R. H. Ives Gammell

The Paintings of R. H. Ives Gammell

Born into a wealthy Providence, Rhode Island family in 1883, Robert Hale Ives Gammell was an American artist, one of the last American artists who were trained in the French Academic tradition of the late nineteenth-century. His work shows the influence of French Neoclassical painters Jacque-Louis David and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, as well as Academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Gammell was also inspired by the work of his teachers: William Sargeant Kendall, with whom he studied from 1906 to 1914, and Boston artist William McGregor Paxton who mentored him from 1928 to 1930.

R. H. Ives Gammell attended Groton School, a private college-preparatory boarding school, where he spent much of his personal time drawing. His formal art education began at Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts under Impressionist painters Joseph DeCamp, Edmund C. Tarbell, and Philip Leslie Hale. Gammell later studied in Paris at the Académia Julian and the Atelier Baschet under genre painter Henri Royer and portrait artist William Laparra. Although he had intended to stay five or six years in France, these studies in Paris were interrupted by his service in the United States military during World War I.

Upon his return to the United States, Gammell briefly returned to his studies at the Boston Museum School. However, he was frustrated as he felt that, although the standards established by the great nineteenth-century painters were generally accepted and understood, the procedures and principles for the construction of large figural compositions and imagined scenes were not being taught. Trained as an impressionist, Gammell was interest in painting decorative subjects in the academic tradition. He began his career in the Boston tradition with portraits, nudes and interior scenes with primarily female figures. As he matured, Gammell turned to ancient history, Greek mythology, literary and religious scenes, and psychology particularly that of C. G. Jung, for his subjects.

R. H. Ives Gammell produced many works in the 1930s; however, the recognition that he was working against the current trend in art and other stress factors led to a nervous breakdown in 1939. While recovering, Gammell read Carl Jung’s “Psychology of the Unconscious” and discovered an approach to a series of paintings based on poet Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven”. Read while a sixteen-year old student, this poem had held Gammell’s imagination and formed the basis of a number of sketches. He now saw Jung’s work as a link between myths, symbols, poetry and the recurring emotional patterns of human life.

Gammell had begun planning in 1941 the sequence of images that would embrace many of the themes he had considered throughout his career. His “Hound of Heaven” series consisted of twenty-three large format oil on canvas paintings, each being 200.7 x 68.6 cm in size. These illustrations of Thompson’s poem contain images and symbols drawn from various ancient and modern sources and conjure up deep human responses. The series, completed and exhibited in 1956, is considered by many to be Gammell’s greatest achievement, one which represented his artistic aims and ideas.

Starting in the 1940s, R. H. Ives Gammell taught at the Fenway Studios in Boston. His classes included the study of anatomy, memory drawing and the sight-size method, a technique that ,when viewed from a set vantage point, presents the drawing and subject with exactly the same dimensions. Among his many students were painters Robert Cormier and Richard Frederick Lack, the founder of Classical Realism; Robert Douglas Hunter known for his academic still lifes; and Samuel Rose known for his realistic and surreal subjects.

Gammell publish a book of art criticism in 1946 entitled “Twilight of Painting”, in which he argued that the tradition of European craftsmanship was undermined by modern art with its emphasis on abstraction. He also wrote a monograph on the Boston painter Dennis Miller Bunker, one of the first biographies on this innovator of Impressionism, and the 1961 book “Shop Talk of Edgar Degas”, a discussion of Degas’s connection to the act of painting. Gammell wrote a book of essays entitled “The Boston Painters: 1900-1930”, an examination of the genesis, contributions and motivations of the Boston School artists, many of whom Gammell knew personally. This volume was published posthumously.

Robert Hale Ives Gammell died, at the age of eighty-eight, in his Boston home in April of 1981. His papers, diaries, and notebooks with sketches are housed in the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Museum.

Note: A transcript of an 1973 Oral History interview with painter Robert Douglas Hunter, in which he discusses his years as a student of H. R. Ives Gammell, can be found at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art sit located at: https://www.aaa.si.edu/download_pdf_transcript/ajax?record_id=edanmdm-AAADCD_oh_212739

Second Insert Image: R.H. Ives Gammell, “The Predicament”, 1958, Oil on Canvas

Third Insert Image: R. H. Ives Gammell, “William” 1915, Oil on Canvas, 74.9 x 59 cm, Provincetown Art Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Robert Ives Gammell, “The fates”, circa 1930, Oil on Paper, 26.7 x 28.6 cm, Private Collection

Niels Smits Van Burgst

Paintings by Niels Smits Van Burgst

Born in Maassluis, The Netherlands in 1970, Niels Smits Van Burgst is a figurative painter whose work reveals moments of his personal life experiences and those shared with close friends and acquaintances. He currently lives in Rotterdam where he works in a large studio near the Sparta Stadium.

Niels Smits Van Burgst attended the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hage where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1993 and his Masters Degree in 1994. He committed himself in 1994 to depicting the experience of life awareness in his paintings. Initially he concentrated on painting private and personal experiences; over time, he gradually extended his work to include friends and people casually met through the course of life.

The main emphasis of Van Burgst’s work is to show an identity, an understanding of what it means to be alive in Western society. His paintings, with their broad brushstrokes and cool palettes, provide the memories for their subjects’ life experiences. In many of Van Brugst’s works, he presents images of men existing in a civilized world where their excesses, such as lust, aggression and euphoria, are personally suppressed. In society, however, excesses are still experienced by individuals through sylized media channels such as television, the internet, and film.

Niels Smits Van Burgst’s paintings have been exhibited in New York, Berlin, Amterdam, Brussels, and many more cities across Europe. A retrospective of his work was held in 2013 at the Museum ‘de Buitenplaats in Eelde, Netherlands. Van Burgst won the Van Ommeren de Voogd Foundation Prize for Fine Art in 2007 and the Aku in 2011. His paintings are in collections both private and public.

Niels Smits Van Burgst is represented by “De Twee Pauwen Gallery in The Hage.

Complete collections of Niels Van Burgst’s work, including contact information, can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/nielsSvanB and https://www.instagram.com/niels_smits_van_burgst/

Middle Insert Image: Niels Smits van Burgst, “De Schilderkunst (The Art of Painting)”, 2003, Oil on Wood, 30 x 22 cm

Jesse Hazel Arms

The Paintings of Jesse Arms

Born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 27, 1883, Jesse Hazel Arms was a painter, illustrator, printmaker, and muralist. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago under Danish-American portraitist John Johanson and spent the summers studying with marine painter Charles Woodbury at his summer art colony school in Oguinquit, Maine. Following a short trip to Europe in 1909, Arms returned to her hometown of Chicago, where she worked as an artist and interior decorator.

Jesse Arms moved in 1911 to New York City where she became a student of painter and interior designer Albert Herter. She obtained employment with his company Herter Looms, a tapestry-textile design and manufacturing firm in New York City, where she specialized in tapestry cartoons until leaving the company in 1915. During her employment with Herter Looms, Arms assisted Albert Herter with his mural project for the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco and worked with Herter’s wife, still-life and portrait painter Adele Herter, as a private home decorator.

Returning to her hometown of Chicago in 1915, Jesse Arms married Dutch-born painter and etcher Cornelius Botke. Together, they worked on murals in Chicago for the Kellogg Company and for the University of Chicago’s Noyes Hall, the social hub of the campus. In 1916, Jesse Arms gave birth to their only child, William. By 1917, after multiple exhibitions, she had gained recognition for her work and had won many awards both in Chicago and southern California.

Following an initial visit in 1918 to California, Arms and her family relocated in 1919 to Carmel, California, where they became influential figures in the local art colony. The family eventually settled in 1927 on a ranch in Santa Paula, California, where Arms continued to paint and contributed to the managing of the ranch. A prolific exhibitor of her work and member of both the California Art Club and the California Watercolor Society, Jesse Arms Botke died on October 2, 1971 in Santa Paula, California.

Jesse Arms was a prominent figure of the California School of Impressionism and became known for her exotic and richly decorated bird studies. Her highly detailed work depicted birds set in each species’ natural settings with an abundance of flora. Arms typically used oil paints, but also worked in watercolors and gouache; the backgrounds in her work were frequently embellished with gold and silver leaf. Arms also portrayed other subjects including genre and desert landscapes, and Native American figures.

Among the prizes award to Jesse Arms’s work are the 1918 Cahn Prize and the 1926 Shaffer Prize, both from the Art Institute of Chicago, and the 1938 Carpenter Prize from the Chicago Society for Sanity in Art. Her work can be seen in the collections of the San Diego Museum, Municipal Gallery of Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Calendar: November 23

A Year: Day to Day Men: 23rd of November

Tiny Bears in a Row

November 23, 1862 was the birthdate of Belgian Neo-Impressionist painter Théo van Rysselberghe.

Born in Ghent, Théo van Rysselberghe studied at the Academy of Ghent under Theo Canneel and later at the Academie Royal des Beaux-Arts in Brussels under Jean-François Portaels. Van Rysselberghe was strongly influenced by North African paintings, which had become the fashion in Belgium. He made three trips to Morocco, staying there for a year and a half.

Van Rysselberghe painted his “Self Portrait with Pipe” in 1880, in the somber colors of the Belgium realistic tradition. His “Child in an Open Spot in the Forest”, also painted in that year, showed a move to impressionism. He started traveling extensively with his friends, impressionist Frantz Charlet and Asturian painter Dario de Regoyos, throughout Spain and Morocco, staying in Tanger for four months starting in October of 1882. At this time, Van Rysselberghe painted and drew many scenes form the streets and in the souk, including the 1882 “Arabian Street Cobbler”, the 1882 “Arabian Boy”, and “Resting Guard” in 1883.

Van Rysselberghe saw the works of the impressionists Monet and Auguste Renoir at the show of “Les XX” in 1886, becoming deeply impressed. He experimented with this technique in his 1886 “Woman with Japanese Album”. This impressionist influence became prominent in his later paintings. In 1886 he also discovered the pointillist techniques at that Eighth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris, abandoning realism and became an adept of pointillism,

Theo Van Rysselberghe’s “Gate of Mansour-El-Hay” and”Morocco-the Great Souk”, both done in 1887, are painted in the pointillist style, but still with short strokes of paint and not with points. These are among his rare pointillist paintings of Morocco. When he had finished these paintings, he stopped completely with this Moroccan period in his life. Van Rysselberghen then turned to portraiture, resulting in a series of neo- impressionist portraits. His famous portrait of Alice Sèthe, painted in 1888 in blue and gold, would become a turning point in his life. In this painting he used only points of paint on the canvas.

In 1898 Van Rysselberghe moved to Paris, although he maintained close links with the artistic milieu of Brussels, and executed in 1902, among other works, a series of decorative panels for the HÃ´tel Solvay, belonging to Victor Horta. Van Rysselberghe also played an important role in the introduction of the fauvist painters, whom he had met through his friend Paul Signac, to Belgium. From 1903 onward, his neo- Impressionism began to give way to more restrained forms, and during the last years of his life he also executed some sculptures. Van Rysselberghe died on the 13th of December of 1926 in Saint-Clair, France.

Albert Weisgerber

Albert Weisgerber, “Garçon nu Assis dans un Bois”, 1912, Oil on Board

Albert Weisgerber was a German painter whose work forms a bridge between the Impressionist and early Expressionist movements. He studied at the Munich Art Academy and became friends with Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Karl Arnold. Weisgerber is known today for his cartoons, illustrations, as well as his paintings. He joined the German army in World War I, was promoted to the rank of major and was killed at the age of 37 while participating in the Battle of Fromellles in France.

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Calendar: February 25

Year: Day to Day Men: February 25

Falling Water

The twenty-fifth of February in 1846 marks the birthdate of Italian painter Giuseppe De Nittis, a central figure in Paris during the aesthetic and institutional upheavals of 1870s. His work integrated the style of the Academic salons with the newly emerged Impressionists.

Giuseppe De Nittis was born into a wealthy family who resided in the coastal city of Barletta in Italy’s region of Apulia. Barletta, particularly during the reign of Ferdinand II, was an extremely class-oriented city. Those who could afford it gathered regularly at the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher which was located near the De Nittis residence. The city’s port was a point of embarkation for the privileged class’s travels to and from the East.

In 1860 at the age of fourteen, De Nittis relocated to Naples where he gained admittance to the Reale Instituto de Belle Arti, a university-level fine arts school founded in 1752 by King Charles VII of Naples. Outspoken in his criticism, he was was expelled from the institute in 1863 for insubordination. De Nittis began his career with the 1864 entry of two paintings at the Neapolitan Promotrice, an exhibition space similar to the salons of Paris. He became acquainted with a group of artists, known as the Macchiaioli, and became friends with one of its most prominent members, Telemaco Signorini. The Macchiaioli were a group of Neapolitan and Florentine painters who reacted against the rule-oriented Italian art academies and painted plein-air to capture both the light and color of nature.

In 1867, Giuseppe De Nittis began exhibiting his works in Florence. During this time in Italy, De Nittis met and renewed his acquaintance with painter, Geremia Discanno, also born in Barletta but seven years earlier. Together, they exhibited and sold work in the city of Turin during 1867. De Nittis traveled to Paris later in the year and became represented by Jean-Baptiste Adolphe Goupil, one of the city’s leading art dealers. After exhibiting at the Salon, he returned to Italy where he produced several views of Mount Vesuvius.

In 1868 at the age of twenty-two, De Nittis returned to Paris and became a permanent resident of the city. His affection for Paris was expressed through images of the French capital’s urban renovation overseen by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann. Haussmann had been chosen by Emperor Napoleon III to carry out a massive renewal program of the boulevards, parks and public works in Paris. Through his close association with members of the Impressionist movement, De Nittis often visited the horse races at Auteuil with Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas. The love of the French for horse racing as well as the well-groomed crowds promenading on the wide boulevards became recurring themes for his work.

Giuseppe De Nittis was invited by Edgar Degas in 1873 to exhibit in the First Impressionist Exhibition held at photographer Nader’s studio in 1874. De Nittis, who submitted five works despite protests by Adolphe Goupil, was the only Italian artist at that exhibition; it was also the only one of the group’s exhibitions he attended. In 1875, De Nittis broke his contract with Goupil and started working in pastels. He executed a series of portraits of sitters which included the authors Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, playwright Émile Édouard Zola, Édouard Manet, and novelist Louis Edmond Duranty. Pastels became an important medium for De Nittis’s later work; he preferred patels as the medium for his largest works such as the 1881 triptych “Races at Auteuil”.

De Nittis exhibited twelve works at the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris. He was, in the same year, also awarded the Légion d’Honneur, the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. In 1884, Giuseppe De Nittis died suddenly at the age of thirty-eight of a stroke at the commune of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the western suburbs of Paris. His wife, Léontine Lucile Gruvelle, donated the studio’s paintings to his hometown of Barletta where they are housed in the Palace of the Marra.

Giuseppe De Nittis’ works are in many public collections, including the Musée d’Orsay, London’s British Museum and New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Philadelphia Museum of Art houses his 1875 “Return from the Races” and 1869 “The Connoisseurs”. In September of 2022, the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. held the first exhibition devoted to the work of Giuseppe De Nittis in the United States.

Edward Willis Redfield

Edward Willis Redfield, “The Burning of Center Bridge”, 1923, Oil on Canvas, 127.6 x 142.9 cm, James A. Michener Art Museum, Doyelstown, Pennsylvania

Primarily a landscape painter, Edward Willis Redfield was acclaimed as the most “American” artist of the New Hope school because of his vigor and individualism. Redfield favored the technique of painting en plein air, that is, outdoors amid nature. Tying his canvas to a tree, He worked in even the most brutal weather. Painting rapidly, in thick, broad brushstrokes, and without attempting preliminary sketches, Redfield typically completed his paintings in one sitting.

In 1923 Redfield created the nocturnal scene that would be recognized as one of his most important works. “The Burning of Center Bridge” depicts the 1923 fire that destroyed the bridge connecting Center Bridge, Pennsylvania, with Stockton, New Jersey. Although Redfield took notes on an envelope as he observed the scene, he departed from his practice of capturing a landscape en plein air and painted the scene when he returned to his studio.

Within two days, Redfield created this canvas, which captures the heroic efforts of firemen trying to extinguish the fire as spectators stand by helplessly watching the burning wooden structure glow against a black sky filled with plumes of smoke. The destruction of the region’s oldest Delaware River covered bridge was a monumental event for local residents. News of the incident appeared in the Washington Post and in the headlines of the local Bucks County Intelligencer, which recounted the drama of 25 firemen falling into the river as they fought the fire while “the banks of the river were lined with a crowd aggregating thousands of spectators.”

Károly Ferenczy

Paintings by Károly Ferenczy

Top to Bottom Images: “Joseph Being Sold into Slavery”, 1900; “The Return of the Prodigal Son”, 1908; “Orpheus”, 1894

Károly Ferenczy was a Hungarian painter and leading member of the Nagybánya artists’ colony. He was among several artists who went to Munich for study in the late nineteenth century, where he attended free classes by the Hungarian painter, Simon Hollósy. Upon his return to Hungary, Ferenczy helped found the Nagybánya artists colony in 1896, and became one of its major figures. Ferenczy is considered the “father of Hungarian impressionism and post-impressionism” and the “founder of modern Hungarian painting.”