Alexei Alexeiwicz Harlamoff (1849 – 1905) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg and won a gold medal and a travel scholarship in 1868. This enabled him to go to Paris, where he remained, working with the great portrait painter and teacher at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts Léon Bonnat (1834-1922). Harlamoff's work was exhibited in the Russian section of the Décennale exhibition of art produced between 1889 and 1900 which was part of the World’s Fair held in Paris in 1900.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Conrad Marca-Relli - Steel Grey [1959-62]
Conrad Marca-Relli (Boston, Massachusetts, June 5, 1913 – Parma, Emilia Romagna, Italy, August 29, 2000) was an American artist who belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognised across the Atlantic, including Paris. New York School Abstract Expressionism, represented by Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Franz Kline, Marca-Relli and others became a leading art movement of the post-war era. Throughout his career Marca-Relli created monumental-scale collages. He combined oil painting and collage, employing intense colours, broken surfaces and expressionistic spattering. He also experimented with metal and vinyl materials. Over the years the collages developed an abstract simplicity, evidenced by black or sombre colours and rectangular shapes isolated against a neutral backdrop.
[Oil and collage on canvas, 152.7 x 134.9 cm]
Claude Monet - Springtime [1872]
In the 1870s, Argenteuil, a suburb of Paris on the Seine River, north-west of the city, was a gathering point for a number of Impressionist artists. In this fully developed Impressionist work, Monet portrays his first wife, Camille, seated on the lawn beneath lilac bushes in the garden of the Maison Aubry, their first residence in the Paris suburb. Monet moved to Argenteuil in December 1871. Many of the motifs that he and the other Impressionists favoured could be found in this small town, conveniently connected by rail to nearby Paris. While in Argenteuil, Monet set up a comfortable residence for himself, his wife, and their son Jean, enjoying a period of stability that resulted in great productivity over the next seven years.
During the early 1870s, Monet frequently painted views of his backyard garden that included Camille as his model. Here, her voluminous pink dress appears to float over the grass. The canvas glows with dappled sunlight, suggested by the artist's quick, unblended dabs of color. Camille's serene absorption in her book and the delicacy of her form recall 18th-century representations of women reading. "Springtime" is a prime example of Monet's commitment to painting outdoors and was included in the Second Impressionist Exhibition in 1876.
[Oil on canvas, 50 x 65.5 cm]
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Gerard David - The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor [c.1510]
Gerard David - The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor [c.1510], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.
The Virgin and Child are enthroned in a walled garden, a probable metaphor for her virginity. On the right Saint Barbara reads a book. Mary Magdalene, seated next to her holding on ointment jar, appears to be turning the pages. To the left Saint Catherine receives a ring from the infant Christ (she refused to marry an emperor on the grounds that she was already married to Christ). The everyday world represented beyond the wall was perhaps painted from contemporary Bruges.
David's picture was almost certainly commissioned by the kneeling figure on the left, Richard de Visch van der Capelle, a cantor (senior cleric) of Saint Donatian, Bruges. His identity is recorded in the coat of arms on the greyhound's collar. In 1500 he sought to restore the chapel of Saint Anthony Abbot, who appears in the background behind Saint Barbara. This painting was almost certainly intended for the altar of Saint Catherine there.
[Oil on oak, 105.8 x 144.4 cm]
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Torsten Andersson - Spring Breeze [1946]
Otto Torsten Andersson (June 6, 1926 - May 30, 2009) was a Swedish modernist painter, best known for his theme of the realistic depiction of abstract sculptures, and two-dimensional exploration of three-dimensional objects, where the colours seem to be superimposed on a random and perfunctory manner.
[Oil on canvas, 58 x 66 cm]
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