On this day in 1757, the great Venetian sculptor Antonio Canova was born. He was an important artist in the development of neoclassicism. Baroque art probably found its most annoying expression in sculpture. Canova’s work is know for its refined simplicity. It is gorgeous work.

He was born to a family of stone cutters who created small statuaries. His grandfather taught him early how to draw and sculpt. You can see in the self-portrait above, that he clearly had talent in that regard. But his main interest was in sculpture and that is what he spent his career doing. By the age of nine, he was working in marble. It was through his grandfather that he made important contacts with patrons and with teachers. By his late teens, he had his own workshop.

In his mid-20s, he moved to Rome where he worked for a couple of decades. He seemed to spend the last section of his life back in Venice. All of that time produced great work. At the age of 30 he produced what is probably my favorite work, Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss:

And here is The Three Graces — started when he was in his late 50s and finished in his early 60s, shortly before his death:

Happy birthday Antonio Canova!

I really should know better than to leave the house. I feel very much like the Aztecs when Cortés came. You know that they weren’t defeated militarily. It is just that the Europeans, who lived in a world of filth and virus, brought unknown disease to the new continent. It is kind of hard to fight a war when 90% of your troops die of smallpox. Anyway, I just don’t get out much. So when I leave the house, I am under constant threat — especially from children, who I think we all know are evil, even if it isn’t there intention. Bottom line: I’m quite sick and without any medicine or even alcohol to help me through it.

On this day in 1883, the great cubist painter Marie Laurencin was born. But she was more than that. The self-portrait at the beginning of this article is almost neoclassical — plus it is multimedia, primarily charcoal. She started her studies doing porcelain painting. It was only later that she became involved in avant-garde. And the work that I most admire of hers is not cubist. In fact, she seems to have only done cubist work for a short period. For example, Jeune Femmes (“Young Women”) is from 1910:

But by 1928, she was creating work that looked more like, Portrait of Mrs Aitato, which reminds me a bit of Modigliani:

It’s all lovely. I always think that people like Laurencin aren’t better known because they are women. Sexism in the art world seems to be especially bad. Or used to be. I don’t know anything about the art world today.

Happy birthday Marie Laurencin!

On this day in 1842, the great Russian painter Vasily Vereshchagin was born. He is best known as a war artist. In the days before photography, armies had painters to immortalize their acts. The job wasn’t as much like a modern photojournalist as it was the poets who warriors have kept around for millennia to write songs of their exploits. Vereshchagin traveled all over the world documenting wars and a lot more. He was one of the first Russian artists to be highly regarded internationally.

At the age of eight, he was sent off to military school. From the age of 16 to 21, he was in the Imperial Russian Navy. At that point, he left and began studying art. A year after that, he was studying in Paris with Jean-Léon Gérôme (who I actually like a lot more). After studying there for a couple of years, he got a commission to travel with a Russian expedition to Turkestan. It was from these travels that my favorite of his paintings came, The Apotheosis of War:

This painting was not well received by the Imperial Russian Army, but most of his work was more traditional. After this time, he spent a couple of years traveling through India and Tibet where he did a lot of beautiful and, for him, unusual work. But by 1878, Vereshchagin was back with the Army at the Russo-Turkish War. His brother was killed during it and he was seriously wounded himself. Because he was actually a soldier, he saw war in a very objective way. And he didn’t like it. His work became more and more anti-war and didactic. For example, he was highly criticized for Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English, but I have a hard time believing that it isn’t largely true. The British weren’t close to the worst colonial power, but they were nonetheless a colonial power.

In my research of war artists, I’ve found that few of them live to be very old. It is just too easy to die in war zones. If it isn’t the shelling, it is the disease. Vereshchagin was no different. He was invited to come and document the Russo-Japanese War. While traveling on the Russian battleship Petropavlovsk, it struck two mines and sunk. Vereshchagin did not survive.

Happy birthday Vasily Vereshchagin!

On this day in 1474, the great High Renaissance painter Mariotto Albertinelli was born. He was a colleague of Fra Bartolomeo, who I also quite admire. There was a time that I didn’t much care for these early perspective painters. But I don’t really know what I was thinking. It was a wonderful time for art. I think in the past I’ve gotten bogged down in seeing different periods of art relative to other periods. This caused me to focus on what one period didn’t have that another did.

Although he worked closely with Bartolomeo, Albertinelli reminds me more of Leonardo da Vinci. Consider this untitled painting, and see if you don’t agree. But over time, I’ve come to see Leonardo as the Orson Welles of his day: brilliant but never finishing a work that completely satisfies, or at least lives up to the transcendence of parts of his work. At his best, Albertinelli is preferable. I don’t think that Leonardo ever created a work that is as stunning as The Virgin and Child with the Infant Baptist:

Albertinelli was known for his lively personal life — in stark contrast to his religious painting. Being more interested in living than creating, he found much of the details of painting taxing. In addition, he did not like the criticism that his work got from fellow painters. So at one point, despite his success as a painter, he gave it up and opened a tavern. But he only stuck with this for a short time before going back to painting. I find this charming; I love restless people.

Albertinelli died at the age of 41. The only explanation I can find is that he worked himself to death. He was working away from home, and it seems more likely that he simply got sick. He did manage to have himself delivered back to Florence, just in time to die.

Happy birthday Mariotto Albertinelli!

On this day in 1840, the great British artist Simeon Solomon was born. His father was a prominent manufacturer in London and his mother was an artist. This probably explains why his older brother Abraham and older sister Rebecca were also painters — both exceptionally gifted.

Simeon Solomon was the most interesting of the children. His work is highly symbolic, which is remarkable given that it came out of Victorian England. Looking at his work, it is easy to mistake it for work done well into the twentieth century. I think of him as kind of a combination of Gustav Klimt and Edvard Munch and especially Fernand Khnopff. But there’s more. It is hard not to see Salvador Dalí in his 1884 chalk on paper, Head of Medusa:

But Solomon is better known for work like his 1870 The Sleepers, and the One That Watcheth. I don’t know quite what to make of it, which is generally what I feel about his work and why I think it is so wonderful:

One thing that comes across rather clearly in this painting is Solomon’s homosexuality. For this “crime” he was twice jailed. And he seems to have spent the last twenty years of his life in a workhouse. He continued to work, however. In fact, he produced great work, but much more pencil and pastel — much less watercolor, which seems to have been his preferred medium. Still, it is a sad way to treat a man who gave so much to the world.

Happy birthday Simeon Solomon!

On this day in 1572 (maybe), the great Baroque painter Caravaggio was born. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that he was the inventor of Baroque painting. There is no doubt that he was hugely influential in its earliest development. Baroque painting was a response to Mannerism. Where as Mannerism was highly intellectual and artificial, Baroque painting was dramatic. Artists played a lot with light and shadow and they showed scenes in medias res — things were already happening.

Take for example, everyone’s favor Old Testament story: Judith’s Beheading of Holofernes. It tells the story of the Jewish widow Judith who is none too happy about what pussies the Israelite men are being about the Assyrians. So she goes and visits the Assyrian commander, Holofernes. She gets cozy with him, promising him intelligence about the Israelites, and probably more, if you know what I mean. So she enters his tent one night when he is passed out drunk. And she cuts off his head and brings it back to the Israelites to inspire them. It’s amazing that people not only let their children read this stuff, they tell them it is the most moral Book in the world.

Anyway, a great example of a Mannerist approach to this painting was done by Cristofano Allori, where we just see it after the fact, with Judith holding Holofernes’ head while her maid looks on. (It’s still a great painting!) Caravaggio, provided a Baroque approach, which I think you will agree is very dramatic:

Not all of Caravaggio’s work is so cold blooded. Much of it is really quite sweet. But it is always quite dramatic with very rich colors and lots of light and shadow.

As for his character, well, it seems to not have been so great. He was a hard drinking man, much inclined to bar brawls. In 1606, he killed a young man in a brawl, and had to flee Rome. He continued to work and to get into trouble. And along the way, unsuccessful attempts were made on his life. He made a lot of enemies. He died in 1610 at the age of only 36. It is unclear exactly why. Murder is a good possibility. Despite his brief life, there are over 80 known paintings of his. And given the great detail of them, that is a lot. He was probably the greatest painter of his time — and extremely fast.

Happy birthday Caravaggio!

On this day in 1748, the great French painter Jacques-Louis David was born. He is one of the greatest of the neoclassical painters. Unfortunately, his reputation has been tarnished because of his involvement with the French Revolution. This attitude is especially strange in the United States. Certainly things got out of hand. I’m not in favor of killing people and certainly killing Louis XVI was counterproductive. But no one today who is concerned about this regicide seems terribly concerned about the low life expectancy of the poor.

What I found most interesting in the Wikipedia discussion of David’s involvement with the revolution was its tone of surprised that David would be involved, “It is uncertain why he did this, as there were many more opportunities for him under the King than the new order…” Really?! Based upon this theory of psychology, people only do what it is in their best economic interests. This sounds like it was written by some economist from the Chicago school. It’s pretty clear David believed in the cause, how ever much it was mismanaged.

Regardless, we should give David credit for even surviving. His two notable revolutionary friends, Jean-Paul Marat and Maximilien de Robespierre, both died rather young as a result of their revolutionary acts. He was eventually exiled, although Louis XVIII offered him a royal position as an option because, you know, a great painter is hard to find. Instead, David moved to Brussels. That alone should explain why he was involved in the revolution: because he believed in it. He lived, worked, and taught in Brussels until his death in 1825.

Here is David’s great painting The Death of Marat, done shortly after Marat’s assassination:

And to show you just how great he was throughout his life, here is his last painting, Mars Being Disarmed by Venus, which he completed at the age of 76:

Happy birthday Jacques-Louis David!

On this day in 1899, the great Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo was born. He is from that great period of revolutionary art in Mexico. But he rebelled against it. This was not because he was conservative. But any clear-eyed view of revolution shows that it almost always most hurts the people it is intended to help. Certainly during his early years, Tamayo was criticized for this although no one seems to have ever questioned the brilliance of his work.

As a result of this, he left Mexico in 1926 to live and work in New York. In 1949, he moved to Paris for a decade. But after that, he returned to Mexico for the rest of his long life—he died a couple months short of his 92nd birthday in 1991.

It’s hard to categorize Tamyao’s work. Wikipedia calls it “figurative abstraction,” which I suppose is as true as anything. But his work is quite varied over his long career, so any one description is certainly insufficient. I see a lot of Paul Klee in his work—especially in Tamyao’s use of colors. See, for example, Watermelons. But I’m fascinated by this painting that is rather different, Hombre Mirando Pajaros (“Man Looking at Bird”):

Happy birthday Rufino Tamayo!

On this day in 1910, the great surrealist painter Dorothea Tanning was born. Sadly, she is probably better known as Max Ernst’s wife than as a painter. But her work is amazing. And she was basically a self-taught artist, which is remarkable given the classical aspects of her work. Before she was recognized for her serious work, she supported herself as a commercial artist in New York.

I called her work surreal, but that’s only because that is what she is best known for. Her later work is more abstract. I can see the the surrealism in it, but probably just because I know her earlier work. It is supremely confident and beautiful. She was also a poet and short story writer. You can read more about that and see an example of her later work in, With Our Souls in Our Laps.

Tanning only died two years ago at the age of 101. You can check out a number of her works at, ArtOdyssey. Here is one of my favorite of her paintings:

Happy birthday Dorothea Tanning!