Carol L. Douglas Archives | Page 40 of 75

April 10, 2014

Seeking a crown

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche, 1833, was painted three hundred years after the death of Lady Jane, but immediately after the July Revolution of 1830, which deposed the last of the Bourbon monarchs. It uses an old British story to speak obliquely about recent events in France.

The void left after the death of Edward VI in England became an opportunity for a remarkable series of women to chase after the crown. Intending to keep it out of Catholic hands, young Edward had named his teenaged first cousin, Lady Jane Grey, as his successor.

She was married into a family of power brokers. Her brother-in-law would become Queen Elizabeth’s close companion, confidant and, possibly, lover. Her father-in-law, the Duke of Northumberland, was the principle power broker in her rise and fall.

Lady Jane later wrote that she accepted the crown only with reluctance, and it certainly appears that she was a pawn in a game organized by others. Northumberland moved quickly to consolidate his power, but Mary moved even faster. The Privy Council switched sides, naming Mary the queen and imprisoning Jane and her husband. Northumberland, Lady Jane, and her husband were executed.

Portrait of Mary Tudor by Antonis Mor, 1554. Whatever else you might say about the Tudors, they had fantastic portrait painters working in their courts.

Mary I of England comes down to us with the sobriquet of “Bloody Mary” for her violent suppression of Protestants: she had almost three hundred of them burned alive at the stake. But she should also be remembered as the first successful British female monarch. She was succeeded by her sister, Elizabeth I, arguably the greatest woman ruler in history.

One more claimant to the English throne deserves mention. Mary, Queen of Scots was the only surviving legitimate child of King James V of Scotland, and a constant thorn in Elizabeth’s side. She was also a Tudor cousin, and Elizabeth vacillated between wanting to name her as her heir and wanting to kill her.

Portrait of Mary Stuart, 1578-79, by Nicholas Hilliard. The mount was done in the next century; the painting is watercolor on vellum.

Mary was six days old when her father died and she ascended to the Scottish throne. She spent most of her childhood in France. At the age of sixteen she married the Dauphin, who in short order left her widowed.

She returned to Scotland. Four years later, she married her first cousin, Lord Darnley, another aspirant to the English throne. While his scheming character may have attracted her at first, it eventually dawned on Mary that he was a threat to her well-being. Darnley was killed when his home was bombed. The prime suspect, the Earl of Bothwell, married Mary one month after he was acquitted.

It was typical of Mary’s career that she would act impetuously, with disastrous results. Denounced as an adulteress and murderer, she was imprisoned and forced to abdicate the Scottish crown in favor of her infant son.

Mary escaped from prison and raised an army, which was defeated. She fled to England, expecting her cousin Elizabeth to help her regain her throne. Elizabeth promptly parked Mary in the Yorkshire countryside and opened an inquiry into Darnley’s murder. Elizabeth ensured that no verdict was ever reached, and Mary spent several years in sumptuous imprisonment in England.

That didn’t prevent her from plotting against her cousin, however, who remained curiously reluctant to deal with her in the decisive Tudor manner. Finally, in 1587, Mary was tried and convicted of treason. Elizabeth’s Privy Council ordered her swift execution, and her career was at an end.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

April 9, 2014

A true warrior queen

Zenobia in Chains, 1859, by Harriet Hosmer. The American sculptor Harriet Hosmer portrayed Zenobia twice. This version depicts Zenobia being paraded through Roman in Aurelian’s Triumph. It is impossible to read this statue retrospectively without considering it as a commentary on the dual American questions of the age: women’s rights and abolition. It just figures that when Hosmer showed it in Europe, many questioned whether a woman would have been capable of producing such a monumental work.

My friend K Dee recently put together a photostream of portraits of women to “help me remember, in case I ever start to forget, which sort of female image I find reflects a healthy civil society, and which I do not.” I’m not sure I’d call the collapsing Roman empire a ‘healthy civil society’ but Zenobia is certainly one of its heroines.

In the third century AD, the Roman Empire was coming unglued. Emperors were assassinated, a Persian revolt couldn’t be put down, generals were locked in power struggles, and the frontiers were open to attack. The governor of the eastern provinces chose to deploy his legions to defend his territory rather than fight with other Romans.

Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, modeled c. 1859; carved after 1859, by Harriet Hosmer. “I have tried to make her too proud to exhibit passion or emotion of any kind; not subdued, though a prisoner; but calm, grand, and strong within herself,” wrote Hosmer.

In the usual manner, he too was murdered. His son, Vaballathus, was named rex consul imperator dux Romanorum and corrector totius orientis of the new Palmyrene Empire. That was a mouthful for a child who was barely walking, so the real power behind the throne was his mother Zenobia.

Zenobia was the daughter of a governor of Palmyra. While she claimed she was a descendent of the Ptolomies and Dido, Queen of Carthage, she was more likely a Romanized Syrian with some Egyptian and North African ancestry. She was well-educated and fluent in Greek, Aramaic, Egyptian and Latin. And of course—because she is a queen of legend—she was beautiful. It is probably true that she rode, hunted, fought, and drank like her male officers, or she could not have commanded them in the field.

Who knows how long the Romans might have ignored her had she contented herself with governing Syria and its surrounds? But by 269, Zenobia was on the move. She conquered Egypt and beheaded its Roman prefect. She proclaimed herself Queen of Egypt.

From that to the absurd: the Duchess of Devonshire dressed as Zenobia for her own Jubilee Costume Ball in 1897. Playing dress-up Zenobia has been popular forever, it seems.

Her victory was short-lived. By 273, Rome had reestablished enough equilibrium to challenge Zenobia. The Emperor Auralian arrived in Syria and crushed Zenobia’s army near Antioch. Zenobia and her son were captured along the Euphrades as they fled by camel.

Aurelian took Zenobia and Vaballathus as hostages to Rome, parading Zenobia in golden chains during his Triumph. Nobody knows whether Zenobia was executed or pardoned, for she disappeared from history at this point. Legend says she was married off and lived to bear several daughters.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

April 8, 2014

The Empress Dowager Cixi

A tinted photograph of the Empress Dowager Cixi, Regent of the Qing Dynasty. Her portraits included a painting given to Teddy Roosevelt as well as extensive photographs.

My friend K Dee recently put together a photostream of portraits of women to “help me remember, in case I ever start to forget, which sort of female image I find reflects a healthy civil society, and which I do not.” Today we’ll look at the story of a remarkable woman who prospered by being more toxic than her society.

The Empress Dowager Cixi was born in Beijing in 1835, an unimportant daughter of a mid-level bureaucrat. At 16, she was one of sixty girls in a cattle-call to choose consorts for the new Xianfeng Emperor. Cixi made the cut.

Concubines of the Xianfeng Emperor fishing at a pond, 19th century. The figure at left is probably Cixi; the one at right is the Empress Ci’an.

Despite the plethora of women in his harem, the Emperor had trouble producing an heir. In 1856, Cixi gave birth to his only surviving son, Zaichun. This propelled her up through the harem ranks so that by the time Zaichun reached his first birthday, she ranked second only to the Empress.

Unusually, Cixi could read and write. This granted her unprecedented access to the Emperor and an informal education in how to govern.

In September 1860, British and French troops attacked Beijing and burned the Emperor’s Old Summer Palace to the ground. The Emperor and his entourage fled Beijing. The Emperor turned to booze and drugs, became ill, and died.

Portrait of Empress Dowager Ci’an (co-regent with Cixi). Since Ci’an was an Empress and Cixi a lowly concubine, Ci’an had precedence, but this was a matter of formality, not fact. Her portrait corresponds with descriptions of her as good-natured and naive.

An eight-member Regency ruled on behalf of his heir, who was then five years old. Balancing the Regents’ power were the former empress, the Dowager Empress Ci’an, and the former concubine, the Dowager Empress Cixi.

The Dowager Empress Ci’an was good-natured and naïve: the perfect tool for the former concubine. The situation was inherently unstable, and at the correct moment, Cixi staged a coup with the support of a coterie of princes. To demonstrate her compassion, Cixi executed only three of the eight Regents, eschewed torturing them, and refused to execute the ministers’ families.

Ruling from “behind the curtain,” Cixi issued an Imperial Edict on behalf of the young Emperor stating that the two Empresses Dowager were to be the sole decision makers “without interference.” Her partner being malleable, Cixi had absolute control of the Chinese state by the mid-1860s.

Portrait of Empress Jiashun, Cixi’s daughter-in-law. It is speculated that Cixi poisoned her when she was pregnant with an heir to Cixi’s dead son.

In 1872, the Emperor turned 17 and was married to the Empress Jiashun. The relationship between Cixi and the new Empress was fraught. “I am a principal consort, having been carried through the front gate with pomp and circumstance, as mandated by our ancestors. Empress Dowager Cixi was a concubine, and entered our household through a side gate,” the new Empress said.

Foolish girl. Cixi ordered the couple to separate. The young Emperor—a man of weak intellect and weak character—began to act out his sexual desires in the brothels of Beijing. He contracted syphilis and died at the age of 19. His young pregnant Empress followed him into the grave a few months later, perhaps at Cixi’s hand. They left no heir. After considerable uproar, Cixi’s four-year-old nephew was tapped to become the next Emperor.

The Empress Dowager Ci’an died suddenly in 1881; rumors swirled that Cixi had poisoned Ci’an. Now the sole Regent, Cixi maintained her iron grip on power even after the new Emperor reached his majority and began to reign as the Guangxu Emperor.

As he grew into his role, the Guangxu Emperor began flexing his muscles, initiating a series of modernizing reforms. These particularly displeased Cixi because they would have checked her power. Once more, the Empress Dowager Cixi took over. The Emperor was never formally removed from the throne, but he was a powerless puppet from then on.

The Guangxu Emperor died suddenly on November 14, 1908. The Empress Dowager installed a new child emperor on the throne and promptly keeled over herself. Turns out that the Guangxu Emperor was poisoned; modern forensic testing shows he had arsenic levels 2000 times greater than normal. It appears that, knowing she was dying, the Empress Dowager’s last act was to prevent him from ever taking power in China.

In 1912, the child emperor Puyi abdicated, ending over 2000 years of imperial China and beginning a long period of instability that would result in the Chinese Civil War.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

April 7, 2014

Two Elizabeths

This Bavarian polychrome statue of Elizabeth of Hungary, c. 1520, is so lifelike that she could be the engineer in the next cubicle.

In popular literature, Elizabeth of Hungary is most known for a miracle of the roses (which is a frequent image in Catholic iconography). She was, however, a real woman who lived a real life of good works.

Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, c. 1365, by Pietro Nelli, tempera and gold on panel, focuses on her miracle of the roses.

The daughter of King Andrew of Hungary, she was the niece, through her mother, of another saint of the church, Hedwig of Silesia. She was affianced to Louis IV, future Landgrave of Thuringia and taken to that court as a young girl so that she might grow up in the culture in which she would reign. At age 14, she and Louis were married.

She must have been a remarkable 14-year-old. As he traveled to meet his liege responsibilities, she ran his fiefdom. She built a hospital and distributed alms during a period when plague, floods and famine ravaged Thuringia. Rather than resenting his wife’s religiosity, Louis encouraged her distribution of his worldly goods.

In 1227, Louis died in Otranto while en route to join the Sixth Crusade. His brother was appointed regent for their young son, and Elizabeth’s power came to an end. That year she left the castle. Elizabeth lived in the strictest celibacy and self-denial for the remainder of her short life, resolutely resisting all machinations by her family to make her another politically-profitable marriage.

Mother Seton lived too recently to be the subject of great art. (In part, contemporary artists are hampered by having some idea of what she looked like.) Here, from a prayer card.

Elizabeth Ann Seton was the first US-born saint. Born in 1774, she was the child of affluent, educated, and well-connected New Yorkers. At age 19, she married a wealthy and prominent businessman. The couple belonged to fashionable Trinity Church, where Elizabeth helped found The Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children.

In 1802, the family’s fortunes reversed: William Seton declared bankruptcy and sailed for Italy in an attempt to cure his tuberculosis. The trip killed him. It was there that Seton was introduced to Catholicism, to which she converted in 1805.

Impoverished and widowed, Seton tried to start a school for proper young ladies, but her conversion was anathema to the elite of New York. In 1809 Elizabeth took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and accepted the invitation of the Sulpician Fathers to move to Emmitsburg, Maryland. There she founded the Saint Joseph’s Academy and Free School for the education of Catholic girls and the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s, dedicated to caring for the children of the poor. By 1818, the sisters had established two orphanages and another school. Today six groups of sisters trace their origins to Mother Seton’s initial foundation. Mother Seton herself died of tuberculosis at the age of 46.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

April 6, 2014

Great Dames

Boudicca and her Daughters on the Victoria Embankment is the most famous representation of the British queen. Queen Victoria felt a resonance with Boadicea; the work was as commissioned by Prince Albert and executed by Thomas Thornycroft.

My friend K Dee recently put together a photo stream of portraits of women to “help me remember, in case I ever start to forget, which sort of female image I find reflects a healthy civil society, and which I do not.” That in turn reminded me of Lady Antonia Fraser’s wonderful Warrior Queens: The Legends and Lives of Women Who have led Their Nations in War, and I decided to focus on great queens and their artistic representation this week.

One of Fraser’s primary subjects is Britain’s Boadicea. I have a half-finished portrait of her in my studio that I will be working on next week.

Her name comes down to us as Boudica, Boudicca, Boadicea or Buddug. It derives from the Proto-Celtic feminine adjective boudīka, which translates to “victorious” in English. What we know of her comes from the writings of Tacitus and Cassius Deo.

Boadicea’s husband Prasutagus was a client-king of the Roman Empire. Although his will left his kingdom jointly to his daughters and the Emperor, upon his death, his kingdom was annexed to Rome. Boadicea was beaten, their daughters were raped, and Roman financiers claimed the family assets as their own.

Boadicea Haranguing the Britons, line engraving, published 1793, by William Sharp, after John Opie. The engraving is finer than the painting.

Boadicea raised the Iceni and neighboring tribes—estimated to be 100,000 strong—in what would become the longest-lasting revolt against Roman rule by a client state. The natives sacked Camulodunum (modern Colchester), Londinium, and Verulamium (St. Albans) before being defeated by Suetonius in the Battle of Watling Street. Boadicea committed suicide rather than be captured by the Romans.

Considering that Boadicea is one of the fundamental heroes of early Britain, she is shockingly unrepresented in art. One has to ask why the Pre-Raphaelites, with their consuming interest in British history, gave her such a cold shoulder. Her militancy, her political skill, her energy, and her mastery apparently gave them fits; they were much more interested in the wasting maiden.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

April 3, 2014

Does art reflect society or society reflect art?

McSorley’s Bar, 1912, by John Sloan. McSorley’s is the oldest Irish tavern in New York City. It only admitted women after being forced to do so in 1970. I got into my last-ever bar fight there, with an undergrad from NYU who imagined I’d slighted his girlfriend. “I can take him,” I insisted to my husband. “Who expects a roundhouse from a blue-haired church lady?”

Yesterday a reader asked, “Does art reflect society or society reflect art?” It seems to me that art is primarily a reflection of the aspirations and values of the society that created it. That is not to downplay the importance of social justice in art, and it doesn’t mean that artists can’t change people’s minds. Think of the tremendous courage it took for Émile Zola to publish J’accuse, and the influence it has down to this day. But even that was responsive to a reality: the injustice of institutional anti-Semitism.

By the turn of the 19^th century, America had recovered a bit from its earlier unbridled optimism. This could be seen in its literature, with writers like Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, and Frank Norris describing the dark side of the American experience. The painterly equivalent was called the Ashcan School.

Steaming Streets, 1908, by George Bellows. The Ashcan painters did not gloss over the filth and danger of our cities.

The Ashcan painters opposed both American Impressionism and the highly polished work of painters like John Singer Sargent. They were darker, rougher, and harsher. They were not just interested in light and air; they also wanted to paint the grime, the frozen manure and the poverty that were also part of our urban reality.

From the standpoint of trendiness, their moment was short-lived. The Cubists, Fauvists and Expressionists took over the avant garde high ground with the Armory Show of 1913, and suddenly the Ashcan painters were lumped in with all those boring old realists from the 19^th century.

Eviction (Lower East Side), 1904, by Everett Shinn (gouache). Shinn had watched the eviction of an old musician from his apartment, which inspired this picture of misery and despair.

That should not minimize their artistic and social importance. Painters like Robert Henri, George Bellows, George Luks, John Sloan, and William Glackens cast a long shadow. They were the first painters to admit that America was not Elysium, and the flaws they painted have only gotten more noticeable with time.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

April 2, 2014

American naturalism

High-Jake Game, c. 1861, by Thomas LeClear. Before official colored regiments were formed in 1863, several volunteer regiments were raised from free black men, including freedmen in the South. The Confederacy had passed a law stating that blacks captured in uniform would be tried as slave insurrectionists in civil courts—a capital offense with automatic sentence of death. Many captured black soldiers were summarily executed without even the pretense of a trial. For this young man, this is a high-stakes game indeed.

Before there was an Ashcan School, there were genre painters. Thomas LeClear’s most famous painting, Buffalo Newsboy, is dear to all who grew up visiting the Albright-Knox Art Museum. LeClear was contemporary with Honoré Daumier and Jean-François Millet but the difference between their worldviews is striking.

This difference derives not from talent or temperament, but from place. The French naturalists described a society where there was limited social mobility. The working poor expected to remain poor forever. LeClear, on the other hand, described the boundless optimism of a people who believed poverty was a transitory state and that anyone could go from rags to riches. LeClear’s newsboy is saucy, healthy, energetic, and not the least bit fazed by his low beginnings.

Buffalo Newsboy, c. 1853, by Thomas LeClear, is a favorite of Buffalonians. It harks back to when Buffalo was a boomtown.

LeClear painted some of his most famous canvases during the Civil War. By concentrating on children, he could obliquely point to difficult issues of democracy and emancipation. That he was able to retain his optimism during this cataclysm speaks volumes about his, and the nation’s, character.

Thomas LeClear was born in the village of Candor, Tioga County, New York. In 1832 his family moved to Ontario. A few years later LeClear became an itinerant portrait artist and decorative painter traveling in a range across New York and as far west as Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Young America, c. 1863, by Thomas LeClear. “The locality is a street in Buffalo, and the man on the sidewalk evidently engaged in counting up his gains is a portrait of a well-known operator in stocks, who goes by the name of “three cents a month,” a contemporary, Henry T. Tuckerman, wrote.

In 1839 he moved to New York City, where he studied with Henry Inman. By 1847 he had begun to win substantial recognition for his work. That year, he moved to Buffalo in a calculated move to increase his income. At the time, Buffalo was a boom-town and LeClear quickly acquired many wealthy patrons

In the early 1860s LeClear moved back to New York City. He was elected to full membership in the National Academy of Design in 1863. He became a prominent portrait painter as well as a genre painter.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

April 1, 2014

The poorest of the poor

The Laundress (La Blanchisseuse), c. 1863, by Honoré Daumier. This painting exists in another two versions, one of which is owned by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

In the context of art, naturalism is a kind of painting that attempts to look reality square in the face. It seeks to depict people and their transactions with as much honesty as is possible. Since naturalism arose in tandem with the Industrial Revolution, it frequently investigated the changes which the Industrial Revolution wrought.

The Third-Class Carriage, 1863-65, by Honoré Daumier. While Daumier has us focus on one family—a mother with her infant child, a tired grandmother and a sleeping boy—they represent all of the working class, with their solid bodies and weary stoicism.

Mid-19th century French painters were particularly good at this, and nobody was more incisive than Honoré Daumier. Daumier was a bit of an artistic polymath, excelling at printmaking, caricature, painting and sculpture. He was tremendously prolific, producing more than 6000 pieces of work in his lifetime.

The Uprising, c. 1860, by Honoré Daumier. Daumier was unique in seeing the nascent labor movement as a fitting subject for art. Daumier is very spare with the details here, driving our attention inexorably to the figure in the center. In this, he suggests the coming Impressionist movement.

In Daumier’s era, washerwomen did their work at lavoirs, which were public places set aside for clothes washing. It was dismal and hard work. Duamier lived on the Quai d’Anjou on the Île Saint-Louis. This afforded him many opportunities to see the washerwomen at their work along the Seine. His washerwomen, would have been amused by the modern conceit of “Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work Day” since it was a fact of life for the 19^th century poor. They are tired, but they are strong, and they exhibit the same monumentality as Millet’s gleaners.

The Burden (The Laundress) c. 1850-53, is another look at the same subject. Again, the figure is monumental and impressionistic, but here she and her child are both driven. The paint handling clearly suggests the next generation of French painters, particularly Van Gogh.

Having grown up in a working class household himself, Daumier was uniquely sensitive to working class life. However, he did not just paint the poor; he depicted (and caricaturized) the whole gamut of French society.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

March 30, 2014

Back to the studio

There were visitors to the gallery all evening long. The show is up until April 11.

You can be the belle of the ball on Friday night, but you’re still a painting teacher on Saturday morning. It was a great opening with a fabulous turnout, and lots of insightful questions. There were crowds until 10 PM, at which time I stumbled home to bed, because Saturday mornings are always a rush.

Teressa’s been drawing on and off with me for a few years, but she finally bit the bullet and did her first painting this weekend.

Painting classes, I’ve noticed, are split between two populations. There are the forty- and fifty-somethings who always wanted to paint but never had time, and young people from their mid-teens to mid-twenties. This makes for a nice mix of people in the studio, but it also tells us something about our times. Nobody in the prime working years has time. They’re running flat out. Between grasping the brass ring and raising children, everything else takes a back seat.

My own Mary, who’s a talented artist but majoring in biomedical engineering, graced my studio with her presence. I am afraid I will have to ask her for some lessons in drawing with a tablet one of these days.

It’s kind of a pity that we’re so frenetically busy from our mid-twenties to our mid-forties. The time to be reflective shouldn’t be a luxury of the old and the young.

So it’s back to business as usual, but I’ll have the flowers to remind me of a wonderful evening. Thanks, guys!

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!