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Art and criticism - monographs and studies (1892) (14782334764)
Summary
Identifier: criticismmo00chil (find matches)
Title: Art and criticism : monographs and studies
Year: 1892 (1890s)
Authors: Child, Theodore
Subjects: Art criticism
Publisher: Harper
Contributing Library: Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO
Text Appearing Before Image:
and a new and absolutely unique decorativescheme of blue and gold, in which the chief motif was peacocksand their feathers, appeared in its place. Walls, wood-work,and ceiling are entirely covered with these compositions in theJapanese taste. The framework is lacquered and clouded, ortreated like aventurine, and the panels are filled in with im-brications of peacocks feathers of exquisite invention. Overthe buffet, at the end of the room opposite the fireplace, isan oblong panel sixteen feet long, where Mr. Whistler hasdepicted two peacocks in aggressive attitudes, designed ingold on a blue ground. One peacock, of extreme and un-ruffled elegance, is supposed by some subtle interlinear read-ers to represent the artist, and the other peacock, with dis-ordered plumage and irate mien, standing on a pile of shekels,is identified with the artists patron. The background isdotted with flying feathers and masses of gold, and the wholecomposition has reference, we are told, to a difference that
Text Appearing After Image:
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.From a painting by G. F. Watts. A PRE-RAPHAELITE MANSION. 311 arose between Mr. Whistler and Mr. Leyland with respect to the price of the work. This cryptic panel was the paintersvengeance, but its hidden meaning is so discreetly concealedthat it would remain forever lost in the spirited charm of thewhole, had not anecdotic memories treasured up the souvenirof the artists wrath and of its ingenious manifestation. The tall panels formed by the closed shutters of the case-ment windows are exceedingly fine in design. The panels to the right and left represent peacocks with their tails spreadfanwise, advancing in perspective towards the spectator, onebehind the other, the peacocks in gold and the ground in blue.On the middle panel are perched two peacocks with pendenttails sweeping down to the ground, and presenting an arrange-ment of lines and masses of blue and gold of singular splendor.The remaining wall space is occupied by the smaller panellingalready described,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English painter and poet and one of the co-founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Rossetti was born in London, on 12 May 1828. His family and friends called him Gabriel, but later, he put the name Dante first in honor of Dante Alighieri. While studying painting in London, he was fascinated by the work of Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe. In 1847 he discovered the 18th-century English painter-poet, William Blake. By the time Rossetti was 20, he had already done a number of translations of Italian poets. Together with his friends, Rossetti formed and expanded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood by linking poetry, painting, social idealism and a romanticized medieval past. Rossetti’s own paintings were elaborate in symbolism. Elizabeth Siddal who served at first as a model, married him. Around 1860, after ten years of writing poetry, Rossetti returned to oil painting. His marriage ended tragically in 1862 with her death from an overdose of laudanum. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems with his wife at Highgate Cemetery, though he later had them dug up. Rosetti compared his love for his wife to Dante’s love for Beatrice. After the death of his wife, Rossetti moved from riverside London’s Blackfriars to Chelsea, where he lived for 20 years surrounded by extravagant furnishings, exotic birds, and animals. Rossetti grew affluent and enjoyed modest success in 1861 with his published translations of the Early Italian Poets. The publication of his own poems followed in 1870 but criticism of Rossetti's poetry contributed to a mental breakdown in June 1872, so he "spent his days in a haze of chloral and whisky". Toward the end of his life, he sank into a morbid state, darkened by drug addiction and mental instability. He had been suffering from alcohol psychosis. On Easter Sunday, 1882, he died at the country house of a friend, where he had gone in a vain attempt to recover his health. He is buried in the churchyard of All Saints at Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, England. Rossetti remains an important figure in the history of 19th-century English art.
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