#19th century French pastels

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MFABoston's Romance With NFTs: Not Fiscally Tangible, Maybe?

MFABoston’s Romance With NFTs: Not Fiscally Tangible, Maybe?

The other day the hardworking staff received this email from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Not to get technical about it, but we don’t have a digital collection of NFTs, mostly because they’re the pet rocks of the art world. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Last year the Boston Globe’s Malcolm Gay reported on the origins of the MFA’s NFT fling. ‘Someone had to move first’: MFA plans sale…

[lionofchaeronea]

Dandelions, Jean-François Millet, 1867-68

[mythical-redon]

By Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)

"Pegasus"

Love the airy colours in this! It's like an ancient tale fully coming to life. Probably my favorite depiction of this subject by Redon.

[lesbianarthistory]

Pierre Carrier-Belleuse – Pierrot and Ballerina (1900)

In 1888, the Cercle Funambulesque was founded in Paris, producing pantomimes inspired by the Italian commedia dell'arte. Due to their influence, the most popular among its characters became Pierrot, who would commonly get portrayed not only by male, but also by female actors, such as Félicia Mallet and even the famous Sarah Bernhardt. Carrier-Belleuse's painting depicts one such version of Pierrot, portrayed by the unknown female mime.

[empirearchives]

Young female artist during the Napoleonic era, aided by her mother

C. 1802-1812, Mademoiselle Pastel, suivie de sa mère, Le Bon Genre N. 17, published by Pierre La Mésangère

[liturgical-agenda]

Symbolist triptych, 1887 by Clément Mère

[oncanvas]

Avenue de Clichy, le soir, cinq heures (Avenue de Clichy, evening, five o'clock), Louis Anquetin, March 1887

Pastel on board 23 ¾ x 19 ¾ in. (60.3 x 50.3 cm)

[solcattus]

A woman pleating her hair (La Cigale)

By Camille Métra

[lubentina]

Louise Abbéma (French, 1853-1927)

Sarah Bernhardt à table, c.1885, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris

Pastel

[autumncottageattic]

vin.tagephoto

Paul Helleu

A famous French painter and engraver of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Paul César Helleu gained fame as a talented artist, primarily due to his elegant portraits of beautiful women of his era. He mastered the drypoint technique and created more than 1,500 beautiful engravings, as well as many oil, pastel and watercolor paintings. The work of the master was strongly influenced by impressionist colleagues.

[urcinnamongirll]

Your Guide to the Coquette Aesthetic 🩰

What is the coquette aesthetic ?

The coquette aesthetic is a dreamy, ultra-feminine style that blends innocence with flirtation. Rooted in a nostalgic longing for vintage femininity, it captures the delicate balance of soft beauty and playful allure. Think light, pastel colors-especially pink, and red- alongside pearls, lace, ruffles, and bows. Common motifs include roses, hearts, and vintage l—gerie, reflecting both sweetness and subtle femme fatale energy.

When did the aesthetic originate ?

The term "coquette" originally comes from the French word for "flirt" and was historically used to describe women who exuded charm and light-hearted seduction. While coquettes have been a cultural figure since the 18th and 19th centuries, the aesthetic in today's digital age gained popularity on social media platforms like Tumblr and TikTok, drawing from the styles of icons like Brigitte Bardot and Lana Del Rey. The modern coquette look mixes vintage inspiration from the 1950s and 1960s with a dash of Lo—ta fashion.

How to become a "coquette" (more in-depth in my next post)

The aesthetic embodies romantic femininity but isn't just about looking soft or dainty-it's about embracing confidence, independence, and knowing the power of one's charm. She's elusive, sweet yet seductive, innocent yet a bit daring. Her beauty may seem delicate, but it's calculated in its artfulness.

Caring yourself in a feminine manner is advised. Being kind to others and especially yourself is important. Indulge in self-care whether that be a warm bath or enjoying some chocolate. Keep up with your hygiene ! Shower with scented products and collect light perfumes (post on fragrance coming soon). Of course most of us either go to school or work, but your hobbies should be enjoyable things that calm to brain after using the productive and logical parts of your brain.

next post: a guide to dressing coquette

[dear-mrs-otome]

Hello friends. Would you like to meet the antagonist of Faust's route? The dastardly entity responsible for untold pain and misery, for putting our intrepid couple through the metaphorical wringer? The arch-enemy of mankind for centuries??

(spoilers behind the cut)

Here you go! Yersinia pestis, or Y. pestis to its friends, in all its gram-negative, electron scanned, color enhanced glory.

Aww, but Mrs O, you say, it's so cute! Look at its widdle fimbriae waving hewwo! Its pastel pink Lisa Frank inspired palette!

But don't be fooled! This tiny cold-blooded killer is responsible for more deaths than possibly any other infectious agent in the history of humankind - we all know it as the bubonic plague. The Black Death. It's cut down hundreds of millions of people over the course of human history, and it is still a threat today.

Transmitted to humans primarily by the bite of fleas, Y. pestis is a nasty character - without treatment, mortality rates upon infection are 30% - 90%. It sets up shop in a nearby lymph node, gets busy, and the resulting damage causes tissues to die. Victims tend to develop large, swollen, and painful lymph nodes called buboes, which is where the illness gets the name 'bubonic plague'.

One thing to note though, for Faust's route, is that while we generally think of this type of plague as THE plague...there are two other forms an infection with Y. pestis can take. A septicemic infection, where the bacteria enter the blood stream rather than the lymph nodes and which is almost always fatal, and a pneumonic version. This one here is the stuff of epidemiology nightmares. It often is the result of inhaling airborne droplets from another infected individual, and it can spread from person to person very easily unlike the usual bubonic form which requires bodily contact or a bite from an infected flea. It causes fevers, weakness, and violently severe coughing, and without antibiotics is nearly 100% fatal in a frighteningly short period of time - most victims are dead within mere days. Sometimes hours.

The first major recorded outbreak of the bubonic plague was the Plague of Justinian, which began about 1,500 years ago in 541 CE and ravaged the Sasanian and Byzantine empires. It's estimated that the plague resulted in anywhere from 15 to 100 million deaths, up to 40% of the population of Constantinople at the time, and some historians believe people were dying at a rate of 5,000 per day in the capital city.

The second plague epidemic, the one many people are more familiar with, was the one we refer to as the Black Death. This epidemic began raging across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia in the late 1330s, with Europe being hit particularly hard. By the time it was over Europe would see its population cut between 30% and 60%, and the Middle East losing about a third of its people as well. Numbers are difficult to estimate but they range from 75 -200 million dead.

There is, however, a third plague epidemic, although not as well known. In the 18th century the plague made a resurgence in SW China, remaining somewhat localized until the mid 19th century when it spread to Hong Kong and from there globally. There were outbreaks in the United States, India, many African countries, SE Asian countries, Russia, South America, the Caribbean, and most importantly for our story purposes - Europe. The largest outbreak was in Lisbon, but there were many smaller pockets of infection in various cities across the continent.

This was around the time the plague bacterium got its scientific name, Yersinia pestis, because of this man - a secondary character in our vampire love story, albeit with a slightly different name:

Say hello to Alexandre Yersin, a Swiss-French doctor and scientist.

Keenly interested in bacteriology, in 1886 he studied in Paris where Louis Pasteur was doing work in microbiology and worked on antiserum for rabies and antitoxin for diphtheria, two other famous scourges. (Antiserum, in the briefest of explanations, is basically a way to transfer antibodies from someone/something exposed to an infectious agent to a different person, thereby triggering the recipients immune system earlier and more vigorously EDITED TO ADD: this also applies to venom and this is actually how antivenom is made as well!)

In 1894, he was sent to Hong Kong to investigate the plague outbreak and it was here that he identified the bacteria responsible, the one that now bears his name, along with confirmation of its transmission route via rodents. (A Japanese scientist in Hong Kong at the same time, Kitasato Shibasaburou, independently identified the bacterium almost simultaneously as well, but because his documentations were not as clear it is Yersin who is generally credited with the initial find)

Yersin spent the next few years continuing his studies of the plague, traveling back to Paris in 1895 to develop the first anti-plague serum. It was the work of scientists like him, and so many others at this time, that paved the way for modern medicine and a path towards eradicating the diseases that have held us in their skeletal grip for so much of mankind's history.

...And perhaps, in the world of Ikevamp, that path owes just a little bit to a certain bespectacled German priest.

[lionofchaeronea]

Dans le bleu, Amélie Beaury-Saurel, 1894

[mythical-redon]

By Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)

"Apparition"

[adarkrainbow]

Behind Peau d’Âne (1970) - A

I want to talk a bit about one of the most famous French “fairy tale movies”, still very popular to this day: 1970′s “Peau d’Âne”, Donkey Skin by Jacques Demy. If you aren’t familiar with the movie this series of posts will... probably confuse you a lot, as what I will do is go over info about the movie’s production, creation, adaptation process. I actually decided to make this series of posts because there is a full article about this movie with ton of info and analysis - but given it is only in French well, why not share it in English for non-French speakers? X) So let’s go.

# So, Demy’s project for a “fairy tale” movie dates back as early as the 1950s: he had written a script for a Sleeping Beauty movie, but it never went anywhere. The two movies he did after that, “Lola” and “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” did reference fairy tales, but they were not a full fairy tale movie. After a trip to the USA  between 1967 and 1969 for the making of his movie “Model Shop”, he returned to his fairy tale project out of a desire to make a movie fully into French culture and fully into the “merveilleux” genre. Out of all the tales of Perrault, Demy decides to choose “Peau d’âne”, “Donkeyskin” due to how weird this story of a girl hiding in a donkey skin to escape an incestuous father was, and because he felt it was the most complex of Perrault stories. In fact, Demy had already written a Donkey Skin script back in 1962 - and his original plans for the movie back then were to have as the Princesse and Prince Brigitte Bardot (which did happen) and Anthony Perkins (because he was then spending a lot of time in Europe). In fact both actors had agreed to the project, but due to financial reasons it was stopped, and if Demy putted it back together in 1969 it was because of the HUGE success of “The Young Girls of Rochefort” in 67. 

# Before Demy’s movie, there was only ONE French cinematographic adaptation of “Donkey Skin”, a mute 1908 short film by Albert Capellani, which itself was an adaptation of a “féerie” as they were called (a sub-type of theatrical performances) from 1838 and was a big success of the 19th century stage. But this original theater play (by Emle Vanderburch and Laurencin), and the later short movie, had removed the incestuous nature of the story. The princess was forced into the donkey-skin as a punishment for her vanity. As a result, Demy’s movie was the first attempt at making a faithful cinematographic adaptation of the story exploring the incestuous thematic. It was quite a bold and audacious move compared to the landscape of 60s French cinema, but Demy had grown quite bold and audacious during his trip to the United-States. He wanted to get rid of his reputation of a “maker of pastel movies” that the “Young Girls of Rochefort” earned him, he wanted to do something “simple and true” like the “Umbrellas of Cherbourg”. And he had this to say to his experience in the USA: he discovered America as a “baroque and garish world where the notion of “taste”, the French good taste we are injected with like a vaccine, did not exist”. He said he was “transported by” and “adored” the “American bad taste”. 

# Despite his first American movie, “Model Shop” being a failure, Hollywood producers wanted Demy to make another project, “A Walk in the Spring Rain” with Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn. But Demy refused because he really wanted to just do his “Peau d’âne” and return to his own passion projects. So he launched his Donkey Skin project, riding on the fame of “The Young Girls of Rochefort”, and using the famous and iconic actress Catherine Deneuve for the main role. In fact her presence in the movie was a big help in finding financial means, because while producers refused to spend anything on a “movie for kids”, they were all aboard to fund a “Catherine Deneuve piece”. 

# The costumes were created in a complex way. They were first imagined and conceived by Agostino Pace in fifteen days, because he was very busy with theater work and so only had fifteen days to co-work with Demy to create all of the costumes (Demy himself checked Pace’s work almost every fifteen minutes, and gave constant feedback and review other those days as Pace worked actually at Demy’s house for those fifteen days). It is notably when Pace had the idea to split the two kingdoms into two colors - he wanted to make visuals “just like children would”, to deliberately play on the “childish freedom” of such a movie. The costumes however were created, physically, by Gitt Magrini, who made them all in Italy before shipping them to France. And Magrini added his own touch and twist to the costumes by taking inspiration from the fashions of the Renaissance and from the era of Charlemagne (in fact, the way the beard of the Red King is covered in flowers is a nod to Charlemagne’s nickname “the emperor with the flowery beard”). The dresses of the Princess were inspired by the Louis XV fashion, but with references to the Walt Disney movies ; as for the Prince’s outfit they were taken out of the Henri II fashion. For the Lilac Fairy however they completely mixed the “Hollywood glamor” style (with a vaporous negligee) with classical “Cour fashion” (such as the big collar). The three dresses asked by the Princess (the Weather, Moon and Sun dress) were actually very heavy (just like the fake donkey skin), and Deneuve had a lot of troubles walking around with them (especially since they shot in the Chambord castles which TONS of staircases), so she had to slide between shots a stool under her dresses to be able to rest. Deneuve notably remembers that Demy was very uncaring when it came to the difficulties of the costumes, as he didn’t care if an outfit was practical or not, or if it caused actors problem, because for him as long as it looked good in the movie it had to go. 

# When there is the sequence of the Ball of the Cats and Birds, Demy wanted to recreate the works of Leonor Fini (which notably greatly inspired both the surrealists and Jean Cocteau). As for the donkey-skin... I have to correct what I said earlier, it wasn’t fake. It was a real donkey skin, taken from a slaughterhouse - which, even if it was cleaned up and adapted as a movie costume, still was a very heavy thing to wear, and smelled quite bad. In fact, Deneuve was not told it was a real skin - she thought it was fake all the way until the movie was finished shooting. 

# The sets were conceived by Jim Leon, famous for his love of the “oniric art of the 19th century”. He was chosen by Demy after a meeting at San Francisco where Leon showed him drawings he mades of butterflies, as well as an erotic drawing of Alice in Wonderland. 

# Demy insisted on having “natural” sets and shooting in real buildings and real nature - notably the shooting of the movie took place during eight weeks at the height of 1970′s summer. Several of the “Loire castles” were used for the movie; Chambord’s castle for the Red castle and the wedding scenes ; the Plessis-Bourré castle for the Blue castle. Other castles included the Neuville castle and his park (Yvelines) for the farm and cabin-in-the-woods scene ; and the Pierrefonsds castle (Oise) for the final scene of the “guests parade”. As for the “dream of the lovers”, it was shot in the Eure-et-Loir countryside, near Rouvres and the house of Michel Legrand.

# Demy insisted on the actors using a lot of gestures ; and he asked them to over-play, to exaggerate everything from the looks they cave to the emotions they expressed. In fact, they over-played so much they often had fits of laughter (and you can still see hints of them trying not to laugh in the movie). It was all to play in the “aesthetic and literary marvel”, in a “surreal” feeling. 

# The movie had some budget restrains, which made it less grandiose than originally planned: most of the money went towards the sets and the costumes, and both Jacques Demy and Catherine Deneuve agreed to be paid less than they should have to help the movie go forward. A part of the financial problems came to Bernard Evein, in charge of the decoration, being unable to clearly estimate the price of the sets due to lacking any type of comparative element - Peau d’Âne was THAT much of an unusual movie. When the sets were finally done, it turned out they costed twice as much as initially planned. There was a lot of “last-time fix-up”, such as the bed of the Princess in her bedroom, which was apparetly a fixing of a “catastrophic mess” and not at all what was originally planned. It was originally supposed to be an enormous pink flower that would open when the Princess came near it and close itself when she slept in it - but their attempt at doing so was disastrous, and so to replace it they just took two of the statues actually already present at the Chambord castle and they improvised a bed with them. 

# Despite all that, Demy and his actors apparently had a great relationship: he included them in his talks of the scenario, annd it was so smooth that Jacques Perrin (the actor of the Prince) declared that he wouldn’t place “Donkey Skin” with his other cinema works, because it wasn’t true “work” like the others, but more of a pleasant and memorable experience. But the relationship between Demy and his production director, Philippe Dussart were... poisonous to say the best, as the movie went not only over-budget for what was initially planned, but over-budget for what ANY French movie of the time usually did. Demy notably explained how he had to basically cut half of the sets, half of the actors and half of the costumes, which saddened him as he wanted to make a truly grand, majestic, magical piece, and in his own word “magic costs A LOT”. 

# The team was thankful for being able to shot at the Chambord castle... BUT it came with a lot of problems. They shot in a part of the castle not accessible to the public, and given it had barely any furniture, you often heard the sound of the tourists and guides from the rest of the castles, arriving through echoes to the set. Jacques Demy notably had a lot of patience as he calmly stopped shooting every time there were “tourists noises” and they resumed once the group was away. 

# Demy insisted on having a lot of “artisanal” special effects, to recreate the type of movies of George Méliès and Jean Cocteau. In fact there is a great mystery surrounding one specific trick: how were the clouds on the “Weather Dress” able to move? According to Demy, Deneuve and Agnès Varda (a producer of the movie) the dress was made out of the same material used for cinema screens - the clouds moving were shot separately by a 16 millimeters camera, and then projected onto the dress, with the projector constantly following the actress. However, despite those three testimonies, there is a problem... In 2013, in honor of the movie, the dresses were recreated, and when the Weather Dress had to be re-created, the team in charge realized that such a “projection technique” was impossible, pointing out how the waves and folds of the dress would have deformed the picture. They pointed out how the material of the dress seemed “too soft”, and pushed forward the idea that the cloud images were added later as the movie was edited. But another theory was also pushed forward: it is possible that the dress was made out of Translex, a specific “reflective material” on which the picture was projected through a complex system of colorless mirrors. But we will probably never know the truth as the men in charge of the special effects for the movie ALWAYS refused to reveal their trick. 

# Jim Morrison visited the shooting of the movie at the Chambord castle, with his friend Alain Ronay (they had studied cinema together apparently). He took pictures of the shooting of the movie, and while very discreet on the scene he did agree to one autograph, for Duncan Youngerman (the son of Delphine Seyrig, the Lilac Fairy). 

# The scenes of Donkey-Skin working at the farm were apparently really difficult, not just because of the problems of the donkye-ksin itself, but because due to it being the heat of summer it was really hot, AND the manure... was just as real as the skin. 

[exhibit-of-the-century]

Lecture Notes MON 16th OCT

Masterlist

BUY ME A COFFEE

Doing Art History: Drawing/Works on paper.

Oeuvre: the artworld of that time. The body of work by a painter, composer, or author.

Drawing was and has always been the first step into becoming an artist, it is the most fundamental and important aspect of any artistic study or development. To know your fundamentals, the figure, perspective, and weight/shading. Historically this is the first step any artist took, before developing into their preferred medium.

Observe these drawings/sketches and paintings; consider the materials, their effect and product.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Vicomtesse Othenin d'Haussonville, nee Louise Albertine de Broglie, study, ca. 1845, graphite, with white heightening, on paper, France, Musée de Carpentras.

Colourism – (not to be confused with the discrimination based on skin colour) Specifically in painting, it is a style of painting characterised by the use of intense colour, which becomes the dominant feature of the resultant work of art, mostly influential in the French impressionism movement of the 19th century.

Also: a person who uses colour in s particular way, draws attention to the colour use.

HILAIRE-GERMAIN-EDGAR DEGAS, WOMAN STANDING IN A BATHTUB C. 1890–92, charcoal with stumping on beige wove paper, 43.2 x 29.5 cm, Sterling and Francine Clark Institute

Edgar Degas After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself, c. 1890-95 Pastel on wove paper laid on millboard. 103.5 x 98.5 cm. The National Gallery, London. Bought, 1959. Photo: © The National Gallery, London

Théodore Géricault, Study for the Raft of Medusa, 1818, charcoal on paper, Paris, Musée du Louvre.

Observe the contour line (the darker outline line), surrounding the body. Note the twist and strain of the muscles and exaggeration of line and pose to create drama on the paper. Also note the materials used. Charcoal: a material that possesses a short life on paper without additives to preserve it. Something that smudges easily. Perhaps to quickly capture the body and idea and shading.

The Male nude – which surprisingly are the most common nude that exists in the western world. And this is because the basic fundaments were learnt from drawing casts, from the ancient world, or drawing from other works of art. Sketching development and a skill development, meant drawing bodies and getting to access to more complex forms to keep learning.

The RA is doing an exhibition on Impressionist on paper, which from the photos of artworks in this post, I recommend going to and seeing and judging for yourself, the use of materials and their effects.

On Degas and pastels: you can over saturate paper with pastels, muddying the colour. Critics of Degas spoke out, how his portrayal of bodies appear bruised. Degas was less interested in accuracy, more into the exploration of light on the body, the illumination, and the space it inhabits.

Genres of painting: Landscape, Portrait, Still life, Genre, Historical, Allegorical:

Allegorical paintings covered mythos. These were most prominent and popular when the state collected paintings, rather than when commissions came into prominence, and private ownership of painting rose.

Impasto: when paint stands off from the canvas. An Italian word for “mixture,” used to describe a painting technique wherein paint is thickly laid on a surface, so that brushstrokes or palette knife marks are visible. A pastose surface is one that is thickly painted.

19th century: paints in tubes begin to make an appearance.

Plain air: painting outside, open air painting. A common impressionist's expression.

Claude Monet Cliffs at Etretat: The Needle Rock and Porte d’Aval, Pastel on wove paper, c. 1885. 39 x 23 cm. National Galleries of Scotland. Accepted in lieu of Inheritance Tax by H M Government from the estate of Miss Valerie Middleton and allocated to the Scottish National Gallery, 2016

Drawings always have a subjective idea of being ‘finished’ surrounding them. A rising problem surrounding the impressionist artists was critics perceptions of the artworks seeming unfinished, which could decrease a value of an artwork.

Berthe Morisot, At the Beach in Nice, 1882, pencil and watercolour, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum.

Note the signing of this particular artwork, in the bottom left corner. A tendency that arose after an artist died and their work became more famous or popular, their families would sign the work in their name.

Moreover, looking at this artwork it may surprise some to know that watercolour is considered a less prestigious material to use. As opposed to oil painting, which carries a greater prestige due to its difficulty to use and master. Leaving less room for imperfections. As a snide response to the impressionist movement, critics suggested that these artist under this movement, stick to and use watercolour.

Consider critics opinions of materials and how that translates to accessibility and intension.

Watercolour is actual a far more accessible material than oil painting and can give you a great finish, especially for artists that were painting on open air and their surroundings live.