THE FIGHTING TEMERAIRE

BY J. M. W. TURNER

                               

Back in 2005, the BBC’s Radio 4 Today show organised a poll to discover ‘Britain’s favourite painting’. Or, let’s be fair, those Britons who listen to the Today show and could be bothered to vote. 118,000 people did indeed do so and the results were thus:

1st: The Fighting Temeraire – Joseph Mallord Turner with 31892 votes (which was 27.00% of the accepted votes)

2nd: The Hay Wain – Constable with 21711 votes (18.38%)

3rd: A Bar at the Follies Bergere – Manet with 13218 votes (11.19%)

4th: The Arnolfini Portrait – Jan van Eyck with 11298 votes ( 9.57%)

5th: Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy – Hockney with 8890 votes (7.53%)

6th: Sunflowers – Van Gogh with 8603 votes (7.28%)

7th: Rev Walker Skating – Raeburn with 8189 votes (6.93%)

8th place: The Last of England – Madox Brown with 5283 votes (4.47%)

9th place: The Baptism of Christ – Piero della Francesca with 5028 votes (4.26%)

10th place: Rake’s Progress – Hogarth with 3999 votes (3.39%)

Personally, I see some red flags there: where is Millais’ Ophelia? That painting once topped a similar poll. Nothing by Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and yet a Piero della Francesca in the top 10? Is he that popular? And forgive my ignorance perhaps but I have never heard of The Last of England by Ford Madox Brown. Nevertheless it is fascinating that Turner’s painting is in this (albeit flawed) poll: the number one choice. So let’s see if we can understand why.

Personally I love Turner’s works and this is no exception. We’ve yet to make a Turner Exhibition on Screen film, but the possibility has been floating around for a while, and I am still exceptionally proud of our episode of Great Artists based on his artwork. Turner’s narratives tap into my interest of English/British history. His scale and ambition are so frequently breath-taking. His technique is impressive and multi-layered, his use of colour peerless, his exploration of light powerful and moving.

I’ve worked on two films about Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar in our Great Commanders collection. I simply could not read enough about life in those “wooden worlds” – those fighting ships. I was brought up knowing about key battles in our history like Trafalgar and the more I researched it, the more incredible it became. The Temeraire was a key ship that day and now here it is being towed down the Thames to be taken to bits. It is the end of an era – the industrial revolution is well & truly under way. This is the steam age: the age of wind has passed. So there is plenty to peer at, plenty to place you in the late 1830s when history seemed to move so fast.

So the narrative is clear (which helps) and taps into our sense of ‘when Britain ruled the waves’. But the storytelling alone is not enough to explain why it is so popular. Look carefully at how Turner controls your eye. He makes sure you look first on the left at The Temeraire and then through brilliant use of diagonal lines and spots and streaks of white your eye follows a clear path across the painting until finally you are left looking at the fine detail of the building in the hazy distance. Do you see the Houses of Parliament and the clock tower (‘Big Ben’)? Turner was hugely influential on the impressionist painters that saw his work but what is interesting here is this mix of detail. Look again at The Temeraire itself – grand, ethereal, carefully rendered – and the sea and sky which is a sublime ‘impressionistic’ mix of colours and brushstrokes. This all makes it a beautiful and powerful painting that offers all sorts of visceral pleasures. Like a good film, it is a gripping story allied with high craft.

Whisper it quietly, but this surely can be called a masterpiece. Is it ‘the nation’s favourite’? Who knows. But is it one of the greats of British art? Yes. Turner loved it enough to never sell it so he rated it highly. There are dozens and dozens of contenders for favourite paintings awaiting a lunchtime pop-in to the London’s National Gallery (for those fortunate enough to stop by once their doors reopen shortly) but I suspect this piece will make a fair few visitor’s top 10 list.

* * *

JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES

BY CARAVAGGIO

                               

Some of you in the UK may have visited the National Gallery to see the Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition before Covid shut it down. If you did, I expect one painting that may have impressed you is her Judith and Holofernes from around 1620. Interestingly, this violent scene of this particular woman beheading this particular man had been a popular subject for artist through the centuries, not least the 16th when it was covered by, among others, Vasari, Cranach the Elder, Donatello, Giorgione and Caravaggio. It is Caravaggio’s version I urge you to look at today.

As outlined in the Book of Judith, Holofernes was the leader of an Assyrian Army in the 6th century BC who attempted to conquer Israel. Judith, a fair young widow, took it into her own hands to save the besieged town of Bethulia (possibly modern Meselieh in the Palestinian West Bank) by donning fine clothes, gaining access to his tent and filling the foolish soldier with wine. When the opportunity offered itself, she drew a sword and cut off his head. As a result of this murder, Israel was saved. By killing him, she prevented the Jewish people from having to worship the Assyrian king Nebuchadnezzar. Thus, her act kept her people on the path of the one true God.

Such a narrative was highly topical at the time of Caravaggio. Repressing heresy and regaining control were central to Papal thought at this time, known as the Counter-Reformation. The Church had lost various territories including England and parts of Germany and France, who were rejecting the authority of Rome – and its taxes. The Church had decided to fight back.

By the latter half of the 16th century, the Church had militarised in order to reclaim what it felt was rightly its own. Religious orders like the Jesuits went out to convert – or kill. Even monarchs feared for their lives. Elizabeth I of England survived multiple assassination attempts; others were not so lucky. Judith became a torchbearer for such violent demonstrations of renewed Catholic dogmatism.

The era of the rebuilding of Rome – as we will see in our soon-to-be-released film on Raphael – was a direct product of this Counter-Revolution. The Popes were determined to show the renewed glories of the Catholic Church; they positioned themselves as the true heirs of the Roman Empire, a Christian Empire.

A young Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio arrived in Rome at this time. He was but a jobbing artist until his mid-20s, and then a painter of semi-nude boys for a cardinal who liked the company of young men. He started to be noticed and left the cardinal’s palace to get bigger commissions. In 1599 he was asked to paint this. The money was one thing, kudos another, but the drama and subtexts clearly appealed.

Here was a chance for an artist to depict beauty, horror and drama on a surface level, and the Church’s message at a deeper level. Caravaggio shows the moment of death – the shock, the scream, Judith’s own revulsion at what she has to do, alongside her maid’s similarly appalled gaze. It is all too realistic – and it is likely Caravaggio had been to at least one of the many decapitations that happened in Rome. This method of execution was a relatively frequent form of legal punishment in the papal State – with the heads then hung from the Castel Sant’Angelo. If there was already one thing that appealed to Caravaggio, it was pushing at the limits of how dramatic, horrific and affecting a painting could be.

One thing he did not do was paint Judith nude, as others before him had done. Caravaggio probably knew other artists were using the story to display their ability to paint the human form, but I think he was more interested in probing the reality of a situation. Indeed he is known for having used ‘ordinary’ people as models. It has been suggested that his model for Judith was his mistress or a local prostitute. One wonders if Holofernes is perhaps a self-portrait. So we have these many possible layers upon layers of meaning and insinuation… It is a truly fascinating work of art.

Caravaggio’s life was one full of drama; knives and swords play as much a part in his biography as they do in his paintings. Thus, once again, biographical knowledge helps explain the artwork… and the artwork helps explain the biography.

* * *

THE DEATH OF MARAT

BY JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID

                               

Some time ago, when we were making the series Great Artists, one of the episodes focussed on the French artist Jacques-Louis David. I’d first become aware of him when making an earlier film about Napoleon due to his 1800-1801 painting Napoleon Crossing the Alps, which is as fine a piece of propaganda as you’ll ever see. Where there was, in fact, a mule, here you see a fine stallion. I became interested in the artist – and what a life story he has.

What an extraordinary time that was to be a leading establishment painter in France. David straddled the revolution and then the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. Next time you are able to visit the Louvre, seek out his works: they are monumental in so many ways. But it’s actually a painting now in Brussels (although a decent copy by Serangeli is also at the Louvre) from 1793 that is the subject of this latest brief commentary. It is called The Death of Marat.

It is an archetypical history painting – indeed, it shows an actual event and was painted in the days and weeks after it happened. It is perhaps the most famous painting of the French revolution.

So first, the history: the French Revolution of 1789 was a bloody affair and its violence increased and spread throughout the early 1790s. Joseph Guillotine’s invention was but one example of the torture and death that accompanied the fall of the monarchy and the chaos that ensued. Born in 1748, Jacques-Louis David had a wealthy upbringing, despite his father having died as a result of a duel when Jacques-Louis was 9. Notwithstanding that, by his early 50s and the height of revolution, he had become an ardent rebel, part of a group called the Jacobins that included Danton and Robespierre. During what is known, for good reason, as ‘The Terror’, one of David’s friends, the publisher, journalist and politician Jean-Paul Marat was murdered by a female assassin, Charlotte Corday. Murdered, as you can see, in his bath – with Corday’s letter of introduction in his hands. She later claimed that she blamed Marat for countless deaths and killing him was killing one man to save 100,000. David, on the other hand, held him in great esteem, thinking him a great speaker and thinker. David had been in that very room only 24 hours earlier – the room where his friend is now depicted taking his last breath.

It is thus a painting of a murder that has just happened, a raw painting, the vulnerability of someone in their bath being stabbed to death, almost Christ-like at a time when religion had been banned, with the open gash visible to all. Marat apparently was in his bath because the cold water eased a terrible itchy skin disease that he suffered from. Perhaps Corday knew that Marat would be bathing and helpless – but it still feels a brutal and defenceless way to die. Although the knife is on the floor, in reality it was left in his chest, and Corday herself did not apparently try to flee – though David chooses not to paint her in the scene.

The painting thus has all the drama of a great novel and it is fascinating historically. But as an artwork? Well, actually I think this neo-classical work is indeed a very fine painting. There is something of Michelangelo about it. The composition, the detail, the drama, the lighting… all are highly skilled and exemplary storytelling. It may not be accurate – no unsightly skin rashes on view for example – but it tells a gripping story with great craft.

By 1794 the Jacobins themselves were on the run – David only just survived by renouncing his association with them and, having been imprisoned in the Louvre (the former royal palace), was fortunate that his skills as a painter were recognised by a young Corsican army general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. He was released and the rest, as they say, is history.

* * *

A YOUNG WOMAN SEATED AT A VIRGINAL

BY JOHANNES VERMEER

                               

One of our first Exhibition on Screen films was dedicated to one of the most famous paintings in the world, the rather enigmatic Girl with a Pearl Earring. The film’s director David Bickerstaff and I spent a good deal of time at the Mauritshuis in the Hague, where the painting lives, and in Delft nearby trying to learn as much as we could about the work and its artist. Little correspondence survives from the 17th century life of Johannes Vermeer but one can still piece together his life – not least by looking carefully at the 35 or 36 paintings of his that have survived.

Girl with a Pearl Earring, and the Mauritshuis, were certainly worth a film on their own account but when the National Gallery of London informed us they were doing an exhibition entitled ‘Vermeer and Music’ we jumped at the chance to look again – and in a different way – at this extraordinary man. Many of his artworks are interior views with female protagonists but almost a third of his surviving artworks also reference music in some way – and it is fascinating to ask ‘why?’.

Of those dozen works, A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal is a particular favourite of mine. It is actually one the National Gallery in London owns – though it is not always on show. What we see is a young woman seated presumably at home in front of the family virginal. On the left is a viola da gamba, with a bow on top of it strings. On the virginal is a landscape (a painting within a painting) and on the wall another painting – the one on the wall is actually known to have been owned by Vermeer’s mother-in-law and is today on show at the MFA in Boston.

The painting was made when Vermeer was around 38, married with many children and working hard to maintain a business as an artist. Little is known about who commissioned his works, etc, but he does seem to have worked slowly and that reduced his output. Nevertheless, this work would appear to have been created at the same time as A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal so perhaps they were a twin commission from some wealthy Delft businessman.

Look again at the painting – there is so much carefully rendered detail. The virginal, for example, is exquisite. Keyboard instruments like this often feature in his works. These harpsichords – or virginals (maybe thus called as they sound like young girls or (according to another theory) because they were often played by nuns lauding the Virgin Mary) – were common in well-to-do homes and would sit on side-tables or on legs. Learning to play a keyboard was something young women of a certain class were expected to do – indeed right up to the 19th century. (A million pianos a year were built in Paris in the mid 1800s, for example). This young woman is well-dressed and well-presented. Alongside her is a viola da gamba – this perhaps suggests another member of the household who would know how to play it and, of course, is a reminder to us that music in the evening was a key source of entertainment in the pre-television world. Moreover, the viewer of paintings like this would know what these instruments sounded like and would almost ‘hear’ them while regarding the work. Vermeer is offering a soundtrack to accompany his painting, even if the soundtrack is in the viewers’ mind only.

And an additional word to the wise. Vermeer was not averse to having a bit of cheeky, slightly ribald, fun in his paintings too. Indeed, it’s a recurrent theme in Dutch art at this time – and at a time when naturally people were more open about bodily functions and sexual desire than we actually are today. The viola’s shape represents a female form – and the position of the bow, and indeed its angle, is not an accident. Look at the young woman’s slightly blushed cheeks and wry smile – is there more on her mind than a musical score? What at first glance may seem a staid, formal representation of a young woman practicing her music is, I would contend, a little bit more than that.

And one final thought: some have argued that his works are so detailed that he must have used mirrors or similar to them copy from. I’m not convinced – nor are these claiming to be accurate representations of events in actual rooms. Often in his paintings the perspective is simply impossible. No, these scenes are made up and created in his mind. In this case, maybe the young woman sat first, then he may have added the viola, added the paintings, added the curtain. In short, never take anything for granted in Vermeer’s work. Things are rarely as they seem at first glance. You need to look and look again to really appreciate his genius.

* * *

THE ART OF LEBANON

To paraphrase a powerful article by David Gardner on the 8th August in the FT: ‘It took 15 years of sectarian carnage in Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war to destroy Beirut and 15 more years to rebuild it. It has just been laid waste again in barely 15 seconds’.

A third of Lebanese are jobless and half live below the poverty line. The middle class is sinking into poverty and the poor are being pushed into destitution. Not to mention the plight of 1.5m Syrian refugees for whom life was bad enough already. Then throw in Covid.

On the 4th August 2020, 2750 tonnes of inadequately stored or maintained ammonium nitrate caused a massive explosion in the port of Beirut killing over 200 people and injuring thousands more. It was a truly dreadful (avoidable) accident that Beirut and Lebanon will spend a long time trying to recover from.

Personally, I love that part of the world: Turkey, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Libya. I have visited those countries and always found them exciting, fascinating and provocative. My art is essentially that of filmmaking and visiting countries like those (always for filming-related projects) was always productive and creative. But I have a regret. When I made my I, Caesar: The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire series, I travelled the full circumference of the Mediterranean. My passport was full of visas, including one for Lebanon as I wanted to visit and maybe film the Roman ruins at the Baalbek temple complex, above all the remarkable Temple of Bacchus. But my visit to Syria over-ran and I never made it. What a shame. Since that time, though, I have tried to keep up with events in this battered and assailed country, hoping that a common purpose – not embedded in violence, discrimination and corruption – could prevail.

There have been plenty of positives and negatives: and I have wondered what role art has had in any of this? And what role can art have now? Or is the scale of destruction and loss across the city of Beirut such that art will be seen to be frivolous and irrelevant?

Of course it will be, largely and rightly, up to Lebanese artists to decide how to creatively respond. And who are those artists? Frankly, I don’t know. I would love to have more time and opportunity to explore and learn about the artists of the Middle East, the Emirate States, and surrounding areas. But filmmaking is a hugely time-consuming job and it’s impossible to be across multiple genres. I am in the early stages of writing a very broad history of art – and trying to look beyond Western Europe as much as possible – so that will give me a reason to look more closely, but in the meantime I, like you, can only surf the wild waves of the internet to find out more.

The first thing to note is that there is no shortage of artists – all ages, all backgrounds, all seemingly trying to bring a fresh and distinctive eye to their art. At first glance it looks bright, centred, challenging, modern. How well we know them is often down the vagaries of the market. Right now, it is Chinese and, broadly, African artists that are attracting attention (and ever higher sale prices) but, mark my words, the Middle East will have its day.

But more importantly, what role can art actually play after a disaster like this? Is it in any way at all as valuable as those digging with their hands through the rubble or making do in damaged hospitals? Dedicated as I am to art, the answer has to be no. But, longer term, that’s where art makes a stand. It can be a record of events and an interpreter of events. Did Picasso’s Guernica stop any ounce of blood being spilt in the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War that followed? Probably not – but is it one of the most powerful depictions of the brutalities of conflict ever painted? Yes. Can it perhaps influence the morality of younger people gazing upon it? One hopes so. Thus, in the years to come in Lebanon’s struggle to rebuild, please let’s all spare a moment or two to take note of how its artists do what they can to assist, reflect and encourage change.

* * *

SISTINE MADONNA

BY RAPHAEL

Before we start, take a look at the painting. What do you see? Are you actually a bit disinclined to give it too much attention as it is ‘yet another Madonna and child’?

I suppose the greetings card industry is to blame but more than once when I have asked someone to name me a Raphael painting or image they know, it is the two cherubs at the bottom of the Sistine Madonna that have come up. And you have to admit, they are very cute. Quietly balanced on the bottom of the painting, their toes somewhere out of sight in the clouds, looking up at the baby Jesus in his mother’s arms. Whereas the two cherubs – or indeed putti to use their correct name – seem very relaxed, the baby Jesus is an odd mix of composed and wriggling, comfortable and uncomfortable. His mother’s face too is not one of unbridled joy but one of recognition of her son’s destiny – and it is almost as if Raphael has painted her at the moment of reluctantly handing her new child to us, to humanity, to his destiny – which is the cross.

It’s a strange painting though: why the drawn-back curtains. Is Raphael emphasising the drama of the situation by making seem as if it were on a stage? Why then the floor of clouds? And look behind the Madonna – on one side a glimpse of a town, but where and why? Why so little of it that it permits no identification? And predominantly on the other side, the endless baby faces…a host of angels I assume? At what point is Raphael the storyteller, the employed craftsmen, simply showing off his abilities by the faces, the curtains, the clouds, the bodies, the gestures?

The model for the Madonna is assumed to be Raphael’s long-term mistress Margarita Luti or ‘La Fornarina’ (“the baker’s daughter”). Her face appears in a number of his works. She may have been his perfect model but whether her position in Raphael’s life made her the perfect Madonna is hard to say. No-one seems to have minded though. Whether she had to stand holding someone’s baby is also hard to say but it seems unlikely; Raphael would probably have used drawings he had made of local children for that. What would Margarita have thought of how the centuries that followed her life hailed this painting as the ultimate mother and child? What would she and Raphael have thought that the two seemingly inconspicuous little cherubs have now become more famous than the central characters of Madonna and child, flanked by saints Sixtus and Barbara? The altarpiece was commissioned for the Piacenza monastery of San Sisto (hence the painting’s name – it is not a painting that was done for the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican): what did indeed the monks think when it was finished and they first saw it?

Look again at the painting: now you know a little more about it, isn’t it more powerful, more interesting and certainly more beautiful? A real woman – we may even know her name – stood for the artist Raphael. Some even claim she and Raphael were secretly married and that, after she was turned away following his death, she entered a convent. This perhaps reminds us that the Madonna, the baby Jesus and the saints were real people too and it makes their journey through life and death all the more powerful to the monks of San Sisto and to us now. The painting is now in Dresden and has been since 1754 (when an absolute fortune was paid for it). Other than a brief period in Russia during and after the war, it has been in the remarkable Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden – a perfect city to consider the nature of resurrection.

* * *

IDLE HOURS

BY WILLIAM MERRITT CHASE

There are lots of reasons why I have chosen this painting. First of all, when you first looked at it, who did you think it was by? Did you immediately think of Merritt Chase or did Monet come to mind? Renoir maybe? Pissarro?

William Merritt Chase, like so many artists before him, had left his home (he was born in 1849 in Indiana) and travelled to Europe to the source of new painting, above all the revolutionary style of impressionism. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich because (it is said) there were fewer distractions than Paris. Maybe, maybe not, but certainly he worked hard and by the time he returned to New York in 1878 he could be considered a leading artist of the new European-inspired American art movement.

We looked at this movement in our film The Artist’s Garden. One aspect that is so interesting to observe is how impressionism – in American hands – tells, unsurprisingly perhaps, a distinctly American story. Merritt Chase was a key part of it. This painting – Idle Hours – he painted in his mid-30s and is set not in Normandy or Brittany but on Long Island. At first glance you’d be hard pressed to see any difference. Merritt Chase led painting summer schools on Long Island throughout the 1890s and one can imagine, alongside him as he paints, 6 or 7 students also painting the same models lounging in the sun.

Look carefully and you can spot the artist’s tricks; the position of the models for instance subtly directs the watcher’s eye. A little circle, then the small umbrella taking your gaze to the girl on the right, who is facing up the beach, which is where you eye now travels, on that long curve and then out of the top right of the painting. That long visual exit adds a laziness to the scene; there is nothing urgent here. The spots of red and the black of the stockings, pot and cap are probably something you notice on the second, more careful look. Then finally perhaps one takes a closer look at the technique of the foliage and the distant, actually very cloudy, sky.

It is far, far from the Madding Crowd of New York or Boston – or indeed Paris or Munich. These are privileged women with time on their hands, and there is no man to be seen, unless we assume the sailors in the distant, barely noticeable boats are men. Merritt Chase is presenting a vision of life that was true and available to only a few in the post-Civil War United States. Much of European impressionism actually reflects a rapidly changing Europe for ordinary men and women. There is none of that here. That is no criticism – it is a lovely painting.

What adds poignancy is that I am looking at this painting at a time of a global pandemic when nothing is calm and peaceful anymore. While so many of us stay in our homes, longing for the day when it feels safe again to travel, be that holidaying with our loved ones, or simply to wander around without a mask. Imagine this scene with the characters in masks. Horrific really – though only 24 years later the so-called Spanish Flu (which killed as high as 50 million people internationally) also meant Americans were asked to wear masks. As with today, some did and some did not, risking arrest.

An artist like Merritt Chase sought to find beauty and peace around him, and reflect that in his artworks. He wanted to forget the horrors of the Civil War, and to put out of his mind the privations of urban and rural life in the USA – a USA that was rapidly changing with the arrival of millions of European migrants and refugees. Is Merritt Chase’s work thus of a man with his head in the proverbial sand or do we need art that is beautiful for beauty’s sake? What kind of art do we seek as we continue upon the long hard road of COVID-19?

Interestingly, our most popular film over the past few weeks has been another film that features gardens and impressionist paintings. Entitled Painting the Modern Garden: From Monet to Matisse, maybe its success shows – what Merritt Chase thought too – that we humans prefer to seek solace and escape in the beauty of nature, the electricity of colour, the sensation of sun, sea and sand. Maybe that’s what we all need right now. Maybe that’s what drew me back this week to look at Merritt Chase’s Idle Hours.

* * *

VASE OF FLOWERS

BY CLAUDE MONET

The Courtauld is a treasure trove of a gallery in the heart of London. I must admit that until we made a 3-part series about it a few years ago I had never been – and, my word, how many wonderful paintings I had missed. You know the painting of Van Gogh with the bandaged ear? Or Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère? Yes, both at the Courtauld.

A rather less well-known painting – albeit by one of the all-time greats – is Vase of Flowers by Claude Monet. This is one of those paintings that I am sure people too often wander past without really stopping to look and think. So, if I may, here is your opportunity. Imagine in front of you there is a blank canvas and that on to it you have decided to record a vase of flowers. Where do you start? How do you progress from first outlines to finished work? Look closely at Monet’s painting. That vase is totally credible and yet what is it exactly? Maybe it’s just those two slightly diagonal lines that convince the brain it’s a vase. Then the stems of the flowers – barely visible, dabs of dark green but so realistic. The flowers themselves are extraordinary – you feel their fragility, at the mercy of any passing breeze, and yet they are no more than daubs of paint on a flat canvas. It’s magic of sorts, don’t you think? I would love this painting on my wall at home. Nor would I be the first.

Flowers in art have been popular since the time of Ancient Egypt. Think of the gorgeous mosaics and paintings of the Romans. In Christian art, medieval art, Renaissance art there are plentiful examples of flowers not only as decorative but symbolic. Take the red carnation: in Greek it is called dianthus (flower of God) and thus often appears in paintings of Madonna and Child. Have a look at my film Leonardo: The Works and his Madonna of the Carnation in Munich.

The Dutch played a major role in the history of botanical art – their wide sea-faring empire brought not only spices back to their shores, but flowers too. Perhaps most notably is the tulip from Turkey (most likely originating from Kazakhstan which was under Turkish rule). The wealth of empire led to a house-building boom and inhabitants wanted pictures for their walls. Millions, yes millions, of paintings were produced and flowers in vases among the more popular.

France at the end of the 19th century, with its growing band of art dealers, also had a decent market for flowers in vases. Artists – often impoverished, like Claude Monet – saw the commercial appeal of making such works, and of course they liked the simplicity of the challenge. Around 1880 Monet focused on still lifes more than landscapes – again, he was following the market. Once his landscapes started to sell, he stopped with still lifes forever, although not before painting a very impressive flower called the sunflower. In 1881 he painted a handful of them, growing, as they did, along a path near his garden in Vétheuil. In 1888 Van Gogh wrote how Gauguin had told him of Monet’s painting of a sunflower but that he preferred Van Gogh’s versions. Van Gogh modestly begged to differ.

The flowers in this painting are, however, wild mallow – a plant with many uses, including (according to the Roman Pliny) use as a mild laxative. Certainly Monet found it uncomfortable, talking in his letters of the difficulties he had in painting it. Indeed he didn’t finish it completely and it was only later in life that he signed and sold it. Perhaps, yes, the angle is slightly strange or it doesn’t feel three-dimensional enough – perhaps the plant and flowers are not quite resolved enough for some – but to me it’s a wonder and just as much a draw at the Courtauld as any of the more well-known works. We are just completing a film about Van Gogh’s Sunflowers – which has been a truly fascinating and revealing journey– and both artists are excellent reminders that still life paintings are just as worthy of our attention as portraits or landscapes.

* * *

PORTRAIT OF GEORG GISZE

BY HANS HOLBEIN

I would like to write about a painting by Hans Holbein (1497/98-1543) entitled Portrait of Georg Gisze painted in 1532. Hans Holbein was born in the imperial German city of Augsburg in Bavaria and died in London. Possibly he interests me because I too have a German/English background, but it is more likely that I appreciate him as an example of the fact that for centuries and, in spite of many wars, our relationship with the Continent has always been close and fruitful. Finally, I admire highly his skill and his penetrating grasp of the psychology of his sitters.

Studying his portraits and portrait sketches we not only see great beauty and amazing artistic skill but also come to comprehend the personality and psychology of his sitters. To begin with, however, we need to know a little about Holbein’s life and how he came to rise to be the painter of English kings and queens.

Holbein came from a family of painters. His father was a Late Gothic panel painter. As a young man Hans worked in Basle where he painted important portraits, religious works and murals. He became famous in 1523 by virtue of his portrait of the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, a great intellectual celebrity of the day. After travelling through Europe he eventually arrived in England in 1526 where he gained the patronage of Sir Thomas More, a very significant humanist, politician and courtier at the Tudor court, painting his portrait in 1527. More also obtained important commissions for him. Holbein returned to Basle in the summer of 1528 but returned to England in 1532.

Sir Thomas More had fallen from grace so Holbein found the new patrons he needed among the wealthy German merchants of the Steelyard which was an extensive area situated in the present City of London where they both lived and worked. This politically influential and wealthy German trade establishment, founded in the 13th century, took to Holbein and his first client was a merchant called George Gisze. Aged 34, he had lived in London since 1522 and was one of the Steelyard’s administrators. He commissioned this very large portrait.

Because the pink flowers, carnations and rosemary symbolize love and fidelity we can assume that he had it painted for his fiancée in Danzig, whom he married in 1535.

I love the complexity of this painting. To begin with his clothing. It is, at one and the same time, both plain and luxurious. His pink undergarment is of sumptuous silk, while his black overgarment is of a stark, sober black, as is his cap. In a painting of Jean de Dinteville, painted a year later, we see the same gleaming pink undergarment, only this time the black overgarment is lined with white fur. The same year Holbein painted a portrait of Robert Cheseman, again with the pink silk undergarment and a black surcoat lined with fur. The rich silk indicates that Gisze must have been very rich, but not of such social standing that he could allow himself fur on his outer garment. He also has two gold rings on his left index finger, which could be engagement rings. Surrounding him are the accoutrements of his trade, many of then pointing in his direction as if to reinforce how he is the centre of attraction. They are extremely realistically painted. His arms, covered in the luscious silk, form a diamond shape culminating in his mouth, which is nearly the same colour as the pink silk. His face, turned slightly to the left, expresses much about him. His chin is determined, while his lips are soft yet firm, perhaps even sensual but with a hint of hardness. He has a strong but fine nose, leading up to his expressive eyes. His eyes were probably brown, but they appear black in the painting and suggest wariness and more than a hint of sadness. He is clearly a serious young man of business who, as the flowers symbolize, may also become a loving and faithful husband. A personal motto (reading ‘No joy without sorrow’) is pinned on the wall behind his head. Maybe he is alluding to his missing his home and fiancée while he works abroad? Holbein does not flatter him nor does he stylize him. He has taken time to understand the character of this young man and present him as truthfully as he can.

* * *

AGRIGENTE

BY NICOLAS DE STAËL

This week, I focus on an artist you may not have heard of even though one of his paintings sold a few months ago for 22 million US dollars. I was recommended to take a look at him by a knowledgeable friend of mine a couple of years ago and I admit it was an unfamiliar name to me too. The name of the artist: Nicolas de Staël. And the painting of his that I am bringing to your attention is called Agrigente, painted in 1953. It is currently at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Let’s start with who Nicolas was. I was recently filming for a forthcoming film (Easter in Art) in the fascinating city of St. Petersburg and that is Nicolas’s hometown. His military family were forced to flee because of the 1919 Russian Revolution, first to Poland and then, after his father and stepmother died, to Brussels. In 1932, aged 18, he began studying at the local Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts and within a few years he was exhibiting. He continued as an artist through the war – surviving tough times in Paris. But by the late 40’s and 50’s he had been noticed internationally. Depression, however, got the better of him on March 16th, 1955 when he committed suicide aged only 41.

Let’s now take a look at the painting. Let me start by acknowledging that abstract art is not always to my taste but if I had the chance I’d put plenty of de Staël’s works up in my house. That intrigues me: what is it about his art that ‘works’ for me while so much of abstract or contemporary art leaves me cold, sometimes even dismissive?

I was looking at some abstract art the other week by a few relatively well-known and respected artists and basically felt they actually couldn’t paint at all but somehow had managed to do enough to establish their names as artists that now folk would buy the work, no matter how the paint was plastered on the canvas. Of course, a lot of people in the art world would be shocked by such a declaration. It is much easier to pretend to see something profound in a painting that ordinary mortals simply don’t get – that way you appear knowing and special. While there is no reason that everyone should be moved by the same works, I certainly would argue that some abstract art is just randomly applied colours to canvas.

We do, of course, have to be careful not to dismiss all artists who work in this area. I adore Cézanne and Matisse, for example – indeed I think they are among the all-time greats. And I genuinely think de Staël follows in their footsteps. I love this painting: of course it not ‘realistic’ but nor is it so abstract that it contains no obvious sense of narrative. It is clearly a landscape and while these colours may not ever be seen in the real world in this way they still convey to me the sense of a sun-drenched, inviting, lyrical and timeless southern French countryside. As a keen runner in my spare time, I just want to get my running kit on and head off down that road and up and over those hills.

Like the masters before him – such as Monet, Picasso, da Vinci – de Staël was fascinated by colour theory and how our brains comprehend the different tones of reflected light. Look closely here at the shades of red, the hues of brown, the spaces left white, the shock of the yellow: it is gorgeous, sumptuous, life-affirming. Earth, sky, light – all is here to behold and examine and question. What do you think?

* * *