Claude Monet
You probably heard about Oscar Claude Monet (1840-1926), but it is very likely his first name is new to you. His parents called him only by his first name, by the way, but this is not the only interesting trivia from a long and fruitful life of the most influential impressionist. So here I prepared a few more interesting …
Facts about Claude Monet
His father Claude Adolphe wanted him to become part of the home grocery business, but little Claude wanted to become an artist. He was not a good pupil, instead of listening to he preferred to draw caricatures of his professors and other kids.
He was so good he started to sell charcoal caricatures at 15 years of age. At about 22 he met Renoir, Bazille, and Sisley, all students of Charles Gleyre and they together started a discussion about light, colors, and a possibility to catch the moment of truth, what eventually led to Impressionism.
If you didn’t know, the term was coined by Louis Leroy (1812-1885), when he said he saw only impressions, not finished paintings, at the first exhibition of Monet (his painting Impression, Sunrise initiate the name of whole artistic movement) and his colleagues in 1874.
This is the painting which gave the name to Impressionism. Louis Leroy satirically commented it with 'wallpaper is more finished than this seascape'. But the new approach where the painter focused on colors and lights proved to be interesting enough for the audience the Impressionism grew into so important art movement it extended its influence from the field of visual arts to music and literature as well.
Monet was an extremely productive artist and although he for some time struggled with money so much he even tried to commit suicide by jumping into the Seine, he eventually became so successful he could buy his own house with some land and at certain moment employed seven gardeners. Nature under controlled circumstances was his favorite subject for painting and water lilies the most popular motif of all. He could paint the same scene dozen or more times, all at different times of day, year, in different weather conditions, etc. Here is a very small example in no particular order:
Claude Monet: Water Lilies Series
He painted water lilies from about 1895 to 1925 and we can find paintings from different eras in all major museums all over the world.
Monet’s paintings are among the most expensive artworks in human history. Several of them were stolen more than once and their price could surpass tens of millions of dollars. The last from the series of water lillies, for instance, was sold for 80 million dollars!
It’s interesting to note impressionistic paintings are in general among the most costly pieces of canvasses ever. Maybe because they were initially created and promoted by unconventional minds who believed in their right to think differently?
Or maybe because impressionism doesn’t really care about reality, because, there is no one? It’s only the moment, the one, unique and unrepeatable moment, which could be only caught into a perspective of a skilled master?
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was a great Hungarian musician and composer, maybe the best pianist of all times, who left an impressive legacy of hundreds of compositions and arrangements. He showed unbelievable talent at a very early age and this to great content marked his life.
Here are some interesting facts about Franz Liszt:
A child prodigy
His grandfather and father were multi-instrumentalists. Franz’s father Adam started to teach his son to play the piano when he was seven years old and he started making simple compositions only a year after.
By the age of nine, he was already so good he could perform in concerts. At eleven his first composition was published and he wrote his first (and only) opera at thirteen years.
Several wealthy people offered to sponsor his private education and his father Adam decided to leave service at Prince Esterhazy (he was his secretary) to focus all his energy on developing son’s talents.
Franz got lessons from several great music teachers including Antonio Salieri, the great rival of another prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Although young Liszt’s talent was widely recognized and appreciated, his attempt to enroll in Paris conservatory was denied because he was a foreigner. His father died when Franz was fifteen and this was a huge trauma for the teenager.
He lived in Paris in a small apartment with his mother for the next few years. Franz earned money with teaching piano and composition. He sometimes worked from early morning to late night.
He started drinking and smoking, what accompanied him for the rest of his life. He also met many great names of classical music (which was contemporary at those times). When Franz Liszt played with Niccolo Paganini, he decided to become such virtuoso on the piano as Paganini on the violin.
He learned and improved the technique from the best players of the time, who perfected the playing of this instrument. One of them was Frederic Chopin, another superb piano player and composer. He also transcribed Berlioz’s Symphony Fantastique to popularize it through performances and help the destitute composer to finally publish now famous composition.
Private life
When he was 22, he met Comtesse Marie d’Agoult, a French writer who was then married to Comte d’Agoult and already had two kids. Franz and Marie lived together for four years and had three children in this period.
They never married and due to his increasing obligations with touring slowly estranged. However, they spent the holidays for the next few years together until in 1844 they finally ended their relationship.
This is also the time of so-called Lisztmania, with screaming and fainting women at his concerts. Majority of his earning had gone for different charity projects.
His playing skills were so outrageous, cartoonists portrayed him with four hands. He also made several influential friendships. Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein was definitely one of the most influential persons in his life, convincing him to stop touring and focus on composing only.
Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia invited him to visit and stay at Weimar, where he became a conductor, wrote many of his most important musical pieces and started a friendship with Richard Wagner which lasted to the end of Wagner’s life.
Liszt’s daughter Cosima even married Richard in 1870 and as one of his most important inspirations became the greatest promoter of his works after his death.
Meanwhile, Liszt tried to marry Carolyne, but their attempt failed due to the incompletion of her divorce papers. Two of his children died in a span of three years and he retreated to a monastery at Rome.
For the rest of his life, he spent most of time conducting, inventing new musical forms and traveling from Rome to Budapest and Weimar. In July 1881 he fell down the stairs and never fully recovered. About four weeks and a series of medical complications later he died of pneumonia.
Although Liszt authored about 400 compositions and made around 900 arrangements, this is probably his most famous piece of music:
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 was so hugely popular the author eventually became fed up with it and stopped performing it. As we can say it is written not only as a piece to listen, it is very attractive to perform as well.
Some other pieces are known by very spectacular and demanding techniques like long left-hand intervals and hand crossings. Before we stray too far into the details, we’ll just say good-by and thanks, Franz Liszt!
Angelica Kauffmann, an artist and a pioneer of women emancipation
Angelica Kauffmann was probably the most famous female artist of the 18th century. She was extremely popular portraitist, portraying European royalty and other affluent people, historical painter and engraver, whose style can be described as neoclassicism with a dash of rococo. Her works were thanks to engravings and many forgeries well-known in numerous homes across Europe. Her sayings were quoted, her dressing style copied, her beauty and intellect praised. Even at the twilight of her artistic career, this Swiss-born Austrian was still so famous, her funeral was directed (by a sculptor Antonio Canova)!
A wunderkind
Angelica (sometimes Angelika) Kauffmann (for most of her life signed as Kaufman) was a child prodigy. Thanks to her mother Cleophea she learned four languages before the age of ten (German, Italian, English, French).
But it was her father, Joseph Johann, a muralist, who introduced her into the world of art. He traveled a lot and Angelica accompanied and assisted him as a kid. At twelve years she already had her first commissions for portraits.
At fifteen she painted wall decorations in churches while her father did the frescoes. Her talent couldn’t stay unnoticed. When she stayed in Italy for a few years, she became very popular among visitors from England. A wife of English Ambassador in Venice invited her to England, where she soon earned enough money with portraying to buy a house.
There she could focus on her biggest passion – historical painting (like the one of Esop and Rhodope about), which was at the time considered as one of the most demanding artistic skills.
Why? The artist had to be very well educated in history and literature and had superb technique, what was especially hard for women, who were not allowed to study male nudes.
When Angelika moved to England, she was already an elected member of art academies in Bologna, Venice, Firenze and Rome (a great achievement for a lady and she was also among the youngest members in history). Thanks to the promotion of Sir Joshua Reynolds she also became one of the founding members of Royal Academy.
She was one of only two women (the other was a portraitist Mary Moser) and they stayed the only ones for the next two centuries!
But we should know painting, where she excelled, was not something that she took for granted. In 1792 she even painted a picture where she portrayed a dilemma which she faced after her mother’s death.
Music or painting? She wasn’t only skilled with a paintbrush (and etching), she was also a very talented musician with a beautiful soprano.
An emancipation
Although the art was one of the rare areas where women could ‘compete’ with men, Angelica Kauffman had to overcome many obstacles to live and work as she wanted. In the first years her father was her manager, but after her move to England, she married a man who soon proved to be an imposter (she married him believing he was a rich Swedish Count Frederick de Horn but was only a servant, and he was actually already married!) and the young couple became estranged after only a few weeks.
She had many friends and was a non-stop targeted by gossips. Although her name was connected with several famous artists, it is very hard to prove who was really her lover, if any. Nevertheless, she was constantly involved in all sorts of scandals but dealt with them quite effectively.
When, for example, Nathaniel Hone included her fictitious act in a satirical picture where he mocked her friendship with Reynolds, she openly demanded from him to cover the female character with paint and he had to obey that.
There were also other interesting situations. When Johann Zoffany made a commemorative painting of Academicians of Royal Academy, it was decided the founding members should be portrayed around a nude male model, what was inappropriate for ladies. So Moser and Kauffmann were included as – portraits on hanging pictures!
When she married for the second time (after the death of her first husband), she chose another painter, Antonio Zucchi, who also became her manager, but they signed a special contract which guaranteed her to control the money she earned (in the 17th century a wife was legally treated almost as a husband’s property and so was her money).
Strong, focused, yet still feminine Angelika Kaufman became one of the role models for women for centuries to come. Of course, she inspired men as well. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (in her portrait below), one of her close friends described her as probably the smartest woman of the century.
If you want to find more about Angelica Kauffmann, the web is full of interesting facts about her (this site is probably best to start for further investigations) and there are also many more or less fact-based books about her life. Kauffman’s life and works are definitely worth to explore.
The unsuccessful definition of jazz
"If you have to ask what is jazz, you’ll never know.”
Louis Armstrong
Jazz is the music genre which is probably hardest of all to define. We can pretty safely presume the history of jazz started at the end of 19th century in southern parts of the USA, we can relate its origins to several other music genres like marches, gospels, blues, and quadrilles, but still can’t provide a good definition.
We know there are some elements, which are more characteristic for jazz than any other kind of music. These are syncopations (kind of disturbances in the rhythm), polyrhythms (use of more rhythms which are in conflict) and of course improvisation (derived from one of the most basic patterns coming from Western African origins and called call-and-response).
So instead of trying to write what is jazz, I will only provide a few interesting facts – to amuse and confuse:
1. The meaning of word jazz is almost so unclear as of the history of this music. There are many explanations, but it seems it is closely related to indecent behavior. The phrase ‘to jazz’ can be translated as ‘to cheat’ or ‘to fornicate’, ‘jazzer’ is ‘lover’, ‘jazz baby’ is ‘woman of easy virtue’ and ‘jazzing’ meant ‘to sleep around’. Coded words are not surprising if we think about the black slaves who used to work on a plantation, singing songs and often incorporated hidden messages about their hopes and also plans to escape.
2. Jazz started as a music of black people, outcasts, rebels, poor, … It is inseparable from some major points in the history of USA. We can connect it to New Orleans which is still considered the world capital of jazz, to prohibition and gangsters in Chicago, to women’s right to vote (and before that to drink, smoke, and dress like men), to the end of World War 2, big swing bands and so on. Today it is kind of elitist music – most popular among well educated and affluent people.
3. If we have to choose one, the most characteristic instrument of jazz music, this would be a saxophone, named after Adolphe Sax, an instrument maker from Belgium. It’s interesting to note it was only used first around 1920 in jazz orchestra and was until then considered more as part of inventory in classical arrangements and chamber music.
For the end, let’s enjoy one of the classic jazz pieces: George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in Original Jazz Band version.
Well, this can be of course described as a jazzy interpretation of classical music (with an orchestra with several classic instruments), but these controversies are the part of the charm of the jazz music. Se what I mean?
Impressionism: it all started with a few rebels
What is impressionism and why we should care?
Impressionism is a name of the artistic movement which started in second half of 19th century in France among painters and soon expanded in other countries and other artistic areas. The name was coined as a mocking word by art critic and satiric Louis Leroy who used the title of the painting Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant) by Monet for it.
This is definitely not the only interesting trivia related to impressionism, but first, let’s look at the main circumstances which helped the formation of impressionism:
– During the 19th century, many things changed in the political and economic sphere in Europe and France was no exception; Academie des Beaux-Arts served as kind of guardian of tradition and preferred traditional art and traditional techniques to new ones. Well, artists are rebels by definition, so a clash between the older, established representatives and younger ones was to expect. A lot of artists came from lower social classes and there were more and more women among them.
– Group of young painters (Bazille, Monet, Renoir, Sisley and occasionally others, among which Cezanne, Degas, and Manet are most known names today) loved to experiment with brighter and more eye-catching new color pigments. They used them to portray contemporary life and often painted outdoors, where they found a lot of inspiration in uneven light and movement of painted objects.
– The main annual event in France was the exhibition in so-called Salon (Salon de Paris), where painters commissioned their new works and a special jury awarded (or rejected) them. The group mentioned above was often rejected.
– Things started changing after a rejection of Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass. The reason was nude among clothed what was a contemporary scene, not a historical or mythological which were in favor of the jury. When Emperor Napoleon III saw the painting, he ordered to make an exhibition of rejected arts. Although many visitors went to this exhibition only to ridicule the artists, this exhibition achieved greater popularity than the traditional Salon.
– Encouraged by this and with similar problems in next years, the painters (they were not called Impressionists then) decided to establish their own exhibition in 1874. Already mentioned Leroy used the title of Monet’s painting to deride painters as Impressionists, as being unable to present clear scene. The Impression was just an impression, a mere sketch, not a finished work, by his opinion.
– The term soon became popular and the same happened to the Impressionists. They used a set of different techniques which were already in use by other artists, but not to such degree. This includes visual traces of the paintbrush (no go in a classic school), so-called broken color technique (instead of brown, mixed from red and green, they applied red next to brow, what caused much more energetic feeling), when they applied layers of paint, they didn’t wait for each layer to be dried up, they avoided black color and used for instance blue for shadows, or mix of complementary colors to make look of gray, the used much lighter colored ground …
– Effect of impressionism was impressive (pun intended). Art stopped depicting only classical scenes, so an artist was not obligated to have a high degree of education. Art was produced much faster, it became more available to a wide audience and it started to spontaneously celebrate life right here, right now. We can say it was kind of a by-product of the Industrial Revolution.
– Many painting styles were started by Impressionism. Abstract-Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, Neo-Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism are only some of them. Although some of the most expensive paintings in the world were made by Impressionists, the majority of Impressionists didn’t earn much with their work in their lifetime. But without a doubt, they changed the art forever.
Homer
Who was Homer? When we mention his name Iliad and Odyssey immediately come to one’s mind. Homer is without a doubt the most famous poet of antiquity. Unfortunately, we can’t say much about his life and work. Everything is far from facts and is based on many speculations.
While Homer is often called the father of the epic, in recent years there is a new perspective on his work from the rhetoric point of view. If we use the old and through history most often used definitions of rhetoric, we can’t deny strong persuasive and expressive potential of Homer’s works, so we could actually attach him additional label: the father of rhetoric.
Homer and his guides by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905)
Here are some points to keep in mind:
1. He probably lived around 12 century BC, maybe around 7th century BC or somewhere in between, or not at all. In this case, it would be interesting to find the real author of his masterpieces, not only Iliad and Odyssey, but his very influential speeches as well.
I personally like a piece from the 20th century SF novel The Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein, where the major character mentions a historian who devoted his whole life to prove all Homer’s works were written by another guy, who was also named Homer.
2. Homer’s origin is completely unclear. We can find very different and sometimes colorful allusions of his birthplace from being a Babylonian prisoner and his name was actually taken from homeros (Greek for hostage) to being a son of a nymph.
But their also the assumption the word Homer was used for every blind street poet in his days. According to his works he was very likely personally familiar with some of the locations in his works (especially with Troy), so it is safe to presume he was from one of the places he wrote about, Chioa and Ionia are among the favorites for this privilege.
Hector and Ajax by John Flaxman (1855-1926)
3. Iliad is officially the oldest work of Western literature. It was very likely written between 750 and 650 BC. Odyssey is probably several decades younger. Some people believe, both epics were written by many different authors and later compiled by some sort of editor.
Certain inconsistency and breaks in transitions from one part of the epic to another, support this theory, but very consistent style suggests there was only one, although not necessarily the same author for each of the poems.
We still have a dilemma if the author of both epics was the same because they differ by genre, style, and many details, but this could be caused by being written by the same person as younger and older author.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is by quality and impact of his work compared with Dante, Homer, Shakespeare and other immortals.
He was not only an artist, he studied law, just like many other famous writers (Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, Jean de La Fontaine, …) During his legal studies he took drawing lessons and when he moved from Leipzig to Strassbourg, he started to study medicine as well. He was also deeply interested in poetry and occultism. He later studied architecture, botany, mineralogy, and optics too. For several years he was the minister of state in fields of agriculture, horticulture, and mining. He was benighted by Emperor Joseph II and helped planning a botanical part in Weimar and reforming the University of Jena.
Apart from extreme productivity, it seems he was very good at bad things turned into good ones. When for instance French army occupied his birth town Frankfurt, he used the situation to improve French and learned a lot about theatre because with the army came a theatrical group.
Problems with lungs forced him to change his lifestyle and almost two years of recovery changed his playful artistic expression to more serious and introspective. In a way, we can say his illness helped him to mature as a person and artist. At the end of a recovery period, he also moved to Strasbourg where he met Johann Gottfried von Herder, who helped him to develop an interest in architecture and introduced him to new literary works.
He was not only productive, he showed some remarkable consistency, what is clearly seen in Faust, his lifetime project, which he had written and rewritten for decades with part two published only after his death.
During his life, Goethe met many important people, but let’s try to focus on ladies only.
Here are some remarkable women of Goethe’s life:
1. Between 1765 and 1768 in Leipzig he wrote a lot of poetry which was inspired by Anna (Annette) Katharina Schnkopf. She was a daughter of a wine merchant in whose tavern Goethe dined. These poems (the collection was titled Annette) were published anonymously and were rediscovered only in 1895.
2. During his years in Strasbourg, he was in love with pastor’s daughter Friederike Brion, who inspired many lyrics too, but the most important character she inspired was definitely Gretchen in Faust.
3. When he ended legal studies and moved to Wetzlar to learn his profession at empire supreme courts, he fell in love with Charlotte Buff, who rejected him and married one of his acquaintances (they had twelve kids together). Goethe was so deeply in love, he actually bought rings, but everything ended pretty miserably for him (he was on the edge of suicide) and pretty good for world literature. His love to Charlotte inspired The Sorrows of Young Werther (the title character was in love with Lotte, who was engaged with somebody else), Goethe’s first bestseller, one of greatest works in world literature and is caused a lot of controversies because it probably encouraged many young men to commit suicides.
4. Only one year after Sorrows of Young Werther’s publishing Goethe found new great love. Her name was Lili Schneemann and her father was a banker. A young couple got engaged but Goethe realized him and her world can’t mix, so he resigned. At least three beautiful love poems resulted from his short-lived obsession with Lili: New Love, a new Life, To Belinda and On the Lake.
5. Goethe served as a high state officer for twelve years (he even became the president of Treasury) in Weimar where his lover was Charlotte von Stein, who was married and had seven kids with somebody else. The relationship was not so emotional as some at an earlier age, but we can’t deny her influence on Goethe’s artistic development. She was seven years older than him after all. He produced much more sophisticated works.
6. Their relationship lasted ten years, but the woman of his life was actually long-time mistress and mother of his son Julius August Walther. Her name was Christiane Vulpius, she was sixteen years younger and they lived together ‘in sin’ for eighteen years before they married. She certainly influenced Goethe’s works too and Roman Elegies (Erotica Romana), often censored collection of highly erotic songs, is only one of them.
Christiane portrayed by Goethe (he produced about three thousand drawings!)
7. Even in later years, he didn’t stop falling in love. He was already 70 years old when Austrian dances and actress Marianne von Willemer (who was exactly half younger) served as a model of Suleika in the cycle of lyrics titled West-Eastern Diwan. By the way, she was married too.
8. And there was Baroness Ulrike von Levetzow, who was only 17 when they first met. Goethe’s passion, which he tried to convert in marriage (but was rejected) eventually resulted in Trilogy of Passion with several immortal songs. Ulrike was last love of this great man and the final answer to the probably most important question about him:
What was Goethe’s greatest obsession: art, science or nature?
Well, I think it was love!
