18C Women Around the World

Costumes de Differents Pays, by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (France, 1757-1810) c 1797 Hand-Colored Engraving from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

By the end of the 18C, worldwide exploration & colonization by Europeans were fairly commonplace, enabling the late 18C & 19C public to catch a glimpse of the clothing & customs of other peoples.

Women & Children by Frenchman Maurice Denis 1870-1943

 Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) La Grande Soeur Anne Marie Francois et sur La Plage

Maurice Denis was a French painter and theorist and a member of the Symbolist and Les Nabis movements. His theories contributed to the foundations of cubism, fauvism, and abstract art.

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) Child in a Red Dress 1898

Maurice Denis was born in Granville, Manche, a coastal town in the Normandy region of France. Waters and coastlines would remain favorite subject matter Throughout His career, as would material drawn from the Bible. As a teenager, Denis wrote, "Yes, it's Necessary That I am a Christian painter, That I celebrate all the miracles of Christianity, I feel it's necessary."  The Denis family was affluent, and young Maurice Both attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian, where he Studied with the French figure painter and theorist Jules Joseph Lefebvre.

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) The menuet de la Princesse Maleine 1891

At the Académie, he met painters and future Nabi members including Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel. In 1890, they formed The Nabis using the Hebrew word for prophet, Because They believed they would be creating new forms of expression. The group would split apart by the end of the decade but would influence the later work of Both Bonnard and Vuillard, as well as non-Nabi painters like Henri Matisse.

Denis went on to focus on religious subjects and murals. In 1922, he published His collected historical and theoretical work as New Theories of Modern Art and Sacred. He wrote, "... Symbolism is the art of translating and inducing states of soul by means of relations of colors and forms. These relations, invented or borrowed from Nature, become signs or symbols of These states of soul: they have the power to suggest them ... The Symbol claims to give rise straightway in the soul of the spectator to the whole gamut of human emotions by means of the gamut of colors and forms, or let us say, of sensations, Which Corresponds to them. "

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) Eva Meurier in Green Dress 1891

The subjects of His mature works include landscapes and figure studies, Particularly of mother and child. But His primary interest Remained the painting of religious subjects.

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) Portrait of a Small Girl

Denis was among the first artists to insist on the flatness of the picture plane-one of the great starting points for modernism, as Practiced in the visual arts. In 1890, he wrote, "Remember That a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order."  In 1898, he produced a theory of creation That found the source for art in the character of the painter: "That Which Creates a work of art is the power and the will of the artist."

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) Portrait d'Une Demoiselle Roussi

Denis married His first wife, Marthe Meurier, in 1893. They had seven children, and she and the children would pose for Denis Numerous works. Following her death in 1919, Denis painted a chapel dedicated to her memory. Two years later, he married again, to Elisabeth Graterolle, blackberries and fathered two children. Denis died in Paris of injuries resulting from an automobile accident in 1943.

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) Mother and Child 1895

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) The Baby 1898

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) The Crown of Daisies 1905

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) The Cuisiniere

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) The Cow Girl 1893

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) Portrait of Two Girls

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) The Two Sisters 1891

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) Yellow Cat 1915

Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) Anne Marie Denis

1902 Maurice Denis (French artist, 1870-1943) Maternite, Anne-Marie and Marthe in the Oval Bague

18C Women Around the World

Costumes de Differents Pays, by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (France, 1757-1810) c 1797 Hand-Colored Engraving from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

By the end of the 18C, worldwide exploration & colonization by Europeans were fairly commonplace, enabling the late 18C & 19C public to catch a glimpse of the clothing & customs of other peoples.

Women in his Family -Theo (Theophilus) van Rysselberghe (1862-1926)

 1918 Women in the Family Maria van Rysselberghe, the artist's wife

 1907 Theo (Theophilus) van Rysselberghe (Belgian artist, 1862 to 1926) Maria van Rysselberghe, the artist's wife

 1907 Theo (Theophilus) van Rysselberghe (Belgian artist, 1862 to 1926) Maria van Rysselberghe, the artist's wife

 1900 Theo (Theophilus) van Rysselberghe (Belgian artist, 1862 to 1926) Mrs Monnon, the artist's mother-in-law

 1908 Theo (Theophilus) van Rysselberghe (Belgian artist, 1862 to 1926) Mrs Monnon, the artist's mother-in-law

 1915 Theo (Theophilus) van Rysselberghe (Belgian artist, 1862 to 1926) Elisaeth van Rysselberghe, Seated the artist's daughter, Her Hands on the Table

 1916 Theo (Theophilus) van Rysselberghe (Belgian artist, 1862 to 1926) Elisaeth van Rysselberghe, the artist's daughter

 1926 Theo (Theophilus) van Rysselberghe (Belgian artist, 1862 to 1926) Maria van Rysselberghe, the artist's wife

 1926 Theo (Theophilus) van Rysselberghe (Belgian artist, 1862 to 1926) Elisaeth van Rysselberghe, the artist's daughter

18C Women Around the World

Costumes de Differents Pays, by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (France, 1757-1810) c 1797 Hand-Colored Engraving from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

By the end of the 18C, worldwide exploration & colonization by Europeans were fairly commonplace, enabling the late 18C & 19C public to catch a glimpse of the clothing & customs of other peoples.

Women by Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941)

 1902 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Young Woman with Lilacs

Alexej von Jawlensky was born in Russia. At the age of ten he moved with his family to Moscow. After a few years of military training, he became interested in painting, visiting the Moscow World Exposition c. 1880. Thanks to his good social connections, he managed to get himself posted to St. Petersburg and, from 1889 to 1896, studied at the art academy there, while also discharging his military duties.

 1909 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Inclined Head

I was taken to see the 1880 World Exhibition in Moscow (in 1880, ed.). I found it all very boring. But when I came to a section devoted to art – there were only paintings, and this was the first time of my life (16 years old) I had seen paintings – I was so deeply affected that it was a case of Saul becoming Paul. It was the turning point of my life. Even since then art has been my ideal, my holy of holies, that for which my entire soul and my entire self yearn.

 1910 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Dark Blue Turban

 1910 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Helene in Colored Turban

 1910 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Lady in Yellow Staw Hat

In the spring of 1911 Marianne von Werefkin (his study-mate in Russia and his art muse for 15 years, ed.) Andrei, Helene and I went to Prerow on the Baltic. For me that summer meant a great step forward in my art. I painted my finest landscapes there as well as large figure paintings in powerful, glowing colours and not at all naturalistic or objective. I used a great deal of red, blue, orange, cadmium yellow and chromium-oxide green. My forms were very strongly contoured in Prussian blue, and came with tremendous power from an inner ecstasy. ‘der Buckel’, ‘Violetter Turban’, ‘Selbstporträt’…were created in this way. It was a turning-point in my art. It was in these years, up to 1914, just before the war, that I painted my most powerful works, referred to as the pre-war works.

 1911 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Spanish Woman

 1911 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Violet Turban

 1912 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Blue Cap

 1913 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Earth

 1913 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Woman with Black Hair

 1916 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Dreaming Head

 1916 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Neoplitan Girl

At first I intended to carry on working in St. Prex (in Switzerland, around 1914 – 1915, fh) in the same way I had been working in Munich. But something inside me prevented me from painting colourful, sensuous pictures. Suffering had changed my soul, telling me to find other forms and colours to express what was on my mind.

 1916 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Woman from St Prex

 1917 Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Mystical Head Yellow Mouth within Violet 

I painted these ‘Variations’ for some years and then I found it necessary to find form for the face, because I had come to understand that great art can only be painted with religious feeling. And that, I could only bring to the human face. I understood that the artist must express through his art, in forms and colours, the divine in him. Therefore a work of art is God made visible and art is "a longing for God."

 1917 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Mystical Head

In a letter to his brother Dimitri, probably around 1917/18, the artist wrote, I am now mainly painting faces and landscapes; I am obsessed day and night by the vision of faces and colors. And the spiritual vision is my mystical world.

1917 Alexej von Jawlensky (Russian artist, 1864-1941) Mystical Head

18C Women Around the World

Costumes de Differents Pays, by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (France, 1757-1810) c 1797 Hand-Colored Engraving from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

By the end of the 18C, worldwide exploration & colonization by Europeans were fairly commonplace, enabling the late 18C & 19C public to catch a glimpse of the clothing & customs of other peoples.

Mostly Winter Hats - Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Young Girl

Renoir painted hat after hat after hat -- winter, spring, summer, & fall. It is always a revelation to search a painter's work looking for just one thing. So much jumps out that I have simply ignored on previous tours.

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Woman Wearing a Hat 1881

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Woman With a Blue Blouse c 1882

 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919) Mademoiselle Demarsy 1882

 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919) Study of a Woman

 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919) Margot c 1876

 Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Reflection 1877

 Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Ingenue

 Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Madame Henriot

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919)  The First Outing c 1875
Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Woman in a Hat

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Woman in Bright Blue at the Conservatory

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Woman in Hat

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Aline Charigot 1880

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Gabrielle Renard (1878-1959) Gabrielle

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Berthe Morisot and Daughter Julie Manet

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Flowered Hat

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Black Hat

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Coco and Two Servants

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Girl in Blue

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Girl in a Hat

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Girl in Straw Hat

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Girl with a Hat

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Madame Severine

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) The Loge

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Two Sisters

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Woman in a Garden

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Woman in Blue

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Woman Wearing a Hat

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Yellow Dress

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Yellow Hat

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French painter, 1841-1919) Marie Therese Durand Ruel

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919) Woman in a Hat

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919) Seated Woman 1895