Daumier (1808 – 1897): visions of Paris, Sackler Wing of Galleries, Burlington House, Royal Academy, 26th October to 26th January 2014

           The Royal Academy has amassed some 130 works of art by the legendary French artist and chronicler, Honore Daumier, who lived during a turbulent and pivotal time in French Nineteenth century history. He is an artist who had the capacity to respond to the events of his time with humour, empathy and satire and is explored in great detail in this exhibition – the first for over fifty years – focusing on his paintings, drawings, watercolours and sculptures.<p>

            Daumier was a meticulous artist who made drawings of his subject matter and then returned to his studio to draw from a combination of memory and from his notes. He did not employ models. One of his predominant interests was the life of the ordinary man and the role of the artist in society in portraying him as he tried to escape poverty, war and disease. He worked for two main French newspapers, La Caricature and La Charivari in which his satirical drawings of men, often political men, were showcased. On display are his real to life clay heads of different personages; one of them being Jacques Lefevre a pompous politician. You can see the pomposity in his haughty expression and the delicate way Daumier has copied his face. Daumier’s incredible talent, draughtsmanship and focus on detail is reflected in these small sculptures.  He was a prolific artist - he drew in total 4000 lithographs and 1000 designs for wood engravings which were published in both newspapers and from which he received his main income. Throughout the exhibition are information panels explaining different techniques, historical facts and reflections on society as it was then, such as the explanation of lithography, which are extremely interesting.<p>

Ecce homo, 1849, Daumier

 ‘Ecce homo’ which Daumier painted in 1849 is his largest painting and takes as its theme Christian art. We see the ambiguity of mood and meaning as Daumier portrays a mass of crowds as they view Christ.  The inherent danger and volatility of crowd mentality and ignorance is suggested. Christ can be seen as a figure who challenges the prevailing order of society. Daumier’s style is loose and free with less of a focus on detail and the crowds of people are painted mainly in profile. A hint of melancholy can be found in much of his work, for example, in his small painting called ‘The Watering Place’. This is a bleak portrayal of a man on a white horse with the suggestion of the city behind. His two mirror image paintings of a ‘Man on a Rope’ portray a working man suspended on a building. One can see the muscular form of the man with his use of browns, yellows and whites to portray the artist’s respect and concern for the ordinary worker. Similarly in ‘The Launderess’ we see a simple painting of a woman and child as they climb the steps from the Seine with their washing. Suffused in blues and greys the simplicity of the scene is amazing and we have a modern, evocative portrayal of poor people as they go about their daily life.<p>

            Daumier refused throughout his life to pursue more lucrative genres, for example portraiture or book illustration. Moreover much of his work anticipates other famous artists who took his work as a source of inspiration. For example his painting ‘The Muse of the Brasserie’ where the crowd is reflected in the mirror behind a central figure is a precursor to Manet’s famous painting,’ The bar of the Folies Bergeres’ which uses the same subject matter. The isolation of the individual in the city was a favourite theme of Daumier’s and in this he shared his interest with the photographer, Charles Negres’s who recorded people in photographs. One of Daumier’s most famous watercolours and the highlight of the show for me is the painting, ‘The 3^rd Class Railway Carriage.’ Here we see ordinary people in a crowded railway carriage, painted in warm hues of reds, browns and oranges. The central figure is an old lady hemmed in by a sleeping child and a nursing mother with the top hats and backs of men flanking her in the back. Her troubled face is lined with worry, and old age. It is as if you can feel the hardship of her life and the troubles she resolutely faces. The painting depicts all ages of man as old and young are portrayed together. Daumier fortunately was very popular with collectors which helped ease his life, particularly when he was faced with difficulty, for example when he was dismissed from Le Chaviravi. Degas owned 750 of his prints, 5 drawings and 1 painting and Van Gogh too talked about Daumier ceaselessly in his letters. Daumier’s later lithographs, located in the last room of the exhibition, depicted the political instability in Europe as the 3^rd Republic was shaped into being in France. All the conflicts of the twentieth century are anticipated as is the struggle of power within a world  where the increasing need for arms became a major reality.<p>

            If you want to learn much about France in the nineteenth century whilst also admiring a fine artist you should not miss this show. In Daumier is both past and present - much of his work is reflected in the art of contemporary artists such as Peter Doig, Paula Rego and Gerald Scarfe. He was a fine master of his art.<p>

By Larissa Woolf, arts editor, visitmuseums.com<p>

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Georges Braque, Grand Palais, Paris

Georges Braque, Grand  Palais, Paris, to January 6^th 2014<p>

            TheGrand Palais has organised a comprehensive and monumental exhibition of the work of the quintessential French painter, Georges Braque. This extraordinarily prolific twentieth century painter and artist is minutely revealed and explained. A huge range of important works of art have been borrowed from both private and public collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim and the Pompidou. Braque – a painter whose style has been described  as ‘material’, textural’,’ emotional’ and ‘architectural’ was hailed by Cezanne as the “world’s greatest living painter”.<p>

            Braque was trained initially to be a house painter and decorator like his father but he then went on to study at the Academie des Beaux Arts in 1905. Starting as a Fauvist artist the exhibition begins with the beautiful and evocative “Port in L’Estaque” series with their bright points of colour and loose forms. These timeless landscapes are evocative and intimate and capture intense emotional responses.  The skies are full of vivid, rowdy blues, greens, yellows and pinks.  Braque was inspired by the works of Andre Derain and Matisse as well as from Primitives such as Van Gogh and Boudin.  He didn’t like Romanticism and his determined brush strokes and flamboyant colours set up Fauvism as the next artistic vocabulary of the time. He made several versions of the same scenes, for example there are thirty pictures of his South of France  paintings where he is conveying more than just impressions but also solid structures.<p>

            The show unravels how Braque’s styles evolved slowly and explains how he began to gravitate from Fauvism to Cubism from 1908 to 1913. In 1907 his friend, the poet Apollinaire, introduced him to Picasso which was to be one of the most important relationships of his artistic career. Braque described his friendship with Picasso as being “roped together like mountaineers” as they created together a new school of art and thought. They were both residents of Montmartre in Paris and saw each other intensely every night for a long period of time.  Picasso was interested in tribal masks, works from Cezanne and Iberian sculptures and these influences are reflected in their art.  We see Braque’s famous and large painting, titled, “Big Nude” which he painted in 1908. This large painting of a distorted lady with empty, mosque like eyes, and geometric shapes is at once beautiful and disturbing. It marks the beginning of Braque’s and Picasso’s move into Cubism and the complex patterns of faceted forms and monochromatic colour that was to develop.<p>

 It was the art critic Louis Vauxcelleds who invented the term Cubism or “bizarre cubes” in 1908 when he was describing one of Braque’s paintings and the name stuck. Braque was championed by his friend the German-Jewish art dealer, Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, and in 1908 there was the first Braques show in Paris. In “The Instruments of music” we see how Braque shatters traditional perspective into multiple visions of an object or the world.  Slowly his art became more and more Cubist, seen in his painting “House and tree” where the houses are reduced to geometric forms. In “The Castle at Roche Guyon” he renders the forms into even smaller facets with no horizon line so that all that is left is a cluster of walls and dislocated roofs where one can only recognise the landscape by its colour. Braque’s art was seen as revolutionary, daring and shocked many. He himself said ” I have made a great discovery. I no longer believe in anything. Objects don’t exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them or between them and myself.When one reaches this harmony one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation. This is true poetry. And indeed Braque new movement and its shattering of perspective and light eventually freed the Ecole de Paris to lead innovation in painting for the next half a century. The Cubist Movement spread quickly through Europe and Paris and in turn influenced other movements such as Fauvism and German Expressionism.<p>

            Braque’s move into papiers colle art shows him yet again playing with traditional viewpoints and perspectives as well as materials. His painting titled “Fruitbowl and Glass” is made up of strips of faux bois wallpaper that simulated wood grain and combined with paint to suggest a fruit bowl and glass on a table. His still lives were all about the relationship between objects and the space between them as he overlaps forms and uses supple arabesque and curvilinear shapes as can be see in his paintings “The Frying pan” which he painted in the 1940’s and “The Billiard Table”. We see his mastery of not just painting but also etching, lithography, aqua tint and woodcut. The advent of the Second World War stimulated the creation of more serious works reflecting the austerity of the war; such as his massive Theogomie de Hesiode series. The beautiful and captivating blues and swirls of Braque’s birds as you near the end of the exhibition are amazing. He painted these in the late 1940’s and we can see how they attest to his ability to capture the movement and lightness of birds. Two of the paintings in his ‘Birds” series adorn the ceiling in the Henry II room at the Louvre in Paris. The Grand Palais shows us a complete picture of Braque with photographic footage, films, letters interspersed with his fabulous works of art so that we also get a social, cultural and political idea of the times in which he lived.<p>

Braque was a giant of modern art as this exhibition proves; in fact he was the first living artist to have his works exhibited in the Louvre in 1961. The exhibition is big and to enjoy it at its fullest I would recommend you set aside at least one and a half to two hours to see it properly.<p>

Braque, by Larissa Woolf, Arts Editor, Visitmuseums.com<p>

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Jordaens – 1593- 1678 - Pride of Antwerp at the Petit Palais, Paris

Jordaens – 1593- 1678 -  Pride of Antwerp at the Petit Palais, Paris, 19^th September to 19^th January 2014.<p>

The Petit Palais in Paris has amassed a dazzling and extensive exhibition of the talented 17^th century Flemish painter, Jacob Jordaens. It is the first major French retrospective dedicated to this well renowned artist and includes 120 exceptional works from major public and private collections from around the world including The Prado Museum in Madrid, the Hermitage in St Petersburg and the Royal Museum in Brussels.<p>

            Jordaens was one of the three Flemish Baroque painters along with Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck to bring prestige to the Antwerpen school of painting. He represented the solid virtues of the bourgeoisie but was also a history painter of the sacred and profane and had a large aristocratic clientele. Interestingly Jordaens never travelled abroad to Italy – unlike his contemporaries - and he remained in Antwerp his whole life, except for short trips to the Low Countries. He breathed new life into classical and religious subjects and his art was full of emotion with Antwerp as the privileged backdrop to his painting. Although his father was a linen merchant there was a history of frame making in his family since the fifteenth century.<p>

             A rather delightful and playful music accompanies you throughout the exhibition which somehow adds atmosphere to the experience. His painting, called “The Pintor family”, is beautiful and is an autoportrait of him with his wife, Catherine Van Noot  and their daughter Elizabeth. Here he uses a carefully manufactured scene normally reversed for the noblesse with  sumptuous decoration and elegant, sombre costumes with white neck ruffles for the women. Jordaens portrays himself as an accomplished man with intellectual and artistic qualities; an artist who also takes himself very seriously! We see in another of his huge paintings, entitled “The Adoration of the Bergers”, that he concentrates with elaborate detail on the body of Jesus. It was at this time, in 1616, that he collaborated with Rubens and started to assimilate the art of his master. The exhibition rather cleverly puts the Jordaens ‘Adoration’ painting alongside the same painting by Reubens so that you can see the similarities and differences of both artists. We see how Jordaens copies Ruben’s Adoration whilst tightening the circle of people and he intensifies the emotions and the combination of colours.<p>

            In ‘La Sainte Famille’ Jordaens again uses his family to create a more intimate and personal work of art. It is the portrait of a saint and attributed to Caravaggio. His wife and daughter; Catherine and Elisabeth, are the faces of the Virgin and Jesus. The coral necklace on Jesus as a baby is an allusion to the blood running during the Passion and creates the strong sacred mood of the scene. The black background means the figures really impose themselves and the contrast of light and dark on their faces is amazing. Jordaens executed several scenes of the Town Hall in Antwerp and two paintings marked the pinnacle of his career ; “The Victory of Time “ and “The Triumph of Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange” which was intended for the ceremonial hall in the ‘House of Woods’ outside the Hague. We see how at ease Jordaens is with the baroque allegorical language adopted by Rubens. In fact after Rubens died in 1640 Jordaens became the most important painter in Antwerp for large scale commissions. He often created several variations of the same theme -  such as his scenes of uproarious festivity in the series of paintings, entitled “The King”. These paintings stem from the rich literary and proverbial heritage of the Netherlands which dates as far back as the Middle Ages.<p>  Jordaens liked to use proverbs as a way of educating the masses and his representations of everyday life normally had a moral message to convey. The opulence and elaborate detail in the paintings is incredible as scenes of great mirth, overflowing wine, bountiful fruit and food and youthful hilarity are played out for us. In each of the paintings the king is in the middle of the painting and he is crowded by other people of all ages and even animals such as dogs and parrots. Yet such a subject matter also had a hidden denunciation of the human excesses and decadence of the time in which Jordaens lived    One of my favourite paintings in this exhibition is Jordaens “Portrait of a Young Lady”, painted in 1639. It is probably a portrait of his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, born in 1617. She looks out at us with a straight, eloquent gaze and is dressed in beautiful, delicate, lacy clothes whilst holding an antique ornament. The delicate pink rose of her cheeks, the little pearl clip in her hair and the hint of a pearl earring together with her faraway expression completes an intimate and masterful portrait.  Indeed most of Jordaens models for his portraits were from his close circle of friends and family.<p>

The exhibition ends with a very effective and unusual ‘chest of curiosities’ where members of the public are invited to learn in even more detail about Jordaen’s techniques and art. A succession of different shaped drawers hide information on his style and techniques as well as the culture and lifestyle of the time. Certainly this exhibition is well worth a visit if only to admire the rich and evocative works of the Golden Age of Flemish seventeenth century painting. <p>

Jordaens, Pride of Antwerp at the Petit Palais, Paris by Larissa Woolf, Arts Editor, Visitmuseums.com<p>

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