Hôtel de Ville, Paris
The Hôtel de Ville in Paris, France, is the building housing the city's local administration, standing on the place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville in the 4th arrondissement. The south wing was constructed by François I beginning in 1535 until 1551; the north wing was built by Henry IV and Louis XIII between 1605 and 1628. It was burned by the Paris Commune, along with all the city archives that it contained, during the Commune's final days in May 1871; the outside was rebuilt following the original design, but larger, between 1874 and 1882, while the inside was modified. It has been the headquarters of the municipality of Paris since 1357, it serves multiple functions, housing the local administration, the Mayor of Paris, serves as a venue for large receptions. In July 1357, Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris, bought the so-called maison aux piliers in the name of the municipality on the sloping shingle beach which served as a river port for unloading wheat and wood and merged into a square, the Place de Grève, a place where Parisians gathered for public executions.
Since 1357, the City of Paris's administration has been located on the same location where the Hôtel de Ville stands today. Before 1357, the city administration was located in the so-called parloir aux bourgeois near the Châtelet. In 1533, King Francis I decided to endow the city with a city hall which would be worthy of Paris the largest city of Europe and Christendom, he appointed two architects: Italian Dominique de Cortone, nicknamed Boccador because of his red beard, Frenchman Pierre Chambiges. The House of Pillars was torn down and Boccador, steeped in the spirit of the Renaissance, drew up the plans of a building, at the same time tall, full of light and refined. Building work was not finished until 1628 during the reign of Louis XIII. During the next two centuries, no changes were made to the edifice, the stage for several famous events during the French Revolution. In 1835, on the initiative of Rambuteau, préfet of the Seine département, two wings were added to the main building and were linked to the facade by a gallery, to provide more space for the expanded city government.
The architects were Jean-Baptiste Lesueur. During the Franco-Prussian War, the building played a key role in several political events. On 30 October 1870, revolutionaries broke into the building and captured the some of the members of the Government of National Defence, while making repeated demands for the establishment of a communard government; the existing government escaped via an underground tunnel built in 1807, which still connects the Hôtel de Ville with a nearby barracks. On 18 January 1871, crowds gathered outside the building to protest against speculated surrender to the Prussians, were dispersed by soldiers firing from the building, who inflicted several casualties; the Hôtel de Ville had been the headquarters of the French Revolution, it was the headquarters of the Paris Commune. When defeat became imminent and the French army approached the building, the Communards set fire to the Hôtel de Ville, along with other government buildings, destroying the building and all of the city archives.
Reconstruction of City Hall lasted from 1873 through 1892 and was directed by architects Théodore Ballu and Édouard Deperthes, who had won the public competition for the building's reconstruction. Ballu designed the Church of La Trinité in the 9th arrondissement and the belfry of the town hall of the 1st arrondissement, opposite the Louvre's east facade, he restored the Saint-Jacques Tower, a Gothic church tower in a square 150 metres to the west of the Hôtel de Ville. The architects rebuilt the interior of the Hôtel de Ville within the stone shell that had survived the fire. While the rebuilt Hôtel de Ville from the outside appeared to be a copy of the 16th-century French Renaissance building that stood before 1871, the new interior was based on an new design, with ceremonial rooms lavishly decorated in the 1880s style; the central ceremonial doors under the clock are flanked by allegorical figures of Art, by Laurent Marqueste, Science, by Jules Blanchard. Some 230 other sculptors were commissioned to produce 338 individual figures of famous Parisians on each facade, along with lions and other sculptural features.
The sculptors included prominent academicians like Ernest-Eugène Hiolle and Henri Chapu, but the most famous was Auguste Rodin. Rodin produced the figure of the 18th-century mathematician Jean le Rond d'Alembert, finished in 1882; the statue on the garden wall on the south side is of Étienne Marcel, the most famous holder of the post of prévôt des marchands which predated the office of mayor. Marcel was lynched in 1358 by an angry mob after trying to assert the city's powers too energetically; the decor featured murals by the leading painters of the day, including Raphaël Collin, Jean-Paul Laurens, Puvis de Chavannes, Henri Gervex, Aimé Morot and Alfred Roll. Most can still be seen as part of a guided tour of the building. Since the French Revolution, the building has been the scene of a number of historical events, notably the proclamation of the French Third Republic in 1870 and the speech by Charles de Gaulle on 25 August 1944 during the Liberation of Paris when he greeted the crowd from a front window
René Schützenberger
René-Paul Schützenberger was a French Post-Impressionist painter. Born in Mulhouse, into an Alsatian family of famous brewers, he was the son of Paul Schützenberger, a French chemist; the painter Louis-Frédéric Schützenberger was his cousin. René Schützenberger studied at the Académie Julian, a private art school founded by Rodolphe Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens. In 1891, he married Andree-Marie Bouland. Schützenberger started to exhibit at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1889, at the Salon des Indépendants from 1902 and at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts from 1907, he got an honourable mention at the Salon of 1897 and at the Universal Exhibition of 1900. In 1911, Schützenberger exhibited at the "Exposition des Peintres du Paris moderne” in the Gallery Georges Petit. In 1912 and in 1915, he participated in the Exposition of group of artists called "Cent Artistes” in the Gallery Henri Manuel, he died in Paris, aged 56. He practiced genre painting, portraits and landscapes, treating the subjects of the daily life and intimate subjects.
His style is close to the Post-Impressionism movement and was influenced by the Les Nabis group of Post-Impressionists, most of whom studied at Académie Julian. Retrospective exhibition Salon des Indépendants took place in 1926. Works by René Schützenberger were exhibited at Grand Palais along with works by Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Amedeo Modigliani, Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Félix Vallotton and other painters. References SourcesJules Martin, Nos peintres et nos sculpteurs, Paris Flammarion, 1897. Catalogue du Salon de la Société lyonnaise des Beaux-Arts, 1898. Catalogue général officiel de l'Exposition Internationale Universelle de 1900, Paris. Catalogue du Salon de la Société des Amis des Arts de Nantes, 1907. L'Art et les Artistes, 7ème année, n°75, juin 1911; the Julian Academy, Paris 1868-1939, Spring Exhibition 1989, Sheperd Gallery, New York. Benezit, Dictionnaire des artistes, 1999. Dominique Lobstein, Dictionnaire des Indépendants, tome III, L'Échelle de Jacob, 2003.
Gaïte Dugnat, Les catalogues des Salons de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, tome III, L'Échelle de Jacob, 2005. Gaïte Dugnat, Les catalogues des Salons de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, tome IV, L'Échelle de Jacob, 2005. Paul-René Schützenberger File, Documentation du Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Family genealogy Schützenberger Benezit Dictionary of Artists, 2006, site Oxford Index Société des artistes indépendants. 26, Catalogue de la 26e exposition 1910, no. 4648-4651.
Herter Brothers
The firm of Herter Brothers, New York, founded by Gustave and Christian Herter, begun as an upholstery warehouse, became one of the first firms of furniture makers and interior decorators in the United States after the Civil War. With their own design office and cabinet-making and upholstery workshops, Herter Brothers were prepared to accomplish every aspect of interior furnishing including decorative paneling and mantels and ceiling decoration, patterned floors and carpets and draperies; the Herters were born in Württemberg. Gustave was born Julius Gustav Alexander Hagenlocher, with his unmarried mother's surname, she married Christian Herter in 1835, he adopted Gustave. Christian Augustus Ludwig Herter, Gustave's half-brother, was born in 1839. Gustave and Christian's father was a skilled cabinetmaker and they followed him in the trade. Gustave Herter by 1858 was working under his own name. Christian was in New York by 1859 and joined his brother in the firm by 1864; the firm was at the forefront of the panoply of furnishing styles that preceded the Mission style: Renaissance Revival, Neo-Grec, the Aesthetic Movement, ebonized "Anglo-Japanese style" furnishings of the 1870s – 1880s for which the firm is best recognized today, the wide range of furnishings in revival styles required for Gilded Age houses.
The Red Room of the White House was furnished with Herter Brothers furniture during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant. Several pieces of Herter Brothers furniture remain in the White House including a center table and a slipper chair; this center table bears the remains of the only known Herter Brothers paper label. Among their most prominent clients were the Vanderbilts. Between 1879 and 1882, Herter Brothers decorated William Henry Vanderbilt's new Fifth Avenue mansion. At 634 Fifth Avenue, in 1880–1882, they decorated the mansion of Darius Ogden Mills, on the site of part of Rockefeller Center now occupied by the colossal bronze Atlas, their bills came to US$450,000. At the same time they were furnishing the nearby Jay Gould residence at 579 Fifth Avenue, at Forty-seventh Street; the White House's interiors were extensively renovated during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. Executing the designs of architect Charles Follen McKim, Herter Brothers created the plaster ceiling and ornately carved oak paneling for the expanded State Dining Room.
The firm's workshops provided the carved paneling for the renovated East Room. Few Herter Brothers interiors remain extant. "Elm Park" in Norwalk, Connecticut was built 1864-68, decorated by Herter Brothers. Open to the public as the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, the drawing room, music room and rotunda/art gallery are examples of the Herters' interior design schemes, including lavishly carved and inlaid woodwork and frescoed walls and ceilings; the restored drawing room retains a suite of Herter furniture purchased for it by the home's second owner, Charles D. Mathews. Furniture from an early Herter commission survives in Victoria Mansion in Maine. A notable surviving Herter interior is the John Thatcher home, now the Rosemount Museum, in Pueblo, Colorado. Examples of Herter furniture are in major public collections in the United States; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City presented an exhibition, "Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age," in 1995. Howe, Katherine S. Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age.
Harry N. Abrams: Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1994. ISBN 0-8109-3426-4. Lambourne, Lionel; the Aesthetic Movement. Phaidon Press: 1996. ISBN 0-7148-3000-3. Barry R. Harwood, "A Herter Brothers library rediscovered" from The Magazine Antiques, May, 2002 Metropolitan Museum: Library Table for William Henry Vanderbilt Michael S. Schneider, "Geometry of a Herter Brothers Cabinet" Geometric analysis of a cabinet, ca,1883 Herter Brothers Pictorial Histories Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on Herter Brothers
Thomas Cooper Gotch
Thomas Cooper Gotch or T. C. Gotch was an English painter and book illustrator loosely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Gotch studied art in London and Antwerp before he married and studied in Paris with his wife, Caroline, a fellow artist. Returning to Britain, they settled into the Newlyn art colony in Cornwall, he first made paintings of natural, pastoral settings before immersing himself in the romantic, Pre-Raphaelite romantic style for which he is best known. His daughter was a model for the colourful depictions of young girls, his works have been exhibited at Royal College of Art and the Paris Salon. Thomas Gotch was born 10 December 1854 in the Mission House in Northamptonshire, he was the fourth son born to Mary Ann Gale Gotch and Thomas Henry Gotch, a shoe maker. He had an elder brother, John Alfred Gotch, a successful architect and author. In 1881 he married fellow art student Caroline Burland Yates at Newlyn's St Peter’s Church, his daughter, Phyllis Marion Gotch was sometimes a model for her father.
After completing his studies, Gotch travelled to Australia in 1883. Gotch and his wife settled in Newlyn, Cornwall in 1887; the couple and their daughter were key participants in the Newlyn art colony. In addition to his time spent in France and Belgium while studying art, Gotch travelled to Austria, South Africa and Denmark. Thomas Cooper Gotch died on 1 May 1931 of a heart attack while in London for an exhibition, he was buried in Sancreed churchyard in Cornwall. In the graveyard of St Sancredus are buried fellow Newlyn School artists, Stanhope Forbes and Elizabeth Forbes. With his parents' support, in 1876 and 1877 he first studied at Heatherley's art school in London and at Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp in 1877 and 1878. In 1879 Gotch attended Slade School of Fine Art with Alphonse Legros in London. Gotch met his future wife Caroline Yates at Slade. After their marriage and Caroline studied in Paris at Académie Julian and Académie Laurens in the early 1880s, it was in Paris.
In Newlyn he founded the Newlyn Industrial Classes, where the local youth could learn the arts & crafts. He helped to set up the Newlyn Art Gallery, served on its committee all his life. Among his friends in Newlyn was fellow artist Stanhope Forbes and Albert Chevallier Tayler. In Newlyn, like other art colony artists, he used the plein-air approach for making paintings outdoors, he was inspired by James McNeill Whistler's techniques for creating compositions and paintings. His style changed following an 1891-1892 a visit to Florence, his first such painting was My Crown and Sceptre made in 1892, Commenting upon his new style, Tate said: His new combination of symbolic female figures, decorative Italian textiles and the static order of early Renaissance art brought him recognition. On the provisional committee for the 1895 opening of the Newlyn Art Gallery, Gotch exhibited The Reading Hour and A Golden Dream at the inaugural exhibition. Chris Leuchars for Project Kettering has said of Gotch's work: Although Thomas Gotch is not recognised in international art histories, his position and friendships in Newlyn, the mastery of his artwork, provide him some level of recognition in British painting history and his works make valuable contributions to collections around the world.
He has work in key collections in New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Thomas Gotch enjoyed considerable public acclaim, he was a regular exhibitor at London's Royal Academy and contributed to numerous other national and international exhibitions. His works are still exhibited and are the subject of academic studies. Over his artistic career Gotch was a model for other artists. For instance, he modelled for illustrations of King Arthur's Wood for Elizabeth Forbes, he helped establish, was a prominent force or member of the following organizations. The following had exhibitions of Gotch's work: Gotch landscapes and genre works using watercolour and pastels; the following is a partial list of his works. Most of his earnings came from painting portraits children and women. Gotch collaborated with John Drew Mackenzie on a set of copper plates that represents air, earth and water, melding the styles of both artists in a symbolic Biblical theme. Baldry, A. L. "The Work of T. C. Gotch", The Studio, Vol.13, March 1898, pages 73–82.
Lomax, Pamela. The Golden Dream: A Biography of Thomas Cooper Gotch. Sansom & Company, 2004. Lomax, Pamela. A Winter in Florence 1891-1892. Shears & Hogg, 2001 Lomax, Pamela. A Long Engagement. Shears & Hogg, 2002. Virag, Rebecca. Thomas Cooper Gotch: A Painter of Childhood and Empire. Unpublished M. A. thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, 1997. Virag, Rebecca. Images of Inheritance: The influence of eugenic ideas and socio-biological theory in late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century British art. Unpublished Ph. D. thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, 2003. Media related to Thomas Cooper Gotch at Wikimedia Commons
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives and airbrushes, can be used; the final work is called a painting. Painting is an important form in the visual arts, bringing in elements such as drawing, composition, narration, or abstraction. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, abstract, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by religious art. Examples of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery, to Biblical scenes Sistine Chapel ceiling, to scenes from the life of Buddha or other images of Eastern religious origin. In art, the term painting describes the result of the action; the support for paintings includes such surfaces as walls, canvas, glass, pottery, leaf and concrete, the painting may incorporate multiple other materials including sand, paper, gold leaf, as well as objects.
Color, made up of hue and value, dispersed over a surface is the essence of painting, just as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music. Color is subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West; some painters, theoreticians and scientists, including Goethe and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent; the word "red", for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a formalized register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music, such as F or C♯. For a painter, color is not divided into basic and derived colors. Painters deal with pigments, so "blue" for a painter can be any of the blues: phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, Cobalt blue, so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not speaking, means of painting.
Colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, because of this, the perception of a painting is subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to "light" in painting, "shades" to dynamics, "coloration" is to painting as the specific timbre of musical instruments is to music; these elements do not form a melody of themselves. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting to include, as one example, which began with Cubism and is not painting in the strict sense; some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Anselm Kiefer. There is a growing community of artists who use computers to "paint" color onto a digital "canvas" using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, many others; these images can be printed onto traditional canvas. Jean Metzinger's mosaic-like Divisionist technique had its parallel in literature. I make a kind of chromatic versification and for syllables I use strokes which, variable in quantity, cannot differ in dimension without modifying the rhythm of a pictorial phraseology destined to translate the diverse emotions aroused by nature.
Rhythm, for artists such as Piet Mondrian, is important in painting as it is in music. If one defines rhythm as "a pause incorporated into a sequence" there can be rhythm in paintings; these pauses allow creative force to intervene and add new creations—form, coloration. The distribution of form, or any kind of information is of crucial importance in the given work of art, it directly affects the aesthetic value of that work; this is because the aesthetic value is functionality dependent, i.e. the freedom of perception is perceived as beauty. Free flow of energy, in art as well as in other forms of "techne", directly contributes to the aesthetic value. Music was important to the birth of abstract art, since music is abstract by nature—it does not try to represent the exterior world, but expresses in an immediate way the inner feelings of the soul. Wassily Kandinsky used musical terms to identify his works. Kandinsky theorized that "music is the ultimate teacher," and subsequently embarked upon the first seven of his ten Compositions.
Hearing tones and chords as he painted, Kandinsky theorized that, yellow is the color of middle C on a brassy trumpet. In 1871 the young Kandinsky learned to play the cello. Kandinsky's stage design for a performance of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" illustrates his "synaesthetic" concept of a universal correspondence of forms and musical sounds. Music d
Académie Julian
The Académie Julian was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian, active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number and quality of artists who attended during the great period of effervescence in the arts in the early twentieth century. After 1968, it integrated with ESAG Penninghen. Rodolphe Julian established the Académie Julian in 1868 at the Passage des Panoramas, as a private studio school for art students; the Académie Julian not only prepared students to the exams at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, but offered independent alternative education and training in arts. "Founded at a time when art was about to undergo a long series of crucial mutations, the Academie Julian played host to painters and sculptors of every kind and persuasion and never tried to make them hew to any one particular line". In 1880, women who were not allowed to enroll for study to the École des Beaux-Arts, were accepted by the new Académie Julian.
Foreign applicants, deterred from entering the Ecole des Beaux Arts by a vicious French language examination were welcome at the Académie Julian. Men and women were trained separately, women participated in the same studies as men, including drawing and painting of nude models. "Human exchange went forward in an atmosphere, collegial and mutually supportive. It nurtured some of the best artists of the day". Académie Julian became popular as fertile ground with French as well as foreign students from diverse backgrounds from all over the world, from the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. In 1989, on the occasion of the exhibition at the Shepherd Gallery, in Manhattan, devoted to the Academie Julian in Paris as it existed between 1868 and 1939, John Russell wrote: By my count, more than 50 nationalities were represented at the school during its glory years. To be at the Academie Julian was to be exposed to a kind of white magic that seems to have worked in every case. What was learned there stayed forever with alumnus and alumna, it related as much to the conduct of life as to the uses of brush and chisel. – in The New York Times, John Russell: "An Art School That Also Taught Life", March 19, 1989.
The early success of the Académie was secured by the famous and respected artists whom Rodolphe Julian employed as instructors: Adolphe William Bouguereau, Henri Royer, Jean-Paul Laurens, Gabriel Ferrier, Tony Robert-Fleury, Jules Lefebvre and other leading artists of that time trained in Academic art. Académie Julian students were granted the right to compete for the Prix de Rome, a prize awarded to promising young artists, and participate in the major "Salons" or art exhibitions. In the late 19th century the term L'art pompier had entered the scene as a derisive term for the traditional academic art espoused by the Académie's instructors; as a result the Académie Julian embraced a more liberal regime pushing a less conservative, more sincere approach to art which corresponded to the Secessionist art movement in Germany and the Vienna Secession in Austria. It was followed and articulated by the Nabis, avant-garde movement, that participated in paving the way to modern art in 1888–1889. Over time, Académie Julian opened schools in other locations.
In addition to the original school at Passage des Panoramas, studios were at no. 28 Boulevard St-Jacques in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, no. 5 Rue de Berri in the 8th arrondissement, no. 31 Rue du Dragon in the 6th arrondissement, no. 51, rue Vivienne in the 2nd arrondissement for female student artists, overseen by painter Amélie Beaury-Saurel, Julian's spouse. And subsequent faculty were made up like Edgar Chahine for example. Académie Julian remained open during World War I, albeit with a lesser number of students. By contrast during World War II, after the 1941 exhibition Vingt jeunes peintres de tradition française considerations on "degenerate art" by the German military administration forced the school to close. In 1946 some of the studios were sold. For his services to the arts, Rodolphe Julian, described by the Anglo-Irish novelist and critic George Moore as a kind of Hercules, dark-haired, with broad shoulders, short legs, a soft voice and all the charm of the Midi was awarded the Legion of Honour.
The artist records still extant are those of the men's section, covering the 1870–1932 period, those of the women's section, covering the 1880–1907 period. In 1968, an important year in France's history with the May events in relation to education, the Académie Julian integrated with ESAG Penninghen. Martine Hérold, L’Académie Julian a cent ans, 1968 Catherine Fehrer, "New Light on the Académie Julian and its founder", in La Gazette des Beaux-Arts, mai-juin 1984. Catherine Fehrer, The Julian Academy, Paris, 1868-1939: spring exhibition, 1989, essays by Catherine Fehrer. Y.: Shepherd Gallery, vers 1989. Larcher, Revivons nos belles années à l'Académie Julian 1919-1925, chez l'auteur, Auxerre, 1982. "Women at the Académie Julian in Paris" in The Burlington Magazine, Londres, CXXXVI, novembre 1994. Gabriel P. Weisberg and Jane R. Becker, Overcoming All Obstacles: The Women of the Académie Julian, Dahesh Museum, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 1999. Reid, Dennis R
Cristóbal Rojas (artist)
Cristóbal Rojas was one of the most important and high-profile Venezuelan painters of the 19th century. Rojas's styles varied throughout his life, he displayed talents in painting that ranged for dramatic effect, to works done in the impressionist style. Cristóbal Rojas Poleo was born in the city of Cúa in the Valles del Tuy to parents who worked in the medical profession. Part of his childhood occurred during the middle of the federal war and Cúa was affected by the events of the war, he initiated studies under his grandfather, José Luis Rojas, who taught him how to draw and motivated him to improve. At 13 years old, his father died and he was forced to begin work in a tobacco factory in Cúa to help support his family. In 1878, an earthquake devastated the Valles del Tuy region, the Rojas faced poverty; as a result, he moved to Caracas where he continued his painting studies, despite again having to work in the tobacco industry to support his mother and family. In Caracas he attended classes by José Manuel Maucó at the Universidad Central de Venezuela.
Between 1880 and 1882, he developed a keen interest in oils and displayed a primitive technique that would prevail in his paintings such as Ruinas de Cúa después del Terremoto and Ruinas del templo de la Merced. During this time he became acquainted with the painter Antonio Herrera Toro coming under contract as Toro's assistant to paint Caracas Cathedral. In 1883, Rojas exhibited his La muerte de Girardot en Bárbula in the Salón del Centenario to commemorate the birth of Simon Bolivar and won a silver medal in second place along with the painter Arturo Michelena; this award would grant him a scholarship by government amounting to 50 pesos each month, to study in Europe. In early 1884 he had moved to study in Paris. In the period between 1883 and 1890 Rojas would experiment with different pictorial tendencies and techniques ranging from post-romanticism to impressionism. Melancholic, with an uncertain temperament, Rojas was inspired by examples of artwork he discovered on his continuous visits to the Louvre.
Between 1886 and 1889 he exhibited many paintings including La miseria. With El Bautizo, a notable change in his work is observed. With a more acute perception of chromatic atmosphere, the painting displayed clear Dutch influences, a style, reflected in a painting he produced in 1889 Dante y Beatriz a orillas del Leteo. Towards the end of 1889, Rojas moved away from the painting of dramatic effects which he had displayed at Paris Hall, began to display talent for scenes and portraits, using colours and paying attention to details with impressionism. However, the subsidies for his scholarship would soon run out, he became plagued with tuberculosis, he was forced to return to Venezuela in 1890, bringing with himself his last paintings, a portrait of President Juan Pablo Rojas Paúl and The Purgatorio, a depiction of purgatory. Soon after his return to Caracas, he died on November 8 of 1890, around 5 weeks before his 33rd birthday. Journalist Ermelindo Rivodó who visited Rojas in Paris in 1885, described the painter as "Somewhat pale, with small moustache and black hair, that emphasize his smooth set of melancholic eyes".
Rojas was known for his reserved but passionate nature socialising with others around him and preferring to study art in his own medium. Peers and artistic commentators have referred to him as "melancholic". Jose Antonio Hedderich, in an interesting article published in the National Magazine of Culture,after studying the life of Rojas described him, he had few friends". However, Hedderich continues to identify that Rojas was of a emotional nature. Once remarking that, "He had fatalistic temperament and was emphatically sad". According to Hedderich, Rojas was embittered by excessive guilty feelings about life and was acutely aware of his conscience; these feelings were reflected in some of his works such as his purgatory painting, painted shortly before his death in the knowledge he was going to die from tuberculosis. Arthur Rimbaud
