Edgar Degas – Rest – Waiting for the Kiss of Spring

“O eyes long laid in happy sleep!”
“O happy sleep that lightly fled!”
“O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!”

Edgar Degas, Rest, 1893, pastel

Edgar Degas has many lovely pastels which I enjoy gazing at from time to time, mostly of ballerinas – a motif which he was famous for – but for months now this beautiful pastel with a simple title, “Rest”, from 1893, has been on my mind. The pastel shows Degas’ favourite subject; a woman. This time a half-nude woman sleeping on a pile of fabrics, she is covered only partly with a bright blue blanket. While her auburn hair is cascading down her back, her face is, thank you Degas, turned towards us. Perhaps she was folding her laundry and started daydreaming of sparrows and blossoming orchards and baby blue skies in the middle of her task and eventually fell asleep; been there, done that. The thing that immediately drew me to the painting was the bright blue blanket. That colour! Ah! Is it really a man-made fabric or a meadow of cornflowers? Even though it is long and covers a lot, Degas left plenty of skin-coloured areas to tempt us; a leg coyly peeking out of that sea of blue, the face, the arm and the bosom. How delightful is the contrast between her delicate porcelain skin and that blue colour? Another pop of colour here comes from the bright blue wall behind her, and that same blue is repeated in dashes on the floor. Truly that blueness is irresistible.

The forgotten castle (Château de la Mothe-Chandeniers).

The colours and the mood of the painting make me think of this forgotten castle in a picture above. Degas’ slumbering maiden was probably just a Parisian working class girl, but in my imagination she is the Sleeping Beauty and she is sleeping in one of the chambers of this castle, waiting in vain for a kiss of spring… The maiden is in a sweet slumber; the long, frosty and icy slumber of winter that is about to be awoken by a sweet, fragrant and warm kiss of spring. I imagine the Spring to be a personified as a wickedly handsome man, fragrant and long-haired, with a slightly mischievous yet disarming smile, dressed in green robes or perhaps nothing at all, the Zephyr from Botticelli’s painting “The Birth of Venus” comes to my mind. And then the woman will open her eyes and whisper:

“I’d sleep another hundred years,
O love, for such another kiss;”
“O wake forever, love,” she hears,
“O love, ’t was such as this and this.”

….“O eyes long laid in happy sleep!”
“O happy sleep that lightly fled!”
“O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!”
“O love, thy kiss would wake the dead!“

(Lord Tennyson, The Day-Dream)

When she stands up, the blue blanket of winter will fall down and in a second be replaced by a dress of dandelions and a corsette of dandelions that the man-Spring had been weaving and making for her in all those long wintery afternoons. And then the two will dance and play till their hearts’ delights in flowery meadows.

Henri Matisse – Interior with a Young Girl (Girl Reading)

“Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.”

(Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art)

Henri Matisse, Interior with a Young Girl (Girl Reading), 1904–05

Matisse’s girl in the painting is a quiet little girl, completely absorbed in the book that she is reading. She is seated at the table, perhaps in the dining room. We are somewhat able to decipher the space around her. A bowl of fruits at the table alongside a jug of water. Clearly it wasn’t Matisse’s intention to portray this interior scene in a realistic manner. So what was his intention; playing with colour and appealing to our senses? Perhaps. Matisse is not one of my favourite painters, but when I need my dose of colours and vibrancy I go to Fauvists and their leader Matisse just as the junkie goes to his dealer at the streetcorner. Colour truly has power to uplift us; just look at all the gorgeous, vibrant shades of yellow, red, turquoise, pink, blue and green. So much life and vivacity going on in a single canvas! It’s so childlike and unpretentious. The girl in the painting is Matisse’s ten year old daughter Marguerite who was the daughter of Matisse’s model Caroline Joblaud. Portrait of a girl reading brings to mind the many portraits of children by Renoir who was Matisse’s friend and an artist he looked up to. But in Matisse’s painting the little girl isn’t just a pretty girl in a cozy bourgeoius interior, no, it seems that the colourful patchwork interior composed of contrasting and complementing pathes of colour is actually the interior of Marguerite’s playful, imaginative mind. I imagine that, as she is reading the book, the world around her is transformed accordingly and all the magic of the words and scenes described therein suddently come to life because Marguerite has the power of imagination; she has the power to transcend the ugliness of reality, its dullness and lifelessness, and paint it in all the colours her heart desires, to make it whimsical. And clearly Matisse nurtured his inner child throughout his life, for even his collage cut-outs which he was making in his old days are totally child-like and playful. Matisse transformed the ordinary into extraordinary in this painting. A simple interior scene which might have been boring if painted realistically in shades of brown and beige, is a landscape of vivacity. The space in the painting appears flat but highly decorative and buzzing with excitement. The energy of the painting, and we cannot deny that paintings have energies that directly speak to us, is that of a child’s laughter and play, bright pink ice cream melting in a summer’s day, jumping on trampoline, ribbons, bonbons and candy-floss, the world of fairy tales and make-believe. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I gaze at this painting, I feel rejuvenated. This just might be one of my favourites by Matisse.

Alfons Karpinski – Jane With a Japanese Doll

Alfons Karpinski (1875-1961), Jane avec une Poupée Japonaise, 1909

I discovered this painting a few months ago and hesitated for some time before deciding to write about it, for I felt I had nothing much to say, but something just keeps luring me to gaze at it again and again…

Alfons Karpiński was a Polish painter, born in 1875, who studied in Krakow at the School of Fine Arts from 1891 to 1895, then in Munich from 1903 to 1907, and then he traveled to the city for artists at the time: Paris. Painting “Jane with a Japanese Doll” shows Karpiński’s favourite motif to paint: a beautiful woman. The closely cropped composition and the intimate, sensual mood is what instantly appeals to me in this painting and the scene also brings to mind the sensual scenes of Fragonard and Boucher. The model for the painting was a Parisian girl called Jane and this isn’t the only time Karpiński had painted her. Jane is dressed in her undergarments with pretty pink bows, over the knee stockings and brown boots; part of her little boot and her shoulder are cut off and overall little is seen of the space around her, only a floral wallpaper and a hint of the doors. Jane seems almost unaware of the artist’s presence or his inspecting gaze that is slowly transforming her from a vision before him to a painting on canvas. One gaze, one brushstroke and reality is turning into art. I can imagine her dangling her legs with nonchalance, but don’t let this nonchalance fool you; she knows very well she is the muse about to be captured for eternity. I just love how simultaneously she is the centre of the painting, the centre of the painter’s vision, and yet, at the same time she is amused by something else, playing with a Japanese doll, lost in her thoughts, aware of her loveliness yet completely nonchalant about it; she doesn’t even gaze at us.

The angle of the painting, the casually dressed lady and the soft, sensual and intimate mood all reminds me of the many 1970s photographs I’ve seen, especially those by the notorious David Hamilton. In my mind, this could be sweet Jane Birkin, coyly playing with a Japanese doll and singing a song in French with her cute accent…. Bellow you can see another portrait he painted of her in 1908, not as interesting as “Jane with a Japanese Doll” but certainly the blue and white stripes are visually exciting.

Alfons Karpinski, Model Jane, 1908

Jakub Schikaneder – Dead Girl

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”

(Tagore)

Jakub Schikaneder, Dead Girl, 1909

Czech painter Jakub Schikaneder’s paintings are full of figures of people miserable in one way or another. He painted the poor and the lonely, the forgotten and the downtrodden, old and frail, young and – dead. Motif of death appears often in Schikaneder’s art; from a scene of murder to a melancholy figure of a drowned young girl washed a shore and in this painting, “Dead Girl”, painted in 1909 the lightness and innocence of youth are touched and torn by death’s black claws. The scene is bared to the minimum, nothing unnecessary clutters the composition, just a chair and a bed made out of dark wood; the wood is solid, dark and hard, and the girl is frail and clad in white. A humble interior. A little room filled with sickness and death, stuffy from the coughs and the burning candle. That way, the painter placed our focus on the real essence of the painting; the girl and her death. Death is an invisible and pervading, solemn and mysterious character in this poignant scene. The simplicity adds to the sorrowful mood of the painting and the colour palette of different tones of grey, the colour of fog and ashes, because the world of colours, sounds and scents means nothing to her anymore. You are fading away, sweet child, and:

“….You will no longer

Distinguish what rises or falls;

Colors are closed, and tones are empty,

And you won’t even know any longer

Who brings you all the flowers.“

I also stumbled upon this photograph by a Polish photographer Laura Makabresku and it is obviously inspired by this painting and is equally melancholy and poignant. Edvard Munch also painted a sick child in bed and it seems that the motif of death and children go well together because they create a contrast which makes it especially poignant and sorrowful.

Photograph by Laura Makabresku

Jakub Schikaneder, By the Girl’s Bed, 1910

All of Jakub Schikaneder’s paintings have that particular mood which is hard to put in words, but rather brings to mind other imagery; the thick and impenetrable November fog, orange autumnal sunset tinged with sadness because it seems the sun will never rise again, a soil hardened by frost, an eerie yellowish light of the lantern on the street corner. Autumnal and announcing death and the end. Schikaneder also loved the motif of autumn and winter, and is not winter the death of nature? In another painting, “By the Girl’s Bed”, painted the following year Schikaneder explores the same motif; death of a young girl. In this painting the glow of the candle is overpowering, colouring the room in warm orange shades, as if the more frail and sickly the girl is, the more strength the candle possesses.

Philip Wilson Steer – Girl in a Blue Dress

Philip Wilson Steer, Girl in a Blue Dress, c. 1891

I have recently written about Philip Wilson Steer’s vibrant and unique beach scenes, but today I would like to focus on these lovely portraits of his model, muse and girlfriend Rose Pettigrew. Little is known of their relationship, but we do know that Rose posed for him for eight years and on one occasion said: “I love posing for Philip; and first of all posed for little money as I thought he was very poor, and child as I was, wanted to help him”. This dim lit interior is a harmony of browns and blues; the limited colour palette and the girl’s pose reminds me of some of Whistler’s portraits. Also, I would never assume that a simple combination of brown and blue could create such an aesthetically pleasing painting. This is no luxurious salon, the girl is sitting on a simple hard wooden chair and only a window showing the night sky is seen behind her. We don’t see her face because she is focused on the little book of pictures that she is holding in her hand. This makes the painting appear casual and intimate, this isn’t a formal sitting with the girl staring straight at us, trying to hold a feign smile, but rather Steer portrayed this lovely girl while she was amused by something else. He gazed at the object of his fascination and affection as one would a bird in its cage; we see less of Rose’s character and more of Steer’s perception of her. In a humble interior, Rose shines nonetheless because Steer’s brush is tinged with sensuality and melancholy. When the lights are dim, the barriers fall down. Her gorgeous blue dress with white dots here and there looks like a night sky littered with sparkling, silvery stars. In “Girl on a Sofa”, it’s the girl’s slender little hand that is the most sensual detail to me. Her blushing cheeks and gaze hidden from us speak of her girlish shyness. These verses from Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poem “Jenny” come to my mind as I gaze at these paintings:

“All golden in the lamplight’s gleam,—

You know not what a book you seem,

Half-read by lightning in a dream!

(….)

And I should be ashamed to say:—

Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!

But while my thought runs on like this

With wasteful whims more than enough,

I wonder what you’re thinking of.”

Philip Wilson Steer, Girl on a Sofa, 1891

Peter Ilsted and Hamsun’s Hunger: Ylajali Looking Out the Window

I recently wrote about the turn of the century Danish painter Peter Ilsted and his delightful, sunny and cozy interior scenes with girls playing or reading books and I mentioned Knut Hamsun’s novel “Hunger”, well today I want to focus exclusively on Hamsun’s novel and the painting which reminds me of one scene from the novel.

Peter Vilhelm Ilsted (Danish artist, 1861-1933), Looking Out the Window, 1908

In “Looking Out of the Window”, a pretty young girl in a black dress and two long braids is looking out of the window. As usual with these Northern painter such as Hammershoi and Ilsted, the girl’s face is not seen, but still I know that she is pretty because she must be and I want her to be because I see her as the Ylajali from Knut Hamsun’s novel “Hunger”; the sweet-scented, pretty and mysterious girl that the narrator meets one day by chance in the street and later he has a very interesting conversation with her one night. In this painting Ilsted offers a somewhat voyeuristic view of the girl looking out of the window because she is in the other room, and she left the doors behind her open and that’s why we see her through the corridor. If the white doors were closed, the girl would be a mystery and all that would remain on the canvas would be the little table, a painting with shadowy figures and the door. The interior would seem cold and uninviting, but the girl with the braids adds a mysterious touch to it.

What is she looking at? Or should I say, on what strange gentleman are her eyes set? The answer lies in Hamsun novel “Hunger”; written in the first person in the stream of consciousness style, the unnamed narrator is a young aspiring journalist who, poor and hungry, wanders the streets and encounters many things on his way. This is how the novel begins: “It was during the time I wandered about and starved in Christiania: Christiania, this singular city, from which no man departs without carrying away the traces of his sojourn there.” Hungry, half-desperate and half-hopeful in a mad way, with frail nerves, empty stomach and a thin coat, he leaves his attic room in search of….something to fill his day. While on a walk in the beginning of the novel, he sees two ladies walking with their parasols, and accidentally brushes one, turning around to apologise, he sees her pale face and cheeks blushing and she is instantly lovely to him; “I feel myself seized with an odd desire to make this lady afraid; to follow her, and annoy her in some way. I overtake her again, pass her by, turn quickly round, and meet her face-to-face in order to observe her well. I stand and gaze into her eyes, and hit, on the spur of the moment, on a name which I have never heard before–a name with a gliding, nervous sound–Ylajali!”

The mysterious girl whose pale face hidden under the veil cannot leave his mind is named Ylajali and he follows her to the bookstore and then to the house where she apparently lives and here is that part of the novel which reminds me of Ilsted’s painting:

“Outside No. 2, a large four-storeyed house, they turned again before going in. I leant against a lamp-post near the fountain and listened for their footsteps on the stairs. They died away on the second floor.

I advanced from the lamp-post and looked up at the house. Then something odd happened. The curtains above were stirred, and a second after a window opened, a head popped out, and two singular-looking eyes dwelt on me. “Ylajali!” I muttered, half-aloud, and I felt I grew red.

Why does she not call for help, or push over one of these flower-pots and strike me on the head, or send some one down to drive me away? We stand and look into one another’s eyes without moving; it lasts a minute. Thoughts dart between the window and the street, and not a word is spoken. She turns round, I feel a wrench in me, a delicate shock through my senses; I see a shoulder that turns, a back that disappears across the floor. That reluctant turning from the window, the accentuation in that movement of the shoulders was like a nod to me. My blood was sensible of all the delicate, dainty greeting, and I felt all at once rarely glad. Then I wheeled round and went down the street.

I dared not look back, and knew not if she had returned to the window. The more I considered this question the more nervous and restless I became. Probably at this very moment she was standing watching closely all my movements. It is by no means comfortable to know that you are being watched from behind your back. I pulled myself together as well as I could and proceeded on my way; my legs began to jerk under me, my gait became unsteady just because I purposely tried to make it look well. In order to appear at ease and indifferent, I flung my arms about, spat out, and threw my head well back–all without avail, for I continually felt the pursuing eyes on my neck, and a cold shiver ran down my back. At length I escaped down a side street, from which I took the road to Pyle Street to get my pencil.”

Ylajali, what a beautiful and exotic name to my ears! This scene from “Hunger” lingered in my mind for some time after finishing the novel.

Vilhelm Hammershoi, Interior, Strandgade 30, 1901

And just for comparison, here is Vilhelm Hammershoi’s painting with a similar theme, again a lady is looking out the window, her back turned against us, her face hidden, but this version of the same scene doesn’t speak to me as much as Ilsted’s version does. Hammershoi does have a mystery and a certain magic, but this strictness of elements, minimalism, and the palette of greys is painfully oppressive and I just wanna die when I gaze it for a long time.

Peter Ilsted – Two girls playing

Out of the three leading Danish painters in the early twentieth century; Peter Ilsted (1861-1933), Carl Holsøe (1863-1935) and Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916), it was Peter Ilsted who brought the warmth, the yellow rays of sunlight, coziness and quiet cheerfulness in his interior scenes, while imbuing them with the little bit of the mystery, the kind that haunts Hammershoi’s well-known interiors. Ilsted was the oldest of the three painters, born on Valentine’s day in 1861, and his sister Ida later became Hammershoi’s wife and appears often in his interior scenes, as a mysterious figure in black.

Peter Vilhelm Ilsted (Danish artist, 1861-1933), Two girls playing, c. 1900

Ilsted’s painting “Two girls playing” exudes loveliness and warmth. Sunlight is streaming into the room, pale, peachy-orange and yellowish, and suddenly the same minimalist Northern interior which would appear cold and distant in the paintings of Holsoe or Hammershoi, is filled with quiet sweetness and hopes. Two girls, perhaps sisters are playing with something. They turned their backs on us, they don’t care about us because whatever they are playing with is far more amusing. Their appearance is matching; dark dresses under white aprons, little black boots, hair in a single plait follows the line of the neck and ends in a little bow. While the lighter haired girl is kneeling on the chair, the other seems to be standing on the tips of her toes to see better that secretive toy which seems to provide them both with so much amusement. I can imagine them chatting quietly, even giggling, but all in moderation, for the children ought to be seen but not heard. An interesting detail to notice are the paintings on the wall, little paintings in a painting, figures on them are shadowy and dreamy.

Peter Vilhelm Ilsted, Interior with girl reading, 1910

The painting “Interior with girl reading” from 1910, is again filled with the same Ilsted-esque sunshine, silence and tranquility. Sweet moments at home, the coziness and the safety. The future, its trials, tribulations and uncertainties are miles away from this little girl reading a book in her drawing room. How sweet and shy and modest she appears, in a simple grey dress, hair tied in a braid, completely absorbed in the book she is reading. What thoughts occupy her sweet and innocent mind? The bookshelf, the mirror and the drawer are the only pieces of furniture in this simple room, but again there is something warm and cozy about it which doesn’t appear in the paintings of Ilsted’s contemporaries Holsoe and Hammershoi. I love how Ilsted continually achieves this delightful warmth and coziness in his interiors with little girls playing, reading or chatting, without allowing his canvases to fall into the abyss of sentimentality. Far from it, these paintings are equally thrilling and mysterious as any interior painted by Hammershoi. This delicate, gentle portrayal of the home life and childhood resonated with me, the warm orange-yellowish light that colours the space in his interiors almost fills me with nostalgia. Just take a look at that golden sunlight on the floor, how yellow and tangible it appears! It makes me wanna lie there and take a nap like a cat.

It being winter; cold and dreary, and I am weary, weary of it, my thoughts go to “Northern” painters and writers. I recently read Knut Hamsun’s novel “Hunger” originally published in 1890, and while he isn’t a Danish but a Norwegian writer, some interior scenes by Hammershoi and Ilsted came to my mind because these cozy, quiet and sunny interiors are a stark contrast to the cold and unwelcoming outside world. “Hunger” is written in the first person by an unnamed narrator who is struggling to get his writing published, his extreme poverty brought him to the state of perpetual hunger and this hunger makes his nerves frail and his behavior somewhat eccentric. In one scene from the novel, he keeps staring at a window until a girl’s face appears, they stare at each other for a while, but then her lovely countenance disappears behind the thick white curtains, the borders between the outside world and the indoor coziness, the narrator continues staring at the window, feeling curious and slightly embarrassed.

I wonder, if the girls from Ilsted’s painting would leave their books and their toys, and if they looked through the window and saw a thin, hungry man in a tattered suit, with wild untamed hair and crazy eyes, how would they feel about him? A mix of pity and fear. Would they stare for some time, until their mother or the servant chased them away from the window because it’s inappropriate to stare at the outside world. This simple and sober middle class interior is a safe cage for the girls-birds; they are too shy, too innocent and too sweet to see the reality out there, on the other side of the curtains and windows which serve are protectors. Whatever crazy stuff is going on outside, none of it can harm them.

Peter Vilhelm Ilsted, Interior, 1897

Peter Vilhelm Ilsted, Interior with two girls, 1904

Pietro Longhi – Scenes from Everyday Life

Pietro Longhi is a wonderful Venetian eighteenth century painter who, unlike some of his contemporaries in Venice, devoted himself to portraying the simple beauties of everyday life. These days I enjoy gazing at his genre scenes and let’s take a look at a few interesting ones.

Pietro Longhi, The Painter in His Studio, 1741, oil on canvas, 41 × 53.3 cm (16 1/8 × 21 in)

A painting is a finished work, but in Longhi’s painting “The Painter in His Studio” we see the hidden, mysterious aspect of art and portrait painting; we see what happens behind the curtains, a sweet secret that only the artist, the sitter or the model know. In this work, a painter is painting an oval portrait of a Venetian noblewoman. Her clothes speak of her wealth and importance. I deserve to be captured for eternity on canvas, her gaze seems to say. Her hair is powdered and short, her stays laced, and a little dog is peeking under her lace sleeve. Considering how wide her sumptuous dress is, perhaps there is another dog hiding in there. Their carnivals and their masques, one never knows with these Venetians, what are they hiding, what is real and what a mirage. The man beside her; is he her husband, her brother, a father or a friend, we don’t know. But he also has a Venetian masque on his face, moved to the side though. Maybe he is telling the painter something really important. And look, his hand is about to pull something out of his inner pocket, what is it, a dagger? In case he is displeased with the painter’s work. Or some gold coins, if he thinks the likeness of the two faces, the one on canvas and the one in reality, is astounding. On the left of the painter, we see his painting equipment. The background is painted in muted brownish tones and is empty of details and ornamentation, we don’t see the continuation of rooms or space, which makes these three characters seem like actors on the stage, but then again, aren’t we all?

Pietro Longhi, Fainting, 1744, 50×61.8 cm (19 11/16 × 24 5/16 in)

From a calmness of a portrait sitting painting we are moving on to a more dramatic scene, painted around the same time, 1744, when Longhi was about forty-two years old; it is unsure whether he was born in 1701 or 1702. A lady dressed in a pastel pink gown, deadly pale and weak, is just opening her eyes. Quick, quick, someone call the doctor! The lady had fainted. Oh, she is opening her eyes slowly now. Her one hand is on her breast, the other is hanging limp. A soft pillow was brought so she can lay her head on it, and smelling salts are offered to her delicate nostrils. Do not let this pastel pink sweetness fool you, for this scene is not as innocent as it may seems at first.

The evidence of the crime lays open to our eyes in the bottom left corner; an overthrown little table with a notably Rococo playful and flamboyant chinoserie pattern, cards and a little velvet purse full of coins are scattered on the floor. People have gathered sympathetically around her, but this lady has a card or two up her sleeve. The reason she fainted is not the lack of fresh air, or the stays laced too tight, but rather the fact that she was loosing in the game. What else can she do but stage this silly little incident. Ha, but the man dressed in a long blue cloak and a long dark grey wig on the right doesn’t seem to believe her. His hand is stretched towards her as if he’s asking for the money. Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni praised Longhi’s portrayal of truth on his canvases, portrayal of the real world around them, and the painting “Fainting” most likely inspired Goldoni’s comedy “La finta ammalata“ or “The Fake Patient Woman” (1750–1751); there’s a scene in which the main character Rosaura had just fainted and she is surrounded by her friend, her suitor, her father and her doctor.

Pietro Longhi, The Game of the Cooking Pot, 1744, 49.8 × 61.8 cm (19 5/8 × 24 5/16 in)

Another charming and slightly confusing scene is presented in the painting “The Game of the Cooking Pot”. The lady in the gorgeous white gown is a sight to behold; her delicate pale face, her tiny pearl earring, a subtle pink flower in her powdered hair, her little white shoe peeking under the dress, all so dainty and doll-like in the typical Rococo way. But then there’s a guy on the right, holding a stick, his eyes tied with a handkerchief so he cannot see, and he is about to hit … the pot? The Game of pentola or The Game of the Pot is yet another one of strange Rococo games played by adults and not children which includes a person who has to strike the pot and smash it in order to find a pleasant surprise underneath. In a fancy Rococo interior carefree and pretty young people are indulging in lighthearted fun, and why would they not? Life is to be enjoyed. In the background, on the left, there’s some wine in jugs and some biscuits, little details that Longhi painted to add his scenes some warmth and domesticity.

What were the Venetians up to in the 1740s. This is sort of like an Instagram of their day and age; everything is smooth and perfect, there’s no smallpox, pimples, sadness or a bad hair day. Everyone is “caught” on the canvas having so much fun, like in a group selfie, a big smile everyone! And of course they are having much more fun than you are. Pietro Longhi’s focus on painting genre scenes led the art critics to compare his work to that of his English contemporary, the famous brutally satiric William Hogarth. This comparison isn’t true at all. They both placed their focus on the everyday life on their age and area, but Hogarth’s work tends to be harsh, his wittiness turns to sarcasm, whereas Longhi’s world is delicate and dainty, and figures in his paintings look like actors on stage, their face expressions and movements carefully devised to tell the tale. Pastel colours, fine brushstrokes, Longhi shows both the refined and frivolous past times of Venetians around him; gambling, playing games, sitting for portraits, reading letters, dancing, taking music lessons, receiving visitors. Every canvas is a scene from life. Also, the notable small size of these interior scenes is another thing which connects Longhi’s art with that of Vermeer and other seventeenth century Dutch painters who portrayed daily life, though with more modesty, mystery and coldness, they are after all people from the dark, rainy, and gloomy North.

Pietro Longhi, The Letter, 1746, oil on canvas, 61 x 49.5 cm (24 x 19 1/2 in)

In this painting I love the detail or a washing line with the white garments painted in such loose, feathery soft, almost ghostly strokes, it just looks so delicate, and adds to the aura of gentleness which matches the pale pretty girl’s pastel pink gown and a sweet round face.

Pietro Longhi, The Music Lesson, 1760, oil on copper, 44.6 x 57.6 x 0.2 cm (17 9/16 x 22 11/16 in)

Since when is holding hands crucial for learning the notes? Hmmm…. The music teacher’s profile alone, with the wide wicked smile and those eyebrows indicates a lecherous Faun-like nature. And look at the way the little dog is observing it all, with his paw in the air.

William Orpen – The Mirror: Why live in the world when you can live in your head?

William Orpen, The Mirror, 1900

This painting keeps haunting me. I don’t quite know why because it’s a really simple portrait, nothing special about it at first sight. I discovered it months ago, and it just lingers in my memory. Every once in a while I remember it and then I gaze it for some time. Then I forget it, and a week passes and then I remember it again and it’s a never ending cycle. The space in the painting isn’t cluttered with many things that tire our eyes. The colours are neutral, greys, black and olive green, nothing overwhelming. The simple arrangement of objects in a painting, with a chest of drawers, a round mirror on the wall and a girl sitting on a chair makes for a simple composition. It also makes it look as if the painter didn’t just capture the space as it was, although it is accurate, but rather chose the objects to make the painting look aesthetically appealing. William Orpen, an Irish painter, was very young when he painted “The Mirror”, just twenty-two years old. He had just recently finished his schooling at the Slate School of Art in London (he studied there from 1897 to 1899), and with this painting he was paying homage to Whistler’s famous “Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 2” or simply A Portrait of the Artist’s Mother painted in 1871. The round mirror on the wall which shows the artist painting is an obvious reference to “The Arnolfini Portrait” painted by Jan van Eyck. But Emily seems to belong to an entirely different world to the one where Orpen is painting. As if the space around her is disappearing and she remains alone on the stage of her life, hiding from us with that hat.

“The Mirror” was painted in Orpen’s lodgings and the model was a girl called Emily Scobel who modeled at the Slade School and was at the time engaged to Orpen, but broke off the engagement the following year and eventually married someone else. She was the main model for Orpen’s early works. With the simple composition and sombre colours, Orpen put a focus on Emily’s face because that’s where the real drama takes place. Her face is very captivating to me and it seems to say so much. Half hidden in the shade of her lovely hat, the same hat you can see in a drawing of Emily that Orpen made in 1901, her eyes are full of doubt and slight disappointment; I feel like she’s come to the point where she doesn’t know what to do with her life and she’s staring into the grey future with worrying eyes that seem to say: and what now? Her shoulders are sloping and her hands are clasped in her laps. She is sitting there in her long black skirt and white blouse, but her thoughts are somewhere else. Cheeks of her round face are pink as roses, but her lips pressed together are hiding secrets that she is hesitant to tell us. When I look at her face, and I have gazed at it for quite some time on different occasions, the lyrics to the Pulp’s song “Monday Morning” comes to mind:

There’s nothing to do so you just stay in bed,

Oh poor thing,

Why live in the world when you can live in your head?

 

Mmm when you can go out late from Monday,

Till Saturday turns into Sunday,

And now you’re back here at Monday,

So we can do it all over again.

And you go aah ah ah

I want a refund,

I want a light,

I want a reason,

To make it through the night, alright.

 

And so you finally left school,

So now what are you going to do?

Now you’re so grown up,

Yeah you’re oh oh oh oh oh so mature oh.

William Orpen, A Study – Emily Scobel, 1901, red chalk, graphite and grey wash

This interesting red chalk study of Emily was used to illustrate an article written about Orpen in August 1901 in a magazine called “The Artist”. Not much is known about Emily, and if it wasn’t for her connection with Orpen and her modelling at the Slade School of Art, she would have probably been forgotten in history. She was born sometime in 1877 and in the 1901 UK census, she was listed as a twenty-four year old servant living in Lewisham, London, working for the Churchward family along with a girl called Mary Scobel, who was twenty-two years old at the time and possibly her sister or cousin.

Gerard ter Borch – Love Letters and Glistening Satin Gowns

In this post we’ll take a look at some pretty women dressed in splendid white gowns by a Dutch Baroque painter Gerard ter Borch.

Gerard ter Borch, Woman Reading a Letter, 1660-62

Out of the darkness that lures in the background, a genre scene full of intrigues and turmoil arises. A table, two chairs and three figures hold a story. A pretty young lady is reading a letter, most likely a love letter. Her raised eyebrows and slightly parted pink lips reveal her thoughts and feelings; she’s surprised, confused, a bit saddened by the words of the letter. An older female figure dressed in a fur-lined dress is sitting at the table, above an unfinished letter, she’s resting her head on one hand, and holding a quill in the other. Her gaze tells us about the seriousness of the situation. Even the young long haired servant boy glances at her worryingly! Meanwhile, a little dog is sleeping on the other chair.

Let us take a moment to appreciate her gorgeous satin gown. It is painted so beautifully and so skilfully that it looks, to me, as if it was a ball gown woven from moonlight and dandelion seeds for a forest fairy and by some magical mistake it ended up in the wardrobe of a seventeenth century lady. By painting the dress so shining and white, Ter Borch not only emphasised the rich status of the lady wearing it, and showed the elegance and sophistication of the latest fashions, but he also used it as a dazzling contrast of light and darkness. The background and the other figures are painted in dark sombre tones, and the spotlight is on her, the lady reading a letter whose words and emotions will remain forever mysterious to us. In that splendid whiteness the woman looks like a fragrant white lily blooming in the darkness of her beautiful cage.

Gerard ter Borch, Lady at her Toilette, 1660

In “Lady at the Toilette”, we have a somewhat similar scene. Again a woman dressed in a gorgeous white satin gown with details in gold and blue takes the central position. Our eyes are on her, but where is she looking? Both her clothes and the interior signify her high status, and are surely more sophisticated than Vermeer’s are. The interior with a fireplace, Oriental carpet, a mirror, and candlesticks shows luxury. The mirror shows the woman’s profile, but it doesn’t quite make sense. A figure behind the woman is perhaps a maid helping her with her gown, or a seamstress taking a measure or putting finishing touches to the dress. There is a richly dressed servant boy again. A little dog is present as well, not sleeping this time, but stretching with curiosity on the chair.

Ter Borch always lets the long skirt touch the floor and stay there in movement, creating shadows and depths, and you can almost hear its rustle, imagine its softness and shine. With his emphasis on elegance and splendour, Ter Borch partly announced the art of the eighteenth century.

Gerard ter Borch, Woman Writing a Letter, 1655

And now a lady not reading a letter but writing one. Take a look at her pearl earring, and look how concentrated she looks, as if she doesn’t know we are gazing at her. And what is she writing, I am bursting with curiosity to find out!

These days, Jan Vermeer is perhaps the most well-known out of the genre-scene painters from the Dutch Golden Age of painting but Gerard ter Borch has painted his fair share of everyday people in everyday situations and he went even further than Vermeer and Jan Steen by adding the glamour and stylishness to everyday life; he transformed middle class ladies into belles of the ball. There is a simple reason why genre painting flourished in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century: there was a free art market and painters weren’t restricted by the demands of the church as they were in the neighbouring Flanders or Southern Netherlands, then controlled by Spain. The artists naturally shifted their focus from the pompous religious subjects full of pathos and flair, which dominated the Spanish and Flemish Baroque, to humble beauties of everyday life. Genre-scenes were a popular option, but still lives and landscapes were common too. This shift seems all to natural to me, for, if a king or a court lady deserves to have her portrait painted, if she is worthy of being captured on canvas for eternity, why wouldn’t a middle-class lady from Utrecht or Amsterdam be a worthy subject for a painting?

Gerrit ter Borch, Messenger, 1650

Painting “The Messanger” is very interesting because the mood of mystery that lingers throughout Ter Borch’s paintings reaches its peak here. A lady in a shining white satin is reading a letter brought by a messenger merely a moment ago. But she turned her back on us, so not only are the words of a love letter concealed from us, so is her face expression. Is she smiling sweetly and trying to prevent herself from giggling, or is she standing in that dark room with a furrowed brow, trying to prevent tears from obscuring her vision, in case the messenger had brought sad news and is waiting for a quick reply. We will never know.

In all these paintings, Ter Borch presents us with a gentler, more intimate, softer side of Baroque; a world of silence and stillness, eloquent glances and glistening fabrics, letters being written and letters being read, letters full of secrets; a world we can relate to and which intrigues us. Jan Vermeer’s genre scenes have a similar mood, and the emphasis is, in both artists, on intimacy and silent drama that takes place behind closed doors.

Gerard ter Borch, An Officer Making His Bow to a Courtesan, 1660s

I decided to add the painting you see above just because of the ethereally beautiful white fabric. It looks so light and airy as it touches the floor. Also, I recently wrote a short post about Victorian photography where girls are dressed in splendid gowns and reside in chambers of silences and dreams, and looking at Gerard ter Borch’s paintings now reminds me of those photographs.

Also, I already wrote about Jan Vermeer’s similar genre scenes here.