A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
AMMANATI, Bartolomeo 1511-92:
Career: He was an outstanding Tuscan-born Mannerist sculptor & architect who was active in Florence, Urbino, Padua & Rome
Features: Having come under Jesuit guidance, he pleaded in letters to the Florentine Academy & the Grand-Duke Ferdinand I de’Medici (1582 & c1590) against the representation of the nude, & urged the removal or covering of existing works by himself & others Wittkower&Jaffe p9, L&L
ANGERSTEIN, John Julius, 1735-1823:
He was a financier, philanthropist, & collector, who was born in St Petersburg. After his death, his collection was sold & then formed the nucleus of the National Gallery L&L
ANTAL, Frederick, 1887-1954, Hungary:
Background: He came from a wealthy Jewish family & his father was a doctor DAH
Training: In law at Budapest & in art history at Budapest, Paris, & Berlin under Wolfflin. In 1914 he undertook a doctorate under Dvorak DAH
Career: In 1916 he was a member of a discussion group, Sonntagskreis, with Lukacs, Mannheim & Hauser. He was briefly the Chairman of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, under the Communists. After fleeing, he travelled extensively during 1919-23, though he was mostly in Florence & partly funded by the University of Berlin. He produced a draft on Florentine art history. Between 1923 & 1933 he was in Berlin, but fled to Britain where he was befriended by Anthony Blunt & lectured at the Courtaluld Institute. He re-wrote his book on Florence & contributed to the 1949 catalogue of the Royal Library drawings DAH
Publications: His Marxist Florentine Painting and its Social Background of 1948 was highly regarded but criticised as over-rigidly determinist. In1962 his posthumous Hogarth & His Place in European Art, asubtler work, was published OxDicArt
Ideas (leading): “Any period of reaction fears Realism above all else” Antal1962 p180; See Marxism
ARISTOTLE, 384-322BC, Greece:
Teacher: Plato Gomb2002 p15
Status: He was a celebrated Greek philosopher
Beliefs: There is a tendency within nature for potentialities to be fulfilled, eg for acorns to become oak trees. However, the process of actualisation is never completed & is inevitably followed by decay & death. Aristotle applied these biological ideas to the evolution of certain arts, in particular tragedy Gomb2002 p15
Legacy: The first writings on history of sculpture & painting appeared shortly after Aristotle’s death & the apparent attainment of perfect mimesis by Lysippus the sculptor & the painter Apelles. Unlike Plato, Aristotle had no preference for the early stages of development but, without his theory of growth & decay in the arts, the idea of the primitive could never have taken root Gomb2002 pp 16-7. Aristotle viewed nature as a force working in the refractory medium of matter to produce a central & generalised form. Hence artists’ task was to produce the perfect forms to which nature was striving Hussey pp 7-8
ARUNDEL, Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl, 1586-1646, England:
Career: In 1613-5 the Arundels travelled with Inigo Jones in Italy visiting every major art centre. He became a leading figure at the court of Charles I, where he promoted interest in the arts L&L, OxDicArt
Collection: In 1616, following the death of Lady Arundel’s father, the Arundels were able to begin collecting in earnest employing ambassadors as agents & training their own agent. Arundel’s tastes were catholic. In painting he was passionately interested in Holbein the Younger, collected Durer & commissioned works from Rubens & Van Dyck L&L, OxDicArt
Innovations: He was the founder of modern collecting in England L&L
BALDASSAR & BALDESAR, Count, 1478-1529 (confusable with Francesco & Giovanni) = Italy:
Background: He was born at Castleatico, near Mantua Grove6 p38
Education: During 1490-9 he was at Ludovico Sforza’s ducal court in Milan Grove6 p38
Career: Castiglione was a writer, humanist, soldier & diplomat. Between 1499 & 1504 he was in court service for Francesco II Gonzago, Marques of Mantua. Then, until 1516, he served at the courts of Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino, & Francesco-Maria I della Rovere, his successor. Here he met Bembo & Raphael (his strong friend). During 1508-18 Castiglione wrote Il Libro del Cortegiano, 1528. In 1513-4 he explored ancient Roman sites with Bembo & Raphael, & in 1519, with Raphael, he wrote a report on ancient Rome for Leo X. He acquired art works for Isabella d’Este & Federico II, Marques of Mantua, & during 1519-24 was in his diplomatic service. From 1524 he was papal nuncio to Charles V in Spain Grove6 pp 38-9
Legacy: Castiglione’s book had a considerable impact on painting See under Aesthetics &.Beauty
BALDINUCCI, Filippo, 1625-96, Italy=Florence:
Training: He was largely self-taught L&L
Career: Baldinucci was a bookkeeper by profession & he was not wealthy. However, his patron Cardinal Prince Leopoldo de’ Medici (died 1675) supported his Notizie de’ professori del disegno, 1681-1728 in six volumes. This was intended to up-date Vasari, substantiate his claim of Tuscan artistic primacy, & counter Malvasia who had promoted Bolognese art L&L
Friends: Dolci, Sustermans & other Florentine artists L&L
Innovation: The use of every kind of document for art history OxDicArt
Personal: He was depressive with an unfulfilled religious vocation L&L
BALDASSAR & BALDESAR, Count, 1478-1529 (confusable with Francesco & Giovanni) = Italy:
Background: He was born at Castleatico, near Mantua Grove6 p38
Education: During 1490-9 he was at Ludovico Sforza’s ducal court in Milan Grove6 p38
Career: Castiglione was a writer, humanist, soldier & diplomat. Between 1499 & 1504 he was in court service for Francesco II Gonzago, Marques of Mantua. Then, until 1516, he served at the courts of Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino, & Francesco-Maria I della Rovere, his successor. Here he met Bembo & Raphael (his strong friend). During 1508-18 Castiglione wrote Il Libro del Cortegiano, 1528. In 1513-4 he explored ancient Roman sites with Bembo & Raphael, & in 1519, with Raphael, he wrote a report on ancient Rome for Leo X. He acquired art works for Isabella d’Este & Federico II, Marques of Mantua, & during 1519-24 was in his diplomatic service. From 1524 he was papal nuncio to Charles V in Spain Grove6 pp 38-9
Legacy: Castiglione’s book had a considerable impact on painting See under Aesthetics &.Beauty
The BARBARINI FAMILY:
Background: It was descended from Florentine merchant’s wealthy from wool trading L&L, Grove3 p205.
Influences: During 1604-7 Maffeo Barbarini, the future Urban VIII, was papal nuncio at the court of Henry IV of France. He witnessed the benefits of artistic patronage which resulted in the glorification of the monarch. Mindful of a poet ancestor he became ambitious to be a poet & patron. Likewise, his nephew Francesco. who was erudite & deeply cultivated, led a legation to France in 1625 & witnessed the political function of art Grove3 pp 205, 207.
Careers: In 1623 Maffeo became Urban VIII. He engaged in the Baroque embellishment of St Peter’s including the baladacchino, & was a great patron of Bernini. His younger brother Antonio, who patronised Reni, Domenichino, da Cortona & Lanfranco, was made a Cardinal together with Francesco, who commissioned work from Poussin, & Francesco’s brother, Antonio II, who patronised Andrea Sacchi. There was also Taddeo, Francesco’s brother who was not a Cardinal but was given office, who commissioned Sacci & Andrea Canaassei when decorating the Palazzo Barberini.
Urban was the last great nepotist who appointed his Cardinal relations when very young. On his death the family was disgraced L&L, Grove3 pp 205-8
BARR, Alfred H, 1902-81, United States:
Background: Born in Detroit, the son of a Presbyterian minister OxDicMod
Training: Art & archaeology at Princeton where he ended with an MA in 1923 Grove3 p 270
Career: After travelling to Europe, he taught art history at Vassar, Harvard where he completed his doctoral courses, Princeton & at Wellesley College, 1923-7. Here he taught the first ever undergraduate course in modern art in America, & visited the Bauhaus & interviewed its members. In 1929 Barr became director of MoMA, assembled a collection of modern masterpieces, held a long series of daring & wide ranging exhibitions. Many were accompanied by scholarly but accessible books & catalogues which he wrote which became a model Grove3 p271
Beliefs: Barr was an ardent defender of artistic freedom who opposed Nazi & Soviet censorship & Clement Greeberg’s belief that artistic progress was unidirectional. However, he had in Cubism & Abstract Art, 1936, suggested that modern art was a kind of self-sustaining development with abstraction its inevitable goal Grove3 OxDicMod p271 Barr’s concept of modern art was by no means restricted. In American Realists & Magic Realists for instance he saw a commonality between modern work by Hopper & Sheeler & paintings dating back to the 1820s M&B pp 9-20
Status: In 1960 John Canady of the New York Times said he was the most powerful tastemaker in American art Grove3 p271
Influence: He widened the traditional concept of the art museum so that it included architecture, industrial design, photograph & film OxDicMod
BAUDELAIRE, Charles, 1821-67, France:
Background: There appears to have been insanity in his father’s family & his half-brother died syphilitic & insane. His father was 61 & his mother 25. When his father died in 1827, his mother re-married within a year Brookner pp 62-3
Career: Baudelaire hated his step-father who was a strict disciplinarian. Disgust at & remorse for his mother were the dominant strains in his emotional life. When he came of age, he set up house in great style with a spectacular but illiterate & improvident coloured mistress, took enormous quantities of drugs & spent money like water. He was judged incompetent to administer his financial affairs & had to subsist on a meagre allowance. Formerly a dandy he became a haggard creature &, although he worked extremely hard as a journalist, he was unable toward the end to afford a hair cut. He died syphilitic & insane Brookner pp 62-5
Development: He was, as he said, animated both by life’s horror & its ecstasy & his writings reflect this. However, the horror gradually engulfed him. What he felt to be his mother’s betrayal implanted a belief in original sin & a fear of nature. He could, for instance, see nothing commendable about the painting of landscape. Consolation was sought through increasing drug taking & from the belief that art was an antidote to nature. He believed that great artists could, through the power of Imagination, create a new unblemished state of consciousness Brookner pp 66-9
Poetry: His poems Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) were 101 exquisitely crafted lyrics characterised by musical language & evocative images. They attempted to create order & beauty in a world perceived as largely ugly & oppressive. He explored his boredom & melancholy, & his sense of exile & sin, together with the transporting power of love & the attractions of evil, vice & degraded Parisian life. Baudelaire was fined for publishing the poems & six poems were banned, although others were added, in subsequent editions OxCompEng
Status: He was the foremost art critic of his age Brookner p59.
Misogamy: Women are horrible creatures of natural appetite: “She is in heat, so she must be fucked, How admirable! Woman is natural, which is to say abominable” Himmelfarb p216
BEAUMONT, Sir George, 1751-1827
Background: He was born at Dunmow, Essex Shearer-W1996
Training: Drawing under Alexander Cozens at Eton. He was subsequently guided by Reynolds, Gainsborough & other distinguished artists Shearer-W1996, Grove3 p454
Career: He succeeded to his baronetcy in 1762 & made a Grand Tour in 1783. His oils were exhibited at the RA, 1779, & 1794-1825. In 1823 he promised his collection to the nation if a suitable building could be found. However he waged a prolonged campaign against Turner whom he regarded as aiming at the extraordinary, threatening traditional standards & colour Shearer-W1996, L&L, Grove3 p454
Characteristics/Verdict: His own work was picturesque but mediocre Shearer-W1996
Patronage: He initially collected Old Masters but during the early 1800s patronised the younger generation. He promoted Wilkie, Landseer, & Gibson, etc Shearer-W1996, Grove3 p45
Gossip: He carried Claude’s Hagar & the Angel about with him Shearer-W1996
Friends: Most leading artists: Constable, Haydon, Wilkie & Byron, Scott & Wordsworth Shearer-W1996
Status: He became the leading arbiter of taste in his day Grove3 p 454
Legacy: He helped establish the National Gallery presenting it with 16 paintings in 1826 Shearer-W1996
Collections: Leicestershire Museum & Art Gallery, Leicester
BELL, Clive, 1881-1964, & SIGNIFICANT FORM:
Background: His father was a civil engineer OxDicMod
Career: History at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1903-4. Here he became interested in painting & met Woolf & Strachey. In 1907 he went to Paris to view art & met painters. He married Venessa Stephen & their house became a centre for the Bloomsbury Group In 1910 he met Fry & became his apostle. Bell helped organise the first Post-Impressionism Exhibition, 1910, & in 1912 selected the British section of the second Post-Impressionism Exhibition. In 1914 in his book Art he set out the theory of “significant form” OxDicMod, Bell pi. By the First World War his marriage with Venessa was over. He had a number of liaisons & she began a lifelong relationship with Duncan Grant. Nevertheless he continued to spend periods at the Charleston farmhouse where she lived with Grant OxDicMod, Wikip
Beliefs: Art, as all sensitive people agree, provides a peculiar aesthetic emotion & “thrill” at the discovery of the common provoking feature is the central problem of aesthetics. Bell found this common feature in the formal properties of art works, not in subject matter, moral message or anecdotal content OxCompArt. Descriptive pictures may possess formal significance but this alone qualifies them as art, even if the forms employed arouse our interest or move us. Only where forms are themselves objects of emotion, & the picture moves us aesthetically, does it become art Bell pp 16-7. Art can be appreciated without knowledge or familiarity with life’s emotions because we are transported to a world of aesthetic exaltation. We are lifted above life in much the same way as a pure mathematician is thrilled Bell p25. Bell treats formal values as a constant in contrast to Greenberg’s developmental theory OxDicMod. In Civilization, 1928, he argued that it is artificial & characterised by tolerance, discrimination, reason & humour. It depends on the existence of a leisured, though not necessarily hereditary, elite OxCompEng.
Status: His writings, together with those of Fry, had an enormous, though not unchallenged, influence Ox20Art.
BELLORI, Giovanni, 1615-96, Italy:
Career: He excavated & recorded antiquities of Rome, & became the antiquarian to Clement X & to Christiana of Sweden. His lecture of 1664 to the Academy of S. Luke in Rome is the seminal Classicist statement where art is the ideal essence of reality, & the Antique the model of excellence. It is to be regarded as elite style, not understood by those liking naturalism or novelty. He had a decisive influence on French academic theory, & provided Winckelmann with a theoretic basis. His Vite de’ Pittori, Scultori et Achitetti Moderni of 1672 was the basic source for Baroque period. He championed Poussin, & Annibale Carracci against Caravaggio but significantly omitted Bernini when discussing leading artists of the age. He influenced the RA in Britain via Shaftesbury & Reynolds OxDicArt, OxCompArt, L&L, Waterhouse1962 p77, TurnerRtoI pp 142-3
On Caravaggio: Bellori damned him with faint praise because, though he supplanted late Mannerism’s artifice, he went to the opposite extreme of imitating nature too closely. Caravaggio’s dark nature was reflected in his dark style. His dependence on the model encouraged young artists to neglect study & engendered contempt for beautiful things when he rejected Raphael & the antique & replaced them with vile unidealised nature Grove5 p720
On the Caravaggisti: They sought out vulgar & ugly forms, including working class costume, wrinkled skin, & diseased limbs Grove5 p720
Friends: Poussin who was close Waterhouse1962 p77
Status: He was the dictator of art theory of his age Waterhouse1962 p77
BEMBO, Pietro, 1470-1547, Italy:
Background: Hi father was a Venetian statesman NG Arts site
Career: University of Padua; 1497-99 at the Este court in Ferrara where he met Ariosto & started Gli Asoleni,1505. During 1502-3 he was in Ferrara & had an affair with Lucrezia Borgia the wife of Alfonso d’Este. Between 1502 & 1512 he was at Urbino working on a treatise on poetry in Italy. In 1513 he went to Rome & became Leo X’s secretary, after the Pope’s death he went to Padua. In his 1525 treatise was published, in 1530 he became the librarian of S. Marks in Venice, & in 1539 a Cardinal NG ArtWeb, Wickip
Innovations: The development of the Italian language from the Tuscan as a literary medium; & the revival of interest in Petrach & Boccaccio Wickip
Status: He was one of the most celebrated diplomats, poets, & humanist scholars of the 16th century NGArtWeb
Links: He corresponded with Jacopo Sannazaro RoyalCollectionWeb. He was a friend of Raphael (close), Giovanni Bellini, & Titian whom he first met at Bellini’s studio. In 1513 he invited Titian to join him in Rome NGTitian p33, Hale pp 59, 117. He worked with Aldus, the publishers, on & off during 1497-1505 Kidwell p16. It is unclear how much contact he had with his relative Caterina Cornaro but there was clearly some Kidwell pp 99-100
BURCKHARDT, Jacob, 1818-97, Switzerland:
Background: He came from an art loving patrician family in Basel BurkeP p7.
Influences: Schopenhauer BurkeP p8.
Career: He was a professor at Zurich, 1855-8, & at Basle, 1858-93. In 1855 his Cicerone, a guidebook to Italian art, was published, & in 1860 The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy OxDicArt. He planned to follow this up with a whole book on Renaissance art but, apart from a section on architecture, this was not completed. Only when he retired did he have time to finish various extended essays on Italian Renaissance art of which The Altarpiece in Renaissance Italy has alone been translated Burckhardt1894 p9
Ideas: Burckhardt pioneered cultural history & his Civilization of the Renaissance was recognised as being one of the greatest historical works of the 19th century. Following Vasari, he believed that art developed from the work of Cimabue to the Golden Age of the High Renaissance. However after Raphael there was a decline & even Michelangelo in his pursuit of beauty & expressiveness overstepped the bounds of naturalism Burckhardt1894 p10. He thought that there was a rhythmic periodicity in art with the Rococo ending a decadent phase OxDicArt. Unlike Hegel, he did not see history as progress & preferred to examine societies & their features at differing points in time, believing that each age was a unity. The nature of each society was determined by the interaction between the state, religion & culture. Economic life was ignored BurkeP p8. Burckhardt considered the history of art as being a history of artistic tasks Burckhardt1994 p12
CATARINO/POLITI, Ambrogio, 1484-1553, Italy:
In 1517 he became a Dominican Friar. He mostly worked in Naples, attending the circle of artists around Victoria Colonna. Catarino became a Bishop in 1546. In 1552 he participated in the Council of Trent & was promoted Archbishop of Conza. He was about to become a Cardinal when he died. Catarino was a prolific author of polemical theological texts & helped formulate Counter-Reformation doctrine with respect to art Wikip, See under Antimannerism & Counter-Reformation Painting
CENNINI, Cennino, c1370-1440, Italy=Florence:
Training: Agnolo Gaddi Antal1948 p277
Career: His Craftsman’s Handbook (c1390) is a most important source on current artistic practice L&L. It consists of handicraft recipes & formulas, but in his introduction he says that painting should not be treated as a mechanical art because of its imaginative element. Its place is immediately after the sciences. Cennini says that “the most perfect steersman you can have & the best helm lie in the triumphal gateway of copying from nature”. He suggested that rocky masses be painted from stones brought into the workshop Antal1948 pp 277, 284
Verdict: Despite archaic notions his book stands on the threshold of a new outlook Antal1948 p284
CLARK, T(imothy) J(ames), GB/USA:
Career: Born 1943; Cambridge University; PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art. During 1967-9 he lectured at Essex & between 1970 & 1974 at the Camberwell School of Art. From 1974 he was at UCLA. He was a founder member of the Caucus for Marxism & Art & in 1976 became Chair of the Fine Art Department, Leeds. In 1980 he went to Harvard where he had a controvery with Freedberg, who was a formalist & scholarly connoisseur. He forbade his students to study with Freedberg for which he was formally reprimanded. In 1988 Clark went to Berkley where he was a Professor DAH, S.&S p252
Books: Image of the People: Gustave Courbet & the 1848 revolution (1973); The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists at & Politics in France, 1848-1851 (1973); The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet & His Followers (1985); Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (1999), etc.
DE PILES, Roger, 1635-1709, France:
Career: He undertook diplomatic missions for Louis XIV, which enabled him to study the arts widely. In the Quarelle du Coloris in the French Academy he supporterd those who held that colour & chiaroscuro are of prime importance in painting against those who emphasise drawing. He published a pamphlet Dialogue sur le Coloris in 1793 in support of this position & formed a group which held that Rubens was the finest example to emulate. In 1699 he was elected an honorary member of the Academy OxDicArt, TurnerRtoI p319
Beliefs: Colour is superior to drawing because the principal aim of painting is to deceive the eye & here colour is more effective than drawing. He praised Rubens seeing him as a naturalist who had escaped from the imitation of classical art that was inaugurated by Poussin & codified by the Academy Blunt1954 pp 257-8. Piles stressed genius, imagination & enthusiasm & criticised rule-dominated painting OxDicArt. Portrait painters should emphasise grace & dignity to such an extent that a general will, for instance, seem to say I am a valiant commander who strikes terror. (He was censured by Reynolds for failing to see that dignity & loftiness should appear natural & inherent) Reynolds p133
FRIEDLAENDER, Walter, 1873-1966:
Background: He was born in Germany OxDicArt
Career: He was a professor Freibourg , was dismissed in 1933, became a professor at New York University, & during 1939-66 edited acomplete catalogue of Poussin’s drawings with Anthony Blunt OxDicArt
Innovations: In works during 1914 & 1925 he fixed the origins of Mannerism firmly around 1520, provided a more precise definition, & distinguished between an early & later stages of Mannerism, which is now generally accepted. In 1930 he identified an Anti-Mannerist style that was prevalent during the later decades of 17th century. He preferred this term to early or pre Baroque because of its distinctive characteristics Friedlaender1925 pp xi, xiii, 81)
Status: He had a great influence on American art historians OxDicArt
Pupils: Panofsky OxDicArt
GOETHE, Johann von, 1749-1832, Germany:
He was a writer, scientist & amateur artist OxDicArt
His first publication on art Van Deutscher Baukunst, 1772, was one of the earliest appreciations of Gothic art. It was inspired by Strasburg cathedral. He identified art with nature & held that great art must reflect the blind force in nature & concentrate on individual characteristics, not the generic type OxDicArt.
In 1786-8 he visited Rome, came in contact with Tischbein & other German artist, became an advocate of Classicism & the Renaissance, & argued that beauty was the symbolic expression of the inner laws of nature OxDicArt. In Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert, 1805, he distinguished very clearly between an idealistic & a realistic trend in art: idealists (Winckelmann, Lessing, Mengs, Carstens) submit to the standards of classical antiquity & regard beauty as art’s highest purpose; realists (Johann Schadow & the critic Alois Hirt) rank what is characteristic above beauty. Goethe endorsed idealism because beauty does not exclude the characteristic but ennobles it. He had already (1802) criticised Berlin naturalism for its prosaic spirit: poetry was displaced by history, character by portrait, landscape by views, & general humanity by the narrowly patriotic Weisberg1882 pp 124-5.
His stress on the concept of genius was pivotal in the development of Romanticism OxDicArt
GREENBERG, Clement, 1909-94, USA:
Background: He was born in New York OxDicMod.
Training: He studied at the Art Students’ League & Syracuse University OxDicMod.
Influences: Marxism provided him with a strong sense that history had order & purpose, so enabling him to claim that his verdicts had historical certainty OxDicMod.
Career: He began by working as a clerk for the US customs. In 1941 he began writing regular art reviews for the The Nation, a political journal which had previously ignored painting. He attacked neo-romanticism, Surrealists who were accused of reverting to pictorialism, Mondrian’s Boogie-Woogie which he thought wavering & awkward, MoMA’s support for a retrograde romantic revival, Kandinsky whose pictures were full of holes & negative space, Gorky’s biomorphism, & lyrical abstraction. This was anti-Cubist & semi-representational L&L, Ahston 1972 pp 157-60.
From 1943 he supported Pollock to whom he an odd devotion in view of the gaping holes of which he was so critical Ashton1972 pp 159-60. Other Abstract Expressionists he championed included Gottlieb & Hoffman, & later Frankenthaler, Noland, Morris Louis, Jules Olitski & Jack Bush In 1964 he identified & promoted what he called Post-Painterly Abstraction. He was critical of Johns, Rauchenberg & Pop Art. L&L.
Beliefs: Until 1947 he was a Trotskyite. In a 1939 essay he called for an avant-garde that would oppose the mass culturE kitsch that dictators would employ to flatter the oppressed masses. Avant-garde art should be self-centered, have no point of contact with a wide public, & not be socially concerned Grove13 p616, OxDicMod p47.
Greenberg believed that painting was the most alive of the avant-garde arts but that it had been relatively slow to develop in a modernist direction. Almost all art that was truly alive needed to dispense with unnecessary conventions as soon as they were recognised in a society “bent in principle on rationalising everything”. Expendable conventions were, & he was writing in 1955-8, being eliminated by the Abstract Expressionists who were reducing paining to it viable essence. Such artists, however labeled, were advancing modernism by passing beyond the illusion of shallow depth, & the rectilinear & curvilinear regularity, imposed by the Cubists on all previous abstract art when Picasso & Braque drew back from utter abstraction Greenberg pp 208-11, 218.
Art, or so Greenberg thought, is driven by its own inherent logic & the urge towards purity which in painting means a progressive emphasis on the flatness of the picture surface & the rejection of any form of illusionism L&L. He was enthused by the following developments which, although there were anticipations, took place around 1950:
(i) Following Gorky’s lead, the use of huge canvasses, where the painted surface was so large that the edges were on the periphery of the artist’s field of vision, the frame was no longer a constriction on what was painted Greenberg p219.
(ii) Colour that was restricted by Kline to black & white which did away with three dimensional illusionism Greenberg p220;
(iii) The elimination of value contrasts as the basis of pictorial design. In the paintings of Newman, Rothko & Still provided a new type of pulsating flatness, a value-muffling warmth & colour, because of the virtual absence of drawing & design they exhale colour & have an enveloping effect. Still’s great insight was that by painting adjacent colours with similar colours the surface was muffled & did not produce a jarring effect. The early Kandinsky may have glimpsed this & in several paintings Pollock created a vaporous dust of interfused lights & darks Greenberg p226-7.
The Abstract Expressionists were well aware that America had not made a single contribution to the mainstream of painting, they were resolved to bring this bring this to an end, & they succeeded Greenberg p228.
In 1964 identified & praised Post-Painterly Abstraction [as the latest stage in the modernist advance] See Post-Painterly Abstraction.
Status: He was the most influential American writer on contemporary art in the post-war period OxDicMod
Impact: This was due to his firm & passionate speaking Ashton1972 p160. The dominance of Post-Painterly Abstraction was largely due to Greenberg & his sway over American museums. He was believed to be almost infallible due to the way he had championed Pollock & Abstract Impressionism Hughes pp 545-6.
Influenced: Fried, T. J. Clark, Krauss S&S p248
HALPERT, Edith, 1900-1970, USA:
Background: Born Odessa to prosperous Jewish parents BudickFT6/11/19
Career: After bad investments had depleted the family fortune, she worked behind the counter in a candy store, moved to Macy’s & ended up a director of an investment bank. Able to indulge a passion for art she took classes & went to gallery openings. After a failed marriage to a useless painter, Halpert opened the Downtown Gallery in the West Village, 1926. Here she championed American art when others were looking to Europe. Those she promoted included Stuart Davis, Sheeler, Ben Shahn, Arthur Dove, Jack Levine & Jacob Lawrence. During the Depression Halpert, unable to survive on contemporary art, scoured New England & Pennsylvania for obscure & self-taught painters. This led to the discovery of William Harnett &, after the gift of Locke’s The Negro in Art, to her showing Lawrence’s Migration Series & her 1941 exhibition American Negro Art. The critics responded with supreme condescension but Halpert made deals that established his reputation. She knew Abby Rockefeller who donated 500 works purchased through the Downtown Gallery to MOMA BudickFT6/11/19.
HERDER, 1744-1803, Germany:
Background: he was born at Mohrungen in East Prussia into a poor family EBrit
Training: He mainly studied theology & philosophy at Konigsberg from where he attended Kant’s lecture 1762 EBrit
Influences: Hamann, Shakespeare & the poems of Osian which he thought genuine EBrit
Career: After teaching at the cathedral school. he became assistant pastor in Riga. He visited France, England, Holland etc to study their educational systems when he was contemplating radical reform of social life. Herder then became travelling tutor & chaplain to the young prince of Eutin-Holstein & went to Strasbourg where he met Goethe. In 1771 he became court preacher at Buckeburg but met opposition from the orthodox clergy etc. Through Goethe’s influence he finally became court preacher etc at Weimar but the social atmosphere did not suit him & his relationship with Goethe became difficult EBrit
Innovation: After breaking with Classicism he was the pioneer of the Sturm Und Drang movement, inspiring Kant & a band of young writers at Darmstadt & Frankfort Ebrit. Herder & Kant were the true fathers of Romanticism. There were three strands in Herder’s doctrine each of which was revolutionary Berlin1999 p57.
First, there was expressionism. Herder believed that expression was a fundamental human property & that a work of art was a form of communication through which we contact its maker. When we evaluate a work of art, we do not simply assess its beauty or other properties, but hear what the artist is saying, & this will depend on his purpose & convictions. These are not irrelevant: a work of art is not freestanding Berlin1999 pp 58-60.
What it means to belong to a group was the second element in Herder’s thinking. Every man belongs to some kind of group in which he feels at home & outside of which he feels cut off from his roots. The very idea of belonging to a group & having roots, due to language & culture, was largely invented by Herder (though it had been partly anticipated by Vico). Herder was not referring here to belonging to a race or nation, He talked about nations but in the 18th century the word did not have the same force as in the 19th.Berlin1999 pp 59–61.
Because individuals belong to groups it is necessary when appraising a work of art to know to which group it is being addressed. Works of art do not have impersonal or eternal value & cannot be evaluated in terms of timeless criteria. He was critical of Winckelmann & Lessing for believing that classic art was an unchanging type that was universally valid, & emphasised the excellence of Gothic art. It is necessary by an act of supreme imagination to enter into the feelings & appreciate the values of the society in which they were created. Herder himself in his writings on literature showed a rare & sympathetic insight into the feelings of diverse peoples Berlin1999 pp 61-2, EBrit.
The third element in Herder’s thinking was the belief that true ideals are often incompatible & irreconcilable. That valid & objective answers were always possible to questions such as what is beautiful was one of the great beliefs of the Enlightenment. Herder believed that societies would arrive at different answers because of their differing geography & histories. He took delight in what things were & did not condemn them for not being something else. What he did dislike was the elimination of one culture by another. He also thought that the creative powers of those who did not possess roots & inherited modes of expression would be restricted Berlin 1999 pp 63-5.
Herder believed that human culture in all its aspects, whether they be linguistic, religious, moral or artistic, was essentially evolutionary & developmental. In contrast to French thinkers he thought that human growth was of a biological or organic in nature Berlin1999 p61, Ebrit.
HUSSEY, Christopher, 1899-1970, England:
Background: He was born in London & inherited Scotney Castle from his grandfather DAH
Career: He went to Eaton, & to Christ Church, Oxford, 1919-21. His book The Picturesque was published in 1927. In 1930 he became architectural adviser for Country Life & during 1933-40 was its editor, writing articles on England’s architectural heritage & fostering interest in preservation, Between 1951 & 1967 he wrote a series of surveys & books on English country houses & gardens See also Picturesque.
HUYSMANS, Joris-Karl, 1848-1947, France:
Background: His father was Dutch & his mother French Brookner p149
Training: Law Brookner p149
Career: During 1868-98 he was a civil servant but worked short hours. In 1876 his first novel was published & he then had contact with Edmond de Goncourt & Zola Brookner p149
Phases: Between 1876-81 & 1881 his novels were Naturalistic. His A Rebours (against the current) of 1884 was a piece of extravagant aestheticism in which a neurasthenic aristocrat retreats into a private world of sensuousness, artifice & self-awareness. It was a rousing send-off for the Decadent movement. Between 1891 & 1904 he wrote novels about his hero’s progress to Catholicism. He had a growing fear & hatred of the modern world & returned to Catholicism OxCompEng, Brookner pp 147, 158.
Criticism: He favoured Adler, Bastien-Lepage, Beraud, Caillebotte, Cassatt, Degas, Fantin, Morisot, Pissaro, Raffaelli (the only true Naturalist), & Renoir Weisberg1992 pp 16-7, Brookner pp 154-6. In 1881he praised Gauguin, & eulogised Moreau & Redon in A Rebours. However, he described Courbet as an animal with a working class mind & thought Millet’s pictures were bad Brookner pp 147, 160.
KAHNWEILER, Daniel-Henri, 1884-1979:
He was German-born who was a banker by training & who persuaded rich banker uncles to support his Galerie Kahnweiler in Paris, 1907. Knowing nothing about art he bought what he fancied: Fauve paintings by Braque, Derain & Vlaminck, & then Cubist works by Braque, Picasso. In 1912 the two latter contracted to let him have their entire output. After spending the War in neutral Switzerland, he returned to Paris in 1920. Picasso & others had meanwhile deserted to Paul Rosenberg, but he set up the Simon Gallery which dealt with Klee, Mason & Laurens. He became a French citizen in 1937, went into hiding during the War, & resumed his activities at the Leiris Gallery. He published, wrote books on art & was intimate with the artists he handled. However, he became disenchanted with the artistic scene OxDicMod, L&L
KLINGENDER, Francis, 1907-55, England:
Background: His father (Louis) was a prosperous wild-life painter. His parents were English but resided in Germany till about 1925 Klingender1968 pp vii-viii
Career: In about 1925 he came to England & worked at an advertising agency. He was an evening student at the LSE & undertook sociological research on the black coated worker. Klingender had difficulty in securing suitable academic work, but undertook lecturing & writing. He was an executive of the Artists International Association, for which he was the chief spokesman & he ran its Charlotte Street Centre. Between 1936 & 1940 he researched for John Grierson on film Industry finance & for Political & Economic Planning, a research organisation. In 1948 he became a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Hull Klingender1968 pp viii-xi, Spalding1986 p122
Publications (art only): Marxism & Modern Art (1942); Art & the Industrial Revolution (1947); Goya in the Democratic Tradition (1940), etc
Beliefs: He was a dedicated Marxist Klingender1968 pvii. In 1948 he declared that it was a travesty to say that official Soviet criticism of modernist composers amounted to a purge, especially with the menace of a real purge in Britain M&R p79.
See also Modernism & Marxism
LIPSIUS, Justus, 1547-1606:
Career: He taught philosophy at the University of Louvain Klessmann p21
Beliefs: In his Physiologia Stoicorum he claimed that close study of natural phenomena, & meditative examination of the whole of nature, would reveal the measure & meaning of divine Creation Klessmann p34
See also Rubens
LONGHI, Roberto, 1890-1970, Italy:
Background: He was born Alba in the Piedmont. His father was a school teacher Longhi pxxv
Training: At the University of Turin Longhi pxxv
Influences: Groce DAH
Career: He was a distinguished art historian & critic; & was involved with various art-historical & critical journals. His 1911 thesis was on Caravaggio. Longhi championed the Futurists but disparaged Pittura Metaphisica. He taught art history at high schools in Rome. Around 1920 he was taken up by the great collector Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi who provided him with the opportunity for travel etc. In 1934 he became Professor of Art History at the University of Bologna; & in 1949 Professor at the University of Florence. He wrote the introduction to the important Caravaggio exhibition in Milan, 1951 DAH; Longhi pxxv
Works/Re-evaluations: In 1914 he wrote an article on Piero della Franchesca who was then relatively obscure & had been strongly criticised by Berenson. This was followed by a 1927 monograph (& subsequent revisions) on Piero which established him as a great Quattrocentro artist. During 1928-34 he wrote articles on Caravaggio, his other great interest, &1962 monograph DAH. He made studies on Brescia, Bergamo & other Lombard centres which showed them to be more than imitators of Venetian art. He also established that Bologna was as independent centre in the 14th & 15th centuries Longhi pp xiv-xx
Verdict: He had an ability to make historical connections (Haskell) DAH. His writing were a sheer delight (Tabbat) Longhi pxxiv
Gossip: He was accused of authenticating fakes to pay his gambling debts DAH
LONGINUS:
This is the name attached to the author of a treatise, probably of the 1st century, on the Sublime. It says that poetic excellence arises from the profundity of the writer’s emotions OxCompEng
MAHON, Sir Denis, 1910-2011:
Career: He was a private scholar educated at Eton & Christ Church, Oxford. He had private means, being the heir to the Guinness Mahon merchant banking fortune; & was able to devote himself single-mindedly to the study of Bolognese & other 17th century Italian painting. Mahon was the leader in the rehabilitation of the Carracci, Guercino, Reni & other once-scorned artists. His Studies in Seicento Art & Theory, 1947, is a brilliant pioneering work, which contains studies of Guercino & the Carracci. From 1956 he was a trustee of the National Gallery where he waged a campaign against the over-cleaning of paintings. In 1999 he donated his vast collection to public museums in the British Isles & Italy OxDicArt, MahonD, DAH.
Legacy: Along with Sacheverell Sitwell & Tancred Borenius, he brought Italian Baroque painting to the attention of the English speaking nations DAH
MALVASIA, Count Carlo, 1616-93, Italy=Bologna:
He was a Canon at Bologna Cathedral & law lecturer at the University of Bologna & amateur painter. Malvasia was a fierce Bolognese patriot. His 1678 Felcina Pittrice, Vite de Pittori Bolognesi, 1678, is the principal source on 17th century Bolognese painters, many of whom he knew. He opposed Baldinucci, who championed Tuscan art L&L, OxDicArt
MANCINI, Giulio, 1558-1630, Italy:
Background: He was born in Siena L&L
Career: After training in Padua he worked in the hospital of S. spirit & the papal prisons in Rome. He became Urban VIII’s personal physician L&L
Writings: He wrote on dance & painting. His works on the consideration painting, 1621etc, contain the first biographies of the Carracci & Caravaggio; his Voyage to Rome to see the Pictures Found There is the first modern secular art guide to the city; & he also wrote an art guide to Siena. He praised invention & imagination above technique. & perceptively distinguished four main types of painting in early 17th century Rome: those of Caravaggio, of the Carracci, late Mannerism (Cavalier d’Arpino,etc), & eclecticism. He thought that the differing styles of Caravaggio & the Carracci were valuable as correctives to a general decline in painting, the “age of senility”, although the idea of a new artistic renaissance only occurred later. However, he considered that Caravaggio’s work was over-dependent on nature & his lighting was somewhat unnatural. He was a forerunner of connoisseurship & examined medieval painting with innovatory care L&L, Grove20 p242 & 27 p122
MARINETTI, Filippo, 1876-1944, Italy:
Background: He was born in Alexandria, the son of a wealthy lawyer. Family money enabled him to pursue his artistic interests OxDicMod
Educated: The Sorbonne & then law in Genoa until 1911 L&L, OxDicMod
Career: He was an experimental poet, a writer & an artistic entrepreneur, who lived in Milan but moved to Rome in 1925. In 1909 he launched Futurism with his manifesto in Le Figaro & then vigorously promoted the movement. The article in ringing tones glorified technology, speed which was a new form of beauty, aggression & war. He denounced any attachment to the past, including museums which he promised to destroy Lynton p87. Marinetti agitated for Italy to enter the War, & in 1915 he volunteered for the army where he was wounded & decorated for bravery. In 1929 he launched Aeropittura which was a late manifestation of Futurism. He served as a volunteer when Italy invaded Abyssinia & in Russia in 1942 Lynton p87, L&L, OxDicMod, OxDicTerms
Politics; He was fiercely nationalistic & in 1918 founded the Futurist Political Party which supported his friend Mussolini L&L, OxDicMod
Feature: He attracted attention by challenging a journalist to a duel in London in 1911, & by his three trials for obscenity followeing his 1910 novel about a man with a very long penis, which he wrapt around himself when he slept OxDicMod
Influence: [Read Hughes]
NATANSON, the brothers Alexandre, Alfred, & Thadee (1898-1951) & their cousin Stephane, France:
Background: The brothers’ father, Adam, emigrated from Poland to Paris in the early 1870s & was a wealthy Jewish banker Grove22 p537, Groom p121.
La Revue Blanche: This was the spearhead of modernity in late 19th century Paris It began as a school magazine started by pupils at the Lycee Condorcet. Its was first published in Liege but moved to Paris in 1891 where Thadee became editor & during 1893-1900 its regular art correspondent. He defended Impressionism & Neo-Impressionism, & strongly championed the Nabis. Prints were commissioned as front pieces for the Revue & then sold separately & exhibitions were held. Bonnard & Toulouse-Lautrec were also commissioned to produce highly successful colour lithograph posters. Regular contributors included Mallarme, Valery, Tristan Bernard & de Gaumont. Vuillard, Bonnard & Vallotton became Thasdee’s friends & those of his wife Misia Godebska, a young Polish pianiast. She presided over their house in the Champs Elysees which was a centre of Parisian life frequented by Andre Gide, Jarry, Leon Blum, Colette & Debussy. In the later 1890 the Revue took an anarchistic & staunchly Dreyfusard line. After 1900 Thadee abandoned journalism & the Revue ceased in 1903. His marriage broke up in 1904 Denvir p165, Grove22 p537-8.
Commissions: In 1892 Stephane persuaded his sister Leonie & her wealthy industrialist husband, Paul Desmarais, to commission Vuillard to paint six decorative oil panels depicting women in leisure & work activities. They were the first of his great panel commissions. During 1893-4 he painted The Square, a large work in distemper/peinturea la colle for Thadee & Misia. During the same period he also painted a series of oil panels known as The Public Gardens for Alexandre Groom pp 19, 22-3, 42-4, 47. In 1894-56 Vuillard painted as series of oil panels, which depict women & flowers & are known as The Album for Thadee & Misia Groom pp 67-72. Finally, Vuillard painted two huge oil panels for Adam Natanson Groom pp 122-4
NEWTON, Eric, 1893-1965, England:
Training: The University of Manchester DicArtHist.
Career: He was born at Marple & became a mosaic craftsman in the family firm. During 1914-18 he was a captain in the army. Newton produced occasional art criticism for the Manchester Guardian, & from 1930 he worked full time. In 1936 he went to London where he was a broadcaster & became a household name. After 1947 he worked for the Sunday Times but was dismissed in 1950 after a controversial review of an RA Exhibition. He undertook an MA thesis on Tintoretto at the University of Manchester, & in 1956 went back to the Guardian DicArtHist.
NOVALIS/VON HARDENBERG, Friedrich, 1772-1801, Germany:
Career: He was a Romantic who wrote religious, mystic & secular poetry, & novels OxCompEng.
Influences: Fichte’s equation of God with the universe’s moral order (for which he lost his professorship at Jena) Honour1979 p30
Theory: He wrote of the need to restore spontaneous feeling by endowing the commonplace with lofty significance & the ordinary with mystery Honour1979 p72. Music, painting, & poetry were essentially the same., with the ultimate artistic experience being a synaesthetic total art form (or Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk). Painting was figurative & objective music (1798-9). He shared the Enlightenment opposition to superstition, injustice & intolerance but rejected Voltarian cerebral scepticism. This he thought reduced the universe to a purposeless mechanism. He had a quasi-religious attitude to the human body: to touch it is to touch heaven & to make love is to achieve self-dissolving bliss & union with nature Honour1979 pp 72, 119, 280-1, 298, 309. In Die Christenheit, oder Europe, 1799, Novalis supposed that in the Middle Ages society had existed harmoniously due to faith, not reason. The French Revolution was the ultimate consequence of the doubting spirit initiated by the Reformation Vaughan1980 p9
POZZO, Cassiano dal, 1588-1657=Italy:
Career: He was born in the Piedmont but moved to Rome. Here he became secretary to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, with whom he travelled to France & Spain. Pozzo created a ‘Paper Museum’ of drawings of antique & early Christian monuments by, Cortona, Testa & Poussin to whom he gave sustained patronage. He belonged to the Accademia dei Lincei whose aim was to study nature by direct observation L&L
Verdict: Pozzo was Europe’s greatest connoisseur of his age Haskell p104
ROSENBERG, Leonce, 1877-1947, & his brother Paul, 1881-59:
In 1906 they took over their father’s gallery which had specialised in Impressionist & post-Impressionist paintings. In 1910 they split the business & Leonce became the main dealer for Cubism, giving contracts to Braque, Gris & Leger, while Kahnweiler was in exile. In 1918 he opened the Galerie de l’Effort Moderne, which, together with its journal, became a powerful force in promoting avant-garde art. However, Picasso, Braque & Leger deserted to Paul, & Leonce became unpopular in the early 1920s when he handled, & profited from, the sale of Kahnweiler’s stock, confiscated during the War. Paul’s gallery was up-market & concentrated on established artists OxDicMod.
SAINT-YENNE, La Font de, 1688-1771, France:
Background: He was born into a bourgeois family involved in the Lyon silk trade Grove18 p630
Career: Between 1729 & 37 he was a courtier attached to Queen Marie Leczinska at Versailles. He befriended Lemoyne & presumably became interested in art Grove18 p630
Status: He is generally regarded as the first art critic in the modern sense Fried1980 p181
Beliefs: He attacked mythological subjects as absurd & immoral & in 1754 called for historical paintings of virtuous, heroic & patriotic men who would, if necessary, be prepared to sacrifice life itself. Brutus & other such exemplars were to be found in the ancient world, though not in decadent imperial Rome Honour1968 p44. Saint-Yenne believed that French painting had declined steadily since the death of Louis XIV due to the Rococo style & the banishing of serious paintings from fashionable walls with the growth of luxury. Only heavy state intervention would halt the process Grove18 p630. He admired a work by Vien but was critical of Boucher because his figures lack of serious attention to what was happening Fried1980 pp 28, 30, 39. In 1747 Saint-Yenne had advocated that the royal art treasures to be put on public exhibition at the Louvre & complained that they were hidden & deteriorating at Versailles Tietze p40, Wikip.
Legacy: The success of his books fuelled an explosion in Salon criticism during the second half of the 18th century Grove18 p630
SHAFTESBURY, Lord, 1671-1713:
Teacher: Locke L&L
Career: He was an essayist & art patron who travelled in Italy, France & Germany. During 1695-8 he was MP for Poole & advocated that allowing counsel for prisoners charged with treason be allowed counsel, 1695. In 1699 he became the third Earl During 1698 he made a European tour with Earl Stanhope & Closterman. He came under the influence of Pierre Bayle. After voting with the Whigs during 1700-2, he was dismissed from his vice-admiralship; 1702. In 1703-4 he withdrew to Holland; & in 1711 left England for Naples L&L, Grove7 p461, CDNB, DNBC
Views: He advocated the Grand Manner & criticised Dutch genre for being merely natural L&L
Patron for: Greenhill W&M p179.
See also Nature in Section 7
SMITH, Joseph/Consul Smith, c1675-1770, England:
Career: He was a resident in Venice from the early1700s & in 1744 became British Consul in 1761 he sold the bulk of his library & pictures to George III L&L
Role: He was a merchant, publisher, art collector, patron, & a dealer associated with Canaletto, Carriera, the Riccis & Zuccarelli L&L
STEVENSON, Robert Allan Mowbray, 1847-1900, Scotland:
Background: He was born in Edinburgh. His father was a leading engineer & meteorologist. He was the cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson McConkey1989 p158
Training: In 1873, after taking a Cambridge degree, he went to Paris as art student where, in 1874, he attended Carolus-Duran’s atelier where Sargent & O’Meara were fellow students McConkey1989 p158
Career: Between 1880 & 1893 he was professor of fine arts at the future University of Liverpool. He was art critic to the Pall Mall Gazette from 1893 until his death & gave extensive coverage to NEAC exhibitions. His influential book Velazquez appeared in 1895. He was an early visitor to Grez-sur-Loing McConkey1989 p158
STIGLITZ, Alfred, 1864-1946, USA:
Background: Born Hoboken, New Jersey, the son of successful German immigrant businessman OxDicMod
Career: In 1861 went to Berlin to study mechanical engineering. There he developed an interest in photography & by his return in 1890 he had an international reputation. In 1905, with the American photographer he opened a gallery which later became known as the 291 Gallery (at 291 Fifth Avenue). It soon started promoting modernist painting & sculpture, & between 1908 & 1914 held the first American exhibitions of Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rousseau, Picabia, Severini & Brancusi. Stieglitz also championed American artists, including Hartley, Dove & O’Keeffe whom he married in 1924. During the first two decades of the 20th century he did more than anyone else to bring European avant-garde art before the American public. 291 had to closed in 1917 but he ran his Intimate Gallery during 1925-9 & An American Place from 1929 to 1946 OxDicMod, L&L
He is regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of photography. His subjects included landscapes, views of New York & studies of his wife OxDicMod
Stieglitz did not believe in the broad public appreciation of art. He refused to advertise his galleries, list them in phone books, label what they displayed or sell to “unenlightened” buyers. Stieglitz cast himself as the high priest of modern American art for the elite Doss p60
TOLSTOY, Count Leo, 1826-1910, Russia:
Background: He was born at the family estate of Yasnaya Polyana Chambers
Education: Privately & at Kazan University where he read law but left without a degree Chambers
Career: He said his early life was dissolute. In 1851 he went with his elder brother to the Caucasus where he joined the artillery & began writing. After commanding a battery during the defence of Sebastopl, he left the army & joined the literary circle in St Petersburg, 1856, & travelled abroad. In 1862 he married & became a progressive landlord, having inherited the family estate in 1847. He wrote War & Peace, 1663-9, Anna Karaenina, 1874-6, & The Kreuitzner Sonaata. 1884. What is Art? was published in 1898. Eventually he surrendered his possessions to his wife & lived as a peasant under her roof. After domestic quarrels he secretly left home with his youngest daughter, caught pneumonia & died at a railway station Chambers
What is Art? Tolstoy regarded the arts as a form of communication in which the artist, if successful, transmits his feelings to the viewer. If the work does not infect no explanation will create contagion & art was used because this was the only form of transmission. In fact critics are less susceptible than other men to the contagion of art & their writings have largely contributed to the perversion of public taste Tolstoy pp 194-5, 218. A real work of art is that in which the viewer is infected by the author’s condition of soul. This destroys the consciousness of his separation from the artist & also unites him with others. This union with others frees our personality from its separation & isolation, & is art’s the great attractive force. Infection is a sure sign of art & its degree is the sole measure of excellence. It is through sincerity that the artist is able & impelled to express his feelings. When the spectator feels that the artist is painting for himself, & not merely for others, infection takes place. This explains why peasant art is so powerful , but is a condition almost entirely absent from upper-class art Tolstoy pp 228-30.
Art is the evolution of feeling & the movement of humanity towards perfection as feelings that are less kind & necessary for human well-being are replaced by the growth of brotherhood among men, or what Tolstoy terms religious perception. The more art fulfils that purpose the better it is. The upper classes at the time of the Renaissance mistakenly thought that its purpose of art was pleasure. Moreover the heroes in art were those who had triumphed by craft, fraud or cruelty that rifled a desire for the glory & greatness of their society. The best examples of current art that transmits positive or negative images of brotherhood are to be found in literature, eg Les Miserables & in Dickens. Examples are less common in painting, especially among the works of the most celebrated painters, but have been produced by Millet, Jules Breton, Lhermitte & Walter Langley Tolstoy pp 231, 234-6, 241-3.
Counterfeits of art & insignificant art have been mistaken for real art, witness Monet, Manet, Puvis de Chevannes, Burne-Jones, Stuck & Bocklin. The upper classes have prioritised beauty instead of goodness thus freeing themselves from the demands of morality. This is evident in the work of Nietzsche, the Decadents & certain English aesthetes. The art of the upper classes has promoted that which is most harmful to humanity: superstition, patriotic intoxication & above all sensuality Tolstoy pp251-2, 257–60.
For Tolstoy’s views on beauty See BEAUTY in Section 7
THORE, Theophile, 1807-69, France:
Together with Baudelaire he was the most perceptive art critic of his time. He wanted art for the people & supported those who ignored or subverted academic calls for learned subject matter & high rhetoric. Thore was among the first to acclaim Courbet, Daumier, Manet, Monet & Renoir, & to see the weakness of Meissonier. Above all, he virtually rediscovered Vermeer & was a pioneer student of the Dutch School OxDicArt, L&L
TRETYAKOV, Pavel, 1832-1908, Russia:
Background: He was born in Moscow Grove31 p311
Career: After marrying the niece of the industrialist Sarva Mamontov in 1851, Tretyakov began collecting west European art but switched to icons & 18th & 19th century Russian works, & became the Wanderers’ main patron. He was committed to Naturalism & was critical of A Parisian Cafe by Repin. In 1872 he opened his museum of Russian art & in 1892 gave the collection, & that of his dead brother, Sergey, to the city of Moscow. but he remained curator until his death. It was nationalised in 1918 becoming the State Tretyakov Galley. Along with the Russian Museum in St Petersburg it is the world’s most important collection of Russian art Grove 31 pp 311-2, WPS p20.
Feature: From the late 1860s Tretyakov began to deliberately commission & acquire portraits of Russia’s cultural elite. He saw this as a museum within a museum, & to begin with the portraits were hung together. It reflected the nature of the Russian intelligence with its stoic & messianic mission. As befits portraits of an iconic nature & members of a national pantheon its members are a serious, austere & even forbidding group. Nobody appears to be smiling & only one sitter looks at all friendly, & this portrait, that of Alexander Ostrovsky, was not commissioned by Tretyakov. The gallery became a milestone in Russia’s understanding of its own identity [& the belief in Russia’s special mission which owed much to the concept of Pan-Slavism], A feature of the original pantheon was the absence of female faces Blakesley pp 147, 149, Pl 1-13, Fig 3.1, 3.6
UHDE, Wilhelm, 1874-1947, Germany & France:
Background: He was born in Friedeberg OxDicMod
Career: He was a collector, dealer, entrepreneur & writer on art. Uhde abandoned law for the study of art. In 1904 he settled in Paris & in 1905 bought pictures by Braque & Picasso when they were almost unknown . He formed a strong friendship with the latter which lasted until 1928. Uhde was a link between French & German artists & introduced Klee to leading Cubists in 1912. He had to leave France during the war & his collection was seized. After his return he resumed dealing, & discovered, encouraged & promoted naive artists, including Seraphine & Bombois OxDicMod.
Feature: He was a homosexual but in 1908 made an unconsummated marriage to Sonia Delaunay-Terk so she could escape from her Russian family OxDicMod