#anniversaryofartists

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MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF

 On this day of 11th November, Marie Bashkirtseff (Maria Konstantinovna Bashkirtseva,) (1858—1884) was born in Gavrontsi in Russia (now in Ukraine).

She grew up mostly abroad, throughout most of Europe Riviera, until the family settled in Paris.

Educated privately and with early musical talent, she lost her chance at a career as a singer when illness destroyed her voice. She then determined to become an artist, and she studied painting in France at the Robert-Fleury studio and at the Académie Julian, one of the few establishments that accepted female students.

As a painter, Bashkirtseff took her cue from her friend Jules Bastien-Lepage's admiration for realism and naturalism, where Bastien-Lepage had found his inspiration in nature, Bashkirtseff turned to the urban scene, writing, "I say nothing of the fields because Bastien-Lepage reigns over them as a sovereign, but the streets, however, have not yet had their... Bastien. By unlucky chance, both artists succumbed prematurely to chronic illness in the same year and the later pages of Bashkirtseff's journal record her visits to the dying painter.

From approximately the age of 13, Bashkirtseff kept a journal, and it is probably for this that she is most famous today. Bashkirtseff's journal was first published in 1887 and was only the second diary by a woman published in France to that date.

Her journal got the attention of British Prime Minister William Gladstone, George Bernard Shaw, George Gissing, Henry Koster, Mary MacLane. Pierre Louÿs, Katherine Mansfield, and Anais Nin.

Her letters, consisting of her correspondence with the writer Guy de Maupassant were first published in 1891.

Bashkirtseff died of tuberculosis at the age of 25, lived just long enough to emerge as an intellectual in Paris in the 1880s, and is buried in Cimetière de Passy, Paris. Her great friend Prince Bojidar Karageorgevitch was present at her deathbed. Her monument is a full-sized artist's studio that has been declared a historic monument by the government of France.

Marie Bashkirtseff was included in the 2018 exhibit 

Women in Paris 1850-1900.

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CHARLES VERLAT

 On this day of 24th day of November, Charles Verlat or Karel Verlat (24 November 1824 – 23 October 1890) was born in Antwerp, Netherlands. Some sources claim that his date of birth was 25th November.

He was a painter, watercolorist, engraver, art educator, and director of the Antwerp Academy. He painted many subjects and was particularly known as an animalier and portrait painter. He also created Orientalist works, genre scenes, including a number of antics, religious compositions, and still lifes.

He was a professor of drawing and director of the Antwerp Academy when Vincent van Gogh spent a brief period as a student at the Academy in 1886. The two men got into arguments about van Gogh's unconventional style of drawing.

Charles got his first drawing classes from Johannes Antonius van der Ven. Then took lessons from Nicaise de Keyser. De Keyser was one of the key figures in the Belgian Romantic-historical school of painting. Pupils of de Keyser who came to prominence were Edouard Hamman, Jan Swerts, Joseph Lies, and Johan Bernard Wittkamp.

His first picture to be exhibited was Pippin the Short Killing a Lion. He also gradually started to paint animal scenes as well as genre scenes. He painted his first religious composition which was intended for the St Gummarus church in Lier.

He left for Paris and studied in the studio of Ary Scheffer. And later from Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin.

He gained commissions from religious and official institutions in Belgium including historical composition Godefroid de Bouillon during the assault on Jerusalem. In 1855 he won a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle at Paris with his Tiger Attacking a Herd of Buffaloes.

He gradually came under the influence of the Realism of Gustave Courbet. This resulted in his work Coup de collier. The work was negatively criticised. Verlat took revenge by painting a monkey shaving itself while wiping its feet on the copy of the newspaper in which the criticism had been published.

He also started to establish a reputation as an animal painter. He also painted religious subjects and his Pietà was so successful that it earned him the distinction of being appointed a Knight in the French Legion of Honour

His major creations during his visits to the Middle East were Vox populi, Vox Dei, The Tomb of Christ, and The Flight into Egypt

Verlat also created a few panoramic paintings. The Battle of Waterloo was 120 meters wide and 10 meters high.

Verlat’s students included Joseph Finnemore, Joseph Malachy Kavanagh, and John Duncan.

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BOAZ VAADIA

 On this day of 13th November, Boaz Vaadia (November 13, 1951 – February 25, 2017) was born in Gat Rimon, Israel.

An Israeli–American artist and sculptor who worked primarily in stone and subsequently by casting in bronze.

Boaz credits his parents with instilling a tremendous love for the earth in him and a sense of connection to it that amounted to adoration. 

At age 14, he skipped high school and went directly to art school at Avni Institute of Art and Design in Jaffa, by claiming to be two years older than he was.

Vaadia received a scholarship from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation to study in New York City, where he studied at Pratt Institute and continued to pursue his career as a sculptor.

Based in New York City since 1975, his studio is located in Brooklyn. The power of natural materials and the relation of human beings to that power determine the content of Vaadia's sculpture.

He started to work in stone, added human hair. Subsequently, he began exploring surrealist influences with sheep hides, branches, and leather in his work. Vaadia then worked with the sedimentary stone where he began exploring the natural force of gravity and eventually .incorporating material from the New York City environment, slate, shingle, bluestone, and boulders, to create figural sculptures with universal features. His materials, particularly the bluestone and slate formed from layers of compressed sediment, are carved to expose each stratified layer. Relying on the weight of the stone, Vaadia's figures connect with nature to harness the powers inherent in their materials. Vaadia's statement says, "Man came from the earth and in death returns to it. I see the stone as the bone structure of the earth.

Numerous public and private collectors from around the world have acquired Vaadia's works who include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Hakone Open-Air Museum, Hakone, Japan, and Grounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ.

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RENÉ FRANÇOIS GHISLAIN MAGRITTE

On this day of 21st November, René François Ghislain Magritte; (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was born in Lessines, Belgium.

He was a surrealist artist. He became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Often depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced pop art, minimalist art, and conceptual art.

René Magritte was son of Léopold Magritte, and, Régina (née Bertinchamps). Little is known about Magritte's early life.

Magritte's earliest paintings were Impressionistic in style. He studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, under Constant Montald, and from the painter and poster designer Gisbert Combaz. Later he produced paintings influenced by Futurism and by the figurative Cubism of Metzinger.

Magritte produced his first surreal painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu), and held his first solo exhibition in Brussels in 1927.

He moved to Paris, and became friends with André Breton, and became involved in the Surrealist group. In 1929 he exhibited at Goemans Gallery in Paris with Salvador Dalí, Jean Arp, de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Picabia, Picasso, and Yves Tanguy.

In 1936 he had his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, followed by an exposition at the London Gallery in 1938. Notable paintings were, Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle) and La Reproduction Interdite, and Not to Be Reproduced.

In France, Magritte's was showcased including at the Centre Georges Pompidou, In the United States retrospective exhibitions: at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Artists influenced by Magritte's works include John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Jan Verdoodt, Martin Kippenberger, Duane Michals, Storm Thorgerson, and Luis Rey.

His works have been frequently adapted or plagiarized in advertisements, posters, book covers, and the like. Examples include album covers for The Jeff Beck Group Alan Hull's, Jackson Browne's, Firesign Theatre's, Styx's, The Grand Illusion rapper Jesse Jagz's, Punch Brothers, Paul Simon, John Cale, Tom Stoppard, and others.

Magritte's imagery has inspired filmmakers like Marcel Mariën, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Bernardo Bertolucci, Nicolas Roeg, John Boorman, and Terry Gilliam.

A Street in Brussels has been named Ceci n'est pas une rue (This is not a street).

The Magritte Museum is in Brussels, which displays some 200 original Magritte paintings, drawings, and sculptures including The Return, Scheherazade and, The Empire of Light.

Another museum is located at Rue Esseghem in Brussels in Magritte's former home. A painting, Olympia, was stolen from this museum in 2009 by two armed men but was returned to the museum in 2012 as the thieves were unable to sell it on the black market due to its fame

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FRANÇOIS AUGUSTE RENÉ RODIN

 On this day of 12th November, François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917) was born in Paris.

He is generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, and deeply pocketed surface in clay. He is known for such sculptures as The Thinker, The Kiss, The Burghers of Calais, and The Gates of Hell.

Many of Rodin's most notable sculptures were criticized as they clashed with predominant figurative sculpture traditions in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly thematic. Rodin's most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory. He modeled the human body with naturalism, and his sculptures celebrate individual character and physicality. Although Rodin was sensitive to the controversy surrounding his work, he refused to change his style, and his continued output brought increasing favour from the government and the artistic community.

The popularity of Rodin's most famous sculptures tends to obscure his total creative output. He painted in oils, watercolours. chalk, charcoal, dry points and a single lithograph.

By 1900, he was a world-renowned artist. Wealthy private clients sought Rodin's work after his World's Fair exhibit, and he kept company with a variety of high-profile intellectuals and artists.

He married his lifelong companion, Rose Beuret, in the last year of both their lives.

His sculptures suffered a decline in popularity after his death in 1917, but within a few decades his legacy solidified. Rodin remains one of the few sculptors widely known outside the visual arts community.

Rodin had enormous artistic influence which includes Gutzon Borglum, Antoine Bourdelle, Constantin Brancusi, Camille Claudel, Charles Despiau, Malvina Hoffman, Carl Milles, François Pompon, Rodo, Gustav Vigeland, Clara Westhoff , Margaret Winser,Aristide Maillol , Ivan Meštrović,  Joseph Csaky, Alexander Archipenko, Joseph Bernard, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Georg Kolbe, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Jacques Lipchitz, Pablo Picasso, Adolfo Wildt,[and Ossip Zadkine, Henry Moore .

Several films have been made featuring Rodin as a prominent character or presence. These include Camille Claudel, a 1988 film, Camille Claudel 1915 a 2013 film, and Rodin, a 2017 film.

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GEORGIA TOTTO O'KEEFFE

 On this day of 15th November, Georgia Totto O'Keeffe, (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, USA.

She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been recognized as the "Mother of American modernism"

In 1905, O'Keeffe began her serious formal art training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and then the Art Students League of New York, but she felt constrained by her lessons that emphasised the recreation or copying of nature.

In 1908, unable to fund further education, she worked for two years as a commercial illustrator and then taught in Virginia, Texas, and South Carolina between 1911 and 1918. During that time, she studied art during the summers between 1912 and 1914 and was introduced to the principles and philosophies of Arthur Wesley Dow, who created works of art based upon personal style, design, and interpretation of subjects, rather than trying to copy or represent them. This caused a major change in the way she felt about and approached art, as seen in the beginning stages of her watercolors from her studies at the University of Virginia and more dramatically in the charcoal drawings that she produced in 1915 that led to total abstraction. 

Alfred Stieglitz, an art dealer, and a photographer held an exhibit of her works in 1917. Over the next couple of years, she taught and continued her studies at the Teachers College, Columbia University in 1914 and 1915.

She moved to New York in 1918 at Stieglitz's request and began working seriously as an artist. They developed a professional relationship and a personal relationship that led to their marriage in 1924. O'Keeffe created many forms of abstract art, including close-ups of flowers, such as the Red Canna paintings.

O'Keeffe and Stieglitz lived together in New York until 1929, when O'Keeffe began spending part of the year in the Southwest, which served as inspiration for her paintings of New Mexico landscapes and images of animal skulls, such as Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue and Ram's Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills. 

After Stieglitz's death, she lived permanently in New Mexico at Georgia O'Keeffe Home and Studio in Abiquiú, until the last years of her life when she lived in Santa Fe.

In 2014, O'Keeffe's 1932 painting Jimson Weed sold for $44.40 million more than three times the previous world auction record for any female artist.

After her death, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum was established in Santa Fe

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WALTER GEIKIE

 On this day of 10th November, Walter Geikie (10 November 1795 – 1 August 1837) was born in Edinburg, Scotland.

Walter was a Scottish painter.

At the age of two, he suffered a "nervous fever" which left him deaf. Through the careful attention of his father, a hairdresser and, perfumer, he obtained a good education. Before he had the advantage of the instruction of a master he had attained considerable proficiency in sketching both figures and landscapes from nature, and in 1812 he was admitted into the drawing academy of the board of Scottish manufactures.

He first exhibited in 1815, and was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1831, and a fellow in 1834.

Owing to his want of feeling for color, Geikie was not a successful painter in oils, but he sketched in India ink with great truth and humor the scenes and characters of Scottish lower-class life in his native city. A series of etchings that exhibit very high excellence was published by him in 1829-1831 and a collection of eighty-one of these was republished posthumously in 1841, with a biographical introduction by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder

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