Off the harbor by Ioannis Altamouras

by 19th century ArtGreek ArtStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
Ioannis Altamouras, 1852-1878
Off the harbor, 1874, oil on paper mounted on cardboard, 23.3 x 30.5 cm, Bank of Greece
https://museum.bankofgreece.gr/topoianaforas/modern_greek_art/501_Altamouras_en.html

Emily, / A ship is floating in the harbour now, / A wind is hovering o’er the mountain’s brow; / There is a path on the sea’s azure floor, / No keel has ever plough’d that path before; / The halcyons brood around the foamless isles; The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles; / The merry mariners are bold and free: / Say, my heart’s sister, wilt thou sail with me? / Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest / Is a far Eden of the purple East; / And we between her wings will sit, while Night, / And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, / Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, / Treading each other’s heels, unheededly… wrote for Epipsychidion, Percy Bysshe Shelley back in 1821. Off the harbor by Ioannis Altamouras is a small painting that reminds me of Shelley’s description… A ship is floating in the harbour now… https://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/epipsychidion_(excerpt)_5166

Ioannis Altamouras, 1852-1878
Self Portrait, 19th century, oil on canvas, unidentified location
https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%99%CF%89%CE%AC%CE%BD%CE%BD%CE%B7%CF%82_%CE%91%CE%BB%CF%84%CE%B1%CE%BC%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%81%CE%B1%CF%82#/media/%CE%91%CF%81%CF%87%CE%B5%CE%AF%CE%BF:Ioannis_Altamouras_-_self_portrait.jpg

Ioannis Altmouras, an accomplished representative of the Seascape painting genre, is one of my favourite modern Greek painters. Born in Italy, his parents were both artists, Ioannis Altamouras was of Greek/Italian descent. He was the son of Saverio Altamura, an Italian Painter, and Professor at the Naples School of Fine Arts, and Eleni Boukouri from the island of Spetses, who, daringly dressed as a young man, studied Art in Italy, at times, under the tutelage of her future husband Saverio. Between 1857 and 1859 his parents separated, and Eleni took her two older children and returned to Greece, where she raised them teaching Art to prominent members of the Athenian society, including the Greek Queen, Olga. Eleni was Altamouras’s first Art Teacher, who, in 1871-72, coached by Nikephoros Lytras, studied at the School of Fine Arts in Athens. Between 1873 and 1876 Ioannis Altamouras was in Denmark, on a scholarship from King George I, where he continued his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at Copenhagen, close to the great painter of the time, Carl Frederick Sorensen. During the summer of 1876, Altamouras’s revolutionary spirit took him to the fishing village of Skagen, where 40 Danish painters had created the well-known “Skagen Colony”. It was at Skagen where the ideas of Impressionism in his art, took roots, as he spent time outdoors observing, the Skagen open horizon and the interplay of different colors in natural light. Sick with tuberculosis, Altamouras returns to Greece and tragically young, he died, six years later, in 1878. https://www.nationalgallery.gr/en/painting-permanent-exhibition/painter/altamouras-ioannis.html

Off the harbor by Ioannis Altamouras is a small painting in the Art Collection of the Bank of Greece, rarely seen by the public but nicely documented as it was exhibited in the 2018 Exhibition at the Benaki Museum, titled Frames of Reference from the Bank of Greece Collection. I like how it is described… A dull, rainy, and humid seascape is revealed in front of us. Small boats are scattered here and there, schematically defined, somewhat vaguely against the background. A little to the fore, we see a few boats painted in dark colours and contrasting the overall blue-white landscape. Their cross-like shape makes them a point of reference for the entire composition. Sea and sky appear united, in the absence of a clear separating line for the horizon. https://museum.bankofgreece.gr/topoianaforas/modern_greek_art/501_Altamouras_en.html

For a PowerPoint Student Activity on Altamouras’s Seascapes, please… Check HERE!

Homer’s Summer Night

by 19th century ArtAmerican ArtArtStudent Activities
Winslow Homer, American Artist, 1836-1910
Summer Night, 1890, Oil on canvas, 76.7×102 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/03/winslow-homers-summer-night-examined-at-harvard-art-museums/

Harvard Art Museums’ Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director Martha Tedeschi, discussing in an interview Homer’s Summer Night said: One of the things that I think is so successful in this picture, and that I love about Homer in general, is that it evokes things that he could not have possibly painted into the picture, like sound. There are two young women dancing on a porch. That immediately implies that there’s probably music playing. And in fact, an early title of this picture was “Buffalo Gals” after the popular song. So with that title in mind, and looking at the women dancing, you could almost start humming that song to yourself and the lines “Buffalo gals won’t you come out tonight, and we’ll dance by the light of the moon.” There is also the silhouetted group of people to the right of the picture who appear mesmerized by the sound of the crashing waves and the light flickering across the surface of the water. Homer conjures the sound of relentless splashing and churning. You can feel the spray, you can feel that cool breeze coming across that moonlight sea… https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/03/winslow-homers-summer-night-examined-at-harvard-art-museums/m

This nocturnal scene by the sea transcends observed reality through a keen sense of poetry and mystery… this is how the Musée d’Orsay experts describe Homer’s Summer Night. The light and shade effects blur shapes, the experts continue while the ghostly silhouettes of two women dance on the shore. Although it may well have been influenced by Courbet’s Waves, the lyricism tinged with mysticism expressed by Homer helped develop a feeling for nature that is peculiarly American. https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire/commentaire_id/summer-night-2970.html

Winslow Homer, American Artist, 1836-1910
Summer Night (detail), 1890, Oil on canvas, 76.7×102 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France https://twitter.com/linshangon/status/1016569875190374400/photo/1

Winslow Homer is one of the finest 19th century American Artists. His career started as a graphic reporter during the American Civil War with paintings like Home, Sweet Home, and Sharpshooter on Picket Duty, of 1863, or Prisoners from the Front, of 1866 defining his early career. The late 1860s and the 1870s were, however, the artist’s finest years of artistic experimentation and prolific and varied output. Living and working in New York, but traveling to Paris, in late 1867, for the exhibition of two of his Civil War Paintings at the Exposition Universelle, Homer came face to face with the French avant-garde, and although there is little likelihood of influence, the artist shared their subject interests, their fascination with serial imagery, and their desire to incorporate into their works outdoor light, flat and simple forms (reinforced by their appreciation of Japanese design principles), and free brushwork. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/homr/hd_homr.htm

For a Student Activity, please… Check HERE!

A Meissen Figurine of La Chocolatière

by 19th century ArtArtStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
A Meissen Figure of La Chocolatière, circa 1870, porcelain, 36 cm, Private Collection https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/13951/lot/103/

I hate milk chocolate, don’t want clouds / of cream diluting the dark night sky, / don’t want pralines or raisins, rubble / in this smooth plateau. I like my / black, my beer from Germany, wine / from Burgundy, the darker, the better. / I like my heroes complicated and brooding, / James Dean in oiled leather, leaning / on a motorcycle. You know the color. / Oh, chocolate! From the spice bazaars / of Africa, hulled in mills, beaten, / pressed in bars. The cold slab of a cave’s / interior, when all the stars / have gone to sleep. / Chocolate strolls up to the microphone / and plays jazz at midnight, the low slow / notes of a bass clarinet. Chocolate saunters / down the runway, slouches in quaint / boutiques; its style is je ne sais quoi. / Chocolate stays up late and gambles, / likes roulette. Always bets / on the noir. Barbara Crooker, the author of More, wrote Ode to Chocolate and my mind travels back in time when Chocolate was… all the rage… and A Meissen Figurine of La Chocolatière the latest in the Art of Porcelain! https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2014/02/12/8-chocolate-poems-love-chocolate/

Jean-Baptiste Charpentier the Elder, 1728-1806
The family of the Duke of Penthièvre called la tasse de chocolat, 1768, oil on canvas, 176×256 cm, Palace of Versailles, France https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_famille_du_Duc_de_Penthi%C3%A8vre_dit_la_tasse_de_chocolat.jpg

Three hundred years ago drinking Hot Chocolate was the latest fab in fashionable cities like Paris, London or Bath… At home, or in trendy chocolate houses the elite of Europe would gather and indulge on the silkiest smooth, most aromatic, succulent chocolate from Latin America… Chocolatières could make, and money could buy! Recipes varied by adding vanilla or cinnamon, nutmeg, milk and sugar so as every chocolate drinker’s palette be satisfied. And that was not enough… The grandest porcelain factories in Europe competed to produce the finest, most stylish, and expansive tableware this delicate, mouthwatering drink demanded! Chocolate pots had shorter spouts and lower handles than coffee pots and often had hinged finials to allow the molinet (a wooden ridged stick to roll and mix grated chocolate)  to be inserted. Two handled chocolate cups with their matching covers and saucers were distinctively different in style to tea or coffee cups and increasingly elegant designs were manufactured by leading porcelain factories such as Meissen in Dresden, Sevres in France or Worcester in England. https://museumofbatharchitecture.org.uk/hot-chocolate-in-the-18th-century/

Jean-Étienne Liotard, 1702-1789
The Chocolate Girl, 1744, pastel on parchment, 82.5×52.5 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-Etienne_Liotard_-_The_Chocolate_Girl_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

The Meissen Figurine of La Chocolatière is a wonderful Rococo-inspired example of the European Chocolate fashion of the 19th century. The figurine copied Jean-Étienne Liotard’s pastel painting of The Chocolate Girl exhibited today in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. Described by the Bonhams porcelain experts… the maidservant stands wearing a lace-trimmed bonnet, her dress decorated with colourful floral sprigs, holding a rectangular tray out before her, set on a square rocky base… This is a beautiful figurine to remind us of the small pleasures in life and help us celebrate World Chocolate Day! https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/13951/lot/103/

For a Student Activity, please… Check HERE!

François Boucher, 1703-1770
Le Déjeuner, 1739, oil on canvas, 81.5 x 61.5 cm, Louvre Museum, Paris, France https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fran%C3%A7ois_Boucher_002.jpg

White Ships by John Singer Sargent

by 19th century ArtAmerican ArtArtPowerpoints
John Singer Sargent, American artist, 1856-1925
White Ships, circa 1908, Translucent and opaque watercolor and wax resist with graphite underdrawing, 35.6 x 49.2 cm, Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/20397

Strange flight, the body / Held at a threshold / And never quite freed    /    Or quite revealed— / One wing taut with wind, / One wing concealed    /    Until the wind grows calm / And it shimmers in a shadow-world, / The shape of a sail, yet softer—    /    The drifting boat / A bird half in air, / Half in water… writes Heather Allen, and I think of White Ships by John Singer Sargent and a perfect day in the sea… anywhere in the world! https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2017/02/09/top-10-ship-sail-boat-poems/

John Singer Sargent is the par excellence representative American artist of the Gilded Age. His life represents its very characteristics! He was born in Florence, Italy, to expatriate American parents…  He had a nomadic childhood, spending winters in Florence, Rome, or Nice and summers in the Alps or other cooler locations. Early in his life, he realized what he wanted to do in life was to become an artist, and supported by his mother, Mary Newbold Sargent, who was herself an accomplished amateur watercolorist he accomplished it. Sargent and his mother carried sketchbooks throughout their extensive travels across Europe, and he developed a quick eye and fast reflexes for recording his impressions of the landscape. Eighteen years old, under the tutelage of the painter Carolus-Duran, who encouraged him to paint directly onto the canvas, without any preparatory drawing, and to study the Old Masters, John Singer Sargent developed his skills, exhibited both landscapes and portraits to much acclaim, and developed a reputation as a fine society portraitist on both sides of the Atlantic. What a life… Brooklyn Museum – Teaching Resource: Special Exhibition – John Singer Sargent Watercolors – April 5–July 28, 2013, p. 2

John Singer Sargent, American artist, 1856-1925
Self-Portrait, 1906, oil on canvas, 70×53 cm, the MET, NY, USA https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sargent,_John_SInger_(1856-1925)_-_Self-Portrait_1907_b.jpg

Sargent wanted more… He grew restless at the height of his career, and sought escape from the constraints of the studio and the demands of his patrons for society portraits. What he did was to travel to remote spots, choose his own subjects, and paint without distraction inspirational watercolours… of landscapes, genre scenes, friends, and family. After 1900 Sargent spent his summers traveling throughout Europe, painting both oil paintings and watercolors. What a life… Brooklyn Museum – Teaching Resource: Special Exhibition – John Singer Sargent Watercolors – April 5–July 28, 2013, p. 2

Painting the characteristic Mediterranean sailing boats and fishing vessels was a favourite theme of Sargent’s watercoloures. The Brooklyn White Ships is by far my favourite. The subject matter is purely “marine,” the lines communicate energy and the colours bask on summer chaleur! The artist focuses on the sails, the mast and the prow of each boat, the blue of the sky and the reflections on the seawater. Controlled tones of blue and white suggest subtle shadows while brushstrokes of colour on the water create an interaction of light a shade. How more summery can it get!

When I discuss John Singer Sargent’s Watercolours with my Students I always give them a copy of the Brooklyn Museum – Teaching Resource: Special Exhibition – John Singer Sargent Watercolors – April 5–July 28, 2013. It is a great source of information and provides many sources for Student Activities.

For a PowerPoint on John Singer Sargent’s Watercolours, please…  Click HERE!

Idle Hours by William Merritt Chase

by 19th century ArtAmerican ArtArtStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
William Merritt Chase, American painter, 1849-1916
Idle Hours, 1894, oil on canvas, 90.17×64.77 cm, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Texas

“The first lily of June opens its red mouth. / All over the sand road where we walk / multiflora rose climbs trees cascading / white or pink blossoms, simple, intense / the scene drifting like colored mist.    /    The arrowhead is spreading its creamy / clumps of flower and the blackberries / are blooming in the thickets. Season of / joy for the bee. The green will never / again be so green, so purely and lushly    /    new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads / into the wind. Rich fresh wine / of June, we stagger into you smeared / with pollen, overcome as the turtle / laying her eggs in roadside sand.” More Than Enough is a lovely poem by Marge Piercy. Idle Hours by William Merritt Chase is a wonderful painting to make us dream of summer days… https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42466/more-than-enough

My God, I’d rather go to Europe than go to heaven… William Merritt Chase apparently said back in 1872 when a group of St. Louis businessmen offered him the financial support to study in Europe. He was a young, talented man from Indiana, and the Royal Academy in Munich, Germany, was his choice for Art studies. Less distracting… compared to Paris, he probably thought… but the more Academic Munich Art scene did not keep Chase from exploring the latest in European Art. The flashy brushwork and dramatic chiaroscuro espoused by Wilhelm Leibl, Gustave Courbet‘s German friend and stylistic alter ego was what he espoused in Munich along with the painterly realism of old masters such as Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Hals. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chas/hd_chas.htm

William Merritt Chase, American painter, 1849-1916
Self-Portrait, 1915-16, oil on canvas, 133.3×161.2 cm, Richmond Art Museum, Richmond, IN, USA

I intend to have the finest studio in New York… he told a friend… and in 1978, back in New York, he did… by renting a small studio in the prestigious Tenth Street Studio Building in Greenwich Village. That studio became the perfect setting for the elegant, debonair image he contrived for himself. He traveled back and forth to Europe, visited the latest art shows, meeting artists and collectors, exploring the modern look, experimenting with subjects of relaxation in an innovative style,  and set himself to become the finest members of the American artistic community.  https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chas/hd_chas.htm

Archival  Photographs of the Shinnecock Summer School on Long Island
https://aaqeastend.com/contents/the-art-village/

In 1891 William Merritt Chase became the leading Art Teacher of the prestigious, but equally popular and fashionable, Shinnecock Summer School on Long Island. He was happy at Shinnecock as he was able to practice open-air painting for twelve consecutive summers in an elegant environment he enjoyed. He taught two days every week and then… I imagine him in his veranda… overlooking the ocean, among members of his family, content and overwhelmed by the changing effects of light, creating some of his finest, vivid landscapes.  

William Merritt Chase, American painter, 1849-1916
Idle Hours (detail), 1894, oil on canvas, 90.17×64.77 cm, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Texas
https://gallerythane.com/products/william-merritt-chase-fine-art-print-idle-hours

To celebrate the Summer Solstice of 2021, I chose to present the 1894 painting Idle Hours by William Merritt Chase exhibited today at Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Texas. The painting shows the artist’s wife in a red bonnet with two of her daughters and possibly his sister-in-law. The group enjoys a perfect day of sunshine and sea breeze while indulging in the idyllic pastime of reading outdoors. The Shinnecock dunes and beach, the yellowy, summer greens of the landscape and the flickering light, create a painting of summer bliss I particularly enjoy… and hope, you will enjoy as well… https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/idle-hours-william-merritt-chase/aAGRt5_rnKp-qw and https://www.wga.hu/html_m/c/chase/idlehour.html

For a Student Activity, please… Check HERE!

Mother’s Day

by 19th century ArtArtImpressionismPowerpoints
Mary Stevenson Cassatt, 1844–1926
Maternal Caress, 1890-91, Drypoint, aquatint and softground etching, printed in color from three plates, 36.5 × 26.8 cm, the MET, NY, USA
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/364213

“Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome / Has many sonnets: so here now shall be / One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me / To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home, / To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee / I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome; / Whose service is my special dignity, / And she my loadstar while I go and come. / And so because you love me, and because / I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath / Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honoured name: / In you not fourscore years can dim the flame / Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws / Of time and change and mortal life and death.” I miss my mother… and on Mother’s Day, I think of her with Art and poetry, because my heart and thoughts are … full of love. https://poets.org/poem/sonnets-are-full-love-and-my-tome (Christina Rossetti’s (1830-1894) Sonnets are full of love)

For the Mother’s Day BLOG POST two Works of Art from two different parts of the world… yet, Mary Stevenson Cassatt’s Maternal Caress, and Kitagawa Utamaro’s Mother and Sleepy Child, have so many similar stories to tell… https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/364213 and https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/51137

Mary Stevenson Cassatt, 1844–1926
Maternal Caress, 1890-91, Drypoint, aquatint and softground etching, printed in colour from three plates, 36.5 × 26.8 cm, the MET, NY, USA
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/364213
Kitagawa Utamaro, 1753–1806,
Midnight: The Hours of the Rat; Mother and Sleepy Child, Edo period (1615–1868), ca. 1790, Polychrome woodblock print, The MET, NY, USA
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/51137

Mary Stevenson Cassatt (1844 – 1926) was a fortunate lady! Born into an affluent family in Pennsylvania who believed it was important for women to receive an education, she grew up attending school in Philadelphia and travelling to Europe where …Art kept changing. Reaching adulthood she persuaded her parents that her life’s destination was Europe and professional pursuit will be painting! It was not easy for her father to accept it, but after serious deliberation, it was decided… in 1866, with her mother and family friends acting as chaperones, she settled in Paris and was accepted to study Art in the private studios of Jean-Léon Gérôme, Charles Joshua Chaplin and Thomas Couture. She expanded her training with daily copying in the Louvre and trips to the French countryside where she drew from life. Two years later, in 1868, her painting A Mandoline Player, was accepted for exhibition in the Paris Salon. She was noticed as a professional painter, but she was not fully content!

Everything changed in 1877 when paintings she submitted to enter the year’s Salon were rejected by the committee. Disillusioned with academic painting and eager to experiment, Cassatt met Edgar Degas, an artist she greatly admired, who invited her to collaborate with the Impressionists and exhibit with them in 1879, at the 4th Impressionist Exhibition. She was finally happy in an artistic environment that suited her needs… plein air painting, ordinary subjects, vibrant, metallic in some cases, colour, in short, dancing brushstrokes, flat space, the discovery of Japanism…

On the 9th of May, celebrating Mother’s Day, a tribute to Mary Cassatt as “…in her clear-headed treatment of mothers and infants, (she) was, for her time, entirely alone. The bunch of English and French daubers have put them in such stupid and pretentious poses! complained the critic J.-K. Huysmans, contrasting them with Cassatt’s irreproachable pearls of Oriental sweetness.” I couldn’t agree more! https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/364213

Kitagawa Utamaro, 1753–1806,
Midnight: The Hours of the Rat; Mother and Sleepy Child, Edo period (1615–1868), ca. 1790, Polychrome woodblock print, The MET, NY, USA
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/51137

One of my favourite classroom games, teaching my students the accomplishments of Impressionist artists like Mary Cassatt, is to present them with Japanese Woodblock prints and assist them to draw comparisons and conclusions. The MET experts present Kitagawa Utamaro as “one of the most prolific artists of the genre of the portrayal of beautiful women… extremely interested in images of mother and child in daily life.” Midnight: The Hours of the Rat; Mother and Sleepy Child “belongs to a series entitled Fuzoku Bijin Tokei (Women’s Daily Customs). To illustrate midnight, Utamaro has chosen a mother who sleepily emerges from her mosquito net to attend to her child, who rubs the sleep from his eyes. The personal, quotidian nature of the subject exemplifies the new interest in the individual that emerged during the Edo period.”

For a PowerPoint on Mary Stevenson Cassatt and Japanism, please… Check HERE!

Kanaris Burning the Turkish Flagship

by 1821-Greek Independence Day19th century Art
Nikiforos Lytras, 1832-1927
Kanaris Burning the Turkish Flagship, 1873, oil on canvas, 143×109 cm, Averoff Gallery, Metsovo, Greece     https://www.averoffmuseum.gr/kanaris-burning-the-turkish-flagship/?lang=en

“Mais le bon Canaris, donc un ardent sillon  /  Suit la barque hardie,  /  Sur les vaisseaux qu’il prend, comme son pavillon,  /  Arbore l’incendie !          But good Kanaris, whose daring boat  /  Is followed by a burning wake,  /  On the vessels he seizes, as his ensign,  /  Displays the blaze!” Writes Victor Hugo inspired by the daring deeds of Konstantinos Kanaris (anglicised as Constantine Canaris), distinguished as a brave fire ship captain. In 1873, Nikiforos Lytras painted Kanaris Burning the Turkish Flagship, honouring the great man.     https://poesie.webnet.fr/lesgrandsclassiques/poemes/victor_hugo/canaris     and     https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/fr_canar.html

Averoff Gallery, Metsovo, Greece     

Every time I travel to Metsovo, in the Epirote mountains of Pindos, in Northern Greece, I visit the Averoff Gallery and stop in front of Nikiforos Lytras’s painting Kanaris Burning the Turkish Flagship. You cannot miss it… It is one of the most captivating 19th-century Greek paintings. https://www.averoffmuseum.gr/

Kanaris Burning the Turkish Flagship is an amazing departure from what Nykiforos Lytras studied in the Münchner Akademie der Bildenden Künste under the tutelage of Karl Theodor von Piloty (1826-1886). An influential Art School, the Münchner Akademie, attracted and trained artists from around the world to become leading painters, able to combine in their style, academic realism, baroque colourism and dark chiaroscuro. The artists of the Akademie were committed to monumental history paintings, landscapes, ethnography, portraits and still life. Naturalism in its depiction of human emotions was not among the School’s greatest artistic pursuits. http://www.artmag.gr/art-history/art-history/item/270-i-sxoli-you-monaxou

Konstantinos Kanaris (1793 – 1877)
Greek and Philhellene Fighters in the Greek Revolution of 1821, Portraits of the German officer and Philhellene Karl Krazeisen
This is a rare series of the lithographs of Krazeisen, which are hand-painted.
https://www.eefshp.org/en/portfolio-item/konstantinos-kanaris-1793-1877/

Lytras’s painting on the heroic deed by Konstantinos Kanaris is a historic painting with a twist! The artist moves away “from the romantic tendency that prevailed in the School of Piloty to a more naturalistic one in which the genre element played the dominant role.” According to the description provided by the Averoff Museum “Lytras` anthropocentric painting… was not concerned so much with the historical event per se. More so it was the projection of the heroic act carried out by brave persons worthy of emulation. The flaming ship is thrust into the distance to form the backdrop for the human action that is played out on a plane close to the viewer. Thus, in contrast to the ambiguous treatment of the background, where the ship disappears half-hidden by the smoke, the realistic rendering of the Psarians with Kanaris in the boat gives the work the immediacy and truth that interested the artist.”     https://www.averoffmuseum.gr/kanaris-burning-the-turkish-flagship/?lang=en

Nikiforos Lytras, the painter of Kanaris Burning the Turkish Flagship in Metsovo, was born in Pyrgi, on the Cycladic island of Tinos, the son of a marble sculptor. An exceptional talent, Lytras studied at the Athens School of Art from 1850 until 1860 and then, as the recipient of a state scholarship, he continued his studies at the Munich Academy, in the class of Karl von Piloty. In 1866 Lytras was back in Greece and was appointed professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts, a position he held for 38 productive years. A conscientious teacher, but interested to experience new ideas and always open to new trends, Nikiforos Lytras became the leading Greek artist of his time, popular with the people and honoured by his students and fellow artists.

Nikiforos Lytras, 1832-1927
Self-Portrait, 19th century, oil on canvas, 51,5 x 43,5 cm, National Gallery of Athens      

There are two paintings on the theme of Kanaris Burning the Turkish Flagship. The earliest, chronologically, was painted by Nikiforos Lytras and today is exhibited in the Averoff Museum at Metsovo, one of my favourite Art Museums in Greece. The second painting, by  Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, was painted in 1881 and is part of the E. Koutlidis Collection and is exhibited in Athens at the National Gallery. For a Student “Compare and Contrast” Activity, paintings, please… Check HERE!

Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, 1817-1900
The Burning of the Turkish Flagship, 1881,oil on canvas, 162×223 cm, National Gallery of Athens     https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Burning_of_the_Turkish_Flagship_by_Kanaris_-_Ivan_Aivazovsky,_1881.png

If you wish to learn more about the Greek War of Independence and the Bicentennial Celebrations in 2021, please VISIT the official Greece 1821-2021 Bicentennial site http://www.greece2021.gr, Twitter, https://twitter.com/Greece_2021, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/Greece2021/, and Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/greece2021/?hl=el

Celebrating the Greek Revolution of 1821

by 1821-Greek Independence Day19th century ArtArtStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
Johann Georg Christian Perlberg, 1806-1884
Drums for the War of Independence – Young Drummer in Missolunghi, oil on canvas, 48.5 x 34.5 cm, Private Collection
https://www.dorotheum.com/en/l/2897144/      and     http://ellas2021.eu/gallery.html

It was for these children that we fought… paraphrasing the words of Yanni Makrigianni, 1794-1864, Greek Revolutionary Fighter of 1821! Celebrating the Greek Revolution of 1821 and remembering the children who probably suffered the most.

Messolonghi… View of the location where Lord Byron died, 1848
ESTOURMEL, Joseph d’, Comte. Album du Journal d’un Voyage en Orient, Paris, Hellenic Library – Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation
http://eng.travelogues.gr/item.php?view=39968

“The torch that was Missolonghi shed its light as far as Vasiladhi and Klisova and over the whole plain, and even reached us. The flashes of gunfire looked like a host of fireflies. From Missolonghi we heard the shrieks of women, the sound of gunfire, the explosion of powder magazines and mines, all combined in an indescribably fearful noise. The town was like a roaring furnace” remembers Nikolaos Kasomoulis (1795 – 1872), who took part, fought and survived the Exodus. I hope Perlberg’s Young Drummer Boy, so romantically groomed, successfully survived the tragedy…     https://books.google.gr/books?id=GhCLDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA26-IA16&lpg=PA26-IA16&dq=%22The+flashes+of+gunfire+looked+like+a+host+of+fireflies.%22&source=bl&ots=sDTZ6TqHS3&sig=ACfU3U1jIfv4avEDAVvPpC9AfvJbcVkRmQ&hl=el&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiE8qvu2bvvAhWDO-wKHTb_A5MQ6AEwAnoECAEQAw#v=onepage&q=%22The%20flashes%20of%20gunfire%20looked%20like%20a%20host%20of%20fireflies.%22&f=false

For our Youngsters… the National Historical Museum in Athens

National Historical Museum of Greece – The building was designed by Francois Boulanger to serve as the first Greek Parliament. Construction began in 1858 and ended in 1875. It served as the Nation’s Parliament until 1935 and became a museum in 1960.     https://www.greece-is.com/national-historical-museum/

For celebratory mood and quality time with your youngster, you can VISIT the National Historical Museum site http://www.nhmuseum.gr/en and then go to     http://www.nhmuseum.gr/el/ekpaideysi/ekpaideytiko-yliko/.

This is a “Colouring Page” Activity (in Greek BUT easy to understand and DO) on famous figures of the Greek War of Independence. It was inspired by the Exhibition The 1821 Greek War of Independence Retold in… Playmobil! The Activity is very EASY!     http://www.nhmuseum.gr/el/ekpaideysi/ekpaideytiko-yliko/

To do the Colouring Activity Press on each picture you wish your child to colour – download it – print it – DONE! You can choose between heroes and heroines of the Greek War of Independence and celebrate an important moment in Greek History. From top to bottom, the Colouring Page Figures are: Theodoros Kolokotronis, Odysseas Androutsos, Laskarina Bouboulina, Konstantinos Kanaris, Manto Mavrogenous, Germanos, Metropolitan Paleon Patron, Andreas Lontos, Asimo Goura, Ioannis Makrigiannis, Domna Visvizi, Christos Kapsalis, Andreas Pipinos, Dimitrios Papanikolis

For our Youngsters… a List of Student Activities on the Greek Revolution of 1821 prepared by Greek Museums and Foundations… HERE!

Student work… Foustaneloforoi!

For an easy to print Celebrating the Greek Revolution of 1821 Worksheet, please… Click HERE!

If you wish to learn more about the Greek Revolution of 1821 and the preparation for the Bicentennial Celebration in 2021, please VISIT the official Greece 1821-2021 Bicentennial site: https://www.greece2021.gr/en/ and/or https://www.greece2021.gr/

Boat of Greeks

by 1821-Greek Independence Day19th century ArtArtGreek ArtStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
Dionysis Tsokos, 1820-1862
Boat of Greeks, 1844 to 1847, oil on canvas, 29×23 cm, Averoff Museum, Metsovo, Greece
https://www.averoffmuseum.gr/boat-of-greeks/?lang=en
 

“…Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!  /  On Suli’s rock, and Parga’s shore,  /  Exists the remnant of a line  /  Such as the Doric mothers bore;  /  And there, perhaps, some seed is sown,  /  The Heracleidan blood might own.          /          Trust not for freedom to the Franks—  /  They have a king who buys and sells;  /  In native swords and native ranks  /  The only hope of courage dwells:  /  But Turkish force and Latin fraud  /  Would break your shield, however broad….” Writes George Gordon Byron in The Isles of Greece and makes the best possible introduction for Dionysis Tsokos’s Boat of Geeks at the Averoff Museum in Metsovo.     https://englishverse.com/poems/the_isles_of_greece

Dionysis Tsokos’s painting Boat of Geeks is closely connected to the fate of the small city of Parga on the Ionian Coast of Epirus. Parga, a small city/fortress, was always closely connected to the European political interests of the Ionian Islands. Since 1360 when the fortress of Parga was built with the help of the Normans who held, at the time the island of Corfu, the Pargians faced countless Ottoman attacks while they were under Venetian, French or British rule. In 1815 the inhabitants of the city of Parga rebelled against the French rule, under the instigation of the British, and a short period of British rule started. Seeing Parga as the stepping stone to achieving their final goal: to occupy the Ionian Islands, the British, in 1817, sold Parga to Ali Pasha for 150,000 pounds.     https://www.kastra.eu/castleen.php?kastro=parga

Edward Lear, 1812-1888
Parga, Journals of a Landscape painter in Albania etc., London, Richard Bentley, 1851,  14×21 cm, Benaki Museum Library
https://eng.travelogues.gr/collection.php?view=283

What happened next is best described in the October 1819 edition of the Edinburgh Review… “As soon as the notice was given [of how much Ali was to be charged for their homeland] every family marched solemnly out of its dwelling, without tears or lamentation; and the men, preceded by their priests, and followed by their sons, proceeded to the sepulchres of their fathers, and silently unearthed and collected their remains, – which they placed upon a huge pile of wood which they had previously erected before one of their churches. They even took their arms in their hands, and, setting fire to the pile, stood motionless and silent around it, till the whole was consumed. During this melancholy ceremony, some of Ali’s troops, impatient for possession, approached the gates of the town; upon which a deputation of citizens was sent to inform our Governor, that if a single Infidel was admitted before the remains of their ancestors were secured from profanation, and they themselves, with their families, fairly embarked, they would all instantly put to death their wives and children, – and die with their arms in their hands, – and not without a bloody revenge on those who had bought and sold their country. Such a remonstrance, at such a moment, was felt and respected, as it ought by those to whom it was addressed. General Adam succeeded in stopping the march of the Mussulmans. The pile burnt out – and the people embarked in silence…”      http://newsteadabbeybyronsociety.org/works/downloads/sale_parga.pdf     and      https://books.google.gr/books?id=7kNBAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA12&lpg=RA1-PA12&dq=Edinburgh+Review+Sale+of+Parga&source=bl&ots=hZxwnxM1hD&sig=ACfU3U3ac4JXKloQ18zhWLsbpAsGjXXTtQ&hl=el&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjug-2Ly5jvAhVfQhUIHaLnBgkQ6AEwB3oECAkQAw#v=onepage&q=Edinburgh%20Review%20Sale%20of%20Parga&f=false pp. 22-23

Boat of Geeks by Dionysis Tsokos depicts the final act of Parga’s sale by the British to Ali Pasha… “a boat full of refugees – resistance fighters, a priest, and a woman – floundering on the waves as it heads for foreign shores. One gallant lad stands embracing the mast and holding the Greek flag, gazing intently at the fatherland he is abandoning, while the captain holds fast to the helm.”     https://www.averoffmuseum.gr/boat-of-greeks/?lang=en

Dionysis Tsokos, 1820-1862
The Flight from Parga, after 1847, oil on canvas, 37×47 cm, E. Koutlidis Foundation Collection, National Gallery of Greece, Athens
https://www.nationalgallery.gr/en/painting-permanent-exhibition/painting/the-years-of-othon%E2%80%99s-reign/history-painting/the-flight-from-parga.html

Dionysis Tsokos created two paintings on the theme of Greeks fleeing Parga after the shocking 1819 British sale to Ali Pasha. The earliest, chronologically, of the two paintings, is today exhibited in the Averoff Museum at Metsovo, one of my favourite Art Museums in Greece, the second painting, dated a little later is part of the E. Koutlidis Collection and is exhibited in Athens at the National Gallery. For a Student “Compare and Contrast” Activity on Dionysis Tsokos’s paintings, please… Check HERE!

If you wish to learn more about the Greek War of Independence and the Bicentennial Celebrations in 2021, please VISIT the official Greece 1821-2021 Bicentennial site http://www.greece2021.gr, Twitter, https://twitter.com/Greece_2021, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/Greece2021/, and Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/greece2021/?hl=el

Constantino Brumidi

by 19th century ArtAmerican ArtArtPowerpoints
Constantino Brumidi, 1805-1880
The Apotheosis of Washington, 1865, Fresco, 4,664 square feet, United States Capitol Building’s Rotunda, Washington, DC

Myrtle Cheney Murdock, the wife of John R. Murdock, the elected congressman from Arizona, was a teacher and an enthusiastic tour guide at the United States Capitol. She was amazed and dismayed at how little was known about Constantino Brumidi, the Greek/Italian/American artist of the Apotheosis of Washington on the Capitol’s Rotunda Dome. She frequently asked, “How can countless exquisite frescoes and paintings adorn our Capitol Building and yet the American people have little or no knowledge of their existence?” Researching for her Monograph on Constantino Brumidi, Michelangelo of the United States Capitol, she discovered the artist buried in an unmarked grave in Glenwood Cemetery. Myrtle Cheney Murdock’s research and dedication to Constantino Brumidi led to a posthumous appreciation of the artist’s artistic achievements and a commemorative plaque placed over his tomb in 1952, inscribed with a wish allegedly expressed by Brumidi back in 1855: “I have no longer any desire for fame and fortune. My one ambition and my daily prayer is that I may live long enough to make beautiful the Capitol of the one country on earth in which there is liberty.”     https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2flocal%2fbrumidi-study-of-capitol-dome-painting-to-go-to-smithsonian%2f2012%2f03%2f05%2fgIQAclhhtR_story.html     and     https://www.senate.gov/reference/reference_item/Michelangelo_of_the_US_Capitol.htm

Constantino Brumidi, 1805-1880
The Apotheosis of Washington, 1865, Fresco, 4,664 square feet, United States Capitol Building’s Rotunda, Washington, DC

Constantino Brumidi’s father was Stavros Brumidis from Filiatra in the Peloponnese, who, after the 1770 Orlov insurrection, a major precursor to the Greek War of Independence in 1821, and fearing Ottoman repercussions,  fled Greece for Italy. Stavros Brumidis settled in Rome, married  Anna Bianchini, opened a coffee shop to support his family and in 1805 became the father of a boy named Constantino. The boy was artistic and talented, studied Art for fourteen years at the Academy of St. Luke in Rome and became quite successful as a fresco painter working for the Vatican. In 1849 he was caught up in the Italian Risorgimento, he was arrested, accused of serious crimes and sentenced to eighteen years in prison. The Pope pardoned him but his only hope for freedom was to leave Italy for the United States.     https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/constantino-brumidi

Constantino Brumidi, 1805-1880
The Apotheosis of Washington (detai), 1865, Fresco, 4,664 square feet, United States Capitol Building’s Rotunda, Washington, DC

Brumidi reached the United States in September 1852 and for the next two years he worked, on private or church commissions in New York, Massachusetts and Mexico City. In December 1854 he met with Captain Montgomery C. Meigs, the Army Corps of Engineers officer who was supervising the construction of extensions to the Capitol. Impressed with Brumidi’s credentials, Meigs offered him the opportunity to paint for the United States Capitol through the 1860s and the 1870s. His major contribution  is the 1865 Apotheosis of Washington and the frieze of the new Capitol Dome.

For a PowerPoint on the Apotheosis of Washington, please… check HERE!

Constantino Brumidi, 1805-1880
The Apotheosis of Washington (detail), 1865, Fresco, 4,664 square feet, United States Capitol Building’s Rotunda, Washington, DC