William Merritt Chase - A Friendly Call [1895]

William Merritt Chase - A Friendly Call [1895], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

William Merritt Chase (American, 1849 – 1916), an influential art teacher and one of the leading exponents of American impressionism, captured the genteel, privileged life of polite society in the 1890s. A Friendly Call, set in Chase's elegant summer house at Shinnecock Hills, Long Island, shows two fashionably dressed women in a large, airy room decorated with prints, paintings, hanging textiles, and a large, gilt-framed mirror. The artist's wife Alice, on the right, listens attentively to her visitor, who is still wearing her hat and gloves and carrying a parasol.

Chase's rendering of light, his facile brushwork, and his choice of everyday subject matter all recall the work of the French impressionists; yet, unlike his European contemporaries, the artist carefully composed his paintings to underscore abstract elements. Simple rectangular patterns of the floor, wall, and couch are echoed in the framed pictures and wall hangings while they are contrasted to the more curvilinear figures, chair, and plump pillows. The mirror framing Mrs. Chase offers a surprising reflection of a wall behind the viewer; Chase's compositional arrangement and his use of reflected imagery suggest that he may have been paying homage to the seventeenth-century Spanish artist Velázquez, whose much-admired painting Las Meninas displays a similarly inventive studio interior.

[Oil on canvas, 76.5 x 122.5 cm]

Charles Hoffbauer - In the Restaurant [1907]

Charles Hoffbauer - In the Restaurant [1907], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Charles Hoffbauer (1875 - 1957) was born in Paris, the son of an architect. He studied under Fernand Cormon and Gustave Moreau, then won a medal at the Universal Exposition of 1900. In France, he served on Salon juries and eventually was awarded the coveted Légion d’Honneur. On a traveling scholarship (1909), Hoffbauer visited New York and was given two solo shows in 1911 and 1912. Hoffbauer served in the French Army during the first world war, then revisited America to accept a commission for a mural in the Missouri State Capitol. In 1941, he escaped occupied France, became an American citizen, and moved to Rockport (Cape Ann), Massachusetts.

[Oil on canvas, 115 x 167 cm]

Thomas Wilmer Dewing - A Reading [1897]

Thomas Wilmer Dewing - A Reading [1897], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Thomas Wilmer Dewing (May 4, 1851 – November 5, 1938) was an American painter working at the turn of the 20th century. He was born in Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts. He studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, and later settled into a studio in New York City. He married Maria Oakey Dewing, an accomplished painter with extensive formal art training and familial links with the art world. He died in New York City.

[Oil on canvas, 51.3 x 76.8 cm]

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld - Ruth in Boaz's Field [1828]

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld - Ruth in Boaz's Field [1828], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This picture was painted in Munich, based on drawings made a few years earlier in Italy. The artist had spent ten years in that country, and was a leading figure in a group of German and Austrian artists named the Nazarenes who sought to invest modern painting with the purity of form and spiritual values that they saw in Renaissance art. 

The subject is taken from the Old Testament Book of Ruth. Here the Moabite Ruth is gleaning (gathering up corn left after the harvest) to support her widowed mother-in-law. The landowner Boaz who talks to her has come to show his admiration for her support for her family. The two eventually married.

[Oil on canvas, 59 x 70 cm]

Jean-Francois Millet - The Goose Girl [c.1863]

Jean-Francois Millet - The Goose Girl [c.1863], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

In a scene that is unusually light-hearted for the artist, a young girl has abandoned her gaggle of geese to escape the summer heat by bathing in a stream. She is observed only by two cows in the background (in the top right corner). Light penetrating the foliage bathes the scene in a warm glow and unifies the composition. A contemplative artist, Millet (French, 1814 - 1875) developed this composition over seven years. Unlike other Barbizon artists, Millet produced few oil paintings outdoors and preferred to work from memory. Such work was later much admired by Camille Pissarro, who was inspired to paint his own version of the scene.

[Oil on canvas, 38 x 46.5 cm]

Isaac Levitan - Birch Forest [1885-89]

Isaac Levitan - Birch Forest [1885-89], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Isaac Ilyich Levitan (August 30, 1860 – August 4, 1900) was a classical Russian landscape painter who advanced the genre of the mood landscape. Isaac Levitan was born in a shtetl of Kybartai, Kaunas region, Lithuania, into a poor but educated Jewish family. His father Elyashiv Levitan, the son of a rabbi, completed a Yeshiva and was self-educated. He taught German and French in Kaunas and later worked as a translator at a railway bridge construction for a French building company. At the beginning of 1870 the Levitan family moved to Moscow.

In September 1873, Isaac Levitan entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where his older brother Avel had already studied for two years. After a year in the copying class Isaac transferred into a naturalistic class, and soon thereafter into a landscape class. Levitan's teachers were the famous Alexei Savrasov, Vasily Perov and Vasily Polenov.

Levitan spent the last year of his life at Chekhov’s home in Crimea. In spite of the effects of a terminal illness, his last works are increasingly filled with light. They reflect tranquillity and the eternal beauty of Russian nature. He was buried in Dorogomilovo Jewish cemetery. In April 1941 Levitan's remains were moved to the Novodevichy Cemetery, next to Chekhov's necropolis. Levitan did not have a family or children. Isaac Levitan's hugely influential art heritage consists of more than a thousand paintings, among them watercolours, pastels, graphics, and illustrations.

Jan Steen - The Effects of Intemperance [c.1663-65]

Jan Steen - The Effects of Intemperance [c.1663-65], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The woman slumped on the left, whose purse is being picked by a child on the extreme left, is sleeping off the effects of alcohol. As in many other paintings by Steen, it is the foolishness of their elders that encourages the children to misbehave. Here the child throwing roses to the pig illustrates a popular saying about foolish behaviour (to throw roses before swine). In the background an old man is seducing a young girl, another of the pitfalls of alcohol. As in many of Steen's paintings the coarse subject is in sharp contrast to the refined rendering of the various textures of the objects on the floor and the shimmering fabrics.

Jan Steen was born at Leiden, where he mainly worked, with periods in Haarlem, Utrecht and The Hague.He was a lifelong Catholic, and also produced religious and mythological paintings. His father was a brewer and leased a brewery for Steen at Delft (1654-57). In 1672 he was licensed to keep an inn at Leiden. Jan Steen attended Leiden University in 1646; his paintings often contain literary or theatrical references.

[Oil on wood, 76 x 106.5 cm]

Henry Siddons Mowbray - Idle Hours [1895]

Henry Siddons Mowbray - Idle Hours [1895], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Henry Siddons Mowbray (Alexandria, Egypt, August 5, 1858 - 1928) was an American artist. He was born of English parents. Left an orphan, he was taken to America by an uncle, who settled at North Adams, Massachusetts. After a year at the United States Military Academy at West Point, he went to Paris and entered the atelier of Leon Bonnat. He taught at the Art Students League of New York circa 1901.

[Oil on canvas, 30.4 x 40.6 cm]

Follower of Rembrandt - A Man seated reading at a Table in a Lofty Room [c.1628-30]

Follower of Rembrandt - A Man seated reading at a Table in a Lofty Room [c.1628-30], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Until relatively recently attributed to Rembrandt, this work is now thought to be a work of an early, perhaps contemporary, follower of Rembrandt. The artist has imitated the style of Rembrandt's early years (1625-31) when he worked in his native Leiden, a style characterised by the precise treatment of detail and strong contrasts between light and dark. Rembrandt only painted this kind of subject in his early years in Leiden. However, this painting is significantly different in composition and technique from Rembrandt's work of that period. Moreover, the draughtsmanship is considered to be too heavy-handed and the volumes too ill-defined for the painting to be by Rembrandt. This picture was probably painted in Leiden in the late 1620s.

[Oil on oak, 55.1 x 46.5 cm]

Rogier van der Weyden - The Last Judgement [1446-52]

Rogier van der Weyden - The Last Judgement [1446-52], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Rogier van der Weyden (1399 or 1400 – June 18, 1464) was an Early Netherlandish painter. Rogier van der Weyden was born in Tournai (in present-day Belgium) as Rogier de le Pasture (Roger of the Pasture) in 1399 or 1400. Little is known about Rogier's training as a painter. The archival sources from Tournai (completely destroyed during World War II, but luckily partly transcribed in the 19th and early 20th century) are somewhat confusing and have led to different interpretations by scholars.

His vigorous, subtle, expressive painting and popular religious conceptions had considerable influence on European painting, not only in France and Germany but also in Italy and in Spain. Hans Memling was his greatest follower, although it is not proven that he was a direct pupil of Rogier. Van der Weyden had also great influence on the German painter and engraver Martin Schongauer whose prints were distributed all over Europe since the last decades of the 15th century. Indirectly Schongauer's prints helped to disseminate Van der Weyden's style.

[Oil on wood]

William Merritt Chase - The Tenth Street Studio [1880]

William Merritt Chase - The Tenth Street Studio [1880], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Chase (American, 1849–1916), who is almost lost in the shadows at the right, portrays himself holding his palette as if pausing from work, but he leaves it to the viewer to deduce whether the young woman with whom he chats is a model, a patron, or a friend. Her listlessness and immersion in an aesthetic interior make her seem like a precious object, a simile embraced by many artists and collectors of the period. Her association with art reflects women's roles as consumers and keepers of culture and arbiters of taste. Chase encoded his professional ambitions in the opulent décor of his Greenwich Village studio and in his painted accounts of it. Packed with works of art and souvenirs of travel, the studio showcased Chase's refinement and connection with tradition; provided a place for display, contemplation, and professional entertaining; and offered a retreat from urban confusion.

[Oil on canvas, 102.6 x 133.4 cm]

Canaletto - The Stonemason's Yard [c.1725]

Canaletto - The Stonemason's Yard [c.1725], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The Stonemason's Yard is considered one of Canaletto's finest works. The view is one across the Campo (small square) St. Vidal, looking over the Grand Canal to the church of S. Maria della Carità (Saint Mary of Charity). The square has been temporarily transformed into a workshop for repairing the nearby church (not seen in the picture) of St. Vidal. The blocks of Istrian stone were brought by water to the square. The campanile (bell-tower) of the church of St. Maria della Carità on the far side of the Grand Canal collapsed in 1744, after the painting was made, and was not rebuilt.

The painting is not precisely datable but the bold composition, the densely applied paint and the careful execution of the figures are characteristic of Canaletto's works of the mid- to late 1720s. The informal nature of the scene and the unusual view across the Grand Canal suggest that it was made for a local Venetian patron rather than a foreign visitor to Venice.

The National Gallery, London, exhibition entitled 'Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals' is currently running from October 13, 2010 to January 16, 2011.

[Oil on canvas, 123.8 x 162.9 cm]

Gallery Closure

Gandalf's Gallery and Gandalf's Gallery Modern will be closed for a couple of weeks while I am on holiday. May I thanks all my friends and visitors for your continued support. See you soon – Friday 19^th November.

Best wishes.

Gandalf

J Bond Francisco - The Sick Child [1893]

J Bond Francisco - The Sick Child [1893], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

In The Sick Child the green walls and pale sheets emphasise the boy's flushed skin, and although his eyes are closed, he does not appear to rest comfortably. The silk clown dangling upside down by one leg from the boy's hand appears about to fall, as if the child himself has only a weak grip on life. J. Bond Francisco (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1863 - Los Angeles, California, 1931) exhibited this painting at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and the image was widely reproduced and hung on the walls of doctors' offices and hospitals.

[Oil on canvas, 81.3 x 121.8 cm]

Camille Pissarro - Boulevard Monmartre in Paris [1897]

Camille Pissarro - Boulevard Monmartre in Paris [1897], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Like Claude Monet, Pissarro, an outstanding representative of the Impressionist movement, often painted whole series of works showing the same motif. This painting belongs to a series of views the Boulevard Montmartre, for which the artist rented a room in the Grand Hotel de Russie from which he could see all the "grands boulevards". Pissarro depicted this view at different hours of the day, in different weather conditions, creating a total of 13 paintings taken from the same viewpoint. Here the master skilfully conveyed the rich atmospheric effects, the complex colours and ethereal feeling of a gloomy day. This image of fast-moving, dynamic urban life, so convincingly captured by the artist's rapid brushwork, presents the image of a contemporary city - not in a ceremonial or official mood, but animated and alive. Such urban landscapes formed the central motif in Pissarro's work.

[Oil on canvas, 74 x 92.8 cm]

Victor Higgins - The Widower

Victor Higgins - The Widower, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Victor Higgins (June 28, 1884 – August 23, 1949) was an American painter and teacher born in Shelbyville, Indiana. He studied at the Art Institute in Chicago and at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In Paris he was a pupil of Robert Henri, Rene Menard and Lucien Simon. He was an associate of the National Academy. He moved to Taos, New Mexico in 1914 and joined the Taos Society of Artists in 1915.