Queen Victoria
Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. On 1 May 1876, she adopted the additional title of Empress of India. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III. Both the Duke and the King died in 1820, Victoria was raised under close supervision by her mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, she inherited the throne at the age of 18, after her father's three elder brothers had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was an established constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held little direct political power. Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments. Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840, their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the sobriquet "the grandmother of Europe". After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria avoided public appearances.
As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration, her reign of 63 years and seven months was longer than that of any of her predecessors and is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, political and military change within the United Kingdom, was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire, she was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover. Her son and successor, Edward VII, initiated the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father. Victoria's father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of the reigning King of the United Kingdom, George III; until 1817, Edward's niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, was the only legitimate grandchild of George III. Her death in 1817 precipitated a succession crisis that brought pressure on the Duke of Kent and his unmarried brothers to marry and have children.
In 1818 he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children—Carl and Feodora —by her first marriage to the Prince of Leiningen. Her brother Leopold was Princess Charlotte's widower; the Duke and Duchess of Kent's only child, was born at 4.15 a.m. on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London. Victoria was christened by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace, she was baptised Alexandrina after one of her godparents, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, Victoria, after her mother. Additional names proposed by her parents—Georgina and Augusta—were dropped on the instructions of Kent's eldest brother, the Prince Regent. At birth, Victoria was fifth in the line of succession after the four eldest sons of George III: George, the Prince Regent; the Prince Regent had no surviving children, the Duke of York had no children. The Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Kent married on the same day in 1818, but both of Clarence's legitimate daughters died as infants.
The first of these was Princess Charlotte, born and died on 27 March 1819, two months before Victoria was born. Victoria's father died in January 1820. A week her grandfather died and was succeeded by his eldest son as George IV. Victoria was third in line to the throne after York and Clarence. Clarence's second daughter was Princess Elizabeth of Clarence who lived for twelve weeks from 10 December 1820 to 4 March 1821 and, while Elizabeth lived, Victoria was fourth in line; the Duke of York died in 1827. When George IV died in 1830, he was succeeded by his next surviving brother, Clarence, as William IV, Victoria became heir presumptive; the Regency Act 1830 made special provision for Victoria's mother to act as regent in case William died while Victoria was still a minor. King William distrusted the Duchess's capacity to be regent, in 1836 he declared in her presence that he wanted to live until Victoria's 18th birthday, so that a regency could be avoided. Victoria described her childhood as "rather melancholy".
Her mother was protective, Victoria was raised isolated from other children under the so-called "Kensington System", an elaborate set of rules and protocols devised by the Duchess and her ambitious and domineering comptroller, Sir John Conroy, rumoured to be the Duchess's lover. The system prevented the princess from meeting people whom her mother and Conroy deemed undesirable, was designed to render her weak and dependent upon them; the Duchess avoided the court because she was scandalised by the presence of King William's illegitimate children. Victoria shared a bedroom with her mother every night, studied with private tutors to a regular timetable, spent her play-hours with her dolls and her King Charles Spaniel, Dash, her lessons included French, German and Latin, but she spoke only English at home. In 1830, the Duchess of Kent and Conroy took Victoria across the centre of England to visit the Malvern Hills, stopping at towns and great country houses along the way. Similar journeys to oth
Antibes
Antibes is a Mediterranean resort in the Alpes-Maritimes department of southeastern France, on the Côte d'Azur between Cannes and Nice. The town of Juan-les-Pins is in the commune of Antibes and the Sophia Antipolis technology park is northwest of it. Traces of occupation dating back to the early Iron Age have been found in the areas of the castle and cathedral. Remains beneath the Holy Spirit Chapel show there was an indigenous community with ties with Mediterranean populations, including the Etruscans, as evidenced by the presence of numerous underwater amphorae and wrecks off Antibes. However, most trade was via the Phocaeans of Marseille. Antibes was founded by Phocaeans from Massilia; as a Greek colony settlement, it was named Antipolis from its position close to Nice. Current research suggests that Antipolis was founded late, to benefit from the protection of Marseille with its trade routes along the coast and strongholds like Olbia at Hyères, trading posts such as Antipolis itself and Nikaia.
The exact location of the Greek city is not well known. Given Greek colonial practices, it is that it was set at the foot of the rock of Antibes in today's old city. Traces of occupation in the Hellenistic period have been identified around the castle and the church; the goods unearthed during these excavations show the dominance of imported products of the Marseilles region, associated with Campanian and indigenous ceramics. Early in the second century BC the Ligurian Deceates and Oxybiens tribes launched repeated attacks against Nikaia and Antipolis; the Greeks of Marseille appealed to Rome as they had done a few years earlier against the federation of Salyens. In 154 BC the consul Quintus Opimius defeated the Décéates and Oxybiens and took Aegythna from the Décéates. Rome increased its hold over the Mediterranean coast. In 43 BC, Antipolis was incorporated in the propraetorial province of Narbonesian Gaul, in which it remained for the next 500 years. Antipolis grew into the largest town in the region and a main entry point into Gaul. Roman artifacts such as aqueducts, fortified walls, amphoræ can still be seen today.
The city was supplied with water by two aqueducts. The Fontvieille aqueduct rises in Biot and joins the coast below the RN7 and the railway track at the Fort Carré, it was discovered and restored in the 18th century by the Chevalier d'Aguillon for supplying the modern city. The aqueduct called the Clausonnes rises near the town of Valbonne. Monumental remains of aqueduct bridges are located in the neighbourhood of Fugaret, in the forest of Valmasque and near the town of Vallauris. Like most Roman towns Antipolis possessed these buildings for shows and entertainment. A Roman theatre is attested by the tombstone of the child "Septentrion"; the inscription says "he danced and was popular on the stage of the theatre". The theatre was located, like the amphitheatre, between Rue de la République and Rue de Fersen, near the Porte Royale; the back wall is positioned next to Rue Fourmillère. A radial wall was found on the right side of the bus station. A plan of the theatre made in the 16th century is in the Marciana National Library of Venice.
The remains of the amphitheatre were still visible at the end of the 17th century during the restructuring of the fortifications of the city. A concentric oval was still visible in many plans of the seventeenth century and in a map of Antibes from the early nineteenth century; these remains are now covered by the College of Fersen. Excavations in the old town have discovered well-preserved houses showing some luxury. Among them, the most monumental are those in the rectory garden of rue Clemenceau; these show a comparable level to that of the Gallo-Roman domus such as those of Saint-Romain-en-Gal. Large parts of the floor mosaic are organised around a courtyard with a marble fountain; the building dates from the late third century, although parts date from the end of the Hellenistic era or the end of the Roman Republic. Another house paved with porphyry and green stone was excavated between rue des Palmiers and the rue de la Blancherie; the finds at the Antibes Museum of Archaeology suggests the main occupation between the 2nd and 4th century.
Finds from the end of the Hellenistic era and the end of the Roman Republic is present on both sites. Antipolis became the seat of a bishopric in the 5th century. After the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire, various barbarian tribes seized Antibes; this resulted in a long period of instability. In the 10th century, Antibes found a protector in Seigneur Rodoart, who built extensive fortified walls around the town and a castle in which to live. For the next 200 years, the town experienced a period of renewal. Prosperity was short-lived; the inhabitants of Antibes stayed behind their strong city walls as a succession of wars and epidemics ravaged the countryside. In the 1244, Antibes's bishop moved. By the end of the 15th century, the region was under the protection and control of King Louis XI of France. Relative stability returned. From around the middle of the 19th century the Antibes area regained its popularity, as wealthy people from around Europe discovered its natural environment and built luxurious homes there.
It was transferred from its former department of Var to the new one of Alpes Maritimes in 1860. The harbor was again used for a "considerable" fishing industry and the area exported dried fruit, salt fish, an
Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900; the museum holds French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures and photography. It houses the largest collection of impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Sisley and Van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986, it is one of the largest art museums in Europe. Musée d'Orsay had 3.177 million visitors in 2017. The museum building was a railway station, Gare d'Orsay, constructed for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans and finished in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle to the design of three architects: Lucien Magne, Émile Bénard and Victor Laloux, it was the terminus for the railways of southwestern France until 1939. By 1939 the station's short platforms had become unsuitable for the longer trains that had come to be used for mainline services.
After 1939 it was used for suburban services and part of it became a mailing centre during World War II. It was used as a set for several films, such as Kafka's The Trial adapted by Orson Welles, as a haven for the Renaud–Barrault Theatre Company and for auctioneers, while the Hôtel Drouot was being rebuilt. In 1970, permission was granted to demolish the station but Jacques Duhamel, Minister for Cultural Affairs, ruled against plans to build a new hotel in its stead; the station was put on the supplementary list of Historic Monuments and listed in 1978. The suggestion to turn the station into a museum came from the Directorate of the Museum of France; the idea was to build a museum that would bridge the gap between the Louvre and the National Museum of Modern Art at the Georges Pompidou Centre. The plan was accepted by Georges Pompidou and a study was commissioned in 1974. In 1978, a competition was organized to design the new museum. ACT Architecture, a team of three young architects, were awarded the contract which involved creating 20,000 square metres of new floorspace on four floors.
The construction work was carried out by Bouygues. In 1981, the Italian architect Gae Aulenti was chosen to design the interior including the internal arrangement, decoration and fittings of the museum. In July 1986, the museum was ready to receive its exhibits, it took 6 months to install the 2000 or so 600 sculptures and other works. The museum opened in December 1986 by then-president François Mitterrand; the square next to the museum displays six bronze allegorical sculptural groups in a row produced for the Exposition Universelle: South America by Aimé Millet Asia by Alexandre Falguière Oceania by Mathurin Moreau Europe by Alexandre Schoenewerk North America by Ernest-Eugène Hiolle Africa by Eugène Delaplanche Frédéric Bazille – 6 paintings including The Family Reunion, The Improvised Field Hospital, The Pink Dress, Studio in Rue de La Condamine Cecilia Beaux – Sita and Sarita Rosa Bonheur - Ploughing in the Nivernais Pierre Bonnard – 60 paintings including The Chequered Blouse Eugène Boudin – 33 paintings including Trouville Beach William-Adolphe Bouguereau – 12 paintings including The Birth of Venus, La Danse and Virgil Louise Catherine Breslau - 4 paintings including Portrait of Henry Davison Alexandre Cabanel – The Birth of Venus, The Death of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta Gustave Caillebotte – 7 paintings including The Floor Scrapers, Vue de toits Eugène Carrière – 86 paintings including The Painting Family, The Sick Child, Intimacy Mary Cassatt – 1 painting Paul Cézanne – 56 paintings including Apples and Oranges, The Card Players, Portrait of Gustave Geffroy Théodore Chassériau – 5 paintings Pierre Puvis de Chavannes – Young Girls by the Seaside, The Young Mother known as Charity, View on the Château de Versailles and the Orangerie Gustave Courbet – 48 paintings including The Artist's Studio, A Burial at Ornans, Young Man Sitting, L'Origine du monde, Le ruisseau noir, Still-Life with Fruit, The Wave, The Wounded Man Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – 32 paintings including A Morning.
The Dance of the Nymphs Henri-Edmond Cross – 10 paintings including The Cypresses in Cagnes Charles-François Daubigny - The Harvest Honoré Daumier – 8 paintings including The Laundress Edgar Degas – 43 works including paintings such as The Parade known as Race Horses in front of the Tribunes, The Bellelli Family, The Tub, Portrait of Édouard Manet, Portraits, At the Stock Exchange, L'Absinthe, pastels like Café-Concert at Les Ambassadeurs and Les Choristes Eugène Delacroix – 5 paintings Maurice Denis – Portrait of the Artist Aged Eighteen, Princess Maleine's Minuet or Marthe Playing the Piano, The Green Trees or Beech Trees in Kerduel, October Night, Homage to Cézanne André Derain – Charing Cross Bridge known as Westminster Bridge Édouard Detaille – The Dream Albert Edelfelt - Pasteur's portrait by Edelfelt Henri Fantin-Latour - Around the Piano, A Studio at Les Batignolles Paul Gauguin – 24 paintings including Arearea, Tahitian Women on the Beach Jean-Léon Gérôme – Portrait of the Baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild, Reception of Condé in Versailles, La Comtesse de Keller, The Cock Fight, Jerusalem Vincent van Gogh – 24 paintings including L'Arlésienne, Bedroom in Arles, Self Portrait, portrait of his frien
Salon (Paris)
The Salon, or Paris Salon, beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art event in the Western world. At the 1761 Salon, thirty-three painters, nine sculptors, eleven engravers contributed. From 1881 onward, it has been managed by the Société des Artistes Français. In 1667, the royally sanctioned French institution of art patronage, the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, held its first semi-public art exhibit at the Salon Carré; the Salon's original focus was the display of the work of recent graduates of the École des Beaux-Arts, created by Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister of France, in 1648. Exhibition at the Salon de Paris was essential for any artist to achieve success in France for at least the next 200 years. Exhibition in the Salon marked a sign of royal favor. In 1725, the Salon was held in the Palace of the Louvre, when it became known as Salon or Salon de Paris.
In 1737, the exhibitions, held from 18 August 1737 to 5 September 1737 at the Grand Salon of the Louvre, became public. They were held, at first and biennially, in odd-numbered years, they would run for some weeks. Once made regular and public, the Salon's status was "never in doubt". In 1748 a jury of awarded artists was introduced. From this time forward, the influence of the Salon was undisputed; the Salon exhibited paintings floor-to-ceiling and on every available inch of space. The jostling of artwork became the subject of many other paintings, including Pietro Antonio Martini's Salon of 1785. Printed catalogues of the Salons are primary documents for art historians. Critical descriptions of the exhibitions published in the gazettes mark the beginning of the modern occupation of art critic; the French revolution opened the exhibition to foreign artists. In the 19th century the idea of a public Salon extended to an annual government-sponsored juried exhibition of new painting and sculpture, held in large commercial halls, to which the ticket-bearing public was invited.
The vernissage of opening night was a grand social occasion, a crush that gave subject matter to newspaper caricaturists like Honoré Daumier. Charles Baudelaire, Denis Diderot and others wrote reviews of the Salons; the 1848 revolution liberalized the Salon. The amount of refused works was reduced. In 1849 medals were introduced; the conservative and academic juries were not receptive to the Impressionist painters, whose works were rejected, or poorly placed if accepted. The Salon opposed the Impressionists' shift away from traditional painting styles. In 1857 the Salon jury turned away an unusually high number of the submitted paintings. An uproar resulted from regular exhibitors, rejected. In order to prove that the Salons were democratic, Napoleon III instituted the Salon des Refusés, containing a selection of the works that the Salon had rejected that year, it opened on 17 May 1863. The Impressionists held their own independent exhibitions in 1874, 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882 and 1886.
In 1881, the government withdrew official sponsorship from the annual Salon, a group of artists organized the Société des Artistes Français to take responsibility for the show. In December 1890, the leader of the Société des Artistes Français, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, propagated the idea that Salon should be an exhibition of young, not-yet awarded, artists. Ernest Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, Auguste Rodin and others rejected this proposal and made a secession, they created the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and its own exhibition referred to in the press as the Salon du Champ de Mars or the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux–Arts. In 1903, in response to what many artists at the time felt was a bureaucratic and conservative organization, a group of painters and sculptors led by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Auguste Rodin organized the Salon d'Automne. J. J. Marquet de Vasselot: Répertoire des catalogues du musée du Louvre, 1793–1917 Thomas Crow: Painters and Public Life in 18th Century Paris.
Yale University Press 1987 Patricia Mainardi: The End of the Salon: Art and the State in the Early Third Republic, Cambridge University Press, 1993. Fae Brauer and Conspirators: The Paris Salons and the Modern Art Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars, 2013. Albert Boime, "The Salon des Refuses and the Evolution of Modern Art," Art Quarterly 32: 41 1-26 Margo Bistis, "Bad Art: The Decline of Academic Art in the Caricatural Salon," International Journal of Comic Art 7, no.1. Timeline of the Paris Salons Harriet Griffiths and Alister Mill, Database of Salon Artists, 1827-1850
Lyon
Lyon is the third-largest city and second-largest urban area of France. It is located in the country's east-central part at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, about 470 km south from Paris, 320 km north from Marseille and 56 km northeast from Saint-Étienne. Inhabitants of the city are called Lyonnais. Lyon had a population of 513,275 in 2015, it is the capital of the region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The Lyon metropolitan area had a population of 2,265,375 in 2014, the second-largest urban area in France; the city is known for its cuisine and gastronomy, historical and architectural landmarks. Lyon was an important area for the production and weaving of silk. Lyon played a significant role in the history of cinema: it is where Auguste and Louis Lumière invented the cinematograph, it is known for its light festival, the Fête des Lumières, which begins every 8 December and lasts for four days, earning Lyon the title of Capital of Lights. Economically, Lyon is a major centre for banking, as well as for the chemical and biotech industries.
The city contains a significant software industry with a particular focus on video games, in recent years has fostered a growing local start-up sector. Lyon hosts the international headquarters of Interpol, the International Agency for Research on Cancer and Euronews, it was ranked 19th globally and second in France for innovation in 2014. It ranked second in 39th globally in Mercer's 2015 liveability rankings. According to the historian Dio Cassius, in 43 BC, the Roman Senate ordered the creation of a settlement for Roman refugees of war with the Allobroges; these refugees had been expelled from Vienne and were now encamped at the confluence of the Saône and Rhône rivers. The foundation was built on Fourvière hill and called Colonia Copia Felix Munatia, a name invoking prosperity and the blessing of the gods; the city became referred to as Lugdunum. The earliest translation of this Gaulish place-name as "Desired Mountain" is offered by the 9th-century Endlicher Glossary. In contrast, some modern scholars have proposed a Gaulish hill-fort named Lugdunon, after the Celtic god Lugus, dúnon.
The Romans recognised that Lugdunum's strategic location at the convergence of two navigable rivers made it a natural communications hub. The city became the starting point of the principal Roman roads in the area, it became the capital of the province, Gallia Lugdunensis. Two Emperors were born in this city: Claudius, whose speech is preserved in the Lyon Tablet in which he justifies the nomination of Gallic Senators, Caracalla. Early Christians in Lyon were martyred for their beliefs under the reigns of various Roman emperors, most notably Marcus Aurelius and Septimius Severus. Local saints from this period include Blandina and Epipodius, among others. In the second century AD, the great Christian bishop of Lyon was Irenaeus. To this day, the archbishop of Lyon is still referred to as "Primat des Gaules". Burgundians fleeing the destruction of Worms by the Huns in 437 were re-settled at Lugdunum. In 443 the Romans established the Kingdom of the Burgundians, Lugdunum became its capital in 461.
In 843, by the Treaty of Verdun, Lyon went to the Holy Roman Emperor Lothair I. It was made part of the Kingdom of Arles. Lyon did not come under French control until the 14th century. Fernand Braudel remarked, "Historians of Lyon are not sufficiently aware of the bi-polarity between Paris and Lyon, a constant structure in French development...from the late Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution". In the late 15th century, the fairs introduced by Italian merchants made Lyon the economic counting house of France; the Bourse, built in 1749, resembled a public bazaar where accounts were settled in the open air. When international banking moved to Genoa Amsterdam, Lyon remained the banking centre of France. During the Renaissance, the city's development was driven by the silk trade, which strengthened its ties to Italy. Italian influence on Lyon's architecture is still visible among historic buildings. In the 1400s and 1500s Lyon was a key centre of literary activity and book publishing, both of French writers and of Italians in exile.
In 1572, Lyon was a scene of mass violence by Catholics against Protestant Huguenots in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Two centuries Lyon was again convulsed by violence when, during the French Revolution, the citizenry rose up against the National Convention and supported the Girondins; the city was besieged by Revolutionary armies for over two months before surrendering in October 1793. Many buildings were destroyed around the Place Bellecour, while Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois and Joseph Fouché administered the execution of more than 2,000 people; the Convention ordered that its name be changed to "Liberated City" and a plaque was erected that proclaimed "Lyons made war on Liberty. A decade Napoleon ordered the reconstruction of all the buildings demolished during this period; the Convention was not the only target within Lyon during the 1789-1799 French Revolution. After the National Convention faded into history, the French Directory appeared and days after the September 4, 1797, Coup of 18 Fructidor, a Directory's commissioner was assassinated in Ly
Dutch Golden Age painting
Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history spanning the 17th century and after the part of the Eighty Years' War for Dutch independence. The new Dutch Republic was the most prosperous nation in Europe and led European trade and art; the northern Netherlandish provinces that made up the new state had traditionally been less important artistic centres than cities in Flanders in the south. The upheavals and large-scale transfers of population of the war, the sharp break with the old monarchist and Catholic cultural traditions, meant that Dutch art had to reinvent itself; the painting of religious subjects declined but a large new market for all kinds of secular subjects grew up. Although Dutch painting of the Golden Age is included in the general European period of Baroque painting, shows many of its characteristics, most lacks the idealization and love of splendour typical of much Baroque work, including that of neighbouring Flanders. Most work, including that for which the period is best known, reflects the traditions of detailed realism inherited from Early Netherlandish painting.
A distinctive feature of the period is the proliferation of distinct genres of paintings, with the majority of artists producing the bulk of their work within one of these. The full development of this specialization is seen from the late 1620s, the period from until the French invasion of 1672 is the core of Golden Age painting. Artists would spend most of their careers painting only portraits, genre scenes, landscapes and ships, or still lifes, a particular sub-type within these categories. Many of these types of subject were new in Western painting, the way the Dutch painted them in this period was decisive for their future development. A distinctive feature of the period, compared to earlier European painting, was the limited number of religious paintings. Dutch Calvinism forbade religious paintings in churches, though biblical subjects were acceptable in private homes few were produced; the other traditional classes of history and portrait painting were present, but the period is more notable for a huge variety of other genres, sub-divided into numerous specialized categories, such as scenes of peasant life, townscapes, landscapes with animals, maritime paintings, flower paintings and still lifes of various types.
The development of many of these types of painting was decisively influenced by 17th-century Dutch artists. The held theory of the "hierarchy of genres" in painting, whereby some types were regarded as more prestigious than others, led many painters to want to produce history painting; however this was the hardest to sell, as Rembrandt found. Many were forced to produce portraits or genre scenes. In descending order of status, the categories in the hierarchy were: history painting, including allegories and popular religious subjects. Portrait painting, including the tronie genre painting or scenes of everyday life landscape, including seascapes, battlescenes and ruins still lifeThe Dutch concentrated on the "lower" categories, but by no means rejected the concept of the hierarchy. Most paintings were small – the only common type of large paintings were group portraits. Painting directly onto walls hardly existed. For the extra precision possible on a hard surface, many painters continued to use wooden panels, some time after the rest of Western Europe had abandoned them.
In turn, the number of surviving Golden Age paintings was reduced by them being overpainted with new works by artists throughout the 18th and 19th century – poor ones were cheaper than a new canvas and frame. There was little Dutch sculpture during the period. Painted delftware tiles were cheap and common, if of high quality, but silver in the auricular style, led Europe. With this exception, the best artistic efforts were concentrated on printmaking. Foreigners remarked on the enormous quantities of art produced and the large fairs where many paintings were sold – it has been estimated that over 1.3 million Dutch pictures were painted in the 20 years after 1640 alone. The volume of production meant that prices were low, except for the best known artists; those without a strong contemporary reputation, or who had fallen out of fashion, including many now considered among the greatest of the period, such as Vermeer, Frans Hals and Rembrandt in his last years, had considerable problems earning a living, died poor.
In particular the French invasion of 1672, brought a severe depression to the art market, which never quite returned to earlier heights. The distribution of pictures was wide: "yea many tymes, cobblers etts. will have some picture or other by their Forge and in their stalle. Such is the generall Notion and delight that these Countrie Native have to Painting" reported an English traveller in 1640. There were for the first time many professional art dealers, several significant artists, like Vermeer and his father, Jan van
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, myth, literature, education and political economy, his writing styles and literary forms were varied. He penned essays and treatises and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and a fairy tale, he made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, birds and architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature and society, he was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters, an extended essay in defence of the work of J. M. W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature." From the 1850s, he championed the Pre-Raphaelites. His work focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera. In the course of this complex and personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society; as a result, he founded the Guild of an organisation that endures today. Ruskin was the only child of first cousins, his father, John James Ruskin, was a sherry and wine importer, founding partner and de facto business manager of Ruskin and Domecq. John James was born and brought up in Edinburgh, Scotland, to a mother from Glenluce and a father from Hertfordshire.
His wife, Margaret Cock, was the daughter of a publican in Croydon. She had joined the Ruskin household when she became companion to Catherine. John James had hoped to practice law, was articled as a clerk in London, his father, John Thomas Ruskin, described as a grocer, was an incompetent businessman. To save the family from bankruptcy, John James, whose prudence and success were in stark contrast to his father, took on all debts, settling the last of them in 1832. John James and Margaret were engaged in 1809, but opposition to the union from John Thomas, the problem of his debts, delayed the couple's wedding, they married, without celebration, in 1818. John James died on 3 March 1864 and is buried in the churchyard of St John the Evangelist, Croydon. Ruskin was born on 8 February 1819 at 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, south of St Pancras railway station, his childhood was shaped by the contrasting influences of his father and mother, both of whom were fiercely ambitious for him. John James Ruskin helped to develop his son's Romanticism.
They shared a passion for the works of Byron and Walter Scott. They visited Scott's home, Abbotsford, in 1838. Margaret Ruskin, an Evangelical Christian, more cautious and restrained than her husband, taught young John to read the Bible from beginning to end, to start all over again, committing large portions to memory, its language and parables had a profound and lasting effect on his writing. Ruskin's childhood was spent from 1823 at 28 Herne Hill, near the village of Camberwell in South London, he had few friends of his own age, but it was not the friendless and toyless experience he claimed it was in his autobiography, Praeterita. He was educated at home by his parents and private tutors, from 1834 to 1835 he attended the school in Peckham run by the progressive Evangelical, Thomas Dale. Ruskin heard Dale lecture in 1836 at King's College, where Dale was the first Professor of English Literature. Ruskin went on to enroll and complete his studies at King's College, where he prepared for Oxford under Dale's tutelage.
Ruskin was influenced by the extensive and privileged travels he enjoyed in his childhood. It augmented his education, he sometimes accompanied his father on visits to business clients at their country houses, exposing him to English landscapes and paintings. Family tours took them to relatives in Perth, Scotland; as early as 1825, the family visited Belgium. Their continental tours became ambitious in scope, so that in 1833 they visited Strasbourg, Milan and Turin, places to which Ruskin returned, he developed his lifelong love of the Alps, in 1835 he first visited Venice, that'Paradise of cities' that provided the subject and symbolism of much of his work. The tours provided Ruskin with the opportunity to record his impressions of nature, he composed elegant if conventional poetry, some of, published in Friendship's Offering. His early notebooks
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One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Frantz, Henri (1911). "Meissonier, Jean Louis Ernest". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 85–86.
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