Oedipus Rex and Jocasta by Renoir

by 19th century ArtArtFrench ArtImpressionismMythologyStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French Artist, 1841-1919
Panel for Oedipus: Jocasta, and Panel for Oedipus: King Oedipus
Both Panels: circa 1895, Oil on Canvas, 96.1 x 36.5 cm, Private Collection
https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-6452011?ldp_breadcrumb=back&intObjectID=6452011&from=salessummary&lid=1

Citizens of my beloved Thebes!  See now your great Oedipus!
That famous man who knew the answers of great riddles.  That man whose good fortune every man in Thebes envied!  See now in what monstrous storm of misfortune he has fallen… Let’s not praise a man for his good Fate unless he has arrived at his final day, having escaped bad Fate… The last Chorus lines of Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex convey a sense of profound realization and acceptance of the futility of human efforts against fate and destiny. Do the paintings of Oedipus Rex and Jocasta by Renoir reflect Sophocles’ point of view? How did the great Impressionist artist decide to explore such a subject matter? https://bacchicstage.wordpress.com/sophocles/oedipus-rex/

The myth of Oedipus revolves around a tragic prophecy that foretells Oedipus, the son of King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes, would kill his father and marry his mother. In an attempt to avoid this fate, Oedipus is abandoned as a baby but is later adopted and raised by another royal family. Unaware of his true parentage, Oedipus grows up and, through a series of unfortunate events, unwittingly fulfills the prophecy by killing his father, King Laius, in a chance encounter on the road and subsequently marrying his mother, Queen Jocasta. When the truth is revealed, Jocasta tragically takes her own life, and Oedipus blinds himself in horror and shame. The Oedipus myth explores themes of fate, free will, and the inevitability of destiny, serving as a classic example of Greek tragedy.

Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex stands as a timeless masterpiece of Greek tragedy, skillfully weaving a narrative that delves into the complexities of fate and the human condition. The play’s exploration of the inevitable clash between individual free will and the predetermined course of destiny is masterfully executed. The intricate use of dramatic irony, the relentless pursuit of truth, and the psychological unraveling of Oedipus and that of his mother Jocasta, contribute to the play’s enduring impact, making it a powerful and thought-provoking work that continues to captivate audiences and provoke contemplation on the intricacies of human existence.

These characteristics of drama seem to have inspired none other than the famous Impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who, in 1895, created two panels moved by Sophocles’ tragedy, depicting the protagonists of the play, Oedipus Rex, and Jocasta.

When viewed side-by-side, Christie’s experts tell us, Renoir’s two panels depicting Jocasta and Oedipus illustrate the full tension of the tragedy, their bodies seeming to push away from one another, whilst an unseen magnetic connection– an allegory for the inescapable strength of the prophecy– pulls them together. Renoir skillfully employs dynamic poses to enhance the drama of the narrative, and his vibrant choice of red alludes to the bloodshed in the tale. The artist embellishes the central figures on both panels with grisaille bas-reliefs and trompe l’oeil imitation of columns and stone, a rare example of Antique-inspired decoration within the artist’s oeuvre. https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-6452011?ldp_breadcrumb=back&intObjectID=6452011&from=salessummary&lid=1

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French Artist, 1841-1919
Panel for Oedipus: Jocasta, and Panel for Oedipus: King Oedipus
Both Panels:circa 1895, Oil on Canvas, 96.1 x 36.5 cm, Private Collection
https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-6452011?ldp_breadcrumb=back&intObjectID=6452011&from=salessummary&lid=1
https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Panneau-pour-Odipe–Odipe-roi/676741683B0A87196FE13FBA024B87C8

Both paintings are indicative of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s interest in the world of Antiquity, and particularly his reaction to the Pompeiian wall paintings he saw, and deeply admired, when he visited Italy in the fall of 1881 to mid-January 1882. In an 1882 letter to Mme George Charpentiere, he wrote… J’ai beaucoup étudié le Musée de Naples, les peintures de Pompéi sont extrêmement intéressantes à tous points de vue… https://chat.openai.com/c/c667ff6c-ca07-41ec-a3b0-29c824c174c3 Renoir’s Trip to Italy by Barbara Ehrlich White, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Dec., 1969), pp. 333-351 (29 pages) p.350

Mythology, figures of ancient tragedy, (Project for Oedipus), 1895, oil on Canvas, 41,2 x 24,4 x 2 cm, Musée Picasso, Paris, France
https://www.palazzoroverella.com/renoir-alba-di-un-nuovo-classicismo/
Mythology, figures of ancient tragedy, (Project for Oedipus), 1895, oil on Canvas, 41,2 x 24,4 x 2 cm, Musée Picasso, Paris, France
https://www.palazzoroverella.com/renoir-alba-di-un-nuovo-classicismo/

The paintings of Oedipus and Jocasta were part of a commission by Paul Sébastien Gallimard, one of the artist’s most important patrons, and a close friend. They were meant to decorate a room in Gallimard’s country house, dedicated to Greek theatre. Once more quoting Christie’s experts Renoir’s panels reveal a combination of influences, from Ancient wall painting, to Louis XVI panelling and the Directoire style of furniture and ornament. A related study depicting mythological figures that Renoir worked on for this commission is now in the collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris and was previously owned by Pablo Picasso himself. For reasons that remain unknown, the room was never completed and the panels remained in Renoir’s studio until the artist’s death. https://www.christies.com/en/auction/ancient-to-modern-art-from-the-mougins-museum-of-classical-art-part-i-29973/

Both paintings were auctioned by Christie’s on the 7th of December 2023 (Ancient to Modern Art from the Mougins Museum of Classical Art).

For a Student Activity inspired by Oedipus Rex and Jocasta by Renoir, please… Check HERE!

Les Meules à Giverny simply means The Stacks at Giverny

by 19th century ArtArtFrench ArtImpressionismStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
Claude Monet, French Artist, 1840-1926
Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer), 1890/91, Oil on canvas, 60 × 100.5 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago, USA https://www.artic.edu/artworks/64818/stacks-of-wheat-end-of-summer

My new BLOG POST title,  Les Meules à Giverny simply means The Stacks at Giverny,  refers to twenty-five paintings that Claude Monet began near the end of the summer, the month of August, of 1890, and continued through the following spring… Information about Les Meules à Giverny comes from Monet Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago | Cats. 27–33  Stacks of Wheat, 1890/91 (artic.edu) Cats. 27–33  Stacks of Wheat, 1890/91, and Monet’s Haystacks Reconsidered by Richard R. Brettell, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 4-21 (19 pages) https://www.jstor.org/stable/4115885?read-now=1#page_scan_tab_contents, and https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2019/impressionist-modern-art-evening-n10067/lot.8.html

Claude Monet painted his famous series Les Meules, or Stacks of Wheat, also commonly referred to as Haystacks series, in his house at Giverny in France, where he saw large stacks of wheat in his neighbor’s farm, a field adjacent to his property. The decade starting in 1890 was a happy one for the artist. He turned fifty, he was established as an artist and was considered to be the leader of the Impressionist movement. He bought the house in Giverny, a beautiful place he had rented since 1883, a life-long source of inspiration, and a property and gardens he loved. It was also in 1890 that he began work on his famous Meules series.

I’m working away at a series of different effects (of stacks), but at this time of year, the sun sets so quickly that I can’t keep up with it… Monet explained to his friend Gustave Geffroy, journalist, art critic, historian, and novelist, on October 7, 1890. I’m becoming so slow in my work that it makes me despair, but the further I go, the better I see that it takes a great deal of work to succeed in rendering what I want to render: ‘instantaneity,’ above all the enveloppe, the same light diffused over everything, and I’m more than ever disgusted at things that come easily, at the first attempt… he continued.

Claude Monet first exhibited his series of paintings titled Les Meules, in Paris on the 4th of May, 1891. The exhibition, along with seven more paintings by the artist, took place at the Galerie Durand-Ruel, a prominent art gallery in the city. Fifteen paintings of the ‘Haystacks’  series were placed together and hung in the same small Gallery room. The exhibition of Monet’s ‘Haystacks’ series was met with a positive critical response, and it achieved significant financial success.

Let me present you with two 1891 critical reviews of Les Meules à Giverny simply means The Stacks at Giverny.

The famed art critic, gallery director, art collector, and anarchist, Felix Fénéon, the man who introduced the term Neo-Impressionist, wrote about Monet in rhapsodic prose… When did Monet’s colors ever come together in more harmonious clamor, with more sparkling impetus? It was the evening sun that most exalted Grainstacks: in summer they were haloed in purple flakes of ire; in winter, their phosphorescent shadows rippled in the sun, and, a sudden frost enameling them blue, they glittered on a sky first pink, then gold (F. Fénéon quoted in D. Wildenstein, Monet or the Triumph of Impressionism, Cologne, 1996, pp. 279-80).

Les Meules à Giverny by Claude Monet made the critic Gustave Geffroy wonder if Monet, a dear friend of his, saw the poetry of the universe in the restricted space of a field… I love it!

Today, experts on Claude Monet’s achievements, and particularly the famous Meules, examine the series as a whole and draw favorable conclusions about the artist’s ability in capturing the transient nature of light, the ever-changing atmosphere, and the passage of time, and Monet’s mastery in depicting the subtle variations of color and light. The general consensus is that Monet skillfully depicted the interplay between sunlight and shadows, creating a luminous quality in the ‘Heystacks’paintings. His use of broken color and loose brushwork allows the viewer’s eye to blend the colors optically, resulting in a vibrant and harmonious visual experience.

I particularly like how Paul Hays Tucker describes Monet’s organization… The compositions are all strongly geometric—the fields, hills, and sky being reduced to parallel bands that in most cases extend across the entire canvas, with the fields occupying approximately half the surface, and the hills and sky, a quarter each. When fifteen of these canvases were exhibited at Durand-Ruel’s in Paris between May 4 and May 18, 1891, their impact was as forceful as their elemental motifs and the show was an enormous success…. In moving from one canvas to another, one senses not only the many artful choices Monet made, but also his deep engagement with the stacks themselves. They are never overwhelmed by the light or obscured by the atmosphere, and thus they never lose their identity as forms. Monet even goes so far as to outline them, often in bold colors, and to define their conical tops by rivulets of light that run down their undulating edges. Although inert, the stacks seem to be invested with great feeling… P. H. Tucker, Monet in the ‘90s, The Series Paintings (exhibition catalog), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1989, pp. 77 & 82 https://archive.org/details/monetin90sseries00tuck

For a Student Activity on Les Meules à Giverny, simply means The Stacks at Giverny, please… Check HERE!

The Fourth of July 1916

by 20th century ArtAmerican ArtArtImpressionismStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
Childe Hassam, American Artist, 1859-1935
The Fourth of July 1916, 1916, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 66.7 cm, New York Historical Society, USA https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Fourth_of_July,_1916_Childe_Hassam.jpg

A glorious sea of American flags, crowded streets, and Fifth Avenue skyscrapers, The Fourth of July 1916 (The Greatest Display of the American Flag Ever Seen in New York, Climax of the Preparedness Parade in May) by Childe Hassam (1859-1935) is a beloved work of American Impressionism. It was painted at the height of Hassam’s powers and is one of some 30 related paintings of flag-decorated streets that the artist produced between 1916 and 1919, during and immediately after the First World War. That they are intensely patriotic works is patent, while aesthetically they bear witness to the example of Claude Monet, both in the subject (Monet created two paintings of flag-bedecked avenues on a single day in 1878) and in the concept (a series of paintings of a motif, such as haystacks or Rouen Cathedral). https://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/fourth-july-1916 and https://www.whitehousehistory.org/photos/treasures-of-the-white-house-avenue-in-the-rain

Childe Hassam (1859-1935) was an American Impressionist painter known for his depictions of urban landscapes, cityscapes, and seascapes. He was born Frederick Childe Hassam in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and grew up in a middle-class family. Hassam showed an early interest in art and studied at the Boston Art Club and the Lowell Institute. He worked as an apprentice in a wood engraving firm and began his career as a freelance illustrator, creating illustrations for magazines and newspapers. In the spring of 1886, along with his wife Kathleen Maude Doane, he traveled to Paris to study painting at the Académie Julian. While in Paris, Hassam was greatly influenced by the Impressionist movement, which was then emerging in France. He was particularly drawn to the work of Claude Monet and the French Impressionists, and he began to incorporate their techniques into his own work. He returned to the United States in 1889 and recognizing the prominence of New York as an international art center, he settled in New York City, where he established himself as a leading American Impressionist painter. https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.1379.html

Throughout his career, Hassam painted a wide range of subjects, including landscapes, cityscapes, seascapes, and portraits. He was especially known for his depictions of urban life in New York City, and his paintings capture the energy and vibrancy of the city. Hassam was also deeply patriotic and painted many works featuring the American flag, which he saw as a symbol of national unity and identity. https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.1379.html

As a prominent member of the US Preparedness Movement, Hassam created a series of paintings known as the Flag Series, which featured American flags prominently displayed in various settings, including urban landscapes and rural scenes. These paintings were seen as a way of promoting patriotism and support for the US Preparedness Movement.

Childe Hassam, American Artist, 1859-1935
The Fourth of July 1916 (detail), 1916, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 66.7 cm, New York Historical Society, USA
https://www.americanacorner.com/blog/united-states-flag

The Fourth of July 1916 (The Greatest Display of the American Flag Ever Seen in New York, Climax of the Preparedness Parade in May), is one of the first paintings created for the Flag Series. It shows the bustling 5th Avenue decorated for the July 4th, Independence Day holiday. Hassam’s brushwork is loose and expressive, creating a sense of movement and energy within the painting, his gestural brushwork, expressive and spontaneous, generates movement and energy, and his color choice of primarily red, white, and blue keenly echoes the colors of the American flag, adding to the lively and vibrant feel of the composition. As Dr. William H. Gerdts has noted, “Hassam was already recognized as one of the artists most identified with ‘Americanness,’ but it was in these works that he was able to give the modern cityscape patriotic and spiritual resonance. This pictorial sequence constitutes one of the greatest achievements of American art.” https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5793601

For a Student Activity, inspired by Childe Hassam’s, The Fourth of July 1916, please… Check HERE!

Childe Hassam, American Artist, 1859-1935
Flag Day, Fifth Avenue, July 4th, 1916, 1916, watercolor, ink and chalk on paper, 26 x 17.1 cm, Private Collection https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5793601

April by Lucien Pissarro

by 19th century ArtArtFrench ArtImpressionismStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
Lucien Pissarro, French Artist, 1863–1944
April, Epping, 1894, Oil paint on canvas, 603 × 730 mm, Tate, London, UK
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/lucien-pissarro-april-epping-r1139298

Oh, to be in England / Now that April’s there, / And whoever wakes in England / Sees, some morning, unaware, / That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf / Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, / While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough / In England—now! Robert Browning probably wrote Home-Thoughts, from Abroad in 1845, while he was staying in Italy, homesick of the English countryside during a glorious April morning! Interestingly, April by Lucien Pissarro is an Impressionistic painting of a similar April morning by a French artist living in England! https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43758/home-thoughts-from-abroad

Lucien Pissarro was a French painter, printmaker, and etcher. He was born on February 20, 1863, in Paris, France, and was the oldest son of the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. He began his artistic education at a young age, studying under his father and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1884, he began exhibiting his work in Impressionist exhibitions, and in 1886, he participated in the 8th and final Impressionist exhibition. In 1888, Pissarro moved to London, where he became a member of the New English Art Club and began to develop his own unique style, influenced by the work of the Pre-Raphaelites and Japanese prints. He spent the next two decades in London, exhibiting his work and participating in the city’s art scene. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/lucien-pissarro-r1105344

Portrait of Lucien Pissarro, c.1937, Photograph, black and white, on paper, taken by Lafayette Ltd, London, Tate Archive, London, UK
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/lucien-pissarro-r1105344

In 1910, Pissarro returned to France and settled in the small town of Éragny-sur-Epte, where he focused on painting landscapes and rural scenes. He continued to exhibit his work, and in 1913, he was awarded the Légion d’honneur. Pissarro’s work is characterized by his use of vibrant colors, bold brushstrokes, and a focus on nature. He is considered to be one of the most important Impressionist painters of the 20th century. Pissarro died on July 10, 1944, in Éragny-sur-Epte, France. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/lucien-pissarro-r1105344

According to the TATE experts David Fraser Jenkins and Helena Bonet, …Lucien Pissarro exhibited April, Epping at the New English Art Club in November–December 1904, where he renewed contact with artists, he had met more than ten years earlier. He was invited to join Walter Sickert’s Fitzroy Street Group in 1907, and so became acquainted with those who went on to form the Camden Town Group in 1911. For the younger artists of the group in particular, Pissarro represented a direct link to the origins of impressionism and neo-impressionism, his father Camille being a great inspiration, as well as his friends Seurat, Signac, and van Gogh. The influence of Pissarro’s style and technique can be traced in the work of Spencer Gore, Harold Gilman, William Ratcliffe and James Bolivar Manson in particular. Sickert wrote of this influence in the New Age in May 1914: ‘Mr. Pissarro, holding the exceptional position at once of an original talent, and of the pupil of his father, the authoritative depository of a mass of inherited knowledge and experience, has certainly served us as a guide, or, let us say, a dictionary of theory and practice on the road we have elected to travel.’ https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/lucien-pissarro-r1105344

Created just a few years after he settled in England, April, Epping is for Lucien Pissarro a new approach to Landscape painting. He breaks away from the ‘teachings’ of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, the ‘neo-impressionist’ or ‘divisionist’ artists with whom he had been friend in Paris, and he creates a landscape painting characterized by thick, visible brushstrokes, and a strong emphasis on light and color. He uses ordered, criss-crossed touches of paint, mostly light green but with a variety of other colours, showing recession by means of colour, and he uses touches of orange, mauve and blue paints among the green of the meadow, to re-introduce the key principle of impressionism, that, of coloured shadows. In May 1894 Lucien Pissarro wrote to his father asking for new materials and …short brushes, like the ones Cézanne used … because I am going to try to paint in an entirely different way. Did he? https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/lucien-pissarro-april-epping-r1139298

For a Student Activity, please… Check HERE!

Boating by Édouard Manet

by 19th century ArtArtImpressionismPowerpoints
Édouard Manet, French Painter, 1832-1883
Boating, 1874, oil on canvas, 97.2 x 130.2 cm, the MET, NY, USA
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436947

Boating by Édouard Manet was exhibited in the Salon of 1879, and the art critic J. K. Huysmans wrote… The bright blue water continues to exasperate a number of people… Manet has never, thank heavens, known those prejudices stupidly maintained in the academies. He paints, by abbreviations, nature as it is and as he sees it. The woman, dressed in blue, seated in a boat cut off by the frame as in certain Japanese prints, is well-placed, in broad daylight, and her figure energetically stands out against the oarsman dressed in white, against the vivid blue of the water. These are, indeed, pictures the likes of which, alas, we shall rarely find in this tedious Salon. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Masterpieces_of_European_Painting_1800_1920_in_the_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art  pages 104-105

Édouard Manet, the scion of a wealthy French family, was a Parisian good-looking, charming, and cosmopolitan artist of great talent… He believed, according to the National Gallery of Art experts, that art should be about modern life and embraced the role of social commentator. He admired the old masters… but his artistic inspiration came from the ‘modern’ city of Paris, dramatically transformed at the time of Napoleon III, by the vision of Baron Georges Haussmann. His goal was to document the world around him: the grand boulevards, fashionable cafés, busy racetracks, and people and activities in his own neighborhood, and wherever else fashionable Parisians were expected to be. https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/Education/learning-resources/an-eye-for-art/AnEyeforArt-EdouardManet.pdf

In the summer of 1894, Édouard Manet was at Gennevilliers, opposite Argenteuil, on the river Seine where the Manet family had a country estate. He was in good company! His friend Claude Monet lived nearby, at Argenteuil. The two artists accompanied, at times, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted together and continued their conversations which were for Manet precious… Nothing could have been more interesting than our discussions… he once said. The summer of 1874 was also pivotal as the time when Manet’s friendship with the younger Impressionist Claude Monet took deep roots. http://www.worldsbestpaintings.net/artistsandpaintings/painting/172/

Édouard Manet, French Painter, 1832-1883
Boating (Detail), 1874, oil on canvas, 97.2 x 130.2 cm, the MET, NY, USA
https://blog.artsper.com/en/a-closer-look/understanding-impressionism/
Édouard Manet, French Painter, 1832-1883
Boating (Detail-Woman), 1874, oil on canvas, 97.2 x 130.2 cm, the MET, NY, USA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard_Manet#/media/File:Edouard_Manet_Boating.jpg

At Argenteuil Manet painted Boating along with more paintings on similar subject matter like Monet in his Studio Boat, The Monet Family in their Garden, Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil,  and more. Boating depicts one of the most popular leisure activities of the French bourgeoisie… sailing on the Seine! There has been a lot of speculation as to who the people in the painting are. It has been suggested that the depicted “sailor” is Rodolphe Leeenhoff, Manet’s brother-in-law. No consensus has been reached, however, as to who the female in the painting is. According to the Metropolitan Museum experts, she might be Alice Lecouvé, the model for the 1875 painting The Laundry in the Barnes Foundation. https://www.edouard-manet.net/boating/ and https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Masterpieces_of_European_Painting_1800_1920_in_the_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art  pages 104-105

Shown in the Salon of 1879, Boating was deemed “the last word in painting” by Mary Cassatt, who recommended the acquisition to the New York collectors Louisine and H.O. Havemeyer. Louisine bequeathed it to The Met upon her death in 1929. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436947

For a PowerPoint on Boating by Édouard Manet and the Summer of 1874, please… Check HERE!

Poppies on the Isles of Shoals

by 19th century ArtAmerican ArtArtImpressionismPowerpoints
Childe Hassam, American Artist,1859–1935
Poppies on the Isles of Shoals, 1891, 50.2×61 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Childe_Hassam,_Poppies,_Isles_of_Shoals,_1891.jpg

At the Isles of Shoals, among the ledges of the largest island, Appledore lies the small garden which in the following pages I have endeavored to describe. Ever since I could remember anything, flowers have been like dear friends to me, comforters, inspirers, powers to uplift and to cheer. A lonely child, living on the lighthouse island ten miles away from the mainland, every blade of grass that sprang out of the ground, every humblest weed, was precious in my sight, and I began a little garden when not more than five years old. From this, year after year, the larger one, which has given so much pleasure to so many people, has grown. The first small bed at the lighthouse island contained only Marigolds, pot Marigolds, fire-colored blossoms which were the joy of my heart and the delight of my eyes. This scrap of the garden, literally not more than a yard square, with its barbaric splendors of color, I worshiped like any Parsee… writes Celia Thaxter, the lover of gardening, flowers, and the good friend of painter Childe Hassam. Poppies on the Isles of Shoals is one of his many paintings celebrating the flora of this unique group of nine small, rocky islands off the coast of New Hampshire, in the Atlantic. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/thaxter/garden/garden.html

Appledore (House) Hotel and landing, Isles of Shoals, NH, between 1901 and 1906, Detroit Publishing Co., publisher, Library of Congress, Washington DC, USA
https://www.historynet.com/childe-hassams-island-escape/

Imagine a summer day in the company of novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, poets Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and artists Childe Hassam, and  William Morris Hunt. Now add conversations on art, and music, recitations of poetry, intellectual “arguments,” and gardening “lessons.” The result is… a summer day at Appledore House, a family-run Hotel on Appledore Island, off the coast of Maine, where every summer Childe Hassam and a group of musicians, writers, and artists mad an informal colony as guests of Celia Thaxter, poet extraordinaire, passionate gardener and Hotel proprietor. https://americanexperience.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Hassam.pdf

Childe Hassam painting on Appledore, from The Cruise of Mystery and Other Poems by Celia Thaxter, 1888, archival photograph. Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department https://www.christies.com/features/Lot-427-Childe-Hassam-The-East-Headland-Pool-Appledore-9072-6.aspx

For three decades (between 1886 and 1916), Childe Hassam was perfectly happy to spend his Summers at Appledore House painting, en plain air, Celia Thaxter’s Hotel garden, and the rugged landscape of the Isles of Shoals. His body of work at Appledore remains a pinnacle of American Art of the Impressionist movement. He was particularly fond of painting Babb’s Cove from the shaded piazza of Thaxter’s cottage. He routinely set up his easel there to paint the vista, which included the brilliant field of Iceland poppies cascading beyond the borders of her famous flower garden. As Thaxter wrote in 1894, “How beautiful they are, these grassy, rocky slopes shelving gradually to the sea, with here and there a mass of tall, blossoming grass softly swaying in the warm wind against the peaceful, pale blue water!” https://www.incollect.com/articles/american-impressionist-childe-hassam-and-the-isles-of-shoals and https://www.pem.org/exhibitions/american-impressionist-childe-hassam-and-the-isles-of-shoals

Childe Hassam, American Artist,1859–1935
Poppies on the Isles of Shoals (detail), 1891, 50.2×61 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Childe_Hassam,_Poppies,_Isles_of_Shoals,_1891.jpg

The National Gallery Poppies on the Isles of Shoals painting of1891 is my favorite! The painting, as Franklin Kelly wrote, presents a broad vista moving from a dense foreground of flowers to a background of rocks, water, and sky. The poppies that spread beyond Celia Thaxter’s garden were the artist’s favorite subject. They cover the foreground with brilliant, warm hues of green and red in wavy brushstrokes. For the rest of the painting, the middle and background is painted in cooler tones of blue, purple, and white for the rocks and water, and pale blue for the sky. Hassam’s brushwork is equally varied, ranging from lush red and white strokes defining the flowers to long drags of pigment suggesting the multihued surfaces of the rocks. The artist’s painting is a tour de force of Impressionistic landscape painting en plein air. https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.103172.html

Childe Hassam, American Artist,1859–1935
Poppies on the Isles of Shoals (Detail of Signature), 1891, Oil on Canvas, 50.2×61 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA
https://www.lonequixote.com/blog/hassam-poppies-isles-of-shoals-details-1891-b

For anyone accustomed to academic landscape painting, seeing one of Hassam’s Isles of Shoals paintings was, as one reviewer wrote, “like taking off a pair of black spectacles that one has been compelled to wear out of doors, and letting the full glory of nature’s sunlight color pour in upon the retina.”  https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.103172.html

For a PowerPoint titled 15 Paintings by Childe Hassam depicting the Isles of Shoals, please… Check HERE!

An original UNC-TV Documentary (27.55min) exploring the North Carolina Museum of Art exhibit of American impressionist painter Childe Hassam. The documentary focuses on Hassam’s work on Appledore Island over the course of thirty years… https://www.pbs.org/video/unc-tv-presents-childe-hassam-and-isles-shoals/

Portrait of Alexander Cassatt and Robert Cassatt

by 19th century ArtAmerican ArtArtImpressionismStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
Mary Stevenson Cassatt, American Artist, 1844 – 1926
Portrait of Alexander J. Cassatt and His Son, Robert Kelso Cassatt, 1884, Oil on Canvas, 100.3 × 81.3 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/104479

The Portrait of Alexander Cassatt and Robert Cassatt by Alexander’s sister Mary Stevenson Cassatt is a perfect example of what an American artist could achieve in Paris… the Mecca of Modern Art, and Old World charm. Starting in 1865, at the end of the Civil War, traveling to Europe became an American institution! Americans were attracted by French culture and bohemian life. They attended social events, art exhibitions, and archaeological monuments. They studied art or collected antiquities, artworks of the Old Masters, or paintings by contemporary artists. This phenomenon is best described by Henry James who wrote…It sounds like a paradox, but it is the simple truth that when, today, we look for American art, we find it mainly in Paris. When we find it out of Paris, we at least find a great deal of Paris in it. https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/americans-in-paris–1860-1900

Mary Stevenson Cassatt, American Artist, 1844 – 1926
Portrait of Alexander J. Cassatt and His Son, Robert Kelso Cassatt (Detail), 1884, Oil on
Canvas, 100.3 × 81.3 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA
https://www.gazette-drouot.com/en/article/mary-cassatt-the-franco-american/4732

How more affectionate can a father/son moment be! The great Alexander J. Cassatt is depicted sitting comfortably on a plush armchair reading his paper while his son Robert sits on the chair’s arm embracing him. Both portraits share similar characteristics… focused gazes, flushed cheeks, and black clothing. Mary Cassatt achieved to depict an intimate moment, the special bond between father and son, and the natural physical resemblance between them. Clad in black Alexander and Robert stand out, further emphasizing their tender rapport… Mary Cassatt’s famous double Portrait of Alexander Cassatt and Robert Cassatt was painted in December of 1884, during a surprise visit to Paris by her relatives. https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/104479

Mary Stevenson Cassatt, American Artist, 1844 – 1926
Portrait of Alexander J. Cassatt, 1880, Oil on Canvas, Pastel, 92.3×72 cm, Seattle Art Museum, USA https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mary_Cassatt_-_Portrait_of_Alexander_J._Cassatt_-_Seattle_Art_Museum.jpg

Alexander J. Cassatt was the first vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad and one of the most powerful businessmen in the United States. He was also Cassatt’s beloved older brother, whom she painted on several occasions. Every time she did so, he is depicted casually posing in his sister’s house, a dear relative rather than a  famous public persona, absorbed in his thoughts, revealing both the kindness and formality that were attributed to him. In a letter home to the United States, Alexander’s wife wrote: “Mary has painted a very good portrait of Aleck for which he has been posing every morning for two hours for two weeks.” http://art.seattleartmuseum.org/objects/10259/portrait-of-alexander-j-cassatt;jsessionid=14B64D561385E3770309506FB79F6022

Mary Stevenson Cassatt, American Artist, 1844 – 1926
Portrait of Master Robert Kelso Cassatt, c. 1882, Oil on Canvas, 50x61cm, Private Collection https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/american-art-n09689/lot.45.html

Images of Mary Cassatt’s friends and family constitute a pivotal, according to the Sotheby’s experts, a component of the artist’s prolific body of work. Robert Kelso Cassatt was Mary’s favourite nephew and one of her favorite models. Robert first bonded with his expatriate aunt during the summer of 1880, when he visited the artist and his grandparents at their rented villa in Marly, in the countryside outside of Paris. Robert was not the easiest of Mary’s models… he wouldn’t sit still… but Cassatt grew fond of him, hoping for a time that he would become an artist himself… https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/american-art-n09689/lot.45.html

Happy Father’s Day

For a Student Activity on the Portrait of Alexander Cassatt and Robert Cassatt, please… Check HERE!

Camille Pissarro Flower Arrangements

by 19th century ArtArtEducationImpressionismPowerpoints
Camille Pissarro, French Artist, 1830–1903
Pink Peonies, 1873, Oil  on Canvas, 73 x 60 cm, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK
https://www.wikiart.org/en/camille-pissarro/pink-peonies-1873

The flower that smiles to-day / To-morrow dies; / All that we wish to stay / Tempts and then flies. / What is this world’s delight? / Lightning that mocks the night, / Brief even as bright.    /    Virtue, how frail it is! / Friendship how rare! / Love, how it sells poor bliss / For proud despair! / But we, though soon they fall, / Survive their joy, and all / Which ours we call.    /    Whilst skies are blue and bright, / Whilst flowers are gay, / Whilst eyes that change ere night / Make glad the day; / Whilst yet the calm hours creep, / Dream thou—and from thy sleep / Then wake to weep. Everything is ephemeral and transitory for Percy Shelley like bouquets of flowers… like Camille Pissarro Flower Arrangements! Could this be the reason why the artist painted so few Still Life Paintings of Flowers? Was he afraid of all hopes, desires, and delights the world has to offer are short-lived and doomed to fade away? https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45133/mutability-the-flower-that-smiles-to-day and https://interestingliterature.com/2017/07/10-of-the-best-poems-about-flowers/

Camille Pissarro was the only painter to exhibit in all eight Impressionist exhibitions organized between 1874 and 1886. He became a pivotal artist and mentor within the movement, and he is best known for his landscapes and his images of the day-to-day life of French peasants. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/pissarro-camille/life-and-legacy/#biography_header

Camille Pissarro, French Artist, 1830–1903
Self-Portrait with Hat, 1903, Oil on Canvas, 41×33 cm, Tate Britain, UK
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Camille_Pissarro_-_Self-portrait2_-_Tate_Britain.jpg

Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro was born and raised in St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, then the Danish West Indies. His parents were merchants of modest means, but in 1842, young Pissarro was sent away to a boarding school in Passy near Paris, France, where he was introduced to the arts and encouraged to draw directly from nature and to use direct observation in his drawings, empirically rendering each object in its truest form. Pissarro returned to St. Thomas to immerse himself in the family business; however, he got quickly tired of mercantile pursuits and upon meeting the Danish painter Fritz Melbye, in the early 1850s, he abandoned the family business, following his Dutch friend to Caracas, Venezuela, and committing himself to becoming a painter. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/pissarro-camille/life-and-legacy/#biography_header

Camille Pissarro, French Artist, 1830–1903
Tropical Landscape with Farmhouses and Palm Trees, 1856, Oil on Cardboard, 24.8×32.7 cm, National Art Gallery, Caracas, Venezuela
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Camille_Pissarro_-_Paisaje_tropical.jpg

By 1855, Pissarro had returned to Paris, where he was exposed to the artwork of Eugène Delacroix, and Realist landscapists like Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, and Jean-François Millet. Largely if not entirely self-taught at the time, Pissarro started taking classes at the Academie Suisse in 1859 where he met Cézanne, one of his closest lifelong friends. In 1861, Pissarro registered as a copyist at the Musée du Louvre, and around this same time, he met Julie Vellay, the daughter of a vineyard owner in the Burgundy region. He got married in London in 1871 and became the caring father of eight children. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/pissarro-camille/life-and-legacy/#biography_header

Pissarro began submitting to the Salon in the late 1860s with landscape paintings reflecting his profound knowledge of and exposure to the compositional techniques of the eighteenth-century French masters. However, spending time and painting en plein air in Louveciennes, an area much favoured by the Impressionists, Pissarro’s style gradually changed. He focused on light effects and atmospheric conditions created by the change of the seasons developing a pure, mature Impressionist style. As he grew older, he worked hard to keep his art avant-garde and relevant by testing new theoretical concepts like the Pointillist technique. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/pissarro-camille/life-and-legacy/#biography_header

Camille Pissarro, French Artist, 1830–1903
Medley of Still Life Paintings of Flowers

In 2005, at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Exhibition “Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro, 1865–1885” placed Camille Pissarro, the artist pretty much behind every art movement of the 19th century, in the same league as Paul Cézanne, the artist whose art will define the 20th century. Pissarro’s landscapes are indisputably important… but, I like to focus on Pissarro’s few Still Life paintings… discover his modernist approach, notice his ability to manipulate colour for a “truer” visual image, and relish at his direct, unadorned approach to his subject matter.

Paul Cézanne (left) and Camille Pissarro (right) at Auvers-sur-Oise, Private Collection, by an Anonymous Photographer https://newcriterion.com/issues/2005/9/cezanne-pissarro-a-crucial-friendship and http://art-cezanne.com/photography_cezanne/1874%20Paul-Cezanne%20&%20Camille%20Pissarro%20in%20%20Auver.jpg

To end this short presentation I will quote Paul Cézanne, who three years after Pissarro’s death, identified himself in a retrospective exhibition, as “Paul Cézanne, pupil of Pissarro.” https://www.theartstory.org/artist/pissarro-camille/life-and-legacy/#biography_header and https://www.haberarts.com/cezannep.htm

When I teach Impressionism… I like to stress how important Pissarro’s Still Life paintings of Flowers are! I use Visual Learning Strategy Questions to help my students reflect upon their significance, and experience a process of enduring understanding!

For a PowerPoint of Camille Pissarro’s paintings of Flowers, please… Check HERE!

Little Dancer Aged Fourteen by Edgar Degas

by 19th century ArtArtBasil and Elise Goulandris Foundation AthensImpressionismSculptureStudent ActivitiesWorksheets
Edgar Degas, French Artist, 1834 – 1917
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, circa 1878-1881, Bronze with brown patina, tulle skirt and satin ribbon on wooden base, Cast by A. A. Hébrard, Paris, circa 1922, 96.5×47×35 cm, Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Athens, Greece
https://goulandris.gr/en/artwork/degas-edgar-little-dancer-aged-fourteen

You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies, / or may trod me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I’ll rise.    /    Does my sassiness upset you? / Why are you beset with gloom? / ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells / Pumping in my living room.    /    Just like moons and like suns, / With the certainty of tides, / Just like hopes springing high, / Still I’ll rise.    /    Did you want to see me broken? / Bowed head  /and lowered eyes? / Shoulders falling down like teardrops.    /    Weakened by my soulful cries.    /    Does my haughtiness offend you? / Don’t you take it awful hard / ‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines / Diggin’ in my own back yard.    /    You may shoot me with your words, / You may cut me with your eyes, / You may kill me with your hatefulness, / But still, like air, I’ll rise.    /    Does my sexiness upset you? / Does it come as a surprise / That I dance like I’ve got diamonds / At the meeting of my thighs?    /    Out of the huts of history’s shame / I rise / Up from a past that’s rooted in pain / I rise / I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, / Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.    /    Leaving behind nights of terror and fear / I rise / Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear / I rise / Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, / I am the dream and the hope of the slave.    /    I rise    /    I rise    /    I rise… writes Maya Angelou and I think of the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen by Edgar Degas in the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in Athens… https://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poems/best/dance

Edgar Degas, French Artist, 1834 – 1917
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (detail), circa 1878-1881, Bronze with brown patina, tulle skirt and satin ribbon on wooden base, Cast by A. A. Hébrard, Paris, circa 1922, 96.5×47×35 cm, Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Athens, Greece
https://goulandris.gr/en/shop/category/edgar-degas

Edgar Degas found ballet dancing irresistible and at the Paris Opéra, he frequently attended grand ballet productions on stage and small ballet classes in rehearsal studios. He was an astute observer of the ballerinas’ daily routine of rehearsing, stretching, and resting. He studied dance movements and filled numerous notebooks with sketches to help him remember details so he could later compose paintings and model sculptures in his studio. His penetrating observations are best exemplified in the artist’s statue of the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen exhibited in the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in Athens. The Little Dancer’s name was Marie van Goethem… and she was a young student at the Paris Opéra Ballet School. https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/Education/learning-resources/an-eye-for-art/AnEyeforArt-EdgarDegas.pdf and https://goulandris.gr/en/artwork/degas-edgar-little-dancer-aged-fourteen

Adolescent Marie, according to Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation experts, is presented standing in a dynamic but relaxed way, her feet in the “fourth position,” her hands held behind her back, the head slightly raised, and the entire appearance revealing all the ambiguity of an adolescent figure deformed by the dancing practice. The thinness of her body, the possible malnutrition suggested by a slightly swollen belly, does not diminish the girl’s sensuality, whose proud position, almost with an air of defiance, may seem, according to observers, dignified, provocative, or despising… I rise / Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear / I rise… https://goulandris.gr/en/artwork/degas-edgar-little-dancer-aged-fourteen

Edgar Degas, French Artist, 1834 – 1917
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (back view), circa 1878-1881, Bronze with brown patina, tulle skirt and satin ribbon on wooden base, Cast by A. A. Hébrard, Paris, circa 1922, 96.5×47×35 cm, Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Athens, Greece
https://goulandris.gr/en/artwork/degas-edgar-little-dancer-aged-fourteen
Edgar Degas, French Artist, 1834 – 1917
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (side view), circa 1878-1881, Bronze with brown patina, tulle skirt and satin ribbon on wooden base, Cast by A. A. Hébrard, Paris, circa 1922, 96.5×47×35 cm, Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Athens, Greece
https://goulandris.gr/en/artwork/degas-edgar-little-dancer-aged-fourteen

Degas worked on Little Dancer Aged Fourteen for more than two years. He first created an armature of metal, wood, wire, rope, and two long paintbrushes for the dancer’s shoulders. Then, he modeled the figure first with clay to define the muscles, and then he modeled the final layer of the sculpture in wax. It was not enough… He dressed the statue in real ballet satin slippers, a linen bodice, a muslin tutu, and a wig of human hair, braided and tied with a ribbon. Finally, to complete the illusion, a coat of wax spread smoothly with a spatula over the surface of the sculpture, giving it an overall waxy,  lifelike look. After Degas died in 1917, copies of this wax figure were cast in plaster and bronze, and Little Dancer Aged Fourteen grew in fame around the world. https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/Education/learning-resources/an-eye-for-art/AnEyeforArt-EdgarDegas.pdf

For a Student Activity, please… Check HERE!

Edgar Degas, French Artist, 1834 – 1917
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (Museum Hall view), circa 1878-1881, Bronze with brown patina, tulle skirt and satin ribbon on wooden base, Cast by A. A. Hébrard, Paris, circa 1922, 96.5×47×35 cm, Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Athens, Greece
https://goulandris.gr/en/visit/be-athens

The Princess from the Land of Porcelain by James Abbott McNeill Whistler

by 19th century ArtAmerican ArtImpressionismPowerpoints
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, American Artist, 1834-1903
Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain (Portrait of Christine Spartali), 1863-1865, Oil on Canvas, 201.5×116.1 cm, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_from_the_Land_of_Porcelain#/media/File:James_McNeill_Whistler_-_La_Princesse_du_pays_de_la_porcelaine_-_brighter.jpg

The sitter’s sister Marie (artist Spartali-Stollman) told Pennell: ‘At first the work went quickly, but soon it began to drag. Whistler often scraped down the figure just as they thought it all but finished, and day after day they returned to find that everything was to be done over again … Mrs. Stillman remembers that Whistler partly closed the shutters so as to shut out the direct light; that her sister stood at one end of the room, the canvas beside her; that Whistler would look at the picture from a distance, then suddenly dash at it, give one stroke, then dash away again … The sittings went on until the sitter fell ill … The head in the “Princess” gave him most trouble … During her illness, a model stood for the gown, and when she was getting better, he came one day and made a pencil drawing of her head, though where it went to Mrs. Stillman never knew. There were a few more sittings after this, and at last, the picture was finished.’ The Princess from the Land of Porcelain by James Abbott McNeill Whistler has more stories to tell… https://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/biog/?bid=Spar_C&fbclid=IwAR0Z8K3QjV1wsba9ee8HPO7ax0Ri9r3uvxu9QKVkwZdKKaVn-PSZ6Bpaca8 (Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 1, pp. 122-25, 130, 157, 203-04; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980.)

Image of the Peacock Room featuring the Princess in the Land of Porcelain painting by James McNeill Whistler, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M Sackler Gallery, Washington DC, USA https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Peacock_Room.jpg  

During the 1860s until the final years after the First World War, Japanese Art was all the rage amongst the world of Western Αrt ant Ιntelligentsia. At the time, James Abbott McNeill Whistler was a most fervent Japonist. Inspired by ukiyo-e prints, ancient Greek sculpture, music, and dance, Whistler created works of art of entranced female figures…Japanese and ancient Greek art set the tone. Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain is one such happy consequence. Painted between 1863 and 1865 with Christine Spartali as the model, and described in 1865 as “unready for display and lacking in substance” by the art critic Gustave Vattier, the painting was not an immediate success. Without a direct buyer, the work changed hands for a few years – at one point landing in Dante Rossetti’s studio – before it was purchased by Frederick Leyland for his dreamed porcelainzimmer! In 1903, the painting was bought by Charles Lang Freer, and today Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain can be seen in Washington DC, the Freer Gallery of Art, a much-appreciated part of the Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-story-behind-the-peacock-rooms-princess-159271229/ and https://artofdarkness.co/post/137432960224/whistler-princess-from-land-porcelain-gigapixel-details

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, American Artist, 1834-1903
Sketch for Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, between 1863 and 1864, oil on hardboard, 61.3 × 35.1 cm, Worcester Art Museum, MA, USA  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_Princesse_du_Pays_de_la_Porcelaine_-_James_Abbort_McNeill_Whistler_-_Sketch.JPG

Whistler’s painting Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain was part of a series of costume pictures undertaken by Whistler in the mid-1860s in which western models appear in Asian dress, surrounded by Chinese and Japanese objects from Whistler’s own collections. He modeled the princess on Christina Spartali, a young woman of Greek descent who is dressed in a kimono and surrounded by luxurious objects that suggest an imaginary “land of porcelain.” Not intended as a portrait, the painting instead demonstrated a new ideal of beauty, one derived from Japanese ukiyo-e prints and the elongated figures painted on Chinese porcelain. https://asia.si.edu/object/F1903.91a-b/#object-content

Kitagawa Utamaro, Japanese Artist, 1753-1806
Washing and stretching cloth, 1796-1797, Color woodblock print on paper, Triptych: each sheet 38.1 x 25.4 cm, NY Public Library, USA
https://artvee.com/dl/drying-and-stretching-cloth/

When I teach American Art, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, in particular, I like to compare Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain to Kitagawa Utamaro’s Washing and stretching cloth print of 1796-1797. The elegant postures of Ukiyo-e Ladies, their body language, grace, style, and refinement captivated Whistler’s imagination, creating… wonderful paintings! https://artvee.com/dl/drying-and-stretching-cloth/ and https://risdmuseum.org/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/women-floating-world

For a PowerPoint on paintings by James Abbott McNeill Whistler depicting European Women wearing Asian costumes, please… Check HERE!

Julia Margaret Cameron, 1815-1879
Christina Spartali (later Countess Edouard Cahn d’Anvers), 1868, albumen cabinet card, National Portrait Gallery, London, UK
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/christina-spartali-the-model-for-la-princesse-ca-1865-70-julia-margaret-cameron/qwF4d-HWJ94Gtg

Christina Spartali, the model for Whistler’s Princess from the Land of Porcelain,  was Michael Spartali and Euphrosyne Varsini Spartali’s second daughter. Her father, a prosperous London resident merchant, became Consul-General for Greece in 1866. From 1864, the family lived in London at “The Shrubbery” in Clapham Common, and through their relatives, the Ionides, prominent patrons of the arts, became acquainted with members of the contemporary art world, including James McNeill Whistler. The photographer Julia Margaret Cameron was the Spartalis’ neighbor at Sandford, the family’s estate on the Isle of Wight, where photographs of the Spartali sisters were taken. In 1868, Christina married Count Eduard Joseph Cahen D’Anvers, a Jewish banker from Belgium, moved to Paris, and live the life of an upper-class, apparently not so happy, socialite. https://www.costumecocktail.com/2016/09/26/christina-marie-spartali-ca-1870/ and http://fannycornforth.blogspot.com/2018/12/sunday-16th-december-christine-spartali.html