J. R. Witzel: A Jugend Artist

This little gallery of illustrations from Jugend Magazine features the work of J. R. Witzel, an artist who is little known in English. Published in the magazine from its very first year, Witzel's work exemplifies the curvilinear aspects of the Art Nouveau style. Whether in humor, charm, or political commentary, Witzel uses the curved line to fill the frame in clever ways.

I discovered Witzel in the image of a woman starled by a shadow couple that invites the viewer to invent a caption or even an entire story. Then found L'Affaiire Dreyfus (the second image here). At the time, in 1896, when this was published, it had just been revealed that the French government had suppressed evidence that exonerated Alfred Dreyfus. Justice is pictured as a woman bound from every angle.

When you look closely at the image of the woman in the pink dress and the little girl, you find faces peering out of the letters that spell Jugend and an attention to detail that never appears fussy.

Images: J. R. Witzel, from the Library of the Univeristy of Heidelberg, Germany.

Signs Of Spring From Jugend

Illustrators little known or completely forgotten graced the pages of Jugend Magazine.

The flower seller offers pussy willows for sale, holding the fuzzy things next to her cheek. Who knows? She may be thinking of her cat waiting for her at home. Who knows what August Geigenberger (1875-1909) might have accomlished if he had been blessed with a longer life?

His hyacinths are beautifully contained in this pillar print, but Paul Haustein (1880-1944) devoted his career to silversmithing.

G.E. Dodge has eluded me but the idea of Ganselblumchen - or Goose flowers - charms me.

As does Fraulein Leopardus with her rabbit friends by Edward Okun (1872-1945).

A Line Is A Force

In every country, the freshness of using white as a color was a prominent feature of Art Nouveau, especially in the material arts. While the darkness of the Victorians and the Aesthetic Movement is a subject of some debate, as these images show, artists were as one in connecting lightness with modernism in both handmade and industrially produced items.
The shapes and angles of geometry coexist harmoniously with the familiar curvilinear Nouveau style. ("A line is a force." - Henry van de Velde, c. 1892).

Passing time should not desensitize us to the boldness of Marcel Kammerer's 1909 design for the grand ballroom of the Vienna Hotel Wielser or Antonio Gaudi's use of white in tiles for Water World at Casa Batllo in Barcelona in the same year.

The anonymous photographer of these images of Villa Altesse Aly-Bey Djelal in Cairo suggests the the extent of the style's popularity. Italian architect Antonio Lasciac ((1856-1944), worked for several wealthy patrons in Egpyt, from 1883 forward, beginning with his involvement in a modern urban design for the port city of Alexandria. It was after returning to Italy that Lasciac moved his entire family to Cairo in 1898, so we can date this villa to the early 20th century.

This exquisite calla lily vase created by the Swedish designer Nils Lundstrom (1865-1960) circa 1903. It epitomizes the art Nouveau ideal of an organic form seamlessly inetgrated into a highly stylized object.

The Garden Door And The Open Gate

"Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." - Matthew 7:15, from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

"We destroy the beauty of the countryside because the unappropriated splendors of nature have no economic value. We are capable of shutting off the sun and the stars because they do not pay a dividend."
- John Maynard Keynes

It seems fitting to illustrate Earth Day with this watercolor by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), the artist credited with changing landscape painting from a backdrop for human dramas to a subject in itself. The Garden Door And The Open Gate offers a vision of harmony between the cultivated garden and the natural surroundings.

Image:

Caspar David Friedrich, The Garden Wall And The Open Gate, undated, Hamburg Kunsthalle, Germany.

Felix Feneon, Collector

“I aspire only to silence.”

A paradoxical statement from a man who wrote for, edited, and even founded publications on politics and art. Felix Feneon definitely aspired to influence, and as we saw in the career of Henri-Edmond Cross yesterday, he suceeded. His influence is still with us, through his art collection.
Felix Feneon (1861-1944) was the son of a traveling salesman so, though the family lived in Burgundy, Felix was born 'on the road' in Turin, Italy.

At twenty, Feneon was employed by the Ministry of Defense in Paris while frequenting the poet Stephane Mallarme's Tuesday evening salons where his real career began.

When Feneon saw Georges Seurat's Sunday On The Island Of La Grande Jatte in 1886, Feneon recognized something absolutely new in art that harmonized with his own absolute love of art. For Feneon, the refusal to accept new art led him to reject bourgeois society in total. Indeed, many of the artists Feneon would champion supported the Anachist movement, as he did.

Arrested in 1892, when the police found explosives in his apartment, Feneon was put on trial and it was his attorney, Thadee Natason, who offered him a position at La Revue Blanche, where Feneon fomented his version of revolution. Consistently astute, he hired Debussy to review music and Andre Gide to review literature. After La Revue folded in 1902, Feneon worked for Le Figaro and Le Matin. He was the Director of the Berhnheim-Jeune Gallery from 1906-1925.

Feneon's perceptions were acute, his writing astrigent, and he often annoyed those around him by operating on another plane of reality. Thus, his early recognition of the powerful new direction in Pierre Bonnard's first nude paintings, sombre though the palette was. Both The Indolent Woman and Blue Nude are brillaint compositions, portraying a mood of languid eroticism through a series of angles.

Opus 217. Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones, and Tints, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon in 1890 became a familiar image in the Art Nouveau revival that began in the 1960s. Signac set Fénéon against a swirling background of Charles Henry's color wheel, premature psychedelia. As for the painting's long title, prolixity was not a failing of the author of Novels In Three Lines. And Feneon's verdict on the portrait by his friend Paul Signac? He hated it.

Images:

1. Paul Signac - Opus 217, 1890, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

2. Theo van Ryseelberghe - The Reading (from left to right: Feliz Dantec, Emile Verhaeren, Franci Viele-Griffen, Henri-Edmond Cross, Andre Gide, Maurice Maeterlinck), 1903, Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium.

3. Georges Seurat - Poseuse de Face, 1887, Felix Feneon Collection at Musee D'Orsay, Paris.

4. Georges Seurat - Trees in Winter, 1893, Felix Feneon Collection, Musee D'Orsay, Paris.

5. Pierre Bonnard - The Indolent Woman - or - Fareniente, 1899, Felix Feneon Collection at Musee D'Orsay, Paris.

6. Pierre Bonnard - Blue Nude, 1899, Felix Feneon Collection, Musee D'Orsay, Paris.

Sea And Sky: Henri-Edmond Cross

How dots and daubs of paint, meticulously applied, resolve themselves into a masterpiece of sea and sky, bathed in the Mediterranean light.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Henri Edmond Cross (20 May 1856-1910).

Cross was born at Douai, near the northern French industrial city of Lille but it was Monaco, where he lived with parents after 1883 that inspired his landscapes, with its dazzling sunshine and dramatic coastal views. It was his father's cousin, Auguste Soins, who encouraged the boy's talent for drawing.

Cross studied in Paris with Carolus Duran, who also taught John Singer Sargent in the 1870s. Cross exhibited his work at the first Salon des Independents in 1884, founded by him and his friends, notably Georges Seurat. But it was not Paris, capital of the art world that he wanted to paint.

Around 1904, Cross began painting according to the theories that chemist Michel Chevreul (1786-1889) developed during his tenure as Director of the dye works at Gobelins Manufactures (think: tapestries). Cross and his friend Paul Signac experimented with divisions of color and light and their interactions. Cross was then living at Saint-Clair, a small town near Saint-Tropez.

Sometimes, as in Landscape with Stars, Cross combines his characteristic daubs of paint with abstract washes of color, more characteristic of his watercolors.

The critic Felix Feneon was the first to point out that Cross the Divisionist was himself divided in himself between a desire to reproduce reality and an ambition to transcend it. Feneon purchased Cross's transcendent work Iles d'Or when it was exhibited for the first time in March 1905.

Images:

1. L'Iles d'Or, 1905, Musee D'Orsay, Paris.

2. The Evening Air, 1893, Musee D'Orsay, Paris.

3. The Boats, no date, Louvre Museum, Paris.

4. Landscape With Stars, c.1905-1908, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

Van Gogh's Invincible Summer

"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer." - Albert Camus

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) often wrote to his brother Theo of his admiration for the Barbizon painter Jean-Francois Millet. Indeed, First Steps painted during his last months is Van Gogh's homage to a pastel by Millet, from the late 1850s. Millet's work is now out of fashion, as is his view of the human place in nature, a view that Van Gogh shared.

A gentle rebuke to cynicism, Van Gogh's First Steps offers a glimpse of the artist's own invincible summer, the strength that made it possible for him work in spite of inner torment.

Note: You may also be interested in Narcissus And Violets For Van Gogh, posted here 3 March 2010.

Images:

1. First Steps - After Millet, 1890, Metropolitan Museum

of Art, NYC.

2. Nursery On The Schenkweg, - April 1882, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

3. Road In Etten, 1881, metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

4. Street In Saint-Maires - July 17, 1888, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

5. View Of The Wheatfields, 188, Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA.

Travels With Walter Georgi

Whether it was traveling or moving around, German illustrator Walter Georgi (1871-1924) covered a lot of territory in his 53 years. Born in Leipzig, he studied art in Munich and Dresden, visited Brittany in 1914, and lived at various times in Weimar, Dusseldorf, Karlsruhe, and finally at Woodhausen on the Ammersee.
Georg Hirth had founded the influential magazine Jugend in 1895 under the name Jugend: Münchner illustrierte Wochenschrift für Kunst und Leben (Youth: the illustrated weekly magazine of art and lifestyle of Munich). In spite of its lengthy title, Jugend became the major purveyor of the Art Nouveau style in Germany. Georgi received many commissions from Jugend and also for the satirical review Simplicissimuss.

Georgi's style and choice of scenic subject matter are not what the magazine is remembered for. Nevertheless his scenes of life in Munich still charm.
The last image, a carriage on a rural road shows the German postal service in action. In the middle of the 17th century, the age of the postal service carriage began in central Europe. Simplified border crossings, accurate schedules and improved roads, all changed the experience of traveling . The postal service carriage affected not only mobility, but also the spread of enlightened thought and middle class mores.

Images: Walter Georgi for Jugend Magazine, 1902-1910 from the digital archives of Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany.

How The Swans Got Their Island

In the beginning there were no swans and there was no island. But, as Louis XIV saw it, in the beginning there was the Sun King and nothing would ever be the same after him. Looking back from the next century, Voltaire agreed with Louis: "Almost everything was either reinvented or created in his time."Considering his One small, but not insignificant, example is the Ile des Cygnes, or Isle of the Swans, in the Seine and located between the 7th and 16th Arrondissements of Paris. Because the island was a human made and because local politicians are reliably parochial thinkers, the story of the Ile des Cygnes has often been catalogued as two separate entities, the island and the former island, when, in reality, the island was the product of restless, competitive earth-moving.

But, first, the swans, or at least the idea of swans. In the summer of 1676 as Louis was engaged in his grand enterprise of creating a unique national culture through patronage, he was captivated by the graceful birds parading through the labyrinth at Versailles, a folly that had been carved out of nature at his command. He ordered the purchase of hundreds of the exotic, expensive fowl for a colony he decided to create on a dirt mound in the Seine. The swans would glide magically along the waters as guests of the King also glided from central Paris to Versailles.

If the phrase "mound of dirt" sounds flippant, it is well to note that already, in the 17th century, the waters of the Seine at Paris were polluted and congested, thanks to industrious Parisians. Critics of the project fretted that the swans were not cut out for urban life, but Louis ordered the Police force of Paris to take care of them.

Whether the island was originally part of a bridge-building project or an accretion of soil that had coalesced around remnants of the Siege of Paris, c. 885, remains a mystery. What is certain is that King Charles IX, had ordered 1,200 victims of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre to be buried on the island in 1571. Louis ordered his engineers to in-fill the land between four tiny islets, one of which had been named Isle des Vaches (Isle of Cows) as the result of a deal between peasant farmers looking for a place to graze their cattle and the Abbey of Saint-Germaine-des-Pres. (You can see the plan that the Royal Engineer Claude Lucas drew up for the island at top.)

An island in the middle of a busy city is a rare and precious thing, and also a sitting invitation to exploitation, even one that is only about 2800 feet long and 36 feet wide (850 meters by 11 meters). After Louis XV gave the island to the City of Paris in 1722, it was the site of a factory, a mill, and a slaughterhouse. It was on the Ile des Cygnes that American inventor Robert Fulton conducted his early experiments in navigation with steam engines, around 1802. As a gesture of Franco-American friendship, a smaller replica of the Statue of Liberty was dedicated on the island in 1889.

In both his versions of Ile des Cygnes, from around 1900, artist Henri Riviere intimates that Parisians had come to value the island's aesthetic and natural qualities. In 1937, the Universal Exposition of Arts and Technology set up there. You have to look closely to see the Eiffel Tower in the second version; today you can see both the Tower and the Statue of Liberty from the same vantage point. The swans have moved upriver to the Jardin des Plantes.

You may also be interested in A Writer On Governor's Island, posted here 8 September 2009.

Images:
1. Claude Lucas - Plan For Ile des Cygnes, Louvre Museum, Paris.
2. Jacques Bailly - The Labyrinth at Versailles, Musee du Petit Palais, Paris. (1629-1679)
3. Henri Riviere - Isle des Cygnes, c. 1900, Les-Amis-de-Henri -Riviere.
4. Henri Riviere - Ile des Cygnes, from Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower, c.1900, Musee d'Orsay, Paris.

5. Albert Marquet - L'Ile aux Cygnes, Summer 1919, Pompidou Center, Paris

Lousine Havemeyer & Mary Cassatt: The Power of Two

On the 140th anniversary of the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, let's remember the women who made the Met the home of the finest French art collection outside the Musee d'Orsay in Paris.

If people remember Lousine Havemeyer (1855-1929) today, it is as the wife of the wealthy sugar baron Henry O. Havemeyer. But that is hardly the story of her luck and pluck. Lousine Elder was a young girl when her father died. Luckily for Lousine, her mother decided to tour Europe rather than stay home and be courted by the sort of men who find wealthy widows attractive. What luck for the talented Lousine to study art in the Paris of the 1870s. Even better was when her friend Emily Sartain introduced Louisine to the young American artist Mary Cassatt and a lifelong friendship began. Cassatt painted Havemeyer and her daughters several times. With H.O.'s millions and Mary's knowledge of all the coming artists in France, Lousine Havemeyer was armed and ready to collect, and collect she did.

Mary Cassatt urged Louisine to acquire works by the (then) controversial Claude Monet and his fellow Impressionists, and by her friend Edgar Degas. In searching through the Havemeyer collection at the Met, I looked for pieces that had particular interest for Mrs. H. O., as she was called. There are hundreds to choose from, so I tried to avoid some of the most recognizable ones, the ones that have been reproduced on the place mats, coasters, umbrellas, etc. in the Met's gift shops.

While her contemporaries focused on Corot's landscapes, Lousine took note of his figurative works; his The Muse of History appealed to her feminist heart. Havemeyer was no prude, but the images of women that spoke to her were more varied than those that appealed to many of her male contemporaries. Two paintings by Degas, Dancers In Green And Pink and At The Milliner's are much more avant-garde than we realize. Both are experiments in perspective and planing that appeared radical to the artist's contemporary critics who knew what vantage point they wanted their pictures painted from. Those strong vertical assertions altered the accepted order. To the viewer, just as to the prosperous customer, trying on the hat, the woman who created the hat is bifurcated almost violently, a vivid representation of social inequality.
Havemeyer's attraction to bright colors is reflected in her choice of Louis Comfort Tiffany to decorate her Fifth Avenue townhouse. The exquisite Tiffany hair ornament was a gift from Mrs. H. O. to her daughter-in-law.

It seems necessary to keep asserting the strengths of both womenin the face of decades of criticism that, being women, they were in some way not up to herculean tasks of making and collecting art. Yet Cassatt recommended and Havemeyer purchased this vibrant, lopsided Cezanne still life.

This last image, The Collector Of Prints, is an early work by Degas, painted when Lousine Havemeyer was a little girl. Just because life is easier for the rich than for poor should not obscure what strengths, what energies this woman had to marshall to imagine herself as a possible artist and collector, not to mention a supporter of the radical feminism of her time. We may have been born at a luckier time, but Havemeyer's triumph is ours, thanks to her.

Images from the Havemeyer Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC:

1. Claude Monet - The Green Wave, After 1866.

2. mary Cassatt - Young Mother Sewing, 1900.

3. Edgar Degas - Portrait Of A Young Woman, c. 1885.

4. Jena Baptiste Camille Corot - The Muse Of History, c. 1865.

5. Edgar Degas - Girl Having Her Hair Combed, c.1886.

6. Edgar Degas - At the Milliner's, 1882.

7. Edgar Degas - Dancers In Green And Pink, c. 1890.

8. Louis Comfort Tiffany - vase, c. 1896.

9. Louis Comfort Tiffany - hair ornament, c. 1904.

10. Paul Cezanne - Still Life With Eggplants, c. 1893.

11. Edgar Degas - The Collector Of Prints, 1866.