Contents

Study Guide for The Louvre:  The Golden Prison (MP 23)
The Artist Was a Woman (SL 1897)
Note on Nudes and Sexism
Note about Still-Life Genre
African-European & African-American Artists

When NBC made the film back in the 1960's, the Louvre had two million visitors a year.  The economic impact of art and great museums for a city, therefore, can be immense. Figuring the two million visitors in local terms, using All-Tel Stadium's 70,000 seats, we would have to have 28.57 games (almost three seasons to equal that a great museum does in Paris).

The Louvre is located in the center of Paris, France.  You have to go back to 1190 AD to find a Paris without the Louvre.  It was originally built by King Phillip Augustus as a fortress, dungeon, kennel for dogs, etc.

Scholars are not certain about the origin of the name.  Perhaps it comes from an Old French word for lepers or from louvetterie (for "kennel").

During the next 350 years, additions and improvements were made, and also various older parts of the Louvre probably deteriorated.  At any rate, it was eventually torn down by King Francis I (born in 1494).  Francis I was an interesting figure in French and European politics and in art.  He purchased paintings by Raphael, Titian, and by another Italian, Leonardo da Vinci.  Legend says that Leonardo died in his arms.

The Louvre was rebuilt by King Henry II (1519-59), who disliked the Italian Renaissance style and preferred the French Renaissance style.  His architect was Pierre Lescot.  The narration points out that Henry II was married to an Italian, Catherine de Medici, who bore him ten children; however, he was really in love with his mistress, Diana de Potier. Throughout the Louvre, he put images and references to this woman, who bore him one child.  He had rejected two statues by Michelangelo.

Catherine de Medici built the Tuileries, which received its name from the blue tiles with which it was covered.  The architect for the project begun in 1564 was Philibert Delorme, with the gardens being laid out by landscape architect Andre Lenôtre.  This was the site of many glorious and grotesque events in French history, including the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of the French Huguenots (Protestants).

Her son-in-law, Henry IV (also known as Henry of Navarre), was the next great builder of the Louvre complex. Ironically, he began his political life as a leader of the Huguenots and angered both Catholics and Protestants by marrying Margaret of Valois.  The Massacre above occurred a week later, forcing him to accept Catholicism.  (The pope annulled his first marriage in 1599 so he could marry Marie de Medicis.)

Henry IV (1553-1610) took thirteen years to build the 950-foot Grand Gallery.  Occasionally, they would hunt foxes with dogs and horses in the Gallery.  (Denson's First Principle of Houses: If you find the need to ride horses through your home, you've overbuilt and you're losing your sense of proportion.)

After Henry's assassination by a religious fanatic Francois Ravaillac in 1610, his widow (1573-1642) commissioned Peter Paul Rubens to depict their grand and glorious career as king and consort.  Rubens produced twenty-one giant paintings in three years, and, when Marie disliked one, he and his workshop produced a replacement in three weeks.

Louis XIII (1601-43), according to the film, had few accomplishments.  His mother, Marie de Medicis, governed as regent for seven years until Cardinal Duc de Richilieu became Louis' chief minister and exiled her.  Louis tore down the great wall of Paris, and he fathered Louis XIV.  He was offended by the Seine River, which was the main sewer of Paris in those days.  Denson's First Principle of Old European Rivers is "A person who swam in the Seine was called ____________________."  (Rim-shot!)

Louis XIV (1638-1715) was known as the "Sun King."  He ascended the throne at the age of five and ruled for seventy-two years, the longest recorded reign in recent Western history, eventually being succeeded by his great-grandson.  He is also famous for saying, "L'etat c'est moi" (I am the state), even though he wasn't.  (France had a regent until he was about twenty.)  Since the film focuses on the Louvre, this king's greatest accomplishment was the building of the facade, the Colonnade (architectural credit going to Claude Perrault, Louis le Vau, and Charles Le Brun for the east facade).  Louis XIV brought much attention to himself, honoring the playwright Moliere, for example, by dining with the commoner.  He constructed six palaces, including the palace that deserves a film all by itself:  Versailles.

Versailles was a small city about thirty miles from Paris.  At this palace, he had 10,000 attendants.  Moreover, his building of Versailles caused other counts, dukes, etc. throughout Europe to imitate his extravagance.  The bills were not being paid by the upper class or the almost non-existent middle class; instead, the poor were taxed to the hilt to pay for this extravagance.  The film argues that Louis XIV's "life-long infatuation with art, architecture, and himself bankrupted the treasury of France."  Actually, the bankruptcies came because it was a regular practice of the government to declare bankruptcy so it wouldn't have to repay its bills; because other aristocrats tried to be as extravagant as Louis XIV; and because Louis XIV engaged in numerous pointless and expensive wars.  He also stupidly drove off over 200,000 French Huguenot businessmen and their families, ignoring the principle that no nation prospers when it wipes out a productive class.  Louis XIV, however, did spend much money on art, purchasing paintings by Carracci, Titian, Rembrandt, Carravaggio, Giorgione, Van Dyke (portrait of England's Charles I), Rigaud (similar pose for himself).

Several decades later, in the 1790's, the French Revolution occurred, and Louis XVI (1754-1793) and Marie Antoinette kept a date with the iron maiden.  (The Revolution is worth too or three films, though mostly on politics.)

On May 27, 1792, the Louvre became a public museum.  Among the common people, however, one soldier, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), showed ambition and skills and soon occupied the Louvre as emperor.  Several massive paintings of Napoleon were done by the French painter, Jacques Louis David.  Napoleon built a triumphant arch (in the manner of the Ancient Romans) and took the equestrian statues from Venice's Church of San Marco and put them atop the arch.  (The Venetians were horribly upset since they had gone to all the trouble of stabbing Constantinople in the back and stealing them from there.  Oh, yes, and Constantinople had stolen them years before from Italy.)  The Louvre was renamed as the Musee d'Napoleon (Museum of Napoleon).  Twelve years later, however, Napoleon met the British army of Wellington at the battle of Waterloo and gave us the expression, "He met his Waterloo."

As an art collector, Napoleon and his regime had purchased or stolen art from the known world:  Cimabue (700 years ago), Fra Angelico (500 years ago), Ghirlandaio (a teacher of Michelangelo), Mantegna (the sculptor in paint), Quintin Matyss ("The Money Lender").  He also inspired archaeologists who collected works from ancient Persia, Babylon, Egypt, Abyssinia, etc.  One object still in the Louvre is "The Scribe," which is 4,500 years old.  A member of Napoleon's army (Jean François Champollion) figured out how to use the Rosetta Stone to crack the mystery of hieroglyphics.  (An English physicist Thomas Young encouraged him and did preliminary work in the area.)

The film skipped over much history in going from Napoleon to Emperor Napoleon III (also known as Louis Napoleon) and Empress Eugenie.  There was a revolution in 1830, for example, which produced the politically important painting of "Liberty Leading the People, 1830" by Eugene Delacroix.

Extravagance came to the surface again as Napoleon III (1808-1873) and Eugenie became the greatest builders of the Louvre, construction more in five years than all of their predecessors had done.  They even ordered part of the Grand Gallery torn down and rebuilt larger.  (Remember Denson's First Principle of Houses?)  However, they did complete the grand design of the Louvre complex.

From 1850 to 1870 (and into the mid-20th Century), France and Germany sniped at each other and fought intermittent wars.  Paris, for example, endured a siege, during which the French were reduced to eating their pets, the animals in the zoo, and even the rats from the alleys and sewers (apparently quite tastily prepared due to the French expertise in cuisine--yum yum).  The common people (Communists) revolted against the rulers and attacked the Louvre, burning much of the complex.

For twenty years, the Parisians debated what to do with the ruins:  to rebuild or remove the facilities entirely.  They finally decided on the cheaper option of turning the area into a large municipal park (one that rivals London's Hyde Park and New York's Central Park).

With the life force of France drained by the bloodshed of World War I, the French were easily pushed aside by Hitler's armies in the 1940's.  Paris was occupied without a shot being fired.  However, to keep the Nazis from stealing their art objects, they hid the paintings, statues, etc. in caves and other spots.  No art work from the Louvre was stolen, and all were returned.

Denson's sidelight:  The German commander was General Diedrich von Choltitz, who received calls from Hitler and other officials in Berlin, asking, "Ist Paris brennt?" (Is Paris burning?)  Hitler had ordered all the major buildings in Paris to be wired and blown up:  the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Opera, etc.  Von Choltitz defied the order, deciding not to go down in history as the man who had destroyed a thousand-year-old city.  To be fair to the nihilistic Hitler, he was also trying to blow up everything in the Third Reich in the last days of the war since he felt the country didn't deserve to out-live him.

Regarding saving art works, in Britain during World War II, Kenneth Clark had the job of safeguarding the paintings, sculpture, etc. of the National Gallery.  It wasn't safe simply to put them in a remote mansion since some pilot might be unable to reach a target that was fogged in and might drop the bomb load anywhere, even over a remote mansion.  They used caves and old mines, plus shipped them to Canada.

The dream of the return to the museum after hours featured shots of paintings by these artists:  Rembrandt ("Bathesheba"), Frans Hals ("Bohemian Girl"), Rogier van der Weyden (who was known as the painter of the changes of the soul), Jan van Eyke (who could see leaves a mile away and the soul up close), Botticelli, Mary Cassatt (an American), Rubens, David, El Greco, Murillo, Ribera, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh ("Dr. Gachet" portrait with its "distressed expression so typical to our times" -- a work that has apparently been sold to the Japanese for $90+ million).  There were also the pieces of sculpture from the ancient world and the Renaissance:  the Venus de Milo (Golden Aphrodite), the "Winged Victory," and the statues by Michelangelo that Henry II had not liked.

In the thirty years since the NBC film, the Louvre has gone through major changes.  For example, the Impressionist Museum, which was housed in the Jeu de Palme (Tennis Court), has apparently been moved en masse into the 19th Century Museum of Art, which was opened in one of the city's grand old rail-stations.  While digging around the Louvre, workers discovered streets of a buried medieval city; these have been excavated, perhaps beneath the glass "pyramid" that apparently serves as an entrance.

Older textbooks and reference books often neglect to give appropriate credit to the contributions of women artists and African-American (even African-European) artists.  Even white American males were slighted at times: e.g., in the 1700s and early 1800s, Europeans asked, "Who reads an American book, goes to an American play, admires an American painting?"

You will not be familiar with many of the women artists below, and your instructor is only interested in your remembering two or three of the names and in your recognizing certain trends.

In the list, notice the following:

 * How far back in time women artists were doing paintings, etc.

 * Before the 20th Century, the fathers generally had what type of occupation?

 * The degree to which women were being honored by the art Academies of Italy, France, or England.

 * Any relationship between marriage/motherhood and a career in art.

 1.  CATHERINE VAN HEMESSEN, Flemish (1528-1587), was the daughter of an Antwerp artist, Jan van Hemessen, who provided her early instruction.  Of the ten existing paintings done by her, all were painted before 1552, when she was twenty-four.  There is no record of her activities after that.

Example: Young Woman Playing the Virginal (1548), oil on panel.

 2.  *SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA, Italian (1532-1625), was the first Italian woman to become an international celebrity as an artist.  She was the eldest of seven children; her father was a nobleman of Cremona.  Her first drawing master was Bernardo Campi.  She spent her late years in Palermo, where Anthony van Dyke sketched her a year before her death.  She died at age 93.

Painting:  Self-Portrait 1561.  She did at least twelve self-portraits.

3.  LUCIA ANGUISSOLA, Italian (1540-1565):  She was the younger sister of Sofonisba, but only lived twenty-five years.  The critics like to say that Lucia would have been a greater artist than Sofonisba if she had lived.  However, she didn't, so it's not sporting to give her credit for work she didn't do.

Painting:  Portrait of Pietro Maria, about 1560.  The snake around the staff indicates that the subject is a doctor; he may have been Lucia's grandfather.

4.  LAVINIA FONTANA, Italian (1552-1614), was the daughter of Prospero, was leading painter of Bologna.  Lavinia had public and private commissions to do portraits, religious works, mythologies, and altar-pieces.  She married a mediocre artist and had eleven children.  At least 135 works have been attributed to her.

Painting:  Noli Me Tangere ("Touch Me Not"), 1581, is inspired by Correggio's painting of the same subject showing the moment Mary Magdalene receives Christ's blessings and the gesture forbidding her to come any closer (John 20:17).

5.  FEDE GALIZIA, Italian (1578-1630):  She was presumably taught by her father, who was a miniaturist from Trento working in Milan.  Her reputation was a portraitist was established before she was twenty.  She also excelled in still-lifes and did several commissions for churches in Milan.  She also did a Judith picture.

Painting:  Portrait of Paolo Morigia, 1596, shows a Jesuit scholar and historian who has his pen in hand after writing a short poem about the picture and its creator.

6.  ***ARTEMISIA GENTILISCHI, Italian (1593-1652):  International newspapers are referring to her as the "world's greatest woman artist."  Born in Rome, she was the daughter of a painter, Orazio, who was a follower of Caravaggio.  Both Artemisia and her father tackled the subject of Lot and his daughters.  The father's work may be found at
http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o116389.html.  Artemisia's take on the subject is at  http://members.ozemail.com.au/~drbrash/artemisia/lot.html.While she was studying and working in her father's studio, Agnostino Tassi, another artist, who worked for her father, raped her in 1612.  A court trial followed, and Artemisia was tortured with thumb screws (an early lie detector).  She protested that the screws were a poor substitute for the wedding band that her attacker had promised.  She later married a Florentine and had a daughter, Palerma.  When Artemisia was twenty-three, she was made a member of the Florence Academy.

Paintings:  Judith with Her Maidservant, c. 1612;

Judith Beheading Holofernes, c. 1615;

The Penitent Magdalene, 1619;

Judith and Maidservant with Head of Holofernes, c. 1625, (many consider this her masterpiece);

Self-Portrait as "La Pittura" c. 1638 (probably painted in England while she was helping her father set nine canvasses into the ceiling of Queen's House in Greenwich);

David and Bathsheba, c. 1640 (one of six paintings on this subject done by her; her Caravaggesque naturalism is being replaced with classicism; her figures are slimmer, calmer, more etherial than earthly);

Esther Before Ahasuerus, c. 1639 (Esther fasted for several days before she dared to go into the presence of her husband, the Persian king, to beg him not to slaughter her people).
 
 
 

NOTE ON NUDES & SEXISM:  Some feminist critics have complained that art reflects a bias because most nudes have been done of women.  Some women artists in the 20th Century purposely tried to do male nudes to offset the balance.  In truth, many nudes have featured women, though the figures may have originally had significance in promoting fertility (e.g., Venus).  Michelangelo, by contrast, rendered more male nudes than female ones.

 In addition, feminist critics have alleged that only a skilled woman artist can render the female form most effectively since only a woman knows how a woman's body feels.  The position, of course, is silly nonsense.  Any great artist (from painters, actors, poets, to novelists) has to call upon the feminine side and the masculine side to render males and females effectively.

 Jazz analogy:  Probably it was Downbeat magazine in the late 1940s or early 1950s which tested the belief of the time that you could listen and identify the race of a musician.  The blindfold test proved that, if the musicians are first-rate jazz musicians, experts can't tell.

Painting: Porcia Wounding Her Thigh, 1664, depicts a tale from Plutarch's Life of Brutus.  To test her own strength of character, she made a deep wound in her thigh, later telling her husband:

 "Brutus, I am Cato's daughter, and I was brought into thy house, not like a mere concubine, to share thy bed and board merely, but to be a partner in thy troubles.  I know that a woman's nature is thought too weak to endure a secret, but good rearing and excellent companionship go far towards strengthening the character, but now I know I am superior, even to pain."

Painting:  Flowers in a Glass Vase, c. 1615, with two roses, two tulips, a narcissus, anemones, pinks and stocks in an unusual glass vase decorated with a strange mask.

NOTE ABOUT THE STILL-LIFE GENRE:  Male and female artists began focusing on still-lifes in the 1600s.  Today, we may look at a painting of a vase, roses, etc. and NOT realize that the work may have much symbolism.  For example, a cut flower symbolizes human existence.  The blossom will wilt and lose its petals; we humans will sag, degenerate, and die.  The theme may be Vanity, Vanity, All is Vanity (as Ecclesiastes says).

Still-life and genre artists as naturalists:  Both men and women artists of still-lifes or paintings of farm animals and the like functioned as natural scientists and naturalists.  They noted exactly what a flower looked like, from its stem, to its leaves and blossoms.  Prior to photography, excellent still-lifes provided a scientific record.

Paintings:  Self-Portrait, c. 1630, is done in the Hals manner of lively activity and vigorous, free brush work, although her work was done on a smaller scale than Hals's work and has more of a sense of narrative.

The Merry Couple or The Jolly Companions, 1630, had been attributed to Franz Hals until it was cleaned in the 1890s by the Louvre.  A mysterious symbol was uncovered--a J, an L, and a star--the monogram Judith used in signing her work--a pun on her name, which means "lodestar" in Dutch.

The Flute Player, The Proposition, 1631--the tone of the latter is in opposition to her contemporaries, who did boisterous treatments of seduction themes with lifted skirts and leering suitors.

10.  LOUISE MOILLON, French (1610-1669):  One of seven children whose father was a painter and picture dealer.  Her talents were known by the time she was eleven years old.  More than 30 of her works are known, most of them before 1642, two years after her marriage.  She had three children and did not resume painting until after 1685.

Painting:  At the Greengrocer, 1630, was done when she was 20; it's one of four known examples that includes figures with still-life (for which she is best known).

Basket of Apricots, c 1635, is considered a still-life masterpiece, with its trompe l'oeil ("trick the eye") water drops and a drinking fly in the foreground.

11.  MARGARETA HAVERMAN, Dutch (c.1695-1750):  Little is known about her and only two paintings are signed by her.  She is supposed to have gone to Paris and to have been admitted to the Royal Academy, but a year later the Academy decided that her reception piece had been done by her teacher, Jan van Huysum, and she was expelled.  Her signed works, however, indicate she could paint as well as he could.

Painting:  Vase of Flowers, 1716, suffered from either inadequate technical ability of the artist or poor conservation since it has lost color.

12.  MARIA VAN OOSTERWYCH, Dutch (1630-1693):  She was the daughter of a preacher who noticed her artistic talents and sent her to study with Jan Davidsz de Heem in 1658 in Antwerp.  She worked slowly, building up her marvelously finished positions, but she worked everyday.  Her well-made paintings are unlikely to disintegrate.  She never married and gained an international reputation for her art.  Her work is often attributed to de Heem or Willem van Oelst.

Painting:  Vase of Tulips, Roses, and Other Flowers with Insects, 1669.

13.  **RACHEL RUYSCH, DUTCH (1664-1750):  She was born to distinguished parents.  Her mother was the daughter of the architect, Pieter Post, and her father was a professor of anatomy and botany.  Her talents were detected early and at age fifteen she was apprenticed to a Dutch still-life painter.  Rachel married a portrait painter and together they joined the Guild of Painters at The Hague.  She was fortunate to have the wealth to pay for servants.  She had ten children and still managed a lifetime career as a painter.

Paintings:  Flower Piece, 1703;

Fruit, Flowers and Insect, c. 1716, known for being a marvel of scientific observation and a microcosm of the cycle of life:

Still-life with Fruit, Lizards, and Chaffinch Nest, 1717.

14.  ***ROSALBA CARRIERA, Italian (1675-1757): She was the daughter of a poor Venetian public official and a lacemaker.  For her father, she drew patterns at first, then graduated to decorating snuffboxes and to painting miniatures.  She was one of the originators of the rococo style in Italy and France, plus being a favorite of nobility.  She and her two younger sisters were encouraged in the arts by her parents.  Rosalba sent work to Rome and Paris, which resulted in a constant stream of visitors and more requests for work than she could fulfill.  She was elected to Rome's Academy of St. Luke in 1705.  When a client encouraged her to visit Paris in 1720, she was elected to the Royal Academy.  Rosalba returned to Venice, where she lived on the Grand Canal with her widowed mother and younger sister.  She never married.  Rosalba was also noted for her pastel portraits.  In the 1660's four women were elected to the Academy.

Painting:  Self-Portrait, Holding Portrait Of Her Sister, 1715.  She was introduced to pastels by the Venetian painter, Lazzari, who supported himself by making pastel copies of famous paintings.  She was impressed with the speed and subtlety of the medium.  In this self portrait, she portrays her plainness with extreme honesty.

15.  *FRANCOISE DuPARC, French (1741-1778):  Her early art experiences probably were in the studio of her father, Antoine DuParc, the son of sculptor Albert DuParc.  She was born in Spain, but her family moved to Marseilles when she was four.  She studied with Van Loo, a portrait painter of Marseilles.  Close in spirit to Chardin, she was admitted to the Royal Academy in 1776.  She left 41 paintings, but only four are known.

Painting:  The Seller of Tisane shows that she chose her subject matter from the daily lives of working class people.  Here the young woman gazes impassively, as she works her herb-mill that crushes the dried leaves.

16.  ***ANGELICA KAUFFMAN, Swiss (1741-1807):  She began life as the daughter of an obscure painter who was determined that she should do very well.  He saw to it that she was trained by the very best painters of her time.  Angelica went to Rome to study and became a member of the neo-classic movement.  Beautiful and talented, she received much attention.  Goethe, a close friend, said that she could teach craftsmen especially how to work.  He said, "It is a great pleasure to look at pictures with Angelica.  She's sensitive to all that is true and beautiful, and incredibly modest.  Considering her great talent and her fortune, she is not as happy as she deserves to be."  However, the English painter John Constable associated her with decadence and advised the English to forget her.  She began by being ahead of her time, but she may have finished behind it.  She learned from England's Joshua Reynolds, but also showed him a wider range of color and emotion.

Paintings:  Self-Portrait; Cleopatra at the Tomb of Marc Antony, 1770, was painted when classical themes were in vogue, with the scene probably being taken from Plutarch's "Life of Antony."  After receiving permission from Augustus Caesar, Cleopatra visits the tomb of her lover.  Angelica often painted women left alone to fend for themselves.

Virgil Writing His Own Epitaph at Brundisium, 1785, was described thusly in her studio book:  "Virgil, ill and nearing death, writing his epitaph in the presence of his two friends, the poets Variou and Tucca, who are sorrowful at the approaching loss of their friend.  He is writing his won epitaph the country and wars.'"

Corneilia, Mother of the Gracchi, 1785, is based on this anecdote:  "Corneilia, receiving the visit of noblewoman friend of hers, who shows her all her beautiful jewels, asks Corneilia to show her hers.  Corneilia then shows her sons, Tiberius and Gaius...together with her daughter, Sempronia, saying, 'These are my most precious jewels.'"

Self-Portrait, 1770.

17.  ***ANNE VALLAYER-COSTER, French (1744-1818):  The daughter of a goldsmith, she displayed talent with her first painting, done when she was 18.  In 1770, she was unanimously accepted as a member of the Royal Academy and is known today for her "talent [which] is truly that of a man perfected in this genre of painting representing still life."  The moment of this success was saddened by the death of her father.  More than 450 of her works are recorded.

Painting:  The White Soup Bowl, 1771, is one of her most famous paintings--an essay in white.  She pays tribute to Chardin's austerity of praising the virtues of domestic thrift through a design of bold simplicity.

18.  ***ADELAIDE LABELLE-GUIARD, French (1749-1803):  The youngest child of a Paris cloth merchant, she was surrounded by ribbons, laces, and satins -- which she later painted with great authority.  Clever and ambitious, she made friends with many of the Academicians and painted their portraits.  In 1783, she was admitted to the Academy and then waged a campaign to abolish the limit on the number of women members.

Diderot (the "father" of encyclopedias) admired her style:

 "Art is pernicious for females.  It makes them lose a precious modesty, their most beautiful ornament.  And throws them almost always in libertine ways.  But what a man that woman is!"

Painting:  Portrait of the Artist with Two Pupils, Mlle. Marie Gabrielle Capet and Mlle. Carreaux de Rosemond, 1785, is considered one of her masterpieces.  She sent the portrait to the Salon of 1785.  The two students became well known later as a portraitist and miniature painter.  Her painting make the point that there was really room at the Academy for more than four women artists, the official limit at the time.

Portrait of Madame de Genlis, 1790, is of a woman well known in Paris society as a gifted musician, brilliant conversationalist, writer, and educator of aristocratic children.  Madame de Genlis was an unusual teacher because boys were normally educated by male governors.  One of her students later became King Louis Philippe.

19.  MARIE VICTOIRE LEMOINE, French (1754-1820).  Little is known about her life and training except that she exhibited some 20 paintings in the Salon de la Correspondence in 1779 and 1785.  In 1796 and 1814, she exhibited in the official Salon of the Academy.  The Cummer Museum in Jacksonville has a fine portrait she has done of an African-European servant.

Painting:  Interior of the Atelier of a Woman Painter, 1796, is an elaborate composition combining portraiture and genre.  The artist wears her favorite fly-away muslin turban.  There is some debate about the identity of the two women.  One may be Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun in her studio giving a lesson to Lemoine, but, in the year the work was done, Vigee-Lebrun was 41 and Lemoine was 42.  Although it could be an idealized tribute to Vigee-Lebrun, the student may also be Vigee-Lebrun's daughter, Julie, who would be about this age.  Notice that the figures were compressed in the lower half of the canvas.

20.  ***ELIZABETH VIGEE-LEBRUN, French (1755-1842):  The daughter of an artist, she became a successful portraitist of Parisian aristocracy before she was twenty, but she had unfortunate ties to Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette when the revolution swept them out of the palace.  The painter fled France and traveled from court to court in Europe executing well-paid commissions.  She produced 800 paintings during her life.  She once tried to paint in the Kauffman manner.  She was forced to use her personal charm to get an education.  She made a rash marriage to a libertine.

She wrote in her notebook:

 "I do not suppose that any artist images he has attained perfection and far from any presumption on my part, I have never yet been quite satisfied with any work of mine.  My conscience makes me think about it a long time, and touch it up repeatedly."

Daughter with a Mirror, 1786, involves a subtle double-portrait.

Marie-Antoinette in a Blue Dress, c. 1780, was one of at least twenty portraits of the Queen that the painter did.  Vigee-Lebrun was the official painter to the Queen. The painter said of the Queen:  "Brilliant is the word, for her skin was so transparent that it bore no umber in the painting."  Marie-Antoinette, however, was not brilliant in mind since she said many things that offended the French commoners.  When she was imprisoned, she was unwise enough to send letters to foreign rulers asking for their help (in effect, calling for them to invade France).  For that reason, the French snicked her head off.

Marie-Antoinette and her Children, 1788, was the last canvas the artist painted of the doomed Queen.  The young Dauphin, on the right, points to the empty cradle where a fourth child would have rested if it had lived.

Portrait of Hubert Robert, 1788, is of a landscape painter and friend of the artist.  The work features a strong personality on canvas.  Parenthetically, how would a woman painter fend off advances being make by make models?  She wrote:  "Those gentlemen, as soon as I observed an intention on their part of making sheep's eyes at me, I would paint them looking in another direction than mine.  At the least movement of the pupilla, I would say, 'I am doing the eyes now.'"

Portrait of Paisello, 1791, drew this back-handed praise from Jacques-Louis David when the painting was exhibited next to one of his portraits at the Salon:  "They will think that my canvas was painted by a woman and the Portrait of Paisello by a man."

Varvara Ivanovna Narishkine, 1800, is in the Columbus, Ohio Gallery of Fine Art.  The artist said of what we may call this "Cher picture":  "Mme. Narishkine had beautiful, regular features; her figure was slim and supple, her face, which seemed perfectly Greek, make her quite remarkable."

Portrait of Princess Zaionczek, 1819, features a pleasant face, with little soul in the painting.  However, the artist said, "I endeavored to capture the women I was painting, and, whenever possible, the attitude and expression of their countenance; with those who lack character (they exist), I painted dreamy and languid poses."

Germaine Greer in The Obstacle Race:  The Fortunes of Women Painters and their Work gave these bits of information:  There was a scandal regarding an alleged relationship between Vigee-Lebrun and the Comte de Calonne.  She protested in her Souvenirs that she was never a coquette, although Greer said her own self-portraits contradict the statement.  She was the subject of scandalous stories about orgy-like dinners costing 40,00 francs, but her commissions went straight into the pockets of Jean Baptiste-Pierre LeBrun, her libertine husband whom she married in 1774.  Her training with oils began in 1766 when she was eleven.  She was painting from life when she was thirteen.  After her father died, her mother remarried in 1768 to an avaricious jeweller who took everything she earned.

21.  **MARIE GENEVIEVE BOULIAR, French (1762-1825):  Little is known about her life and career other than her first recorded work was done in 1785 and that she submitted works to the Salon from 1791 until 1817.  She never married.  In 1795, she won the Prix d'Encouragement for her idealized painting of the hetaera Aspasia (the courtesan of Pericles in ancient Athens).  The prize represented a short-lived enthusiasm of the Revolution for free love and unfettered womanhood, plus the full intellectual and sexual development of the individual.

Painting:  Portrait of Adelaide Binart (Mme. Alexander Lenoir), 1796, is one of Bouliar's efforts to present another personality without seeming to impose her own.  Her portraits are informal in spirit and are freely painted.  One can sense a kinship between the artist and model, both entering the profession at the same time.

22.  *CONSTANCE MARIE CHARPENTIER, French (1767-1849): Although she studied with LaFitte, Gerard, and Bouillon, she is traditionally associated with David.  Between 1795 and 1819, the Parisian native exhibited over 30 paintings in at least 10 Salons.  On two occasions, she received awards.

Painting:  Melancholy, 1801, is inspired by the writings of Rousseau and the growing Romantic movement in art.  The isolated figure of Melancholy became a popular subject in late 18th Century and early 19th Century French and English art.

23.  **ROSA BONHEUR, French (1822-1899)  Remaining unmarried because she claimed that being a wife and mother would demand full attention, a kind of draining away of creative energies from her work, Bonheur paralleled the woman writer, George Sand.  Bonheur preferred a masculine style of dress, cross-dressing for protection in public.  Her father, Raymond Bonheur, a member of the St. Simonian religious sect, preached the unity and holiness of all living things, along with the absolute equality of the sexes.  The sect even predicated a female Messiah.  She said, "Why wouldn't I be proud of being a woman?  My father, that enthusiastic apostle of humanity, often repeated to me that the mission of woman was to elevate the human race."

Paintings:  The Horse Fair, 1853-55, is her masterpiece.  When it was purchased by Cornelius Vanderbilt and brought to the U.S., it became the most famous painting in America at the time.  It is noted for its pure energy and pure movement on canvas.

 Oil Sketch for Haymaking in Auvergne, 1855, shows the painter experimenting about a possible subject to be rendered carefully later on.

 Gathering for the Hunt, 1856, demonstrates that animals were her specialty and that she studied their anatomy at slaughter houses, cattle markets, county fairs, etc.

 Study of Rams and Study of Wild Boars are other practice works.  She said, "I became an animal painter because I love to move among animals.  I will study an animal and draw it in the position it took, and, when it changed to another position, I would draw that."

 Cattle Painting, c. 1856, and Study of Lions, c. 1880, are other practice works.  Two lions were actually delivered to Rosa's home near Fontainebleau, which had acres of pasture and woodlands.  Her collection of gazelles, deer, elk, ponies, goats, etc. roamed freely.  The lions, however, frightened passersby and had to be given to the zoo.

 Colonel W. F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, 1889, is what resulted when Cody visited Fontainebleau during his troop of bronco riders and Indians' performances for the Paris Exposition of 1889.  To reciprocate, he sent her a gift of two broncos.  This painting is in the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming.

 24.  ***MARY CASSATT, American (1844-1926):  When her father heard she wanted to become an artist, he was not enthusiastic:  he said he would wish her to be dead instead.  However, Cassatt lived, studied, and worked in Paris, to which she was "drawn like a magnet" during the Impressionist period.  She wrote, "No amount of bodily suffering would seem for me too great a price for the pleasure of being in a country where one could have some art advantages.  I recognized who were my true masters.  I admired Manet, Courbet, and Degas.  I hated conventional art.  I began to live."  Although unknown in America, Cassatt encouraged many influential families to purchase works of many French Impressionists, plus works by such forgotten painters as El Greco.

 Paintings:  Five O'Clock Tea, 1880, was submitted to the fifth Impressionist exhibit.  Critic Huysmans said, "In spite of her personality, which is still not completely free, Miss Cassatt had, nevertheless, a curiosity, a special attraction, for a flutter of feminine nerves passes through her painting, which is more poised, more calm, more able than that of Mme. [Berthe] Morisot," another painter.

 Young Woman in Black, 1883, shows the influence of Degas in its evident use of visible brushwork, the silhouette of the figure, and the painted fan on the wall, the latter a device used to add interest with a "picture within a picture."

 The Boating Party, 1893, was a personal painting.  In 1914, she wrote: ". . . I do not want to sell it; I have already promised it to my family.  It was done at Antibes twenty years ago -- the year when my niece come into the world."

 The Coiffure,  1891, is a color print with drypoint, soft-ground, and aquatint.  She worked on copper to perfect her line and learned from Degas the technique of soft-ground etching and aquatint.  Her style underwent simplification after she studied Japanese prints, resulting in the strong linear design of the color prints of the 1890's.

 Peasant Mother and Child, c. 1894, is a color print and drypoint and aquatint.  Cassatt devoted herself to printing because she thought it was a good way to bring art to the public at reasonable prices.

 25.  **LADY ELIZABETH (THOMPSON) BUTLER, British (1850-1933):  Born in Switzerland of English parents who encouraged her and her sister (the poet Alice Neynell) in athletic activities, intellectual training and travel, she became the painter of a major work,  Quatre Bras, 1815, about the Battle of Waterloo.  In 1877, she married a military man, travelled with him to his outpost assignments, and accurately recorded in notebooks and sketchbooks her observations of military life.  In 1874, she sent her large painting, Calling the Roll before an Engagement--the Crimea, to the hanging committee of the Royal Academy.

 Painting:  Quatre Bras, 1815, 1875, was a difficult project.  Lady Butler not only bought a field and restaged the Battle of Waterloo, she submitted herself to a cavalry charge to experience the fear of a foot soldier.  Her mother bought rye to have trampled into the field.  Lady Butler's achievement was not enough to elect her into the Royal Academy, since she lost by two votes.  John Ruskin said of the painting: "I never approached a picture with. . .more. . .prejudice against it than I did Miss Thompson's  'Ouatre Bras'--partly because I always said that no woman could paint and secondly because I thought what the public make a fuss about must be good for nothing."

 26.  **CECILIA BEAUX, American (1855-1942):  Shortly after Cecilia's birth, her mother died.  She was raised by relatives in Philadelphia.  From her French father, she developed an interest in European culture; from her grandmother, she was taught that "no kind of art should be treated as a toy or plaything to be taken up, trifled with and perhaps abandoned."  She make many trips to Europe where she admired the works of Rubens, Titian, and Rembrandt.  In America, she admired the works of John Singer Sargent (her works have been compared with his painterly style).  She was the first American woman to be asked by the Uffizi to paint a self-portrait for the Medici Gallery of prominent artists.  In 1930, she published her autobiography, Background with Figures.  Cecilia Beaux has been referred to as "the best woman painter who ever lived."

 Painting:  Sita and Starita, 1921, features Sarah Leavitt, a maternal relative of the artist.  The painting demonstrates her best work of rapport with her subject.  She did her best work doing paintings of her family and friends.

 27.  **SUZANNE VALADON, French (1865-1938):  The illegitimate daughter of a seamstress, Valadon was the child of the Montmarte streets of Paris.  When she was sixteen, she began modeling for Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec and recalled:  "I remember the first sitting I did.  Remember saying to myself. . .This is it!  This is it!  I did not know why.  But I knew that I was somewhere at last and that I should never leave."  She was the first working class woman to become a respected painter; in fact, she became known as the best French woman painter.  Her radiates a lawless, sexual energy.  Degas accepted her as "one of us," as he never did accept America's Mary Cassatt.

 Paintings:  The Blue Room, 1923, has been referred to as Valadon's masterpiece.  Critics said her strong style was due to her strong-willed and rebellious personality.  She said, "Do you know, cheri, I think maybe God has make me France's greatest painter."

 Family Portrait Andre Utter, Suzanne, Grandmere, and Maurice Utrillo, 1912, demonstrates her awareness of her energy and reflects that the young men are overcome by the energy.  She trained her son (foreground) to be an artist.  Her mother (right) took care of him during Valadon's frequent absences.  Andre Utter and Valadon were married when he was twenty-eight and she was forty-nine.  All three exhibited together and were good friends.

 28.  *KATHE KOLLWITZ, German (1867-1945):  This prolific graphic artist and sculptor identified with the disadvantaged, the laborers, and the oppressed.  She first exhibited in 1893 at the Berlin Free Art Exhibition.  She endured several tragedies, including the death of her son Peter in World War I, the ban placed on her work by the Nazis in 1936, her evacuation from her home during the war, the death of her husband Karl in 1940, and the death of her grandson Peter in World War II.  In her diaries, she wrote, "What can the goal of humanity be said to be for men to be happy?  The individual strives first of all for happiness in the usual sense.  On a somewhat higher plane is the joy of self development, bringing all one's forces to maturity."

 Pencil drawings:  Early Self-Portrait with Hair Loose, c.1892,

 Head of a Child in Its Mother's Hands, 1890,

 Lithographs:  Germany's Children Are Starving, 1890,

 Death, 1897.  She wrote:  "I have made a woman with a sorrowful face.  She is not the child's mother, but the woman watching who feels everything."

 Poverty, 1897, is from her first major print cycle, "The Weaver's Uprising" (1895-97), based on Gerhardt Hauptmann's play, which takes the themes of poverty, suffering, and rebellion.

 Woman Lost in Thought, 1920, is of a "working class woman who shows me her hands, her feet, and her hair.  She presents herself and the expression of her feelings openly without disguises."

 Etching:  Whetting the Scythe, 1905, is a soft-ground etching from her second print cycle, "Pleasant War," showing preparation for war.  The scythe assumes a dual meaning as an instrument for nourishment as well as destruction.

 Lithograph:  Self-Portrait, Profile, 1927, another lithograph.  Kollwitz felt that Art was a tool for social change and should be available to everyone; hence, she chose the print medium to reach the most people.

 29.  *FLORINE STETTHEIMER, American (1871-1944):  Born in Rochester, New York, she studied at the Arts Student League and traveled to Europe in 1906 with her mother and two sisters.  She returned to New York when World War I broke out.  They established a salon that attracted the avant-garde painters, sculptors, photographers from Europe And America.  A posthumous exhibit of her work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1946.

 Paintings:  Beauty Contest, 1927, is an oil painting dedicated to P. T. Barnum.  It is one painting from a series on public and private entertainments.  In her diary, she said, "Beauty contests are a blot B.L.O.T. on American something--I believe life--or civilization."  (The Miss America Pageant was relatively young in 1924.)

 Cathedrals of Art, 1942, is the last of a series of four monumental "Cathedrals of New York," in which she honored the city she deeply admired.  In the series, she attacked the symbols of culture with satire and camp humor.

 30.  *ROMAINE BROOKS, American (1974-1970):  Born in Rome of American parents, she was the daughter of a wealthy mother.  Her allowance permitted her independence to study art where she chose, in Rome, Paris, London.  She did portraits of high society and of those in the French arts and letters.  She greatly admired Whistler and for the most part her palette is close to that of Whistler's tonality.  Her drawings were described by a critic as "to be by Thurber out of Beardsley."  She fought an anti-female pressure to enter some European drawing classes and engaged in cross-dressing, partly to offset her critics.

 Painting:  The Crossing, c. 1911, features Ida Rubenstein, probably.  Rubenstein, a popular model, was the dancer and actress who appeared as Cleopatra in Diaghilev's ballet in 1909.

 31.  *PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER, German (1876-1907):  Of 259 paintings she did, Modersohn-Becker only sold one.  She was the first German painter to assimilate the Post-Impressionist currents of Paris and to forge for herself a very personal, expressive style.  She married one of her teachers, Otto Modershon, and died of an embolism at 31 after giving birth to her only child.  Besides her paintings (which numbered 400, according to another source), she executed more than a thousand graphics and drawings.  In the last days of the 19th Century, she traveled to Paris and was struck by the works of Cezanne.  In her own work, she repeatedly reworked intense feelings of motherhood, of nurturing, and simple piety.  Her work reflects a deep respect for peasant life and primary relationships.

 Paintings:  Mother and Child, c. 1903, reflects this statement of the artist:  "To be a wife and mother as well as an artist must be complete bliss.  To have been able to bind one's heart in love and yet to preserve liberation of thought and mental creation, are the realization of the fairest dream."

 Still Life with Fruit and Flowers, c. 1906, reflects her emphasis, after 1903, of still-life works, which play a central role in her direction of "great simplicity of form."  She wrote her husband, Otto, "I have a feeling for the interlacing and the layering of objects.  I must develop and refine this carefully."

 32.  *VANESSA BELL, British (1879-1961):  Born into an intellectual family, Vanessa was the sister of Virginia Woolf, who, with her Brothers, Toby and Adrian, formed a circle of writers, artists, and intellectuals on London called the Bloomsbury Group.  She married Clive Bell, exhibited in Roger Fry's Post-Impressionist show, and did illustrations for her sister's works.  She said of her work:  "It is. . . so absorbing, this painter's world of form and color, that once you are at its mercy, you are in grave danger of forgetting all other aspects of the material world."

 Painting:  Portrait of Iris Tree, 1915, is an oil painting of the poet Iris Tree (1897-1968), who was the daughter of actor Sir Beerbohm Tree.  Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, and Bell painted Tree's portrait during the same sitting at Bell's home at 46 Gordon Square in London.

 33.  NATALIA GONCHAROVA, Russian (1881-1962):  Born near Tula south of Moscow to a family of impoverished but aristocratic landowners, she was sent to Moscow to study.  In Moscow, she met Mikhail Larionov and they were among the group of artists and intellectuals who reassessed the value of Russian folk arts and crafts.  In 1914, she was asked by  Diaghilev to do the sets, costumes, an curtain for a production of Le Coq d'Or in Paris.  She and Larionov lived and worked in Paris and were married when they were in their seventies.

 Paintings: Fishing, 1909, shows her blend of native Russian design elements in European Fauve influences.

 Portrait of Larionov, 1913, features Mikhail Larionov, who developed Rayism, an optical theory based on the theories of Cubism, Futurism, and Orphism.  These artists sought to capture the rays of light that emanated from the subject and were reflected by it.  Goncharova uses the Rayist style to portray him as its creator.

 Woman with a Plumed Hat, 1912.

 Lampes Electriques.

 34.  SONIA DELAUNAY, French (1885-1970), was a pioneer abstractionist who was the co-founder with her husband Robert of Orphism.  She tried to bring new energy to the decorative and applied arts, not only to earn money, but also because she had strong feelings about the interaction among art, design, and democracy.  She designed costumes, fabric, furniture, tapestries, interiors, and illuminated books.

 Paintings:  Market in the Minho, 1915, is a wax on canvas.  The Delauneys went to Portugal and continued their experimentation with light and color.  Under the influence of Portugal, the exotic marketplaces, and the colorful patterned costumes of the peasants, she uses figurative elements.

 The Flamingo Singer (The Large Flaminco), 1916, features oil, sizing, and encaustic on canvas.  It was done during the artist's years in Spain and Portugal and was apparently inspired by folklore.  Note that the "simultaneous discs" of color (as energy) are more intense at the heart of the painting and fade as they move toward the edges.

 Photograph:  Sonia Delaunay poses with a book of costumes

 Watercolor on paper:  Dance Costume, Paris, 1923  (Costume designers do not have to produce a highly polished drawing or painting.  Their illustrations merely have to be sufficient to guide the tailors and seamstresses making the costumes.)

 35.  HANNAH HOCH, German (1889-), was the only member of the Berlin Club Dada who was active in satirical and anti-establishment events of Post-World War I Germany.  In 1939, Nazism forced her retirement to the country outside Berlin, where she still lives.  Her chief concern has been to utilize art in support of her personal ideas and the expansion of her own vision.  Her guiding principles have been free experimentation, craftsmanship, and intellectual control.

 Paintings:  The Tamer, 1930, is an outgrowth of her Dadaist work:  a disquieting image of fantasy and ambiguity of the sex of the figure.

OTHERS WHO COULD BE DISCUSSED:  Just in America, the slide presentation could have discussed the anonymous women artists who made pottery and woven material in the American Indian tribes, not to mention the European-American and African-American artisans making similar objects.

 But other American, and women, artists included Henrietta Johnston (c1670-1728?), Patience Lovell Wright (1725-1786), Hetty Sage Benbridge, Eunice Pinney, Anna Mary Robertson Moses (Grandma Moses), Clementine Hunter, Ann Hall, Sarah Goodridge, Sarah Miriam Peale, Anna Claypoole Peale, Margaretta Angelica Peale, Mary Jane Simes, Mary Jane Peale, Lilly Martin Spencer, Cornelia Adele Strong Fassett, Charlotte B. Coman, Fedelia Bridges, Annie Cornelia Shaw, Anna Eliza Hardy, Mary Nimmo Moran, Harriet Hosmer, Edmonia Lewis, Vinnie Ream Hoxie, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Elizabeth Ney, Elizabeth Gardner Bouguereau, Anna Lea Merritt and hundreds of others.  (See American Women Artists, N 6505.R8 in the reference department)

African-European & African-American Artists

 For over nearly two decades, your instructor has been looking for a decent slide or videotape presentation on black artists.  Our campus library's reference department features The Negro as Artist (N 6538.N5), with only black-and-white reproductions.

College libraries feature many audio-visual presentations on African art (but it's as if the art community lost interest if they left the continent and tried to work in Europe or the Americas).  Libraries will often have a fair amount of books and tapes on, say, the art of the Zulu, Masai, and other tribes.  They may have books and AV presentations on the Harlem Renaissance (in the 1930s).

However, we get a sense of the black artistic history with The Negro as Artist.  As with women artists, we find that African-European artists were working centuries ago.  For example, Juan Pereja (1606-1670) painted "The Calling of St. Matthew," while Sebastian Gomez (1646-1682) painted "The Virgin and Child," "The Immaculate Conception," and "The Holy Family."  In America, Joshua Johnston (c1770-1830) painted "The James McCormick Family," while Robert S. Duncanson (1821-71) produced "The Buffalo Hunt," "Blue Hole, Little Miami River," and "Bishop Payne and Family."

Other African-American artists include Edward M. Bannister (1829-1901), sculptor Edmonia Lewis (1845-1890), William Simpson (working in the 1850s), HENRY OSSAWA TANNER (1859-1937), William A. Harper (1873-1910), Edwin A. Harleston (1882-1931).

A bonus:  In the area of writing, some African-European writers include novelist and dramatist Alexandre Dumas of France (The Three Musketeers) and the poet Aleksander Sergeevich Pushkin of Russia.

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