ART SUNDAY - PETER GERASIMON

"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough." - Rabindranath Tagore 

Peter Gerasimon was born in 1951 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, one of eight children of Russian/German immigrants. Very early in his life he developed an interest in fine arts and attended art classes, despite advice from relatives and friends that this was not a secure career choice. Although he preferred to learn the hard way, by trial and error, he did develop his skills formally through art studies at the Escuela de Artes Quilmes, Argentina 1966-1967 and a course at the Famous Artists' School for Talented Young People 1969-1971.

Not convinced that the arts could support him in the future, Peter pursued a career in economics and business management, but painting remained his passion. Even on his business travels he always found some time to draw sketches and produce an occasional painting. In early 1996 he gave up his busy management career to go after his passion and become a full time artist. He set up his home studio and gallery, “Glenrowan Studios” in Gisborne, Victoria, near the Macedon Ranges and met with instant success.

Gerasimon has participated in some Art Shows in Australia and has obtained several Awards at the Berwick, Ivanhoe and Woodend Art Shows.

The art of Gerasimon is a mix of the realistic with the naïve, his canvases often depicting everyday scenes, streetscapes and landscapes in a rather dispassionate and detached manner, which nevertheless manages to evince emotion in the viewer. His paintings also include depictions of Australian flora and fauna, which border on the genre of scientific illustration, while his still life painting often evokes a deeper symbolic meaning. Still other types of paintings include commissioned work and illustrative material. More of the artist’s oeuvre can be found on his website (http://www.gerasimon.com.au/).

The Painting above is his “As Time Goes By” a view in St Kilda, Melbourne.

ART SUNDAY - LÉON FRÉDÉRIC

“Symbols are the imaginative signposts of life.” - Margot Asquith 

Léon Frédéric (August 26, 1856 – January 27, 1940) was a Belgian Symbolist painter. His earlier paintings embraced Christian mysticism, pantheistic, and natural themes, while his later works increasingly reflected social themes. Frédéric’s work reflects influences of fifteenth and sixteenth century Flemish, as well as Renaissance painting styles.

Frédéric attended the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1871 to 1878, and was a pupil of the Neo-Classicist Jean-François Portaels. While attending the academy Frédéric made long trips to Italy from 1876 to 1878 to study with the Belgian sculptor Julien Dillens. While in Italy (Venice, Florence Naples and Rome) he studied the works of Botticelli and Ghirlandaio, reinforcing his linear technique.

In 1879, on his return from Italy, he made his debut at the Brussels Salon and became a member of the artist group L’Essor (The Soaring). In 1883, he moved to Nafraiture, in the Belgian Ardennes, and traveled extensively to England, Germany and the Netherlands. He moved to his final home in Schaerbeek in 1899, and continue to travel and show his work in international exhibitions.

Despite achieving recognition and honours in Germany and the United States, as well as winning several gold and bronze medals for his work, Frédéric did not receive official approval in his native country until later in his life. He was awarded gold medals for painting at the Exposition Universelle of 1889 and 1900. Between 1889 and 1900, Frédéric was awarded gold and bronze medals in the United States. In 1904, he was appointed member of the Royal Academy of Belgium. In 1891, he was awarded a gold medal in Berlin. In 1929 Frédéric was created a Baron and Knight of the order of King Leopold.

Leon Frédéric drew on contemporary and centuries-old influences as well as on his very personal spiritual views of life and nature to evolve his unique artistic style. Working during a period when Impressionism and its offspring Divisionism and Post-Impressionism were the mainstay of avant-garde art, Frédéric’s supra-realism came as a considerable and impressive surprise.

Nature is omnipresent in the work of this artist, both in his landscapes and in his social works, where he paints realistically the life of the peasants of Flanders or the Ardennes workers, as well as in his allegorical paintings. A humanitarian ideal, almost anarchic, characterises his compositions with a social message, for example “Les ages de l’ouvrier” (1895-1897, Paris, Mus. D'Orsay). From 1890, he produced a number of large-scale works, still naturalistic, but well grounded in the symbolist ideals, such as the triptych "Le ruisseau" (1890-1899, Brussels, M.R.B.A.B.).

The painting above is one of a triptych he painted of chalk workers, showing them going to work (Morning), having a meal (Midday) and returning home (Evening). This is a detail from the middle panel “The Chalk Sellers - Midday” (1882) and depicts them at their humble meal while they are on a break from their back-breaking labour. Child labour was something that was common in Frédéric’s time and his painting shows the pitiful lot of small children that have been forced by poverty to work long hours in a hard and harsh job.

ART SUNDAY - CHARLES GLEYRE

“Art must take reality by surprise.” - Françoise Sagan

Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre (2 May 1806 – 5 May 1874), was a Swiss artist, resident in France from an early age. He took over the studio of Paul Delaroche in 1843 and taught a number of younger artists who became prominent, including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Louis-Frederic Schützenberger.

Gleyre was born in Chevilly, near Lausanne. His parents died when he was eight or nine years old, and he was brought up by an uncle in Lyon, France, who sent him to the city’s industrial school. He began his formal artistic education in Lyon under Bonnefond, before moving to Paris, where he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Art under Hersent. He also attended the Academie Suisse and studied watercolour technique in the studio of Richard Parkes Bonington. He then went to Italy, where he became acquainted with Horace Vernet and Louis Léopold Robert.

It was through Vernet’s recommendation that he was chosen by the American traveller John Lowell Jr. to accompany him on his journeys round the eastern Mediterranean, recording the scenes and ethnographic subjects they met with. They left Italy in spring 1834 and visited Greece, Turkey and Egypt, where they remained together until November 1835, when Lowell left for India. Gleyre continued his travels around Egypt and Syria, not returning to France until 1838. He returned to Lyons in shattered health, having been attacked with ophthalmia, or inflammation of the eye, in Cairo, and struck down by fever in Lebanon.

On his recovery he proceeded to Paris, and, establishing a modest studio in the rue de Université, began carefully to work out the ideas that had been slowly shaping themselves in his mind. Mention is made of two decorative panels “Diana Leaving the Bath”, and a “Young Nubian” as almost the first fruits of his genius; but these did not attract public attention until much later, and the painting by which he practically opened his artistic career was the “Apocalyptic Vision of St John”, sent to the Salon of 1840. This was followed in 1843 by “Evening”, which received a medal of the second class, and afterwards became widely popular under the title “Lost Illusions” (see above). It depicts a poet seated on the bank of a river, with his head drooping and a wearied posture, letting his lyre slip from a careless hand, and gazing sadly at a bright company of maidens whose song is slowly dying from his ear as their boat is borne slowly from his sight.

In spite of the success of these first ventures, Gleyre retired from public competition, and spent the rest of his life in quiet devotion to his artistic ideals, neither seeking the easy applause of the crowd, nor turning his art into a means of aggrandisement and wealth. After 1845, when he exhibited the “Separation of the Apostles”, he contributed nothing to the Salon except the “Dance of the Bacchantes” in 1849. Yet he worked steadily and was productive. Many years often intervened between the first conception of a piece and its embodiment, and years not infrequently between the first and the final stage of the embodiment itself. A landscape was apparently finished; even his fellow artists would consider it done; Gleyre alone was conscious that he had not “found his sky”.

Gleyre became influential as a teacher, taking over the studio of studio of Paul Delaroche – then the leading private teaching atelier in Paris – in 1843. His students included Jean-Léon Gérôme, Jean-Louis Hamon, Auguste Toulmouche, Whistler and several of the Impressionists: Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Bazille. He did not charge his students a fee, although he expected them to contribute towards the rent and the payment of models. They were also given a say in the running of the school. Though he lived in almost complete retirement from public life, he took a keen interest in politics, and was a voracious reader of political journals. For a time, under Louis Philippe, his studio had been the rendezvous of a sort of liberal club. To the last — amid all the disasters that befell his country — he was hopeful of the future. It was while on a visit to the Retrospective Exhibition, opened on behalf of the exiles from Alsace and Lorraine, that he died suddenly on 5 May 1874. He had never married.

He left unfinished the “Earthly Paradise”, a picture, which Taine described as “a dream of innocence, of happiness and of beauty — Adam and Eve standing in the sublime and joyous landscape of a paradise enclosed in mountains, a worthy counterpart to the Evening”. His other works include “Deluge”, which represents two angels speeding above the desolate earth from which the destroying waters have just begun to retire, leaving visible behind them the ruin they have wrought; the “Battle of the Lemanus”, a piece of elaborate design, crowded but not encumbered with figures, and giving fine expression to the movements of the various bands of combatants and fugitives; the “Prodigal Son”, in which the artist has ventured to add to the parable the new element of mother’s love, greeting the repentant youth with a welcome that shows that the mother's heart thinks less of the repentance than of the return.

Other paintings of his are “Ruth and Boaz”; “Ulysses and Nausicaa”; “Hercules at the Feet of Omphale”; the “Young Athenian”, or, as it is popularly called, “Sappho”; “Minerva and the Nymphs”; “Venus and Adonis”; “Daphnis and Chloë”; and “Love and the Parcae”. He also left a considerable number of drawings and watercolours, and a number of portraits, among which is the sad face of Heinrich Heine, engraved in the Revue des deux mondes for April 1852. In Clement’s catalogue of his works there are 683 entries, including sketches and studies.

MOVIE MONDAY - MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN

“Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.” - Salman Rushdie

Director Deepa Mehta’s 2012 film “Midnight’s Children” starring  Rajat Kapoor, Vansh Bhardwaj, Anupam Kher is based on the novel of the same name by Salman Rushdie. The author collaborated with the director to write the screenplay. Generally, if the chemistry between the author and director is good, the results can result in excellent cinema. Unfortunately, this is not always the case…

Sir Ahmad Salman Rushdie, FRSL (born 19 June 1947) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. “Midnight’s Children” (1981), his second novel, won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He is said to combine magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilisations. His fourth novel, “The Satanic Verses” (1988), was the centre of a major controversy, provoking protests from Muslims in several countries. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwā calling for his assassination issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989, and as a result the author was put under police protection by the British government.

Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Britain’s foremost literary organisation, in 1983. He was appointed Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999. In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States, where he has worked at Emory University and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published “Joseph Anton: A Memoir”, an account of his life in the wake of the controversy over “The Satanic Verses”.

I was a little wary to watch the film as Rushdie’s prose, though lush and quite literary, can also be rather convoluted and sesquipedalian, and in parts turgid. Thus is the writing of most literary authors who try “Write” with a capital “W”. And it is because of this (or perhaps in spite of this?) that their work is recognised by the various organisations that hand out literary prizes. Nevertheless, the film was very watchable and the gorgeous cinematography, grand locations, colourful costumes and beautiful music made it, if nothing else, good eye candy.

The plot commences at the stroke of midnight on August 15th, 1947, when India declares independence from Great Britain. Two babies born in the same Bombay hospital at midnight are switched at birth by a nurse. And so it is that Saleem Sinai, the illegitimate child of a beggar woman, and Shiva, the only son of a wealthy couple, are fated to live the destinies meant for each other. Over the next three decades, Saleem and Shiva find themselves on opposite sides of many a conflict, whether it be because of class, politics, romantic rivalry, or the constantly shifting borders that are drawn every time neighbours become enemies and decide to split their newborn nation into two, and then three, warring countries. Through it all, the lives of Saleem and Shiva are mysteriously intertwined. There is another mystic link with all other children that are born around midnight on that fateful date, as all these “Midnight Children” have mystical powers. Saleem and Shiva are also inextricably linked to the history of India itself, which takes them on a whirlwind journey full of trials, triumphs and disasters.

The film is a loose allegory for events in India both before and, primarily, after the independence and partition of India. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, born with telepathic powers, as well as an enormous and constantly dripping nose with an extremely sensitive sense of smell. The technique of “magical realism” finds liberal expression throughout the novel and is crucial to constructing the parallel to the country’s history.

The film was controversial, primarily because of the way India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was portrayed. The same controversy had dogged the book: In 1984 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi brought an action against the book in the British courts, claiming to have been defamed by a single sentence in chapter 28, penultimate paragraph, in which her son Sanjay Gandhi is said to have had a hold over his mother by his accusing her of contributing to his father’s Feroze Gandhi’s death through her neglect. The case was settled out of court when Salman Rushdie agreed to remove the offending sentence.

The film certainly makes Salman Rushdie’s prose more accessible to the general public that perhaps is not as keen to read the novel. The film is beautiful to look at, has some fine cinematic moments in it and there are some poignant and moving parts in it. However, the screenplay is too indulgent (remember the author was responsible for it) and the direction was perhaps a trifle over-ambitious. What was worrying for me personally was that there was a disconnect between me as a viewer and the characters and action on screen. When there is not a strong emotional connection with the characters on film, it can be disastrous in a movie – especially one as long and as epic as this one. I am glad we watched it, but I can think of other more worthy films to recommend to friends to see. If you get a chance to see it, do so, it is good, but I would not go out of my way to hunt it out and watch it…

ART SUNDAY - CIMABUE

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” - Aristotle

Cimabue (1240-1302) was a master Florentine painter and mosaicist, who was a pioneer in the artistic movement towards naturalism in his time. Cimabue introduced three-dimensional designs using the Romanesque approach, with Byzantine models and medieval techniques to create his own style. Cimabue built on existing styles of painting to create more life-like and proportional figures, making subjects more realistic to the viewer. Cimabue may not have received credit for many of the changes in art style at this time, but he was a great contributor and major force of naturalism in art and the realist movement.

There is very little documentation about Cimabue’s early life and training in art. It is thought that Cimabue was born in Florence and died in Pisa, Italy. There are a number of works attributed to Cimabue, however, only one was dated with certainty and that is the mosaic of St. John the Evangelist, created in 1301-1302 in the Pisa Duomo. His first attributed work, the Crucifixion, in the church of San Dominico in Arezzo, was thought to have been created in 1270. In 1280, it is said that he painted the Maesta, now displayed at the Louvre Museum. Cimabue is said to have been a nickname, meaning “bull-headed”. His real name is thought to have been Cenni di Pepi, but he was also known as Bencivieni di Pepo, or Benvenuto di Giuseppe. Because his works were not dated or signed, and many were destroyed by time or natural disaster, Cimabue may not have received the credit which he so deserved. Many of his artworks are still disputed today because of the lack of documentation.

Cimabue was strongly influenced by the Greek Byzantine style, but he introduced his own more natural treatment of these traditional subjects and formal Byzantine style. He was one of the first artists of his time to leave the traditional, somewhat stiff Byzantine style of art, opting to find more beauty in the reality of nature and life. He used soft and natural outlines, with finer portrayal of muscles and bones. These three-dimensional designs exhibited his dramatic and sentimental approach to art. Cimabue worked with egg tempera on panel to create his paintings, but also worked in fresco and mosaic. His subjects were of the crucifixion, saints and apostles, and scenes from the Apocalypse. He used linear perspective, which was later more refined by his pupil Giotto. It is thought that although the Florentine school was attributed to Giotto, it was Cimabue’s style that inspired this movement. Members of the later formed Florentine School, were masters such as Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Although Cimabue is a somewhat forgotten artist, he set a new direction for art of his time period. Life-like figures, with realistic traits and proportions, were a radical departure from the European artistic tradition of the time. Remaining true to the theme of religious icons, Cimabue introduced realism to his art, anticipating the naturalist movement to come. Cimabue’s Madonna, in the Church of Santa Maria, has been regarded as a marvel of art. Cimabue’s last work, the Large Mosaic of St. John in Pisa Cathedral, was started in 1302, but he died that same year, leaving the altarpiece to be completed by his student Giotto. Cimabue’s style was respected and admired by other artists such as Giotto and Duccio, but was also was a catalyst for the realism movement.

The work above is the fresco “Madonna Enthroned with the Christ Child, St. Francis and Four Angels”, painted about 1280 and found in the Lower Church of St Francis in Assisi. In this large scale (320 × 340 cm) work, one can see Cimabue’s artistry patently. The figures of the Madonna, Christ and saints are beautifully modeled and one appreciates the three-dimensional rendition of the faces and limbs. The poses are more natural and less formal than in the Byzantine icons and even the colours are beginning to assume a more realistic approach so that the eye of the viewer is led into thinking this is a true rendition of a real scene.

ART SUNDAY - COURBET

“What is indispensable to inspiration? ...Sound sleep and the provocation of a good book or a companion.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Looking through my books this morning, I found a book on a French 19^th century artist that I had misplaced and which gave me the idea for this Sunday’s Art Sunday. It is Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) who was an influential and prolific French painter, a realist painter par excellence. Courbet, together with his compatriots Honoré Daumier and Jean Francois Millet, founded the mid-19th-century art movement subsequently called “realism”.

Courbet, was a farmer's son and was born June 10, 1819, in Ornans. He went to Paris about 1840, ostensibly to study law; instead, he taught himself to paint by copying masterpieces in the Louvre, Paris. In 1850 he exhibited “The Stone Breakers” (1849, formerly Gemaldegalerie, Dresden, destroyed 1945), a blunt, forthright depiction of labourers repairing a road. In it, Courbet deliberately flouted the precepts of the romantics’ champions of emotionally charged exoticism and of the powerful Academicians, guardians of the moralising Beaux-Arts traditions.

Courbet further outraged Academicians with his enormous “Burial at Ornan” (1850, Musée d' Orsay, Paris), in which a frieze of poorly clad peasants surrounds a yawning grave. Courbet compounded his defiance of convention in another huge painting, “The Artist's Studio” (1855, Musée d’ Orsay), which he subtitled “A True Allegory Concerning Seven Years of My Artistic Life”. In it, Courbet sits painting a landscape centre stage, attended by a small boy, a dog, and a voluptuous female nude; at left a listless, bored group studiously ignores him; at right a lively, spirited crowd of his friends admires his work. At the same time he issued a provocative manifesto detailing his social realist credo of art and life. By this time he was enjoying widespread popularity.

He continued to flout his critics by painting as he liked, what he liked and often found himself censured with his controversial choices of subject matter. Explicit female nudes and realistic studies of “hard grit” type of subjects, were however, interspersed with idyllic landscapes, hunting scenes, extravagant bouquets of flowers and sensitive pencil sketches of intimate, homely types of subjects. The sleeping form fascinated this artist and on more than several occasions, his subjects are asleep. Surely, canvases such as this catered to the tastes of genteel society and must have earned Courbet quite a great deal of his income. Nevertheless, even in such “bread-and-butter” work, his genius is able to shine through.

The painting illustrated is one of my favourite works of Courbet. There is much emotion and raw energy in this work and even though realistic, this work is also impressionistic to a certain extent and even romantic in its mood. It is the “Stormy Sea” of 1869. A dramatic, roiling, cloudy sky overhangs portentously the stormy sea. Green waves break on the beach and the foam shines white amongst the dark water. The boat in the distance battling the elements is in contrast to the boats seemingly safe on the beach – but are they really safe? This is a great depiction of the power of natural forces, but also an allegory for the artist’s passionate and angry view of life…

ART SUNDAY - JAN VAN EYCK

“Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.” - Leonardo da Vinci

Jan Van Eyck (≈1390-1441) was a Flemish painter who perfected the technique of oil painting. He painted in a realistic, naturalistic style on wood panels, mostly portraits and religious subjects. His paintings are full of allegory and made extensive use of disguised religious symbols. Exquisite detail and paint painstakingly applied in thin layers and glazes make of his paintings marvellous shiny translucent, jewel-like confections. His masterpiece is the altarpiece in the cathedral at Ghent, the “Adoration of the Lamb” (1432). Hubert van Eyck (Jan’s brother) worked alongside Jan.

Jan van Eyck has been credited with the “discovery of painting in oil”. Oil painting, however, was already in existence for many decades before Van Eyck, and was used to paint sculptures and to glaze over tempera paintings. The real achievement of Van Eyck was the development of a stable varnish that would dry at a consistent rate. This was created with linseed and nut oils, and mixed with resins.

The breakthrough came when Jan or Hubert mixed the oil into the actual paints they were using, instead of the egg medium that constituted tempera paint. This made of the medium a creamy, easily manipulated paste, which dried slowly, allowing for re-working and blending. The result in the finished painting was brilliance, translucence, and intensity of colour as the pigment was suspended in a layer of oil that also trapped light. The flat, dull surface of tempera was transformed into a jewel-like medium, at once perfectly suited to the representation of precious metals and gems and, more significantly, to the vivid, convincing depiction of natural light. The development of this technique transformed the appearance of paintings.

Little is known of van Eyck’s early life. The few surviving records indicate that he was born ca 1380–90, most likely in Maaseik. He took employment as painter and Valet de Chambre with John of Bavaria-Straubing, ruler of Holland, in the Hague around 1422, when he was already a master painter with workshop assistants. After John’s death in 1425 he was employed as court painter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in Lille, where he remained until 1429 after which he moved to Bruges, working for Philip until his death there in 1441. It is known that he was highly regarded by Philip, and undertook a number of diplomatic visits abroad on his behalf, including to Lisbon in 1428 to arrange the Duke’s marriage contract with Isabella of Portugal.

Van Eyck painted both secular and religious subject matter, including commissioned portraits, donor portraits (with the donor kneeling before a seated Virgin Mary) and both large and portable altarpieces. He worked on panel, either as single panels, diptych, triptychs, or polyptychs. He was well paid by Philip, who sought that the painter was secure financially and thus had artistic freedom and could paint “whenever he pleased”. His work comes from the International Gothic style, but he soon eclipsed it, in part through a greater emphasis on naturalism and realism. Van Eyck utilised a new level of virtuosity, mainly through the use of oil as a medium; the fact that oil dries so slowly allowed him more time and more scope for blending and mixing layers of different pigments. He was highly influential and his techniques and style were quickly adopted and refined by Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden and later generations of Early Netherlandish painters.

The Ghent Altarpiece above, (also called the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb or The Lamb of God, Dutch: Het Lam Gods) is a very large and complex polyptych panel painting. The altarpiece is composed of 12 panels, eight of which are hinged shutters. The wings are painted on both sides, giving two distinct views depending on whether they are open or closed. Outside of Sundays and festive holidays, the outer wings were closed and often covered with cloth. It was commissioned from Hubert van Eyck, about whom little is known. He was most likely responsible for the overall design, but died in 1426. It seems to have been principally executed and completed by his younger and better known brother Jan van Eyck between 1430 and 1432.

Although there have been extensive attempts over the centuries to isolate the passages attributable to either brother, no separation has been convincingly established. Today, most accept that the work was probably designed and constructed by Hubert and that the individual panels were painted by Jan after his return from diplomatic duties in Spain. The altarpiece was commissioned by the merchant, financier and politician, Joost Vijdt, then holding a position in Ghent similar to city mayor. It was designed for the chapel he and his wife acted as benefactors for, today’s Saint Bavo Cathedral, at the time the parochial church of John the Baptist, protectorate to the city.

It was officially installed on 6 May 1432 to coincide with an official ceremony for Philip the Good. It was later moved for security reasons to the principal cathedral chapel, where it remains. While indebted to the International Gothic as well as both Byzantine and Romanic traditions, the altarpiece represented a new conception of art, in which the idealisation of the medieval tradition gave way to an exacting observation of nature and unidealised human representation. A now lost inscription on the frame stated that Hubert van Eyck maior quo nemo repertus (greater than anyone) started the altarpiece, but that Jan van Eyck – calling himself arte secundus (second best in the art) – completed it in 1432. The original, very ornate carved outer frame and surround, presumably harmonising with the painted tracery, was destroyed during the Reformation; there has been speculation that it may have included clockwork mechanisms for moving the shutters and even playing music.

The altarpiece was opened on feast days, when the richness, colour and complexity of inner view was intended to contrast with the relative austerity of the outer panels. As viewed when open, the panels are organised along two registers (levels), and contain depictions of hundreds of figures. The upper level consists of seven monumental panels, each almost six feet high, and includes a large central image of Christ flanked by frames showing Mary (left) and John the Baptist (right), which contain over twenty inscriptions each referring to the figures in the central Deësis panels. These panels are flanked by two pairs of images on the folding wings of the altarpiece. The pair of images closest to the Deësis show singers in heaven, while the outermost pair show Adam and Eve, naked save for strategically placed fig leaves. The lower register has a panoramic landscape stretching continuously across five panels. While the individual panels of the upper tier clearly contain separate – albeit paired – pictorial spaces, the lower tier is presented as a unified mise en scène. Of the 12 individual panels, eight have paintings on their reverse visible when the altarpiece is closed.

Since its creation the altarpiece has been considered one of Northern European arts masterpieces and one of the world’s treasures. Over the centuries the panels have come close to destruction during outbreaks of iconoclasm, or damage by fire. Some panels were sold and others looted during wars. The panels that had been taken away by the German occupying forces were returned to St. Bavo’s Cathedral after World War I. In 1934 two panels, The Just Judges and Saint John the Baptist, were stolen. The panel of Saint John the Baptist was returned by the thief soon after, but the The Just Judges panel is still missing. In 1945, the altarpiece was returned from Germany after spending much of World War II hidden in a salt mine, which greatly damaged the paint and varnish. The Belgian art restorer Jef Van der Veken produced a copy of the stolen panel The Just Judges, as part of an overall restoration effort.

MOVIE MONDAY - DICKENS' OLIVER

"Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures." - Jessamyn West

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was a prolific Victorian British author who wrote some very successful novels. Who does not know “Oliver Twist”, “David Copperfield”, “A Tale of Two Cities”, “A Christmas Carol”, “The Old Curiosity Shop”, etc, etc?

For Movie Monday today I am highlighting some film adaptations of Dickens novels, which have had great appeal for film-makers from the earliest days of the movies. The richness of the plots, the unforgettable characters and the excellent images that Dickens paints in his prose have begged for a cinematographic treatment, so this perhaps explains why his novels have been so popular with film-makers.

If one looks up the International Movie Data Base, reveals that there are over 340 films made of Dickens’ novels, from the 1890s to the present time!

“Oliver Twist” alone has engendered over 30 films/TV series. The latest is the 2005 version by Roman Polanski. This is up to Polanksi’s usual standard, as good as his “Tess” the adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the D’ Urbervilles”. Ben Kingsley does a great job as Fagin and the rest of the cast are well chosen. The cinematography is wonderful and Polanski tells the story true to Dickens’ vision.

An immediate comparison is that of David Lean’s classic 1948 version of “Oliver Twist”. This is a masterly motion picture made by a very famous director. Alec Guinness is the Fagin that most people have in their mind as they read Dickens’ novel. The black and white cinematography is so attuned to the story telling that one could perhaps imagine the screen to abound in colour, as viewed by the mind’s eye. It is interesting to note that this film sparked a riot in Berlin in its first showing in 1949 and that it was banned for two years in the USA as it was thought of being anti-Semitic (it was only released after significant cuts of 10 minutes had been made)…

“Oliver!”, the 1968 musical version by Carol Reed, one would have thought to be doomed from the start. How could someone make a musical out of such a poignant, dark story, which has social criticism written on each of its pages? However, the film works! It won the best picture Oscar at the 1968 Academy Awards and for a musical it is surprising as almost all of the musical numbers are charming (as opposed to the one-hit wonder musicals that we are used to). Here is a YouTube trailer.

I have chosen this novel by Dickens as it highlights one side of the man that was exceedingly important and is essential to his make-up. Dickens was very much influenced by a childhood where he had first hand experiences of poverty and feelings of abandonment. At 12 years of age, Dickens’ father was put into debtors’ prison and young Charles was taken from school and sent to a boot-blacking factory so as to help his family by earning six shillings. This made the author to grow up having very strong views on social reform.

Although Dickens was no “Socialist” in the modern sense of the word, as G.K. Chesterton says in his essay on Dickens, “Dickens had sympathy with the poor in the Greek and literal sense; he suffered with them mentally; for the things that irritated them were the things that irritated him. He did not pity the people, or even champion the people, or even merely love the people; in this matter he was the people. He alone in our literature is the voice not merely of the social substratum, but even of the subconsciousness of the substratum. He utters the secret anger of the humble. He says what the uneducated only think, or even only feel, about the educated.”  This essay of Chesterton’s is delight to read and can be found on line here.

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.