United States or Ecuador ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The rather triste expression, the veiled look of the eyes, the morbidezza of the flesh tones, and the general sense of amplitude and grace give us a Fortuny who knew how to paint broadly. The more obvious and dashing side of him is present in the Arabian Fantaisie of the Vanderbilt Gallery.
That he spent the brief years of his life in painting the subjects he did is not a problem to be posed, for, as Henry James has said, it is always dangerous to challenge an artist's selection of subject. Why did Goya conceive his Caprichos? The love of decorative beauty in Fortuny was not bedimmed by criticism.
After going to war without becoming a soldier, Fortuny returned to Paris and there he became fast friends with Meissonier, so that a good deal of his work was influenced by that artist's genius. After a time Fortuny's paintings came into great vogue and far-off Americans began buying them, as well as Europeans.
And as for expenses, why, he had thought it all out: he would pay Mariano's expenses himself! "Should we two old men, about ready to die, stand in the way of the success of that boy?" exclaimed the priest. "Why, he will be an artist yet, do you hear? an artist!" They compromised on the Grammar-School, with three lessons a week by a drawing-master. Grandfather Fortuny did not starve.
Fortuny, by his mariage Espagnol, became the head of the Spanish renaissance. Unfortunately, he has been widely imitated by artists of all nations, who have not a tithe of his genius, if any. Pradilla, F. Domingo, Gallegos, the three Beulluire brothers, Bilbao, Gimenez, Aranda, Carbonero, are only a few of the artists whose names are known to all art collectors, and who work in Spain.
He became Court painter, and left many fine portraits; but, perhaps, as Comte Vasili says, "La meilleure oeuvre de Don José fut son fils, Federico; de même que la meilleure de celui-ci est son fils Raimundo." Raimundo Madrazo and Fortuny the elder, who married Cecilia Madrazo, Raimundo's sister, have always painted in Paris, and have become known to Europe almost as French artists.
Two other good forms are two separated units joined by other items and opposed to one, or the three joined either directly or by suggestion, the units balanced like a triangle by opposition. The Madonna and St. John with the Infant Christ is a sample of the first. In the “Connoisseurs” by Fortuny we have the second form, and in the “Huntsman and Hounds” the third.
Dowered by nature with extraordinary acuity of vision, with a romantic, passionate nature and a will of steel, Fortuny was bound to become a great painter. His manual technique bordered on the fabulous; he had the painter's hand, as his fellow-countryman Pablo de Sarasate had the born hand of the violinist.
"When I first had the book I thought you a little unjust to Fortuny, and was prepared to indorse Regnault's estimate of him. Since then I have seen the thirty Fortunys at the International Exhibition, and they have moderated my enthusiasm, and brought me back to sober orthodoxy, to Velasquez and Rembrandt." Mr. G. H. Lewes also wrote:
Gérôme, Guillaumet, Fromentin, Huguet are not to be mentioned in the same breath with Fortuny as to the manipulation of material; and has Guillaumet done anything savouring more of the mysterious East than Fortuny's At the Gate of the Seraglio? The magician of jewelled tones, he knew all the subtler modulations. His canvases vibrate, they emit sparks of sunlight, his shadows are velvety and warm.
Word Of The Day