1.
1749 in art
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Events from the year 1749 in art. John Shackleton is appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary to King George II of Great Britain, canaletto completes his painting of Warwick Castle now at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut. Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin refines technique for reflected light on glass and silver, thomas Hudson paints a portrait of Admiral Byng. Jean-Baptiste Oudry paints Clara the Rhinoceros, a portrait of the rhinoceros Clara at this date on display in Paris, joshua Reynolds paints Commodore the Honourable August Keppel, his first portrait of Keppel. Louis-François Roubiliacs memorial to the Duke of Argyll, his first work in Westminster Abbey, is installed, gervase Spencer paints a miniature self-portrait
2.
Jacques Saly
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He began his training as a sculptor at nine years of age under local master Antoine Gilles in Valenciennes from 1726-1727. In spite of his parents income, he was sent to Paris in 1732 to train in the studio of the leading sculptor at Paris. At the same time he attended the school of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture and he first received his stipend in 1740, and he arrived in Rome on 13 October 1740. He stayed there for eight years between 1740–1748, and lived at the Academy, the goal here was that through the study of antiquities and the masters of the past, one would develop and refine ones artistic taste. More practically it meant making marble copies of Roman sculpture for the French king, in 1742 he made a monumental portrait bust of Manuel Pinto de Fonseca, Grand Master of the Order of Malta. In 1744 he made a bust of a girl which is one of the most reproduced sculptures from the 18th century. He became one of the first French members of the Accademia degli Arcadi in Rome 1744, and of the Academy of Design at Florence, in 1748 and he had close relations with Giovanni Battista Piranesi. He traveled back to his home via Naples, Florence and Bologna, the works he had sent home had received such positive attention that his hometown commissioned a full standing portrait of King Louis XV from him. The marble statue was erected in 1752, and destroyed in 1792, a plaster bust of Louis XV was also made that same year. He went on to Paris, where he became a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1751 with his work A Fawn with a Kid and he was assistant professor at the Académie 1751-1753. He exhibited at the Paris Salons, 1750-1751 and 1753 and he created a plaster bust of Madame de Pompadour in 1752, and a statue of Amor for her the next year. In 1752 Saly was commissioned to create a sculpture of King Frederick V of Denmark on horseback to be placed in the center of the courtyard of Amalienborg Palace. The equestrian statue was commissioned by Adam Gottlob Moltke, head of the Danish Asiatic Company, but while Moltke’s company offered to finance the statue, it was the government, however, who chose the sculptor. Count Johan Hartvig Ernst Bernstorff wrote to the Danish Legation secretary to the French Court in Paris Justitsråd Joachim Wasserschlebe to find a suitable French sculptor, sculptor Edmé Bouchardon rejected the offer, but suggested Saly, who wanted a significant sum for the model and free housing in Copenhagen. Work began on the monument that same year, during the same period of time the Royal Danish Academy of Art was officially established with offices at Charlottenborg, on Frederik V’s birthday,31 March 1754. Saly gave the speech at the event, a snub to the current Academy Director architect Nicolai Eigtved. Saly was made member of the Academy, was named professor, Saly worked hard to improve the Danish Academy after the model of the French Academy. He sought to bring about changes, all the while working on his model of the equestrian statue for the king
3.
Gouache
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Gouache, body color, opaque watercolor, or guache, is one type of watermedia, paint consisting of pigment, water, a binding agent, and sometimes additional inert material. Gouache is designed to be used with methods of painting. The term, derived from the Italian guazzo, also refers to using this opaque method. Gouache has a history going back over 600 years. It is similar to watercolor because it can be rewet and the paint can become infused with its paper support and it can also form a superficial layer like acrylic or oil paint. Also like watercolor, gouache dries to a matte finish and it is similar to acrylic or oil paints in that it is normally used in an opaque painting style. Many manufacturers of watercolor paints also produce gouache and the two can easily be used together, Gouache paint is similar to watercolor modified to make it opaque. Just as in watercolor, an agent is present. This was traditionally gum arabic but since the nineteenth century cheaper varieties use yellow dextrin. When the paint is sold as a paste, e. g. in tubes, to improve the adhesive and hygroscopic qualities of the paint, as well as the flexibility of the rather brittle paint layer after drying, often propylene glycol is added. This makes gouache heavier and more opaque, with greater reflective qualities, Gouache generally dries to a different value than it appears when wet, which can make it difficult to match colors over multiple painting sessions. Its quick coverage and total hiding power mean that gouache lends itself to more direct painting techniques than watercolor, en plein air paintings take advantage of this, as do the works of J. M. W. Gouache is used most consistently by commercial artists for works such as posters, illustrations, comics, most 20th-century animations used it to create an opaque color on a cel with watercolor paint used for the backgrounds. Using gouache as poster paint is desirable for its speed as the paint layer dries completely by the relatively quick evaporation of the water, the use of gouache is not restricted to the basic opaque painting techniques using a brush and watercolor paper. It is often applied with an airbrush, as with all types of paint, gouache has been used on unusual surfaces from Braille paper to cardboard. A variation of traditional application is the used in the gouaches découpées created by Henri Matisse. His Blue Nudes series is an example of the technique. Guazzo, Italian for mud, was originally a term applied to the early 16th century practice of applying oil paint over a tempera base, during the eighteenth century gouache was often used in a mixed technique, for adding fine details in pastel paintings
4.
Giant's Causeway
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The Giants Causeway is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. It is also known as Clochán an Aifir or Clochán na bhFomhórach in Irish and it is located in County Antrim on the north coast of Northern Ireland, about three miles northeast of the town of Bushmills. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986, in a 2005 poll of Radio Times readers, the Giants Causeway was named as the fourth greatest natural wonder in the United Kingdom. The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot, most of the columns are hexagonal, although there are also some with four, five, seven or eight sides. The tallest are about 12 metres high, and the lava in the cliffs is 28 metres thick in places. Much of the Giants Causeway and Causeway Coast World Heritage Site is today owned and managed by the National Trust, the remainder of the site is owned by the Crown Estate and a number of private landowners. As the lava cooled, contraction occurred, in many cases the horizontal fracture has resulted in a bottom face that is convex while the upper face of the lower segment is concave, producing what are called ball and socket joints. The size of the columns is primarily determined by the speed at which lava from a volcanic eruption cools, the extensive fracture network produced the distinctive columns seen today. The basalts were originally part of a volcanic plateau called the Thulean Plateau which formed during the Paleocene. According to legend, the columns are the remains of a built by a giant. The story goes that the Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill, from the Fenian Cycle of Gaelic mythology, was challenged to a fight by the Scottish giant Benandonner, Fionn accepted the challenge and built the causeway across the North Channel so that the two giants could meet. In one version of the story, Fionn defeats Benandonner, in another, Fionn hides from Benandonner when he realises that his foe is much bigger than he. Fionns wife, Oonagh, disguises Fionn as a baby and tucks him in a cradle, when Benandonner sees the size of the baby, he reckons that its father, Fionn, must be a giant among giants. He flees back to Scotland in fright, destroying the causeway behind him so that Fionn could not follow, across the sea, there are identical basalt columns at Fingals Cave on the Scottish isle of Staffa, and it is possible that the story was influenced by this. In overall Irish mythology, Fionn mac Cumhaill is not a giant, the Fomhóraigh are a race of supernatural beings in Irish mythology who were sometimes described as giants and who may have originally been part of a pre-Christian pantheon. In the caption to the plates French geologist Nicolas Desmarest suggested, for the first time in print, visitors can walk over the basalt columns which are at the edge of the sea, a half-mile walk from the entrance to the site. The Causeway was without a permanent visitors centre between 2000 and 2012, as the building, built in 1986, burned down in 2000. A privately financed proposal was given approval in 2007 by the Environment Minister
5.
Canaletto
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Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto, was an Italian painter of city views or vedute, of Venice. He also painted views, although the demarcation in his works between the real and the imaginary is never quite clearcut. He was further an important printmaker using the etching technique, in the period from 1746 to 1756 he worked in England where he created many sights of London. He was highly successful in England, thanks to the British merchant and connoisseur Joseph Smith and he was born in Venice as the son of the painter Bernardo Canal, hence his mononym Canaletto, and Artemisia Barbieri. Canaletto served his apprenticeship with his father and his brother and he began in his fathers occupation, that of a theatrical scene painter. Canaletto was inspired by the Roman vedutista Giovanni Paolo Pannini, and started painting the life of the city. After returning from Rome in 1719, he began painting in his topographical style and his first known signed and dated work is Architectural Capriccio. Studying with the older Luca Carlevarijs, a painter of urban cityscapes. It is like Carlevaris, but you can see the sun shining in it, much of Canalettos early artwork was painted from nature, differing from the then customary practice of completing paintings in the studio. However, his paintings are notable for their accuracy, he recorded the seasonal submerging of Venice in water. Canalettos early works remain his most coveted and, according to many authorities, one of his early pieces is The Stonemasons Yard which depicts a humble working area of the city. It is regarded one of his finest works and was presented by Sir George Beaumont in 1823/8, later Canaletto painted grand scenes of the canals of Venice and the Doges Palace. His large-scale landscapes portrayed the citys pageantry and waning traditions, making use of atmospheric effects. For these qualities, his works may be said to have anticipated Impressionism and his graphic print S. A Giustina in Prà della Vale was found in the 2012 Nazi loot discovery. Many of his pictures were sold to Englishmen on their Grand Tour and it was Smith who acted as an agent for Canaletto, first in requesting paintings of Venice from the painter in the early 1720s and helping him to sell his paintings to other Englishmen. In the 1740s Canalettos market was disrupted when the War of the Austrian Succession led to a reduction in the number of British visitors to Venice and he remained in England until 1755, producing views of London and of his patrons castles and houses. His 1754 painting of Old Walton Bridge includes an image of Canaletto himself and he was often expected to paint England in the fashion with which he had painted his native city. Historian Michael Levey described his work from this period as inhibited, the artist was compelled to give public painting demonstrations in order to refute this claim, however, his reputation never fully recovered in his lifetime
6.
Royal Collection
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The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family and the largest private art collection in the world. The Queen owns some objects in the collection in right of the Crown, the Queens Gallery at Buckingham Palace in London was built specially to exhibit pieces from the collection on a rotating basis. There is an art gallery next to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. The Crown Jewels are on display in the Jewel House at the Tower of London. About 3,000 objects are on loan to museums throughout the world, few items from before King Henry VIII survive. The most important additions to the collection were made by Charles I, a collector of Italian paintings. Many works have been given from the collection to museums, especially by George III and Victoria, in particular, most of the then royal library was given by George III to the British Museum, now the British Library, where many books are still catalogued as Royal. The core of this collection was the purchase by James I of the collections of Humphrey Llwyd, Lord Lumley. Throughout the reign of Elizabeth II, there have been significant additions to the collection through purchases, bequests and through gifts from nation states. Numbering over 7,000 works, spread across the Royal Residences, numbering over 300 items, the Royal Collection holds one of the greatest and most important collections of French furniture ever assembled. The collection is noted for its range as well as counting the greatest cabinet-makers of the Ancien Régime. The Royal Collection is privately owned, although some of the works are displayed in areas of palaces, some of the collection is owned by the monarch personally, and everything else is described as being held in trust by the monarch in right of the Crown. All works of art acquired by monarchs up to the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 are heirlooms which fall into the latter category. Items the British royal family acquired later, including official gifts, ambiguity surrounds the status of objects that have come into Queen Elizabeth IIs possession during her reign. The Royal Collection Trust has confirmed that all pieces left to the Queen by the Queen Mother belong to her personally, non-personal items are said to be inalienable as they can only be willed to the monarchs successor. The legal accuracy of this claim has never been substantiated in court, in a 2000 television interview, the Duke of Edinburgh said that the Queen was technically, perfectly at liberty to sell them. In 1995, Iain Sproat, then Secretary of State for National Heritage, a registered charity, the Royal Collection Trust was set up in 1993 after the Windsor Castle fire with a mandate to conserve the works and enhance the publics appreciation and understanding of art. It employs around 500 staff and is one of the five departments of the Royal Household, buildings do not come under its remit
7.
Windsor Castle
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Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is notable for its association with the English and later British royal family. The original castle was built in the 11th century after the Norman invasion of England by William the Conqueror, since the time of Henry I, it has been used by the reigning monarch and is the longest-occupied palace in Europe. Inside the castle walls is the 15th-century St Georges Chapel, considered by the historian John Martin Robinson to be one of the achievements of English Perpendicular Gothic design. Gradually replaced with stone fortifications, the castle withstood a siege during the First Barons War at the start of the 13th century. Edwards core design lasted through the Tudor period, during which Henry VIII and Elizabeth I made increasing use of the castle as a royal court and centre for diplomatic entertainment. Windsor Castle survived the period of the English Civil War, when it was used as a military headquarters for Parliamentary forces. At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II rebuilt much of Windsor Castle with the help of the architect Hugh May, Queen Victoria made a few minor changes to the castle, which became the centre for royal entertainment for much of her reign. Windsor Castle was used as a refuge for the family during the Luftwaffe bombing campaigns of the Second World War. It is a popular tourist attraction, a venue for hosting state visits, today, more than 500 people live and work in Windsor Castle, making it the largest inhabited castle in the world. Windsor Castle occupies 13 acres, and combines the features of a fortification, a palace, the present-day castle was created during a sequence of phased building projects, culminating in the reconstruction work after a fire in 1992. It is in essence a Georgian and Victorian design based on a medieval structure, since the 14th century, architecture at the castle has attempted to produce a contemporary reinterpretation of older fashions and traditions, repeatedly imitating outmoded or even antiquated styles. Although there has some criticism, the castles architecture and history lends it a place amongst the greatest European palaces. At the heart of Windsor Castle is the Middle Ward, a formed around the motte or artificial hill in the centre of the ward. The motte is 50 feet high and is made from chalk originally excavated from the surrounding ditch, the Round Tower is in reality far from cylindrical, due to the shape and structure of the motte beneath it. The western entrance to the Middle Ward is now open, the eastern exit from the ward is guarded by the Norman Gatehouse. Wyatville redesigned the exterior of the gatehouse, and the interior was later converted in the 19th century for residential use. The Upper Ward of Windsor Castle comprises a number of major buildings enclosed by the bailey wall
