I saw this beautiful neoclassical sculpture at the Wallace collection.
That famous love & tragic story of ancient mythology.
Cupid (the God of love) unwittingly falls in love with Psyche (Greek: “soul”) who is a mortal princess with a beauty that rivals the goddess Venus herself.
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A v. famous subject of art - e.g. this is by the Italian Neoclassical sculptor Canova at the Louvre:
These are electrotype casts from the V&A of the (incredibly!) surviving panels of the two greats of Florence of the 15th century.
Lorenzo Ghiberti - as a young and little-known goldsmith - defeated Brunelleschi for the commission to build a new bronze door for the Baptistery in Florence in 1401.
Although Ghiberti claimed to have won, the judges awarded a joint commission. Brunelleschi refused and Ghiberti’s design still adorns the north side of the Baptistery.
Who do you think should have won?
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I like the angel’s powerful grip of Abraham’s wrist at the climactic moment.
Though, there is something disjointed in Isaac’s head & posture. Moreover, the drama seems to be occluded by Abraham’s arm and sleeve. It feels like we’re excluded as he seems to block our vision.
The ram also seems to wandering of its own accord?
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For me, Ghiberti is the winner.
In this gilded-bronze sculpture, the angel hasn’t yet arrived. This is a critical difference. I think the anxiety and intensity of the horror is so much more forceful.
Isaac seems so much more vulnerable here, and I think we are made to feel included in this horror.
There is also ghastly determination in his father’s face.
I love the “erupting” or “popping out” of the angel Gabriel (?) from within the sculpture. The ram also seems to be hovering down the mountain towards the denouement. It all melds so well together.
Phenomenal.
Human souls in anguish & torture.
I saw this at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. It’s Rodin’s original plaster model.
Smarthistory have done a great little video on this sculpture. Rodin never actually completed these doors which were originally intended for an art museum.
Based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, it’s easily influenced by Ghiberti’s The Gates of Paradise (which I have just blogged about).
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Details:
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This is an electrotyped cast at London’s V&A of the second Baptistry door commissioned from Lorenzo Ghiberti for the Baptistry of the Florence Cathedral.
Lorenzo had already decorated the North doors of the city’s Baptistery. They were a sensation and lead to the second commission.
These were dubbed the “Gates of Paradise” by Michelangelo - i.e. they were good enough to adorn the gates of paradise itself!
They are mind-blowing.
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And me .... đ
Earlier this year, I went to the Courtauld Gallery to see a special exhibition of the masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection (of Winterthur, near Zurich).
It was a wonderful show - full of exciting paintings which had never been seen in England before.
Oskar Reinhart was born from a wealthy Winterthur family who ran a leading international trading company. More interested in art than business, he began collecting seriously in 1919. He eventually had to step back from the firm to devote himself fully to building his collection. This included impressionists and Renaissance works. He built a gallery which he then bequeathed to the Swiss Confederation, which opened to the public in 1970.
Rating: 4/5 ★★★★☆
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Wow. Breathtaking.
This painting was part of a group of twelve still lifes painted by Francisco de Goya.
Painted during the Peninsular War - within the Napoleonic Wars - against Napoleon’s France. According to the gallery:
Still life must have seemed a neutral subject matter at a time of censorship and political upheaval. However, the raw realism of these salmon steaks, isolated from any context, their flesh rendered in blood red, suggests the brutality of war.
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A powerful and rueful painting.
This man is suffering from a mental illness.
Théodore Géricault was a painter of French Romanticism. This painting was created as part of a series of portraits (which were never exhibited during his lifetime) of patients in an asylum, around 1822.
It’s a touching and empathetic painting - his small cap, hospital tag, v. gaunt cheeks, and an anxious & distressed look.
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Laura Cumming, in her review “The week in art: Goya to Impressionism; Linder: Danger Came Smiling – review” (Guardian, Feb 2025), wrote an eloquent encomium about this painting which I enjoyed reading:
There are not many portraits you wait all your adult life to see, but so it is with A Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Rank, painted by Théodore Géricault some time after The Raft of the Medusa in 1819. This shattering image of a man with no name is in Britain for the first time, loaned by a small Swiss museum a dozen miles outside Zurich.
To see it with your own eyes is to have a sense of who this man might really be, whether the title seems right, and why GĂ©ricault painted him in the first place: all of them unresolved mysteries.
The man is gaunt and elderly and sunk in anxiety, or suspicion. He looks away from us towards some other world. He is dressed – or dressed up, perhaps by somebody else? – in white shirt, black gilet and cloth sash over one shoulder. Around his neck hangs what looks to modern eyes like a dog tag, numbered 121, and on his head is a tattered hat with red piping and tassel. Perhaps it is the hat of Napoleon’s military police, hence the delusions of rank. Or perhaps the tag gives the number of his hospital ward.
But all the historic interpretations of this painting – that this is a study of monomania, painted for a Parisian doctor specialising in madness – fall away when you stand before the actual portrait. GĂ©ricault has sat with this man in Paris, heard him breathe or even speak, watched his gaze slide away into the distance. Who knows where or for how long he has been confined. The portrait is so empathetic and dignified, but so loose in its excitable rapidity, that GĂ©ricault’s own state of mind becomes part of the picture’s content. It is anything but a diagnostic illustration.
One of a fabled series of 10 “insane” portraits, scattered after GĂ©ricault’s premature death at 32, it disappeared for years, eventually bought by the Swiss art collector Oskar Reinhart (1885-1965) in the 1920s. It has been hanging in his pristine white villa in Winterthur ever since. The private collection of this Hanseatic merchant became a public museum in the 1950s, and now a tranche of its greatest masterpieces has arrived in the once-private collection of his merchant contemporary Samuel Courtauld in London. Goya to Impressionism is a jewel of an exhibition.
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A powerful seascape by the French Realist painter Gustave Courbet.
I’m always so delighted to see an artist paint the foamy white bubbles on the crash bursting of a wave, or at its collapsing peaks.
They’re a force of nature which the artist seizes and then pours onto his canvas for our delectation. See also: The Wave by Gauguin (right).
This painting was - for its time - quite radical. Important for his stylistic (thick and expressive) brushwork - textured surface created by thickly applied paint via a palette knife. This would be influential.
Fellow blogger Debra (“She who seeks”) recently posted about Hokusai. This painting also traces its inspiration to those magnificent Japanese woodblock prints of the 19th century.
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A feeling of carefree escapism?
Being one with nature. This was early among Courbet’s ouvre.
According to wikipedia, it was “submitted to the Salon of 1845 at the Louvre in Paris, but rejected by the authorities.”
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Just wonderful.
Manet’s loose impressionistic brushwork crates a canvass “texture” to her delicate garments and accentuates her thoughtful and engaging gaze. The dark background really illuminates her presence alongside those diaphanous fabrics.
It’s a beautiful portrait.
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I’ve never seen Paul Cezanne as a younger man. He painted this when he was only 27. Claude Monet bought it.
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| Aged 41. |
He seems measured, deliberate & composed - and yet perhaps a little anxiety in his hand raised to his cheek?
It’s also a bit of a dark painting and the overall effect is a bit inscrutable?
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From Miguel de Cervantes.
Bold colours, loose brushstrokes, and almost abstractions.
It’s a funny painting - I’ll have to think about it more.
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Excellent - it’s that feeling of quiet inner peace.
Camille Corot was the teacher of Berthe Morisot. I think this is an interesting connection.
Here he paints a woman entranced by a novel.
The posture, the face, and the environment all suggest a sense of serenity.
Moreover, she feels so contemporary. Unlike the Rococo, she isn’t dancing, or posing alluringly, or doing anything at all. In fact, she doesn’t seem to care or notice the viewer - which perhaps invites the viewer to contemplate their relationship with the female object?
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Again, we see Renoir’s masterful use of light which adds to fleeting sense of the impressionist interaction.
And, for me, once again ... a certain want in the visage.
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Lovely painting.
It’s nice to see Renoir paint a man. Victor Chocquet was a French art collector (wiki).
There is something irresistible about Chocquet’s gaze, and a certain charm & delicacy to his personality.
I like the open shirt, the feeling of an easiness about him and perhaps he’s a little bit of a thinker.
The light flowery background is a nice touch.
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Beautiful brushstrokes forming her blouse. A lovely painting.
A working lady engrossed, confident, careful, against a light-greeny floral backdrop of swirling petals.
I love those small & loose wisps of hair at the nape of her neck.
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Great.
Sisley is an underrated impressionist.
Once again, fabulous waves rippling the water capturing the overcast atmosphere of the surface of the water which contrasts with the graded wooden finish of the barges.
And the sky’s calmful clouds are a beautiful contrast to the energy of the water.
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Another wow.
Monet’s mind-blowing watery effect.
The unripplied surface, a soft palette of colours across every surface, and those white brushstrokes of ice on the surface.
I feel I need to put on a jumper looking at this !
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Another wow.
The palette saturation is wonderful - azurean sky, then green hills, blue roofs, and red-browny fields.
This painting doesn’t like like a Gauguin yet.
And yet, even so, his use of negative space in the foreground adds, I think, an allegorical tone to the work. Once again, Gauguin uses humans in a large & overbearing field which, to me, evokes a feeling of gloom, pity and/or despondency. For example, see Harvest: Le Pouldu by Paul Gauguin:
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| Harvest: Le Pouldu by Gauguin. |
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Cezanne is a difficult painter.
He does something beautiful - but why?
Is it the limited form, the limited colours, the limited use of perspective, the melding of objects near and far ?
Not sure, but it does work. And brilliantly - sometimes he’s paintings are absolutely engrossing.
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Another one of Cezanne’s enduring themes.
It’s obvious why he’s described as the father of modernism. It’s his intellectual challenging of art in producing something that doesn’t cohere - but has an immersive stunning effect.
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This is new to me.
And I had already seen so much of Van Gogh recently.
Poor Van Gogh. This is a window into his world - having spent weeks recovering from a mental breakdown.
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Toulouse-Lautrec doesn’t do much for me, I don’t think.
Cha-U-Kao was a popular entertainer of 1890s’ Paris and a recurring subject of his.
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Exhilarating to see this.
Manet’s brushwork is fascinating - the richness, the loose strokes etc... I always love poring over the details of his paintings.
And his subject is focused on the everyday and it’s fascinating. A recurring theme is Parisian bars - e.g. A Bar at the Folies-BergĂšre:
I had already seen the twin to this painting at the National Gallery. It was a delight to see the other half at the Courtauld before it went to the National Gallery.
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Hmm ... not sure how I feel about a painting.
This was recently in the news, according to artnet:
Beneath the melancholy hues of Portrait of Mateu FernĂĄndez de Soto by Pablo Picasso, conservators have uncovered a long-hidden secret—an earlier painting of a mysterious woman, concealed for over a century ... Painted in 1901, when Picasso was only 19, this artwork marks one of the earliest pieces from his renowned Blue Period—a phase that lasted until roughly 1904 and was characterized by a monochromatic palette dominated by cool cerulean tones. It depicts Picasso’s friend and fellow Spanish artist Mateau FernĂĄndez de Soto.
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Wow .... I give up now.
Cezanne has won me over.
I could just walk into this painting.
