Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 27

Three Mysore Princesses

I recently saw this painting last Friday at the Tate Britain at the artist and empire exhibition, son. And I kept looking at it. It's an extraordinary painting not least because the painter has captured the Royal imperial state of all the three girls but also the hugely expensive and rich golden ornaments. I was quite taken by the girls.

But then I read the background to the painting and it was even more interesting. Smallpox is a terrible terrible disease son. It used to kill indiscriminately across vast swathes of the world and those it soared, it would disfigured them horrendously. Look up the wiki entry for smallpox and you'll see why it's such a terrible disease.

So it was good to read that the Brits actually tried to do something about smallpox. And these girls were obviously brave to sit for the painting as well as take the vaccination. Bravo!

Hope you're enjoying yourself son.

Love

Baba

Thomas Hickey
1741-1824 | lot | Sotheby's
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2007/important-british-paintings-l07122/lot.45.html
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Important British Paintings

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

Thomas Hickey
1741-1824

PORTRAIT OF THREE PRINCESSES FROM MYSORE

Estimate

400,000 — 600,000

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THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

Thomas Hickey
1741-1824

PORTRAIT OF THREE PRINCESSES FROM MYSORE

Estimate

400,000 — 600,000

Details & Cataloguing

Now

Important British Paintings

06 June 2007 | 10:30 AM BST
London

David Moore-Gwyn

Consultant
Old Master Paintings

+44 20 7293 5406
davidmooregwyn.consultant@sothebys.com

Thomas Hickey
1741-1824

1741-1824

PORTRAIT OF THREE PRINCESSES FROM MYSORE

oil on canvas
124 by 100 cm., 48¾ by 39¼ in.

Provenance

Alfred Davey, Bedford, his sale in these rooms, 29th January 1930, lot 58 (as by Zoffany) bt. by the father of the present owner

Exhibited

Victorian and Albert Museum, India Observed, India as viewed by British Artists1760-1860, 1982, no. 22;
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, In the Public Eye, 1991, no. 95, fig.1

Literature

Mildred Archer, India and British Portraiture, 1770-1825, 1979, p. 204, plate 126;
Nigel Chancellor, 'A Picture of Health: The Dilemma of Gender and Status in the Iconography of Empire', Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 35, 2001, pp. 769-782

Catalogue Note

This important portrait showing three Royal women from the Court of Mysore in Southern India was painted by Thomas Hickey in circa. 1805. Not only is it one of the finest portraits of an Indian subject by a Western artist during the period of British rule, but it also shows a remarkable understanding of the sitters and of classical Indian symbolism.

Hickey was unusual amongst the British artists who went to India to find work in that he can almost be said to have adopted India as his own country. His initial attempt to reach Calcutta failed as his vessel was captured in August 1780 by the French and Spanish fleets. Hickey made the best of his predicament by settling for a few years in Lisbon, where he found plenty of demand for his work as a portrait painter. His namesake, William Hickey noted that he 'had painted most of the English ladies and gentlemen and was then engaged upon the portraits of several Portuguese of rank'. Notable amongst his sitters was the Bengal Court Servant, John George Livius, who was painted in 1782 on his way back from India. Hickey finally reached Calcutta in 1784.

His neatly painted, small scale portraits of British officers soon proved popular, but particularly notable was Hickey's extraordinary ability to paint native sitters with particular sympathy and understanding. In Laurence Sullivan and his ayah of c. 1785 (Henderson Collection), the beautiful young Ayah is painted with particular subtlety, and the Indian Lady of 1787 (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) probably depicts Jemdanee, the bibi of his friend, William Hickey, who is shown to be a woman of rare beauty. Most of Hickey's final years in India were spent in Madras and the first important work which he did there was to paint a series of portraits of Indian princes and courtiers, including Krishnaraja Wadiyar III, the young Raja of Mysore and the wiley Purniya, his Brahmin chief minister. In 1804 Hickey submitted a memorandum suggesting that he should be made 'historical portrait painter to the Hon. East India Company', apparently in response to a wish by the company that information he provided by the various Presidencies to assist with 'a general History of the British affairs in the East Indies'.

It is in this context that Hickey painted this masterpiece. When it was first acquired in 1930 the sitters were described as 'India Princesses' and the picture was said to have been painted by Zoffany, undoubtedly the most celebrated of the Western artists who settled in India to ply their trade. In her important book on India and British Portraiture published in 1979, Dr Mildred Archer correctly reattributed the portrait to Hickey and suggested that the rich jewellery and the composition of this intimate portrait meant that they were 'either temple dancing-girls or experienced courtesans'.

In 1999 the portrait was lent to a loan exhibition at the FitzWilliam Museum in Cambridge where it was seen by Dr Nigel Chancellor who published in 2001 some interesting and thought-provoking theories about the portrait which makes it clear that it has considerably greater significance than had first appeared.

Dr Chancellor pointed out that the assumption that three such ladies with such sumptuous jewellery and such apparent self confidence had to be courtesans was a common, conventional European assessment. Portraits of well born ladies were understandably rare as most would be married and thus confined to purdah, and there would certainly have been a resistance to showing such women as wives from a polygamous society. However the lack of a temple and the failure of the artist to depict the sitter's lower limbs and feet made the idea that they were 'temple dancing girls' highly unlikely – Tilly Kettle's well known picture of An Indian Dancing Girl with a Hookah was an altogether different subject. The opulent jewellery on closer inspection led away from the idea that the ladies were courtesans. The heavy gold sleeve bangles were, as Dr Chancellor points out, one of the defining emblems for women of the Arasu royal clan, and the splendid head-dresses with their distinctive triangular patta on the foreheads established the women as pattaranis or queens who have been crowned as wives of a Raja. The woman on the right of the group is shown with prominent crescent moons on one side of the central band of her head-dress, a reference to the mythical origins of the Mysore Wadiyars (the ancient Hindu dynasty recently restored to power by the British). Dr Chancellor concludes that the portrait probably includes two Mysorean queens, the lady on the left being Rani Devajammani, the Raja's senior wife, and the lady on the right Devajammani of Lakshmivilas Sannidhana, the junior queen who was close in age to the young Raja. The more relaxed lady in the centre resembles Hickey's portrait of the young Raja mentioned earlier and is probably one of the Raja's royal sisters.

The existence of such a rare portrait is explained by the arrival in India at the beginning of the century of the first vaccines against smallpox. Lord William Bentinck, governor of Madras, was anxious to promote its benefits and Mark Wilkes, Resident at the Court of Mysore, was instructed to do all he could to persuade people of its benefits. He was supported by the Raja's minister, Purnaiya (whom Hickey had painted) and most importantly, by Rami Lakshmi Ammani, queen of the old Wadiyar ruler of Mysore and grandmother of the Raja's senior queen. As her husband had died of smallpox she was particularly keen to support vaccination. All this coincided with the betrothal of the young Devajammani, a girl without the dreaded disease, to the young Raja. Her willingness to have the new vaccine was announced in Madras in July 1806. In Hickey's portrait not only is she shown in a white sari with a beautiful unblemished complexion, but she is holding her sari to present her left arm and the sleeve of her bodice indication where the vaccine would be performed, something which a European doctor could do without compromising the modesty of an Indian woman.

Suggested Lots

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Important British Paintings

06 June 2007 | 10:30 AM BST
London

David Moore-Gwyn

Consultant
Old Master Paintings

+44 20 7293 5406
davidmooregwyn.consultant@sothebys.com

Condition Report

45

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

Thomas Hickey
1741-1824

PORTRAIT OF THREE PRINCESSES FROM MYSORE

oil on canvas
124 by 100 cm., 48¾ by 39¼ in.

Estimate 400,000 — 600,000

This painting would appear to be in generally very good condition. The canvas has been lined. However, there are no apparent tears or damages, and the work would appear to be in good structural condition. There is some craquelure to the paint surface, but this is characteristic for a painting of this age. There is some good remaining impasto on the sitters' jewellery. Examination under ultraviolet light reveals a thick varnish which obscures a clear reading. However, there would appear to be some evidence of a couple of minor areas of retouching in the lower right hand corner of the composition, as well as some retouchings to the edges of the canvas. There is evidence of some older retouchings in the sitters' costumes, but the varnish layer is uneven and hard to penetrate. Held in a plaster gilt and wood frame.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

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Friday, November 20

I am still learning

I'm reading a new biography of this hero of mine. It's not the same as stone's book, drier but what a man.

70 years old and he's still learning.

As I told Kannu, just because you're out of school doesn't mean you stop learning.

Thursday, December 12

Mapping temperaments

A fascinating visualisation of how artists show off their temperament. You may debate the placements, but its very interesting to see where the chaps are placed, eh?

Thursday, August 29

The representation of Italian nudes due to Indians?

What a curious argument. I quote:

We discovered innumerable lands, we saw innumerable people and different languages, and all were naked.1 (Amerigo Vespucci, letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, 1500)

This essay proposes that we question the current understanding of the Italian Renaissance nude by examining contemporaries’ perceptions of nakedness. Despite the importance of the nude for the development of Western art, there have been few studies that consider how the revival of the nude form in fifteenth-century Italy was understood by people at the time.2 Most scholars, understandably, see the new fashion for portraying naked figures in the fifteenth century as a direct reflection of the enthusiasm for classical antiquity during this era. Without denying the crucial importance of antique precedents, I wish here to investigate another possibility: that travellers’ accounts of naked natives encountered on European voyages of exploration, particularly those to sub-Saharan Africa, influenced the creation of what has been called a ‘Renaissance anthropology’ – debates about the nature of mankind.3 This provided a new conceptual filter through which the nude figure was seen – and in some cases, these accounts may have directly affected the iconography of otherwise puzzling images.
The article has four main inter-related areas of focus:

the increased nakedness of depictions of Adam and Eve from the early fifteenth century, placed in the context of Renaissance understandings of the development of early mankind – and an emphasis on nakedness as a symbol of human potential;
a survey of Italian travel accounts that invoke stereotypes of nakedness as a symbol for peoples understood to have no civic society, religion or social differentiation;
the increased presence of black Africans in Italian cities (particularly as slaves) over the course of the fifteenth century – with an analysis of Pisanello's Luxuria in this context;
Florentine links with the Portuguese voyages to Africa, and descriptions of battling tribesmen, as a means of interpreting Antonio del Pollaiuolo's Battle of Naked Men, a seminal work in the development of the nude form.

I was specially caught by mention of Niccolo dei Conti, who visited India from Italy around 1439AD. He was the second Italian trader who visited India after Marco Polo (1295 or so). He seems to have married an Indian and travelled all over the Middle East, India and South East Asia. Amazing fella (hereis a great biography of the chap) but the interesting hypothesis is that the travel accounts from Africa and India helped to influence the portrayal of nudes in Italian art. I am not that close to all the various permutations of Italian Art, but it is interesting to note the time period after which nudes become common…how curious.

Wednesday, July 17

Have your lettuce, it will put lead in your pencil

I didn't know this! I quote:

Lettuce has been harvested for millenia—it was depicted by ancient Egyptians on the walls of tombs dating back to at least 2,700 B.C. The earliest version of the greens resembled two modern lettuces: romaine, from the French word “romaine” (from Rome), and cos lettuce, believed to have been found on the island of Kos, located along the coast of modern day Turkey.
But in Ancient Egypt around 2,000 B.C., lettuce was not a popular appetizer, it was an aphrodisiac, a phallic symbol that represented the celebrated food of the Egyptian god of fertility, Min. (It is unclear whether the lettuce’s development in Egypt predates its appearance on the island of Kos.) The god, often pictured with an erect penis in wall paintings and reliefs was also known as the “great of love” as he is called in a text from Edfu Temple. The plant was believed to help the god “perform the sexual act untiringly.”

I think teenagers will be more happy to eat this if they are told that its going to help them boink!

I saw Min in the Petrie Museum the other weekend.

people were not very happy with the display of the erect Phallus and when it was first displayed in the early 20th century, it was covered by a label!

Interestingly, for many many years, the idea of seeing the nude was anathema to Europe. We have so many instances that nude statues or even examples of Min like the above had the phallus hidden. I came across another article here. The abstract:

This essay proposes that we question the current understanding of the Italian Renaissance nude by examining contemporaries’ perceptions of nakedness. Despite the importance of the nude for the development of Western art, there have been few studies that consider how the revival of the nude form in fifteenth-century Italy was understood by people at the time.Most scholars, understandably, see the new fashion for portraying naked figures in the fifteenth century as a direct reflection of the enthusiasm for classical antiquity during this era. Without denying the crucial importance of antique precedents, I wish here to investigate another possibility: that travellers’ accounts of naked natives encountered on European voyages of exploration, particularly those to sub-Saharan Africa, influenced the creation of what has been called a ‘Renaissance anthropology’ – debates about the nature of mankind.This provided a new conceptual filter through which the nude figure was seen – and in some cases, these accounts may have directly affected the iconography of otherwise puzzling images.

Here’s an example of an iconic image

Masaccio, Expulsion from
Paradise, 1426. Fresco, 208 ×
88cm. Florence: Brancacci
Chapel, Santa Maria del
Carmine

Interesting how our ideas of nudity change…this painting is in a chapel! So the painting was painted in 1425. Then around the 18th century, Cosimo Medici asked for fig leaves to be painted on the genitals to hide them. Then in 1980, the painting was cleaned and the fig leaves removed.

Tuesday, April 2

When Art Makes Us Cry

Kannu and Diya.

Here's an interesting article on art. Art can be anything man made. It can be a window, a painting, a carburettor, a sculpture, a film, opera, song, book, a couch. Something man made.

Much art is pedestrian. You pass on by. Some makes you stop and say 'thats nice' and walk on. Few will make you stop and observe and think. Extremely rarely will you cry.

But it has to speak to you. Deep inside your heart. Where the feeling of beauty or sorrow or love or grief or whatever emotion reaches deep inside and squeezes your heart and makes you cry.

Not many people experience this, kids. It could be because they are afraid to cry. Or aren't looking. Or aren't open. So on and so forth. There is no magic bullet to experience this.

You could feel this while listening to a story or a hymn, or standing in front of a painting, or watching an opera, or observing a gravestone or a sculpture or just a beautiful photograph. This has happened luckily to me and I can only wish that you feel something like this as well son.

Love

Baba

When Art Makes Us Cry by Francine Prose | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/sep/06/marina-abramovic-when-art-makes-us-cry/

When Art Makes Us Cry

Francine Prose

Scrovegni Chapel
Detail from Giotto’s Massacre of the Innocents
During the spring of 2010, when Marina Abramović’s retrospective, “The Artist is Present,” was on view at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, it sometimes seemed impossible to open a magazine or newspaper without reading about the artist and her show. I remember feeling curious, admiring, and vaguely irritated. Why, with so few hours in the day, was I spending even five minutes wondering about whether Abramović was exploiting the artists who had volunteered to serve as her apprentices and to reenact (in most cases naked) some of her most physically demanding performance pieces?
I went to see the exhibition and its eponymous centerpiece: the artist, seated in a chair in the museum’s atrium, gazing intently, immobile and in silence, at the audience members who came, one by one, to sit opposite her. As I watched from the sidelines, I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen for a while. We chatted about our work, exchanged news of family and friends. Then I left, glad to have seen my friend, but otherwise no more affected by the Abramović show than I had been when I arrived.
So I was surprised and pleased—as I usually am when something persuades me to reconsider an overly hasty judgment—to watch Matthew Akers’s documentary film, Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present, and to realize how much I’d failed to comprehend. Some of what I’d overlooked seems, in retrospect, obvious: spending months in a hard chair, staring at a succession of strangers, was no less punishing and painful than earlier Abramović works which had involved self-mutilation and physical danger. But though I’d read about the intense responses of so many of the visitors who came to experience the artist’s presence, I didn’t—and perhaps couldn’t, unless I’d stayed around for as long as Akers did—register them in my own brief visit to the show.

Wednesday, February 20

St. Peter's Basilica

This church has quite a lot of personal links to me son. It has the grave of saint Peter, one of the most astounding and amazing men. Fascinating history. His fierce courage faith drive ambition is extraordinary.

Second is the fact that one of my heros, Michelangelo worked here for many moons. What a man. Renaissance man indeed. A painter, sculptor engineer poet and and and. What amazing skills and experience son.

Then the sheer architectural beauty of this building. Architecture is painting with bricks and mortar and sometimes much more difficult. This extraordinary building is truly beautiful. Shows a wonderful confluence of art architecture Etc etc.

Then there is the history. A very large part of the world's history was driven from this building son. Popes and people who desired Christianity's blessing influenced events across the world.

And then you have the faith of billions of Christians who came here to worship and pray. The stones literally hum with emotions.

You were tiny when we took you there in your little pram. We asked for Gods blessing for you under Michelangelo's dome and Bernini's magnificent pillars. Do go there again son with your wife and your children and ask for blessings again.

Love

Baba

St. Peter's Basilica - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica

Thursday, June 21

Its like a car crash, you shouldn't but you still stare

Saturday, January 21

Little Red Riding Hood

Sunday, January 16

Peeing Policeman–freedom of speech

Now this seems to have rubbed off people in a variety of ways. This art exhibit is the problem.

In Dresden, this exhibit is causing quite a lot of outrage. Fairly typical reaction from the usual suspects. I found it quite interesting, this is supposed to be an exposition on the public versus private sphere. Like it or not, this is freedom of expression and that is inviolate. But stick in the muds are all over the world, whether we are talking about the Mohammad cartoons or the Jesus in cow dung painting or what have you. Artists of this world unite and anybody who is principled should support this. Freedom of expression and speech was won from the despots and various assorted religious idiots/leaders of this world at vast cost.

Sunday, May 11

Hindu Rage Boys put in place

I really loved this story. Remember what I said before on this? Rage Boys are funny chaps and they are sort of found all over the world. But these guys being Hindu guys, they are obviously close to my heart..

I quote from what the judgement said:

A painter has his own perspective of looking at things and it cannot be the basis of initiating criminal proceedings against him," Kaul said in his 74-page judgement. "In India, new puritanism is being carried out in the name of cultural purity and a host of ignorant people are vandalizing art and pushing us towards a pre-renaissance era," he observed.

The complainants are from Bhopal, Indore and Rajkot (two of those cities are my home towns, which just goes to show how much moronic behaviour has descended on these Hindu rage boys...). Typical stupid behaviour. But then, for those who want to see some kind of polity based upon religion, read this, you turn moralistic and people will laugh at your stupidity. You see, people who bang on about morals are usually immoral themselves. Without exception. I have yet to find one of those foaming puranitical mental morons being god like or being the poster boys for morality. Funny, how amusing.

Technorati Tags: Hinduism,Freedom of Speech,India,Arts

Hindu Rage Boys put in place

I quote from what the judgement said:

A painter has his own perspective of looking at things and it cannot be the basis of initiating criminal proceedings against him," Kaul said in his 74-page judgement. "In India, new puritanism is being carried out in the name of cultural purity and a host of ignorant people are vandalizing art and pushing us towards a pre-renaissance era," he observed.

Technorati Tags: Hinduism,Freedom of Speech,India,Arts

Nobel win in 2007 a 'bloody disaster': Doris Lessing

How amusing and so cute.

London : Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing has said that winning the award for literature in 1997 has been a "bloody disaster", reports said Sunday.

"All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed," Lessing said during a BBC radio interview to be broadcast Monday.

Lessing, 88, said that she has been constantly in demand since her win last October and that her writing had stopped as she didn't "have any energy any more".

Technorati Tags: Arts,Bibliophilia,Humour