Saturday 23 March 2013

The bathroom.

Above; Awoman bathing her feet; Jean-Leon Gerome  

BATHROOMS.

My new bathroom is getting closer.
They were here today taking measurements.
I’m helping, I’m stripping wallpaper.
I’ve already taken all the old shelves and cabinets down.
I’m also going to paint the ceiling
You can’t imagine how grateful I am.
All I can think about is bathrooms.

The bathroom is my inspiration for Art Sunday today.



This artist has painted a series of ‘bathroom paintngs’
http://arielchurnin.com/2008/01/atelier-work-fall-2007.html

 
This site has lots of vintage pictures of bathrooms.

http://1912bungalow.com/2004/03/historical-bathroom-photos-2/


This is a site full of bathroom prints .

http://bathroomartprints.com/


So here are my ‘bathroom’ inspired paintings.


The Tub, Dagas
Red haired bather, Dagas
La Toilette , Dagas
The Toilette, Mary Cassell 
Woman in a bath Dagas
The Toilette, Lautrec
The bath, Edward George Stevens




 


A small favour


I've posted this on my main site and now I realise, maybe I should post it on all three of my sites, it just makes my life a bit easier. 

I've been here a while now, but being a little slow sometimes, I've only just realised its possible to follow other blog sites via email alert. Oh that makes life so much easier, I've added the little gadget that allows any one to follow this via email alert, and if by chance you have not added it to your page.........please, please do. It makes life so much easier for me. If by chance I was not the only one not to know how to do this, go to layout and then to gadgets and then click 'follow by email'. 
  Thank you for making it easier for me to follow you.  :-)

Sunday 17 March 2013

Artemisia Gentileschi: Early Italian Baroque painter.

Artemisia Gentileschi:
1593-1652 was an Italian Early Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation influenced by Caravaggio. In an era when women painters were not easily accepted by the artistic community, she was the first female painter to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence. She was one of the first female artists to paint historical and religious paintings, at a time when such heroic themes were considered beyond a woman's reach. Artemisia Gentileschi was born in Rome, July 8, 1593, the first child of the Tuscan painter Orazio Gentileschi, one of the best representatives of the school of Caravaggio. Artemisia was introduced to painting in her father's workshop, showing much more talent than her brothers, who worked alongside her. She learned drawing, how to mix color and how to paint. Since her father's style took inspiration from Caravaggio during that period, her style was just as heavily influenced in turn. But her approach to subject matter was different from her father's, as her paintings are highly naturalistic, where Orazio's are idealized. The first work of the young 17-year-old Artemisia was the Susanna e i Vecchioni (Susanna and the Elders) (1610, Schönborn collection in Pommersfelden). The picture shows how Artemisia assimilated the realism of Caravaggio without being indifferent to the language of the Bologna school
During the trial Artemisia was given a gynecological examination and was tortured using a device made of thongs wrapped around the fingers and tightened by degrees ?? a particularly cruel torture to a painter. Both procedures were used to corroborate the truth of her allegation, the torture device used due to the belief that if a person can tell the same story under torture as without it, the story must be true



Artemisia Gentileschi:
 (Born July 8th 1593, Died 1653)
Artemisia Gentileschi was the most important, in fact the ONLY important woman painter of Early Modern Europe.
She was born on July 8, 1593 to artist Orazio Gentileschi, and his wife Prudentia Montone, who died when Artemisia was only 12. Her father trained her from an early age as an artist, mostly for his own benefit. 

He didn’t expect his daughter to become an artist, he just expected her to be competent enough to assist him. He introduced her to the numerous artists of Rome, including Caravaggio whose use of dramatic chiaroscuro (light and shadow) came to have a great influence on her work. As a woman she was excluded from apprenticeship in the studios of successful artists, she was excluded for any official training or education. She remained illiterate, unable to read or write at all until adulthood. She relied on her own innate skill and the technical instruction of her father to produce her early paintings. However, regardless of these disadvantages,  she was producing works which were remarkable at the young age of just seventeen. 

This is when she painted her interpretation of Susanna and the Elders, (painted in 1610). This was a radical painting. Other contemporary paintings of this subject focused on the men and portrayed Susanna in the role of seductress and whore. Artemisia showed two lecherous old men leering over the wall at a shy and terrified and young woman. It was this painting that forced her father to recognize her as more than his assistant and a painter in her own right. It soon became obvious that his daughter was more talented than him.
 
As was the normal practice of the time; Orazio Gentileschi worked in collaboration with several other painters. One of these was a sleezy young man from Florence, called Agostino Tassi.  Orazio apparently took this young painter into his home, without any checks on the young mans background, introduced him to his daughter and allowed the young man unchaperoned access to Artemisia on the pretext of providing her with tuition. 
Since Tassi had previously earned the reputation as a man not to be trusted around women, it’s hard to understand why Orazio willingly allowed this, but he did. Tassi pursued Artemisia and eventually cornered her and brutally raped her. When she admitted the rape, which was about a year after it happened, her father filed suit against Tassi for injury and damage.
 When Artemisia accused Tassi of rape it seems the father turned against her and was more concerned about the family name and the unlikelihood of Artemisia ever finding a husband than he was about the ordeal suffered by his daughter. During the year following the rape, Tassi manipulated and blackmailed Artemisia. 

He told her no one would believe her,  her reputation was ruined and she would be scorned by every one. He promised to marry her if she kept quiet and allowed him to share her bed; and she agreed, probably because she felt she had no choice. Remarkably; the transcripts of the seven-month-long rape trial have survived and amongst the evidence is the record of the damage inflicted to Tassi by Artemisia in her ferocious attempt to fight him off.
 
According to trial records Artemisia testified that Tassi, with the help of family friends, had attempted to be alone with her repeatedly, and raped her when he finally succeeded in cornering her in her bedroom. She told how he tried to placate her afterwards by promising to marry her, and how he successfully gained access to her bedroom on the strength of that promise. 

She told how he always avoided keeping his promise and never actually married her. The trial records could be written for any modern tabloid, they tell how she was accused of not being a virgin at the time and of having many lovers before the incident. She was forced to undergo examination by midwives to determine whether she had been "deflowered" recently or a long time ago.
 
Perhaps even harder to bare for Artemisia was the testimony of Tassi that her artistic skills were so poor he had been employed to teach her the rules of perspective. He claimed this is what he was doing on the day of the alleged rape.  Tassi denied ever having had sexual relations with Artemisia and brought witnesses to testify that she was "an insatiable whore." Their testimony was refuted by Orazio (who brought countersuit for perjury), and Artemisia's accusations against Tassi were corroborated by a former friend of his who recounted Tassi's boasting about his sexual exploits at Artemisia's expense. 

It was then revealed that Tassi had earlier been imprisoned for incest with his sister-in-law and had been charged with arranging the murder of his wife. He was ultimately convicted on the charge of raping Artemisia; Tassi was convicted, but released by the judge. That was the same judge who ordered Artemisia to be tortured as a means of proving her honesty. She risked her painters hands to the thumb screw in order to prove her innocence and even after she was believed he served under a year in prison and to make matters worse, he was then invited back into the Gentileschi household by Orazio.
This unwelcome invite no doubt encouraged (the already pregnant) Artemisia  into the hastily arranged marriage to Florentine artist and family friend Pietro Antonio di Vincenzo Stiattesi. They married just one month after the trial ended, in November of 1612, and then moved to Florence. The marriage only lasted a few years but while she was married she and her husband both worked at the Academy of Design, and in 1616 Artemisia became an official member of the Academy, which was previously unheard of for a woman. This honour was only made possible because she was supported by her patron the Grand Duke Cosimo 11, member  of the powerful Medici family.  Prior to this, although she was the main bred winner of the family, it was her husband who negotiated commissions and the buying and selling of her work and equipment. Her paintings were owned by her husband, she was virtually owned by her husband, and all dealings concerning patrons, commissions and finance, were dealt with by the husband but; following her admission to the Academy, she became an emancipated woman and was able to conduct her own affairs. Membership of the Academy allowed Artemisia to officially gain emancipation and independence.  During her time in Florence, her patron, the Grand Duke, commissioned several paintings from her, he was a real fan of her work but when he died in 1621 she left Florence and returned to Rome as head of her own household. By this time Artemisia had grown into an educated and cultured woman, mostly self taught and she was a prolific and respected painter.
Over the next few years she moved around, always as head of her own household which usually comprised of herself, her daughters and her maidservants, and always as a successful painter. She was commissioned by some of the periods’ most influential people for works in Rome, Genoa, Naples and Venice. She was continually struggling to balance her own artistic preferences with the preferences of her patrons, who made her livelihood possible. She was also constantly seeking new patrons. The patron she finally attached herself was King Charles I of England. Artemisia was in residence at the English court between 1638 and 1641, she was one of many continental artists invited there by the art-collecting king.
She may even have gone to England at her fathers request to assist him in his ambitious project of decorating the ceilings of Queen’s house at Greenwich. In the years immediately following the rape and trial father and daughter were estranged, but in later life they were reunited and are known to have worked together. After civil war had broken out in England in 1641 Artemisia returned to Naples where she lived until her death.

She remained very active at Naples, she painting at least five variations on Bathsheba and perhaps another Judith during those final years. During her last ten years, her primary patron was Don Antonio Ruffo; more is known about these final years than many others due to 28 of her letters to him which have survived.

The exact cause and date of Artemisia's death is not recorded, but she most likely died in 1652. Despite being one of the best painters of her time, despite her extraordinary talent and technical expertise; the rape trial, her unconventional life as an emancipated female painter, and her preference for paintings of powerful women struggling against male dominance, did not endear her to the male aristocracy.
The only record of her death is in two satiric epitaphs, frequently translated and reprinted, they make no mention of her art but figure her in exclusively sexual terms as a nymphomaniac and adulterer. Thirty four of her paintings survive today, as well as the near complete transcript of the rape trial, published in full in Mary Gerrard's Artemisia Gentileschi, The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art. This is a book worth reading.

Art historian Charles Moffat believes Artemisia may have committed suicide, which would explain why the cause of her death was not recorded. Personally I find that hard to believe, I can’t imagine why a woman who had the courage to be an independent woman in an age of the patriarch, who had suffered rape but refused to be victimized and who lived through the brutalizing ordeal of the rape trial and torture would then, when she had found independence and success, commit suicide. We will never know with certainty how or why she died, but we can know she was a remarkable painter, and more importantly, a remarkable woman.


Saturday 2 March 2013

Midge Gourlay, Scottish artist.



http://www.portappinstudio.co.uk/artists/midge/biography

Please visit her website, there are many examples of her extraordinary work.

Midge Gourlay is a textile artist and teacher, trained at Glasgow School of Art and specialising in embroidered and woven textiles.

Her work is mainly inspired by West Highland land and seascapes and by regular visits to the Corbières region of southwest France. She uses techniques which include dyeing, fabric manipulation with machine embroidery, paint and handmade silk paper.
At the start of the twentieth century a group of young women worked and studied together in Glasgow. They specialized in needlecraft, embroidery, jewelry making, metal craft and design. Their work was intricate and decorative. These women became affectionately known as ‘The Glasgow Girls’, they were contemporaries of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his friend and fellow architect/artist Herbert McNair. Two of the leading lights of this movement were sisters Margaret and Frances MacDonald who married Mackintosh and McNair. 

And the reason all of this is relevant is because these women brought needlecraft and embroidery out from the shadows and made it part of mainstream art. Prior to this movement needlecraft was thought of as something genteel ladies did to pass the time, it was not considered ‘art’.




 Needlecraft was the poor relation in the art world; it was low status art and could not compete with ‘proper art’ produced by male artists. Margaret and Frances MacDonald, and their fellow Glasgow Girls changed this, their work was clever, intricate and original, it made its mark on the art world. They paved the way for contemporary artists like Midge Gourlay. 
It’s no coincidence that Midge trained at the same college, Glasgow College of Art’, as the Glasgow Girls attended over 100 years ago. 


I think this is truly a case of ‘you reap what you sow’…………….Her work is so sought after and respected various Churches have commissioned her to produce spcial pieces for them.




Friday 1 March 2013

Claire Wills




Art Sunday; Claire Wills,
Contemporary Scottish artist.
Most of her paintings plus more information about her can be found on her website, its well worth a visit.
http://www.clairewills.co.uk/index.html

Personally I’m very taken with her choice of colours, these paintnings remind me of the song ‘Lucy in the sky with diamonds’, within these paintings you find the ‘tangerine trees and marmalade skies’, and the ‘Cellophane flowers of yellow and green’. 
I think this lady must be the original ‘girl with the kaleidoscope eyes’.  It never ceases to amaze me how so many fine Scottish Artists manage to reproduce the landscape in these vibrant colours. To the untrained eye, Scotland and its landscapes can appear dull, gray and permanently overcast. This lady sees and reproduces the hidden colours of Scotland.

About Claire Wills
Claire graduated from the University of Humberside in 1996 with a degree in Fine Art after which she travelled extensively, gaining inspiration from a wide variety of different cultures and locations such as Tanzania, Budapest, Germany, Jamaica, Ireland, the Channel Islands, and also Cornwall and rural Herefordshire.


In her paintings Claire aims to create engaging contemporary interpretations of land and seascapes through abstract ideas of places or scenes, and she particularly enjoys making paintings of wide-open spaces, which give a feeling of calm isolation where ‘one can become lost in thought’.


Claire uses mixed media; layers of delicate papers are often used to create a surface with a variety of patterns and textures as a base on which to work.


Most recently Claire has been focusing on landscapes and seascapes, often inspired by the many pretty towns and villages of Scotland.