ART SUNDAY - WILLIAM LOGSDAIL

“A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires.” - Hedy Lamarr

For Art Sunday, William Logsdail (25 May 1859 – 3 September 1944), who was a prolific English landscape, portrait, and genre painter. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of British Artists, the Grosvenor Gallery, the New Gallery (London), and others. He is notable for his realistic London and Venice scenes and his plein air style.

He was born in the Close of Lincoln Cathedral, in Lincoln, England, May 1859. He was one of seven children, six boys and one girl. His father was a verger at the cathedral. As a boy, William attended Lincoln School, and also earned money by guiding visitors up the central tower of the cathedral. Logsdail then attended the Lincoln School of Art, where he initially showed an aptitude for architecture, but with the encouragement of his art master, Edward R. Taylor, he took to painting. While at the Art School, he won the Gold Medal for his work in competition with students at other English art schools.

He went on to study in Antwerp, at the École des Beaux-Arts, under Michel Marie Charles Verlat. While there, he became the first Englishman to win first prize at the School. One of his works from this period, “The Fish Market” (1880), was bought on behalf of Queen Victoria for Osborne House. When told of this, Logsdail supposedly commented, “Shows her Majesty’s good sense”.

In the autumn of 1880, Logsdail visited Venice where he was to remain, with occasional visits to England, the Balkans, Egypt and the Middle East, until 1900. During this early period in his career, he gravitated towards architectural and subject paintings. His “The Piazza of St. Mark’s, Venice”, painted in 1883, was judged by the Royal Academy to be the “picture of the year” when it was exhibited in London, although he appears to have been dissatisfied by it, and seriously considered cutting the painting up during its composition.

He also painted some sixty-nine small paintings for the Fine Art Society on the subject of the French and Italian Riviera. In 1893, Logsdail was awarded a medal for oil painting at the World’s Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World’s Fair). After spending two years in Taormina and Sicily, he and his family returned to England, settling in West Kensington, London, where his “The Early Victorian” (1906) (a costume portrait of his daughter Mary) was well received. This marked the beginning of a period of portrait painting for Logsdail, who was offered so many commissions that he was able to pick and choose his sitter at will. In 1912, he was elected as a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. As his career progressed, he turned to flower studies.

In 1892 Logsdail meet Mary Ashman of Necton, near Swaffham in Norfolk, marrying her in May of the same year. With her, he had three children. In 1922, he and his family moved to Noke, near Islip, Oxfordshire, where Logsdail would remain until his death at age 85. Logsdail was a friend of Frank Bramley, who also attended Lincoln School of Art and went on to co-found the Newlyn School and be elected to the Royal Academy. While Logsdail was still studying, the art critic John Ruskin saw his painting of Lincoln Cathedral’s south porch and expressed a favourable opinion of the work, later writing to him and suggesting that he go to Verona once his studies had reached a conclusion, advice the young artist ignored. While in Venice, Logsdail moved in a social circle that included Harper Pennington, Robert Frederick Blum, Martin Rico y Ortega, Frank Duveneck, James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent, the latter of whom inscribed a picture to Logsdail.

Logsdail cultivated a tight objective and realistic style, although his later portraiture and the works painted while in Sicily demonstrate a relaxation of this style. His Venice-based works exhibit a high degree of draughtsmanship described as beautiful and nearly photographic. There is a cool proficiency in his architectural work and street scenes that express what was actually there before him. For example, in the winter in which he came to paint his “St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields” (1888), he hoped for a snow scene, but when faced with only rain and sleet, Logsdail, with his feet buried in straw to keep them warm, painted the scene without snow.

The painting above is “Picking Flowers in an Orange Grove” (oil on canvas, 51 x 73cm), which was sold at auction on 29 October 2008, for £6,000 (AU$ 10,797). The artist’s grandson, William has suggested that this picture was painted by Logsdail during his trip to Sicily where he spent two years after his lengthy stay in Venice.
 The character on the right by the tree is probably the artist’s wife May who appears in many of Logsdail’s compositions. It is typical of Logsdail’s early work and shows a facile use of the medium to convey light and colour naturalistically. 

ART SUNDAY - JAKUB SCHIKANEDER

“Killing is not nearly as easy as the innocent believe.” - JK Rowling

Jakub (or Jakob) Schikaneder (February 27, 1855, Prague – November 15, 1924, Prague) was a Bohemian painter who was born into a German family. He was the second son of Karel and Leokadie Schikaneder. His father Karel Fridrich (1811–1871) worked as a military clerk. He received a military discharge for disability in 1836 and then worked as a customs office clerk and was later promoted to the post of deputy at the Imperial and Royal Customs Office headquarters in Prague. His mother Leokadie (1819–1881), née Běhavá, came from the family of a teacher at the St Giles’ Church school. Despite the family’s poor background, Jakub was able to pursue his studies, thanks in part to his family’s love of art; an ancestor was Urban Schikaneder, the elder brother of the impresario and librettist Emanuel Schikaneder (the librettist of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute”).

After having completed his studies in Prague and Munich (1871–1879), Schikaneder, alongside Emanuel Krescenc Liška, was involved in the furnishing of the royal box in the National Theatre in Prague; however, this work was lost in a fire in 1881. On July 5, 1884, Schikaneder married Emilie Nevolová (1859–1931), daughter of Josef Nevole, a railway clerk in Prague, in the St Nicholas Church in Prague’s Vršovice quarter. The newlyweds moved into the wife’s apartment in house No. 640 at the corner of Rubešova and Jungmannova (today’s Vinohradská) streets in Prague-Vinohrady, where Schikaneder lived until his death (the house was torn down in the 1980s). The Schikaneders’ son Lev Jan was born in May 1885, but died several days later of congenital weakness.

In 1885, Schikaneder was named assistant to František Ženíšek at the School of Decorative Arts in Prague. Later, he became director of a special school of flower painting, and when Ženíšek left the school for the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 1896, Schikaneder took over his decorative painting studio. The professorship enabled him to undertake several study trips in Europe in the 1890s. He repeatedly visited Paris and went as far as Sicily. He travelled across England and Scotland with Josef Thomayer in 1895. Interestingly, Schikaneder spoke English. He also participated in decorating the exhibitions of the School of Decorative Arts at the World Fair in Paris in 1900 and St. Louis, Missouri in 1904.

Schikaneder withdrew from public life at the end of the first decade of the 20th century and no longer exhibited his paintings. He continued teaching at the School of Decorative Arts, even during World War I. His studio was only open to a small group of friends and collectors, such as physician and author Josef Thomayer, lawyer Leopold Katz, pharmacist Karel Vostřebal, Prague mayor Josef Rotnágl and lawyer Josef Šafařík. Schikaneder died suddenly on November 15, 1924, aged 69. He is buried in Vinohrady Cemetery in Prague.

Schikaneder is known for his muted paintings of the outdoors, often melancholy and lonely in mood. His paintings often feature poor and outcast figures, these genre paintings making some social or emotional comment. Other motifs favoured by this artist were autumn and winter, corners and alleyways in the city of Prague and the banks of the Vltava – often in the early evening light, or cloaked in mist. His first well-known work was the monumental painting “Repentance of the Lollards” (2.5m × 4m), now lost. The National Gallery in Prague held an exhibition of his paintings from May 1998 until January 1999.

The painting above, “Murder in the House” Národní Galerie v Praze (1890; Oil on canvas, 203 × 321 cm) is typical of Schikaneder’s oeuvre. Dark, muted tones, a lugubrious subject and an image that tells a tragic story. There is an air of mystery and intrigue in the painting, amplified by the young woman’s bloody corpse on one side, counterbalanced by the group of people on the left. Each figure standing is displaying a different emotion and different depth of involvement with the crime and dead woman. There is tension and apprehension in the piece, amplified by the composition and the realist manner in which the artist has portrayed the event.

Schikaneder presented this work in 1890 at the international exhibition in Berlin, Germany. The painting was a sensation in Prague one year later at the Jubilee Exhibition’s Czech art display. Reportedly, however, the crowds of visitors mostly wondered if the painting depicted the young girl’s murder or suicide.

Recent research identified the specific place that inspired Schikaneder. The dark courtyard was actually the opening of the dead-end Špitálská street leading from Rabínská street in the Jewish Quarter. Schikaneder was very familiar with the Prague Ghetto before its clearance, as he had lived in house No. 186 at the corner of Dušní and Masařská streets in Josefov at the ghetto’s periphery since 1872. In the late 19th century, the Jewish Ghetto was a social ghetto, too, where the poorest of Prague’s inhabitants lived. In this context, Schikaneder’s painting can be seen as social criticism.

In Schikaneder’s oeuvre, “Murder in the House” closes a continuous series of artworks with the theme of the tragic fate of women. In Czech art of the last third of the 19th century, it represents a rare attempt to express both realist and naturalist tendencies in painting.

ART SUNDAY - MARTIN JOHNSON HEADE

“Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.” - Albert Einstein
 

A relatively little-known artist for Art Sunday today, who during his life did not command much attention, also. Martin Johnson Heade (August 11, 1819 – September 4, 1904) was a prolific American painter known for his salt marsh landscapes, seascapes, and depictions of tropical birds (such as hummingbirds), as well as tropical flowers and other still lives. His painting style and subject matter, while derived from the romanticism of the time, are regarded by art historians as a significant departure from those of his peers.

Heade was born in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, the son of a shopkeeper. He studied with Edward Hicks, and possibly with Thomas Hicks. His earliest works were produced during the 1840s and were chiefly portraits. He travelled to Europe several times as a young man, became an itinerant artist on American shores, and exhibited in Philadelphia in 1841 and New York in 1843. Friendships with artists of the Hudson River School led to an interest in landscape art. In 1863, he planned to publish a volume of Brazilian hummingbirds and tropical flowers, but the project was eventually abandoned. He travelled to the tropics several times thereafter, and continued to paint birds and flowers.

Heade married in 1883 and moved to St. Augustine, Florida. His chief works from this period were Floridian landscapes and flowers, particularly magnolias laid upon velvet cloth. He died in 1904. His best known works are depictions of light and shadow upon the salt marshes of New England. Heade was not a widely known artist during his lifetime, but his work attracted the notice of scholars, art historians, and collectors during the 1940s. He thereafter became recognised as a major American artist. Although often considered a Hudson River School artist, some critics and scholars take exception to this categorisation. Heade’s works are now in major museums and collections. His paintings are occasionally discovered in unlikely places such as garage sales and flea markets.

I like his botanical paintings quite a lot as they remind me of a natural history textbook that we used in primary school. There is a strong feel of erudite and nostalgic 19th century naturalism in these paintings and part of their appeal is that while they are botanically accurate, they are also beautifully artistic and highly decorative. The “Orchid and Hummingbird near a Mountain Waterfall” of 1902 shown here is characteristic of Heade’s work in the natural history genre, but the other major part of his work, landscape, is also hinted at by the broad vista behind the main subject.

ART SUNDAY - JOÃO MARQUES DE OLIVEIRA

“All is ephemeral, - fame and the famous as well” - Marcus Aurelius

For Art Sunday today, a little-known painter from Portugal. His name is João Marques de Oliveira and he was born in Porto, Portugal, on August 23rd, 1853, dying on the 9th October 1927 at the age of 64. He was a naturalist painter who specialised in painting landscapes, portraits and genre scenes. In 1864 he joined the Porto Academy of Fine Arts, completing the course of the history of painting in 1873. He lived in France from 1873 to 1879, with his colleague Silva Porto (1859-1893), with whom he studied in the Porto Academy. Both of the painters received a bursary for further study from the Portuguese Government after competing for a painting prize.

Both painters are considered the initiators of naturalism in Portugal. In 1876 and 1877 he travelled with Silva Porto to Belgium, the Netherlands, England and Italy, where he remained for some time. De Oliveira participated in the Paris Salons of 1876 and 1878. In 1879, he returned to Porto and with Silva Porto, introduced “plein air” outdoor painting to Portugal. Back in Portugal, De Oliveira created with Columbano Bordallo Pinheiro, the Lion Group, so named because its members met in a brewery of the same name. From 1881 and until 1926 he taught at the Porto Academy of Fine Arts, where he held the post of Director. His friend Silva Porto was appointed Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lisbon.

Naturalism in art refers to the depiction of realistic objects in a natural setting. The Realism movement of the 19th century advocated naturalism in reaction to the stylised and idealised depictions of subjects in Romanticism, but many painters have adopted a similar approach over the centuries. Naturalism is a type of art that pays attention to very accurate and precise details, and portrays things as they are.

De Oliveira’s work is painterly, full of vivacious brushstrokes and with a good understanding of colour and light. His landscapes have a more impressionistic quality to them, while his large easel genre paintings owe much to Gustave Courbet, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes or even to Jean-François Millet who was active earlier. During his travels, the artist would have familiarised himself with the prevalent styles of the time and he made his choice, leaning towards realism and classicism while wilfully ignoring the more modern waves of surrealism, expressionism, fauvism, cubism, and abstract expressionism – especially so later in his life when he returned to Portugal to assume the directorship of the conservative Porto Academy of Fine Arts.

As such, his work has been somewhat neglected, as the critics class his painting as derivative and backward-looking, rather than innovative and of a personally distinctive style. However, his work has much to offer and I believe he merits more attention. While his painting is highly decorative it is also lively, and his skill as a fine draughtsman cannot be denied. The painting above of 1892 “Waiting for the Boats” shows a beautiful use of colour and light, is beautifully composed and drawn, while the artist conveys skillfully the expectation for the return of the fishermen by their wives and daughters on the beach. Such scenes of everyday life are the mainstay of naturalism, with the artist often making a social comment by the themes he chose.