For your beautiful minds, DUers...the Friday Afternoon Challenge! Today: “The ‘Fabric’ of Art!”

[CTyankee]

You “know” the artworks where you will find these wonderful fabrics, don’t you?

Just don’t cheat and guess...it’s really not OK...

1.
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2.
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3.
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4.
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5.
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6.
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[Kurovski]

1. Last one: The laundress, by degas? 2nd one the stolen kiss? Fargnard?

[CTyankee]

7. correct on 2 but problems on the other...

[Kurovski]

14. How is it spelled, "Fragnard."?

I

[CTyankee]

17. you are missing a vowel...

[Kurovski]

22. "Fragnaurd" ?

I wonder if anyone knows the rest of his name?

[CTyankee]

25. I do. It is Fragonard.

[cthulu2016]

46. I doubt that is a Fragonard

You can't see up anyone's dress.

<a joke on the fact that his best-known paintings are those rather vulgar "up-skirt" pin-ups>

[CTyankee]

49. Yeah, but he was famous for his silver-gray satin, too! This thing is fabulous. That scarf...

As for "up the skirt" no one takes the cake like Boucher. Even I don't post some of his stuff...the girls are just too young and I won't do it...

"The Swing" is different. I like the sly humor of it.

[Kurovski]

2. the fifth one is manet, it was stored away for a long time

can't remember name. I saw it in real life, tho. Very large!


or did I make the perrenial Manet/Monet mistake?

[CTyankee]

15. where did you see this? Not Manet, BTW...

[Kurovski]

27. A show at the art institute in Chicago.

It is Renoir!? The style is different from his later works. i think it was kept as rent, or for a debt for a time. in two-three pieces.

I was stunned to see how large "dance at Bouvigalle" (sp)? was. Gorgeous, a spin caught forever in mid-turn. Very sexy stuff.

[CTyankee]

30. no Manet, no Renoir.

I saw "dance at Bouvigalle" too, but at the MFA in Boston. You are right, it's a biggie...I saw it with a couple of other full length dancers by Renoir...I got too close and had the guard yell at me...

[Kurovski]

36. Claude Monet?

[CTyankee]

37. well, if so, the painting?

[Kurovski]

39. "Three Amigos"

"The Picnic" does not sound french. "Petit dejuiner", better, but I can't guess. I remember someone leaning against a tree, but I'm not certain he had a teacup and saucer.

[Kurovski]

3. Is the third one a french painter?

[Kurovski]

4. Is the first one a portrait of a Medici family member?

[CTyankee]

12. I have no idea...

[cthulu2016]

5. I know 6 is by a short man. (love the painting)

I think 3 and 5 are by impressionists with last names names beginning with R and M.

[Kurovski]

8. Does tge "R" man have an "A" first?

And is it a painting of Madame "R".

Was "R"'s son a filmaker?

[CTyankee]

13. research, research, research...

[Kurovski]

20. I love Jean's book about his life with his father.

R was my favorite as a child. I copied one when I was eight. "The terrace" i think it's named. it's in the Art Institute.- Thank you Mrs. Potter Palmer!

R instructed the maids not to lean spiderwebs, but to leave them as they captured the annoying flies.

[CTyankee]

23. Jean's father is not here so...

[Kurovski]

29. But, still french?

The emroiderer, or tatter mater?

[CTyankee]

31. I don't know what she is doing...but I don't do handiworks...so...

[Kurovski]

35. did she do it in front of a french artist?

By any chance?

[CTyankee]

38. now, now...look at her dress (what you can see)...what era?

[Kurovski]

42. Gee... William and Mary?

English or American

[CTyankee]

43. I see what you are saying but it is not English or American...sorry...

[cthulu2016]

24. I was assuming the painter's son was a film-maker, but that was wrong.

I think the M was a fan of lilies, though this would be an earlier work.

[CTyankee]

26. no film-maker's dad.

[CTyankee]

10. try hard...

[Kurovski]

11. Is the pavement on the road too loose to trek?

[CTyankee]

19. I've heard that...

where have you seen this "pavement"?

[Kurovski]

21. On property owned by a count i believe.

[Kurovski]

6. Is the fourth painting by a Dutch artist?

[CTyankee]

9. no dutch guy this time...

[pinboy3niner]

16. #6: Toulouse-Lautrec - The Laundress. nt

[CTyankee]

18. this one was popular! Good show, Pinboy!

[marions ghost]

28. No. 1 is Bellini

Portrait of Doge
Giovanni Bellini, 1503-04
London, National Gallery

---

[CTyankee]

32. Hey, did you see this in the National Gallery? I just love it...

[marions ghost]

33. Possible, a long time ago tho

I saw the jacket fabric and style and figured it had to have a strong Italian face on top of it....

Yes, that is a fabulous portrait.

[Kurovski]

34. So far only one winner on the "where"?

I could only guess on these, which is against the rules.

I saw one of them, but not in its original home, only on tour.

[CTyankee]

41. "where" refers to the actual work...not the nationality.

[Kurovski]

44. I thought it meant gallery!

Don't play and make dinner at the same time, I say from here on out!

I just could not resist, as it has been a year since I last caught this thread.

Pot roast, ho!

[CTyankee]

47. Oh, sorry! I don't want to ruin a pot roast! You are a great sport!

[cthulu2016]

40. re: #4... something about the history of painting

Painting different things was a progressive technology. Shiny fabric was well systematized here, as well as cunning little metal objects.

But the glass vase is painted in terms of what a person would assume glass looks like, given its known properties. It displays few of the visual features of real glass. It is not observed, and it doesn't not follow formulas derived from observation.

And that dates the painting. Seeing a thing represented in two dimensions is a shortcut to representing the thing in two dimensions, so this painter was not working within a cultural tradition of realistic paintings of glass.

[CTyankee]

45. I think it is typical of this era. For instance, you can see windows reflected in the glass vase.

Not unknown in this era, for sure...

[cthulu2016]

53. You mean the era of the painting?

The point is that painting glass has eras at all. We (culturally) do not tend to think of painting as a progressive technology. We like to think of it springing from an individual imagination.

But artists study effects, and effects advanced over time in a broad cultural way.

The glass here is deduced, as was the case for a long long time. We know that glass is clear, it has highlights, it reflects.

But what can only be observed, because it is not intellectually obvious, is refraction, the effects of the thickness of the glass, and the lack of graduated effects. Glass, like chrome, is actually full of very sharp delineations of light and dark, which is counter intuitive.

See the smooth gradation of light on the left of the vase? The way the glass look like a soap bubble... surrounding space but lacking material volume... the way the highlights are white on light, rather than white surrounded by dark.

These are how a cartoonist would depict glass... a symbolic representation of glass. On the other hand, the little pipe thingy (?) on the right is admirably naturalistic.

The shiny fabric is probably not observed from life so much as constructed, because the art of abstracted depiction of fabric was very sophisticated... while that of glass was not.

And these techniques are technologies. You only have to see it done a few times to "get it," but few can invent it. And it looks right to the audience because they read the symbol of glass and they haven't seen it done naturalisticaly either.

Anyway, the point is that an academic painting can have realistic fabrics with unrealistic glass, and that places the painting in time. We tend to view paintings as products of an artist more than products of an international culture of painting, but they were very much both.

No realist painter today would paint that vase that way, but they would aspire to paint the fabric that way.

Some art schools taught "folds" as rigorously as anatomy. You could spend a year on folds in fabric. Very systematized and -- because cloth is not surprising in the way glass is -- the developed system of folds (which are more perfect than folds in real life) ended up looking very realistic.

A comparable system for glass and chrome did not exist yet. Glass and chrome are so surprising that the systems for rendering them (think airbrush renderings of new cars) were not perfected before photography.

[CTyankee]

56. Yep, "crude reflection" indeed. We think we see that when we actually don't...

Caravaggio does this with his own reflection in "Sick Bacchus."

When you speak about "folds" I get the whole thing in the Fragonard work. It is gorgeous. The skirt, the top train, the scarf she is reaching for...it is a lovely representation...I wish I had fabrics that beautiful, but of course what would I do with them?

But, oh, my...silver grey satin...is there anything more beautiful...

[cthulu2016]

58. If you look through the Dover catalogue

they probably have (or had) some 19th or 18th century drawing manuals on folds. It's very sytematized... the five (or 8 or 12) basic forms of folds, the shadows cast within each... where the highlights fall on satin. It's like an engineering text.

Even Bridgeman's anatomy (a very modern work) ends with chapters on folds.

And since it was something there was a very good system for (and looks harder to do than it is) artists went nuts with folds and fabrics. It was isolated technique... something to do when the model went home.

So from DaVinci to Ingres (to deLempicka) we sae fabric upon fabric upon fabric. It was something they were really good at, and they knew it.

But as convincing as it all is, it is not naturalistic. It is better than nature. Artists were trained to paint folds, not wrinkles. Each little fold is purposeful.

[CTyankee]

64. Interesting art history! I knew nothing of this but I doubt if the Rococo was meant to be

naturalistic!

No wonder I was in such awe of deLimpicka, loving her luscious folds of satin.

So in art, according to what you are saying, our human eye is trained to be tricked? To see reality as not real at all? And so as modern art "modernizes" we are going along for the ride (which I suspected all along)?

[cbayer]

48. #3 looks like a Renoir. That's all I got!

[CTyankee]

50. Awww, no Renoir today...

Nice to see you, cbayer!

[cbayer]

51. I am so bad at this, but I sure like looking at it

just in case I see something I know.

Thank you, CTyankee, for doing this. It's pure DU gold.

[CTyankee]

54. And so are you! Thank you so much for the compliment!

[countryjake]

52. #5 is "Women in the Garden" by Claude Monet

At first, I thought it must be Camille because of the pose seated on the grass and the dark embroidery, but googled for portrait of Camille Monet and found the other after looking at hundreds of her.

[CTyankee]

55. Yes! Research is the key! It's a lovely garden work by Monet...

[Kurovski]

57. This one stumped me, I was certain it was part of this one...

My memory is lousy.




In the end the Dejeuner sur l'Herbe project proved too ambitious for Monet. The painting of spectacular proportions would never be completed, nor presented to the Salon as the artist had originally envisaged. He was encouraged, however, by all the young guard of contemporary painters, and he also received Courbet's sound advice. Furthermore, he paid tribute to Courbet by representing him in the picture: he is the figure on the left in this fragment. The painting, pawned in Fontainebleau, would be reclaimed by the artist in 1884 in poor condition. Monet cut it into pieces, and hence the right section of the picture has disappeared. In this fragment, the central part of the original work, the tall male figure standing is recognizable as Bazille, but we do not know the identity of the female figures.

[countryjake]

61. This one is the one that made me think of Monet...

and Camille:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2002.62.1

I've got that in one of my print books on Monet and another of her standing with very similar embroidery.

[Kurovski]

62. I've never seen that one. (nt)

[pinboy3niner]

59. #4: Hans Holbein the Younger - The Merchant Georg Gisze. nt

[CTyankee]

63. Pinboy, how did you get this one? I am in awe of you...but tell me your tale of exploration....

[pinboy3niner]

66. It took a while

I began searching for a classic art portrait of a tailor, based on the challenge theme and the thread box in the painting. I kept modifying the search terms to get more images I hadn't seen yet. I included the sleeve and shirt color early on, but that was no help.

I had avoided including "vase" in search terms for fear of turning up just a lot of statuary and Grecian urns and still lifes. But it was only when I added "vase," along with portrait and thread box, that I got lucky and found the painting. My next step would have been to look up tailor tools to find out the name of the tool on the table (it looks like something for smoothing seams).

btw, #3 also is one I've seen before, but so far having no luck with searches.

[CTyankee]

69. You are a patient genius, Pinboy! Good for you! I love Holbein...

[countryjake]

60. #4 is by that guy who painted Henry the VIII's court...

I think this may be Cromwell or maybe More but I can't remember the name of the artist and google has me cross-eyed after looking at all of those Monet's. Anyway, it must be somebody very rich with all of the velvet and satin. Red carnations are symbolic, too, maybe a guy who loves his money?

I gotta go fix supper, be back after the party is over.

[CTyankee]

65. Goodness! #3 is not guessed!

Think harder, folks...you'll get it soon...

[cthulu2016]

67. Well, we know it's a painting of Betsy Ross...

[CTyankee]

68. cthulu, tell me...I know you know...come on...give...

[cthulu2016]

70. I thought it was Renoir. I'm stumped.

But the Betsy Ross joke is funny when you look at what she is sewing.

[CTyankee]

71. Of course, she is a lady at her sewing, not someone intent on revolution (at least SHE wasn't)

so she might be a lady somewhere but not in Renoir's time...go back just a bit in your history...revolution brewed in this artist's time, too...

[CTyankee]

72. Here is the full painting of #3...this should help...

[IMG][/IMG]

[velvet]

73. ah well now, it's Goya

and according to wikimedia is a Portrait of Senora Ceán Bermudez.

I tried for Goya, among other suspects, based on the detail image, but somehow never found, or perhaps just blindly overlooked, the full painting.

He sure does rough, impatient things with lace and organza. I wonder what kind of needlework she's doing. Can't be plain sewing or embroidery with that cushion underneath. Maybe she's pricking out a design on paper.

[CTyankee]

74. good for you, velvet! The painting isn't well known. It is evidently in a museum in Budapest.

Actually, it's a bit clearer than a Velazquez painting of essentially the same subject, which I found interesting.

I am wondering if the reason Renoir was suspected as the painter is because Renoir (and other impressionists) were very influenced by some of goya's works?

On a side note, do you notice the similarity of the organza sash in #2 with the ribbon in the Goya? I note that Fragonard painted mid 18th century and the goya is dated 1795...

[entanglement]

75. Number 4 is surely Hans Holbein the Younger

reminds me very much of "The Ambassadors".

Number 2 is "The Stolen Kiss" by Fragonard.

Number 3 looks awfully familiar - Rococo era. "Madame Pompadour"? One of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun's works? I'm sure I've seen this before.

[CTyankee]

76. Yes, you have guessed correctly! See above for the correct guessing of Holbein and

Fragonard.

#3 is the last one guessed, but it too was correctly guessed as Goya, after I posted the entire painting. It was a fun "go" this past week...glad you could come by!

Back next Friday with another Challenge...hope to see you!