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Footsteps of the Artists

Monthly Archives: January 2013

Artists in Chelsea, London

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Posted by patwa in Artist's Studios, Artists in London, Artists Near Paris, Artists' Graves

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19th century, art history, museum, painting

Turner’s and Whistler’s London — Footsteps of the Artists in Chelsea and Covent Garden

“I wander thro’ each charter’d street 
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe. “
…from London by William Blake.

Cremorne Gardens No. 2 by James McNeill Whistler, 1877.

Cremorne Gardens No. 2 by James McNeill Whistler, 1877.

 
Painted anecdotes about London and her citizens crowd the walls of the National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery, the British Museum, the Tate, and the Courtould Gallery — all in London.    J. M.W. Turner’s seascapes and landscapes are displayed in many other museums. James McNeill Whistler’s paintings created in London and Paris are the bedrock of the Freer Gallery collection in Washington.

After studying the originals, a pilgrimage in the steps of the artists fleshes out the history. See London as the artists did; feel through the brick and pavement to the bare bones of the lives displayed in the landscapes, street scenes and portraits.

It was the charter’d Thames, water swirling and mirroring brilliant colors of sun and fire, that lured  J.M.W. Turner.

Thick-waisted and myopic, J. M. William Turner was that rarest of artists, a great success in his own lifetime. He was born in 23 April 1775 at 26 Maiden Lane above his father’s barber shop in the Covent Garden area. Home life was stressful with a mother who erupted in murderous tantrums which eventually landed her in an insane asylum.  Maybe she was overworked and had no help.

By 1804, Turner organized a gallery to exhibit his work at 64 Harley St. where he’d been living since 1804. In 1806 he acquired a house  at 6 West End, Upper Mall Hammersmith, keeping the Harley St. location as well.  Sometime around 1810 Turner changed addresses in London to 47 Queen Ann St. West, a skip and a jump from Harley St. By 1813, he’d designed and built a villa in Twickenham, named Solus Lodge and subsequently called Sandycombe Lodge.

Turner also is linked with Chelsea. He was attracted to the changing colors of the river.

Sunset by J.M.W. Turner.

Sunset by J.M.W. Turner.

Usually considered a painter of seascapes, Turner sketched and painted wherever he traveled, recording the passing scene. During his travels through Europe, watercolors and tablet at hand, he sketched public and private life – as played out in the streets and in the intimacy of various stately homes where he was invited by the nobility.

Chelsea, the Thames and Cremorne Gardens

Turner decided to buy a cottage in Chelsea to serve as hideout where he could work. Downriver from the City, Chelsea was then a waterfront neighborhood, not yet expensively chic as during the 19th century and today. He’d kept a painter’s hide out on the Thames before, at Sion Ferry House in Isleworth in the early 1800’s. Social London thought Turner lived with his family, but he spent most of his time at the cottage near Cremorne Gardens , at 118/119 Cheyne Walk, at the corner of Cremorne Road from 1846 until his death 19 Dec. 1851. His memorial is in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The mystic artist and poet William Blake was married in the same church where Turner studied the colors of sunsets, St. Mary’s, Battersea Parish Church on the south side of the Thames. He and Sophia are buried in Bunhill Fields, London.

http://leoplaw.com

Wm and Sophia Blake tombsone, Bunhill Fields, City Road, Finsbury.

Turner’s London is thriving along the Thames. The day’s moods live on and through a squinted eye, the boats and wharves look almost the same as what Turner painted. We can thank his eye astigmatism for paintings awash in brilliant sun, mist and waves splashed on the canvas.

One later Chelsea resident, Henry James, wrote: “The Embankment, which is admirable if not particularly interesting, does what it can, and the mannered houses of Chelsea stare across at Battersea Park like eighteenth-century ladies surveying a horrid wilderness.” (from English Hours)  The American painter John Singer Sargent rendered Henry James’ portrait in oil which hangs in London’s National Portrait Gallery.

James McNeill Whistler, flamboyant ex-pat icon for many caped, incorrigible artists who came after him, also lived in Chelsea. Like Turner, Whistler gravitated to the steamy, foggy Thames embankment. There were sojourns in Paris, but Chelsea was home. The

Etching by James McNeill Whistler. University of Glasgow.

Etching by James McNeill Whistler. University of Glasgow.

Nocturnes with fog low on the river, were painted a few steps from his houses, at  101 Cheyne Walk (7 Lindsey Row at the time) and 21 Cheyne Row in 1890.  Whistler shuttled between Paris and 72 Cheyne Walk, his final home in Chelsea, until his death, July 17, 1903.  He is entombed with his wife Beatrix in London’t Chiswick Cemetery.

Whistler wandered along the river in the evening, mulling his dreams, then later would go out in a boat with a hired assistant and draw in the dead of night. Sometimes capturing the lights of the Cremorne pleasure gardens.  Whistler probably never saw the earlier Vauxhall amusement parks twinkling ion the south side of the Thames, but Hogarth was a regular.

Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge by James A. McNeill Whistler, 1872-75.

Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge by James A. McNeill Whistler, 1872-75.

Some of Whistler’s nocturnes, the murky paintings of the Thames lit by coal fires and moonlight cutting through, were painted from a narrow Chelsea house with a garden facing the Battersea Bridge. Whistler and other Chelsea artists painted the old wooden Battersea which was replaced in 1890 with a steel span.

Turner and Whistler’s London is thriving along the Thames. The day’s moods live on and through a squinted eye, the boats and wharves look almost the same as what Whistler or  Turner painted. We can thank Turner’s eye astigmatism for paintings awash in brilliant sun, mist and waves splashed on the canvas. Turner is buried at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Breathe in London and you breathe history. The streets and walls, the pavement, the people and most of all the river, transmit stories of London lives. Look at London through the lives and works of artists who recorded the city’s nuances and you’ll see a richer, deeper place.

Going there:  The A-Z London Street Atlas (called the “A to Z”) is the best tool for navigating London in digital or paper versions.  The index of all streets and multiple pages of enlarged map segments make this the standard guide for London.

Chelsea and Covent Garden are close to the center of London and easily reached by tube, bus or taxi. GPS, maps or A-Z Atlas in hand, walk through the neighborhoods. Usually, you’ll see a blue metal plaque on the outside of a historically significant building

Where to Eat:   Pétrus, the famous Gordon Ramsey flagship, caught flak (aka great publicity) during the dot-com flash era when a handful of financial managers spent some $65,000 on wine during dinner.

Dante Rosetti Self-portrait, 1847, two years before he met Elizabeth Siddal.

Dante Rosetti Self-portrait, 1847, two years before he met Elizabeth Siddal.

Pre-Raphaelite artist and model Lizzie Siddal and her painter-poet lover Dante Rossetti, lived in Chelsea at 16, Cheyne Walk.  It’s thought they favored meals at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand.

Rule’s Restaurant, 35 Maiden Lane, claims to be London’s oldest restaurant and probably is!  Close to Turner’s birthplace at 26 Maiden Lane, long ago, the restaurant was an artist’s and writer’s hangout. Today, the prices are a bit steep for the scribbling class, but the atmosphere compensates and then some.

Where to see the art: The Tate Gallery offers one-stop viewing of a rich collection of Turner’s works, as well as paintings, drawings and prints by Whistler, Blake and Hogarth.

For John Singer Sargent’s portraits, visit the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery. Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress can be seen in the Soane Museum, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. The National Gallery displays Hogarth’s Marriage a la Mode and other works.

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Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec in Place Pigalle Neighborhood

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Posted by patwa in Artist's Studios, Artists in Paris, Artists' Graves, Paris

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19th century, art, art studios in Paris, artist cafes, bohemia, cafe-life, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, walk in Paris

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec shifted his attention to the Moulin Rouge, 82 Boulevard de Clichy, when the can‑can dancers became all the rage in the 1890s. Dozens of dancers still kick their booties to the rafters on the Moulin Rouge stage, the “greatest cabaret in the world.”

Steps away, rue Frochot, which runs between Place Pigalle and rue Victor Masse,  was home to the Dihau family at number 6.  Monsieur Désiré Dihau, the family patriarch, was a cousin of Toulouse-Lautrec.  The artist designed and illustrated the covers of published new songs by Désiré Dihau, who was a bassoonist with the Paris Opera

Side view of a man in dark 19th c. top hat and coat, seated in a garden, reading a newspaper.

Désiré Dihau. painted by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Orchestra. Toulouse-Lautrec painted his portrait at least twice.  Edgar Degas also painted M. Dihau.

Toulouse-Lautrec was a frequent visitor their third floor flat at number 6, rue Frochot, a small cream-colored building, now with a theater at street level.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s last art studio was at number 15 ave. Frochot,  a private tree-shaded cul-de-sac that takes its name from rue Frochat which is nearly parallel.  Elaborate locked wrought iron and stained glass doors secure this enticing street with an artistic history.

Ave Frochot Paris

Iron gates to private street in Paris.

Gate to ave. Frochot, Paris 9eme.

Famous residents of the gated street (or its more travelled namesake – sources are difficult to verify)  include Alexandre Dumas (père) and Apollonie Aglaé Sabatier, a friend of the poet Baudelaire.  Victor Masse, the composer, died at number 1 ave. Frochot, which is partly visible from outside the secured gates.

 

Artists knocked on the door of the third and fourth floor studio-museum-apartment duplex at 37, rue Victor Masse just off ave. Trudaine. They sought the advice and approval of the master.  His friends, the painters Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, visited to discuss their evolving styles and exploration into other genres.  Degas also regularly spent time with the Manet-Morisot family in Passy, then a suburb of Paris, now the 16th arrondissement.

Degas moved to number 6, Blvd. de Clichy, where he died September 26, 1917 at the age of 83.  A short film of Edgar Degas walking in Paris in 1914 is available on YouTube.

Degas is buried in Montmartre Cemetery, (20, ave. Rachel or walk down the steps from rue Caulaincourt) in Division 4 along ave. Montebello, one of several streets inside the Cemetery.

François Truffaut grave stone in Montmartre Cemetery.

François Truffaut grave stone in Montmartre Cemetery.

 

Company there includes Zola, Berlioz, Offenbach, Heinrich Heine, the artist Fragonard and 20th c. film director Francois Truffaut.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec died at the Chateau de Malromé
in the Gironde on September 9, 1901 at the age of 36. He was buried about 2 kilometers from the Chateau in the cemetery at Verdelais.

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