1.
Antwerp
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Antwerp is a city in Belgium, the capital of Antwerp province in the region of Flanders. With a population of 510,610, it is the most populous city proper in Belgium and its metropolitan area houses around 1,200,000 people, which is second behind Brussels. Antwerp is on the River Scheldt, linked to the North Sea by the Westerschelde estuary, the Port of Antwerp is one of the biggest in the world, ranking second in Europe and within the top 20 globally. Antwerp has long been an important city in the Low Countries, the inhabitants of Antwerp are nicknamed Sinjoren, after the Spanish honorific señor or French seigneur, lord, referring to the Spanish noblemen who ruled the city in the 17th century. The city hosted the 1920 Summer Olympics, according to folklore, notably celebrated by a statue in front of the town hall, the city got its name from a legend about a giant called Antigoon who lived near the Scheldt river. He exacted a toll from passing boatmen, and for those who refused, he severed one of their hands, eventually the giant was killed by a young hero named Silvius Brabo, who cut off the giants own hand and flung it into the river. Hence the name Antwerpen, from Dutch hand werpen, akin to Old English hand and wearpan, a longstanding theory is that the name originated in the Gallo-Roman period and comes from the Latin antverpia. Antverpia would come from Ante Verpia, indicating land that forms by deposition in the curve of a river. Note that the river Scheldt, before a period between 600 and 750, followed a different track. This must have coincided roughly with the current ringway south of the city, however, many historians think it unlikely that there was a large settlement which would be named Antverpia, but more something like an outpost with a river crossing. However, John Lothrop Motley argues, and so do a lot of Dutch etymologists and historians, aan t werp is also possible. This warp is a hill or a river deposit, high enough to remain dry at high tide. Another word for werp is pol hence polders, historical Antwerp allegedly had its origins in a Gallo-Roman vicus. Excavations carried out in the oldest section near the Scheldt, 1952–1961, produced pottery shards, the earliest mention of Antwerp dates from the 4th century. In the 4th century, Antwerp was first named, having been settled by the Germanic Franks, the name was reputed to have been derived from anda and werpum. The Merovingian Antwerp was evangelized by Saint Amand in the 7th century, at the end of the 10th century, the Scheldt became the boundary of the Holy Roman Empire. Antwerp became a margraviate in 980, by the German emperor Otto I, in the 11th century Godfrey of Bouillon was for some years known as the marquis of Antwerp. In the 12th century, Norbert of Xanten established a community of his Premonstratensian canons at St. Michaels Abbey at Caloes
2.
Belgium
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Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres and has a population of about 11 million people. Additionally, there is a group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons located around the High Fens area. Historically, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were known as the Low Countries, the region was called Belgica in Latin, after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, today, Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. It is divided into three regions and three communities, that exist next to each other and its two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia, Belgiums linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Upon its independence, declared in 1830, Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Belgium is also a member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD and WTO. Its capital, Brussels, hosts several of the EUs official seats as well as the headquarters of major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium is also a part of the Schengen Area, Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy and is categorized as very high in the Human Development Index. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings, a gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Eighty Years War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands. The latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and this was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. The reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 and for women in 1949. The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party, French was originally the single official language adopted by the nobility and the bourgeoisie
3.
Academic art
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Academic art, or Academicism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. In this context it is often called academism, academicism, Lart pompier, and eclecticism, in this medicean institution students learned the arti del disegno and heard lectures on anatomy and geometry. Another academy, the Accademia di San Luca, was founded about a later in Rome. The Accademia di San Luca served a function and was more concerned with art theory than the Florentine one. Accademia di San Luca later served as the model for the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture founded in France in 1648, and which later became the Académie des beaux-arts. The Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture was founded in an effort to distinguish artists who were practicing a liberal art from craftsmen. This emphasis on the component of artmaking had a considerable impact on the subjects. This battle of styles was a conflict over whether Peter Paul Rubens or Nicolas Poussin was a model to follow. Debates also occurred over whether it was better to learn art by looking at nature, academies using the French model formed throughout Europe, and imitated the teachings and styles of the French Académie. In England, this was the Royal Academy, one effect of the move to academies was to make training more difficult for women artists, who were excluded from most academies until the last half of the 19th century. This was partly because of concerns over the propriety of life classes with nude models, special arrangements were often made for female students until the 20th century. Since the onset of the debate, many artists worked between the two styles. In the 19th century, in the form of the debate, the attention. One artist after another was claimed by critics to have achieved the synthesis, among them Théodore Chassériau, Ary Scheffer, Francesco Hayez, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, and Thomas Couture. William-Adolphe Bouguereau, an academic artist, commented that the trick to being a good painter is seeing color. Another development during this period included adopting historical styles in order to show the era in history that the painting depicted, called historicism and this is best seen in the work of Baron Jan August Hendrik Leys, a later influence on James Tissot. Its also seen in the development of the Neo-Grec style, historicism is also meant to refer to the belief and practice associated with academic art that one should incorporate and conciliate the innovations of different traditions of art from the past. The art world also grew to give increasing focus on allegory in art, as artists attempted to synthesize these theories in practice, the attention on the artwork as an allegorical or figurative vehicle was emphasized
4.
Romanticism
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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, music, 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 also 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, however, 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
5.
Orientalism
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In particular, Orientalist painting, representing the Middle East, was a genre of Academic art in the 19th century. Orientalism refers to the Orient, in reference and opposition to the Occident, the East, the word Orient entered the English language as the Middle French orient. In the “Monks Tale”, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote, “That they conquered many regnes grete / In the orient, with many a fair citee. ”The term “orient” refers to countries east of the Mediterranean Sea and Southern Europe. In Place of Fear, Aneurin Bevan used an expanded denotation of the Orient that comprehended East Asia, “the awakening of the Orient under the impact of Western ideas”. Edward Said said that Orientalism “enables the political, economic, cultural and social domination of the West, not just during colonial times, but also in the present. ”In art history, the term Orientalism refers to the works of the Western artists who specialized in Oriental subjects, produced from their travels in Western Asia, during the 19th century. In that time, artists and scholars were described as Orientalists, especially in France, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the term Orientalist identified a scholar who specialized in the languages and literatures of the Eastern world. Among such scholars is the philologist William Jones, whose studies of Indo-European languages established modern philology, additionally, Hebraism and Jewish studies gained popularity among British and German scholars in the 18th and 19th century. The academic field of Oriental studies, which comprehended the cultures of the Near East, the thesis of Orientalism develops Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, and Michel Foucaults theorisation of discourse to criticise the scholarly tradition of Oriental studies. Said criticised contemporary scholars who perpetuated the tradition of outsider-interpretation of Arabo-Islamic cultures, especially Bernard Lewis, the analyses are of Orientalism in European literature, especially French literature, and do not analyse visual art and Orientalist painting. In that vein, the art historian Linda Nochlin applied Said’s methods of analysis to art. In the academy, the book Orientalism became a text of post-colonial cultural studies. Early architectural use of motifs lifted from the Indian subcontinent is known as Indo-Saracenic Revival architecture, one of the earliest examples is the façade of Guildhall, London. The style gained momentum in the west with the publication of views of India by William Hodges, examples of Hindoo architecture are Sezincote House in Gloucestershire, built for a nabob returned from Bengal, and the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. Venice, the trading partner of the Ottomans, was the earliest centre. Chinoiserie is the term for the fashion for Chinese themes in decoration in Western Europe, beginning in the late 17th century and peaking in waves, especially Rococo Chinoiserie. From the Renaissance to the 18th century, Western designers attempted to imitate the technical sophistication of Chinese ceramics with only partial success, Early hints of Chinoiserie appeared in the 17th century in nations with active East India companies, England, Denmark, the Netherlands and France. Tin-glazed pottery made at Delft and other Dutch towns adopted genuine Ming-era blue, Early ceramic wares made at Meissen and other centers of true porcelain imitated Chinese shapes for dishes, vases and teawares. Pleasure pavilions in Chinese taste appeared in the formal parterres of late Baroque and Rococo German palaces, Thomas Chippendales mahogany tea tables and china cabinets, especially, were embellished with fretwork glazing and railings, ca 1753–70
6.
Vincent van Gogh
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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, cypresses, 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
7.
Nicaise de Keyser
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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, Paris 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 also 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
8.
Venus de Milo
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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
9.
Jan August Hendrik Leys
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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
Media related to Eugène Siberdt at Wikimedia Commons
