known as The Gardener), and Four Seasons in One Head calls the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. home.

Be Sure to Check Out Our Counted Cross Stitch Patterns Inspired by Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Henri-Edmond Cross- The French Artist Who Played a Crucial and Vital Role in the Development of Modern Painting

Henri Edmond Cross (1856–1910) was a leading Neo-Impressionist painter, a pioneer of Pointillism, and a founding member of the Salon des Indépendants.

Cross was born Henri-Edmond-Joseph Delacroix, the only surviving child of his French father, Alcide Delacroix, and British mother, Fanny Woollett.  The family moved to Lille when Henri was 9.  He showed an interest in drawing when he was young and his parents sent him to Carolus-Duran, a painter and art instructor, for private drawing and painting lessons when he was 10. He was encouraged as a child to develop his artistic talent by his father’s widowed cousin, Dr. Auguste Soins, who paid for much of Henri’s artistic training.  Henri spent a short time in Paris when he was 19, studying under the tutelage of the French realist painter François Bonvin before returning to Lille.  At the age of 22 in 1878 he enrolled in a three-year course at the Écoles Académiques de Dessin et d’Architecture in Lille and studied under Alphonse Colas.  Three years later he returned to Paris and studied in the atelier (studio) of Émile Dupont-Zipcy. 

Self Portrait with a Cigarette by Henri Edmond Cross Painted-1880
(Painted in Realism Style)

The year 1884, was a milestone in French art.  Up until then any artist wanting to progress in their chosen career relied completely on having their works exhibited at the Paris Salon, and for that to happen they had to submit their paintings to a jury which decided whether their works were good enough to be exhibited. The jurists were, at this time, increasingly rigid and conservative in their views of what was considered acceptable for exhibit and were not receptive to the works presented by Impressionist artists, whose works had moved away from the traditional academic style.  The Impressionists would often have their paintings rejected by the Salon jurists or if they did manage to have a painting accepted it would be hung in such a way that it was almost hidden from view.  In 1863 the jurists rejected a surprisingly high percentage of paintings and this caused a furor among the “discarded” artists, resulting in the Salon des Refusés, an art exhibition held in 1863 in Paris for those artists that had been refused by the jury of the official Salon.  In 1880, the Salon again rejected the work of many Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters, which led to a 2nd Salon des Refusés in 1883.  ​

Peasant Woman Relaxing in the Grass by Henri Edmond Cross - 1890
(Painted in Impressionist Style) 

The following summer a number of these disgruntled artists banded together and formed the Société des Artistes Indépendants (Society of Independent Artists) and based the society on the premise “sans jury ni recompense” (without jury nor award), allowing any artist who wanted to participate to display their work.  They held their own inaugural exhibition, Salon des Indépendants, in May 1884 where Henri Cross exhibited some of his paintings, along with other founding members of the Société including Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Georges Seurat.  Vincent Van Gogh also displayed some of his work at the exhibition.  

It was around this time that Cross changed his name, first to Henri Cross, and later to Henri-Edmond Cross, to differentiate himself from other French artists named Delacroix, (a very common name in France).  Delacroix means “Of the Cross” in French, so using the Anglicized version of the name (Cross) made sense.

In 1891 Cross became Vice-President of the Society.  He was by this time becoming one of the leading figures in the small world of Neo-Impressionist painters in France.

Cross had begun wintering in the warm climes of the South of France in 1883, finally moving there full-time in 1891.  He met his future wife, Irma, there in 1888, and they married in 1893.  His health was poor, suffering from vision problems, rheumatism, arthritis, and eventually cancer, so after moving to the south he rarely travelled out of the area.  His friend Paul Signac moved to nearby Saint-Tropez in 1892, where they frequently hosted gatherings attended by visionaries such as Henri Matisse and Albert Marquet. 

​Cross’s painting styles evolved significantly over the years.  His early works, mainly portraits and still-lifes, were dark and in the Realism style.  After meeting Claude Monet in 1883, he gradually shifted to doing landscapes, in a brighter Impressionist style.  Impressionism uses lively colors and quick brush strokes to capture the texture of the subject and the impact of light on its surface rather than individual details. Instead of mixing colors on a palette, Impressionists placed the brush strokes on the canvas and let the viewer's eye do the mixing of colors. It is based more on emotions and the passing moment than science.

Most of Cross’s friends in the Société des Artistes Indépendants were Neo-Impressionists, a movement which peaked between 1886 and 1891.  Cross initially resisted that movement and continued working in the Impressionist style until 1891, when he adopted the Neo-Impressionist style.  Neo-Impressionism took advantage of the evolving knowledge of how the retina sees light and the mind combines colors.  Neo-Impressionism took the colors and themes of Impressionism but took a scientific approach to art, focused on the theory and division of color and vision and breaking things down to a more fundamental and basic level.   The primary techniques used in Neo-Impressionism abandoned actual brush strokes and replaced them with small, distinct patches (Divisionism) or dots (Pointilism) of color, which interacted optically to create shadow and dimension.  The dots appear to intermingle and blend in the observer’s eye.

​Cross’s first Neo-Impressionist painting was a Divisionist portrait of his future wife, Irma Clare in 1891. 

 His affinity for the Neo-Impressionist movement involved not only adoption of the Divisionist and Pointilist techniques, but also the political philosophies of the members of the movement.  Many believed in anarchist principles and hoped for a utopian society, and this influenced his choice of subjects - scenes depicting a utopian world that could exist through anarchism.

Many of Cross’s paintings from the early to mid 1890’s are in the Pointilist style. Other artists who used this technique include Georges Seurat, Maximilien Luce, and Paul Signac. Other well-known artists who briefly made works in Pointillist style were Vincent Van Gogh and, early in their careers, Picasso, Mondrian and Kandinsky.

In 1895 Cross gradually began changing his technique, partly because he found it tedious and time consuming, and also because of issues with arthritis and his eyes.  Along with his friend Paul Signac, he began to develop a Neo-Impressionist technique that was more intensely colorful and varied in its application, using broad, blocky brushstrokes and leaving small areas of exposed bare canvas between the strokes.  The resulting surfaces resembled mosaics, and the paintings are seen as precursors to Fauvism and Cubism, techniques used by early 20th Century artists.  Examples of this are Cross's "The Artist's Garden at Saint-Clair", from 1904-05 and "Garden of the Painter at Saint-Clair" from 1908.  (Cross liked to paint his garden, apparently!)

The Promenade by Henri Edmond Cross - Painted 1897

Man Working on a Boat by Henri Edmond Cross - Painted 1899

Beach Evening Effect by Henri Edmond Cross - Painted 1902

San Giorgio Maggior by Henri Edmond Cross - Painted 1903-4

Cross died of cancer just four days short of his 54th birthday, on May 16, 1910.  In July 1911, the city of Cross's birth, Douai, mounted a retrospective exhibition of his work.   His work is widely acknowledged as having wide influence on later developments within the French avant-garde, and as a major pioneer of 20th-century painting.

Madame Hector by Henri Edmond Cross - Painted 1903-4

Portrait of Henri Edmond Cross by Maximilien Luce 1898 

•  Wikipedia- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri-Edmond_Cross

• The Art Story -Henri-Edmond Cross French Painter and Printmaker - https://www.theartstory.org/artist/cross-henri-edmond/

• Artnet-Henri Edmond Cross- http://www.artnet.com/artists/henri-edmond-cross/biography

• Olga’s Gallery-Henri Edmond Cross Delacroix- https://www.freeart.com/gallery/c/cross/cross.html

• ArtCyclopedia-Henri Edmond Cross- http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/cross_henri-edmond.html

Illustration of a Lilac Flower, Fritilaria Flower and Candolle Rose by Pierre Joseph Redouté

The Raphael Of Flowers Was The Nickname of Pierre-Joseph Redouté

• Redoute was the premier botanical artist 1790 – 1830.
• Redoute was an art tutor to Marie Antoinette (the last Queen of France) and she became his patron.
• Redouté received the title of "Draughtsman and Painter to the Queen's Cabinet".
• In 1798 The Empress Josephine Bonaparte, the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, also became Redoute’s patron and appointed him to paint the flowers of the garden at Malmaison.
• Redoute’s works were exhibited in The Louvre.
• Redoute produced over 2,100 paintings for published plates depicting over 1,800 different species, many of which had never been drawn before.
• ​His two most famous books were:

                          Les Liliacees (1802 - 15) 500 plates of lilies.

                          Les Roses (1817 - 21) He's best known for his roses.

Illustration of an Alstromeria Lily by Pierre Joseph Redouté

Pierre Joseph Redouté was one of the most prolific and respected botanical artists of the 18th and 19th centuries.  He illustrated approximately 50 botanical books during his lifetime. Redouté lived during a highly politically turbulent period yet he managed to survive and thrive. He was impacted by the French Revolution (1789-1799) where over forty thousand French citizens were executed. Later, with the combination of the Napoleonic wars and the successive changes of royalty -leadership on the French throne. Each change impacted Pierre-Joseph Redoute’s life. However, through perseverance and devotion to his art, Redouté became a remarkable artist and mentor to young artists.

Pierre Joseph Redouté 

Pierre Joseph Redouté was born in 1759 , at St Hubert, Belgium. Redouté was one of five children born into a family of artists. His grandfather, Jean-Jacques Redouté  (1687-1752) and father, Charles-Joseph Redouté (1715-1776) had both earned a living from painting portraits, interior decorations and religious works and it was expected that the next generation of sons would follow suit.  Redouté was a very talented artist and botanical illustrator. His work , able to skillfully bring exotic and native plants to life.

 Vue Du Jardin Des Plantes/Jardin Anglais et derriere de la Serre

Planning on a career painting flowers he moved to Paris in 1782. Redouté began making botanical drawings for the Jardin du Roi (the present-day Muséum national d’histoire naturelle), where he befriended Dutch painter. A professor of floral painting at Jardin du Roi, Gerard van Spaendonck (1746–1822) mentored Redouté.    While at the  Jardin du Roi  Redouté developed his artistic style, including engraving and water coloring methods.

Illustration of a Bellflower by Pierre Joseph Redouté

In 1784 Redouté met Charles Louis L’Héritier, 1746–1800, who was a self-taught botanist and a wealthy magistrate.  He mentored Redouté teaching him how to dissect flowers, draw plant anatomy, and highlight botanical details.  L’Héritier hired Redouté to illustrate botanical plates of several books as well as native and exotic plants in Kew Garden, Jardin du Roi, and other European gardens.

Illustration of Anemone Flowers by Pierre Joseph Redouté

Basically, Redoute’s good fortune was that both Spaendonck and L’Héritier helped launched Redouté’s scientific career. Redoute’s talent and specifically his attention to detail made his artworks unique and highly sought after. His elegant illustrations brought Redoute’ to the attention of royalty. Redouté was fortunate to become an artist who was patronized by the kings of France from Louis XVI to Louis-Philippe. ​His profile also has a unique claim to fame. His artworks and reputation was enhanced by his patronage by two of the premier first ladies of European history - Marie Antoinette and Josephine Bonaparte.

 Portrait of Marie-Antoinette with the rose. Oil on canvas, Versailles. Dated 1783 and painted by Vigée-Le Brun

By 1788 Redouté was the illustrator of two of his patron's books, Stirpes Novae and Sertum Angicum; a year later he was nameddraughtsman to the cabinet of Marie-Antoinette.

During the Terror of the French Revolution he was appointed to the staff of the former royal botanical garden, which had become the Jardin des Plantes and the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle.  Redoute was now showing his illustrations of flowers, fruit, and mushrooms in the official Salon and socializing with well-known painters: David, Vien, Gerard, Fragonard, and Carl Vernet.

Illustration of a Bouquet of Pansies by Pierre Joseph Redouté

During this period Redouté prospered and began to gravitate towards the rising star of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Malmaison The Home of Josephine and Napoleon Bonaparte

His youngest brother, Henri-Joseph, served under the general in Egypt as a zoological draughtsman. Redoute was  creative and prolific drawing more than a thousand botanical plates. By the time of the 1805 edition of Rousseau’s Botanique Pierre-Joseph Redouté was a celebrity,’ le Raphael desfieurc, and a well-to-do business man with a fashionable clientele, a private apartment in the Louvre, a country residence near Paris at Fleury-sous-Meudon (where Jean-Jacques had once botanized), and a salary of 18,000 francs a year as Josephine’s decorator and flower painter at Malmaison.

Josephine’s Garden Party in the Rose Garden at Malmaison

A subsequent commission came with the new French empire. Napoleon Bonaparte married Joséphine de Beauharnais in 1796. Joséphine enjoyed horticulture and botany and, with the wealth and power of her husband, purchased Malmaison and remodeled its gardens, filling them with both native European plants and specimens from botanical expeditions overseas. Redouté became Joséphine’s court artist and illustrated a stunning and accurate record of her work in Jardin de la Malmaison (1805), by botanist Étienne-Pierre Ventenat. Redouté’s later publications for Joséphine included Les liliacées (1802–1816) and Les roses (1817).

Josephine’s Garden at Malmaison

A contemporary of Redouté, the memoir-writer Joseph-Francois Grille, describes him:

“A dumpy body, limbs like an elephant’s, a head as heavy and flat as a Dutch cheese, thick lips, a hollow voice, crooked fingers, a repulsive look, and beneath the skin an extremely delicate sense of tact, exquisite taste, a deep feeling for art, a fine sensibility, nobility of character, and the perseverance needed for the development of genius: such was Redouté, who had all the pretty women in Paris as his pupils.”

Redouté’s school of botanical drawing in the Salle Buffon of the Jardin des Plantes, 1830,  drawing by artist Julie Ribault, 1830

During these years, Redouté married Marie-Marthe Gobert, and they bought an apartment in Paris. They also purchased and a large country house and garden at Fleury-sous-Meudon on the outskirts of Paris. At the Estate at Fleury-sous-Meudon they renovated the house and “tamed the wilderness” of the garden and incorporated into the garden design many plants Pierre-Joseph wished to grow.

The artist home Maison de Redouté à Fleury-sous-Meudon France

After Empress Joséphine's death (1814), Redouté had some difficult years until he was appointed a master of draughtsmanship for the National Museum of Natural History in 1822. In 1824, he gave some drawing classes at the museum. Many of his pupils were aristocrats or royalty. He became a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1825.

Illustration of a Bearded Iris Flower by Pierre Joseph Redouté

Redoute taught and painted up to the day he died of a stroke on June 19 or 20, 1840. He was survived by his wife, Marie-Marthe Gobert, whom he married in 1786, and their two daughters. He was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Brusseleer Institut Redouté-Peiffer in Belgium circa 1922

A Brussels school bears his name: the Institut Redouté-Peiffer in Anderlecht. The Institut Pierre-Joseph Redouté gets its name from the painter of roses.  Opened in 1913, the school that currently bears the name of Institut Redouté-Peiffer has been hosting students in horticulture and market gardening since 1922, in the vicinity of Parc Astrid (Anderlecht). It has a large alpine-inspired rock garden designed in 1958 by the director of the Institute and former pupil of Jules Buyssens, Paul Dewit.

His work continues to be popular and is widely reproduced to this day.

Illustration of a Bouquet of Roses by Pierre Joseph Redouté

Pierre-Joseph Redouté | Wikipedia

Botanical Art and Artists:

The Royal Horticultural Society:

Redouté. The Book of Flowers by H. Walter Lack   2018

Redoute's Finest Flowers in Embroidery by Trish Burr 2002

Instant Wall Art - Botanical Prints: 45 Ready-to-Frame Vintage Illustrations for Your Home Decor by Adams Media 2015

Paul Klee The Bauhaus Master And Father Of Abstraction Was An Excellent Art Teacher And His 100-Year-Old Art Theories Are Still Influential, Relevant and Taught Today!

Paul Klee The Bauhaus Master And Father Of Abstraction Was An Excellent Art Teacher And His 100-Year-Old Art Theories Are Still Influential, Relevant and Taught Today!

Paul Klee’s In The Desert Detail 1914

The work of the Swiss Artist Paul Klee shows that he was truly the master of Modernism, his style reflected his influence of Expressionism, Surrealism and Cubism.  Paul Klee who stated that he enjoyed ‘taking a line for a walk’. Klee was a defining voice of 1920s Bauhaus, he began his career in the dying days of the German Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, before becoming an important proponent of the Expressionist ‘Blue Rider’ movement of the 1910s. By the 1920s he had forged a unique aesthetic of abstraction that, as he once said, “does not reproduce the visible; rather it makes visible”

GOOGLE Salute to Paul Klee’s 139^th Birthday Doodle

Google Doodle celebrates the 139th birthday of Paul Klee (December 18, 1879 - June 29, 1940,) the influential Swiss-German artist. Influenced by movements such as cubism, surrealism, and expressionism, Paul Klee explored numerous styles to develop his own approach to art-making—both rigorous and childlike—which defies categorization.   Today’s Doodle pays homage to his Rote Brücke (Red Bridge), a 1928 work that transforms the rooftops and arches of a European city into a pattern of shapes rendered in contrasting yet harmonious hues. As Klee wrote in his diary, in 1914: “Color and I are one… I am a painter.”

From Google Info

Paul Klee’s Self Portrait 1927

Paul Klee was born on 1879 near Bern Switzerland.  His father Hans Klee was a music teacher, and his mother was a musician. As a boy Paul learned to play violin. He received a well-rounded classical education in the in Bern. Ancient Greek, modern French, classic and contemporary French and German art, and literature were his favorites. Klee was gifted as both a musician and an artist.

Klee was restless unsatisfied with his education and left the Academy and traveled in Italy in 1901 to 1902. His early artistic work was exclusively pen-and-ink drawings and etchings, some of which were satirical.

Paul Klee and Wife Lily Stumpf 1906

In 1906, Klee married the pianist Lily Stumpf and they settled in Munich, then an important center of avant-garde art. In 1910-11 Klee had his first major exhibitions. He contributed 17 graphic works to the the exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), the avant-garde artistic society founded by W. Kandinsky and Franz Marc. That same year Klee visited Robert Delaunay in Paris. The latter’s influence on Klee’s development is considered the strongest outside his immediate circle of avant-garde Munich painters.

Paul Klee’s In The Beginning 1916

In April 1914 he and fellow painters August Macke and Louis Molliet visited Tunisia. Klee returned from the trip inspired and stated that he now understood light in a new way.

During the First World War, Klee was called up for infantry training and then attached to an air force unit where he repaired damaged aircraft, painting their numbers and insignia. Though Klee had few opportunities for artistic work, he managed to do some painting on aircraft canvas. In 1918 he returned to Munich. The avant-garde circle in Munich had been dispersed - Macke and Franz Marc had been killed while Kandinsky had returned to Russia. Klee stayed in Munich alone and continued to develop his ideas.

“Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see”. Paul Klee

Paul Klee’s The Temple Gardens 1920

In November 1920 Klee was invited to teach at the Bauhaus at Weimar, where his friend W. Kandinsky would become a faculty member in 1922. Bauhaus was an innovative school aiming at uniting fine and applied arts and architecture in a new manner suitable for an industrial age. Klee’s teaching included lecturing with demonstrations on form and color in relation to nature and also supervising bookbinding, metal and weaving workshops.

 Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook, one of his essays on art theory, was published in Bauhaus in 1925. In the essay Klee defined and analyzed the primary visual elements and the ways in which they could be applied.

For more information about this and a great illustrated article see the Tate Museum story:  https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/paul-klee

In April 1931, two years before the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis, Klee resigned to take up a professorship at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. He held the post for only two years before the Nazi campaign against modern artists brought about his dismissal. In 1933, Klee left Germany to return to Switzerland. In the summer of 1935 the symptoms of his fatal illness (later diagnosed as sclerodermia) appeared. He was in pain but he remained productive to the end, which came in June 1940.

A photo taken in 1925 of Paul Klee in his Weimar workshop

Paul Klee created over 9000 works of art in his lifetime. Most art critics highly appreciate Klee’s contribution to the development of art in the 20th century. He was extremely inventive, bravely experimented with styles and materials, and the visual effects they gave, ignoring rules and fashion.

Here are a few interesting facts About Paul Klee:

Paul Klee’s The Drummer 1940

1.) Klee was a talented musician.

Young Paul studied violin at seven years-old. His talent earned him an invitation to join the Bern Music Association four years later. As a painter he often practiced his violin to warm up before painting.

Paul Klee’s  what am i missing 1930

2.) He enjoyed creating comic and caricature drawings.

Klee expressed his mocking attitudes toward people and establishments through comic sketches. His illustrations went ignored during his lifetime

Paul Klee’s Red Balloon 1922

3.) Klee’s stylistic approach was inspired and greatly influenced by children

He admired the unstudied simplicity and expressive freedom in children’s drawings. He drew like a draftsman, adding symbols including letters, hieroglyphics and musical notation.

 4.) Paul Klee was born in Switzerland, but considered a German citizen.

Due to Swiss law, he held his father’s citizenship and was called for duty by the Germans during World War I. Legislation exempted him from combat because he was an artist. Instead, Klee worked as a clerk and painted camouflage on aircraft.

Paul Klee’s Senecio-1922

5.) Klee had two distinct drawing techniques.

One of Paul Klee’s earliest works were drawn on a blackened pane of glass using a needle. The rough outlines that defined his post-war works were achieved through oil transfer. His drawings were traced onto watercolor paper using transfer paper layered with gummy black ink.

Paul Klee’s Crystalline Landscape 1929

6.) Klee was sought after and esteemed art teacher.

At the Bauhaus, his lectures were compiled in a collection containing over 3,300 pages. This compilation, regarded as the bible for contemporary artists, is called the “Paul Klee Notebooks”.

Paul Klee’s Sail Boats 1927

7.) He died of a painful progressive autoimmune rheumatic disease scleroderma

Near death and in pain, Paul Klee created “Death and Fire”, one of the most popular depictions of mortality. It has the word “tod” (German for death) hidden twice in the painting.

Be Sure to Look at Orenco Originals counted cross stitch and counted needlepoint patterns inspired by Paul Klee...Click Here

Paul Klee, 1939

Further Research:

Paul Klee's Beginnings 1922

ON LINE:

Paul Klee: from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Klee

Paul Klee 1879-1940 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/klee/hd_klee.htm

Paul Klee-The Tate Museum

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/paul-klee-1417

Paul Klee's Seaside Resort in the South of France 1927

BOOKS:

Paul Klee: Selected by Genius, 1917-33 by Roland Doschka, Ernst-Gerhard Guse, Christian Rumelin, Victoria Salley, Stadthalle Balingen. Prestel Publishing, 2001.

The Paul Klee Catalogue Raisonne, Volume 9 (1940) by The Paul Klee Foundation. Thames & Hudson, 2004.

The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 by Paul Klee, Felix Klee (editor). University of California Press, 1964.

Paul Klee: 1879-1940 (Basic Art) by Susanna Partsch. Taschen, 2000.

Paul Klee: Painting Music (Pegasus Library) by Hajo Duchting. Prestel, 1997.

Be Sure to Look at Orenco Originals counted cross stitch and counted needlepoint patterns inspired by Paul Klee...Click Here

Beatrix Potter was interested in every branch of natural science except astronomy. Potter collecting fossils, archeological artefacts from London excavations, and studied entomology.  She sketched and painted her specimens with great skill. By the 1890s her scientific interests centered on the study of fungus-mycology. Beatrix found that her gender kept scientists from taking her seriously.  There is a collection of her fungus paintings at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Perth, Scotland.

In 1890, the firm of Hildesheimer and Faulkner bought several of her drawings of her rabbit Benjamin Bunny to illustrate verses by Frederic Weatherly titled A Happy Pair. In 1893, the same printer bought several more drawings. Beatrix was pleased by this success and determined to publish her own illustrated stories. Potter's artistic and literary interests were deeply influenced by fairies, fairy tales and fantasy. She was a student of the classic fairy tales. And stories from the Old Testament, she grew up with Aesop's Fables, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies, the Scottish folk tales and mythology.  One of her most famous works.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit, started out as a story she wrote for the children of a former governess in a letter. Potter later transformed this letter into a book, which she published privately. In 1902, Frederick Warne & Co. brought this delightful story to the public. Their new edition of The Tale Of Peter Rabbit quickly became a hit with young readers. More animal adventures soon followed with The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (1903) and The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904) among other stories.

The immense popularity of Potter's books was based on the lively quality of her illustrations, the non-didactic nature of her stories, the depiction of the rural countryside, and the imaginative qualities she lent to her animal characters. In 1902, The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published, and it was an immediate success. It was followed the next year by The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin and The Tailor of Gloucester, which had also first been written as picture letters to the Moore children. Potter 23 books in all. The last book in this format was Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes in 1922, a collection of favorite rhymes. Although The Tale of Little Pig Robinson was not published until 1930, it had been written much earlier. Potter continued creating her books until after the First World War, when her energies were increasingly directed toward her farming, sheep-breeding and land conservation.

Potter was also an astute businesswoman. As early as 1903, she made and patented a Peter Rabbit doll. It was followed by other "spin-off" merchandise over the years, including painting books, board games, wall-paper, figurines, baby blankets and china tea-sets.

 Vincent Van Gogh Tormented Artist

Vincent Willem van Gogh, 1853-1890, was a Dutch post-impressionist painter- artist, his early life was unremarkable and as a young man he floundered failing from one job to the next. Although he is now known as a well-respected artist, Van Gogh basically only painted for the last 9 years of his life, and in that short time he created more than 860 paintings! 

Van Gogh was born in 1853 in the Netherlands. He was raised in the middle-class home of his father who was a Dutch Reformed Church Minister. In childhood Van Gogh was described as an intelligent, serious almost dour young man. He took art lessons in middle school but did not think he was particularly good at it. When he left school, Vincent became an art dealer in England, France and the Netherlands. Vincent was not successful at selling art and so he became a teacher and a minister’s assistant. Failing again and to his parents displeasure he had several short-lived jobs.  At his parent’s insistence he returned to school and trained to be a minister. However, the ministry was also not for Vincent as he failed his seminary examinations.

Van Gogh’s House in Cuesmes Belgium

where he lived in 1879-1880

In his twenties, Van Gogh spent almost 10 years bouncing from one job to the another.  In the early 1880’s, at the age of 29, Vincent began drawing and painting in earnest. He decided to try his hand at being an artist when he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Art in Brussels, where he studied the mechanics and theory of art. He was not a successful artist as there was little interest in his work. He survived on occasional painting commissions. During this time, however, Vincent’s personal life was disastrous, and he was overcome by bouts of depression and self-loathing.

Van Gogh’s The Potatoes Eaters Van Gogh painted 1885

Following the 1885 death of his father, Vincent painted what is considered his first major work, a very dark dour piece titled "The Potato Eaters".  In August of the same year, his work was displayed on exhibition for the first time in The Hague. In November on 1885, Vincent moved to Antwerp, where he became interested in painting with vivid colors. While in Antwerp, he studied Japanese Art and applied the techniques he admired to some of his own paintings. He was completely enamored with Japanese wood block artists and produced several paintings that were homage to Japanese artists Utagawa Hiroshige and Keisai Eisen.  During this period, Vincent’s health was poor.

In 1886, Vincent moved to Paris and began to associate with other Parisian Impressionists such as Émile Bernard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. During his time in Paris Vincent adopted a new style that emphasized bright complementary colors, and he experimented with pointillism

Van Gogh’s Sunflower Study Van Gogh painted 1887

Van Gogh met many artists in Paris. In 1887, he met Paul Gauguin during a visit to an artist cooperative with his brother Theo. The brothers both admired Gauguin’s use of bright colors. Van Gogh met Gauguin again when Gauguin attended a Paris Art Exhibition of Van Gogh’s works that he had organized for the Impressionists Artists of the Petit Boulevard. After seeing the exhibit Gauguin traded one of his paintings from Martinique for two of Van Gogh's Sunflowers studies.

In February of 1888, Van Gogh decided to move to Arles in Southern France and begin what he called the Studio of the South. His plan for the studio was for it to be an artist colony where artists could work together and inspire each other. Van Gogh’s Brother Theo, an Art dealer, agreed to try to sell their work. Van Gogh rented four rooms in a building on the Place Lamartine in May. This building is known as the "Yellow House".

Van Gogh’s The Yellow House Van Gogh Painted 1888

The yellow house is the one that Van Gogh was to share with  Gauguin but as it turned out, his dream of a studio in the south shared by like-minded painters lasted only two months. 

Paul Gauguin’s painting of Vincent Van Gogh painting Sunflowers in the yellow house

 Paul Gauguin came to paint with Van Gogh in Arles. They had a very tumultuous relationship and within a month, Van Gogh and Gauguin were arguing constantly. One night after an argument, Gauguin walked out. Van Gogh followed him, and when Gauguin turned around, he saw Vincent holding a razor in his hand. Hours later, Van Gogh went to the local brothel and paid for a prostitute named Rachel. With blood pouring from his hand, he offered her his ear, asking her to "keep this object carefully." Gauguin Left Arles and returned to Paris.

We have an upcoming blog that addresses the complicated relationship between Gauguin and Van Gogh.

The next day, the police found van Gogh in his room and admitted him to the hospital. Theo arrived to see Van Gogh, who was weak from blood loss and having violent seizures. The doctors assured Theo that his brother would live and would be taken good care of. On January 7, 1889, Van Gogh was released from the hospital. Vincent was alone and depressed. Van Gogh took to painting as a distraction but could not find peace and was hospitalized again. He would paint at the yellow house during the day and return to the hospital at night.

 The Garden in the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence Painted by Van Gogh 1889

Van Gogh decided to move to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence after the people of Arles signed a petition saying that he was dangerous. On May 8, 1889, he began painting in the hospital gardens. In November 1889, he was invited to exhibit his paintings in Brussels. He sent six paintings, including "Irises" and "Starry Night."

The Home of Dr, Gachet Painted by Van Gogh in 1889

In January 1890, Dr. Paul Gachet, who lived in Auvers, about 20 miles north of Paris, agreed to take Vincent as his patient. Van Gogh moved to Auvers and rented a room. In July of that year, Vincent van Gogh committed suicide.

Portrait of Dr Gachet Painted by Van Gogh 1889

In his lifetime Van Gogh produced close to 900 paintings and 700 drawings, only one of which sold during his lifetime. Although Van Gogh was a very unhappy and perhaps unstable person he is considered a genius today and has influenced generations of painters.  His painting Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1890), one of his most admired pieces, was sold at auction for 82.5 million dollars in 1990. This was the highest price ever paid for a work of art in 1990. 

Workers in the Red Vineyard Painted by Van Gogh 1888

In Early 1890, Theo sold The Red Vineyard for 400 Francs.  Theo, who was suffering from syphilis and weakened by his brother's death, died six months after his brother in a Dutch asylum. He was buried in Utrecht, but in 1914 Theo's wife, Johanna, who was a dedicated supporter of van Gogh's works, had Theo's body reburied in the Auvers cemetery next to Vincent.

Theo's wife Johanna then collected as many of van Gogh's paintings as she could, but discovered that many had been destroyed or lost, van Gogh's own mother having thrown away crates full of his art. On March 17, 1901, 71 of van Gogh's paintings were displayed at a show in Paris, and his fame subsequently grew enormously. His mother lived long enough to see her son hailed as an artist and a genius. Today, Vincent van Gogh is considered the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt. 

In 1973, the Van Gogh Museum opened its doors in Amsterdam to make the works of Vincent van Gogh accessible to the public. The museum houses more than 200 van Gogh paintings, 500 drawings and 750 written documents including letters to Vincent’s brother Theo. It features self-portraits, “The Potato Eaters,” “The Bedroom” and “Sunflowers.” 

Sunset at Montmajour  Painted by Van Gogh 1888

In September 2013, the museum discovered and unveiled a van Gogh painting of a landscape entitled "Sunset at Montmajour.” Before coming under the possession of the Van Gogh Museum, a Norwegian industrialist owned the painting and stored it away in his attic, having thought that it wasn't authentic. The painting is believed to have been created by van Gogh in 1888 — around the same time that his artwork "Sunflowers" was made — just two years before his death.

In Arles, Van Gogh painted over 200 paintings; portraits, self-portraits and evening café scenes. Following Vincent cutting off his left ear Vincent spent 1889 in an insane asylum, where he created over 150 paintings, including the Starry Night, a magical painting that makes the brilliantly lit night sky appear as if it is rolling like waves over a pastoral village. Many of his other paintings also featured dazzling night scenes with glowing stars.

Starry Night Over the Rhone Painted by Van Gogh 1888

Quick Facts About Vincent Van Gogh

• Van Gogh suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy as well as other mental and physical conditions.
• Vincent only sold one painting during his lifetime and only became famous after his death
• Vincent van Gogh did not cut off his ear. He only cut off a small portion of his ear lobe.
• Van Gogh painted "The Starry Night" in the asylum where he was staying in Saint-Rémy, France, in 1889, the year before his death. “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big,” he wrote to his brother Theo.
• Van Gogh wrote over 800 letters in his lifetime. Most of them written to his brother and closest friend Theo. In his letters, Van Gogh mentions over 1,100 works by different artists, as well as at least 800 books and magazine articles. He looked for intellectual and artistic nourishment.
• Vincent was obsessed with painting and sketching self-portraits.  Over the course of 10 years, van Gogh created more than 43 self-portraits. "I am looking for a deeper likeness than that obtained by a photographer," he wrote to his sister. "People say, and I am willing to believe it, that it is hard to know yourself. But it is not easy to paint yourself, either. The portraits painted by Rembrandt are more than a view of nature, they are more like a revelation,” he later wrote to his brother.
• Vincent’s brother Theo died six months after Vincent and is buried next to him in Auvers, France.
• Vincent’s brother’s wife collected Vincent’s paintings and letters after his death and dedicated herself to getting his work the recognition it deserved.
• Van Gogh created approximately 900 paintings in 10 years. In his lifetime, Vincent van Gogh completed more than 2,100 works of art; 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings and sketches. Several of his paintings now rank among the most expensive in the world; "Irises" sold for a record $53.9 million, and his "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" sold for $82.5 million.

Further Exploring and Reading:

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh

More about Vincent and Gauguin:

http://www.gauguin.org/link.jsp

Van Gogh’s Night Visions:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/van-goghs-night-visions-131900002/

Touring Europe in the Footsteps of van Gogh:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/travel/van-gogh-france-belgium-netherlands.html

Van Gogh and some of his works:

https://www.vincentvangogh.org/   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh

Movies about Van Gogh:

• Loving Vincent -2017

 Directors: Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman and Writers: Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman

• Vincent and Theo- 1990

Director: Robert Altman and Writer: Julian Mitchell

Be sure to visit the museum in person or on line.  It is an awesome site:

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en

The Van Gogh Museum is an art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Wikipedia

Address: Museumplein 6, 1071 DJ Amsterdam, Netherlands

Founded: June 2, 1973, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The museum's collection is the largest collection of Van Gogh's paintings and drawings in the world.

Johannes Vermeer, 1632 –  1675, was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic paintings. He was a moderately successful painter in his lifetime, but he was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death. Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. Most of his paintings were apparently set in two small rooms in his house in Delft.  You can see that his pictures have the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they usually focus on women.

Vermeer produced fewer than 50 paintings in his lifetime (34 have survived). Only three Vermeer paintings are dated: The Procuress (1656; Gemäldegalerie, Dresden); The Astronomer (1668; Musée du Louvre, Paris); and The Geographer (1669; Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt).

The Astronomer 1668

Jan Vermeer was recognized during his lifetime in his immediate cities of Delft and The Hague, but his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death. He was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists) and was completely omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for the next two centuries. In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing 66 pictures to him, although only 34 paintings are universally attributed to him today. Since that time, Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

The Little Street in Delft 1657-1661

One aspect of his meticulous painting technique was Vermeer's choice of pigments. He is best known for his frequent use of the very expensive ultramarine, as in the Milkmaid, and lead-tin-yellow, as in a Lady Writing a Letter, madder lake, as in Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, and vermilion. He also painted with ochres, bone black and azurite. The claim that he utilized Indian yellow in Woman Holding a Balance, has been disproven by later pigment analysis.

Lady standing at the Virginal 1670-1674

Vermeer's works were largely overlooked by art historians for two centuries after his death. A select number of connoisseurs in the Netherlands did appreciate his work, yet even so, many of his works were attributed to better-known artists such as Metsu or Mieris. The Delft master's modern rediscovery began about 1860, when German museum director Gustav Waagen saw The Art of Painting in the Czernin gallery in Vienna and recognized the work as a Vermeer, but it was attributed to Pieter de Hooch at that time. Research by Théophile Thoré-Bürger culminated in the publication of his catalogue raisonné of Vermeer's works in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1866.   Thoré-Bürger's catalogue drew international attention to Vermeer and listed more than 70 works by him, including many that he regarded as uncertain. The accepted number of surviving Vermeer paintings today is 34.

Girl with the wine glass detail 1659-1662

Vermeer's painting techniques have long been a source of debate, given their almost photorealistic attention to detail, despite Vermeer's having had no formal training, and despite only limited evidence that Vermeer had created any preparatory sketches or traces for his paintings.

In 2001, British artist David Hockney published the book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, in which he argued that Vermeer (among other Renaissance and Baroque artists including Hans Holbein and Diego Velázquez) used optics to achieve precise positioning in their compositions, and specifically some combination of curved mirrors, camera obscura, and camera lucida. This became known as the Hockney–Falco thesis, named after Hockney and Charles M. Falco, another proponent of the theory. Professor Philip Steadman published the book Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces in 2001 which specifically claimed that Vermeer had used a camera obscura to create his paintings. Steadman noted that many of Vermeer's paintings had been painted in the same room, and he found six of his paintings that are precisely the right size if they had been painted from inside a camera obscura in the room's back wall.

Supporters of these theories have pointed to evidence in some of Vermeer's paintings, such as the often-discussed sparkling pearly highlights in Vermeer's paintings, which they argue are the result of the primitive lens of a camera obscura producing halation. It was also postulated that a camera obscura was the mechanical cause of the "exaggerated" perspective seen in The Music Lesson (London, Royal Collection).

 In 2008, American entrepreneur and inventor Tim Jenison developed the theory that Vermeer had used a camera obscura along with a "comparator mirror", which is similar in concept to a camera lucida but much simpler and makes it easy to match color values. He later modified the theory to simply involve a concave mirror and a comparator mirror. He spent the next five years testing his theory by attempting to re-create The Music Lesson himself using these tools, a process captured in the 2013 documentary film Tim's Vermeer.

 Several points were brought out by Jenison in support of this technique: First was Vermeer's hyper-accurate rendition of light falloff along the wall (human eyes cannot detect such slight differences in light

The Lacemaker 1669-1671

Upon the rediscovery of Vermeer's work, several prominent Dutch artists modelled their style on his work, including Simon Duiker. Other artists who were inspired by Vermeer include Danish painter Wilhelm Hammershoi and American Thomas Wilmer Dewing.  In the 20th century, Vermeer's admirers included Salvador Dalí, who painted his own version of The Lacemaker (on commission from collector Robert Lehman) and pitted large copies of the original against a rhinoceros in some surrealist experiments. Dali also immortalized the Dutch Master in The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As a Table, 1934.

Salvador Dali’s The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As a Table, 1934

No window, no letter, no musical instruments, not even a pearl earring: young woman in a pink dress is not what most people think of as a painting by the 17th century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, but newly authenticated as his earliest surviving work it is coming up for auction estimated at up to £8m.

Saint Praxedis 1665

Although the painting is signed and dated, experts have been arguing about the painting of Saint Praxedis for decades, since it was first suggested that it was a genuine early work by the artist, painted when he was 23, newly converted to Catholicism and heavily influenced by Italian art.

In summation Art Historian Caroline Elbaor summed up Johannes Vermeer, the mecutrial artis perfectly:  In an article published in ARTNET NEWS on October 31, 2016  writer Caroline Elbaor, wrote:

The Procuress (detail of a self portrait?) Johannes Vermeer 1656

“For centuries, the painter was a mysterious figure in art history, with very little known about his personal life, thus earning him the nickname “The Sphinx of Delft.”

Here, we’ve sleuthed around and gathered up six facts about Vermeer to shed more light on the once overlooked painter.

1.) His artistic achievements went largely unnoticed throughout his life and in the centuries that followed. Though Vermeer now holds his place in history books as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age, he wasn’t always so admired. Until the 19th century, he enjoyed little-to-no success as an artist, and many of his pieces were credited as the work of other Dutch artists, including Metsu and Mieris. It was only after the publication of Théophile Thoré-Bürger’s catalogue raisonné of Vermeer’s works in 1866—resulting in rapid attention and exposure—that his work gained renown for its lifelike depictions of middle-class life, set in photo-realistic interiors of homes.

2.) The Dutch Master had no formal training, suggesting he was self-taught. Because evidence and details surrounding his life are still minimal, where and under whom—if anybody—Vermeer apprenticed remains a mystery. Naturally, theories about his influences abound, but the general consensus, first posited by American art historian Walter Liedtke, is that Vermeer was a self-taught man.

3.) There are only 36 authenticated paintings by Vermeer in the world. Vermeer was an intensely methodical painter, working carefully and with great attention to detail. Therefore, the artist’s output was limited; at present, he only has 36 canvases to his name. Moreover, Vermeer signed none of his works, and he dated only three (The Procuress, 1656; The Geographer, 1668–1669; and The Astronomer, 1668), thus challenging scholars who attempt to authenticate a work. To add to the confusion, experts are reluctant to declare a painting a Vermeer due to his far-reaching influence on other painters, as well as the threat of fakes.

4.) In the late 1930s and early ’40s, a copycat artist forged and sold works he marketed as newly discovered Vermeer’s. From 1938 to 1945, Han van Meegeren created paintings he passed off as original Vermeer’s, fooling experts and collectors alike, in a move that earned him what would be roughly $30 million today. It was only after World War II that a strange turn of events revealed van Meegeren’s forgeries. Having sold a painting to the prominent Nazi deputy Hermann Goering, van Meegeren defended himself against accusations of collaborating with the Nazis by revealing that he had dealt Goering a fake. As such, van Meegeren then proceeded to call himself a hero for having “hoodwinked” the enemy. He was nevertheless convicted of fraud and sentenced to a year in prison.

5.) In 1971, Vermeer’s Love Letter was stolen from the Fine Arts Palace in Brussels in an ill-devised heist. On September 23, 1971, a twenty-one-year-old man named Mario Roymans broke into the Fine Arts Palace in Brussels and stole Love Letter, which was on loan from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum as part of the Rembrandt and his Age exhibition. The painting was severely damaged due to the thief’s recklessness during the two weeks in which it was missing. When Roymans discovered that Love Letter was too big to fit through the window he planned to abscond through, he removed it from the frame with a potato peeler and stuffed the canvas in his back pocket. He later buried it in the forest where it sustained water damage, and hid it under his mattress, where it was crushed. After Love Letter was recovered, an international committee of Vermeer experts was convened to restore the painting.”

The Girl with the Pearl Earring 1665-1667

Not Just rediscovered by the Art World……

As Vermeer’s fortunes changed, with respect to the art world so too did they gain public recognition and popularity.

Vermeer’s The Girl with the pearl earring experienced a surge in popularity towards the end of the 20th Century. The turning point was an international Vermeer exhibition that opened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1995. The Girl was chosen as the image for the accompanying poster – and her celebrity status was assured. In Tracy Chevalier published in 1999 a novel titled The Girl with the Pearl Earring.

  Chevalier wrote:

“She makes the perfect poster,” “The colors, the light, the simplicity of the image, that direct gaze: a lot of Vermeer’s paintings are people not looking at us, in their own world, but she draws us in. In that way she’s very modern. When you think about the Mona Lisa, she is also looking at us, but she isn’t engaging – she’s sitting back in the painting, self-contained. Whereas Girl with a Pearl Earring is right there – there is nothing between her and us. She has this magical quality of being incredibly open and yet mysterious at the same time – and that is what makes her so appealing.”

Be Sure to browse our Counted Cross Stitch or Counted Needlepoint Patterns Inspired by Vermeer's work!

Princess with a Pearl Earring!

 Kate Middleton Comes Face-to-Face with Iconic Dutch Painting 2016

For Further Exploration:

https://www.vermeer-foundation.org/biography.html

https://www.vermeer-foundation.org/the-complete-works.html-THE MET

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/verm/hd_verm.htm-TimsVErmeer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim%27s_Vermeer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEior-0inxU- A fantastic 2001 documentary, with a huge chunk exploring Vermeer's composition methods and techniques. Narrated by Meryl Streep

The Virgin and the Unicorn by Domenico Zampieri, known as Domenichino c 1602

The Virgin and the Unicorn by Domenico Zampieri, known as Domenichino c 1602

The unicorn (from Latin unus "one" and cornu "horn", also called monoceros by the Greek) is a mythological creature. Though the modern popular image of the unicorn is sometimes that of a horse differing only in the single spiral horn on the middle of its forehead, the traditional unicorn also has a beard of a buck, a tail of a lion, and cloven hooves — these distinguish it from a horse. The unicorn is the only fabulous beast that does not seem to have been conceived out of human fears. In even the earliest references he is fierce yet good, selfless yet solitary, but always mysteriously beautiful. He could be captured only by unfair means, and his single horn was said to neutralize poison.

Portrait of a Young woman with an unicorn by Raphael

Unicorns have been an intriguing animal throughout history. While the actual existence of these creatures is thought to be mythical, people still believe in the fable of unicorns. Historians and storytellers have looked at other mammals, such as the giraffe and the ostrich, as proof that unicorns could perhaps have existed. People are happy to endorse the myth and lore of the unicorn as having existed at some point in time. The ancient Asians believed that unicorns were a sign of good luck that only made revealed to humans in rare cases. It was thought that the appearance of unicorns is a good omen. In medieval times, the unicorn became a symbol of Christianity. The popular belief was that a unicorn could never be lured or tamed, except by the scent of a pure virgin.

The Lady and the Unicorn (French: La Dame à la licorne) is the modern title given to the series of six tapestries woven in Flanders from wool and silk.  The set, on display in the Musée national du Moyen Âge (former Musée de Cluny) in Paris, is often considered one of the greatest works of art of the Middle Ages in Europe.

 “A living drollery: now I will believe That there are unicorns...”

~William Shakespeare, The Tempest, c.1611

The Lady and the Unicorn  Tapestry  Desire.. À Mon Seul Désir

No group of medieval tapestry is more mysterious than the Lady and the Unicorn series which is currently on display at Cluny Museum in Paris France. The facts of its creation are unknown. We know nothing known about the origins of the original tapestry set. There are many different theories about these tapestries but historians have not been able to agree on their origins.

Each of the six artistic master pieces offers a scene of a unicorn with a woman. In medieval times, a unicorn was often thought of as a representation of Christ. The horn was thought to be a symbol of the unity between Christ and God. In each of the six Lady and The Unicorn Tapestries the unicorns represent the human senses. These are defined as sight, smell, touch, sound, taste and love.

Medieval Ages Museum Cluny Museum in Paris France

Five of the tapestries are commonly referred to as the five senses – taste, hearing, sight, smell, and touch. The sixth displays the words "À mon seul désir". The tapestry's meaning is obscure, but has been interpreted as representing love or understanding. Each of the six tapestries depicts a noble lady with the unicorn on her left and a lion on her right; some include a monkey in the scene. The pennants, as well as the armor of the Unicorn and Lion in the tapestry bear the Coat of Arms of Jean Le Viste, who was a powerful nobleman in the court of King Charles VII.   The tapestries are created in the style of mille-fleurs (meaning: "thousand flowers").

The first historical mention of the tapestry occurs in 1814 in a description of the château de Boussac, in the Creuse department in central France, but it was not until 1841 that Prosper Mérimée, a French dramatist, historian, archaeologist and writer, best known for his novella Carmen, which became the basis for the opera by Bizet, discovered the tapestry. The tapestries in 1841 at Château de Boussac in France, where they had serious damage resulting from improper storage conditions. In 1844 the novelist George Sand saw them and brought public attention to the tapestries in her works at the time (most notably in her novel Jeanne), in which using the Ladies Dresses, correctly dated them to the end of the fifteenth century.  In 1863, The Tapestries were brought to the Thermes de Cluny in Paris where after careful conservation has restored them nearly to their former glory.

The Lady and The Unicorn Tapestries on display at the Cluny Museum in Paris France

The red background of each tapestry is dotted with a rich variety of flowering plants and features pine, orange sessile oak and holly trees, the repeated motif of a coat of arms of three white crescents on a blue background, and animals including numerous rabbits, monkeys and birds.

Some historians believe that in five of the six panels, the mysterious lady with the unicorn is Mary Tudor, third wife of Louis XII and sister of Henry VIII, who was Queen of France from August 1514 to 1 January 1515.

The Tapestries are:

Touch

The lady stands with one hand touching the unicorn's horn, and the other holding up the pennant. The lion sits to the side and looks on.

Taste

The lady is taking sweets from a dish held by a maidservant. Her eyes are on a parakeet on her upheld left hand. The lion and the unicorn are both standing on their hind legs reaching up to pennants that frame the lady on either side. The monkey is at her feet, eating one of the sweetmeats.

Smell

The lady stands, making a wreath of flowers. Her maidservant holds a basket of flowers within her easy reach. Again, the lion and unicorn frame the lady while holding on to the pennants. The monkey has stolen a flower which he is smelling, providing the key to the allegory.

The Lady and The Unicorn Tapestries on display at the Cluny Museum in Paris France

Hearing

The lady plays a portative organ on top of a table covered with an Oriental rug. Her maidservant stands to the opposite side and operates the bellows. The lion and unicorn once again frame the scene holding up the pennants. Just as on all the other tapestries, the unicorn is to the lady's left and the lion to her right - a common denominator to all the tapestries.

Sight

The lady is seated, holding a mirror up in her right hand. The unicorn kneels on the ground, with his front legs in the lady's lap, from which he gazes at his reflection in the mirror. The lion on the left holds up a pennant.

À Mon Seul Désir

This tapestry is wider than the others, and has a somewhat different style. The lady stands in front of a tent, across the top of which is written "À Mon Seul Désir", an obscure motto, variously interpretable as "my one/sole desire", "according to my desire alone"; "by my will alone", "love desires only beauty of soul", "to calm passion". Her maidservant stands to the right, holding open a chest. The lady is placing the necklace she wears in the other tapestries into the chest. To her left is a low bench with a dog sitting on a decorative pillow. It is the only tapestry in which she is seen to smile. The unicorn and the lion stand in their normal spots framing the lady while holding onto the pennants.

The Lady and The Unicorn Tapestries on display at the Cluny Museum in Paris France

In 2017 the tapestries, once again can be seen in all their vibrancy and detail after a major cleaning and restoration. Two years ago, in 2015, the tapestries were taken down from display at the Musée National du Moyen Age in Paris, where they had been since 1882. Time and decades of dust had taken their toll on the colors, and the lining from which the tapestry was hung was deforming its shape and designs. Over the following months, a team of five restorers removed and replaced the linings and cleared the dust using a form of micro vacuum cleaner. Finally, all six of the panels were rehung in a newly designed room at the museum. "The tapestry has really come to life again," Audrey Defretin, a spokeswoman for the museum stated. "Already the panels were exceptional and emblematic because of their famous history and the mystery of their meaning, but now they have been cleaned and rehung we have some idea of how they might have looked in the Middle Ages. They are really extraordinary."

The tapestries have inspired novels and songs, been featured in Harry Potter movies and puzzled historians for the best part of 500 years. The Lady and the Unicorn, regarded as the Mona Lisa of woven artworks, is one of the greatest surviving artefacts of its kind from the Middle Ages.

Album Cover For John Renbourn

The Lady and the Unicorn was the title of a 1970 album by folk guitarist John Renbourn and shows the A mon seul désir panel on its cover. The tapestry is also depicted in the 2003 Tracy Chevalier Novel The Lady and the Unicorn, and several of the panels can be seen hanging on the walls of Harry Potter's Gryffindor house common room in the blockbuster films.

Lady with Unicorn by Luca Longhi 16^th Century

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On view at the Cloisters Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Hunt for the Unicorn, or the Unicorn Tapestries, is a series of seven tapestries dating woven between 1495 and 1505, and woven in Brussels or Liège, and currently on display at the Cloisters - Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York. The tapestries show a group of noblemen and hunters in pursuit of a unicorn. The Hunt for the Unicorn was a common theme in late medieval and renaissance works of art and literature. The tapestries were woven in wool, metallic threads, and silk. The vibrant colors are evident even today.  The colors were produced from dye plants: weld (yellow), madder (red), and woad (blue). Most of the tapestries have survived however, only 2 fragments of one of the panels, The Mystic Capture of the Unicorn survives

There are a lot of opinions about the history of the tapestries.

The Hunters at the Start of the Hunt 

The original workmanship of the tapestries remains unanswered at the present. The design of the tapestries in the effect of the richness of figurative elements, near to the art of oil painting and influenced by the French style and reflected the woodcuts and metalcuts printed in Paris in the late fifteenth century.

The tapestries were highly probably woven in Brussels in the Flanders, where was the center of tapestry industry in the medieval European. As a series of remarkable works of Brussels looms, the mixture of silk, metallic thread with wool gave the tapestries finer quality and brilliance of colors. The wool was widely produced in the rural areas in Brussels, and easily obtained as the primary material in tapestry weaving, while the silk was costly in the weaving of tapestry, which symbolized the wealth and social status of the tapestry owner.

The Unicorn in Captivity

The tapestries were rich in floral in the background as a garden, features the "millefleurs" style, refers to a background style of a variety of small botanic, which was invented by the weavers of Gothic age, popular during the late medieval and wilted after the early Renaissance. There are more than a hundred plants represented in the tapestries, which scatter across the green background on the panels, eighty-five of which are identified by botanists whose interior meaning in the tapestries were designed to recall the tapestries' major themes. In the unicorn series, the hunt takes place within a closed garden, the Hortus conclusus, take the literal meaning of "enclosed garden", which was not only in conjunction with the Annunciation, but also a representation of the garden in the secular world.

The Unicorn at the Fountain

The seven tapestries are:

• The Hunters at the Start of the Hunt

• The Unicorn at the Fountain

• The Unicorn Attacked

• The Unicorn Defending Himself

• The Unicorn is captured by the Virgin (two fragments)

• The Unicorn Killed and Brought to the Castle

• The Unicorn in Captivity

The tapestries were owned by the La Rochefoucauld family of France for several centuries, with first mention of them showing up in the family's 1728 inventory. At that time five of the tapestries were hanging in a bedroom in the family's Château de Verteuil, Charente and two were stored in a hall adjacent to the chapel. The tapestries were highly believed woven for François, the son of Jean II de La Rochefoucauld and Marguerite de Barbezieux. And there was a possible connection between the letters A and E and the La Rochefoucauld, which are interpreted as the first and last of Antoine's name, who was the son of François, and his wife, Antoinette of Amboise. During the French Revolution, the tapestries were looted from the château and reportedly were used to cover potatoes – a period during which they apparently sustained damage. By the end of the 1880s they were again in the possession of the family. A visitor to the château described them as quaint 15th century wall hangings, yet showing "incomparable freshness and grace". The same visitor records the set as consisting of seven pieces, though one was by that time in fragments and being used as bed curtains.

The Unicorn Killed and Brought to the Castle detail

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. bought them in 1922 for about one million US dollars. Six of the tapestries hung in Rockefeller's house until The Cloisters was built when he donated them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1938 and at the same time secured for the collection the two fragments the La Rochefauld family had retained. The set now hangs in The Cloisters which houses the museum's medieval collection.

In 1998 the tapestries were cleaned and restored. In the process, the linen backing was removed, the tapestries were bathed in water, and it was discovered that the colors on the back were in even better condition than those on the front (which are also quite vivid). A series of high resolution digital photographs were taken of both.

Ancient unicorn tapestries recreated at Stirling Castle

Historic Scotland commissioned a set of seven hand-made tapestries for Stirling Castle, a recreation of The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries, as part of a project to furnish the castle as it was in the 16th century.

The Unicorn is captured by the Virgin fragment

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Ernst Kirchner The Most Influential Modern Artist That You Have Probably Never Heard Of

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1880 – 1938, was a German expressionist painter and printmaker. He was one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge",which was a group of artists that helped establish and build the foundation of Expressionism in 20th-century art.

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Die Brücke (The Bridge) was a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905, after which the Brücke Museum in Berlin was named. Founding members were Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Later members were Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein and Otto Mueller. The seminal group had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the 20th century and the creation of expressionism.

Die Brücke is sometimes compared to the Fauves. Both movements shared interests in primitivist art. Both shared an interest in the expressing of extreme emotion through high-keyed color that was very often non-naturalistic. Both movements employed a drawing technique that was crude, and both groups shared an antipathy to complete abstraction. The Die Brücke artists' emotionally agitated paintings of city streets and sexually charged events transpiring in country settings make their French counterparts, the Fauves, seem tame by comparison.

From Wikipedia

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Self Portrait by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

In 1898 Kirchner was impressed by the graphic art of the German late Gothic artists, especially Albrecht Dürer, and Edvard Munch both of whom influenced Kirchner’s art. Despite access to the Jugendstil movement and contemporary artists Kirchner chose to simplify his forms and brighten his colors.

Kirchner studied architecture in Dresden, Germany from 1901-1905. But art was his true passion and in 1905 he founded Die Brücke with Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Other artists, including Emil Nolde, subsequently joined the group. For Kirchner, art was a translation of inner conflict into visual terms. He cited the emotive work of Vincent van Gogh and Munch as artistic role models. (see note above)

Kirchner’s use of color and his respect for the paintings of Henri Matisse and the Fauves in France may be seen in Girl under Japanese Umbrella (1906) and Artist and His Model (1907), Much of Kirchner’s work of this period exhibits his preoccupation with malevolence and eroticism. In Street, Berlin (1907), the curvy forms of the fashionable women on the Street focus the sensuousness of the women despite their solemn dress.

Kirchner’s artwork focused upon the human form for a time.  During this period, he was obsessed with nudes.  His studies of the nude, are often explicitly erotic and very Intense.

Illustration for 'Peter Schlemihl' by Adalbert von Chamisso

In 1911 the members of Die Brücke moved to Berlin, where Kirchner produced masterful woodcuts for Der Sturm, Germany’s leading avant-garde periodical before World War I. His illustrations for Adelbert von Chamisso’s novel Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (1915; “Peter Schlemihl’s Wonderful Story”) and for the poem Umbra Vitae (1924) by the Expressionist poet Georg Heym are considered to be among the finest engravings of the 20th century.

Umbra Vitae (1924) by the

Expressionist poet Georg Heym

At the outbreak of World War, I in 1914, Kirchner joined the German army, He found life in uniform rigid and constraining and he suffered a nervous breakdown and returned home.

A Berlin Street Scene by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Even while he was ill and during his recover, Kirchner continued to produce many works; paintings, prints, drawings and sculpture. He sought help at a sanitarium in the Swiss Alps. The cold, dry air in Davos, Switzerland, was considered therapeutic. In 1917, he moved permanently to Davos, Switzerland, where he stopped painting nudes and focused on landscapes and personalities as he started included images of rural life and the surrounding Alps. Through the 1920s major exhibitions of his work were held in Berlin, Frankfurt, Dresden, and other cities. In 1931, he was made a member of the Prussian Academy of Art.

Landscape Under a Winter Moon by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

In 1932 Kirchner was labeled a degenerate artist by the Nazis.  Kirchner was asked to resign from the Berlin Academy of Arts in 1933.  In 1937, more than 600 of his works were confiscated from German museums and were either destroyed or sold. Kirchner was called un-German by the Nazis. His works were removed, some were destroyed. His artwork was cleared out of Germany and in his own country Kirchner felt his work would not be known. That was a devastating blow to Kirchner.

In March of 1938, the Nazis invaded nearby Austria, and Kirchner felt besieged. As an historian recounted "The Nazis were 12 miles away from Davos," … "Kirchner is sitting there in his mountain house with his paintings and his drawings, his prints, his sculpture and so forth, and he got more and more this idea, 'My God, they're 12 miles away and they've destroyed my art in Germany and now they're coming for me.” Kirchner thought it would be better to destroy his own artwork rather than let the Nazis do it so he destroyed it himself.

View of the Basil and the Rhine by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

He tried to persuade his long-time girlfriend, Erna, to commit suicide with him but she refused, and could not stop him. Kirchner died from a self-inflicted gunshot, he was just 58 years old.

The first public exhibition of Kirchner's work in the United States was at the Armory Show of 1913, the first comprehensive exhibition of modern art in America. U.S. museum acquisitions of Kirchner's work began in 1921 and steadily increased through the next four decades. Kirchner was given his first one-man museum show in the U.S. at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1937. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, held a monographic exhibition of Kirchner's art in 1992, based on works in the collections of the Gallery and its donors, and then held a major international loan exhibition of Kirchner's art in 2003.

Self Portrait by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

One of his surviving paintings -- a street scene in Berlin -- sold in 2006 for $38 million dollars.

And in Germany, a country whose rejection tortured him, Kirchner is now revered as one of its greatest modern artists.

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