Romanticism
Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was embodied most strongly in the arts and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of heroic individualists and artists, whose examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society. It promoted the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art, there was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the 19th century, Realism was offered as a polar opposite to Romanticism, the decline of Romanticism during this time was associated with multiple processes, including social and political changes and the spread of nationalism. Defining the nature of Romanticism may be approached from the point of the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist.
The importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich that the feeling is his law. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were laws that the imagination—at least of a good creative artist—would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone. As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creators own imagination, so that originality was essential. The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism. This idea is called romantic originality. Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief, this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. Romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the voice of the artist. So, in literature, much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves.
In both French and German the closeness of the adjective to roman, meaning the new literary form of the novel, had some effect on the sense of the word in those languages. It is only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, the period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought. Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place roughly between 1770 and 1848, and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature, M. H. Abrams placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter a very typical view, and about 1830, however, in most fields the Romantic Period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier
Romani people
The Romani are widely known among English-speaking people by the exonym Gypsies, which some people consider pejorative due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity. Romani are dispersed, with their populations in Europe – especially Central and Southern Europe including Turkey, Spain. Since the 19th century, some Romani have migrated to the Americas, there are an estimated one million Roma in the United States, and 800,000 in Brazil, most of whose ancestors emigrated in the nineteenth century from eastern Europe. Brazil includes some Romani descended from people deported by the government of Portugal during the Inquisition in the colonial era, in migrations since the late nineteenth century, Romani have moved to other countries in South America and to Canada. In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India. The conference ended with a recommendation to the Government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora, the Romani language is divided into several dialects, which add up to an estimated number of speakers larger than two million.
The total number of Romani people is at least twice as large, many Romani are native speakers of the language current in their country of residence, or of mixed languages combining the two, those varieties are sometimes called Para-Romani. French bohème, bohémien, from the Kingdom of Bohemia, whence they came, Rom means man or husband in the Romani, it has the variants dom and lom, related with the Sanskrit words dam-pati, lom, lomaka loman, roman. Another possible origin is from Sanskrit डोम doma, Sanskrit सिनधु is a river or stream of water in general. In particular, it denotes the river Indus and the country around it, in the Romani language, Rom is a masculine noun, meaning man of the Roma ethnic group or man, with the plural Roma. The feminine of Rom in the Romani language is Romni, however, in most cases, in other languages Rom is now used for people of all genders. Romani is the adjective, while Romano is the masculine adjective. Some Romanies use Rom or Roma as a name, while others do not use this term as a self-ascription for the entire ethnic group.
Sometimes and romani are spelled with a r, i. e. rrom. In this case rr is used to represent the phoneme /ʀ/, the rr spelling is common in certain institutions, or used in certain countries, e. g. Romania, to distinguish from the endonym/homonym for Romanians. In the English language, Rom is a noun and an adjective, while Romani is a noun, both Rom and Romani have been in use in English since the 19th century as an alternative for Gypsy. Romani was initially spelled Rommany, while today the Romani spelling is the most popular spelling, the double r spelling mentioned above is encountered in English texts. The term Roma is increasingly encountered during recent decades, as a term for the Romani people
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings and his suicide at 37 followed years of mental illness and poverty. Born into a family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet. As a young man he worked as an art dealer, often travelling and he turned to religion, and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881 and his younger brother Theo supported him financially, and the two kept up a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, in 1886 he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and his paintings grew brighter in colour as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the south of France in 1888.
During this period he broadened his subject matter to include trees, wheat fields. Van Gogh suffered from episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor and he spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris and his depression continued and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver. He died from his injuries two days later, Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime, and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius. His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by the Fauves. The most comprehensive source on Van Gogh is the correspondence between him and his younger brother, Theo.
Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincents thoughts, Theo van Gogh was an art dealer and provided his brother with financial and emotional support, and access to influential people on the contemporary art scene. Theo kept all of Vincents letters to him, Vincent kept few of the letters he received, after both had died, Theos widow Johanna arranged for the publication of some of their letters. A few appeared in 1906 and 1913, the majority were published in 1914, Vincents letters are eloquent and expressive and have been described as having a diary-like intimacy, and read in parts like autobiography
Charles Verlat
Michel Marie Charles Verlat was a Belgian painter from Antwerp. He was a pupil of Nicaise de Keyser, and studied at the Antwerp Academy, in 1842 appeared his first important picture, Pippin the Short Killing a Lion. About 1849 he went to Paris, where he worked under Ary Scheffer, in 1855 he won a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle at Paris with his Tiger Attacking a Herd of Buffaloes, and in 1858 exhibited Le Coup de collier at the Paris Salon. In 1866 he was appointed director of the Weimar Saxon-Grand Ducal Art School, soon after his return to Antwerp in 1875 he visited Palestine, and brought back a large number of interesting pictures, including Vox Populi, The Tomb of Jesus, and The Flight into Egypt. In 1885 he was appointed director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and he executed a series of original etchings, and published in 1879 a book on the Antwerp Academy. 1881, Commander in the Order of Leopold, P. & V. Berko, Dictionary of Belgian painters born between 1750 &1875, Knokke 1981, p. 754-757. P. & V.
Berko, 19th Century European Virtuoso Painters, Knokke 2011, p.519, attribution This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Hugh, ed. Verlat, Michel Marie Charles. Media related to Charles Verlat at Wikimedia Commons
Prix de Rome (Belgium)
This article concerns the Belgian government prize. For similarly named prizes aimed at other countries nationals, see Prix de Rome, the Belgian Prix de Rome is an award for young artists, created in 1832, following the example of the original French Prix de Rome. The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp organised the prize until 1920, the first prize is sometimes called the Grand Prix de Rome. There were distinct categories for painting, sculpture and music, the Prix de Rome was a scholarship for arts students. It was created in 1663 in France under the reign of Louis XIV and it was an annual burse for promising artists who proved their talents by completing a very difficult elimination contest. The prize, organised by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, was open to their students, the award winner would win a stay at the Palazzo Mancini in Rome at the expense of the King of France. The stay could be extended if the director of the institution deemed it desirable. Expanded after 140 years into five categories, the contest started in 1663 as three categories — painting and architecture, in 1803, music was added, in 1804, engraving was added.
The winner of the First Grand Prize would be sent to The Academy of France in Rome founded by Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1666, in 1807, Louis Napoleon created the Dutch version of the Prix de Rome. After the creation of Belgium as an independent state in 1830, the Belgian government started their own version of the Prix de Rome in 1832
Goethe's Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethes Faust is a tragic play in two parts usually known in English as Faust, Part One and Faust, Part Two. Although rarely staged in its entirety, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages, Faust is considered by many to be Goethes magnum opus and the greatest work of German literature. The earliest forms of the work, known as the Urfaust, were developed between 1772 and 1775, the details of development are not entirely clear. Urfaust has twenty-two scenes, one in prose, two largely prose and the remaining 1,441 lines in rhymed verse, the manuscript is lost, but a copy was discovered in 1886. The first appearance of the work in print was Faust, a Fragment, Goethe completed a preliminary version of what is now known as Part One in 1806. Its publication in 1808 was followed by the revised 1828–29 edition, Goethe finished writing Faust Part Two in 1831. The second part formed the occupation of Goethes last years. It appeared only posthumously in 1832, the original 1808 German title page of Goethes play read simply, Faust.
The addition of erster Teil was only retrospectively applied by publishers when the sequel was published in 1832 with a page which read. The two plays have been published in English under a number of titles, and are most usually referred to as Faust Parts One and Two. Mephistopheles makes a bet with God, he says that he can lure Gods favourite human being, the next scene takes place in Fausts study where Faust, despairing at the vanity of scientific and religious learning, turns to magic for the showering of infinite knowledge. He suspects, that his attempts are failing, frustrated, he ponders suicide, but rejects it as he hears the echo of nearby Easter celebrations begin. He goes for a walk with his assistant Wagner and is followed home by a stray poodle, in Fausts study, the poodle transforms into the devil. Faust makes an arrangement with the devil, the devil will do everything that Faust wants while he is here on Earth, and in exchange Faust will serve the devil in Hell. Fausts arrangement is that if he is pleased enough with anything the devil gives him that he wants to stay in that moment forever, when the devil tells Faust to sign the pact with blood, Faust complains that the devil does not trust Fausts word of honor.
In the end, Mephistopheles wins the argument and Faust signs the contract with a drop of his own blood, Faust has a few excursions and meets Margaret. He is attracted to her and with jewellery and with help from a neighbor, with influence from the devil, Faust seduces Gretchen. Gretchens mother dies from a potion, administered by Gretchen to obtain privacy so that Faust could visit her
WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories that participate in the Online Computer Library Center global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC Online Computer Library Center, the subscribing member libraries collectively maintain WorldCats database. OCLC was founded in 1967 under the leadership of Fred Kilgour and that same year, OCLC began to develop the union catalog technology that would evolve into WorldCat, the first catalog records were added in 1971. It contains more than 330 million records, representing over 2 billion physical and digital assets in 485 languages and it is the worlds largest bibliographic database. OCLC makes WorldCat itself available free to libraries, but the catalog is the foundation for other subscribtion OCLC services, in 2006, it became possible to search WorldCat directly at its website. In 2007, WorldCat Identities began providing pages for 20 million identities, predominantly authors, WorldCat operates on a batch processing model rather than a real-time model.
That is, WorldCat records are synchronized at intermittent intervals with the library catalogs instead of real-time or every day. Consequently, WorldCat shows that an item is owned by a particular library. WorldCat does not indicate whether or not an item is borrowed, undergoing restoration or repair. Furthermore, WorldCat does not show whether or not a library owns multiple copies of a particular title, copac Faceted Application of Subject Terminology Library and Archives Canada Research Libraries UK Online Computer Library Center Grossman, Wendy M. Why you cant find a book in your search engine. Official website OCLC - Web scale discovery and delivery of library resources OCLC Bibliographic Formats and Standards WorldCat Identities
Harem
The structure of the harem and the extent of monogamy or polygamy has varied depending on the familys personalities, socio-economic status, and local customs. This private space has been understood as serving the purposes of maintaining the modesty, privilege. In former times, some harems were guarded by eunuchs who were allowed inside, there are several Renaissance paintings dating to the 16th century that defy Orientalist tropes and portray the women of the Ottoman harem as individuals of status and political significance. In many periods of Islamic history women in the harem exercised various degrees of political power, the word has been recorded in the English language since early 17th century. It comes from the Arabic ḥarīm, which can mean a sacred inviolable place, in English the term harem can mean the wives of a polygamous man. The triliteral Ḥ-R-M appears in other terms related the notion of such as haram, ihram and al-Ḥaram al-Šarīf. In Turkish of the Ottoman era, the harem, i. e. the part of the reserved for women was called haremlık.
Some scholars have used the term to refer to royal households throughout history. In Muscovite Russia the area of houses where women were secluded was known as terem. The idea of harem or seclusion of women did not originate with Muhammad or Islam and these practices were well established amongst the upper classes of Iraq, the Byzantine Empire, Ancient Greece and Persia for thousands of years before the advent of Islam. The practice of secluding women was common to many ancient near eastern communities, in pre-Islamic Assyria and Egypt, most royal courts had a harem, where the ruler’s wives and concubines lived with female attendants, and eunuchs. The harem system first became fully institutionalized in the Islamic world under the Abbasid caliphate, Some scholars believe that Islamic culture adopted the custom of secluding women from the Byzantine Empire and Persia, and read those customs back into the Quran. According to Eleanor Doumato, the practice of secluding women in Islam is based on both tradition and social custom.
One verse in particular discusses hijab, in modern usage hijab colloquially refers to the religious attire worn by Muslim women, but its original meaning was a veil or curtain that physically separates female from male space. Leila Ahmed describes the ideal of seclusion as a a mans right to keep his women concealed-invisible to other men, Ahmed identifies the practice of seclusion as a social ideal and one of the four factors that shaped the lives of women in the Mediterranean Middle East. For example, contemporary sources from the Byzantine Empire describe the social mores that governed womens lives, Women were not supposed to be seen in public. They were guarded by eunuchs and could leave the home veiled. Some of these customs were borrowed from the Persians, but Greek society influenced the development of patriarchal tradition, the ideal of seclusion was not fully realized as social reality
Venus de Milo
Aphrodite of Milos, better known as the Venus de Milo, is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. Created sometime between 130 and 100 BCE, it is believed to depict Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and it is a marble sculpture, slightly larger than life size at 203 cm high. Part of an arm and the plinth were lost following its discovery. From an inscription that was on its plinth, it is thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch, earlier and it is currently on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The statue is named after the Greek island of Milos, where it was discovered, the Aphrodite of Milos is widely renowned for the mystery of her missing arms. There is a hole below her right breast that originally contained a metal tenon that would have supported the separately carved right arm. Elsewhere the discoverers are identified as Yorgos Bottonis and his son Antonio and he apparently based these assertions on an article he had come across in the Century Magazine,1881, Vol. I, p.99.
Olivier Voutier, a French naval officer, was exploring the island, with the help of the young farmer, Voutier began to dig around what were clearly ancient ruins. Within a few hours Voutier had uncovered Venus de Milo, twelve days out of Toulon the ship was anchored off the island of Melos. The marble base where the Venus de Milo originally stood still resides today on the property of his great, great nephew, Dimitri Moraitis. The Venus de Milo is a statue of a woman with an apple in her raised left hand. Even with a nose, the face was beautiful. DUrville the classicist recognized the Venus of the Judgement of Paris and it was, of course, the Venus de Milo. He was eager to acquire it, but his captain, apparently uninterested in antiquities, said there was nowhere to store it on the ship. Before he could take delivery, French sailors had to fight Greek brigands for possession, in the mêlée the statue was roughly dragged across rocks to the ship, breaking off both arms, and the sailors refused to go back to search for them.
This story however proved to be a fabrication – Voutiers drawings of the statue when it was first discovered show that its arms were already missing, news of the discovery took longer than normal to get to the French ambassador. The peasant grew tired of waiting for payment and was pressured into selling it to Nicholas Mourousi, Grand Dragoman of the Fleet, working as a translator for Sultan Mahmud II in Constantinople. Upon arrival at the Louvre, the statue was reassembled, but the fragments of the left hand and this was a standard practice for many sculptors of the era—less visible parts of statues often were not so well finished since typically, they would be invisible to the casual observer
Nicaise de Keyser
Nicaise de Keyser was a Belgian painter of mainly history paintings and portraits who was one of the key figures in the Belgian Romantic-historical school of painting. He received his painting tuition at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts under Jozef Jacobs, after 1835 he made many travels including to England and Scotland and Italy. He married the genre painter Isabella Telghuys on 6 October 1840, in 1846, he was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician. When in 1855 the leading Belgian Romantic painter Gustave Wappers resigned as director of the Antwerp Academy, De Keyser regularly travelled to Germany and in 1873 he was awarded the famous Prussian order Pour le Mérite. Despite his great success and fame throughout his lifetime, his work, De Keyser was an extremely prolific painter and is said to have produced more than 350 paintings. Having debuted with religious pictures, his attention was drawn to his countrys history. His breakthrough as a painter came with the canvas Battle of the Golden Spurs and it depicts a scene from an important historical battle between France and Flanders of 1302.
Seeing the painting is said to have inspired the Belgian writer Hendrik Conscience to write his book De Leeuw van Vlaanderen about the Flemish battle for independence from the French, the success of de Keysers work was followed by his less impressive work, the Battle of Worringen of 1288. Starting in 1862, de Keyser painted a series of historical paintings that celebrated the Flemish school of art. The paintings were intended for the former Antwerp museum and academy building, when the new Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp was completed in the late nineteenth century, the paintings were transferred to the staircase of the museum. De Keyser belonged to the first wave of Belgian Romantic painters who had studied or spent time in Paris where they had come into contact with the new Romantic movement. Others in this group included Gustave Wappers, Louis Gallait, Ernest Slingeneyer, Edouard de Bièfve and they chose as the subject matter of their work important historical events in Belgium’s history which were regarded as key to the country’s national identity.
De Keyser painted genre paintings and elegantly refined portraits,1881, Grand Officer in the Order of Leopold, by royal decree of 4 mai 1881. Hymans, Notice sur la vie et les travaux de N. de Keyser, laurent Stevens, Bravo Toro, souvenir dune course de taureaux à Madrid, La peinture tauromachique de Nicaise de Keyser, Annales dhistoire de lart et darchéologie, vol.32,2010, p93-112. Media related to Nicaise De Keyser at Wikimedia Commons
Jan August Hendrik Leys
Henri Leys, Hendrik Leys or Jan August Hendrik, Baron Leys was a Belgian painter and printmaker. He was a representative of the historical or Romantic school in Belgian art. His history and genre paintings and portraits earned him a European-wide reputation and his style was influential on artists in, Henri Leys was born in Antwerp as the son of Hendrik-Jozef-Martinus Leys and Maria-Theresia Craen. His father ran a business specializing in religious images printed from old copper plates. The first etching by Henri Leys was an image made for his fathers shop in 1831. Henry Leys was not very interested in school but was keen on drawing. His parents supported his proclivity and let him study under a painter who lived next door. Leys subsequently studied at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts, from 1829 to 1832 he studied from the Antique, during this period he started to work in the studio of his brother-in-law, the genre painter Ferdinand de Braekeleer. One of Leys teachers at the Academy was Mattheus Ignatius van Bree, according to a widely circulated story, during a lecture by van Bree on the draping of the gown and peplos of figures from antiquity Leys made a remark about van Brees old-fashioned breeches.
Van Bree did not appreciate the joke, but as the young hothead refused to apologize, the director evicted him from the Academy. Leys never returned to the Academy, not even as a teacher after he had achieved international success, from the start of his career Leys painted history and genre subjects. During this period Leys often collaborated with the Belgian Romantic painter Gustaf Wappers, both artists were interested in nationalistic subjects painted in styles that owe much to the example of 16th- and 17th-century Flemish painting. In 1835 Leys went to Paris where he visited the studio of Eugène Delacroix, the influence of Delaroches Romanticism is evident in Leys early work. His precocious talent was manifested at the Brussels Salon of 1836 where he exhibited his Massacre of the magistrates of Louvain for which he received high praise, Leys married Adelaïde van Haren in 1841. The couple had two daughters and a son, the family Leys initially lived in the Hobokenstraat. In 1855 Leys had a spacious house built in the street, which now bears his name.
Fom 1857 to 1861 he worked on murals to decorate the room of his house. Leys became in 1852 member of the Kunstverbond or Cercle Artistique, Litéraire et Scientifique d’Anvers and its honorary chairman was the liberal mayor of Antwerp Jan Frans Loos
Virtual International Authority File
The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library, the National Library of France joined the project on October 5,2007. The project transitions to a service of the OCLC on April 4,2012, the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together, a VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary see and see records from the original records, and refers to the original authority records. The data are available online and are available for research and data exchange. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol, the file numbers are being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAFs clustering algorithm is run every month, as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records
Media related to Eugène Siberdt at Wikimedia Commons
