A list of all pompous pompiers & three "Baigneuses"

And before the list, three nice Bouguereau's pictures: "La baigneuse" & both his "Apres le bain" (worth confronting with renoir's crap: no wonder the "Mafia of the scarabocchi" hated such able painters) and, of course worth confronting with the 1875 version of the "Apres le bain" by the same painter. No wonder, seen a baigneuse of his pupil Matisse (another among the many 'scarabocchi mafiosi'), that they hated Bouguereau. Matisse left quickly his studio, despite the fact that Bouguereau at first tried to encourage him, but soon threw up his hands in exasperation, noting the young man’s weaknesses, “You badly need to learn perspective,” he said to him, “But first, you need to know how to hold a pencil. You will never know how to draw”. How true.

Here the promised list of all 'pompous pompiers' painters

Adolf Schreyer, Adolphe William Bouguereau, Adolphe Weiz, Adrien Dauzats, Albert Edelfelt, Alexandre Antigna, Alexandre Cabanel, Alexej Harlamoff, Alfred Guillou, Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville, Anna Bilinska, Antonio Mancini, Antoine-Joseph Wiertz, Ary Scheffer, Auguste Glaize, Carolus-Duran, Charles Baugniet, Charles Chaplin, Charles Edouard Delort, Charles Edward Boutibonne, Charles Gleyre, Charles Landelle, Charles Muller, Charles Sims, Charles Spencelayh, Constantin Hansen, Delphin Enjolras, Dominique Louis Papety, Edmond Comte de Grimberghe, Edouard Debat-Ponsan, Edouard Detaille, Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala, Edwin Lord Weeks, Emile Levy, Emile Munier, Ernest Hebert,Eugene de Blaas, Eugene-Emmanuel Amaury-Duval, Evariste-Vital Luminais, Fenner Behmer Hermann, Ferdinand Heilbuth, Fernand Cormon, Francesco Paolo Michetti (1851-1929), Francisco Masriera y manovens, Francois Flameng, Franz von Defregger, Franz Xavier Winterhalter, Frederic Soulacroix, Friedrich von Amerling, Gabriele Castagnola, Gabriel-Francois Doyen, Gaetano Bellei, Giovanni Boldini, Giovanni Costa, Gustave Boulanger, Gyula Tornai (1861-1928), Hans Makart, Hans Zatzka, Henri Gervex, Henri Regnault, Henryk Siemiradzki, Horace Vernet, Hubertus van Hove, Isidore Pils, Ivan Aivazovsky, James Carroll Beckwith, Jean-Alexandre-Joseph Falguiere, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Jean-Jacques Henner, Jean-Joseph Weerts, Jean-Leon Gerome, Jean-Louis Hamon, Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Jean-Paul Laurens, Jean-Pierre Cortot, Jehan Georges Vibert, Jerome-Martin Langlois, John Macallan Swan, Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, Jules Girardet, Jules-Alexis Muenier, Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, Kenyon Cox, Leon Belly, Leon Bonnat, Leon Cogniet, Lord Frederick Leighton, Ludwig Deutsch, Luis Riccardo Falero, Marie-Francois Firmin-Girard, Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercie, Martin Drolling, Paul Baudry, Paul Delaroche, Paul Jamin, Paul Peel, Pierre Bonnaud, Pierre-Auguste Cot, Prosper Marilhat, Raffaele Giannetti, Theobald Chartran, Theophile-Emmanuel Duverger, Thomas Couture, Tony Robert-Fleury, Victor Mottez, Victor Schnetz, Victor-Gabriel Gilbert

I know that some of the painters listed above (e.g. Ingres) are not strictly speaking considered 'academists' or 'pompiers', yet we'll see some of their paintings that place them square inside the wondrous pudding of the Pompiers, and well away from the 'Mafia degli scarabocchi' crowd.

Women with mirrors (2)

Well, speaking about women with mirrors, it would be simply -ahem- unfair to forget to mention Frank Dicksee and the fabulous Godward (like in Alma Tadema, note the marble), so here you are, with two more gorgeous 'academic' painters.
Click on the images to enlarge. Enjoy the details.

Women with mirrors (1)

Some interesting pictures of two less known painters of the 'academic' period, in both pictures a mirror plays the most important part of the game: 'Odalisca' by Mariano Fortuny and 'The Reader', by Wiertz.
Wiertz was a very interesting painter, almost surreal, and was of course derided as a 'pompier' by the 'mafia degli scarabocchi'.

(April) Chicco's present to the Web: I pulcini di Nono

Luigi Nono, Grandfather of the omonimous, and equally dead, music composer, presented in 1881 in Milano "La morte del pulcino" (Death of the baby chicken, or death of the day-old chicken, if you prefer).

Here in all its glory, click on it to enlarge. Note how 1é among the other 18 baby chickens seem to watch with infinite sadness. Even the chicken looks sad and moved, he :-)
This kind of 'memento mori' pictures are even more direct than "the dolce far niente" of Godward and Alma Tadema.

Try to find this elsewhere on the Web... you won't be able to.

Godward's Dolce far niente

Taking account of the fact that Godward was an admirer of Alma Tadema, it does not wonder us at all to find a 'dolce far niente' image, similar to Tadema's one we saw couple of days ago.

"In 1904 Godward produced two of his finest paintings. Dolce Far Niente was one of seven paintings of this title. It depicts an Italian model as an exhausted Bacchante after a frenzied dance. The oil is in the late 19th century Classical tradition's aesthetic branch of "collapsing" women. The viewer's eye is led to the slumbering beauty by her peacock fan, bear and lion furs and her sumptuous robes of saffron with crimson stola."

Here it is, in all its splendor. Click and enjoy.

Godward's two priestesses

We can read the following in Wikipedia:

John William Godward (August 9, 1861 – December 13, 1922) was an English painter from the end of the Pre-Raphaelite / Neo-Classicist era. He was a protégé of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema but his style of painting fell out of favour with the arrival of painters like Picasso. He committed suicide at the age of 61 and is said to have written in his suicide note that "the world was not big enough" for him and a Picasso.

Another proof of the fact that the mafia of the scarabocchi (yes, my dear, Picasso included) did its worst in order to destroy all painters that knew how to paint.

Here on the right you have TWO Priestess(es): the one you can find on Wikipedia as well, and another one, sligltly more, ahem, discint. Click on the images on the right to enlarge.

Again, note the marble (inter alia). Again: no wonder that the scribblers didn't like such painters.

One day behind us, let's buy a slave

And today we want to move over to the slavemarkets. Here some classical images: the two versions of Jean-Léon Gérôme very famous "marche aux esclaves": version A ("marche aux esclaves" here on the right, click on it for larger version, Oil on canvas, 84,3*63 cm, no date, but the triumph of the 'Orientalisme' was around 1850/1870) and the slightly less photorealistic version B ("achat d'une esclave"). Note the similarities in the pose of almost everybody in both pictures.

It is worth pointing out the 'photorealistic' style of the '60, especially in Gérome.

The erotic potential of these pictures (especially for the prude end of the XIX century) shouldn't be underestimated either.

Other painters: Decamps, Marilhat (Gautier wrote about him that he had "une si grande force d'illusion que la réalité serait peut-être inférieure" :-), Delcaroix, Deutsch, Vernet, Fromentin, Chassériau (these last two painted 'à l'orientale' until almost 1900), Gleyre and, of course, Gérôme.


Some orientalist Bibliography:

Les peintres Pompiers - by James Harding. Flammarion, 1980

Orientalism in Art- by Christine Peltre. Abbeville Press Publishers, 1997

Orientalism-Delacroix to Klee- by Roger Benjamin. The Art Gallery of New South Wales. Distributed by Thames and Hudson, 1997.

Orientalist Painting- by P. and V. Berko. Editions Laconti, 1982.

Serpent of the Nile- by Wendy Buonaventura. Interlink Books, 1989.

Harem- The World behind the Veil- by Alev Lytle Croutier. Abbeville Press Publishers, 1989

The Orientalists, Painter-Travellers, 1828-1908- by Lynne Thornton. ACR Edition

The East, imagined, experienced, remembered : orientalist nineteenth century painting- by James Thompson

Charles Gleyre, 1806-1874- by William Hauptman

The Life and Work of Jean-Leon Gerome- by Gerald Ackerman

Victorian Painting- by Christopher Wood

Here 'Academia' will strike back against the "mafia degli scarabocchi"

The 'mafia degli scarabocchi' (literally, the mafia of the scribblers: all those painters basically incapable to paint human figures) managed to destroy one of the most interesting artistic developments of the XIX century: the 'academic' painters.

Aided by the birth of photography, and beginning with the 'pointillism' and the 'impressionism', some soi-disant artists began to decry 'objective' interpretation of the reality around us, and to go for subjective, not objective, snapshots. For 'objective' wishes, they had the photography scapegoat ready.
So the scribblers managed -to this day- to convince every gullible soul that a good painter didn't really need to know how to paint.
Just to make one paradoxical example: Seurat's "Les poseuses" contains a clear critical reference to the various 'beauties' of the 'pompiers'. Unfortunately, and despite some nice pictures like his "Bathing place" one wonders if Seurat would have really had -as a painter- the 'photographic' capacity of an Alma Tadema.

The paintings I'm going to dig out here were hidden for many years in the back rooms and/or store rooms of some provincial museums, where annoyed directors, ashamed of even having them, would try to convince you that they were not 'worth' in comparison with some scribbler à la mode.

Today two 'academians' pictures: Giulio Bargellini (Image 00002 below: Pygmalion & Galatea) & Alma Tadema (Image on the right: Dolce far niente). Click on it and carefully observe the marble: no kidding.
No wonder the scribblers hated these painters :-)




Just to wet your appetite. More to follow.


Bibliography:

Baron, Hans. The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952.

Brooke, Anthea. Victorian Painting. Catalogue for exhibition November-December 1972. London: Fine Art Society, 1972.

The Classical Spirit in American Portraiture. Exhibition Catalogue, Providence: Brown University, 1976.

Girouard, Mark. The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981

Jenkyns, Richard. The Victorians and Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980.

Spalding, Francis. Magnificent Dreams: Burne-Jones and the Late Victorians. Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1978.

Turner, Frank M. The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981.

Wolff, Robert Lee. Gains and Losses: Novels of Faith and Doubt in Victorian England. New York: Garland, 1972.

Wood, Christopher. Olympian Dreamers: Victorian Classical Painters. London: Constable, 1983.

The beginning of it all

Well, opened this bloggy thinghy, in order to upload some stuff I like.
Maybe I'll do it during the next weeks, we'll see.
Not that I like blogs, they are just messageboards where only the owner can start a thread afaict, yet I'll upload here images that you could also find elsewhere on the web and images that you will find only here (until somebody will copy them elsewhere), because I scanned them from old books whose patents expired long ago (there's a maximum 70 years patent limit on everything, so our beloved 'academians' are free and open source nowadays :-), or because I have photographed them myself.

These I'll call 'chicco's presents to the web' and these will be my small personal contribution to the wealth of information that flows around us.

All images posted here are under a GPL copyleft open source license, so you may use them wherever you want, whenever you want, but you cannot copyright or patent them.

Wonder how much space for images's there is on this blog thinghy.
Apparently infinite?
If not you just keep opening gmail accounts ad libitum?
We'll see.

Done for now.