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Footsteps of the Artists

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Mary Cassatt’s Chateau de Beaufresne

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Posted by patwa in American Artists in France, Artist's Studios, Artists in Paris, Artists Near Paris, Artists' Graves, France Travel

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art history, Cassatt, Degas

 

ChBeaufresnePeatO'Neil

Chateau Beaufresne © L Peat O’Neil

 

 

 

Chateau de Beaufresne

Mary Cassatt lived at Chateau de Beaufresne in the town Le Mesnil-Theribus in the Oise, north east of Paris for the latter part of her life.

She first saw the Chateau in 1891 while the Cassatt family summered at Chateau Bachivillers a few kilometers away.

Cassatt learned that the 17th c. hunting lodge known as Chateau de Beaufresne was for sale and began inquiries.

During the summer of 1892, Mary again rented nearby Chateau Bachivillers while she painted the three enormous panels for the mural “Modern Woman” for the Chicago

ModernWomenMural

Mary Cassatt’s mural for the Chicago World’s Fair, 1893.

World’s Fair which opened May 1, 1893. The mural measured 58 feet by 12 feet and evidently was mishandled and lost after the Exposition closed October 30th.

The timeline for Mary Cassatt’s life at the National Gallery of Art website states she acquired Chateau de Beaufresne in 1894, but another source (McKown, Robin. The World of Mary Cassatt, Thos. Crowell Co. 1972, p. 140.) indicates she was already directing repairs and renovations at the Chateau de Beaufresne during the summer of 1892 while she was renting the nearby Chateau Bachivillers.

FranceSteps_Mlle Lydia Cassatt soeur de la'artiste ou l'Automne. 1880 Mary Cassatt (1844-1926)

Lydia Cassatt, sister of the artist Mary Cassatt.

Many artists and collectors visited Cassatt during the years she lived at her beloved country home. Among them, Mary’s devoted friend, the painter Edgar Degas often visited.

In 2002, I visited the Chateau to follow the footsteps of this beloved American painter.

ChatBeaufresneAandP

© L Peat O’Neil, 2002

The modest-sized chateau is set in swathe of lawns and woods with a stream cutting across the lower estate. The building is currently used as an agricultural education center.  When we arrived by car from nearby Gerberoy, students of the eco-institute were slamming a soccer ball around on the back lawn. A few were sitting on upper window sills, a perch with a hawk’s view of arriving visitors.

The rear chateau is open to the sunshine while the front is shadowed by tall trees.   Two towers rise on each side of the chateau’s façade, each topped with a cupola. External modern staircases are affixed to the towers, for exit in case of fire.

ChBeaufresneNotebookpage

Travel Journal page with sketch of Mary Cassatt’s tomb and layout of Chateau de Beaufresne estate. © L. Peat O’Neil, 2002

Mary Cassatt at Ch de Beaufresne, 1925

Mary Cassatt at Chateau Beaufresne, 1925. Image source: American Archives of Art https://www.aaa.si.edu

 

Mary died June 14, 1926. Her grave is in the village cemetery accessed by a footpath from the Chateau. A small patch of dark evergreen bushes shields the Cassatt family tomb.

Beaufresne_Lane to CassatGrave

Country lane leading from Ch. Beaufresne to the Cassatt Family Tomb in the cemetery of Le Mesnil-Theribus, a village in the Oise district of France.

The grave tablets are plain granite which time has covered with lichen.  On the stones are carved the names Mary, Lydia, Mother, Father, Robert.

 

Resources:

Mary Cassatt Website

NYPL program on Cassatt and the 1893 World Exposition in Chicago.

McKown, Robin. The World of Mary Cassatt, Thos. Crowell Co. 1972

American Archives of Art -photo of Mary Cassatt at Chateau Beaufresne

Bibliotheque INHA

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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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Tags

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.

Footsteps of the Artists :: Kandinsky

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artists in Paris, Artists' Graves, Paris, Study Art in France

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art history, bohemia, design, painting

Vassily Kandinsky

Born in Moscow in 1866,  Vassilly Kandinsky  (also spelled Wassilly) was raised in comfort and educated to be a lawyer. After practicing law for a few years, Kandinsky started painting at age 30 and pursued art as his passion thereafter.

In Russia up until death of Lenin, artists enjoyed favored status. Creativity was encouraged. Artists produced and their ranks multiplied. Kandinsky’s wild images were strange and wondrous, pushing the use of color to expand consciousness. Much beloved by those who knew him during his lifetime, Kandinsky was a  visionary artist with a global audience for his paintings which are in museum and private collections around the world.

Kandinsky read the occult teachers popular in the early 20th century.  He synthesized evolving precepts of anti-materialism and creativity into his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art published in 1910.

Concerning the Spiritual in Art
by V. Kandinsky

Vassily Kandinsky and his wife Nina moved to Paris in 1933, he came as an exile who’d lost his professorship in Munich after the Nazis closed the school.  They also revoked his German citizenship acquired in 1927.

 

 

 

Vassilly and Nina Kandinsky settled in suburban Neuilly-sur-Seine on the sixth floor of a building overlooking the river.

Early 20th c. view of Paris
Neuilly-sur-Seine in distance

This was the era when Paris warmly welcomed refugees from other parts of Europe and beyond. Foreign artists included: Miro,  Mondrian, Max Ernst, Brancusi, Rivera and many others.

 

 

They lived near the Bois de Boulogne with a view of Mont Valerien. After Liberation Day in 1945, the Mont Valerien property became a monument to those who were executed for work in the French underground resistance to Nazi occupation.

– Bois de Boulogne, Paris 1925

The Russian-French designer Sonia Delaunay and her husband Charles Delaunay were friendly colleagues of the Kandinskys.  Fernand Leger and Jean Arp were also part of their circle, though Leger spent the World War II years teaching at Yale. Kandinsky liked to vacation at Cauterets in the Hautes-Pyrenees.

Kandinsky Color Study

For Kandinsky, the stateless citizen who fled to Paris, success and appreciation came during his lifetime.  There were exhibitions in 1936, 1939, and 1942 at the Gallery Jeanne Bucher.  Nina Kandinsky dubbed 1934-1944 “the years of synthesis”.

The artist became a French citizen in 1939 and died in 1944.  A school in Neuilly-sur-Seine bears his name.  Kandinsky is buried at New Communal Cemetery, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
References

* Hilton Kramer on Kandinsky in Paris, The New Criterion, April 1985.

* Francois Le Targat,  Kandinsky, Rizzoli, 1987.

Footsteps of the Artists :: Auvers-sur-Oise

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artists Near Paris, Artists' Graves, France Travel, Paris

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Tags

art history, art studios in Paris, artist cafes, driving tours, Vincent Van Gogh

Auvers-sur-Oise and region.

 

Auvers, a village north west of Paris on the Oise River, attracted numerous artists during the latter part of the 19th c.  The town is probably most famous as the site for Vincent Van Gogh’s final burst of creativity and death.

Vincent Van Gogh wasn’t the only painter who lived and worked in Auvers.  Situated just 30 kms.  from Paris, Auvers offered exceptional diversity of scenes, light and atmosphere.  What a surprise of real countryside with light playing on the fields and water, fog and movement on the river, thatch roof cottages, stone houses, fields, animals, and rutted roads.In 1849 the railroad came, making Auvers less than 1 hour travel time from Gare du Nord.  Sundays brought the great exodus — artists and writers scrammed out of town.  Plenty of other folks did too.

Paintings by artists who lived and worked in Auvers hang in museum collections around the world, from the Metropolitan in NYC and the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, to  Musee de la Chartreuse, Musee de Pontoise, the Basel Museum and National Gallery of Prague.  Paintings created in Auvers are also featured in private collections.

The influx of artists might have started during the summer of 1854 when Corot and Daubigny painted together at Auvers. Dabigny bought land there in 1860.

In 1873 Paul Cezanne and Hortense, his companion, moved into a house close to Dr. Gachet’s in Auvers.  Cezanne continue to live and work there in 1874.  A decade earlier, Daubigny had helped Pissarro enter the Salon of 1864.  His children Karl and Cecile were friends of the painters and became painters themselves.  Berthe Morisot admitted to the Salon the same year with “An Old Road at Auvers.”

Daubigny continued to help artists promote their work.  He championed Renoir who was denied admission to the Salon in 1866 and  Pissarro (denied in 1867), as well as other painters.  Monet, Pissaro and Daubigny were refuges together in London during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.  They were in contact with Durand Ruel Gallery who sold works by Corot and Daubigny.

Pissarro lived in Pontoise and was considered a God-father to Gaugin and Cezanne. The three artists are buried at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris:  J-B Corot in 1875, Daubigny in 1876 and Daumier in 1879.

April 1887 marked the first impressionist group show in Paris. Pissaro organized (along with Monet, Degas, Guillaumin, Morisot, Sisley and others) the “Society Anonyme des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs” for seven impressionist shows held during a span of 12 years.

Other Auvers painters whose names are not so current in the popular mind include: Charles Beauverie, Octave Linet lived in Eragny and painted in Auvers. Giran Max.

Van Gogh arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise on May 21, 1890 and worked with fury:  70 days and 70 paintings. Treasuring the self-portrait he’d one in St. Remy where he rested in a hospital, Van Gogh brought the portrait to Auvers and kept in his room at Auberge Ravoux.  Visitors can see Van Gogh’s garret and the Auberge serves perhaps the best lunch in town.
Wander around the town on foot to appreciate the intimacy of the neighborhood.  Stand in the same spots where Van Gogh studied the landscape and whipped paintings out of his soul Auvers.  Trek up to the church to pay homage at the small cemetery and leave a pebble on a tombstone.
A Japanese design influence on Van Gogh’s technique is suggested in the paintings of Dr. Gachet’s house.   Daubigny’s Garden, one of three versions of this garden painted by Van Gogh, hangs in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

He wrote to his brother:  “There are many private homes and modern, middle-class dwellings which are very pleasant, sunny and filled with flowers. And this in a countryside that is almost plump.  Right at present the development of a new society amidst the old is not at all disagreeable.  There’s quite an aura of well-being.  Calm, just like at Puvis de Chavannes…no factories, only beautiful greenery, abundant and well-kept.” Letter to Theo and Jo, his brother and sister in law, late May, 1890.

The big change for Van Gogh was painting in open air.  Painting ordinary nature not idealized classically composed scenes.  He painted peasants doing vernacular chores.  The paintings described a moment of light with a  balance of mass and movement.

Van Gogh discovered emotion in human faces, cut through pretense to feeling.  He reveled in color and defined brushstrokes.

Vincent Van Gogh never left Auvers-sr-Oise.  He is buried alongside his brother Theo in the Auvers churchyard, a short walk from town.

Vincent Van Gogh’s tombstone.

Reference:

Auvers or The Painter’s Eye

Maire-Paule Defossez

Translated: Patricia Wallace Costa

Paris: Editions der Valhermeil, 1986.

Study Art in Paris

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artists in Paris, France Travel, Paris, Study Art in France

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art, art history, design, education, painting, photography, sculpture

Step into the Paris that seduced artists from all over the world — the Paris of your dreams.  We’ll show you around Paris of the 21st century with an eye to the traces of decades and centuries past. Like the bumbling hero in Woody Allen’s clever film Midnight in Paris, you can step through the veil of time and paint yourself into a living reverie.  Let us be your guide while you experience the captivating scenes and mysteries of the City of Light.

We’ll follow the Footsteps of the Artists all around France, and visit resort locations where artists and writers gathered to savor nature and revive their enthusiasm.

Research for Footsteps of the Artists covers four decades of living and walking through French cities and towns.  We’ll start with a particular focus on Paris by visiting the academies and studios of artists who created in the city that is sometimes called everyone’s hometown of the heart and soul.

Make your dream of painting in France come true.  Explore these selected art study opportunities and create your trip.  Studying art in Paris is possible!

Art Study in Paris

Wice,  an Anglophone organization in Paris, offers art history tours, painting classes and French lifestyle orientation for visitors and residents.

Montparnasse was once the heart of alternative living in Paris.  Écoles de Condé, a design and graphic arts academy, provides an innovative avant-garde atmosphere that echoes the the eras that attracted international artists to Montparnasse from the 1880s to the current day.

Led by a faculty of internationally acclaimed artists, the Parsons in Paris program provides entree to galleries and art collections. Continuing education courses offer a chance to study fashion design, illustration or art.  Experience the best of the world’s art capital by attending one-week drawing and painting sessions tailored for adult learners at the Parsons Studios, 14, rue Letellier on the left bank near the Eiffel Tower.

The American University in Paris offers summer art courses for degree and non-degree students.

Region:  Gascony – Southwest France

The Nadaï Advanced School in Decorative Painting offers high quality teaching in decorative techniques such as  faux marble, patina, murals and trompe l’oeil. Courses are taught by accomplished masters and renowned artists, notably Michel Nadaï, designated a Meilleur Ouvrier de France (best fine artist) by the French government. The courses are taught at the  atelier in the bucolic Southwest region of France.

The Painting School of Montmiral offers courses for small groups of serious students at all levels, beginner to professional.  Students work in the medium of their choice.  The school leader — artist Francis Pratt — has done research into how we use our eyes when painting and drawing and has published widely.

Region: Provence – Southern France

Lacoste, now part of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), is a unique artistic community located in the medieval village of Lacoste in the Luberon area of Provence. Lacoste’s faculty are part of SCAD. Teaching assistants and visiting artists are chosen for their ability to share their knowledge, skill and personal attitudes.

The Marchutz School offers courses in Painting, Drawing, and Art Criticism for undergraduates and non-traditional students.  The school’s location in Aix-en-Provence offers incomparable landscapes; this is region where Cezanne lived and painted. Students travel around the region and beyond to take full advantage of the landscape, architecture and museums.

Region: Brittany – Northwest France

The Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art is an international academy of studio arts and art history in the historic artist colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany, on the Atlantic coast west of Paris. Courses focus on the history and avant-garde traditions of the area as well as the ancient standing stones of Carnac.

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