Women Painters

Hello ! Well, as you can imagine with the volcano cloud, our flight to Spain was cancelled but it wasn't bad at all, if you are going to be left without travelling, its good when you are left stranded at home rather than abroad so we had a nice night in Liverpool in a room where... oh no ! horror of horrors, Tony Blair had stayed at and a few other people from the world of music who I did not recognize apart from the Beatles. Anyway...we headed to The Walker Gallery in Liverpool the next day, where they are currently having an exhibition from their own collection of ' Women Painters ' which I found very interesting there was a painting of Andromache fainting at the unexpected sight of Aeneas on his arrival by ANGELICA HAUFFMAN who was the daughter of a Swiss painter, she was the first female artist to chanllenge the male monopoly over History painting. History painting took subjects from the bible, history, literature & classical mythology. These subjects were usually deemed too challenging for women. Despite such discrimination, Angelica Hauffmann became a highly respected professional painter with Royal patrons. In 1768, she was one of two female founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts. No other woman was elected as a full or associate member until 1922, when ANNIE SWYNNERTON came to the scene, there is a beautiful painting of hers on show called: ' The Sense Of Sight. Annie was born in Manchester. ( 1844-1933 ) She founded the Manchester Society of Women Painters with the artist SUSAN ISABEL DACRE. In 1895, she was the second, and last woman to sit on the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition Hanging Committee in 1922 and at the age of 78, she was the first woman to be elected as an associate member of the Royal Academy since its foundation in 1768. Her painting ' The Sense of Sight ' ( an angel overwhelmed at the wonder of what they can see, perhaps relates to the importance of sight to an artist and the joy of the visual world.

ELIZABETH- LOUISE VIGEE - LE BRUN (1755-1842)
This artist was taught by her father and financially abused by her art-dealer husband whom she later divorced. She was official painter to Queen Marie-Antoniette but in 1789, the French revolution forced her into exile for 16 years. During this time, she travelled Europe receiving commissions from aristocratic and Royal patrons as a celebrity artist known for her sensitive portraits of women, she was the obvious choice to paint the image- conscious Emma Hamilton, Emma is shown in Naples performing one of the dances that made her famous. It was painted a year, after Emma's marriage in Naples to Sir William Hamilton and 1 year before she met her lover Lord Nelson.

I also found The Dictionary of British Women Artists by Sara Gray, where they had written the name of my ancestor Maria Spilsbury wrong.. they had her as Mary Spilsbury.

Then there was ROSA BONHEUR her father was a social-reformist painter who believed in art education for women. She specialized in painting animals and won fame in her native France with her 5 metre wide painting ' The Horse Fair' it proved so popular, that it toured the U.S. several times, selling thousands of printed reproductions and in Fef 1856 it was exhibited in Liverpool. She gained her sympathetic knowledge of animals by keeping a small zoo and visiting slaughter houses & dissecting animal remains. Mmm. It looks like she took to heart Leonardo's advice ! Then there was ROSALBA CARRIERA she came from an artistic Venecian family. Her father was an amateur artist and her mother was an embroiderer and lace-maker, she started by painting miniature portrait paintings on snuff boxes but moved to life-size portraits in pastel, for which she became internationally reknowned. She was particularly famous among British tourists such as the author and collector Horace Walpole ( 1717-1797) who visited Venice in 1741. So great was the demand for her work among British visitors that she once complained of ' being attacked by the English. ELIZABETTA SIRANI - her artistic skill and beauty brought her European fame and female students. She fed her celebrity with self-portraits, one shown there which was owned by the curator of the Ufizzi collection in Florence. She also entertained visitors to her studio in Bologna with conversation and song. Her father was a painter and all three of her daughters became successful painters, she specialized in religious art. Her early death aroused her father's suspicions that she had been poisoned by her maid. In fact, she probably died from a stomach ulcer brought on by overwork. Or it could have been lead poisoning ! There are paints like White Flake that contains lead. LAVINIA FONTANA she was one of the most successful female artists in the 16th century ( 1552 - 1614 ) and she was the first woman to paint large alterpieces. She was chiefly noted for her portraits. She was trained by her father, a painter from the city of Bologna, known for its support for woman artists. The painting that its on show is based on a drawing by Michelangelo called ' Silentium ' There were a few more. The exhibition is worth seeing.

The Lost Mona Lisa by R.A. Scotti

Sometimes you buy a book that turns into a real gem. Well, this happy feeling happened to me when I bought the ' Lost Mona Lisa by R.A. Scotti. This is a really wonderful book. The author takes you through the extraordinary true story of the greatest art theft in history. The account of this tale reads better than a fictional one. There were weird and strange happenings when the Mona Lisa disappeared from the Louvre, for instance, when the museum finally opened its doors without their star attraction, hundreds of grieving Parisians queued up to view the blank space where the Mona Lisa had been smiling the week before. They didn't queue up to see the other 3 thousand paintings but just to stare at a blank dusty space ! As incomprehensible as this may sound, this is exactly what happened. The queues stretched several blocks where there had never been a wait to enter the Louvre before. Some say, this was the beginning of Modern Art. I also loved the way the author wrote nuggets of historical information in the most entertaining and amusing way. It sets the atmosphere in Paris in such a manner that you can imagine yourself being transported exactly in that era of the afternoon of Sunday, 20 of August 1911 when the painting vanished from the walls of the Louvre. It describes, with a wealth of interesting information what was happening in the inner sactum of the Louvre and who were the people who run it and where they were at the time. The failings that took place. It really is so good, I could not recommend it enough. It is thoroughly well researched from many sources, including newspaper stories of the time. Well, that is my humble opinion.

Black poodle

I have just finished painting this black poodle. Very tricky to paint. If you paint it too black, then you do not see any details and if you paint too many highlights then it would have looked grey instead of black. So it is a fine balance between the two. It is a commission work, so I hope the lady is going to be pleased with her dog's portrait.

Sunday

I'm not a writer nor pretend to be one, sometimes it is simply nice to record something you have lived like let's say...yesterday. Peter and I really didn't wish to travel too many miles we just wanted to go for a Sunday lunch somewhere near, that wouldn't involve a long journey. Where could we go? was the question. I had seen, as we often travel through a picturesque road, a really sweet looking white pub with a chimney stack, puffing blue smoke, so I ventured to suggest maybe going there for lunch, not knowing whether this was a risk worth taking or not, but we stopped there anyway. Once inside, the pub was really charming with wooden beams on the ceilings, velvet red covers on the dark mahoganny carved seats; very inviting we thought and we were right. The name of the pub was the Aleppo Merchant. Intrigued, I enquired about the name of the pub to the bar-man since Aleppo, is not by any stretch of the imagination in the U.K. so why this seemingly exotic name ? He told us that a very wealthy Welshman beyond the dreams of avarice from Llangollen had stopped there over night and he had made his wealth in Aleppo... the second oldest city in the world, located in Syria. He told us this merchant had made his fortune in the silk route selling sheep wool, and that Aleppo was not far away from the Mediterranean sea. It was really, very relaxing to hear this interesting tale as we had our drinks over lunch.

Heir Hunters Fourth Series

We have had the news that the BBC beat all the T.V. ratings for this time of day and so they have commissioned the Fifth series of Heir Hunters. Filming will start in the late Spring. The fourth series ends Friday 12th February with Hector's story. Last Saturday when I went to a new hair-salon, the hair dresser asked me if that was Mr. Birchwood from ' The Heir Hunter ' show. I said: "Yes"
Then the stylist said that Hector was his favourite from that show. I replied: " I'm Hector's mother at which point he said: " You are kidding me, right ? " I said: " Nope, I'm really Hector's mother" I have seen the last story which will be shown Friday week and he comes out better than the other episodes. At this rate... I can probably have a raise on my salary to sort out all the mountains of fan mail that will come here. Heh,heh.

The American Leonardo da Vinci

The story of this painting starts in 1919 with the marriage of a car salesman from the midwest of the U.S. named Harry Hahn to a young Frenchwoman, Andree Lardoux. Miss Lardoux's godmother Louise Montaut, gave the painting to the couple as a wedding present. At the time, the painting was thought to be by Leonardo. Even so, the couple decided to sell it to the Kansas City Art Institute for at least $250,000. When a reporter from the New York World got wind of the transaction, he telephoned the notorious art dealer Joseph Duveen. It was one in the morning, and a sleepy Mr. Duveen answered the phone. When asked what he thought of the portrait, he instantly pronounced it a fake without ever having seen it, claiming that the picture "was a copy, where hundreds of these have been made and other Leonardo subjects and offered in the market as genuine." His hasty response set off a much-publicized legal battle between the Hahns and the Duveen. There is a book about it called " The American Leonardo" that was published last year and chronicles the history of the painting. The case went to trial in New York Supreme Court on February 6th 1929 and according to " The American Leonardo" it was a media zoo, with reporters and members of the public lining up each morning to get into the courtroom. On Mr. Duveen's side, were experts who argued that the painting was a fake, while the dealer himself said that his opinion was formed by "his study of all the great pictures of the world". The Hahns tried to prove their point with their own battery of experts and with what scientific tools were available at the time. But the case ended in a hung jury, and Mr. Duveen finally settled out of court, paying the Hahns $60,000 in damages. Last year, the can of worms was opened once again, when the Hahn's daughter, Jacqueline, curious about the painting that has been so much part of her family history, took it to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles so conservators and experts could examine it. The curator at the Getty Museum Scott J. Schaefer said that the painting he had read so much about and thought to be Lucrezia Crivelli, a mistress of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan- was not what he expected when it was unwrapped. He thought it was much better than what they thought it would be and he said it wasn't just some copy of a painting but a skillful interpretation. Pigment analysis also revealed the use of lead-tin yellow, a colour employed in the 17th century that re-appeared again only in the 19th century. These findings suggest that the painting called : " La Belle Ferroniere " was probably painted before 1750. An expert Mr. Watchter informed the curator of the Getty Museum that after that date, it would have been hard to believe that lead-tin yellow would have been used: " because the formula for it was lost " When learning about the pigments, Mr. Scott J. Schaefer, curator of the Getty Museum said: "Suddenly I had to re-think things. It has been painted earlier than I imagined" still, he said, the mystery of the portrait only adds to its romance. " It's still a conundrum"

Haiti Earthquake

France has accused the U.S. of occupying Haiti on Monday as thousands of American troops flooded into the country to take charge of aid efforts. Medicine Sans Frontiers was warned that is running short of vital medical supplies in the ground after five of its cargo planes were barred from landing in Haiti by the U.S. authorities. The U.S. military who are controlling the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital have agreed to prioritise the landing of humanitarian aid flights, over military reinforcements as the needs for supplies grows ever more desperate. France has critized U.S. relief efforts in Haiti claiming the aid programmes should be about helping the country, not occupying it.