|
vintage art |
|
Print Size: approx: 9-1/2"x 12-3/4" Blank on Reverse |
Condition: This image is in excellent condition. Please see scan below for any imperfections. Margins are not shown due to scanner limitations. Margins may (or may not) include slight finger dents, tanning, or very small stains. 1939 reproduction of an antique painting. Printed in 1939 by Conde Nast Engravers/Press. This print is from a 1939 art journal.
This beautiful old antique/vintage picture would look awesome matted and framed!.
Subject: Portrait of woman in hat, color, coloured, colored.
Title, Artist, and Subject information from Text-The text page will also be included with the print.
THE AMAZON
GUSTAVE COURBET (French School)
ABOUT 1850, when the fight between the classics and romantics was still waging in France, and to express an opinion on painting was to take sides with Ingres against Delacroix, or the other way round, two men appeared who gave the immediate impulse to the technical revolt known as impressionism. These two, Courbet and Manet, in their point of view, differed little from Velasquez and Hals: both were accomplished workmen; both realists, both indisposed to consider the psychological issues that disturbed men's souls.
Courbet, the older, was a peasant of independent means, a defiant showman from Ornans, and to the aristocratic Delacroix, who admired his painting but deplored his manners, an overconfident vulgarian. He was immensely talented, but his lusty scenes from plebeian life were officially excoriated as the work of a socialist, and he was ostracized by the Salon. He retaliated with blatant hostility; recruited his young disciples who called him Master, and became a deputy in the Commune, with foolish dreams of making himself the dictator of art after the example of David. This was more than France could tolerate in an artist, and when the Communards were overthrown, Courbet was chased out of the country into Switzerland, where he died in disgrace.
Courbet used, or allowed to be used in his behalf, for the first time in painting, the word realism. When asked to paint a religious picture, he roared with laughter. "Show me an angel," he exclaimed, in a remark now famous, "and I will paint one! Painting is an art of sight!" He intended to say that, to a modern Frenchman, religious imagery was dead, an allegory, a farce; and his doctrine, as expounded quietly by Daumier, was the best of good sense. Courbet was ambitious to restore to painting the vitality of the old art which, he swore, had been lost because artists had been slaves to precedent. He had animal spirits and a sensual relish for work and for battle: the man was alive, and if he was not moved by the loftier problems of the spirit, at least he could see clearly. His smaller nudes, portraits, and landscapes are extraordinarily masculine, most of them sane and delectably painted, the best of them powerful. The Amazon, of 1856, a portrait of Louise Colet, remembered for her literary feuds and friendships rather than her writings, is a sober study, painted with directness and integrity, not too literal in its insistence on realism, yet of striking verisimilitude in contrast to the portraits of his classical opponents.
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Other Information: This auction is for a vintage print, printed on paper, printed in the year or period specified-Guaranteed. Art prints may be larger or smaller than the size of the digital image scan. Please see the image and print sizes listed near the top of this auction. Some prints may be off center, or have somewhat uneven edges. Any trimming of prints is left to the buyer. We leave all prints in original (as found) condition. Our scanner works very well and will actually intensify any imperfections on a print. Feel free to use the "ask seller a question" link. We do not post questions and answers in our auctions.