ColourandExpressions

London museum says it will show a lost Leonardo !!!

2011-07-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

An oil painting recently authenticated as the work of Leonardo da Vinci will be on display at the National Gallery in the fall as part of a larger exhibition on the Renaissance artist, the London museum said Monday.

‘Salvator Mundi,’ which dates to around 1500, depicts a half-length figure of Christ with one hand raised in blessing and the other holding an orb.

The National Gallery said in a statement Monday that the work was shown to its director, curator and other art scholars after undergoing conservation that was completed in 2010.

"We felt that it would be of great interest to include it in the exhibition as a new discovery," the museum said, adding that its curator Luke Syson "is cataloging the picture as by Leonardo da Vinci and this is how the picture will be presented in the exhibition."

The painting will be included in an exhibition titled: "Leonardo da Vinci: Painter of the Court of Milan," from Nov. 9 to Feb. 5, 2012. "This will obviously be the moment to test this important new attribution by direct comparison with works universally accepted as Leonardo`s," the museum said.

"Once you walked into the room it had that uncanny presence that Leonardo`s have," said Martin Kemp, professor emeritus of art history at Oxford. A researcher of paintings, he was among the experts consulted on the painting.

Detailed examination of the work as well as scientific testing convinced him that he was looking at the real thing. For example, some of the brushwork in the best preserved sections made it clear that the master had been holding the brush.

"None of the students painted like that, none of the followers," Kemp said.

Kemp said he was glad the painting was going on display at the National Gallery. "It`s a new Leonardo painting, it`s sensational," he said. "I`m glad London is seeing it publicly first."

The work is currently owned by R.W. Chandler, a consortium represented by Robert Simon, an art historian and private art dealer in Tuxedo Park, N.Y., according to Sara Latham, a spokeswoman for Simon.

"Salvator Mundi," which means Savior of the World, was believed to have been lost. It was first recorded in the art collection of King Charles I of England in 1649. In 1763, it was auctioned by the son of the Duke of Buckingham. It next appeared in 1900, damaged from excessive paint overlay and its authorship unclear, when it was purchased by a British collector, Sir Frederick Cook, according to a released from Simon. Cook`s descendants sold it at auction in 1958 for 45 pounds. In 2005, it was acquired by an American estate.

Simon said that among the factors that convinced art experts that the painting was by the great master were its execution and style, which were consistent with da Vinci`s other known works, and its superiority to more than 20 painted known copies by his students and followers. He said examination of the pigments and technique also were consistent with those used by da Vinci.

Café Terrace at Night by Vincent Van Gogh

2010-08-25T04:42:00.000-07:00

About the Cafe Terrace at Night Painting
Vincent van Gogh painted several night scenes and became fascinated with depicting the stars (most famously with his Starry Night paintings) and the light effects of the night. Van Gogh has achieved an effect of luminosity with the use of contrasting colors and tones. The darks compliment the lights, the blues intensify the oranges, and the purples bring out the yellows.

Van Gogh wrote about the Cafe Terrace at Night painting in a letter to his sister, saying "Here you have a night painting without black, with nothing but beautiful blue and violet and green and in this surrounding the illuminated area colors itself sulfur pale yellow and citron green. It amuses me enormously to paint the night right on the spot. Normally, one draws and paints the painting during the daytime after the sketch. But I like to paint the thing immediately.
It is true that in the darkness I can take a blue for a green, a blue lilac for a pink lilac, since it is hard to distinguish the quality of the tone. But it is the only way to get away from our conventional night with poor pale whitish light, while even a simple candle already provides us with the richest of yellows and oranges."

The cafe still exists today and is a popular destination for those following the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh.

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali

2010-08-25T04:34:00.000-07:00

Highly recognizable, often spoofed, The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí is a painting that tends to be a universal symbol of Surrealist or Modern Art. In the work, clocks appear to melt over branches and rigid surfaces, and ants devour a pocket watch while a vague face hovers in the background. The background itself shows the rocky landscape of Port Lligat in Dalí’s native Catalonia, Spain. The painting is like a well-crafted hallucination, with the fascinating yet confusing details of a dream.

Since The Persistence of Memory was finished in 1931, many interpretations of its symbolism and components have been made. The face beyond is said to be Dalí himself, the ants may represent destruction or decay, the rocks can be viewed as eternity or reality, and the melting clocks perhaps show that regimented time is an artificial concept that cannot withstand the true power of the universe beyond. The actual painting is only about 10 x 13 inches, intensely colored, one of Dalí’s self-described “hand-painted dream photographs.”

Luncheon of the Boating Party by Pierre Auguste Renoir

2010-08-25T04:15:00.000-07:00

Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881, French: Le déjeuner des canotiers) is a painting by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It is currently housed in The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.
The painting depicts a group of Renoir's friends relaxing on a balcony at the Maison Fournaise along the Seine river in Chatou, France. The painter and art patron, Gustave Caillebotte, is seated in the lower right. Renoir's future wife, Aline Charigot, is in the foreground playing with a small dog.
The diagonal of the railing serves to demarcate the two halves of the composition, one densely packed with figures, the other all but empty, save for the two figures of the proprietor's daughter Louise-Alphonsine Fournaise and her brother, Alphonse Fournaise, Jr, which are made prominent by this contrast. In this painting Renoir has captured a great deal of light. As you can see the main focus of light is coming from the large opening in the balcony, beside the large singleted man in the hat. The singlets of both men in the foreground and the table-cloth all work together to reflect this light and send it through the whole composition.
The painting was purchased from the artist by the dealer-patron Paul Durand-Ruel; it was bought from his son by Duncan Phillips.^[1] It was featured prominently in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain released in English as Amélie (2001). The most prominent reference is a comparison between the film's protagonist, Amélie, and the woman in the centre sipping a glass (Actress Ellen Andrée), seemingly gazing out of the canvas, uninterested, while everyone else is enjoying the day together.
A homage to this painting appears in the final panel of On the False Earths, the seventh volume of Jean-Claude Mézières and Pierre Christin's long-running comic book series Valérian and Laureline. [1]
Actor Edward G. Robinson is quoted as saying: “For over thirty years I made periodic visits to Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party in a Washington museum, and stood before that magnificent masterpiece hour after hour, day after day, plotting ways to steal it."^[2]

Corner of the Garden at Montgeron by Claude Monet

2010-08-25T03:59:00.000-07:00

Claude Monet painted Corner of the Garden at Montgeron in 1876. Department store magnate Ernest Hoschede commissioned Monet to paint four decorative panels for the interior of his grand new home, Chateau de Rottembourg at Montgeron.

Monet spent the summer there, finding motifs on the beautifully landscaped grounds and painting outdoors with bright spots of color in a wide range of tone. Despite his newly made fortune in department store speculation, Hoschede quickly fell into financial difficulty and was unable to pay for the paintings.
Continue to the next page to learn about Monet's Turkeys, a whimsical wildlife painting.

Famous Artist : Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

2010-08-13T04:29:00.000-07:00

Rembrandt at Artprice. To look at auction records, find Rembramdt's works in upcoming auctions, check price levels and indexes for his works, read his biography and view his signature, access the Artprice database.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15th July, 1606, in Leiden, the eighth of nine children of Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and his wife, Neeltje van Suijttbroeck. He was the first and the only of their sons whom they sent to the school for Latin. After seven years’ schooling (1613-1620), Rembrandt entered the Philosophical Faculty of Leiden University to study Classics. A short period at the university finished with starting a period of apprenticeship (1622-24) under the Italy-trained painter Jacob Isaacszoon van Swanenburgh. However, the succeeding half-year studies under Pieter Lastman, the Amsterdam artist of historical paintings, influenced Rembrandt’s work much deeper.
            In 1625 the 19-year-old Rembrandt returned to Leiden and opened his own studio, which he shared with his friend of the same age, Jan Lievens. Rembrandt executed historical paintings, initially following Lastman’s models: Tobit and Anna (1626), The Ass of Balaam Talking before the Angel. (1626). His physiognomic studies, resulted in numerous self-portraits: Self-Portrait. (c. 1629), Self-Portrait with Wide-Open Eyes. (1630). During his lifetime Rembrandt executed more than 100 self-portraits. He also produced many engravings and etchings.
            The turning point in Rembrandt’s further career was the visit to Leiden of Constantijn Huygens, the widely educated secretary of the governor Prince Frederick Hendrick, who developed great interest in Rembrandt and his art. Huygens’ patronage led to commissions and initial success: two works by Rembrandt were purchased by the English Crown and many copies of his painting Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver and the Raising of Lazarus were soon published.
After his father’s death on 27th April 1630, Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, where he settled in the house of the art-dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh. Prince Frederick Hendrick bought a number of his paintings and commissioned the Passion cycle, which he would finish in 1639. In 1632, Rembrandt also received the commission to paint a portrait of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, the famous Amsterdam surgeon. Wining acclaim with this work, Rembrandt became a fashionable portraitist in Amsterdam and started to receive many commissions for portraits of well-to-do patricians. One of his favorite themes, the meditating Philosopher, appeared in his work as early as about 1633. The Prophet Jeremiah Mourning over the Destruction of Jerusalem. (1630): Rembrandt has used the blunt end of his brush to scratch details of the foliage, Jeremiah’s beard and the fastenings of his tunic in the wet paint, a characteristic technique of his early years.
            In 1634, Rembrandt became a member of the Guild of St. Luke, in order that he may train pupils and apprentices as a self-employed master. Rembrandt was popular as a teacher and had a very large and profitable workshop with many student followers, including such outstanding painters as Gerard Dou, Aert de Gelder, Carel Fabritius, Philips Konink, Ferdinand Bol, Govert Flinck and Nicolaes Maes.
            The same year he married Saskia van Uylenburgh, niece of his art-dealer and daughter of a wealthy patrician. Despite their deep devotion and love to each other, their happiness was overshadowed with the deaths of their new-born children and quarrels with Saskia’s relatives, who accused her of squandering money. Of their 4 children only their son Titus, born in September 1641, survived to his adulthood. Titus’ features appear in a number of painting by Rembrandt: The Artist's Son Titus at His Desk. (1655), Titus. (c.1658).
            As if in plea to let her son live, Saskia died the next year in June. Her death caused a deep crisis in Rembrandt’s life.
During the years of their mutual life Rembrandt created such masterpieces as The Abduction of Ganymede. (1635), The Angel Stopping Abraham from Sacrificing Isaac to God. (1635), The Feast of Belshazzar. (c. 1635), The Blinding of Samson. (1636), Danae. (1636), The Prodigal Son in the Tavern (Rembrandt and Saskia). (c. 1635), The Night Watch (1642) and others. The Night Watch, maybe is the most famous Rembrandt’s work, and his the largest one (12x15ft; 3.5x4.5m), was commissioned by a company of the Civil Guard of Amsterdam for its assembly hall. The painting is a “recapitulation of the ideals of Rembrandt’s first ten Amsterdam years, and is the last painting in which he strives for brilliant external effects. From now on he set himself the aim of recreating in visual terms the intangible essence of man, his inner life”. In his last two decades Rembrandt simplified his compositions, preferring more classical and stable structure.
            To help the widowed father, two women, Geertge Dircx and, a little later, Hendrickje Stoffels, were admitted in the household. Eventually Geertge caused the artist troubles: at first she repeatedly quarreled with him until at last she brought him to the court (in 1649) on the grounds of an unfulfilled promise of marriage. The second woman, Hendrickje, testified against the plaintiff, and Geertge was sentenced to several years in the prison at Gouda. Hendrickje became Rembrandt’s common-law wife, she sat for many of Rembrandt’s paintings, such as Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels. (c. 1650) and in 1654 gave birth to their daughter Cornelia.
            Despite numerous commissions, the fees from pupils and the proceeds from etchings, Rembrandt’s debts continued to grow. In 1656, Rembrandt was declared bankrupt. His house and collections were auctioned; however, the sum thereby raised was insufficient to cover the debts. The artist moved into the Roozengracht, where he led a secluded life along with Mennonite and Jewish friends. Titus’ guardian, Louys Crayers, after a long court case, succeeded in having the boy’s part of the inheritance returned to him from his bankrupt father’s estate.

After Rembrandt’s bankruptcy, Hendrickje and Titus (in 1660) set up an art-dealing business in order to provide Rembrandt with protection against his creditors. Despite leading a secluded existence, he maintained many contacts. He continued to keep pupils, and execute commissions, such as the portrait of the board members of the Amsterdam Cloth makers’ Guild The Syndics of the Clothmakers' Guild (The Staalmeesters). (1662); painting of Alexander the Great and a portrait of Homer. (1663). He trained Titus as a painter but hardly any trace of his artistic activities survived. After Hendrichje’s death in 1663 Titus continued the art-dealing business. The paintings of Rembrandt’s last years bear the sad imprint of his unhappy old age and disrepute The Return of the Prodigal Son. (c 1668/69). The dramatic expressions in his last magnificent series of self-portraits reveal an overwhelming ultimate misery and inner torment Self-Portrait. (1669).

In 1668, Titus married Magdalena van Loo, but unexpectedly died half a year later. One year, which remained for him to live, Rembrandt spent at the house of his daughter-in-law. He became godfather to his granddaughter on 22nd March, 1669. The artist died on 4th October, 1669 without having completed the painting Simeon with the Christ Child in the Temple.

New website: Typography Daily

2010-02-26T12:56:00.000-08:00

For all the typography lovers out there, I just started a new blog dedicated to type. If you enjoy the content on Designer Daily, I suggest that you subscribe to this new blog because you will probably like it too. Visit Typography Daily.

Florent Sacré

2010-02-25T10:13:00.000-08:00

Great video game concept art and digital sketches from Florent Sacré.

Pablo Picasso

2010-02-24T00:26:00.000-08:00

Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, in Málaga, Spain. The son of an academic painter, José Ruiz Blanco, he began to draw at an early age. In 1895, the family moved to Barcelona, and Picasso studied there at La Lonja, the academy of fine arts. His visit to Horta de Ebro from 1898 to 1899 and his association with the group at the café Els Quatre Gats about 1899 were crucial to his early artistic development. In 1900, Picasso's first exhibition took place in Barcelona, and that fall he went to Paris for the first of several stays during the early years of the century. Picasso settled in Paris in April 1904, and soon his circle of friends included Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Gertrude and Leo Stein, as well as two dealers, Ambroise Vollard and Berthe Weill. His style developed from the Blue Period (1901- 04) to the Rose Period (1905) to the pivotal work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and the subsequent evolution of Cubism [more] from an Analytic phase (ca. 1908–11), through its Synthetic phase (beginning in 1912–13). Picasso’s collaboration on ballet and theatrical productions began in 1916. Soon thereafter, his work was characterized by neoclassicism and a renewed interest in drawing and figural representation. In the 1920s, the artist and his wife, Olga (whom he had married in 1918), continued to live in Paris, to travel frequently, and to spend their summers at the beach. From 1925 into the 1930s, Picasso was involved to a certain degree with the Surrealists, and from the fall of 1931 he was especially interested in making sculpture. In 1932, with large exhibitions at the Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, and the Kunsthaus Zürich, and the publication of the first volume of Christian Zervos's catalogue raisonné, Picasso's fame increased markedly.

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Tim Sale- A cartoonist

2010-02-21T00:37:00.000-08:00

Tim Sale was born in Ithaca, New York, on May 1st, 1956, but grew up in Seattle, Washington.

After studying art at the University of Washington for two years, he moved to New York City and attended the John Buscema Workshop and The School of Visual Arts just long enough to realize he didn't want to be in school anymore, whereupon he returned to Seattle and worked a variety of odd jobs from Taco Time to grocery store clerk.

While keeping his hand lazily in the art world by partnering with his sister, Maggie, in GREY ARCHER PRESS, he didn't return to comics until inking Phil Foglio on Warp Graphics MYTH ADVENTURES in 1983. Tim was hired to pencil, ink and letter THIEVES' WORLD for Donning/Starblaze in 1985, then, after hooking up with agent Mike Friedrich and STAR-REACH, began his mainstream comics career by meeting Matt Wagner, Diana Schutz, and Barbara Randall at the San Diego Comic-Con.

Ms. Randall introduced Tim to Jeph Loeb, and the rest has been downhill ever since.

Tim currently lives with his two dogs, Hotspur and Shelby, in southern California.
view his work

S D Phadnis

2010-02-20T04:52:00.000-08:00

Cartoonist Shivram Dattatreya Phadnis was born on July 29, 1925 at Bhoj, Dist. Belgaum, India. He took his formal art education at Sir J. J. School of Arts, Mumbai.

Extremely interested in cartooning, he moved to Pune with the strong active support of noted editor, late Mr. Anant Antarkar of Hans Publications, and started his career as a cartoonist and a humour illustrator. Since then, innumerable books and periodicals have been enlivened by the cartoons of S D Phadnis. He has carved a niche for himself in the field of humourous illustrations. Many of his works have been featured at the International Salon of Cartoons, Montreal, Canada.

His simple, captionless cartoons bring out the humour in everyday life, crossing the boundaries of language, region or class.
Married to Shakuntala, he has two daughters, Leena and Roopa. He has his own studio at Pune. Mrs. Shakuntala Phadnis, who is a writer, manages the Laughing Gallery exhibition and the Chitrahas
show.
His Outstanding work

Mario Miranda - Cartoonist

2009-03-19T03:56:00.000-07:00

The Mirandas of Loutolim have lived in the same small area on the north bank of the Zuari River for more than five hundred years. They were the Sardesais or revenue collectors of a small village called Raciem when Goa was ruled by the Bijapur Sultans. They were Hindus and Brahmins by caste. When, in the mid 16th century, the Salcette district was conquered by the Portuguese, the family converted to Roman Catholic Christianity and took on their new name, Miranda.

The house is in Loutolim, in the district of Salcette. Loutolim is small, sleepy and redolent of the flavour of a much older Goa. The center and heart of Loutolim is the church, and within a dog's bark of it, is this house.

It is approached by a lane, pink, because it has been hewn out of the crumbly laterite stone which forms the soil of India's western seaboard. The lane ends up before a wrought-iron gate set in a low wall. And beyond the wall, looms the house foursquare and white, as though sitting for its portrait to be painted or more likely, for tourists' cameras to flash.

Facing the gateway and set to one side of its frontage is a portico embellished with baronial flourishes complete with a heraldic crest engraved on a tablet which is set into its masonry. A couple of steps through the portico lead to a solid wooden door of extravagant dimensions. As you are trying to locate the doorbell you become aware of a tremendous clamour within the house: of several dogs barking furiously and human voices, both male and female, shouting orders.

The door is open and there stands the owner of the house, Mario Miranda.

He is above average height, well set, with skin the colour of weathered teakwood. He has plentiful hair, tousled, dark-brown and flecked with gray. His eyebrows are straight and thick. He has a prominent nose, a firm chin and soft-brown eyes, widely set. He is dressed in an open necked shirt and cotton trousers. His stance, head thrust slightly forward and shoulders hunched, reminds you of a boxer's crouch. His face breaks into a smile as though he is really pleased to see you, even if, as is quite likely, he has been dragged away from his work-table: for he is a busy man and like most artists who work at home, has no fixed working hours.

Click Here for his work

SuZ the Watercolor Artist

2009-02-27T02:14:00.000-08:00

SuZ was born in New Jersey, and moved to the "Wild West" of Idaho at the tender age of two. She grew up on the banks of the Snake River in Homedale, Idaho, not far from the Owyhee Mountains. From the juniper and sagebrush covered Owyhees, to the beautiful Sawtooth Range, the whole family camped, hiked, fished and developed an appreciation for the beauty of nature. It was inspiration.

Some of her work..

Click here for more of her work and details

Vincent van Gogh

2009-02-12T22:40:00.000-08:00

Click here for his biography and his latest works

The Great Artist (Salvador Dalí)

2009-02-12T02:55:00.000-08:00

Salvador Dali Biography

b. May 11, 1904, Figueras, Spain
d. Jan. 23, 1989, Figueras

Beginnings
As an art student in Madrid and Barcelona, Dalí assimilated a vast number of artistic styles and displayed unusual technical facility as a painter. In the late 1920s, two events brought about the development of his mature artistic style:

• His discovery of Sigmund Freud's writings on the erotic
significance of subconscious imagery; and
• His affiliation with the Paris Surrealists, a group of artists
and writers who sought to establish the "greater
reality" of man's subconscious over his reason.

Surrealism
To bring up images from his subconscious mind, Dalí began to induce hallucinatory states in himself by a process he described as “paranoiac critical.” Once Dalí hit on this method, his painting style matured with extraordinary rapidity, and from 1929 to 1937 he produced the paintings that made him the world's best-known Surrealist artist.

He depicted a dream world in which commonplace objects are juxtaposed, deformed, or otherwise metamorphosed in a bizarre and irrational fashion. Dalí portrayed these objects in meticulous, almost painfully realistic detail and usually placed them within bleak, sunlit landscapes that were reminiscent of his Catalonian homeland.

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Father of Calligraphy Achyut Palav

2009-02-11T23:05:00.000-08:00

Each letter in every script known to man holds an eternal power, an individual beauty in its vertical, horizontal,
angular lines, in their continuity. I have made efforts to bring forth calligraphy not only as art form but a expressive
medium where letters in all their nakedness become alive, vibrating, pulsating with its inherent, shape, giving
a canvas space to your thoughts, a meaning to the sounds & actions.

Be it Devnagri or the English scripts, a constant thirst for knowledge and passion for perfection continues to give a
special meaning to my quest in Calligraphy. Even today I say, that I have just begun the journey towards my destination
and I still have a long way to go.

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Hiroshi Matsumoto

2009-02-11T04:03:00.000-08:00