A Review on the London Exhibition 'Painters' Paintings'

choi

Painters' paintings | Beyond Influence; A new show examines the myriad reasons artists collect each other's work. Economist, July 9, 2016.
http://www.economist.com/news/bo ... rk-beyond-influence

Note:
(a) "THE young Henri Matisse fell hard for Paul Cézanne's 'Three Bathers' (pictured) when he saw it in 1899 at the gallery of Ambroise Vollard in Paris. He couldn't get the painting out of his mind; several agonising weeks later, he and his wife agreed to pawn her emerald ring and buy it. Matisse would not part with the painting for another 37 years * * * This small and potent canvas, now owned by the city of Paris, is at the centre of an unusual summer show at London's National Gallery called 'Painters' Paintings.' "
(i)
(A) Henri Matisse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Matisse
(1869 – 1954)

Quote: "Matisse immersed himself in the work of others and went into debt from buying work from painters he admired. The work he hung and displayed in his home included a plaster bust by Rodin, a painting by Gauguin, a drawing by van Gogh, and Cézanne's Three Bathers. In Cézanne's sense of pictorial structure and colour, Matisse found his main inspiration.
(B) "Henri is a French and Finnish form of the masculine given name Henry."  en.wikipedia.org
(C) pronunciation:

30 Artist Names You Are Probably Pronouncing Wrong. Huffington Post, Feb 5, 2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/20 ... tion_n_4705375.html
("It's Awn-REE Mah-TEESE")
(ii) Paul Cézanne
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Cézanne
(1839 – 1906)

Quote: He "was equally proficient in each of these genres: still lifes, portraits, landscapes and studies of bathers. For the last, Cézanne was compelled to design from his imagination, due to a lack of available nude models.

(iii) list of paintings by Paul Cézanne
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Paul_Cézanne
("Three Bathers         1879–1882   52 × 55 cm   Musée du Petit Palais, Paris)

* French-English dictionary:
palais (noun masculine; from From Latin [noun neuter] palātium [palace]): "palace"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/palais
(iv)
(A) Ambroise Vollard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambroise_Vollard
(B) Ambrose (disambiguation)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_(disambiguation)
(Ambrose (c 340 – 397) was an archbishop of Milan)
(v) National Gallery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Gallery
(an art museum; 1824- )

choi

(b) "Anne Robbins, the show's curator. [The show/exhibition is] Prompted by a gift from the late Lucien Freud of a portrait he loved by Corot"
(i) The English surname Robbins means a child of Robin -- a pet form of Robert.
(ii) Lucian Freud
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Freud
(1922 – 2011; was a grandson of Sigmund Freud; born in Berlin, moved with his family to London in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism [and stayed there])

I do not know why "Lucien" was occasionally used, including here. Even in Germany, The spelling Lucian is "most common German form."
(iii) Lucian Freud Says Thank You to the Nation with a Corot Painting. National Gallery, Feb 4, 2013
https://www.nationalgallery.org. ... th-a-corot-painting
("the painting, L'Italienne ou La Femme à la Manche Jaune ([French for] The Italian Woman, or Woman with Yellow Sleeve) [painted 'about 1870'] * * * Freud specified in his will that he wanted the painting to have its new home in the National Gallery so it could be enjoyed by future generations")
(iv)
(A) Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste-Camille_Corot
(1796 – 1875; French)

I could have stopped here. But I saw the first painting titled "Woman with a Pearl" but failed to find a trace of a pearl. Intrigued, I did a mini-research to see where the pearl was. There is none. See next for the explanation of the owner.
(B) Woman with the Pearl. Louvre, undated
www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/woman-pearl

* Girl with a Pearl Earring
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_with_a_Pearl_Earring
(by 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer)
(v) French-English dictionary:
* Italien (noun masculine; plural Italiens; singular feminine Italienne): "Italian"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Italien
* ou (conjunction; from Latin [conjunction] aut [or]): "or"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ou
* à (preposition; from Latin [preposition] ad): "Used to describe a part of something, often translated into English as a compound adjective  <un animal à quatre pattes  a four-legged animal>"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/à
* manche (noun feminine): "sleeve (clothing)"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/manche
* jaune (adjective masculine and feminine; from Latin [adjective masculine] galbinus [yellowish]): "yellow"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jaune

choi

(c) "The show flows backwards over 500 years, from Freud to Matisse to Edgar Degas, then to the Victorians such as Lord Leighton, and English court and portrait painters, notably Joshua Reynolds and Anthony Van Dyck."
(i) Frederic Leighton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Leighton
(1830 – 1896; His house in Holland Park, London has been turned into a museum, the Leighton House Museum)
(ii) Joshua Reynolds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Reynolds
(1723 – 1792; English)

(d) Edgar "Degas was born to wealth. * * * he was able to acquire favoured old masters such as Ingres and Delacroix. * * * The world owes a great deal, for example, to his dogged search for the pieces of Manet's 'The Execution of Maximilian,' dismembered after Manet's death, which Degas hunted down and reassembled."
(i) Edgar Degas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Degas
(1834 – 1917)
(ii) Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Auguste-Dominique_Ingres
(1780 – 1867; French)
(iii) Delacroix
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Delacroix
(1798 – 1863; French)

* French-English dictionary:
croix (noun feminine; from the Latin [noun feminine] crux [cross]): "cross"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/croix
(iv) Édouard Manet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Édouard_Manet
(1832 – 1883)
(v) The Execution of Emperor Maximilian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Execution_of_Emperor_Maximilian
("Fragments of an earlier and larger painting from about 1867–68 are held by the National Gallery in London. Parts of this work were probably cut off by Manet, but it was largely complete on his death; other parts were sold separately after his death. The surviving pieces were reassembled by Edgar Degas and it was bought by the National Gallery in 1918, but then separated again until 1979 and finally combined on one canvas in 1992")

That is the second painting in this Wikipedia page, with missing parts where the beige background peeks out.

choi

(e) "Van Dyck's reverence for Titian * * * Tracing the influence of these painter's paintings on their own style, however, is more difficult; the show makes the case better for some than for others. Lord Leighton's vast collection in Holland Park included a magnificent set of Corot landscapes entitled 'The Four Times of Day' "
(i) Titian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titian
(Italian: Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio; c 1488/1490 – 1576)
(ii) For Holland Park, review (c)(i).
(iii) Corot: The Four Times of Day. National Gallery, undated.
https://www.nationalgallery.org. ... e-four-times-of-day

(f) "The gallery devoted to Matisse makes the connection best. The intense red of Degas's 'La Coiffure' finds echoes in Matisse's expanses of rich colour; the thick limbs of Cézanne's bathers find their counterpart in his monumental sculpture 'Back III.' "
(i) "Combing the Hair ('La Coiffure')[:] about 1896, Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas." National Gallery, undated (Inventory number[:] NG4865; where NG stands for National Gallery).
https://www.nationalgallery.org. ... he-hair-la-coiffure
(A) French-English dictionary:
* coiffure (noun feminine): "hairstyle"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coiffure
(B) English dictionary:
* coiffure (n; Did You Know?): "a style or manner of arranging the hair"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coiffure
(ii) For Back III, see The Back Series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Back_Series
("a series of four bas-relief sculptures, by Henri Matisse. * * * The plaster originals are housed in the Musée Matisse in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France. They were modeled between 1909 and 1930")

* Matisse Museum (Le Cateau)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matisse_Museum_(Le_Cateau)
(The museum was established by Matisse himself in 1952; ts ownership was transferred by the city to the Nord department in 1992)